My judges have gotten back to me (finally) and I can announce the winner of the Fall edition of the Site Write Challenge!
Avaruu with Betrayal! (Click the link, go read - the story is good!)
@avaruu - though Tumblr refuses to let me tag you (venitaspeaks, give a nudge?), you may choose your prize as one of the following:
A mechano-hog
A 1-600 profession kit for a profession of your choice (this may require a few weeks for me to put together)
A prize of 15,000 gold
Congratulations!
Thank you to all of you for participating! I truly can't express how much I love reading about your characters and watching your writing develop even over as short a span as 30 days.
As of right now, my plan is to run another one of these in the spring, tentatively sometime around April or May of 2015.
Shadows of Argus Site Write Challenge is Complete!
The final deadline for prompts has passed. I've gathered together three folks who have agreed to read the final stories for me and select among them a winner for the final prize of the challenge. Don't worry, none of the judges know any of you (thought they do know writing) - I'm careful to keep them unbiased! I'm asking them to get back to me within the week if they can. As a reminder, here's what's up for grabs for the final entry:
The finale winner may choose one among the following three prizes:
A mechano-hog
A 1-600 profession kit for a profession of your choice (this may require a few weeks for me to put together)
A prize of 15,000 gold
Good luck to all of you, thank you again a hundred times over for participating and letting me coax such tasty words from you all, and keep an ear out to hear about the final prize!
Betrayal is an intense and painful thing for any character to experience. All too often, our characters are driven or haunted by the betrayal of others in their lives For this last topic, consider a time when your character was forced by circumstance to become the betrayer. What happened? How did your character justify it? How did it impact the relationships around your character afterwards?
As she staggered toward the grove, Kyssandrith did her best to hide her limp. With each step, her ankle screamed. And a lingering throb knelled in her cheek. But she bit down on her lip and forced her way through. She had to. She always did.
At least… she always tried.
With a stubbornness for the ages, she dragged herself out of the towering stone gates of Darnassus and into the surrounding forests where her uncle waited for her. The underbrush crumpled underfoot- a thick mess of fallen twigs and leaves with a narrow, barren path wound through the center. Her body hauled her along it, yanking her forward just one more step. One more step. She exhaled sharply and rolled her ankle to test the muscles, but… it wasn’t the joint that hurt her anymore. Not really.
In her chest clenched a pain. A cavernous hole where her heart throbbed raw within. It threw a heat up through her neck into her face and eyes, and… she swallowed back against the rising tide.
I won’t tell anyone.
The promise she’d made.
We’ll get you out of this together.
And here they were, a year and a half later.
Shandreya was still thoroughly “his.”
It was in this alcove where her uncle stood.
She drew still when she saw him. Facing away from the forest path and turned toward the pond, with his hands clasped behind his back. The wind yanked at the ends of her Shan’do’s thick deep blue hair, throwing it around the antlers on his brow. He stood there in the stillest of silences, and for a moment it was almost as if his body had become the trunk and the antlers his boughs- as if he would stand beside that lake forever as an Ancient of the forest- but… when she began to creep closer, the leaves crunched beneath her feet. And on one heel, he turned.
His amber eyes shone like lamps in the night. “You’re late,” he said.
There was no response she could give she hadn’t already voiced before. Kyssandrith bowed her head.
“Your face is bruised.” He said it so easily, as if he’d just pointed out that plants had roots or the sky was blue.
“I got in a fight,” she murmured.
“So that’s your excuse this time? Fight today, fight tomorrow, doesn’t really matter with you. You’re still late. Again.”
The apologies that once sprang to her lips, the prostrated pentinence for her transgression as she begged him not to be angry- right now, none of that came. Toward a single blade of grass on the ground, she stared, and she said nothing.
The soft swishing of his robes drifted to her ears. “Have you nothing to say for yourself?”
“I don’t want anyone to know.” Shandreya’s terrified pleas. “You can’t tell them.” Her pupils dilated so wide in the center of her glowing silver eyes. “Please.” While Endalen painted a legacy of bruises across her body.
Kyssandrith’s breath shuddered in her chest.
At the top of her vision, her uncle’s dark leather shoes pushed into sight. But she only looked further down as he drew closer. And her head shrank further and further into her chest until at last he stopped right in front of her and she could recoil no more.
“Kyssandrith,” he rumbled, “I am weary of your antics.”
A twitch ran up her ears. “My… what?”
She jerked her head up just enough to look into his face and- the dark set of his brows caught her breath in her chest.
He rolled his lips and tossed his head with a disgruntled growl. Slowly, he began to pace before her. “When I first took you on as my student, I believed those who reassured me that you’d changed from your younger self. So what am I to think when I hear of your so-called exploits every other day?.Getting in arguments in front of the Temple. Shouting at Wardens. Picking fights with other druids.” His eyes lashed toward the bruises lingering below her eye. “Not to mention the things people are saying about you.” Kelridor stopped short. His narrow nostrils flared as he breathed in. “Who did you possibly piss off this much?”
“I still love him.” Words Shandreya said, so many times. “He needs help.” Help. A funny phrase. Kyssandrith swallowed back the lump in her throat as she forced herself to meet her uncle’s eyes. Like so many kaldorei of his years, Kelridor’s face was smooth, yet mature in a way not quite definable, telegraphing him as far more than a child, but still covered with a veneer seemingly untouched by the ravages of time.
The long blue strokes of his mustache twitched. “Well?” he said.
“You can’t tell him.” It’s what Shandreya would say. “You can’t tell anyone.”
I love you.
I’m sorry.
She averted her gaze to the ground.
“Endalen Embertree,” Kyssandrith murmured.
A pause. “What?”
She forced down the hot coil of irritation in her stomach. “Endalen Embertree,” Kyssandrith repeated. “He’s… the one. He’s been doing all of this.”
There was a rush of air as her uncle stepped back. “You’re trying to tell me you made enemies of the Embertrees?”
Kyssandrith cringed. “I- I didn’t mean to- you see-”
“Kyssandrith,” he uttered her name like the crack of a whip. “What did you do?”
Slowly, she dragged her eyes back to stare directly into his face.
“What did you say?”
He shook his head back and forth with a fevered rhythm as a hand rose to tug at one of his long eyebrows. “To make enemies of a powerful family like the Embertrees is-”
“No.” Her legs drove her forward. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”
Kelridor stared. Slowly, his hand fell back to his side. “I asked you what you did.”
Her chin jutted out as she drew herself up. As she closed the gap between them, as she stepped up the gentle upward curve of the hill, her head drew above his. “I did nothing. Absolutely not one fel-cursed thing, and this is what he’s done to me. How dare you ask me that? How dare you accuse me of inviting everything he’s put me through? The only thing I’ve done is try to protect someone I love!”
His brows knit together. “Kyssandrith-” he murmured.
She fell back clutching a hand to her forehead. Her heart pounded in her chest. She could feel her. She could feel the anger, the rage, the betrayal just on that precipice. “You can’t tell anyone.” Shandreya’s neverending plea. “We have to help him.”
A sudden vice around her wrist. Kelridor clutched at her, concern written into the furrows of his forehead. “Kyssandrith, what happened?”
But when she looked at him, she saw the look in his eyes… the worry shone through but besides that. There was disbelief. There was anger. A hardness she had seen in so many faces these days. Even as she let him draw her hands down, a new rages prang hot through her veins. And as she drew in a deep breath, her nostrils flared. On her wrists, his fingers hesitated.
“I love you, too.”
Kyssandrith spat into his face.
She jerked away from the sharp hiss of his breath, broke from his recoiling hands, twisted her body away and down the hill. Inside of herself she reached- she pulled on the spirit of the bird bound to her body. The transformation flooded over her, and she flapped as hard as she could until the wind cupped under her wings and tore her away from the ground and into the air. She thrummed faster and faster until she shot away like an arrow, leaving her Shan’do behind.
She didn’t stop until she crashed into the low open balcony just outside her room in Darnassus.
As she righted herself and stepped through her door as a kaldorei again, her breaths rasped quick and ragged through her chest. Her ankle hurt still but the pain was so far away as she stumbled around. Grab this trinket. Grab that timepiece. Around the room she stalked, shoving items together on the center table before she even really realized what she was doing. But as the smaller things all sat together in a heap and her legs turned her toward her closet, she stopped. And the gravity of what she was doing crashed over her.
She was leaving.
After the moment’s hesitation, she charged forward and swept her things from the hangers. On the table they went. From the back of the closet, she seized a sack, and she shoveled her belongings into it with a fervor like never before.
She strode out onto the balcony with the effects she’d collected over the last few years slung over her shoulder. In her head, she saw it all- she would jump down. She would run to the roosts. And she’d take a hippogryph away from here. But… there she paused, with one foot poised on the edge.
Across the city, her eyes dragged.
She couldn’t see it from here. But she knew where it was. Shandreya’s home. She might be there, right now. Tucked away in her room with a canvas and her brushes. Painting the world with no more than a few pools of ink. She was so talented. So beautiful. So dear.
I will protect you.
But who protected her?
Kyssandrith pushed off. And as she straightened up after the jump, she turned her feet toward the only destination she knew to go.
He hadn't sounded much like a death knight either, not like one of those whose voice echoed like a hollow room. And were they thoughts or whispers that came to him now, maybe both?
He left you, he left you like so many others..left. Said he would help..where did he go? Where is your help?
Shrewsbury had looked better after his transformation, if one could call it that. Looked better than he had when Mosur had known him in life. He'd met the man in life, but unlike Taeriix he'd never really known him. They had been two of a kind though, Mosur becoming the odd one out in many ways after Shrewsbury had become a death knight.
'You can't help those who don't want to be helped.'
Mosur gritted his teeth as he recalled the knights words to him. He had though, he had asked for help. He asked for help more times than he'd wanted to, to individuals he didn't want to ask. That he couldn't handle things on his own. That he had let things get this bad. Showed weakness to individuals he didn't want to show it too,
And they all left you.
And they all left him. It would be easier to think a lie if even now it didn't seem so true. He wondered if they even missed him, if they even noticed he was gone. He didn't think they did.
'Yes I told you before you needed help. What has changed?'
He still needed help, here again. At least it was different this time at least it wasn't himself in danger. He didn't think so anyway. Though...it rung of the same situations...the same happenings. It made him afraid. He remembered meeting the knight here in Grizzly Hills, on the porch of this very same inn. Of course he hadn't really come here to ask for help then.
'I'll do what I can for you.'
Then he remembered what he'd said to the knight, just before he jammed the dagger through the back of the man's neck.
--Cool air. He needed some cool fresh air. He stood and moved to the porch it was already dark out, but that meant it would be colder out. He stepped onto the porch and some portion of him was not surprised to see Hadeon sitting, staring over the porch rails. His throat tightened a little as the breeze blew past his ears. Thankfully he heard nothing. Mosur nodded as the knight glanced back to see who was up so late though neither of them spoke. He stood there letting the evening air cool him and his worries.
Mosur raised his hand letting it fall upon the knights shoulder, "Thank you, friend." The words were rough as thought it wasn't something he said often or at least without as much sincerity as he placed on them. His hand slipped away from the knight after a moment, and this time 'Goodbye' did not follow, just a grunt and a nod before they both turned their gaze to the darkened forest once more.
“That’s it,” the elf said. “We’re out of ammo. Do you have any bombs left?”
She shook her head--and then checked her pack one more time, just in case she’d missed one. She hadn’t. “No.” Her stomach clenched. She could hear the orcs coming towards them from the mouth of the cave--they weren’t hurrying now; they knew they had run their prey aground.
“I guess that’s it.” Lark hugged Ren to his chest, careful of the fox’s bandaged leg. Then he set her down in the corner of the cave, behind a pile of rocks too small for either elf or human to hide behind. “Stay there, girl. Wait...wait until we’re gone and when the coast is clear...run.” Then he looked up at Shame and blinked his fel green eyes as if trying to hold back tears. “Don’t suppose I can have a last kiss before they get here?”
Her heart cracked in two. There was no way it could still be pumping blood, not with how badly it hurt--she would die before the orcs found them. “Sure, Lark.”
“Daephrin.”
“What?”
“My name--it’s Daephrin Starsworn.”
Her lips twisted into a smile even as she swallowed a sob. “Nice to meet you, Daephrin. I’m Sophia.” She held out her arms to him and he curled inside them. She kissed him: lips, cheek, forehead.
“Sophia,” he whispered, “I’m scared.” His eyes squeezed shut, leaving them in complete darkness.
“Don’t be.” She smoothed his hair away from his face. The orcs were closer now, only a few twists in the tunnel away. “I’m not going to let you die.”
“What?” His eyes opened again. Fel green.
“You can never tell anyone what I’m about to do.” She had promised so many people: Eurynine, Mosur, Hadeon, Grolmok. She had sworn she would never do this again. “Promise, Daephrin!” She demanded from him the very thing she had been unable to keep.
“I promise.”
She stood up, stood in front of him, and she reached for the fel.
Ex-warlock.
Retired warlock.
Reformed warlock.
Lies. All along she had just been waiting for a good enough excuse.
Betrayal is an intense and painful thing for any character to experience. All too often, our characters are driven or haunted by the betrayal of others in their lives For this last topic, consider a time when your character was forced by circumstance to become the betrayer. What happened? How did your character justify it? How did it impact the relationships around your character afterwards?
This has been a ton of fun. Both to read and to personally do. I function much better creatively when I have an objective or a scaffolding to work on. For these, they have been a ton of fun... even if several of them made me feel really bad for what happened to Ireul.
Especially being tied to a tree and left for dead. But! Without further delay...
Ireul was plummeting through a void of impenetrable blackness, twin lances of pain buried deep within him. His fall was uncontrolled; the Pandaren’s thoughts racing. Glancing behind him, he saw the surface of the water rushing up to meet him. There was no impact; instead, the priest was sinking through an inky, endless expanse. Deeper and deeper, the blackness making him unable to see what was around.
Contorting, he managed another glimpse below him. What he saw chilled him to his very core; the massive maw of a Sha was waiting. Open-mouthed, it’s cavernous mouth waited eagerly. With all the raging emotions within him, Ireul would make a fine morsel. A fitting vessel for the Sha, with which to lay waste to Ireul’s fellow Shado-Pan. As he fell, his body contorted and twisting, trying to find any avenue for escape. It was too late—his eyes widen as those massive jaws rose up, parting further before snapping down around the Shado-Pan Priest.
It was with a cold sweat that Ireul shot out of bed, eyes widen with alarm, hammer pounding in his throat. For a moment, fear saturated his senses. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t see—he wanted to run. But in a moment, another sensation shot through him. Deep, burning pain speared through his torso, both of his arms clutching his front. Gritting his teeth, he waited for the worst of it to pass. Despite its severity, the wounded Pandaren savored the pain.
It was a welcome reprieve from the fear.
Eventually, he would begin to lean back, his dark furred chest barely moving with every breath. He had laid here for the better part of two months now. Ireul was on the mend, but the injuries he had sustained… well. I should’ve died. It took several minutes before he was able to lie back down fully, sweat beading along his brow’s fur. But yet he hadn’t, and only the blasted Celestials would know why.
There it was… that ire. That anger had become a daily companion. Some days it manifested as fear, or depression, or any range of extreme emotion. It always centered on the battle that had left him so badly wounded. The tribe of Yaungol had been a divisive issue for many of the Shado-Pan members. Ireul had hoped for a chance at reconciliation, at making potential allies out of at least one tribe. What had happened instead?
It was a blood bath. Ireul counted how many of his friends he saw die, wrestled with the memories of their falling almost daily now. And while death was something any Shado-Pan faced regularly, this time it felt personal. The priest took each of those casualties deeply this time around. And when he thought about others that he was unsure of? His gut twisted in knots. Had anything happened to Wan, he’d go back and end every single Yaungol himself.
A moment later, a wave of disgust washed over him. “There’s no way I can go back…” Not like this. Thoughts like that would be a feast for any Sha. The moment he even saw a Sha with such uncontrolled emotions, he’d be it’s plaything in moments. Unclenching his left paw, he lifted it up into the single shaft of moonlight coming in through the window.
The tiger shaped scar, earned many years ago from a white-hot coin, met his gaze. His memories turned over in his head. The Trial of the Red Blossoms. His daily training with various members of the order. Encountering the Sha for the first time. Various recollections, both warm and chilling, filled his thoughts. His heart yearned to go back, but that wouldn’t work. Not now; he’d be healing up for a while yet. And emotionally?
“I can’t do it. Not now.” Ireul’s voice cracked, tears beginning to fill his vision. Despite this, he looked to the side, spotting the torn remnants of his robes. In spite of the burning pain that had just recently begun to settle, he reached out, grabbing the fabric. With one strong yank, he tore a long, thin scrap of fabric from it. As he wound the crimson cloth around his palm, each pass obscured the tiger scar a little bit further.
He would break his oath for now. In this state, he would be of no use to the order. Perhaps one day, when his mind and body would heal, he would face them again. But for now, with his mind and body unable to fulfill his duty, it would be better to break it and protect his brethren.
The decision had been made. Ireul wasn’t sure if it was the correct one; alone out here, he doubted he’d make one that would be the perfect fit. But it felt right, at least. In this way, more of his brethren wouldn’t be harmed by his emotional state, or let down by his inability to serve. It was painful, but this way, he could suppress any further damage to the order. His heart heavy, he took one last glance at his now fabric-wrapped palm before letting his head fall back onto the pillow, sleep overtaking him. For the first time in weeks, the rest of his evening was dreamless.
The Site Write Finale is upon us! This prompt is intended to push you to go a little more in-depth than previous stories, to delve into more than just day-to-day vignettes and write something exploratory and interesting. As such, you’re allowed more time to plan and write the story. Final entries from the 8 challengers qualified for the challenge – khanaa-runestrider, stahldrauf, mewkeere, shamestoneborn, malvalen, @avaruu, venitaspeaks, kyssandrith – are due by 12 PM (noon, CST) on Wednesday, November 19th.
You have written 30 (or more!) short stories this month. You have written things you’re proud of - and things you’re not. You have written when you didn’t feel like it. You have written when you’re in “the zone” and everything just worked. But the most important thing is that you wrote - you bled onto the page until words appeared and now your mind is just that little bit more focused on not just the big things about your character like where she was born or who he married, but how your character goes through life. I am proud of you for taking on this challenge, and proud of you for finishing it.
Those who wrote a few things for this challenge: I’m proud of you too. You gave it a shot. I only wish you’d kept trying when and where you could, because I’d love to know how your draenei handles campfire stories or hear about the moments when your own character might've been the villain or what happens when you babysit bottomless pits of hunger. You may not be sure of your writing, you may not like what you put on the page, but keep this in mind: the water does not flow until you turn on the tap. Improving until you like it comes from doing it even when you hate it. I’m really glad you tried at all, and I hope to see more from you.
Now that I’ve said all that, guys, here’s your prompt:
Finale Topic
Betrayal is an intense and painful thing for any character to experience. All too often, our characters are driven or haunted by the betrayal of others in their lives For this last topic, consider a time when your character was forced by circumstance to become the betrayer. What happened? How did your character justify it? How did it impact the relationships around your character afterwards?
(Last one! Tomorrow, I post the finale prompt and finale rules! Also, gold prizes for completion will go out and I'll do the drawing for the Blossoming Ancient pet after I post the finale prompt. You guys have done an awesome job! I'm so impressed by all of you!)
Make-up Prompt #7 – Nov. 15th 2014: How does your character describe his best friend? Omit names.
