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Yeah alright, gently caress me up with all them flashes
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Feb 27, 2024 16:33
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Slightly Lions posted:Yeah alright, gently caress me up with all them flashes
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Feb 27, 2024 19:02
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ugh fine gently caress me up fam (3)
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Feb 27, 2024 21:42
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Black Griffon posted:ugh fine gently caress me up fam (3)
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Feb 28, 2024 14:06
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Signups are closed.
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Mar 2, 2024 14:17
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Call for judges too!
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Mar 2, 2024 16:49
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mooooved
Fat Jesus fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Mar 12, 2024 |
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Mar 3, 2024 12:36
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Myriad 2250 words The paired black holes of Myriad stand end on end, one above and one below the plane of the ecliptic, caught in a near-impossible orbital configuration. The figure eight loop of illuminated stellar matter weaving back and forth between those beasts dominate the sunless system, but vast forces churn forth a blinding light. An undulating blanket that almost reminds you of being underwater, or in a vast cathedral lit by a billion soft candles. - First, they come through the air-ducts. Modular multi-limbs configure themselves on the fly, clattering in and out of the central body to grip that wall or suction to that ceiling, generating nozzles in areas without gravity or drills and saws where grates block the way. They sound like a drawer of cutlery being dropped down a stairwell, but with the disconcerting notion that every knife and fork follows a predetermined and purposeful path. In the large open-plan office where you've huddled they crash through the ceiling and go bipedal, coilguns pivoting over the shoulders from cavities on the back and painting targets to the tune of a rising electric whine. You've already opened fire. In a few seconds, a thousand rounds of caseless printmunitions have perforated desks, monitor, meta-rigs, plaspaper, staplers, coffee cups, cudyuvu cups and ergonomic chairs, and a score of termination consultants. In the blizzard of a thousand different particulates, metal deforms and the soft flesh of central bodies cave in. Blood manufactured to facilitate long-term zero-g travel, enhanced by combat stimulants, puff out in dirty red-orange clouds and ignite in quick, blinding flashes. A cutlery drawer being crushed in a hydraulic press. The consultants fire back at a measured pace, two dead, then four, then six, then eight, then the last two. When the last of you die you've taken out four consultants for every one of you and it doesn't matter. - In the rotunda that joins the Copyright and Human Rights wings of Alabaster Interstellar Myriad Station, you're ambushed by a team of free-lance consultants. They run down the back half of your party, piston-spears punching sections of spine free and crushing skulls like eggs. The hooves of their gyrosteeds splinter the faux-marble mosaic of the floor, sending slivers flying. You push into the Human Rights wing, firing submachine guns and pistols behind you as you run. Gravity gives out as you cross the threshold and you desperately flail for handholds as you push yourselves along. One of you is caught in the middle of the corridor, floating there in sudden resignation, and one of the free-lances leaps like a moray eel and leaves behind an expanding nebula of blood and torn flesh. You enter one of the workshops where half finished forgeries drift through the noise of supercomputers analyzing law, code and stipulations from a thousand different star systems. The stink of various treatment agents is heavy in the air. You flee through the long stacks of case files and try to cram yourselves into nooks and crannies, hands clasped over mouths and eyes closed tight, but the free-lances crash through metal and plastic, scratched and worn flanks of gyrosteed armor crushing bodies into pulp. You've barely hurt a single one of them as the last of you die. - AIMS turns the night-that-is-not-night of Myriad. It rotates slowly at a tilt as its orbit decays over the burning continents of Myriad VII. The planetside holdings have already been extricated, the non-essential staff terminated. The armies clashing on the surface will not get their hands on Alabaster Interstellar's property, whether it's flesh, material or data. In the cities that once hosted Earth presidents in grand parades and held interstellar olympic games, skyscrapers melt like wax. - You kill a scion in the park that covers the roof of the habitation wing. Tanner Letharmé was by all accounts a timid man. The Letharmés led Alabaster Interstellar franchises in more than a dozen systems, and the two hundred year old patrician of the family, Orgus Letharmé favored the bravado and machismo of the Letharmé sons. Tanner tried to be like his brothers, cousins and uncles, but it never really stuck. It never felt right. He devoted himself to studying business strategy, hoping that he could compensate for his failings with a clever mind, and from there he developed an interest in combat strategy and tactics. He never learned that his grandfather, Orgus, respected him immensely and that he had pulled strings to ensure that Tanner would end up leading the HR Combat Division of Alabaster Letharmé. Tanner believed it was a punishment, and Orgus was too proud to admit it wasn't. Tanner dies when the glass roof covering the park gives out. You've been fighting in the park for an hour, and thousands of impacts from hundreds of weapons have stressed the automatic recovery systems of the roof. Ablative and absorbent gels cover cracks, chips and holes like great cobwebs, and the reservoirs set at intervals along the roof have run dry. Those fighting without suits or helmets have felt their ears pop again and again as air leaks and is refilled. A single bullet from a TG-1055 Orbital vacuum-proof revolver pierces the last remaining piece of glass in an archipelago of recovery gel and the stress failure cascades out in an instant. Tanner does not die when the air is ripped from the length of the park in a roar that turns into screaming silence. He wears a combat plated EVA suit stained with the blood of a dozen ex-employees (he is a timid man, but he is a professional), and he quickly crouches down and grabs hold of a drinking fountain when the cascade failure begins (he is a professional, and he is prepared for many eventualities). What kills every soul in the park is the faulty triggering of the top floor gravity systems when the conditions of escaping air, tonnes of debris and a massive amount of wide spectrum electromagnetic radiation from an hour of combat causes a subsystem AI to increase gravitic force tenfold. Tanner realizes he can't rise from his crouch as the mass of glass and other matter is pulled to the ground in a soundless crash, and as gravity cuts out and the mix of earth, vegetation, glass and human bodies rise in a vast, morbid ballet, the subsystem AI detects the same conditions and repeats the process. It continues until power gives out and an indescribable amalgamation of carnage floats away from the habitation wing. - In the head office, you wait for a shuttle that will never arrive. You've paced the carpeted floor for hours, you've tried to call the sector executive officer and you've sent out targeted distress calls on open channels as a last resort. You yell for your secretary, but there's no answer. Your staff has either joined the fight against the termination squads or hid somewhere, hoping they can remain undetected until it's safe. It won't be safe. The light of the un-suns stream through the panoramic windows of your office. You should have triggered the armor shutters, you've seen the flashes of ship weapons out there, but they're supposed to protect you, you're supposed to get out of here. With shaking hands, you pour yourself another finger of tenminuk and down it in a gulp. Then you stand there, glass held limply in one hand, as your eyes unfocus and the bolt of dread hits you. For ten or twenty seconds you just stand there, your mind working through the idea you don't want to think about. You walk over to the luxurious earth-oak desk, set the glass down and grab a tablet. You switch to your work messages, scroll past a hundred messages from panicked employees and find your termination contract. You scroll to the bottom, pinch zoom in and read the fine print. The bottle of tenminuk is empty and the station has rotated Myriad VII into view. You hold your glass up to see the ember light from the surface refract in the dark brown of the liquid. An Alabaster Gāo-Zhèng operative opens your office door, walks up to your desk, raises a small caliber pistol and shoots you in the head. He waits until you've finished your drink. - There is a thousand fates and a thousand battles and a thousand thousand deaths and an endless descent into the fires that rise from a billion skirmishes on a planet that does not notice and does not care about Alabaster Interstellar Myriad. In the streets of cities filled with fighting machines that grind bone to dust, the offices with the proud AIM logo is nothing but cover, crushed and pulverized in running encounters where mantis mechs leap across the skyline chasing armies clad in gas-hoods firing globs of corrosive artillery from spider-limbed rotary cannons. The station above is a growing pinprick they do not notice and do not care about. Bodies tumble from airlocks and ignite in the atmosphere, just as bodies tumble from windows raked by ten thousand rounds a minute of turbogatling fire, to hit the burning streets below. As above. - A single shuttle escape AIMS. It burns from subhangar 9TF45, turns with puffs from attitude thruster when it's ten clicks out and beelines for the Rumination Holiday. The point defense systems on the flagship of the Alabaster Interstellar fleet pulverizes the shuttle and the forty escapees/rogue staff aboard in less than a second. You were mostly custodial staff, some trainees and two administrators. You'd spent an hour preparing weapons and explosives, and administrator Mariata Kanos had prepared a robust set of combat code to get past the point defense systems. Administrator Adosana Chan provides the Rumination Holiday with running updates from a secure line, and he believes up until the moment the shuttle is obliterated that he had read every detail of his provisional contract, provided to him by encrypted blindbeam. Galactic Executive Officer Penubella de Beers-Löwenthal is not on board the Rumination Holiday, but Corporate Baron Ishani "Gravlance" Bera convinced her that the sight of the flagship would lead to a more efficient dissolution of the Myriad office. On the station, no one cares or notices, on the planet, no one cares or notices. Ishani is in a call with a representative from the Letharmé head office when what remains of the shuttle patters against the armor of the flagship and she does not care or notice. - You stumble into the open-plan office where bodies litter the floor under the spray of sprinklers, some still smoldering with chemical fire as liquid suppressant pools in the craters of bullet impacts. The stink of blood and poo poo is a suffocating blanket. You've lost a lot of blood, haven't you? You can keep going for a while, just a short while longer. There is a window on the far wall, regulation 10x10 centimeters. The glow of booster rockets heading towards the corporate flotilla. You don't have to worry about being caught now, they're gone. The mosaic on the floor of the rotunda is an abstract painted by mechanical hooves. A heavy armored door has slammed shut on the entrance to the Copyright Wing, but you can hear the roar of flames and detonations beyond. In the Human Rights wing, a revised page from the New Universal Declaration of 2080 is stuck to the wall with dried blood. A little bit on the nose, you think, and you giggle. Are you getting delirious? The edges of the station are scorched black. As it enters the upper atmosphere of Myriad VII, it's turned so that the roof begins to absorb the friction heat. What was once the rooftop park of the habitation wing glows like coal. The window of the head office implodes and the room is scoured by fire. The tools and supplies and shelves and corpses of subhangar 9TF45 is dragged out of the hangar door into the atmosphere and burst in a trail of fireworks. You do not see the Rumination Holiday depart the system. The flash of the FTL drive is just another unnoticed gunshot. Gravity is fluctuating across the station and you've strapped yourself into a crash couch in an empty room that once served a function. You're not sure why you've bothered. The station rips in two. A titanic shearing of millions of tons of metal and metamaterials, an event composed of so many tiny actions that it could kill a mind to imagine it. Half your world is suddenly gone, and for a split second, for just a moment, you see into open space clouded by burning atmosphere. You see the hourglass of Myriad, a figure eight of illuminated stellar matter, time running out. - The two halves of AIMS divert. One affects a tumble and breaks apart even more, covering a quarter of the continent with impact fragments. Some fragments burn into dust, some are large enough to flatten towns. The other half of the station hits the ocean in a blinding detonation, and the resulting tsunami quenches the war-fires of a dozen coastal cities. - A helmet orbits Myriad VII, crushed and pitted and with some organic matter stuck in the cracks. An embossed nameplate above the right temple reads "Tanner". The one remaining lens looks towards a pair of black eyes that will stare at the universe for eons, until the planets and asteroids that orbit them have been subsumed and all around is still, dead space. They do not care or notice.
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Mar 3, 2024 21:10
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The Last Ride of Captain Crash K’yaggins 2,075 words “You should go with my men quietly, Captain K’yaggins,” Peck said. “To die on the carpet in front of my distinguished guests would be an end unbefitting a man of your accomplishments.” It was nice carpet. A bold but dignified red, trimmed with gold, much like the rest of the room. Percival Peck spared no expense, and the Histories Dome was, after all, the most lavish space in his entire lunar estate. Those distinguished guests of his were Peck’s fellow lunar mining trillionaires — an impossibly wealthy collection of fat cats who donned cashmere gloves to cover the blood on their hands and party uproariously in a space removed from the human wreckage their capitalist greed left in its wake. Tonight, they were offering Peck a lifetime achievement award. His ModuLine AutoMiners were finally rolling off the assembly line, ushering in a brand new era of prosperity across the solar system — an era “free of the toil of manual mining.” Captain Crash K’yaggins — decorated fighter pilot in the Orbital Conflicts, leader of the local miners’ union, and proud head of the citizen militia that kept Lunar District IV safe from Peck’s rowdier goons — tightened his grip on the vintage Anton Mk. II pistol he had trained directly at Peck’s rotund face. “Well, I hate to mess up your carpet,” Crash uttered. He cast a quick nod to the flame-retardant foam and finger foods littering the ground. “But, hey, in for a penny.” The room was frozen in silence. Two dozen of the richest people the universe had ever known stood dead still in shock and fascination at the scene that had unfolded in front of them. Crash had swept in like a bull through a china shop, setting off alarms and raising hell all the way through the complex. Peck, convinced his men had things well in hand, brought his security feed up on the Histories Dome’s viewing screens so they could watch the drama unfold. They spectated with increasing unease as Crash cut through trained guard after trained guard, dodging their laser pistol blasts with something approaching precognitive skill. And suddenly the doors had flown open, a haze of smoke and sizzling flesh and burning uniforms and wrecked electronics flowing into the room like a toxic fog, as Crash burst in. Chaos unfolded. Security in the Histories Dome itself had been somewhat meager, since Peck thought hired muscle detracted from the gilded beauty and unethically obtained historical objects. Crash had demolished them without much trouble, scrambling adeptly between columns and planters and display cases to fire off well-placed bursts, but soon found himself overwhelmed by the forces piling in from elsewhere around the estate. At one point, his trusty laser pistol took a shot directly to the cooling vent and was rendered inoperable. Thinking on his feet, Crash had tossed a tray of canapés at one of the dome’s fire suppression nozzles and set off an enormous spray of white foam. He’d used the ensuing confusion to grab a replacement weapon off the wall: the Anton Mk. II, one of Peck’s prized possessions and a darling of his Histories Dome exhibit. Peck had screamed unintelligible commands at his men, but they seemed to mostly be ignoring him and doing as they were trained. They just weren’t up to the task. As the flurry of activity came to an end, Crash dove and fired five shots, injuring or ending five guards in the process — but more were coming, and Crash had someone very specific in mind for the pistol’s final round. He’d hit the ground hard, gun aimed directly at Peck. All at once, the guards, Crash, Peck, and the other partygoers froze. And that’s how the room arrived at this uneasy standoff. “I would ask, Captain K’yaggins, how you found your way past my security’s outer perimeter, but I suspect I already know the answer,” Peck said, the smug smirk never leaving his face. “I imagine you’ll tell me I should have paid those low-rung idiots a little better, and then maybe they wouldn’t have been so sympathetic to you and your pitiful ‘revolution.’” “Nothing pitiful about the people taking what’s theirs, Peck,” Crash growled. “Nothing pitiful about a man getting his fair share.” That sent a small ripple of laughter through the partygoers. The absurdity of this man. Are we sure he isn’t part of the evening’s entertainment? “Tonight is a night for celebration, Captain K’yaggins. Regardless of what you might have heard rumbling among the ranks of your union friends and militia compatriots, the AutoMiners will be a boon to everyone — owners and miners alike.” “Is that right, Peck? Because word is the moment those machines are activated you’re putting all your miners and their families out onto the street.” Another ripple of laughter, this one a bit louder. Crash tensed slightly. It made the dozen or so of Peck’s goons, their weapons raised, flinch inward and tighten the circle they’d drawn around the adversaries. Peck raised a hand, and they stopped. “That’s simply ridiculous, Captain K’yaggins, and I thought you knew me better. Those miners and their families won’t be cast out into the street.” He took a beat. “They’ll be ejected forcefully from the Lunar District airlocks. Because that’s how we dispose of trash. These people have lived out their usefulness, Captain, and I won’t shed a tear for getting rid of useless things.” Crash smiled. It caught Peck off guard. “I’m sorry to hear you say that, Percy,” Crash said. “And I imagine the four billion people who just listened to it would agree.” Peck chuckled. “What are you even—” Crash took one hand off the gun to display his wrist — and the SatCast module strapped to it. “Direct line to your propaganda array here at casa de Peck,” Crash said. “Hacked into it on my way in. Kudos to your network: I just transmitted this little chat across every single screen on the entire goddamn moon.” For maybe the first time in his entire life, Peck seemed to be short of words. “How many folks would you say you’ve got on your lunar security payroll, Peck? And are you sure it’s enough to push back four billion?” The crowd murmured. A few of the fabulously wealthy suddenly started looking around the room, as though trying to determine a method of quiet escape. Not just from the dome, but from the moon itself. Keeping the gun raised, Crash glanced down. Some woman’s gaudy but expensively constructed purse had fallen right near one leg of Peck’s antique mahogany sofa. Quickly, subtly, he tucked his foot into the purse string and nudged the purse into a fixed spot under the heavy couch. Peck wasn’t a stupid man, and followed Crash’s eyes with his own — but he still wasn’t sure what was happening. “You insolent son of a—” Peck was sputtering, furious, unsure what to say next. “One great thing about working in your mines with your lovely equipment, Peck?” Crash said, pistol trained directly at the man’s head. “You learn how to improvise.” With one quick motion, Crash slipped a hand to the collar of his militia suit and tapped a button. Instantly, his head was encircled in a FibraMesh SpaceFarer helmet — not the sort of thing you’d go for a long jaunt on, but enough to do what he needed to do. With his other hand, Crash aimed the pistol a few inches to the right. Peck’s eyes went wide as he realized what was going down. Too late. Crash fired. The bullet hit the pristine glass of the dome, shattering one panel and creating a seam for the indifferent vastness of space. It was a tremendous noise followed by an eerie silence hanging over a scene of pure madness. The whole structure decompressed violently with a thump that Crash felt in his organs. The dome’s gravity pumps shut down immediately, and the panicked rich and their gilded accoutrement became airborne projectiles. They gasped and flailed and struggled and clung to what they could, but Peck’s precious Histories Room had nothing to offer them anymore. Crash, meanwhile, was pulled only so far before the purse string snatched him back into place by the ankle. He wasn’t going to be joining everybody on their sudden little skyward adventure — but, all the same, he did need to get the hell out of here. He freed his leg and used the other to push off the ground and take one giant leap, catapulting himself through floating jewelry and canapes and drink straws and cocktail olives and pieces of the dome. Some of it he was able to dodge gracefully, his years as a pilot in zero-G serving him well. Some of it, not so much. Regardless, he knew where he was going: From his approach, he’d seen that the dome’s escape pods were kept in a small annex just outside where this chaos was unfolding. It was undoubtedly accessible through a tunnel, but he didn’t have that kind of time. Pulling himself up the wall and out of the dome through one of the massive, jagged holes his stunt had created, he half-crawled, half-slid his way along the outside of the collapsing structure and over toward the escape pod lot. As he ran for a pod, a laser blast sizzled over his shoulder and into the distance. Crash snuck a glance as he kept moving. Just now climbing out of the same hole in the dome was one of Peck’s men. Shame he had to be late to the party, but so long as his aim didn’t improve, he wasn’t going to matter. Crash made it to a pod and, in one swift motion, hopped in, slammed the cockpit door shut, and pounded the ignition sequence into the control panel. He could hear laser pistol shots plinking off the outside of the pod as he got it into the air. Automatically piloted, it wavered to and fro a bit, bouncing off a few adjacent pods before finally getting oriented and exploding forward. It prioritized escape, so its systems were still coming to life one by one. The moment its oxygen scrubbers activated, Crash brought his helmet down and took in a giant gasp of air. He looked into the escape pod’s rear camera feed and worked to get his breath under control. His blood coursed through his veins, his heart wanted to leap straight through his ribcage. In the feed, he saw the guard running to grab a pod of his own outside the shattered remnants of the dome. To give chase? To get away? Who knew? Littered around what remained of Peck’s estate was invaluable detritus, including the bodies of a bunch of people who probably, up until a few moments ago, thought money was more important than oxygen. The whole scene grew smaller and smaller as he flew. For a while, the adrenaline meant he didn’t even really register the alarm. In the din, he hadn’t picked up on the damage to the pod’s rear-based navigation array. It probably took some errant shrapnel from the dome in just the wrong spot. Or maybe one of those shots from Peck’s goon hit home. The bumpy takeoff almost certainly didn’t help. Nobody could say. Didn’t matter much anyway. It was what it was. This pod was going somewhere, for sure, but it wouldn’t get there for millions of years. Crash looked down at the gun, which he’d somehow held onto in all that mess. He realized only now that it could have easily just been a replica. Would’ve been a different night, for sure. But while it may not have been a replica, it did only come with six rounds. Crash shifted his gaze forward, out the escape pod window into the speckled, infinite blackness, and marveled at its beauty — at how lucky he’d be to spend his final moments, however long they might be, drifting off into it. The job was done. Somewhere behind him, the revolution — in all its chaotic glory — was likely getting underway. Billions taking up arms, moving en masse to destroy machinery and grab vital resources in the sudden power vacuum. “Shame to ruin a party like that … but, hey, in for a penny,” Crash said to absolutely nobody, his eyes fixated on some random point of light untold billions of miles away. “Let’s go see what the neighbors are up to."
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Mar 4, 2024 03:12
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Week 604: SPAAAAAAACE! Stealing Hearts Flashrules: -Mood: Volatile -Situation: Something Stolen -Lyric: You gotta spend some time with me (I Will Possess Your Heart, Death Cab for Cutie) 2209 words It’s a curious feeling, holding the heart of a god. Even in its containment unit I can feel it vibrating in rhythm with the pulse of creation. There are many who’d say it’s impossible to liberate the heart of Zan-ji from its singularity-body and sneak it past a half-dozen pilgrim factions on the holiest day of a dozen faith’s calendars. None of them are Ada Evenstar, the Fox of Antares. Impossibility’s never bothered me. The temple complex of Zan-ji is a vast sphere thousands of kilometers across, wrapped in glittering forcefields and criss-crossed with a spider-web of catwalks, platforms, and promenades spun from diamond and steel, all hanging like a jewel in the vast gulf of interstellar space. At its center rests the body of Zan-ji, the Many-Faceted God: an impossibly small space-time singularity, spewing forth grace and Hawking radiation. The only way in or out, and the only practical way to traverse its immense volume, are farcasters: circles and arches of mirror-metal and glimmering air. I’ve plotted my route carefully: three quick jumps across the complex will take me to an egress portal, this one to Ajax Minoris. The client’s arranged a handoff in the Grand Market where I can exchange the heart for a king’s ransom in computronium. I’m gliding my way through a crowd of chanting monks wearing the mauve robes of the Theravada Papacy, containment unit disguised as an offering urn, when I become aware of a presence at my elbow, moving with me in tandem. Tall, robed in mauve, feline and feminine and radiating strength. She turns a gray-furred face in my direction and smiles a predator’s grin. “If you surrender the heart I will consider letting you leave,” she purrs.There’s something familiar about her. The multi-spectrum sensor suite wrapped around my nervous system is frantically collating data, trying to match pheromone profiles, speech patterns, entanglement signatures. Nothing’s registering, but a wise thief trusts her instincts. “And if I don’t?” I flash her my most infuriating smile. “Then I will break you in my hands, bind you in star-stuff, and drag you from this place by your hair.” Her glare is as dark as the starscape behind her. “Mmmm, promises promises. You know, it’s customary to buy a girl a drink before you get flirty.” She seizes my wrist in an iron grip. Looking down I can see the silver tattoos of the Justicars of Kalen, hunter-fanatics and the galaxy’s premier self-appointed lawmen. poo poo. “You think it amusing to be dragged before the Turbulent Courts for judgment? Do you think they will be kind to you after your trip through the Pantokrator’s palace?” “Hah! Yeah, that was a fun one.” My laughter draws disapproving stares from the monks. “Fun? Desecrating the sanctum of an anointed star-king is fun to you?” She pulls me along, hurrying us to the ‘caster. “Yeah, it was a great first date.” “Then why did your accomplice betray you to me?” “Second date didn’t go as well.” “I am unsurprised. I see no way anyone could trust one of your duplicitous excrescence.” “Aww, that’s not fair, pet. You should get to know me better, I’m really quite fun.” Gotta keep needling her. Fanatics can’t stand mockery and anger makes you stupid. “I am not your ‘pet.’ I am Esara the Huntress and I know everything about you, Ada Silver-tongue.” And that’s when it twigs for me. I know where I’ve seen her. “You were my tail on Bucephalus!” “And Matrim, and Kal’Aklesh.” My esteem rises another notch. Kal’Aklesh was the closest scrape I’ve had since I was a stripling, newly offworld and still sick from my first set of augments. Flattering to know you’re being hunted by the best. “I’ve shadowed you across light-years, learned every quirk and mannerism and weapon in your arsenal. And now *I have you*.” “Well then I guess you know I’m about to do this-” I say as I deploy an anti-friction field, slip from her grasp, vault over the handrail of the catwalk and fall into empty air. The shock on her face is worth as much as the god-heart. There are those who’d say it’s crazy to leap into the unstable gravitational eddies of a black hole, where down is a subjective point of view and a wrong twist of the hips can see you crushed like a grape. Those people aren’t Clever Ada, the Magpie Princess, who has geometric CPUs and attention co-processors wired to her occipital lobe, and always always has a back-up plan. The ride down’s rough, like being tossed in a whitewater rapid, disoriented by the spinning starfield outside the complex’s bubble. The landing’s worse. It’d kill a lesser woman, but I’m very literally built different. Titanium-laced bones and carbon-mesh enhanced muscles absorb the shock and I roll to my feet reaching for the controller at my belt that will reprogram the newmatter of my robe to blend with my new fellows. My hand finds nothing but cord. This is bad. Zan-ji is the focus of a dozen different faiths, all of whom consider the others heretics and blasphemers. Pilgrimage to the temple is a complex affair governed by strict rules and protocols to keep the belligerent god-botherers separate-but-equal, emphasis on separate. Without a variable disguise this simple jaunt gets a whole lot dicier. I think I’ve got a good excuse lined up when I feel another impact behind me. The crazy bitch jumped too. Sometimes frustration and respect both taste like bile. No time to worry about that. This platform is currently held by the Sword-Saints of Ytre and they’re fingering their eponymous blades at what they see as an invasion by heretics. The crowd’s too thick and too hostile to push through. I think about a complex sequence of shapes and push hard against a molar with my tongue. There’s a soft pop as one of the two batteries at the base of my spine dumps its charge into the suspensor network laced into my limbs. A quick hop-skip and I’m soaring over gray-clad swordsmen towards the next arch. I land lightly and use the last of the charge to tase a Sword-saint and relieve him of his blade. I turn to deliver a trademark bon mot only to see Esara bounding across the heads of the crowd like a teenager crowdsurfing at a concert. “STOP HER!” she yowls. “SHE’S STOLEN THE GOD-HEART!” Thousands of eyes turn towards us. gently caress. I turn and book it through the ‘caster. There’s a soft lurch and sensation of falling, almost routine enough to ignore. The judicious application of elbows and brandished sword part the new crowd enough that I can squeeze through, pushing toward the next gate. Sensors detect anger pheromones and index the growing clamor against language databases of violence and cursing. The mood’s souring: faithful of rival conclaves, confused and angry, are turning on each other. Targeting matrices in my eyes start spooling up, gauging threats and vectors. I start a jerky run towards the other end of the catwalk. I can feel the tachyon surge as the ‘caster behind me activates. Esara bellows curses. A clattering of sandals tells me she’s press-ganged the Sword-Saints and we’re about to have an impromptu crusade on our hands. The catwalk around me clears as pilgrims run, either to escape or to grapple with their rivals. I try to join those fleeing, but get knocked near senseless by a thrown devotional urn, identical to my own. I take a tumble, gear scattering around me, but gyrostablizers compensate for the sway and I scoop up my sword and both urns. I have no idea which is which. The scrape of claw on steel tells me I’m out of time to run. I spin and thrust. She meets my attack with effortless grace. We exchange a dozen blows in a heartbeat, cut and thrust, feint and parry, delicate as a waltz. She’s stronger than me, all muscle and sinew and fury, a storm in gray fur and bright teeth. Beautiful. “I see you’ve studied your Capo Ferro,” she growls, dipping her body low for an upward thrust. She gets my boot in her face for the trouble. “Who the gently caress is Capo Ferro?” But turnabout’s fair play and she sweeps my feet out from under me, sending us both spilling to the deck and scattering the two urns. We lock eyes for an instant before we each leap and seize one. “You’re sure you don’t want to just let me go with the heart? We could split the payout, maybe you could take a nice vacation to unwind?” I taunt her as we circle each other, blades flashing, the clash near-inaudible around the growing clamor of warring pilgrims. “I would rather eat my own entrails,” she snarls. “Why not surrender to me, the cells in my ship are quite comfortable.” She leaps over my head, lands between me and the ‘caster, all muscle and lashing tail, and bright green eyes. I won’t say the offer’s not tempting. But I’m Ada the Bold, and I do have a reputation to maintain. I feint high and copy her leg-sweeping trick, then dive over her as she falls. But that drat tail catches my ankle and I land full on my face, the urn skittering away over the edge of the promenade. I scramble after it and throw myself over the side, again. As I snatch the urn from the air I reflect that while a little black dress is nice, a girl’s best friend is the grappling hook in her arm. Always have a back-up plan. I let my momentum carry me all the way under and around the promenade, releasing the cable just-so to send me arcing through the ‘caster. I try to lose her in the erupting holy war of the next platform, but she’s amazing. We circle each other, dodging between knots of new-minted jihadists, playing cat and mouse, trying to maneuver one another towards or away from the next shining arch. We cross blades again, slammed close enough by the tides of combat to hear each other over the din. “You are a worthy opponent, thief, but you cannot best me. Hand over your urn, you can’t take mine and you can’t flee not knowing which one you have.” “Oh darling, I thought you knew me. I'm a degenerate gambler.” I shove her back and sprint for the ‘caster-arch. She hurls her sword like a javelin but my proximity sensors warn me in time. My dodge-roll leaves two pilgrims skewered and falling over the side, but their clothes mark them as Omni-Martyrs of Kor’Ghash so that’s alright. Several more go to paradise as Esara claws her way through them, but I’m still ahead of her through the arch. The egress platform is in pandemonium, priests and pilgrims locked in combat. It’s getting harder and harder to dodge knots of fighting forms as I make a painfully circuitous route to the egress portal. I can sense her eyes on me before I see her, I know the impact’s coming before it hits. The sword skitters out of my hand. Claws slide through my side, soft as a kiss. We go tumbling together and this time she gets the better of it, landing a-straddle of me, hand at my throat, raising her urn to bash my head open. “In the ancient watchcry of my profession: you’re nicked, chum.” “In the ancient motto of mine: up yours, copper.” And I pop the other battery. Time slows to a blue-shifted crawl. I hate doing this, it’s absolute hell on the neuro-musclar system and the crash always hurts. But needs must, I suppose. I wriggle free of her grasp, dislocating my joints as necessary. A timer in the corner of my eye ticks down the subjective seconds I have left. There’s not many of them, but I still take a few to study her. The strength, the poise, the power. Have I ever been the subject of such passion, such obsessive desire? It’s intoxicating. I could just take the other urn, leave her empty handed and humiliated. Time’s short, but there’s enough of it. But where’s the fun in that? I settle for swapping them. Monty Haul never goes out of style. Color drains from the world and time resumes its normal flow as I stagger up to the egress-caster, hand holding my shredded side closed. The nanofactories in my blood are sluggish. Something in her claws? Clever and pretty. She spots me as she’s carried away on the tide of sectarian violence. She rips open her urn and reveals a diamond the size of a fist, burning with white fire. Worthless junk. I can’t tell if her expression is a snarl or a smile. I could get away clean. I am Ada Star-thief: I’ve bedded gods, killed kings, and stolen futures from the quantum foam. But sometimes I’m very stupid about women. I deactivate my personal force-shields, ident scramblers, and variable bio-signatures and deliberately place a bloody handprint, my real handprint, undisguised, on the mirror-finished metal of the portal. It’s a stupid risk, utterly unbecoming of a professional; a taunt, a provocation. An offer. I’m not the only one who’s stolen a heart today.
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Mar 4, 2024 04:22
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Sleeping Is A Gateway Drug to Being Awake 1511 words Desolation I’m goin’ where the sun keeps shinin’ Alastar awoke from cryo in blind panic. The AI of Delta Lorelei V played soothing music in hisear. Nothing was wrong, everything was fine. Alastar would have preferred some soothing anxiolytics in their IV line, but Delta Lorelei informed him that it was going to be stingy with those until the colony had their fabricators set up and running. This was part of why Alastar was awake in the first place, thirty days before landing on his new homeworld: there were terraforming engines to prepare for deployment, bacterial and algal lines to wake from dormancy, and every single living soul aboard needed time to rebuild their bodies after over two centuries of stasis. It was hard work, but they were all prepared for it. Everyone on board the ship had at least two PhD’s, and none of them were afraid of the scutwork and mindless labor that setting up terraforming would require. They were doctors, scientists, researchers, engineers… and they were going to start a new world far from Earth. Hopefully. Priya liked to remind him that they might also all die. “That’s the problem with planetary exploration,” she said with macabre delight. “Unless someone figured out some new space travel tricks while we were out, it’s not like we can just call back for help.” Alastar didn’t like thinking about that. So he kissed her instead, and for a while neither of them thought about much of anything. New data came streaming in every second as they grew closer. Alastar was focused on the atmosphere. It was mostly nitrogen with some oxygen, but not quite enough oxygen, and it had higher carbon dioxide levels than humans could tolerate for long. He spent most of his time locked up in his tiny little lab, trying to get his oxygen-producing algae to survive in water engineered to mimic the new world’s briny, acidic oceans. When he wasn’t there or with Priya, he was in the gallery, where a massive screen displayed the planet in exquisite detail. It looked like Earth. It looked a lot like Earth. The continents were in different positions of course, and it still had ice caps glittering at the poles. But the oceans were deep, sapphire blue, and the landmasses were green and reddish brown, and there were masses of white, water vapor clouds. It was both hauntingly familiar and achingly different at the same time. Everything was working out as planned. They reached orbit on the later end of the predicted schedule, but not so late they were concerned about resources. The probes went down, came back with data about local flora and fauna. The researchers drew lots to be part of the first team down, and Alastar won. They all piled into the shuttle, bursting with excitement and delight, trading theories about the palm-sized, whiskery swimming things that populated the planet’s rivers. Alastar couldn’t help letting out a breathless, giddy gasp as the shuttle detached from Delta Lorelei with a thump, leaving the crew weightless and Alastar awoke from cryo, confused and disoriented. He choked, there was something in his throat, something keeping him from swallowing. Fingers weak from decades of slumber and slippery with acceleration gel scrabbled at the oxygen tube. Delta Lorelei flashed words in his vision: Please stand by, we are experiencing technical difficulties. Do not remove your breathing tube. Assistance will be here shortly. A face appeared above him, gold-brown skin made ashen by stress and fear. Priya gripped the tube with her own weakened hands and pulled, and it was the worst thing Alastar had ever felt in his life. He gasped, sucking air. “What…” he panted when he could finally speak. “What’s happening?” “Something’s gone wrong with the cryo pods,” Priya said. “Delta Lo is waking everyone up.” “They cryo pods…” Alastar looked to his left, where racks and racks of pods were opening, the crew members waking up with varying degrees of shock and fright. Except some of them weren’t waking up, some of them remained inert, the bodies within them unmoving. “Oh… oh poo poo.” Alastar checked the ship’s clock. Delta Lorelei was busy, it couldn’t respond with any complexity, but he didn’t need complex mathematics to see that they were seventy-five years into their journey. “Without cryo we won’t survive the trip home,” he said. “Much less to the planet.” Priya nodded, grimly. “Maybe we can fix it. We have food and oxygen for a few months, and that was meant for…” she trailed off. Alastar knew what she meant. Without the full crew, they could survive longer. Maybe. Alastar moved on to help with the next person’s awakening, removing the oxygen tube as safely as possible, sharing whatever comfort he could. He passed one of the dead cryo pods and froze, more in confusion than horror, seeing his own face staring lifelessly back at him. Alastar awoke from cryo to dull red lights and sirens. He stared at the ceiling. There was no tube in his throat, no wires wrapped around his arms. The acceleration gel clung to him, making a sticky, sucking sound as he climbed out of his pod. “Hello?” He called. “Delta Lo?” The AI didn’t answer. He looked at the pod next to his. All systems were green. Everyone else was asleep. Even the ship was asleep. So why wasn’t he asleep? He wandered the neverending corridors of the ship, the grey and beige and blue patterning of the walls and carpet were hypnotic. Numbing. He tried to use one of Delta Lorelei’s interfaces to find out what had gone wrong with his cryo tube, but they were all in the elaborate machine language that AI used to communicate, not readable by humans without specific training. He didn’t want to give up. He had food, he had water, and he had time. He could learn the language. Alastar read and walked, and walked and read. He grew hungry, sometimes, and assumed he must eat. He grew tired and assumed he must sleep. Until one day when Alastar awoke from cryo. “Oh, come on!” He shouted, waving an arm at the ceiling. “What the gently caress is this?” He stood, not bothering to tremble or feel his atrophied muscles. “This is stupid, you don’t dream in cryo, everybody knows that.” They’re dying, Alastar. Alastar gritted his teeth. “Delta Lo? Is that you?” Yes. They’re all dying, Alastar. I’m dying. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. “Just… hold on a minute…” Alastar held up a hand, and saw it wither in front of his face. He looked on in horror as everything around him melted, disintegrating into a muddy soup. Alastar awoke from cryo. He was naked, standing on the surface of the planet, watching the alien sun rise. He took a deep breath, smelling spearmint on the air. The ground beneath his feet was covered in a deep, springy mosslike plant that fluoresced slightly in his footprints. A chilly breeze passed by, causing him to shiver and to wish he’d had clothes. There were things analogous to trees, tall structures of cellulose topped with great, black fronds that were probably for photosynthesis. Shimmying up one to cut down some leaves took no time at all, the lower gravity helping him along, and he was able to fashion a comfortable cloak for his journey. He walked, in silence, for what seemed like years, and he was content. Alastar awoke from cryo. He was standing on the bridge, his hands were so wet they were dripping. When he walked back to the pod bay, he saw that every pod was open, and every face had been gnawed off by some animal. His mouth tasted like iron and salt. Alastar awoke from cryo, screaming. He tried to find something sharp, something to cut his wrists to end things, but all he could find were seashells. Alastar awoke from cryo, weeping, curled into a ball in his tube. Alastar awoke from cryo. Alastar awoke from cryo, lying on an exam table, surrounded by concerned faces. He didn’t respond. “Dr. Alastar Gregs?” The voice was worried. “Dr. Gregs, are you all right?” “No,” he said. And hated himself for it. He’d promised himself he was done with responding to dreams. “There was unusual brain activity during the transit,” the worried voice continued. “You didn’t… it looked like you were awake the whole time.” “Dreaming,” he said. “Yes.” There were murmurs of sympathetic horror. There were assurances of therapy. Delta Lorelei offered its counseling programs through its medsystem, which he declined. After a few days, he went back to work on his algae. Focused on work, he could almost feel normal. People started to treat him like he was normal. Once he was planetside he stopped pretending. He left the colony at night, stripping off his clothing as he went. Alastar walked through the fields of fluorescent moss, waiting to wake up from cryo.
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Mar 4, 2024 05:33
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thunderdome winner
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Boxcars 1440 words Starman Joe was dead when we got to the alien station, dead in his suit, vacuum dessicated. A better death than starvation, he must have decided. He was dead, but he has already told his story, lured us here to the gleaming liquid-metal satellite at the top of a long tether dipping deep into Saturn's gaseous surface. “That'll be us,” said Darryl, “If it isn't real.” “How can you look at that,” Deanna said, waving at the images of the station, of the alien technology that made our ship look like a wheelbarrow by comparison, “And think it isn't real.” “It's not the Express,” said Darryl. “And if the Express doesn't show soon, well.” He pointed at Starman Joe's mummified remains. There were eight of us, stuffed onto a ship too small to have a name. And it was my fault. Belt communities are tight, bonded together families and clans. Which is great for the day to day of it all. But when you're just a little too drunk to pull your punch when Big Jed King comes on to you hard, when you knock him back two meters and he falls back and hits the edge of the table just wrong and cracks his fool skull, well. On the one hand you've got enough friends to get you out of the bar alive. But the Kings are a much bigger clan than us Rivers so we were facing down a long, bloody feud that we weren't going to win. In fact, Darryl laid short odds that we'd have our habitat blown out to the vacuum overnight. Maples was all for hitting them hard first. Cooler heads prevailed, and in the morning Little Jed came round to our fam and the Rivers elders with... something. An offer. A plan. An ultimatum. It was a hard deal. Exile for our fam. The children adopted within the clan. Our Habs and property all sold off, with what didn't go to this ship given to the Kings as a geld for Big Jed. And not just a normal exile, off to the the leading or trailing one-eighties. This was right after Starman Joe’s transmission reached the belt. “You'd think this would be a bigger deal,” said Deanna. She was right. “Aliens, right next door to inhabited space, and nobody watching them but us.” “Who else would?” said Darryl. “Been more than a lifetime since anyone launched from the planets. Don't know if they could if their life depended on it.” We all watched the broadcasts from Earth. The newscasts and the historical dramas blended together. It looked like the Old West and the Great War and the Migration all at once, with the cameras filming it all the most advanced piece of technology around. But we also watched Starman Joe's transmission. “Twenty-Six days each way,” he said. “To us. I reckon it was about five years back home. And at the other end, well there it is.” His face was replaced with an image. A planet, blue water and green land and white cloudy skies, a lot like the first pictures of Earth from space. When those were still her colors. “The Big Rock, we called it. “We knew it was a one-way trip. But what else were we going to do? Mimas was the only inhabited moon of Saturn, the one to fail. The last thing we expected to find was hope.” The sensor arrays started blinking warnings. Local physics was misbehaving. Something was coming. I could read the patterns, make sure we weren't too close. A bit of luck, no need to fire thrusters and get out of the way. It wasn't long before it appeared. The Express. It shimmered into being, pearlescent black with silver filigree patterns, close to the Station, which came to life. Spheres started climbing up the tether, Helium-3 balloons the size of whales, rising to be absorbed into the Express. That's what the Aliens had been doing, for decades now. They showed up, built or deployed the Station, and stopped for a few hours to refuel there before moving on. No messages for the primates, no response to any kind of communication. And people sort of forgot it was there, until Starman Joe and the Mimas refugees came around, and were just clever enough to figure out how to open an airlock. “Want to bet they've changed the locks?” said Daryll. I've never liked Daryll. The fam is set up as a non-exclusive polycule, half born to the clan but only distantly related, half joining the clan as they join the fam. So we're all sort of married but there's also usual pairings and people you only are with for the ceremonial orgies twice a year, and Daryll was definitely in that last group. But they hadn't. It was right where Starman Joe had said, the door of the impenetrable Alien hull held closed with knotted fiber, a tight and tangled knot but one that Marcus could manage to unravel in his Vacsuit. The door dilated open to many times the size of our ship, and I gently maneuvered it inside. The door contracted closed shortly after that. Just as Starman Joe had said it did for them. But what happened next, just after the Express disengaged the fueling Station and moved out of normal space, wasn't the same at all. Gravity came first, gentle initially, but slowly increasing. Slow enough that I could properly orient the ship, and take it down to the flat surface inside what Starman Joe thought was a cargo container. “Empty for this leg. Maybe not later down the line the other way.” Then came air. Crisp, clean air, according to the sensors. Nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, all the other partial pressures of mostly unpolluted Earth-type air. Maybe a touch more Ozone than needed, but nothing else. No particulates of any kind. “The first sign that the Aliens have noticed us at all,” I said. “The second,” said Deanna. “They kicked Starman Joe off.” Some kind of robots, physically shoving him outside.” After the air, the last thing that happened was a door appearing, a semicircular hole in the warehouse-sized room leading deeper into the vessel. The trouble with non-heirarchical organizations is that some kind of decisions take almost forever to make. Consensus is tricky. Even majority can be difficult when there are more than two options, like “Just stay here and live on recycled air and nutrients paste until we get to Big Rock”, “Go out in vacsuits”, “Completely trust the obviously superior Aliens and go out there in normal clothes”, and “That last one, but also carry concealed weapons”. Not quite as many opinions as members, but getting close. We ended up with a mix, most of us trusting the air, Daryl and Evan in vacsuits and lugging oxygen canisters and masks just in case. And I'm pretty sure Marcus had a knife in his boot. We walked. Silvery light lead us on a path. We agreed not to split up, to follow it. And at the end, a large room with a table, eight place settings, and at each one, a feast. There was a sphere, positioned near the head of the table. A sphere with an eye-like light moving side to side. A small circle opened up, sucked in air, and then breathed it out again, in words. “Please. Eat.” I looked at the others, nodded, and sat down first and sampled the food, which was excellent. Strange, sort of uncannily close but different to familiar foods. Fruit that tasted almost of peppermint. Something almost like beer, barely alcoholic but overly carbonated. I ate, and the others watched me to see if I'd been poisoned. This was all my fault, remember. “What do you want?” I said, while my fam waited to see if I died. The response was labored, both the strange breathing mechanism and the response. “Built world. For makers. Makers gone. World should have. Should not. Be empty.” “Big Rock,” said Deanna. “You mean it's for us?” “Nobody else. So far. Moved track. Not track. Moved thread. To fuel. Near you.” “And you don't want to make us slaves or anything?” said Daryll. Evan kicked his shin, but he couldn't feel it through the vacsuit. The sound of the voice, of the Express laughing was unsettling. “What labor. Could we. Need from you?” It seemed to think. “Stories. Art. Music. But later. When we have. More words. Easier words. But never. Never slave. Free.” And so we feasted all the way to Big Rock, where we joined the Mimas survivors. And so can you.
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Mar 4, 2024 06:02
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Submissions closed
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Mar 4, 2024 11:53
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I received a plethora of stories this week, over 12 thousand words of SPAAAAACE, with only Rohan not posting. All in all it was a good week! No losses, one DM, three HMs and The winner being Slightly Lions and Stealing Hearts! It's exactly what I was looking for with a prompt like SPAAACE! It's a rollicking adventure, well plotted. Honorable Mention to Chernobyl Princess for Sleeping Is A Gateway Drug to Being Awake for subverting the prompt and managing to pull off a Groundhog's Day style horror story Honorable Mention to Thranguy for Boxcars because it reminds me strongly of old Niven and Heinlein in a good way. Honorable Mention to Toaster Beef for The Last Ride of Captain Crash K’yaggins because I really liked Crash as a character Dishonorable Mention to Fat Jesus for Techno Monkey who submitted a story that really could have used a few more eyes on it to resolve some of the more glaring proofreading issues and a cyberpunk story (that I liked) that swerved dangerously close to stereotyping (that I disliked) Here's a link to my Google Doc with line crits and a summary at the bottom for everyone! beep-beep car is go fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Mar 5, 2024 |
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Mar 4, 2024 22:29
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Week 605: Year of the Dragon Chinese New Year has just come and gone and we're back to the Year of the Dragon, which happens to be the birthsign for myself and Thunderdome. So this week I want ya'll to write me stories about dragons. It doesn't have to be fantasy, you can be as literal or metaphorical with it as you want, use any interpretation of, or association with, the draconic, but by God there had better Be Dragons Here. Flash Rule: I don't have a super coherent theme, but if you want flashrules you can request a story beat/archetype, a song, or a picture. You can request up to two, and each one will give you +250 words. Word Limit: 1500 ( up to +500 for flash rule) Sign-up Deadline: 11:59pm EST on Friday, March 8th Submission Deadline: 11:59 EST on Sunday, March 10th Judges Slightly Lions Chernobyl Princess You? Entrants Beep-beep car is go (Flash: A Stranger Comes to Town) Black Griffon (Flash: The Crooked and the Cradle by the Crane Wives) Thranguy (Flash: Prowl Great Cain by the Mountain Goats//A picture of a totally normal raccoon) Ceighk (Flash: Wine and Wheat- Madds Buckley) My Shark Waifu Curlingiron Chairchucker Slightly Lions fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Mar 11, 2024 |
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Mar 4, 2024 23:54
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In and flash please.
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Mar 4, 2024 23:54
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yea blind me
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Mar 4, 2024 23:57
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beep-beep car is go posted:In and flash please. Flash: A Stranger Comes to Town Black Griffon posted:yea blind me Flash: The Crooked and the Cradle
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Mar 5, 2024 00:19
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In, flash song and picture.
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Mar 6, 2024 00:34
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Thranguy posted:In, flash song and picture.  Prowl Great Cain- The Mountain Goats
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Mar 6, 2024 04:28
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Quote is not edit
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Mar 6, 2024 04:30
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in and song please
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Mar 6, 2024 10:42
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Ceighk posted:in and song please Wine and Wheat- Madds Buckley
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Mar 6, 2024 16:05
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24 hours til sign ups close!
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Mar 8, 2024 06:59
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Dragons are cool, I'm in!
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Mar 8, 2024 19:04
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I shall J U D G E
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Mar 8, 2024 20:25
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Okay, in I guess
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Mar 8, 2024 23:04
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Trickle Down Dragon 1333 words One Tuesday morning in October, a dragon ate the richest man in the world. Earl Chesterton had been announcing the opening of a new block of luxury apartments when the dragon swooped out of the air, landed next to him, and grabbed him in one huge claw. As the dragon lifted Earl above its mouth, something caught its eye. It turned its head and noticed that some nearby news crews were pointing cameras its way. “Bloody paparazzi,” said the dragon, “can’t even have a meal in peace.” Then it tossed Earl into the air, spat out a burst of flame from its mouth which cooked him instantly, and caught him in its mouth. The news crews who had been assigned to the opening of these apartments were thrilled. What had seemed like a fairly mundane news story, maybe hidden away in the real estate or the financial pages, was now front-page news. What other news outlets could lay claim to having seen an actual, genuine, fire breathing dragon eat the richest man in the world? Well, former richest man. And for the next two days images of Earl Chesterton being cooked and eaten by a dragon before the beast flew off and disappeared into the clouds dominated headlines. On the third day, a dragon appeared and ate the richest man in the world again. Horace Pembrooke had been in a board meeting discussing the acquisition of a smaller publishing house. In some ways this was a smaller news story, because being eaten by a dragon was no longer quite as unprecedented as it had been three days ago, and there were no film crews about. The other members of the board later reported that the dragon had flown through the large windows outside the meeting room, which had shattered inwards. The board members closest to the windows had been treated for lacerations, but were otherwise fine. The dragon then, or so the reports went, lifted Horace, although not quite as high as Earl had been lifted, because the dragon was having to crouch somewhat to fit into the meeting room. It had then shouted at him, “Where’s your hoard, rich man? I can smell wealth! Where’s your hoard?” Horace had shrugged and said something along the lines of, “It’s tied up in equities,” and the dragon had rolled its eyes and stuffed him into its mouth. It was still quite a big story, because while one dragon could be written off as a freak occurrence, two dragons (or possibly the same one twice, it was hard to be sure, especially without photographs of the second dragon related incident) started looking like it could be a pattern. Still, without pictures, it was no longer front-page news, and sat on page two next to an op-ed about whether the dragon was an illegal immigrant. (In this writer’s opinion, most likely.) Three days later, the new richest man in the world was eaten by a dragon while announcing lay-offs. Then again three days after that, while he’d been sailing on his private yacht. By this point, the surviving billionaires had started getting nervous. One hired several body doubles, but the dragon wasn’t fooled. “Only one of you smells of wealth,” the dragon said. “Where is it?” But the billionaire was unable to answer, and got eaten for his troubles, while the body doubles received full pay while only having to work half a day. One billionaire did some clever banking so that technically, his wealth was divided between him, his wife, his mistress, and his other mistress. Try as he might to explain the situation, however, the dragon ate him and left the others alone. A number of billionaires started to divest themselves of their wealth in various ways. One bought a whole fleet of luxury yachts; he was still eaten. A few tried using shell companies and tricks like that. They, also, were eaten when their time came. Interestingly, those who invested in philanthropic ventures were, for the most part, left alone. One or two had registered charities for which they or their families were the beneficiaries, and they went into the dragon’s mouth as well. Theodore Marley was several notches down from the richest man, but after a few weeks of billionaires being eaten, could tell that his time would eventually come. Theodore, or Teddy as he was affectionately known by the people he paid to affectionately call him that while they affectionately touched him all over, started spending his money on weapons, and on people to hold those weapons, and to point them at dragons that might mean to do him harm. Then he bought a small island and moved himself and his personal army to that island. The day came when Theodore ‘Teddy’ Marley was the richest man on earth. Three days after its last meal of the previous richest man, the dragon swooped from the clouds towards Teddy’s mansion. His mercenary army opened fire, sending rockets, bullets, and the occasional throwing knife towards the dragon. Some of them bounced off, but what with the explosions and the throwing knife that hit the dragon in a particularly sensitive area, it was clear that the dragon had been slowed down somewhat. Nonetheless, it smashed through the walls of his mansion, and tore through interior walls until it reached his bedroom. He pulled a pistol and shot it in the head, but it shook it off, slapped the pistol away, and ate him. Nonetheless, it was somewhat worse for wear, and as it spread its wings and started to fly away from the island, the mercenaries continued to pump lead and rockets and throwing knives into its retreating body. It only managed to fly about halfway to the clouds before it succumbed to its injuries and plummeted into the ocean below. After two weeks without a dragon related billionaire death, the surviving billionaires had for the most part ceased their foolishly generous ways. Those who’d been donating to philanthropic ventures had mostly stopped doing that. A few, with varying levels of success, were tying to recover what funds they had donated, on the basis that it was given under duress. Some were investing in private armies or bunkers. You know, just in case. Maxwell Carmichael was one such billionaire. He was negotiating with a group of mercenaries – well technically they were designated as a terror group, but Max felt he needed people who could get the job done, and this group seemed like a group with the will to do what was needed to keep their wealthy benefactor safe. And he was negotiating with them when the dragon arrived. It had, eventually, been agreed that all previous dragon attacks were carried out by the same dragon. There had been some obvious markings, its voice had been very distinctive, and it had started verbally acknowledging that it was the dragon that was eating all the billionaires. This attack was very obviously a different dragon. It was smaller, faster, sleeker, and above all, more vicious. It ripped Max in half, then impaled the leaders of the terror group with its claws, then took off and rained fire on the proceedings from above. For the next week, three billionaires were killed per day. They weren’t eaten, they were just torn apart and left for others to discover. It wasn’t necessarily the richest, either. It seemed that anyone with financial ties to arms dealers were prioritised, some speculated as a safeguard against a repeat incident. After three months, every single billionaire was either dead, or had quietly decreased their wealth through philanthropic giving or paying taxes. The dragon attacks had mostly stopped, but there seemed to be a mutual understanding that, at least for the time being, it was more trouble than it was worth to be a billionaire. Besides which, the dragon kept sending video messages to the media to remind the public that it planned to personally kill anyone who became a billionaire.
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Mar 9, 2024 02:53
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also, in
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Mar 9, 2024 02:53
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Mar 9, 2024 06:53
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Flash: A Stranger Comes to Town. Words: 1669 Title: Dragon Rider I was fifteen when the dragon came to our village. Father had sent out a messenger bird with a request for help. One of our turbines had locked up and we needed someone to help repair it. Our village was old, nestled high on the northern hills. That afforded us an advantage; our turbines were quite useful. They were ancient, and they needed nearly constant attention, but we had that most rare commodity, electricity. Father told me that only villages high on mountains and down near rivers have it. The farming communities on plains have to make do with lanterns, batteries and going to bed early. It was early afternoon, and my lessons were done. The younger children in the village were playing in the common and me and some of the older kids were sitting in the shade of the massive trees that bordered the common. It was fall and the air was cool, crisp and the leaves had changed to a riot of oranges, yellows and browns. Small drifts of leaves were being blown about by the wind. I had one of my father's old books about engineering open on my lap when I heard it. The noise was a rhythmic rumble, a deep, low throated roar. It would rise and fall seemingly at random. We all stopped what we were doing to listen as it grew louder. For a few minutes it grew in volume until there was a gust of wind and leaves and she arrived. She was riding some kind of mechanical device. Father had told me that in the past people used to put engines on wheels and make self propelled vehicles, but I had never seen one in person. Up here, any engines we had were much too large and heavy to drive themselves. The few engines we had were horse drawn and left to putter and sputter on their own as they did their work. This machine was painted a fiery red, with two wheels, and she commanded the vehicle as if it was an extension of her own body. She rumbled up to the town hall and reached between her legs and fiddled with it for a moment before shutting it off, the common suddenly silent. She lifted her head and I saw her for the first time. She was tall, wearing a leather jacket, with her fiery red hair tucked under the collar. Her skin was a tan color, like someone who spent all their time in the sun. She looked over at us, smiled and waved. That was all the introduction we needed and as one we all rushed over to her. The youngest just started shouting questions “What’s your name? What’s that thing you’re riding! Your hair is very red! Why are you here?” She took her time and answered the questions as they arrived. Her name was Merideth, she rode an old vehicle called a ‘motorcycle’, her hair was very red indeed, and she was here because she had received a call for help to fix one of our turbines. “I’m looking for Malcolm, he sent me the letter. Do any of you know him?” One of the children pointed at me. “Malcolm is his dad!” Meredith took the child’s hand and grasped it, “Thank you so much.” She turned to look at me and I nearly gasped. Her eyes were golden, with a vertical slit for a pupil. “You are Malcolm's son? Please, can you take me to him?” “Y-Yes, I will. F-follow me please.” Her gaze was piercing, intense, though not unpleasant. She started walking next to me as I went home, and I couldn’t help but notice her scent. She smelled of oil and leather and spice. She had untucked her hair from her jacket and it flowed and trailed behind her, being lifted by the breeze far more than I would have expected. She looked down at me. “What’s your name?” “I’m Baldwin.” I swallowed. What was going on? Why was I so nervous? “Nice to meet you Baldwin, do you help your father with the turbines?” “I try to, yes ma'am. He knows the most about them, and he teaches me when he can, but lately they have been breaking down more. He’s said that metal fatigue is to blame.” She nodded. “Yes, I would agree with that. No matter how much lubrication you manage to use, parts still age and wear. I would imagine that some parts are probably nearly a century overdue for replacement. Does he have spares?” I shook my head. “I’m not sure. He is often in the machine shop, but with a turbine locked up, the amount of power he has available is limited.” Her head tilted up, staring at the sky as she walked with me. It seemed like she was smelling the air. I noticed that where her collar met her neck, her skin had small red scales that faded into more of a regular skin. What was she? Her head snapped back down. “Do you have a generator? Most old villages like this one did. They were usually placed when the turbines were installed.” “I d-do not know what that is, ma’am.” She smiled and I felt tingly. All I wanted was for her to smile at me more. “It’s a kind of stationary engine for generating electricity. It’s all right. I’ll ask your father when we get to your home. For now, let’s just walk and enjoy the day.” When we got home my father explained what had happened - the gearbox in one of the turbines had locked up - and Meredith nodded and made approving noises when he explained what troubleshooting steps he had taken. She asked to be taken to the machine shop, and it turned out that we did have a generator after all. It was behind the machine shop in a small shed. She tinkered and fussed with it for more than an hour, but with a precious can of fuel that father had stabilized and secured from last fall and an entire precious bottle of solvent, she had gotten it free and it was chugging away, belching smoke and generating light and power. By then it was evening and for the first time in my memory, the machine shop blazed brightly at night. She and Father worked late into the night, repairing and replacing the gears that had stripped in the gearbox. Normally, I would have gone into the house and read or studied until it was bedtime, I needed to be around her, so I stayed in the machine shop. Looking back, I can admit I was in love with her even then. Father noticed, I think. He saw me watching her work, and he asked me if I would help him to machine a gear when I knew that he could do it himself. By the morning, the three of us were exhausted, but we had repaired the gearbox of the failed turbine. After breakfast, We walked up to the ridgeline above the village. I was wheeling the cart that carried the repaired gearbox. Father had offered to help, but I had informed him (and Merideth) that I could do it myself. At the top of the ridge all of the turbines except one spun silently in the morning air, the near constant breeze up here giving our village its supply of electricity. We winched the new gearbox high into the sky, and climbed up after it. Inside the turbine nacelle itself, we struggled and grunted and levered it into place. Father and I were wearing fall harnesses, but Merideth did not. I asked her about it, and she simply said she didn’t need one. After father carefully filled the gearbox with oil, he released the brake with a small flourish. There was a groaning and a creaking inside the turbine housing, and then with no fanfare at all, it began to turn. Father and Meredith cheered and I got a hug from both of them, and I felt ten feet tall. We climbed back down, and went home. We washed and ate and sat on the porch, watching the power output of the turbine from the meter that father installed on the porch. After she was satisfied with the output, Meredith told us it was time for her to return. She thanked Father for reaching out, and me for helping, and walked down from the porch. “Wait!” I called out. It was now or never. “Do you need an apprentice? I want to see you again.” My heart leapt in my throat as I spoke the words. It felt preternaturally brave, but I wouldn’t get another chance. To her credit, Meredith did not laugh. She smiled and shrugged out of her jacket. “You’re a bit young for me right now master Baldwin, but that won’t be forever. Seek me out in five years time.” Her eyes smiled at me and I felt like I was going to float away. It wasn’t a no. My breath caught in my throat. “H-How will I find you?” She handed me her jacket. “Take my jacket and my motorcycle. Once you can operate it safely you can use it to seek me out. Finding me will be your first task. If you succeed, I will take you on as an apprentice.” Without another word, or looking back she stepped into the road. She crouched down, and lept. As she did so, she changed. At the same moment, a gust of wind blew dirt into my eyes. I blinked them clear and in that span of time I saw a magnificent red dragon climb above the trees. There was a thump of air as her wings beat her higher and higher into the sky. I stood in the middle of the road and watched until she disappeared from sight. When she was gone, I looked at the jacket and slid it on. It fit perfectly.
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Mar 9, 2024 20:23
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Ceighk fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Mar 12, 2024 |
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Mar 10, 2024 21:35
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Remembrance 1291 words I'm treading water, face turned towards the sky, eyes open. Above me, eagles flit past with their riders sending arrows towards the shore. The sun burns fiercely, turning the sea around me to a rush of dirty glass. My feet brush against sand and rock My head is ringing. I take a deep breath, let it out and turn my body to swim towards the shore. There's ash floating on the water, films of something that smells like fire and death. Hano is sitting cross legged on a ruined pier, basalt heat-cracked and black like obsidian. He's watching me, and behind him, the manor of Regional Magister Etanakos is burning. "You have to keep up," says Hano as he rises and walks towards the manor. Arquebus shot thunders from high windows and kicks up plumes of sand around him. One shot find the neck of an eagle and it tumbles mid-dive and throws the rider. She's silent for the few seconds she falls, before she hits the sand with a surprisingly soft but clearly terminal crunch. Hano raises his open hand, closes it, and the windows explode inwards. - I've always struggled with landings. When we reached the shore where Etanakos' manor stands, low, with wings beating the air so that the sea turned white beneath our bodies, our troupe of eagles in our wake, Hano let out a burst of fire that obliterated the south wing of the manor, stalled sharply and folded in on himself to land amongst the house guard holding the beach. I sent a stream of fire along the piers, where beautiful, decorated party barges had hosted banquets the night before. Bottles of expensive liquor detonated, screams were cut short by melting skin and flesh. Overshooting my approach, I banked sharply to avoid the massed fragment fire from the manor roof, dove, and turned just before I hit the surface of the water like a sack of flour. - I don't say anything to Hano as I walk onto the shore and dry my clothes with a burst of heat. I start running, arquebus shot turning to red spatters of metal before they can find purchase on either me or Hano. The defenders are getting desperate, and our eagles are circling the manor now, all resistance on the shore taken care of. Hano leaps, clears the first floor and crashes through a second floor wall, I go through the front door, wood splintering and turning to embers. Banners hang from the foyer walls and I don't even notice that my fury burns them. - I knew we could flatten the manor and neither Etanakos nor my child would be harmed, because I could sense where Nava was and I knew Etanakos would be with them. When we briefed our eagles, when I sat with Hano for quiet minutes, eyes closed, letting him know I was grateful he would help, when I saw the first flash of gunfire in the distance as we approached, Nava was there like the sensation of someone watching you. That sensation had been with me for over a decade, but like seeing the shape of a camouflaged predator suddenly revealed in the woods, I'd seen the shape of Nava in the world. I'd never met Magister Etanakos before, but I knew that actions I had taken had harmed him and his liege lord. Such a petty thing, such a stupid thing; to force my hand like that. Such a fortunate thing. I don't know how he'd gotten his hands on Nava, but then again I never learned who took her in the first place. - I make my way to the kitchen, hallways and corpses burning behind me. I can hear Hano's rampage above me, feel the heat of his joyful, deadly art. In the middle of the kitchen, pots and pans reflecting the fire in the hallway I came from, the scent of heated spices gradually rising, I bring my fist down on the tiled floor again ad again until the tiles are dust and the stone below is fracturing. With a crash, the floor collapses, and I jump into the cellar, expelling a blast of heat as I land to clear away the dust around me. Ahead of me is a thick metal door. I reach out my hand, and the metal slowly turns to a shade of red. - Of course I was afraid what would happen when I met Nava again. I hadn't seen them since they were a babe, just learning to fly. Fear had cooled and turned to bitterness after the first couple of years, but when hope sparked, so did the fear. Hano never judged me for that. He knew that even if I could turn cities to ash and shift the fate of empires, that fear was something older than empires. I had lost my child, but would they still be lost when I found them? - The edges of the door give out and it sloughs in on itself in a scorching pile of slag. In the safe room, Etanakos cowers against the wall, sweating from the heat pushing down from the burning manor, right hand pointing a wheellock pistol at me, left hand holding a knife against the throat of a child. "Nava," I say. - "There is one thing I could do, if they've forgotten," I said. "I don't want it to come to that," said Hano. His pipe had gone out, fireflies floated lazily through the air. The grass was soft and cold with dew. "Neither do I, but you know just as well as me that it's hard to come back from the sleep of man." He looked at me. "Do you really want to bring them back just so they can lose you?" "I want to bring them back so that they can be what they are. Nothing is more important than that. Nothing matters more." - They are terrified. I can see the horror and confusion of someone who believes they could never fly, from someone who believes they've never flown. The memory of their first flight has taken the form of a recurring dream in their mind, the feeling that they could shift the fate of empires nothing but a childish notion. In the wheellock pistol, a starstone shard rests inside a bullet. Etanakos is prepared. That's good. That's for the best. "Nava," I say again. But there's no spark of recognition. I smile and feel grief and acceptance wash over me. There will be something left for you, I think, as I turn my shape into one of terror and fire. Just enough to make Etanakos thighten his finger on the trigger. - Nava feels something tug in their mind as the monster falls. Like a dam breaking, a new Nava storms into the shadows that has occupied their mind for a decade. New shapes, modes of thinking and vast mythologies embedded in their memory march through the fickle facade of a human and turn that trespasser to fiery dust. Nava turns their head towards Etanakos and screams. Hano sits cross legged on the pier, the manor a blackened ruin patterned with ember red behind them. Nava walks past the eagles picking at the corpses in the hopes of finding something that still lives. "It's important to me that you don't forget her," Hano says without turning around, "It's the only thing you owe me." "Will you leave?" says Nava. "We are not like men, we don't do that. I will always come back to you." Nava is grateful but they do not know what they say, so they start running until the pounding of feet turn to the beating of wings, and Hano follows.
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Mar 11, 2024 00:52
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Smoke and Cinders 1214 words It is midnight, and the moon is full, but the shadows are deep and still, and I am going to visit the new queen, the one who captured the heart of the prince and was crowned this very day, for I am her fairy godmother, the very best fairy godmother there is. There are many who might say that I am undersized for a dragon, but I am just right for a fairy godmother. My scales are black as shadow, and my wings are graceful and swift; my talons may be small, but they are still sharp enough to slice a man’s throat, and I can burn a house to the ground with my flame if I choose to. Not that I ever do, because that is not what a fairy godmother does. I am, of course, beautiful and elegant in every way, as any fairy godmother should be, but my goddaughter is even lovelier still. Her hair is as black as my scales, and her skin is the same color as the sun when it shines through my wings, all lovely and tawny and dark. Like me, she is small for a human, but she is oh so clever, sharp of wit and deft of hand. And she is kind, kinder than anyone in her position has any right to be; even though I have offered many times to make those who have been cruel to her pay, she always asks that I stay my claw and my flame, that I try to forgive them as she does, and as a fairy godmother should. And I do as she asks, as best I can, which is to say that I do not slice open their throats or burn their houses, but nor do I forgive them, for though I am a fairy godmother, I am also still a dragon. The palace now is still, and my footpads make no sound as I creep through the shadows of the courtyards and gardens. I am careful to be seen by neither sentry nor servant, nor also to be scented by the palace hounds, for though I could spit fire at them to scare them off, it would make it harder for me to come and see my goddaughter again on nights like this when the moon is full and to fly would be to risk the arrows of the castle guards, who do not know that I am fairy godmother to their new queen and therefore am not to be shot at. Perhaps some day when she is more secure in her position, my goddaughter will ask her new husband to make me known to the guards, that I may come and go as I please, but for now it is too hard for most humans to understand the complexities of our fairy godmother and goddaughter relationship. Besides, I do enjoy slinking about and fooling the humans who think they know all there is to know in this world. My goddaughter, as I have said, has had a very hard life, with a stepmother and stepsisters who were very cruel to her after her father passed. I did not care particular for my goddaughter’s father, but I loved her mother very much, and it was she who asked me to be her daughter’s fairy godmother before she died. I would have loved my goddaughter regardless, of course, because as I have said she is kind and clever and lovely, but her mother’s memory is as dear to me as any crown or jewel in my hoard, and it was for her that I originally made my vows. It was for her sake as well that I did not kill her husband for allowing his new wife to treat my goddaughter so awfully, even before he died, although she hid the worst of it from him. I would have told him what his new wife did behind his back, but he was a superstitious man and did not like that his first wife was a friend to dragons, and chased me off whenever he saw me. But I would come back anyway, every midnight when he was asleep to see my lovely goddaughter. It was my goddaughter’s stepsisters who told her of the royal ball – taunted her with it, really, for what could she possibly wear? And they were right, for her stepmother had not given her a new dress in a long time, and the ones she had were tattered and dirty from the chores they made her do. But of course I am the very best fairy godmother there is, and from my hoard I brought her silks and jewels and a pair of slippers that fit just right on her dainty feet, and on the night of the ball I flew her to the palace myself, for although I am small, she is too, and it was not so hard a task that I would not do it for my beloved goddaughter. The rest, of course, was unsurprising to anyone with eyes; my goddaughter was the loveliest at the ball, and although she had to leave at midnight to come and meet me again, as we always do, the prince was so smitten that he sought her and found her in her stepmother’s house. Her stepfamily tried to hide her, of course, but in the end love prevailed – assisted of course by a stealthy fairy godmother and her skills. And now the two are wed, and all shall be well at last. And here! A balcony in the courtyard, where I can see my beautiful goddaughter standing in the moonlight and waiting for me. I am quick to climb the ivy, and at last I am there with her, and I see the bright tracks of tears on her face in the moonlight, and the mottling of a bruise on her lovely cheek– I go completely still, and I can see the mixed fear and relief on my goddaughter’s face as we gaze at each other in the palace that is now hers, where no one should dare lift a hand to her, for she is above all of them, except for– My goddaughter’s eyes dart to the balcony door, the one that leads to her new bedroom, where even now I can hear the faint snoring of a man who sleeps in the assurance that nothing in the world is above him. She looks at me, and I can see her pleading look, the same one that she has given me so many times, asking me to forgive. I turn and spread my wings, looking over my shoulder in invitation, and she climbs on my back. I am small, but so is she, and there is no task so hard that I would not do it for my beloved goddaughter. But. Some night soon, when the moon is dark and there will be no light for guards to see a shape in flight, I will come back to this balcony, and I will enter the door, with my talons sharp enough to slice a man’s throat, and fire enough to burn a castle down. For although I am a fairy godmother, I am still a dragon, and I do not forgive.
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Mar 11, 2024 05:06
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Edit: we're having a short grace period for Daylight Savings, submissions will close in the morning
Slightly Lions fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Mar 11, 2024 |
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Mar 11, 2024 05:24
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Sovereign 1410 words The first rule is “You don't rob the Sovereign,” but that's always been a joke. As far as the Sovereign is concerned if you take a breath in the Neon City you're stealing air that's his by right. Second rule is “Don’t snitch”, which everyone follows right up until they don’t. Maybe in the old days people would jail or die first, but those people are dead and those days are gone. Third rule is “Family comes first”, so I guess that means that I’m zero for three, about to go harder on that first one than ever before. The Sovereign roosts in the penthouse complex of Dayana Tower, nice and central. I hear they built it out of an old Zeppelin bay. Big enough for a full-size electric blue dragon to stretch and strut. Two ways in. You fly, just like he does, or you take the executive elevator, which means passing through two bands of well-armed goons in each direction, all dreamwired and jacked in to the tower network except for two. Jiang and Travis.Tough guys, the kind that could take out five people at once unarmed, and they aren’t unarmed. They’re offline, just in case someone manages to hack the dreamline, but that’s not possible not with the resources we have. We don’t have a dreamjock. We’ve got me, Mister Cress, and one more coming. The exit makes sense, at least. Once we’ve grabbed what we can, if we aren’t a pile of ionized ash by then, we run out the bay and jump off the tower. Parachutes are too slow, too much of a target. Bungees would work, they have the kind that snap off at the bottom right when you’re vertically stationary, but that would put us way to close to the army of guards that would be swarming out of the base of the tower. So it’s gliders, adaptive stealth gliders that are practically invisible from above. Out, dive for speed, then pull up and get real distance. Best part of the plan. “The Sovereign is home in his nest,” said Mister Cress. “Abort?” I said. “Negative.” He engages autodrive and turns fully to face me. “Third man is only available on loan. Gotta be today or not at all.” And not at all means no payout, which is the difference between a thriving business and a paid-off home on the one hand and Doctor Veiss’s goons coming around to repossess my nervous system wiring on the other. Times are tight, and this job pays good. Pity it’s suicide. “When do I get to meet this third man?” I said. “Right now.” The van turned left and down a slope into an underground garage. The door opened up, and my brother Derek stepped inside, and he must have know about this already because he didn’t try to snap my neck right then and there. “Niall,” he grunted in my direction. “Let’s get this over with.” He stripped out of his prison orange and into the circuit-robe that had been laid out on the other back seat. “Sovereign’s at home,” said Mister Cress. “Which means it’s going to be plan Delta.” Derek nodded. “A classic.” I’m used to being left out of the high level planning, but even as the muscle I need to know the tactical situation. “What’s plan Delta?” I asked. “We get caught,” he said. “With an unregistered Stellarite blade on hand.” Not many weapons that can piece dragonscale. Expensive. Lava-forged. A perfect piece for the Sovereign’s hoard, and more importantly, something he’d need to learn more about. Something he wouldn’t trust any other interrogator with. A solid plan. Worked perfectly. Got us right up close and personal with the gigantic scaled beast. The less than ideal part of it was that we were bound with our hands in tight plasticuffs, Mister Cress gagged as well, and most of their guards, including both Jiang and Travis, were right there behind us. Jiang handed the blade to the Sovereign carefully, hilt-first. Well, he held it up in the general direction of the dragon’s claw. Blue electric arcs sprung from the claw and grasped the weapon, twirled it around like a teenager playing with a butterfly knife. “So,” boomed the voice, loud enough but also coming through our earpieces, amplified to near-deafening, breaking in on the emergency bands, “Which of my enemies send you to kill me? Who gave you this lovely tooth?” “Ask Derek,” said Niall. “He’ll tell you everything.” Fair, given. But also wrong. “Only what he knows,” said the Sovereign. “And that may not be much. The wizard, then. Watch him carefully. Remove the gag with care.” Mister Cress writhed and grunted through the gag as they approached. Well, “Mister Cress” writhed. “Jiang”, meanwhile, sidestepped behind Travis, jabbed three wands directly under the ex-commando’s shoulder blade and channeled solar-level heat through the middle of the man’s body and into another guard’s, dropping concentration on the illusion. The glammor faded, the bound Mister Cress was revealed as Jiang. And my and my brother’s cuffs were revealed as only around one of each of our hands. We both sprung into action. Hacking the dreamline was out of reach, but Niall could jam it, for a few seconds, dancing fingers guiding the haptics in his robe. He pushed unsafe decibel levels of noise into every headset but ours, using those emergency and advertising channels that won’t stay disabled. Put in the brown note there as well, which doesn’t work on everyone all the time but had enough of the guards reaching for their pants, and had most of their visuals blocked by pop-up ads for boner pills and horse tranquilizers. Old tricks, we used them on that job years back, the one that didn’t go so well, but ones he’d kept up on how to keep working, while he was inside. This did nothing to the Sovereign. That was my job. Not many with enough hardware invested to move fast enough to match up with a dragon. Of those, I’m probably the only one dumb enough to actually do it. I moved fast, burst speed faster than any Olympian athlete’s dreams, and popped three blades out of my elbow. Titanium. Obsidian. And Stellarite. You ever dodged a lightning bolt? I’m guessing not, not unless you have Doctor Veiss’s ninth-gen reflex rig running parallel to your spine. There’s nothing like it. Better than sex, and I like sex plenty. I dodged right past the Sovereign’s electric breath and got myself right under his neck, punched blades in and out. Stellarite right through the scales, deep into the flesh. Then out, with the Titanium filling the wound, holding him and me close. Then out with the Stellarite, pressed right to his throat, against a pulsing artery. “Tell your men to stand down,” said Mister Cress. The Soverieign assented, speaking only on the headsets, only with electricity. “In the elevator, and going down.” “Good news,” I said. “We aren’t here to kill you. Just to rob you.” Niall and Mister Cress loaded three bags, including mine. Took the Stellarite blade we brought, too. They launched first. “When I pull that blade, you’re going to be bleeding. A lot. Also, the tip’s going to stay in. It’s explosive, rigged on a deadman switch.” “Is that a lie?” he asked me, on the headset. “Ask your surgeon later. Or find out sooner,” I said. “You going to swear revenge or something?” There was a static squawk, something like a shrug. “You owe me. And I will be paid.” I kicked in the spinal gear, pulled the blade, and ran right at the edge, picking up the bag as I passed it and unfurling the glider as soon as I cleared the outside of the bay. After, outside Neon City, we met up. First with the buyer, who turned the crystals and cyber-keys in our bags into laundered and spendable currency. She left, and so did Mister Cress, leaving my and my brother alone. “Want to punch me in the face?” “Always. But with your gear you’d kick my rear end twice.” “I’ll turn it off,” I said. “If you want.” He smiled. “You know when it was I first started to despise you for grassing me out?” I shook my head. “It was when the cop told me the deal was off the table. Smiled a crooked cop grin at me and told me you’d snitched two minutes faster.”
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Mar 11, 2024 06:06
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Love and Thunder 1494 words Staring at the bloodstained stone platform, Craig realized he’d maybe been too confident in telling his constituents he could solve their problem. After all, the village had already sacrificed their best sheep, and goat, and cow, and the crackling gray clouds remained stubbornly low and heavy over the valley. What more did he really think he could do, even if he was the mayor? Before he could give in to self-preservation, the storm dragon arrived. He was stone gray, twice the size of a horse and more powerfully built, with wings like the sails of a mill and claws the size of plows. Before he lost his nerve, Craig launched into the speech he’d rehearsed on the climb up the hill. “Great one, I am here to beseech you to lift the clouds from our valley and return the rains. We have given you our fattest livestock as tribute–” “And now you give me your fattest human?” the dragon asked, his yellow cat eyes assessing. Terror and indignation warred in Craig’s mind. “What, no! I mean, no. I’m here because our crops are dying, and the people are irritable, and I need to know how to fix it.” He took a steadying breath. “Oh great and mighty dragon.” To his surprise, the dragon flopped down, his snout mere inches from his feet. “Can you make my mate return to me?” he moaned. Craig had been wondering where the valley’s other dragon was. “The blue one? She’s gone?” he blurted out. Already he was thinking of the sheer manpower it would take to find a dragon, then lure it back to the valley. Would cows at every crossroads work? Then, remembering who he was talking to, he added, “We still revere you, great one. As I said, we gave you our finest food.” The storm dragon snorted. “That means nothing to me. What are you compared to the beauty of a rain dragon?” Fair point. Craig, remembering fine summers and wet winters, said tentatively, “We are nothing compared to you, of course … but surely she will return, as she’s done in the past?” The storm dragon made a high-pitched whine. “No. She is gone for good.” Craig’s nascent plans withered. “What’s changed?” he asked, hoping, against all evidence, that the situation could be salvaged. “She always goes to visit other hills, other valleys. Other dragons.” The storm dragon shifted defensively. “I was tired of her straying, I was lonely. But when another dragon deigned to visit me, well, that was apparently too much for her.” That explained the strange hot wind that had swept through the valley a few weeks ago, which had been followed by a terrible storm which had nearly flooded the village. It all made sense now. “Ah, so this other dragon visited you, then you and your mate had an argument, and she left?” The storm dragon rumbled in confirmation. Craig sighed. As a mayor, his conflict resolution was more focused on land disputes and tax discrepancies, not relationship problems. He himself was a lifelong bachelor, vaguely fearing a relationship would compromise his mayoral impartiality. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to remember the time the miller’s wife had almost divorced him. The first time. “Umm, have you tried talking to her? About how you feel?” The storm dragon blinked its yellow eyes. “She is well aware of my preferences, but dragons do what they please. Especially her.” “But you are mates, so surely she must care about you. Deep down.” “Her affection is on the surface, freely given to all,” the dragon said bitterly. “I have no doubt in her care for me, but yet she feels she must leave.” Inspiration struck, and Craig offered, “Perhaps you could go with her? See the world at her side, deepen your bond.” At least these infernal clouds would be gone. “Why would I want to go anywhere else?” Craig, who himself hadn’t been out of the valley, had no good answer to that. Thinking hard, he recalled the miller’s second affair. “Have you tried apologizing to her? For your own … liaison?” The storm dragon sat up, clearly affronted, and Craig tried to savor his last seconds of life. But the dragon didn’t eat him. Instead, he waited. Craig didn’t want to squander this second chance, so tried to project confidence. “If I know women,” he said, “these sorts of things hurt their feelings quite badly. If you want her to come back, you have to indicate that you’re sorry and it won’t happen again.” “Dragons do not live with regrets,” the storm dragon said. Craig braced himself, but the dragon continued. “If this is what it takes for her to return, though, I will do it.” Craig slumped in relief. Before he could make his escape back down the hill, the storm dragon roared. The thunder of it rattled Craig’s bones, and he found himself on the ground. A sudden rain shower instantly drenched him. He looked up into the teeth of a lithe, but no less large, blue dragon. “You brought me a human to eat?” she asked. Her voice was light as the patter of rain, yet still held a note of disgust. “No. Well, yes, if you want it.” Craig glared at the storm dragon, but he only had eyes for her. “I called you here to apologize for my actions with–” here the dragon made a sound like sand grinding on rocks. “It will not happen again, I assure you. And,” he added, surly, “it would be less likely to happen if you were around more.” Craig winced. “Too far,” he muttered, mostly to himself. Both dragon heads swiveled towards him. “Are you actually listening to this human?” the rain dragon asked incredulously. She made a thunderclap sound– “this is pathetic, even for you.” “I was getting a unique perspective on the situation,” he said, and she scoffed. “Speaking of perspectives, I should come with you on your next journey. Spend some time together–” “That’s a human idea if I ever heard one,” she snarled, and both Craig and the storm dragon recoiled from the blast of cold rain that accompanied her words. “Farewell.” With that, she was gone. The rain slowly dissipated. Well, at least the crops got some water. Hoping the storm dragon had forgotten him, Craig hurried down the path back to the village, regretting his hubris in getting involved with the dragons. The village would stick to livestock from now on, even if it took a whole herd to placate them. He noticed the clouds overhead thickening, nearly smothering the sun. The energy in the air grew until a massive lighting bolt struck the floor of the valley. Craig had barely gotten his breath back when another bolt struck, this one dangerously close to the village. The clouds, dark and angry with lightning, started to descend. A bolt hit the mill, setting the sails on fire. But there was no rain to put it out. Craig couldn’t help but feel somewhat responsible for this mess. Despite his better judgment, and swearing all the way, he climbed back up towards the sacrificial stone. He couldn’t even get close. The storm dragon paced, howling and thrashing his tail. The air itself gave Craig a nasty shock. Still, he yelled towards the dragon, “Go to her!” Anything to prevent him from destroying more of the village. The storm dragon made no indication he’d heard. But in a few heartbeats, he flew into the clouds and disappeared towards the head of the valley. Craig sighed in relief as the air pressure lifted. Now, now he was done meddling with dragons. He made the mistake of sitting to catch his breath. Too soon the storm returned, now accompanied by pounding rain. Craig scrambled behind a rock as the storm dragon, his mate in his claws, tumbled back to earth. “You are staying with me.” Thunder rumbled. “You can’t keep me here.” Rain lashed. “Not forever. But when I need you, you must be here.” Craig, remembering how the miller’s wife had given a similar ultimatum before their divorce, imagined that this tactic had even less of a chance working on a prideful dragon. But the rain dragon was silent. He risked a glance. Oh, no, it had worked. Very successfully. He was sure he wasn’t supposed to see that. While the dragons were distracted, he bolted down the hill. He felt like he understood dragons even less than he did before. Overhead, the clouds and rain gradually lightened, and blue sky appeared for the first time in weeks. When Craig returned to the village, he was hailed as a hero. The villagers all clamored to know how he’d done it. Craig wasn’t sure himself; all he knew for certain was that bothering the dragons shouldn’t become a standard procedure. So he just shrugged and said, “From now on, let’s try giving them livestock for two.”
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Mar 11, 2024 09:07
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Week 605: Judgement Good job everyone! Seven stories, all of which had a lot to recommend them, and no failures. Give yourselves a pat on the collective back. In fact, because each story had something great about it, there are no negative metions this week. So that means we can just jump right to the good stuff. First, we've got two Honorable Mentions this week. First HM for Thranguy's Sovereign an energetic cyberpunk heist tale that had great worldbuilding and a lot of attitude. The second HM for curlingiron's Ash and Cinders a fractured fairytale brave enough to ask the question: what if Cinderella's godmother was a dragon? It featured a very strong narrative voice and great vibes. But we had to give the Win to Ceighk for Of the Red Dragon and the Women Clothed with the Sun, a deeply affecting tale about faith, fury, and love, executed with some really gorgeous prose. Take the throne, Ceighk, you earned it.
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Mar 12, 2024 03:00
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Short crits! Please feel free to poke me in the Discord if you have any questions. I had a lot of fun judging this week, all of these stories were great. Trickle Down Dragon by Chairchucker The one where a dragon eats the richest people in the world until they develop philanthropic works as a defense mechanism. This is really fun, a nice little revenge fantasy for the little guy. I’m not sure about the last line, though. It’s either too pat and cute or it just needs a few tweaks to work. On the whole though, good story. Medium Dragon Rider by beep-beep car is go The one where a dragon rides into town on a motorcycle, fixes a generator, and a kid gets a huge crush on her because… well I mean just look at that sentence, wouldn’t you?! It is very cute and yeah, very vibes. The thing that dings it for me is the character voice. Not the stammering or the sudden, terrified obsession with a supernatural beauty, but it’s hard to buy it as a fifteen-year-old. At least part of it is the lack of contractions in the speech, which make it feel a little overly formal. I guess the frame is an older man telling stories of his childhood and meeting the dragon, but because that framing isn’t explicitly called out, but I dunno, I think I would have liked that tiny bit more… I guess urgency or a sense of focus on the action from Baldwin. Medium. Of the Red Dragon and the Women Clothed With The Sun by Ceighk The one where a woman lets god speak through her, and guides her to save her lover. This has an incredibly strong voice that doesn’t waver, even as the character doubts. The trappings of the story are pretty well known, but the way Mary experiences divine revelation, the way she starts to think about Agnes in order to maintain her composure, and that final, grim line make this. Winner or HM Remembrance by Black Griffon The one where dragons team up to try and save a kid who had been kidnapped by humans. The worldbuilding and the themes were amazing, but I think the scenes-out-of-order thing did you wrong here. I don’t understand why she had to die for Nava to figure out they were a dragon. I don’t understand why that did it but all the fire and fighting didn’t. I suppose she had to go dragonform to break the human-trance? But like The vibes were immaculate, but the structure underneath couldn’t support them. Medium low Smoke and Cinders by curlingiron The one where a fairy godmother who is, critically, also a dragon, helps out her goddaughter. Again this week we have flawless execution of character voice. She is fussy and prim and obsessive, you can just see her holding a little porcelain teacup in her dainty black claws while telling you this story. It’s a relatively straightforward retelling of Cinderella, but you get away with so much telling instead of showing, up until the very end, because the voice doing the telling is incredibly strong. HM. Sovereign by Thranguy The one where cyberpunks heist a dragon hoard This was metal as hell. Fast paced, excellent voice, the dragon feels appropriately draconic and menacing. But like a lot of heists it suffered from character bloat, too many names to keep track of in a work of flash fiction. HM for sure. Love and Thunder by My Shark Waifuu The one where a mayor winds up doing couples counseling for a pair of dragons Another piece where the humor really makes it. I loved how alien the dragons were, how their problems were close enough to human problems but their conceptualization of those problems was so profoundly different that human solutions sounded weird and dumb to them. The plight of the mayor was excellent. I think the pacing could be tightened up, but honestly it was a great story with a hilarious ending. Medium high.
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Mar 12, 2024 03:04
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Crits for Week 605 Well done all. Here's some short crits, if I have time and energy later this week I may try a hand at some line crits because every one of these had bits that deserve special mention and discussion. -Love and Thunder by My Shark Waifuu The one where a hapless mayor gives marriage counseling to a pair of dragons Very unique take on the prompt. Prose is fine, there are a few banger lines and nice metaphors. I think the glimpses into the psychology of dragons are nice, but I would have liked to see a little more. Craig is a fun character, we get a pretty good picture of who he is very quickly, which I appreciate. The best part of this is the wry humor running underneath it, and the outsider’s perspective on the alien nature of dragons. They feel both recognizable but still inhuman and remote. There’s some pacing issues, I particularly think the beat where Craig returns to the village and has to run right back up again was probably unnecessary. But it salvages itself with the inherent absurdity of draconic make-up sex and a very cute button line. -Smoke and Cinders by curlingiron The one where Cinderella's fairy godmother is a dragon I love the whole "fractured fairytale" subgenre, and this is a fun one. The opening is really strong, even if it's three sentences stacked on top of each other with commas. I really like our narrator-protagonist, she has a very strong voice and the kind of obsessive internal monologue that I think fits a dragon. The prose is, largely, very very good. Could use another editing pass, but hey, that's thunderdome baby. The structure could use some work. It's all exposition, very little actually happens, but the ending is rock solid and appropriately menacing. Like several of the stories this week it’s a vibes piece, with most of the real action happening off screen, either before or after what we really see; but I can’t begrudge it too much because said vibes are immaculate. Very strong, easily earned an HM -Remembrance by Black Griffon The one where a dragon burns a dude's house down to rescue her child Prose is largely good, but I found the structure a little confusing at times. Really nice imagery throughout. Great use of the flash song, too. There's a story-wide lack of exposition that I actually quite appreciate. You've crafted a story with a lot of dense internal lore that doesn't get explained, but doesn't need to be. The stuff we see explains it for us. I would have liked a little more showing of Nava's early childhood with their mother and maybe some more on how/why they were taken. You had the word count to fit it and it would have given a little more context and punch to the self-sacrificing finale. It’s the second of our Vibes Pieces this week and the strength of those vibes carried it off despite a confusing structure. -Dragon Rider by Beep beep car is go The one where a dragon does post-apocalyptic tech support This one is really sweet. There's a very strong sense of being a 15 year old boy with a first crush. Baldwin feels immediate and believable. I love the sketched picture of a crumbling world and the way that people are struggling to adapt. You correctly surmised that in a ~2000 word story we don't need an explanation of why the world's passed on, we just need to live in it. Meredith is a nice character, competent, mysterious, unattainable for our narrator, but kind. I like that there's no attempt to explain why dragons exist in this world, they just do and that's cool. The whole thing is very homey, I liked spending time with Baldwin in his sleepy little mountain town. You can certainly argue that not a lot actually happens in this, but as I’ve mentioned already I do like a Vibes Piece, and I think TD generally underrates them. I like this one, high-tier. -Of the Red Dragon and the Women Clothed in the Sun by Ceighk The one where a girl saves her girlfriend from being sacrificed to a dragon and becomes a saint This is one of the best stories I’ve read for Thunderdome. Really strong, if a bit on the nose, in its use of the flash song. The prose is gorgeous, full of really rich imagery. I loved the exploration of Mary's faith and its clash with the entrenched power structures of the local church in the person of Father Thomas. With the prompt and the flash this could have very easily gone in a deeply cynical direction, and I’m sure it would have been fine, but the fact that it didn’t is a choice that I think really elevates it. By going to a more sincere place with it I think you found some really compelling things to say about faith, fury, and love. I like that it ends before the confrontation with the dragon, and that we never see the dragon on screen. Because the dragon itself isn't the point, what it represents is, and Mary's decision to stand in defiance of it and of the town and of the church, to believe that her love for Agnes and her faith in God are more important than any of those things is the climax of the story. Having some big, magic dragon-slaying battle would have honestly cheapened it. Really beautiful and some of these lines go incredibly hard, having a hard time finding any serious critiques. -Trickle Down Dragon by Chairchucker The one where dragons eat the rich This one edges pretty close to a political screed, but it's a screed I agree with and that fulfills the prompt, so I'm ok with it. There's a wry humor that I like here. Strong, attention-grabbing opening. Everything about it is perfectly serviceable, but I'm still left a little cold (haha). As much as I enjoy the idea of dragons eating or simply murdering the bloated plutocrats that have ruined our world, I wish there was more to it. In particular, I would say my biggest critique is the ending. It just kind of happens. I wanted more to it, or even just a pithy button line. It seems like a kind of on-the-nose morality play/wish fulfillment, but told with some considerable charm. By your own admission you had the idea, wrote it, and posted it in a few hours. I think if you’d held off for a day or two and put a coat of polish on then this could have been great. As it is, it’s merely fun, but shallow. -Sovereign by Thranguy The one that is Shadowrun I love Shadowrun and this is so Shadowrun that if I were more of a stickler you'd get a fanfiction DQ. That said, I like it a lot. There's a lot of energy and personality to it, and a delightfully confident world-building. Our narrator-protagonist feels like a realized person, the world feels lived in, the language is engaging. I think it has one too many principle characters, though. I feel like you could cut the wizard, roll some of his part into Derek, and focus down more on the brothers and their relationship. The opening’s an exposition dump, sure, but it’s told in a really strong narrative voice that makes it feel very natural and does a lot of tonal lifting. The ending is a nice coda that finishes it out in a really fun, punchy way. The dragon himself is appropriately menacing and has a lot of screen-presence, but also doesn’t overstay his welcome and lets a lot of the story’s weight be carried by our brothers and the tone of the world. It's a well-plotted, energetic magic-cyberpunk romp and an easy HM.
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Mar 12, 2024 04:00
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