Category Archives: writing

October 9

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Fictober, Prompt 9 – “There’s no right side to this.”

Original fiction.

Warnings: threatened violence, non-graphic discussion of blood magic.

A steady stream of pleading and whimpers fell from the man’s lips as the guards threw him at my feet.

“Silence!” I snapped, and quiet descended, at least momentarily.

This was one of the men responsible for the theft. As if it was not enough that they had stolen from me in the first place, they continued to skulk around, as if waiting for more.

I paced for long minutes while my guards waited patiently, and my prisoner continued to cower. At last, I thought I could be calm enough to keep him alive. Pausing before the fire, I turned and strode back, allowing my staff to tap commandingly against the floor, the hems of my robes swirling dramatically around my feet. Since it seemed that intimidation might get me the answers I sought, then so be it.

“You have stolen from me,” I said, coming to stand before him. He flinched, deliberately bowing lower toward the floor and I sneered. “Sit up and pretend you are in possession of a spine, at least for the next five minutes.”

“What- What will happen at the end of five minutes?” He whispered, making some effort to straighten in spite of the manacles binding his wrists at his back.

“That remains to be seen.” He flinched again, and did not keep his shoulders from curling in. “Speak. Tell me why a thief dares to return to my lands.”

“I did not—”

“You wear the same colors and crest as those that did,” I cut him off. “Speak truthfully or I will not need the remainder of the five minutes to make my decision.”

“We were commanded so by the Voice!” His words now almost tripped over each other in their haste to leave his mouth. “Blood magic is forbidden, and he commanded that no such spells—”

“If it is forbidden,” I cut him off again, voice low and quiet, “then why do I find that your precious Voice also commands his men to use it? Why do I find that my spell has been taken from me to be used?”

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October 8

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Fictober, Prompt 8 – “This is it, isn’t it?”

Original fiction.

Warnings: threatened murder/blood sacrifice, implied violent death (nothing graphic).

It was difficult to explain how I knew.

We were about a third of the way into the next field, walking in on the side that had been harvested already, the corn still standing tall to the left, dry with both the lack of rain and summer’s passing, rustling in the breeze. I stopped dead between one step and the next.

It was startling, to just know suddenly, like he said I would.

“Ah,” he said, sounding pleased.

I thought of the gun trained at my back – the only reason I had come this far at all – and swallowed. “This is it, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Much closer than I had hoped.” Acres of fields stretched out behind us, and then stretched on for acres and acres yet ahead, burnished in the last streaks of dying daylight from the west. To the east, a silvery glow behind the distant tree line threatened the moon’s rising.

Doubt and despair overwhelmed me. I had known, just like he said. Did that mean— Was his plan the right one after all? Should I- Should I let him sacrifice me?

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October 7

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Fictober, Prompt 7 – “That could have gone better.”

Original fiction. Continuation: part one (Day 1) and part two (Day 5).

Warnings: large-scale battle, spaceship crash (nothing graphic), brief and unrealized fear of a tunnel collapse

The ship-killer missile whined past me, headed for the planet’s surface, and I swore, trying to run faster. There was no way I’d be far enough from that one

The laser canon Vivi was manning from the underground station caught it before it could impact. The blast still sent me sprawling forward, but it had been high enough up still that it wasn’t as bad as an actual impact.

Distantly, another missile did strike the surface, opening a crater and sending me to my feet again just after I rose. This time I stayed down, breathing and trying to calm my racing heart. I wasn’t in danger yet, but my air supply was limited.

The glimpse of a ship spiraling out of orbit, smoke and flame trailing from the gaping hole blasted in one side, had me up and running again scarcely a minute later. It was moving away from me, but the impact blast of a whole ship was not something I wanted to be out here for.

I made it to the hatch leading into the below-ground station and got the door snapped shut just in time. The ship’s impact caused a localized earthquake that I rode out in the narrow metal corridor, teeth gritted, one bare hand slapped onto the nearest magic-integration pad and energy streaming out to try and reinforce the corridor walls. If they collapsed here…

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October 4

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Fictober, Prompt 4 – “Fine, I give up.”

Original fiction.

Warnings: implied battle, vague injury descriptions.

Gasping, I fell, my left knee giving out at last. Only my sword, sunk into the earth, kept me partially upright.

Although there was no possible way the gods looked on me in favor, I had no other explanation for why I was still alive at all, truthfully. My ki was too low to manage any more spells, and I was no warrior, was not trained to the sword, not the way those who had pursued us for so long were.

Not the way she was.

I knelt, and panted for air through burning lungs, and stared up at her through one eye that was beginning to swell shut, the other stinging with the sweat and blood dripping down my face. Her eyes, dark, intense, met mine and held.

A strange moment of hush descended around us, even as fire crackled in the distance, mingling with the shouts of those still fighting.

Her face under her horned helmet was unreadable as usual, but there was no anger in her eyes, no hatred, no contempt. None of the emotions that should have been there. I had betrayed her, betrayed my promise. That I hadn’t had any other choice was irrelevant. She would tolerate no such breach of honor.

That she held herself to even higher standards was the only reason that I did not hate her for her part in this pursuit.

But I knelt still, only not at her feet for the short distance still between us, and still she stared, making no move to finish me off.

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October 3

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Fictober, Prompt 3 – “I’ve waited for this.”

Original fiction.

Warnings: horror, monster, vampire, implied blood-drinking, implied violent death.

I held very still.

The man standing across the room did not smile, but the corners of his eyes tightened in satisfaction. “As I suspected,” he murmured, and stepped forward, careful to keep his holy symbol in front of him.

I edged back, lips curling involuntarily at the sight of it. Unfortunately, this gave him a glimpse of fang, which elicited another quick nod from him. He stepped forward more confidently this time, making sure that the rope held in his other hand was clearly visible to me as well.

The rope that trailed up to the boards covering the large window high above, which I could now tell were not fastened as securely as they had seemed at first.

It was a well-set trap, I had to acknowledge, if only in my own mind. He had driven me to this place cleverly, methodically, and there was nowhere in this particular room that would be free of sunlight if he pulled those boards, and we both knew it.

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October 2

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Fictober, Prompt 2 – “You have no proof.”

Original fiction.

Warnings: magical battle of sorts, non-graphic description of someone being dead.

The man clutched the scroll to his chest and looked at me as if I had just insulted all of his ancestors.

“Of course I won’t hand it over to you! It is mine, and acquired only at great trouble and cost!”

“And you didn’t stop to think about why that might be the case?” I asked him, keeping my voice even and my face calm. He had no idea what he was holding, and it was going to cause trouble for more than just him if I couldn’t stop him from using it.

“Obviously, because it confers a great boon to the user,” he huffed, as if this was obvious.

“It was stolen,” I said, losing a little bit of my temper, “out of one of the most secure magical facilities in all the known lands. I know that you know this, because that is why the thieves you hired to steal it charged you so much, and why you had so much trouble finding anyone to even attempt the theft in the first place. Has it not occurred to you that it was under such heavy guard because it doesn’t do what it claims to do, rather than because it does?”

A brief – very brief – flicker of doubt crossed his face, but then it settled into a scowl again.

“You have no proof,” he spat at me, “no proof at all of those rumors! Have you ever even seen it yourself?”

I had not, of course, looked at the scroll myself. Its rolled-up exterior was all anyone I knew had ever seen.

“No one,” I said slowly and meaningfully, “who has ever looked at that scroll is around to tell us what exactly happened to them.”

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October 1

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(Fictober seems like a good time to return from the metaphorical dead? We’ll see how this goes!)

Fictober, Prompt 1 – “I need you.”

Original fiction.

Warnings: implied blood sacrifice, implied murder, implied non-consensual surgical procedures (but nothing actually graphic).

“I need you,” she had said.

Arrogantly, or naïvely, or stupidly, or maybe all of those things, I had believed her.

Well, heard what I wanted to hear, at least. I had believed the implication, just as she had known I would, and it was only the implication that was untrue.

She was not, in the strictest sense, a liar.

We were planetside, deep underground to escape the inhospitable surface, which had made sense enough at the time. But now I couldn’t trust anything that I had seen on the way down, since the viewports could easily have been manipulated to show whatever she wanted me to see.

This lab was definitely real, though. As was the operating table I was strapped to with metal cabling, and the humming generator, and the tubing, and the instruments she was laying out next to me, their edges gleaming sharp under the too-bright overhead lights.

“Hush now,” she soothed, eyes distant as she scanned what looked like a mix of technical specs and spellwork on a datapad, not really looking at me. “You wanted to help me, didn’t you? And you will.”

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Fixer

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(The other Xmas present story, probably time I should get around to posting it. |D Another humans and aliens story, but much happier than the last one.)

Warnings: mild swearing?

The smooth, steady rumble of the drill gave way to an unpleasant squeal of machinery.

Nngli flinched away from it, her arms contracting closer to her soft core protectively. Nothing further happened, fortunately, but the drill had stopped. Nngli contracted further in upset and disappointment. How could they possibly get the samples she needed now?

“Shit,” came the voice of her one companion on this tumbling asteroid: a human from Terra named Kendall. She emerged from the enclosed drill control station, bounding quickly across the surface in the minimal gravity.

“Hold on!” she called over the comms to Nngli, who followed anxiously after once Kendall had examined the drill and nothing else alarming happened.

“It is broken?” she asked, three arms reaching out and then contracting again. She had no help to offer in this situation. At least she could be grateful that someone (hadn’t it been one of the humans?) had finally worked out a proper translating device that would accurately convert Glion brainwaves into an audible signal for humans. She almost sighed in slight envy for the humans’ ability to produce physical sound, though they did lack the Glion ability to shift color and pattern.

Communication had certainly been difficult at first.

“Yeah, a little bit,” Kendall answered her, laying flat and peering down into the drill hole with a bright light. She stayed there for long clicks, but then pushed herself upright with the sound the humans called a ‘sigh,’ indicating frustration. “There’s something jamming it, which might have broken something. Won’t know ‘til we get it pulled back up.”

“Oh no! Then we shall have to wait for a Fixer to arrive,” Nngli said, all her initial disappointment rushing back. That could take a long time, and this work might not be considered important enough to send anyone. She’d had to find a human Operator to bring her here and work the drill, after all.

“A fixer? You mean someone to make repairs?” asked Kendall. “You’re looking at her!”

Nngli rippled her arms in confusion. “But, Kendall is an Operator!”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do a little repair work here and there,” Kendall moved her face in the shape that humans called a ‘smile.’ “Wouldn’t have kept my ship going so long otherwise!”

“Wait,” Nngli said, arms rippling more in greater confusion. “You mean that your brain allows you to have more than one specialty?”

Kendall stopped and stared at her. “Umm…yes? Do Glion brains…not do that?”

“All learn to think and communicate, of course,” Nngli explained, “but the pathways in our brains are permanently set by that which we learn. Many pathways must be set for expertise, so many must be focused on the desired skills. I am an Analyzer, what you call a scientist. I have studied only Analyzing. I could not learn to be a Fixer now.”

“Oh,” Kendall said, her eyes a bit wide. “That’s…that’s a bit— Well, it’s very different from humans. Our brains create neural networks and pathways, I think, but they aren’t…permanent? They sort of are, but we can make new ones too. So, I know how to operate machinery, like the ship and the drill, but I also know enough about how they’re put together that I can do some repairs too. I don’t know as much as an expert, but in this case, I think I can manage.”

“Really?” Nngli asked, knowing that underneath her vacuum-suit her skin had shifted into the light red color of hope.

“Really,” Kendall promised with another smile.

True to her word, Kendall had the drill unjammed, fixed, and running smoothly again in less than one wake-sleep cycle. Nngli had extended all twelve of her arms, waving them joyfully when the steady rumble had started up again.

“Thank you, Kendall,” she communicated, pleased to receive a smile in return.

“You’re welcome,” Kendall responded. “I think you’re right about this hunk of rock having the elements we need, so I’m glad to help out with this.”

“Achieved quantities will be shared fairly,” Nngli assured her.

“I know, and thanks for that. It’ll help both of us out this way.”

The drill bore down, and Nngli settled in to wait, finding patience and calm where she had been unable to before.

Humans were very different, as she had been warned. But this one, at least, was an excellent partner, and together, they would prove that these asteroids were worth the time and trouble to mine.

Nngli hadn’t ever thought anyone would care about this particular Analyzing work, but she was glad to be wrong. Alone, she could never have reached this asteroid or run the drill. Alone, Kendall would not have known where to look.

But together…together they could succeed.

So That Our Banner

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(This was part of an Xmas present, so now I can post it here! A humans and aliens story.)

Warnings: war, blood, angst, Les Mis reference (does that need its own warning? |D )

MK-GL-2654 surveyed the broken ground with distant satisfaction. Troops lined up behind them, row after row of shining armor and laser weapons gleaming under the weak sunlight of this dying world.

There were not many of these pesky Terrans left. It had already taken far more resources than the United Leaders had planned to get this far, to have forced the Terrans into these last few, meager hiding places. More time. More troops.

Far more troops.

The whole planet had turned out to be less hospitable than the Terrans’ civilization had led the Unified Mklak to expect, but they had encountered such physical conditions on other worlds and still prevailed without trouble.

No, it was the Terrans themselves who had been the real trouble.

MK-GL-2654 felt safer admitting that now that the strange little creatures were about to be exterminated at last.

Orders from the ship in orbit above passed through MK-GL-2654’s implants, and MK-GL-2654 triggered the thought which would send them collectively to the troops stationed at the ready.

As one, as it should be, they stepped forward, marching toward the broken fortress in which the Terrans had chosen to meet their end. They had fought long and hard to protect this piece of harsh land, though MK-GL-2654 only now saw the pattern of Terran offense and defense over the many sun-orbits they had been here.

No matter. All the Terran efforts had failed, and today this stronghold too would fall just as all the others had before. The only thing standing between the Unified Mklak troops and the Terran stronghold in the broken stone cliffs and red hills was an even rougher barricade, made of earth and rock and broken Terran vessels.

MK-GL-2654 halted the troops just out of firing range of the Terran weapons. Although this terrain was not comfortable for the Unified Mklak, it was not comfortable for the Terrans either. Movement on the barricade told him that the Terrans had noted their presence.

They would have a short time to contemplate their end.

A Terran, one with black skin, rose to stand tall at the center of the barricade. MK-GL-2654 knew that to be one of the remaining Terran leaders, and again felt distant satisfaction to know that it too would meet its end today.

Others appeared, skins of different shades mingling as they stood together, ragged and unpleasantly discordant in both the nature of their skins and the coverings they used to protect those soft skins. MK-GL-2654 turned to survey the perfect uniformity of the troops, a much more pleasing sight.

“Your time is over, Terrans,” MK-GL-2654 said then, broadcasting the words through the mouthpiece of their armor. “If you surrender now, your deaths will be swift and merciful.”

Terrans rarely surrendered. MK-GL-2654 was not surprised when this group showed no signs of doing so.

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Fictober End

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It feels really weird not to be writing a story tonight, after a successful month of doing Fictober. It’s a relief, in a few ways, but also weird.

It’s a relief because I’m pretty wiped out tonight, and it’s good to not need to thing about writing just now. I’m taking tonight off, but hoping to keep up the general momentum of writing something every day.

It’s a relief because I felt like I was on the verge of running out of good ideas.

(But it’s also a relief because I kept not running out of ideas and now I have…too many new stories to write. So. There’s that.)

I’m really glad that I did it, and I feel good about having managed to do at least a little something every day! Some were definitely better than others, but that’s okay. I’m leaning towards doing it again next year, especially if I’m able to flesh some of these new things out in the meantime.

Congratulations to everyone else who participated! There were some great stories, and I’m going to go back and get caught up on some things because some nights I ran out of energy to read much once I had my bit done.

Thank you to fictober-event on Tumblr​ for running it! It was a lot of fun.