November/December Vignette

[Christoph]

With various gift-giving holidays coming up, I thought we could work that into a prompt, but with a dark twist. The prompt is as follows:

Your character receives a gift or boon but soon discovers an unexpected and unpleasant catch.

Now since this is the final contest of the year and also runs a bit longer than usual (allowing time for better, more fleshed out entries), the standard rewards for second and third place will be doubled and the rewards for first place tripled. So, give it your A-Game!

This contest runs through December 31st, 11:59 PM EST. Good luck!

[The Muri]

"It's so... beautiful..."

Questions such as "can this be true?" crossed my mind as I unwrapped a real gun!! It was so beautiful... beautifully beautiful! I don't know, the only word I could think of was "beautiful"! It was real! It had EVERYTHING! Even masterwork steel designs! A beautiful, amazing, marvelous revolver! (Oh wow, now there's some other words...)

It looked... so...

"... Wow..."

I decided to test it. I cranked the gun, placed my finger on the trigger, and-

-Pop!






...



... A flag that said "bang" popped out of it.

[Philomel]

Softly her fingers curled around the precious bundle. Blinking, she looked up from the soft piece within her hands, to the figure in front of her. He had green eyes, wore a tricorn hat, left over from his brief pirating days, and his eyes spoke absolute devotion to her. This time, however, the look in her eyes was not fake. Before she had led him down many a garden path to get what she needed from him - freedom, information, a warrior - however now ... now she truly showed what she felt.

And that was utter gratitude.

"Th-thank you ..." she whispered, her fingers not even daring to close to secure the package, lest she harm the thing. "I cannot ... where on earth did you find one?"

Lavishingham, the proud and devoted mage of Eanor, looked at the woman he called his beloved, and smiled. Broadly.

"It took me a fair while, my Lady, but eventually I did. My brother, Garvishingham, helped me."

It did not answer the question. In her usual tendency Philomel felt suddenly annoyed. Her eyes glanced around the room, checking, once more, that she was in her office in the Sultry Satyr, the place of her power, the land-centre of the Gilded Lily, her power house. Familiar walls were there, with a tapestry, as usual, of Drys in all her glory, a window to the north and not much space between her and the interviewee. This was her place of power, where she resided on high and all others spoke to her like she was a goddess ...

So why was Lavishingham not answering her question properly? He knew full well where he was, and who she was in terms of this city. After all, he was now on the roster of the Gilded Lily as an official Adviser. Yet he avoided her question like the asbestine plague.

She let her disappointment come to her face, furrowing her brow into a severe frown.

"I meant where, dear, not who helped you."

Lavishingham blinked, then he looked quickly down at the hard ash wood of the desk, and then back up at the faun before him.

"Philomel ... All I can tell you is ..."

Secrets. By Drys, the faun-whore hated secrets in her own office. Vehemently she stood, causing the chair behind her to slide, loudly, back. Her fingers opened, releasing the small fluffy and ginger thing, laying it to rest on her chair cushion - softly, softly now. You did not want to cause a small pure elemental any harm at all - then she turned, fast, and slammed her hands on the desk, right before the mage.

He jumped. And shrieked, flinching back.

"My love ..."

"Where did you find it, Lavishingham? Pheonix chicks are hard to come by these days. Especially those still somehow responding to the Tap ... now how come by Drys, did you come by this? Where did you find it? How, where, everything. I demand you tell me!"

Her fury filled the air, like a poisonous, terrifyingly-thick fog. Beneath her, the shaken and frightened man of Eanor stared back with wide, desperate eyes, his body curled as much into a foetal position as he could in the chair. Everything evil extruded from her, filling the room - a feeling of dread, rivulets of despair, horror, hunger, thirst, and utter hatred - all bubbling away in the heated afternoon. She was like a cackling old crone, mixing a cauldron full of emotions.

Fat tears began to roll down the mage's cheeks, echoing the first time he had sworn himself to her. The stink of salt came to her nose, and she found it repulsive. Being her, in this situation, she let the expression to her visage.

"Lavishingham!"

"Okay, okay! It came from Hadia! From the deepest part of the ninth hell. I swear, I swear I didn't know, Nightingale. Its probably - probably the pet of some demon prince, and yes maybe he will come back and reclaim such a prize. But honestly, I didn't know. It was all Garvishingham's fault!

"My stinky brother is so foolish."

[Remedy]

A gift? What the....

Remedy turned the small parcel in her hands. The wrapping was plain and brown, with a length of twine forming a lonely brown bow. For a moment she placed it back on the table and stared intently at it, as if she could see the meaning behind the gift if she tried hard enough.

"Ugh!"

The redhead pushed herself off her seat and stomped across the room to flop onto her bed. Remedy didn’t understand gifts. She knew of their effect building social relations, and in wooing potential partners, but giving gifts anonymously?

What does it mean??

Remedy pushed her face further into the pillow and ruffled her scarlet locks with her hands. She didn't like uncertainty.

Another frustrated snarl and she pushed herself up into a sitting position. He eyes narrowed at the package before flicking to her bag. She wouldn't give the gift the satisfaction of her focus. Instead she went to her bag and pulled out her zap glove and tools. She put both down on the desk near the present and pulled up her chair. She glanced at the package occasionally as she tinkered absently with her glove. She hadn't moved it, instead she worked on the corner of the large desk to not disturb it.

The minutes past excruciatingly slowly. The small package seemed to grow larger and larger on the desk. She couldn't focus, and she was making a mess of the glove. She'd nearly cut a wire in half, and taken a chunk of copper off the earthing plate.

"Shit!"

Remedy slumped back in her chair and stared at the roof. The lines in the wood danced around knots and cuts to form rivers and roads. She traced the lines with her amber eyes, hoping to find an answer there in that wooden maze. There was none, at least none that didn't involve some tree related pun. Cedar have to figure oak her own problems.

The day had been so simple. She had gone out and visited a few stores and got a decent amount of bartering done. Then out of the blue upon returning to the inn the Keeper had handed her the parcel.

She lowered her eyes to the brown wrapping defeated. She scooted her seat over and lifted her hand to the bow. A tug and the string fell away. Then she slipped her hand into the wrapping and peeled it away.

Sophie's World

Remedy turned the book over and a note fell out.

Dear Remedy,
I hope this book opens your eyes as much as you've opened mine.
Love, An Admirer

Remedy fell off her chair.

"Aaahhh, dammit!"

[Flames of Hyperion]

How long did he slump there, in the darkness, alone? How many eternities did he spend, drowned beneath the weight of his remorse and his failures?

Did the shallow breaths escaping his lips have any purpose to their existence? Did his numbed extremities care whether they had an ulterior motive to aim for? Did the black void behind his snow-encrusted eyelids promise anything but forgotten oblivion?

Somewhere beyond the boundaries of his physical vessel raged the stormy fury of an endless polar night. Upon the only living soul for a thousand leagues in every direction it vented its primal anger. Whiteout suffocated the horizon, choking the frozen breath in his lungs and banishing the shadows in which he might hide. The absolute chill meant nothing, as much a part of his person as the endless plain of ice beneath his prone body or the icicles lashing his exposed back. His ears had long since given up hearing anything but the ceaseless wail of the tumultuous gales. His nose had long since given up smelling anything but his own blood as rampaging ice crystals tore delicate membranes to ribbons.

He didn’t cry. He had no tears left to cry.

“And yet here you are, still trying.”

Kayu.

She appeared before him as he remembered her last, from that midwinter’s afternoon five years ago. Her silky black hair grew beyond her shoulders, straight and fine. She had straightened her crooked teeth, her smile now rivalling the masterworks of Shuhosai. She wore robes rather than tunic, carrying herself with an assured elegance contrasting with her carefree younger self. And yet she was still the same Kayu of old: compassionate and caring, bright and beautiful.

Somehow he found the strength to raise his head before her.

Somehow that strength flowed into his limbs, until he rose to all fours in the treacherous drifts.

Somehow that strength freed his hands from the suppurating snow, until he stood on his own two feet beneath the vicious slicing winds.

“You gift me with hope, Kayu. The hope that one day I might see you again. The hope that one day I can measure up to you and not find myself lacking.”

The softest of smiles touched her lips, as sorrowful as the last of autumn’s red leaves falling in the face of winter’s first gale.

“A fool’s hope,” she pointed out.

“A dreamer’s hope,” he agreed, matching her smile with one that masked his desperate longing. “As that is all I am. All I ever will be. A dreamer.”

The cruel gale should have picked him up and dashed him against the nearest rock face, but somehow he still stood tall. The incessant howling should have drowned him out completely, but somehow he still made himself heard. The swirling darkness should have obscured him from sight, but somehow he kept hold of the light.

“I dreamed of you last night. We held hands and went on a journey to see the world. You came to my house, my room, with your bag full of belongings and you laughed. You snuggled close and asked where we’d like to settle down. I buried my face in your hair and cried, ‘Anywhere with you.’”

He exhaled, trembling in his efforts to quash the heartbreak within. A fool’s illusion. A silly little hope. The innermost desire of his walled-in heart, laid bare to the one person to whom it mattered.

“But it was just a dream.”

“Just a dream,” she agreed, her voice low and gentle.

Her eyes lingered on his shivering shoulders. Her fingers brushed against the back of his hand. The gift of her mere presence suffused his frozen soul with bittersweet warmth.

“Everybody loves somebody, Yann.”

“Not everybody is loved by somebody.”

He dared not sigh, dared not exhale. He fought to keep her words within him for as long as he could hold on. He wouldn’t let go. He wouldn’t let go.

“Yet I can live for the brief moments of hope that these dreams give me.”

Her hand withdrew, every moment of its passing an aching, bittersweet agony.

“All that ever got you is out here in the middle of nowhere, alone, nobody at your side.”

His answer brooked no hesitation, no regret.

“And yet it was worth it.”

“But just a dream,” she repeated one last time.

Her voice receded into the howling wind. Her warmth faded beneath the absolute chill. Her face disappeared from his mind, leaving him alone and abandoned once more.

To the empty world he whispered,

“Guess I just have to keep going, neh?”


***

One step forward. Two.

The darkness of the tundral night pressed in around him, suffocating oblivion tethered only by the treacherous drifts beneath his knees.

One step forward. Two.

Wintry blizzards drove icicles the size of his fingers into his back. Frozen blood numbed his grip upon the wind-packed ice. He could barely feel the beat of the heart in his chest.

One step forward. Two

Hunger gnawed and clenched at the knotted walls of his stomach, cramped and acidic.

One step forward...

But at least the agony receded.

One...

[Sulla]

The censers on the wall hid smoldering coals inside, and languid smoke crawled from out of them. Thin white lines painted themselves across the pitch black backdrop. A table of indiscernible brown glowed faintly from the lantern atop it, turned to its lowest setting. Human eyes could not make out the faintest trace of furnishings or color beyond it. Dawn was an hour away, but black curtains hung from all four windows to still the first fingers of daylight from creeping in. Darkened, gloomy, and with that hint of must lying just beneath the smokey air, the cabin was in every way uninviting.

But seated at the table, eying the room, sat a still and silent Sulla. To he right, he could make out the stonework that encircled the fireplace. The censer on his left had been made from finely brushed copper and draped in gilded beads. And just in front of his, tilted on its wrought-iron stand, was a full-length mirror. The killer could see the slightest quiver of his face as clearly in the looking glass as if the room had been bathed in sunlight. His hair was tussled from a night of work, though his coat and scarf remained undisturbed from his travels. But most surprising was catching a glimpse of his own eyes, that now glowed with a lavender hue.

“Enjoying them?” A voice whispered from behind him with a sweet sound, and a hand was placed feather-gently on his shoulder. Though someone stood behind him, the mirror still showed only Sulla in its reflection. The sound of impossibly light footsteps crept around him until their source sat across from the killer. A man, dressed impeccably in a gray suit, slid a pair of black sunglasses off his face. “Remarkable, aren't they?”

“I never fathomed how much I missed in the dark,” said Sulla. Now and then, his head would tilt to spy more of the room with a childlike curiosity.

“What took you so long to get here?”

“The night was young, and I was eager to test this little gift out. I thought I'd get a bit of work done before I came to see you.” He started as his hands as he stretched his fingers the in the dark, before running them carefully over his breast pocket. “Is it too late for you?”

The man in suit only grinned as he extended an open palm outward. At once, the lamp between the two grew brighter as the flame inside nearly erupted. Made of nickle and glass with a heavy base full of oil, light leapt out from it all around them now, causing Sulla to blink in discomfort. His new sight would take some getting use to.

“I'm glad you've come. I knew you'd be will to hear me out. You have no idea of the amount of people who have found my offers unsavory.” The man played with his tie before straightening it out and slipping it inside the jacket.

“I must admit, I'm not usually happy to find out I'm being followed.” Sulla chuckled a bit, though the strain in it did little to lighten the mood. “But I found the offer intriguing enough, and the delivery impeccably quick.”

“That glamor will wear off soon. But there are more gifts to come, my friend.” The killer eyed the man as he rose from his seat in a single, fluid motion. He craned his body downward to meet Sulla eye to eye. “I've watched you for only a short time, and I'm already an admirer of your work. There's an animal's cunning to you that baser men lack; a thrill for the hunt that I rarely see these days.”

“A sign of the times, I'm afraid to say.” The killer noticed two sharp, white teeth protrude every time he spoke.

“Have you ever wanted to be even better at the game?” The man's stony veneer chipped away to an eager quake. His long arms stiffened as his even longer nails bit into the table. “To stalk your quarry from a distance further than any man? And to live forever doing so.”

“No.” Sulla now rose slowly, before taking up a pose similar to his companion. His cheeks were stretched in an absurd grin and his eyes were half closed. Shallow breaths were all he could manage, on the verge of true laughter. The man in the suit seemed surprised for a second before he shot up.

“Do you know what I'm offering you?” His voice began to break.

“Do you know what you call someone on the sidelines of any game?” He paused to place his hand above his heart, as if reciting some pledge. “An umpire at best, and a spectator at worst. One of whom follows their own strict rules, and the other has no hand in what happens – they're only there to watch.”

“You do not understand -”

“Wrong again!” Sulla was nearly shouting. “I understand your offer well, and I'm well aware of all its consequences – somethings I doubt you'd mention! If you observed me for any length of time, I would hope you could have some idea of how I operate. Habits are a killer in this line of work, you see, they make patterns appear. And patterns are oh so traceable. Do you have any idea how easy it is to track you're kind? How many weaknesses you have? But worst of all – an absolute sin in my eyes! -”

“I believe I was mistaken,” yelled the man in the suit as he moved towards the killer. He had a preternatural grace and speed, but chose poorly when he came straight at him. Sulla quickly slipped the hand into the breast pocket of his coat to retrieve a small glass vial, before slamming it with force into the man's face, who went screaming to the ground as his skin began to sizzle.

“You absolutely were,” the killer jeered. “Six hours was all it took to ask around the town, find someone in a nearby chapel, learn a few rumors and secrets of your nests that may be nearby, and pick up a handy little vial I was pretty sure would harm you – cost a bit of gold, but I am a godly man.” With a fury, he reached across the table for the lamp, nearly ripping it open. He dumped the oil on to the writing creature below, before letting the flickering light fall. Red hot flames engulfed the man in the suit, turning the gray soot black. A haunting, whimpering cry could faintly be heard over the crackling. The killer wasted no time in stomping about the room, ripping all four curtains. Dawn lay just over the horizon.

“And worst of all, you think you live forever.”

[Alydia Ettermire]

Within the Plaguelands there was a patch of land that stubbornly, audaciously, remained clear and habitable. In its first year, it had measured little more than a mile square. In its second year, it was all of five miles square. Now, from the highest point of its center, the darkness and pollution only teased the eye at the edge of the horizon. In another year, it would be Cleansed land as far as the eye could see.

In its center stood a small village. It looked nothing like any other Raiaeran village, though. That might have had something to do with the fact that all its buildings came from different corners of the world. The main administrative building was from the land of the High Elves, the lone remaining structure from the time before Xem’zund. The living quarters and armory were one building, a lesser castle from Dheathain, long abandoned before its removal and repurposement thousands of miles from its former resting spot. The greenhouses at the western boundary of the town were Fallinese, designed to keep conditions as perfect for plant life as possible while keeping everything unwanted from the outside out. In some grew food for the settlement, in others certain researchers tended particularly dangerous samples. Finally, the main research building and the holding pens were the latest technology from Alerar. Unlike the rest of the buildings in the village of fewer than a hundred elves, this had been negotiated for and obtained fairly.

This was Melenahil, an offshoot of Benoist trying a three-pronged approach to curing Raiaera.

Sintta Ilya stood above the Corrupted Corrals, a mask fitted over the lower half of his face as a precaution against breathing any noxious fumes coming from below. A new batch of undead waited for his colleague Finrod Siannodel to sort them into True Dead and Living Corrupted. The pustulant, decaying wretches screeched and groaned in frustration. Initially they all thrashed against the thick steel-treated glass walls that caged them. There was pure flesh here, living beings unblighted. The land was cleansed, a far cry from the comforts of Corruption. Of course their reactions were to attack.

The researcher wondered if they suffered, either from being removed from their habitat or from the desecration of their bodies. He wondered if their struggles were merely whatever passed for reflex or instinct among the undead.

Amethyst eyes swept over the dozen or so “recruits” brought back by a raiding party. Sintta was barely interested in the Necrologist’s corpses. He was a Terinfiguist; his own studies looked into methods of curing the blighted land. Whether or not the zombies could or should be restored was a matter both technically and ethically best left to others.

Suddenly his gaze sharpened, eyes focusing on one particular wretch. Its - no, this abomination had been a man once. His fetid flesh flaked from his figure, his skin was black and gray. His eyes stared blankly at a world he could no longer see, his mouth gaped open in endless, rapacious hunger. Nothing of his life remained to him, but his face…

“Herd that one out! I want him in a solitary holding cell!” Assistants and crusaders looked up at one of the facility’s head researchers, bewildered, but they scrambled to obey. Sintta whirled around, periwinkle robes flying behind him. On his way down to the holding pen, he grabbed hold of a young woman, too caught up in his haste to observe proper etiquette. “Find Hyanda Lindir and send her to Solitary.”


~*~*~

Five minutes later, a female Bladesinger joined Sintta in front of a large glass cylinder. “Loriel came with a summons from you. Is something - Star-Mother, shine your light upon us!” All color drained from Hyanda’s face, and Sintta put a hand under her arm to steady her.

“I know not how he came to be here,” he murmured. “But I do know our obligation to him.”

Hyanda pressed her hand to the glass, green eyes crinkling sorrowfully when a once-vital, once well-loved man lunged for it. One of his few remaining teeth fell from his rotting mouth in his effort to bite her through the barrier, but beyond pain, beyond decency, beyond loyalty, he noticed it not. “We could never tell Alydia.”

“Couldn’t tell me what?” A red-coated Alerian made her way down the stairs as silently as a ghost. Her nose was buried in papers covered in technical writing and arcane notes, so she had yet to see their prisoner. “If it’s that there’s something wrong with either the latest calculations or everything before them, I can see that. The math looks a little strange.”

Sintta’s face sunk into his palm. There was no word this time, no whisper that this woman might arrive at Melenahil. Why had she come to the facility? Whatever her reason, they couldn’t protect her from their discovery now. “Look.”

Alydia’s hat tilted up. A breath sharp as a knife split the air and the file hit the floor, scattering parchments all over the smooth stone. A wisp of darkness took her from where she stood to Sintta’s side, staring with wide-eyed astonishment at the occupant that beat against its cage with mindless rage. “Kelvar!”

She forgot everything else in that moment. The years of research, the years of heartache and struggle, even the current state of her former companion vanished like vapor. She had him back, in an impossible and welcome twist of fate. She had him back.

“Hyanda! Sintta! How far is Siannodel from a workable resuscitation? What can we do to speed his efforts?”

The Bladesinger bit her lip, looking at the buoyant joy on her friend’s face, then at her countryman’s somber expression. “Aly…”

“We have to let his family know!” The thief prattled on, unaware of the unease just behind her. “The sooner we get him back, the sooner they can reunite! His wife can have her husband, his children, their father.”

Sintta cleared his throat. “Aly.”

“We’ll be whole again. All of us, all together.” A red smile painted light on her black face. No one had seen her smile like that in well over a decade.

The Terinfiguist sighed; ripping that smile away was going to hurt. “Aly. We cannot. Kelvar tasted death before our eyes.”

“But -”

He stood firm. “The best we could do is purify him and return him to rest. Restoring him to life would be necromancy, and that is a path none of us are willing to walk. We must grant him his sleep.”

Alydia looked between her Raiaeran accomplices and the animated corpse of a very dear friend. “There is a chance, Sintta. A chance we might get him back. Sh...shouldn’t his family say whether or not we take that chance?”

“They did,” Sintta’s gentle tenor broke on the swelling waves of the slender woman’s despair. “Years ago. Vahka contacted me through Paige within days of your arrival in Radasanth. If Kelvar were found, a plaything of the Necromancer, she wanted us to give him peace. Aly… it is the only right thing to do. And it is what he would have wanted.”

The thief stared at the slavering shell of a man for whom she had cared dearly. The wishful fog lifted, and for the first time she saw him as he was - a puppet, not even an echo. For a moment, the only sounds in the dimly-lit darkness of the solitary research cell were the frustrated groans of a mindless zombie. “Why were you going to keep this from me? Did I not deserve to know his fate, Sintta? Was he not a part of this family, Hyanda?” Gloved hands moved up to frame Kelvar Maliaya’s rotted half-face. “Why?”

“Because it hurts, and we wished to protect you. You did not need to see him like this.” Sintta put a hand on her left shoulder and Hyanda echoed the motion on her right side. “Are we in agreement?”

Alydia’s fists curled against the glass. She took a breath to answer, but could not form the answer her companions wanted. The right answer. How could she bear to regain her lost friend, only to watch him pass beyond the veil of shadow again?

The Raiaerans waited for Aly to compose herself, standing with her, holding her. She blamed herself for Kelvar’s death. If she had come earlier to Eluriand, she believed that his life might have been preserved. Perhaps it would have been. Perhaps not.

Either way, the thrashing corpse accused his friends of treason against him and inundated them with regrets.

“If we can’t bring him back to us, let us at least give him an honorable death.” The dark elf pulled her hat down and stepped back from the chamber. “Open the door.”

Hyanda shook her head, denying the request. “We can cremate him in there. It is respectful to him and safe for us.”

“I will not give his children poisoned ash. Send for a Canister. I will relieve him of his Corruption. Then his friends can release his spirit beneath Raiaera’s sky and its gods. I will take his remains, clean, back to his family. They can choose to spread them beneath Corone’s stars or wait until they can return to scatter them on the lands he tilled.”

The Bladesinger bit her lip. “Protocol dictates that all True Dead be cremated immediately, without coming into contact with the living. None of the others - “

“I do not give a damn about the others,” Alydia growled. “Let their rotten flesh become rotten ash. Sweep it all into a pile and carpet dead fields with it, and I will cleanse it as I come to it as though it was common dirt. But this one is one of mine, and I will not see him discarded like a nameless member of the horde.”

Sintta grabbed her by the arm. “This is not Kelvar. These are his mortal remains. We need you living, and you risk joining him if you go in there. You are resourceful, swift, and lucky, so you come unscathed through much foolishness. This much, this once, I will not allow.”

He gave her a moment to see if she would fight, and when she did not, he nodded to Hyanda. She looked up. The structure that supported the viewing platform up top also supported an Alerian-made Flame Belcher below, one of two that Alydia had procured for Melenahil. At the Bladesinger’s gestured command, the young soldier manning it started moving it into place.

Clank. Cruk. Crak. Clank. Klick. Fwoosh.

When the flame engaged, Alydia vanished from beside Hyanda and Sintta. Shadow coiled and congealed beside the monstrous black mechanism of flame-forged redemption, and in less than a second, a scarlet figure hung from its side. An instant later, the Flame Belcher sputtered and died. The soldier operating it fought with it, struggling to re-ignite the flame, but the machine did not respond.

“Alydia!” Hyanda’s shout was half frustration, half shock, and edged with command. “Return the part to its place and get down from there!”

The Alerian thief dropped, landing narrowly on the two-inch wide wall of glass that separated Kelvar from his former friends. He snarled beneath her, reaching ineffectually for what he could only see as a target. She glared down at the two who would have kept her from the knowledge of the moment.

“For either or both of you, for any or all of those dearest to me, I would shatter heaven and conquer hell. Let the rest of the world burn if it must. Let him burn if he must. But not after I have done my utmost.” She tossed the part she had taken down to the Bladesinger. It was only a set of wires that connected the ignition mechanism to the controls; once Hyanda got it back to the Belcher it would only be a few minutes to repair it.

Aly only needed a few minutes.

Darkness crawled up and down her form, removing her from her perch and putting her behind Kelvar. She reached out for him, shadows flickering from her fingertips to make a quick, merciful end to his too-long undeath. She wasn’t fast enough.

A rotting arm whipped back with serpentine speed, catching Alydia across the face and slamming her against the cylindrical wall. She impacted with enough force to make the glass ring, and Hyanda pulled her sword, rushing for the locked door.

“Panta i’annon!” she shouted to Sintta, who flew in her wake, fumbling with the key to the cell. Had they not just told Alydia not to do this? For once, just once, why could she not listen?!

Panic hindered the researcher’s hands, making them clumsy at a time they needed to be accurate. Despite his companion’s demand that he open the door, fine motor skills were not coming easily to him.

“Sii’, Sintta!” The desperate urgency in Hyanda’s voice did nothing to help steady Sintta Ilya’s nerves, and the key fell from his hand, bouncing and clattering some feet away, under a desk. He flew after it while the Bladesinger struck at the thick glass with her sword again and again.

The zombie took all the commotion in stride, walking the three steps to his rising victim in time with the percussion of steel on steel-glass. When he reached her, he grabbed her by the neck, holding her up and pushing her into the wall. Stars exploded in her vision, darkness flickered at the edges of her eyes. The heat in her temples fought against the frozen vice at her throat.

A glance passed between struggling Alerian and Corrupted Corpse, and for an instant something flickered in the long-dead eyes. A spark of recognition, or sentience? Did he know who he strangled, was it by his living will that the choking grasp slackened a little?

Alydia didn’t have the time to find out. Her hands gripped his forearm, tendrils of shadow rippled over his remaining flesh, and he dropped.

When Sintta and Hyanda managed to open the door a few seconds later, the solitary confinement cell held one living female elf, and one dead male one. This time it was a dignified death, a death without hunger, without the endless, purposeless wandering. Kelvar Maliaya’s suffering was over, the last traces of it washed away by the drops of brine falling on his half-rotted face.

“Aly…”

“Hyanda...find me a canister that I might seal his corruption,” she rasped. “Sintta… contact Paige.”



~*~That night, beneath a tapestry of stars…~*~


Kelvar’s funeral pyre blazed as brightly as the man’s life had, roaring to the heavens that his soul could finally join. Only few stood around it, those who had known him or those close to those who had. The words had been said, the songs had been sung. The rites and rituals had all been observed according to ancient custom.

There was no more dreadful hope, there would not be another day looking to the horizon and waiting to see him coming. Not for anyone.

Alydia held a small blue tablet in the palm of her right hand. It matched a sacred seven others that were scattered across the world. It started flashing when the fire was nearly burnt out. One-two, rest, one-two, rest. An answer from Corone.

Alydia tapped it and lifted it to her lips. “Paige.”

“I’m at the Maliaya residence. I’m handing Vakha the stone now.”

A moment later, a voice greeted her solemnly, heavy with trepidation. “Nae saiann luume’, Alydia.”

“Too long indeed, Vakha.” Alydia spoke slowly, carefully. She had been the one to meet this woman and her children on the docks after the long flight from their homeland. She had been the one to tell them that she would find their husband and father at all costs. She had been the one who had failed to bring him back alive.

“...We found Kelvar.” A log cracked in the fire, exploding sparks upward in a joyous mockery of the dark elf’s incompetence.

“He is at peace.”

[Christoph]

The Muri: I'm not not what to make of your entry. I suppose it counts as flash fiction, since it still has a beginning, middle, and end like a proper story but uh... yeah. I doubt you expected much with this entry.

Philomel: You got off to a shaky start. You spent the first couple paragraphs telling me about the two characters' feelings, but didn't give me a reason to care about it. Being needlessly vague about the "precious bundle" didn't help. It just left me bored rather than intrigued. Now, had you shown me the phoenix chick right away, THAT would be caught my attention for the same reason it caught your character's attention. It would have given a lot more context to Phi's strong reaction.

You also tell rather than show frequently, and in other instances you tell AND show, when simply showing would have sufficed. Example: "She let her disappointment come to her face, furrowing her brow into a severe frown." I think you can show the reader her disappointment without outright telling us.

All that said, your core idea was pretty cool. Phi receives a particularly rare baby phoenix, but it was actually stolen from some powerful demon prince. My concern, beyond how unnecessarily long you took to reveal the gift itself, was that you didn't show the actual fallout. You ended on the reveal, but that shows me nothing of the actual consequences.

Remedy: I liked how you showed Remedy's unfamiliarity with the finer points of human interaction in the beginning, but I feel that you went overboard with her reaction. It went from interesting and entertaining to unbelievable. In your case, I actually didn't mind the delay in revealing the gift itself, since while reading it felt that it wasn't as important as her simply being given a gift at all. Unfortunately, it meant that the reveal disappointed me. Perhaps I just don't know enough about your character, but I didn't get the significance of the gift, nor its unpleasant drawback.

Flames of Hyperion: Super-super-nitpicking: I wonder if your second line wouldn't sound better as: "How many eternities, drowned beneath the weight of his remorse and his failures?" It matches the first, but doesn't feel as repetitive that way. That said, your writing is very solid. It just makes very minor things like that stand out. The only other technical issue I see is your tendency to overwrite sentences, where trimming some down to more efficient forms would smooth out your prose. Of course, it was a fairly minor issue of which you are surely already aware.

Your dialogue was solid. I got a good feel for the characters' voices. This is good, given how much of the story was dialogue. On the other hand, sometimes it wasn't immediately clear who was speaking, but it didn't take me too long to figure out. As for your take on the prompt, I'm not entirely sold. On one hand, I think I get it. Your character sees his lost love, giving him the hope and strength to carry on, but that only pushes him further on the path of suffering. On the other hand, I'm not convinced that it's a true drawback, since doesn't it drive him further along his mission? That was an otherwise solid story's main weakness in my opinion.

Sulla: Your writing style wasn't bad, but I feel like you used an overabundance of adjectives instead of actual literary techniques to get your points across. It made your prose feel dry. Granted, there were a couple of cool lines, like "The man's stony veneer chipped away to an eager quake." So that helped. You definitely get wordy and repetitive at times. For example, "But seated at the table, eying the room, sat a still and silent Sulla." Seated and sat, you don't need them both. Nice alliteration, though. You've got a fair few typos, but nothing game-breaking.

I got the most basic glimpse of your character's personality, but not much more. The dialogue, while mostly cool in its content, felt stilted in its execution. In other words, the things they talked about were interesting, but it didn't feel natural. The action was cool in theory, but felt too matter-of-fact as I read it, so it lost its visceral edge.

Story-wise, I feel like you began too late in the storyline. I would have liked to see Sulla accepting and receiving the gift, not starting the story with it. You also weren't clear about what, exactly, he received. He clearly wasn't made an actual vampire yet, seeing as how his would-be benefactor was still trying to offer it too him. On that note, the mysteriousness didn't serve you. With something as obvious as vampirism, you would generate more interest by telling the reader right off the bat so we at least know what's at stake. Pun intended.

Where in the World?: Your opening bombarded me with adjectives and adverbs. I saw what you were going for, but I feel like there's a more effective way to go about it. There were some nice bits, like "only teased the eye at the edge of the horizon." That had a nice ring to it. If you trimmed off a lot of the unnecessary parts, the good stuff would shine even more.

Your second paragraph took me out of the story. You told me what the village didn't look like, but never actually showed me what it did look like. Even a few little details would have clarified things, since simply saying that a building came from X or Y region doesn't actually paint a picture for the reader.

You hit your stride after that. Once I get a feel for going on, I was intrigued by the characters' reaction to the one zombie. The subsequent revelation came with the appropriate emotional weight, which I thought you did justice. That scene did drag on a bit, though. Pacing in general hurt your entry. I actually liked your take on the prompt the best, so in the end it was just some issues in execution that kept you from first place.


First Place: Flames of Hyperion -- 3,600 EXP and 600 GP
Second Place: Where in the World? -- 960 EXP and 300 GP
Third Place: Sulla -- 200 EXP and 200 GP

The Muri -- 100 EXP
Philomel -- 250 EXP
Remedy -- 150 EXP

[Lye]

Awards added.