Six-Fic Six-Sentence Sunday
Hi all! Fics below the cut. I know I don’t use this blog ‘properly,’ but I wanted to try one of these preview posts at least once as a form of self-motivation! I haven’t been able to read or write as much as I’d like this year, but I think that’s finally turning around!
Stay safe out there, everyone! Be seeing you!
Cyberpunk: Xadia
T+ // Sci-fi AU, aged-up characters. Roughly based roughly on TTRPG Cyberpunk setting, and now some video game as well! A sequel to the 2020 Birthday Bash chapter
Rayla lets Callum a little further into her life, and its details start connecting dots in Callum’s memory. The two work to uncover her past, in spite of both gang law and corporate policy.
===
The crowd surged as Rayla stepped into a small spotlight alongside the vocalist, her guitar swinging wide as its now-distorted notes ripped through the charged room. The frontman reared back, microphone raised, and howled with redoubled energy.
“Hunt down- hunt down- hunt down- your self-esteem!”
Then the lyrics were all but lost in the anguished roar of Rayla’s solo, and Callum winced, electing to cover his ears and stay in the crush of bodies to keep from losing sight of her. She wasn’t watching the crowd, wasn’t watching her hands, only mournfully sweeping her eyes along the edge of the stage, her mouth twisted in a grimace as she played.
Vollarian’s Day
T+ // Very Late Valentine’s prompts.
A mix of canonverse / other AUs, to follow the Rayllum Valentine’s prompts from earlier this year (2021)
Excerpt from Chapter 1
===
“So what’s the book for?”
“Oh,” Callum perked up, reaching for the sizable tome, “just a little… story, I guess, that made me think of you. Of us.”
She eyed the book in his hands. “That looks pretty substantial for a ‘little story.’”
“It’s a collection! They’re not bad, but… here we go- ‘Vollaria’s Everlasting Ardor.’ This is the one.
Rayla’s ears twitched at the name. ‘Vollaria’ didn’t exactly sound… human.
“This isn’t one of the stories with the shirtless men on horses, is it?”
Untitled ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ AU
M+ // Xadia AU (?), major character death, potential graphic violence. Based on the concept of the Japanse light novel “All you need is kill,” which was adapted to the hollywood film “Edge of Tomorrow,” this is a not-so-nice time loop story.
Since a certain someone brought it up a long, long time ago...
When the seemingly-random minor devastations began, the pentarchy could do little besides disregard them as magical events of the world. Now, several months into a shaky alliance with Xadia, the military might of both factions is near-spent attempting to contain what the Elves have guaranteed is a calamitous threat. A lottery is drawn to determine which unlucky souls will be sent to the next expected target...
===
The last thing Callum could focus on, as his vision darkened, was the moon over the elf’s shoulder. Visible in the daytime despite the glare of magic light from nearby. Its surface rippled as if liquid, like a drip into a bucket- some trick of death, he was sure…
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
And then he was breathing again- huge gasps of air, forcing his lungs to work again -but they were fine. He was fine. Sitting up in his bed in the castle, the chill of early hours again settling around him like morning dew.
Drought
T+ // Canonverse Non-Rayllum side story related to the fighting soon after the breach was opened. What happened to those that inhabited the lands close to the world was torn open? A one-shot relating the tale of a human that fled the fighting on the Xadian side of the border, who happens across an earthblood elf’s forest, dying as it is too close to the breach.
===
“Even a small amount is enough.”
She watched the human ignore her cupped hands, opening his canteen and carefully pouring a tiny measure of water into its cap- less than she’d hoped, but more than she’d dared believe the man would ever give her.
When she took the offering back to her Tree, pouring the water over its single exposed root, the human roused himself to anger once more.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing? We both need that more than your dead tree!”
Already beginning to feel the slight reinvigoration of the water, Milyn offered the vessel back. “Not dead.”
The cap was snatched away, but only secured after the man took a greedy swallow of what precious water was left to them.
Untitled Minority Report AU
T+ // Modern Sci-Fi AU (Yeah, again) Another AU based more closely on the Minority Report movie than its 1950s short story source.
Prediction of the near-future is now within reach of the modern world, and law enforcement has successfully used it to prevent violent crime, including murder. For Rayla, an officer of this division, it’s a slow day of monitor-watching… until it isn’t.
And yes, pink hair as requested.
===
“He’s still out on that farm?”
Rayla was already pulling on her street jacket and lense-ordering a dropcraft to the address Callum had given her all that time ago. “Far as I know.”
“Rayla?”
She turned. “Yeah?”
“Promise me you won’t run.”
Soren’s face slackened into a deadpan as she hesitated, not saying what they both knew, and Rayla shrugged before leaving him alone in the control room, spinning the prediction’s truecopy between his hands.
Already Dead
Undecided rating // Xadia ‘low fantasy’ AU. This is the... ninth iteration of the very first fanfic I ever wrote, starting in April 2020. Its timeline, story, and characterizations have been rewritten so many times, but I feel like this might be the right story I want to tell? It’ll be my love letter to the fantasy genre that helped me so much in my life, as well as the fanfic world I’ve grown to love.
Callum embarks on an elf-supervised pilgrimage to research primal alternatives to dark magic, while Rayla comes to terms with what being an assassin entails.
===
“What did he do?”
Runaan’s eyes narrowed. “His crimes have been committed, and his guilt recorded. All that’s left is his justice.”
Rayla looked away from the glare, down at her hands, reciting what she knew would please him. “Assassins don’t decide right and wrong, only life and death.”
“Just so.”
She swallowed the rough lump in her throat.
“I’ll do it.”