Writing With Geoffrey

A place for short stories and flash fiction written by Geoffrey Williams

[writingwithgeoffrey]

Dealing out Magic: Chapter 1

Trying something new. Figured I'd post chapters of this while I'm working on it. I hope the story comes out well.

***

Heavy smoke clung to the air, obscuring the setting sun in a way fog wished it could. The abandoned compound fell beneath the expanding pall, illuminated only by the raging blaze at its heart.

The Dealer stood unfazed. Each inhale took in what little clean air remained, and each exhale puffed a path through the smoke. He had a single hand raised, the palm upturned as a trio of playing cards hovered above it.

His gaze, as amber as the hidden sunset, scoured the veil engulfing the central warehouse. There wasn’t a single sign of those he’d come for, not a hint that they were still alive.

He strained his ears, gaze narrowing as he listened for the tiniest shift in rubble. Beyond the crackling of flames and the cracking of beams, there was nothing. Beyond the hissing as water pipes burst and the roaring of collapsing walls, there was only silence.

Gunfire pierced the air. Faster than the Dealer could react through conscious effort, the cards whirled around his body. Cold, hard lead met paper. The smoke swirled in the bullet’s wake, then settled back into its proper place.

The Dealer turned to face the cards, admiring the damage. Despite their simple construction, the scraps of paper had held strong against the bullet.

He raised his other hand. The bullet and cards separated. He twisted his wrist. The bullet followed. He adjusted his fingers. The bullet turned in midair. He admired its metallic surface, entranced by how the reflection of the flames danced across the material.

When he bored of it mere moments later, he let it tinkle against the ground without decorum. He had greater duties to tend to, and they lay somewhere beyond the smoke.

“I know you’re there.”

His voice echoed across the compound, overshadowed only the slightest amount by the flames now at his back.

“You know me. I don’t want to kill you.”

The fire leaped between buildings. The Dealer watched from the corner of his eye as another warehouse lit up like a funeral pyre. He made no attempt to save the building, or the abandoned goods that lay within.

More gunfire. A trio, this time. The cards again blocked one attempt, while his own bravery left him fearless as the other two zipped past his neck and face.

“I don’t want to kill you, but I will.”

From within one of the untouched warehouses came a single man. Dressed in ratty clothing, he charged for the Dealer, armed with nothing more than a piece of rebar.

A twitch of a finger. Nothing more. One of the cards shot for the man and sliced the rebar in two. Another card shot past and left a thin slice across his cheek. The third crumpled into a ball and hit the man’s forehead with enough force to topple him backward.

The Dealer approached, a scowl distorting the slight amusement once present on his freckled face. The man was nothing more than a simple thug, knocked flat and out cold. A few moments later, he awoke with a start and sucked in a deep breath. The Dealer was there in an instant to press his foot against the man’s chest.

“Stay down.”

“Y-you’re just a kid,” the man panted out.

“I’m twenty-three, asshole.”

As focused as his gaze was on the man underfoot, the Dealer knew nothing of the other approaching from behind. The Dealer’s instincts, however, as tuned to the air around him as they were to the cards he wielded, let him know the moment an attack was made.

The three cards returned in a blink, bringing the pipe to an abrupt halt. A noise rang out through the compound, as if the pipe had impacted metal rather than paper.

Without looking, the Dealer wrapped the cards around the pipe and hauled it from the man’s clutches. The man was left grasping for it in the moment until it dropped on his head from above. With a loud thunk, the man dropped behind the Dealer.

The Dealer let out a breath through his nose, more exasperated by the tedium of the encounter than the repeated attempts on his life. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected a full legion from drug dealers, but I was hoping you’d at least put up more of a challenge.”

The Dealer replaced his foot with one of the cards, the slip of paper providing enough force to hold the man against the ground. His co-conspirator received similar treatment, leaving only one card to the Dealer.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

The card followed along as the Dealer headed toward another warehouse. The blaze had yet to reach this one, and judging by how one of the thugs had emerged from it, there was little reason to believe it wasn’t where the others were staking their claim.

Along the way, the Dealer pulled the card out in front of him. In a single instant, nothing more than the firing of a neuron in his brain, he took hold of its entire molecular structure. As simple as peeling the plastic backing off a sticker, he split the card into two identical forms. He repeated this in a cascade until he had an entire swarm of them hovering at his back.

“I know you’re in here.”

With the same influence he held over the cards, he took hold of the warehouse’s doors. Old wheels complained as they rolled along worn, dented tracks, forced down a path they hadn’t trod in months, if not years.

The moment the gap was large enough for him to stroll through, a salvo of gunfire burst from the darkness within. The Dealer stood there, steadfast, as his cards took the brunt of the assault. Never once did the paper buckle or break.

When the deafening gunfire was replaced by the clicks of empty magazines, the Dealer peeked around his makeshift barrier. There, hiding and trembling in the shadows, was a quartet of men and a single woman. Their eyes were wide, their mouths agape as they huddled around a pallet of plastic packets.

“Wh-what are you?” one of them asked with a voice as unsteady as his limbs.

“I’m the Dealer.” He brushed some of the shaggy, jet-black hair from his face, his hand coming away coated in a smoky odor. “Look, I’ll accept weed, that stuff doesn’t hurt people. But this?”

The Dealer motioned to the white powder that had been stuffed into the packets. The group before him glanced, then stared once more at him.

“I won’t let actual hard drugs onto the streets. So, here’s what’s going to happen.”

The doors to the warehouse shut behind the Dealer. Darkness returned. The roaring of the fire died against the walls. Beneath the muffled noise, little else except the breaths of five terrified individuals. One of the cards caught fire. It served only to illuminate the Dealer’s harsh gaze.

“You’re going to give up. You’re going to turn yourselves into the police when they get here in a half-hour, and then you’re never going to do this again, or else.”

“What are you gonna do?” the woman asked.

A snap of the fingers. Every card above and behind the Dealer burst into a beam of light. They curved together, thinned and thickened, and as a halo, silhouetted him. It was no mere circle of light, however. No, it bore the image of God’s greatest aerial beast, that griffin-like Ziz and the wings that had once unfurled wide enough to block out the sun. With those wings now his, with the magnificent might of the beast at his back, he stared down the people before him.

“You don’t want to know. Now, will this be easy or hard?”

Beneath the light of the Dealer’s halo, the five people dropped their guns and raised their hands. It always put a smile on the Dealer’s face to see a lowly human recognize their place in the world. Yes, this was part of why he did what he did.

“Glad to see you have some kind of head on your shoulders.” The light faded off into dimming streamers. In the darkness, they returned to the playing cards they once had been. “Now, be a dear and go join your friends outside.”

Despite his phrasing, he didn’t give them a choice. Cards clamped down on each of their limbs, acting as shackles that allowed him to toss them from the warehouse. Once they’d been removed from his sight, he approached the pallet of drugs.

“And as for you …”

The Dealer ran his finger along the top layer of packets. For a group of drug traffickers and dealers in the middle of an abandoned warehouse complex, their production was flawless. No matter how he poked or prodded, the plastic remained sealed tight.

His finger did more than play along the surface, however. It acted as a conduit for his abilities, allowing him to probe the chemical structure that made up the drugs. With such knowledge in his head, it became trivial to latch onto each individual molecule and pry it apart into a useless pile of nitrogen, carbon, and water.

Now inert, he had no problems with scattering it to the wind. He even made a game out of it. He formed the playing cards into the shape of a baseball bat, lifted a pack of drugs beneath the influence of his abilities, and wound up. Each impact was satisfying, a loud crack followed by the packet spiraling away through a high, broken window. He kept at it, never slowing his rhythm until the pallet sat empty.

“That’s better.”

He dusted his hands off, returned the playing cards to their prior flat appearance, and returned to the outside world. There, all seven of the people had decided to crowd around one another. Surprising, due to the shackles restricting their limbs, but impressive enough to put a smile on the Dealer’s face.

“Y-you know we’re just the runners, yeah?” one of them piped up. “The mules?”

“Can’t be a mule without drugs.” The Dealer fabricated his cards into a folding chair. With a flash of light, they transitioned from paper into metal.

“Our boss is on the way,” said another. “He’ll kill you.”

“I doubt that.” The Dealer relaxed in his seat, one arm draped over the back.

He didn’t have to wait for more than a few minutes. At the edge of the compound, there came the grind of tires against loose gravel. The Dealer perked up an almost imperceptible amount and twitched a finger. Almost right away, rubber switched out for wrenching metal and shattering glass.

“I think that’s him,” the Dealer said. “And here he comes.”

True to the Dealer’s words, the leader of this ragtag group of drug traffickers rounded the corner of a warehouse. However, rather than walking, he was dragged, his wrists captured in a shackle made of playing cards. His legs, held tight in a similar manner, struggled to kick and break free, but nothing worked.

“Wow, look at that.” The Dealer dropped the man before the others. “The gang’s all here.”

The Dealer rose from his seat and approached the man who was in charge of the entire operation. Shards of glass clung to his suit, tiny sparkles among an otherwise flawless expanse. Fierce blue eyes stared up at the Dealer, while a flurry of curses and complaints in another language flew from his mouth. That same mouth was soon muffled by a muzzle of cards.

“I don’t have time to listen to you. All I have time for is talking. So.” The Dealer crouched in front of the group as a coach would a little-league team. “Great job today. You gave it your best effort, and you know what, sometimes it’s still not enough. That’s not bad, though. You tried, and that’s all that matters.”

“Go to hell,” the leader said in a thick accent.

“Hmm. Maybe one day. I’ve heard it’s quite warm down there. As for you …”

The Dealer’s voice trailed off as, through the din of the flames and crumbling buildings, a trio of sirens approached. Seconds later, the stampede of a SWAT unit.

“All yours, officers.” The Dealer stood and left the gaggle of restrained criminals behind. “Oh, and try not to let them go again. I don’t like seeing drugs on the streets.”

Though the Dealer wished to leave, the Lieutenant in charge of the team approached.

“How can we ever thank you, Dealer?”

“I already told you. Now, you do your jobs and I’ll do mine.”

While the officers performed their duties, switching out makeshift restraints for proper ones, the Dealer approached the flaming warehouse. His legion of cards returned once again, although he had no need for their presence to deal with a calamity of this nature. No, all he needed was to grasp the very air that acted as an oxidizer and rip it away.

The entire warehouse went dim in a heartbeat. In the next heartbeat, whatever wood remained smoldering had its embers stripped and flung high into the atmosphere. The Dealer repeated this with the next warehouse, and then the third, until there was no further threat of the fire expanding beyond its limits.

One of the officers let out a low whistle at the sight of such power. The Dealer ignored it in favor of swirling a hand through the air. The wind followed his movements, dragging the smoke around and coiling it into a vortex. Once it had all gathered, he forced it high into the sky, where it could disperse safely.

The bones of the warehouse were abysmal to gaze upon. Not enough remained of the original material to call them anymore than husks of their former selves.

“Does this place matter?” the Dealer asked.

“It’s sat abandoned for twenty years now.”

“Perfect. Then I don’t need to fix it.”

He didn’t bother with any more of an answer than that. He retreated to the side, leaning with his arms crossed against one of the few structural beams still standing. Under his watchful gaze, the SWAT unit dealt with their arrests the proper way. None of them dared an attack on the officers, not while the Dealer was so close.

Only when the armored truck had been locked up did the lieutenant join the Dealer.

“You know, I always ask, kid. Where’d you get those fancy powers of yours from?”

“What, these?” With a thought, the Dealer levitated an entire deck of cards in front of his face and shuffled them. “I fell into a vat of radioactive playing cards.”

The lieutenant laughed and patted the Dealer on the shoulder. “I’ll get a straight answer outta you one of these days, kid. For now, though, get some rest. You did good work here today.”

“We’ll see about rest.”

This whole situation registered as nothing more than a slight nuisance to him. Like a simple walk through the park, there was no need to rest muscles that weren’t strained from the day’s activities, no reason to lie in bed and wallow when there was still so much moonlight left in the sky.

“Hey.”

The single word got the lieutenant to stop in his tracks and turn around. “What’s the matter, kid?”

For a long while, the Dealer stood silent, contemplating the words he wished to use. He settled on, “Nothing. Forget it.”

Yet, the more he stared at the armored truck, the more he relied on his influence over atoms and molecules to probe the living contents, the more a nasty pit settled in his stomach. Not like he’d eaten something horribly off, but rather like a sense of impending … something. Some instinct from deep down in the ancestral chain, buried under millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of civilization. It gnawed at him, had his toe tapping in the dirt, had his finger thumping against his upper arm.

He shook his head to silence the thoughts. The act only served to bury them once again. He’d deal with them later on down the line, once they’d become too much to bear.

“I’ll see you around, officers.”

The Dealer gave a lazy salute, then started his stroll away from the compound. Rather than remain confined to the ground, however, his playing cards acted as solid steps in a rising staircase. They never faltered under his weight, forming a path that carried him high off the ground until he could gaze out over rolling pastures.

At a suitable height, he swept his gaze across the world. It was tranquil, for an abandoned complex a mile out of town. The scorched warehouses stood as an ugly, blackened stain against an otherwise unmarred landscape. A soft, verdant green sat beneath an endless sea of stars, stretching from horizon to horizon as the fading sun allowed more brilliance to shine through. The occasional flock of birds soared overhead, while a breeze would ruffle through the grass every few seconds.

This was not the life the Dealer had ever known. This peace, this silence … it settled on him like a pressure on his chest, forcing his breaths to still lest they disturb the natural order.

He squeezed his eyes shut, forced himself to fill his lungs with a heavy breath, then switched from walking to hovering, and from there, to flight. The faster he returned to the city, the sooner he could escape the overwhelming freedom afforded to him by the wilds. The sooner he could drown out the temptation afforded by his abilities.

As the complex disappeared beyond the horizon, he muttered to himself, “Keep it together.”

[writing-prompt-s]

The God of Tunnels and Caves. A minor deity at the best of times, barely remembered by historians, a footnote of the pantheon... until the first underground colony on Mars surpassed its first 100k inhabitants and someone jokingly dedicated it to the God.

[writingwithgeoffrey]

You couldn’t believe this shit. The God of Tunnels and Caves. For as long as any god in any pantheon could remember, that was all you were. And, let’s be serious, there weren’t that many of either to go around that were actually important. Sure, maybe a sewer could be counted as a tunnel, or a well could be considered a cave, but seriously? You were content to just sit back and bless the occasional structure, or maybe guide someone through the darkness. But not. This. Shit.

With your name uttered only by the odd historian who cared to add your deeds—which didn’t number very many—you were prepared to relax in the void and enjoy the rest of your cosmic days.

It all started with some idiotic bomb in an underground tunnel. A borehole, as the eggheads on the project called it. You were there, watching as they dug out the stone and topsoil, watching as they slipped the bomb down the hole, and watching as they covered it with a heavy steel lid. You only stayed there because you were curious about what they were doing with their new tunnel.

When the bomb went off, you didn’t even see the lid. You tried following it along all your cosmic paths, but it was just gone. Whatever. You shrugged your divine shoulders and went back to watching other tunnels, because clearly that was more important. I mean, if they put a bomb in one tunnel, who knew what they’d put in the others?

Then their spaceships. You watched them over the decades, but you didn’t care about them, because they weren’t a tunnel or a cave. They sure were pretty to watch light up the night sky, though.

Then came a clamor throughout humanity, a noise that reached even the deepest caves. They announced they’d reached a place called “the planet Mars.” As far as you were aware, no such place existed anywhere in the damn world. Maybe they were finally going crazy. You considered such a thought for a couple years, then forgot about it and tried settling back into the void.

You heard the occasional chatter about this “planet Mars,” talking about how humans had settled there, and were building a colony, and about how it was underground to avoid harmful solar radiation.

Now, see, that last part got your attention. Technically, underground shit was your domain. Something—anything—down there was considered a cave if it was out in the open. And if the humans made it, well, it was a tunnel. But you didn’t feel a new giant cave, or colony, or anything, so, again, you just assumed it was the humans being stupid, as they always were.

Then, for the first time in centuries, whether in jest or not, you heard someone who wasn’t a historian invoke your name. It scratched at the back of your brain in a way that you hadn’t been tickled in so many years, sent a shudder down your cosmic spine, and let you know that, somehow, someone still cared about you.

You followed their voice as they dedicated their new cave to you. As you drew closer, you realized they were talking about a colony. Closer still, and it became clear that this colony was underground. A cave. No wonder they’d invoked your name.

What you weren’t expecting was for that call to take you all the way away from your lovely little home among the underground caverns of the human world, to a rust-red globe.

You stood there, invisible to the humans, intangible to the iron dust billowing around you, with your hands on your hips, taking in all the nothing that there was to see.

And with no one on Earth invoking your name with enough will to drag you back there, you had no power to go back to the verdant greens and the beautiful blues. Which meant you were stuck here. Among the red. The gray. The depressing. All because some stupid human decided to jokingly dedicate a cavern to you.

The moment you realized this, you had only one thing to say. “Oh, screw off!”

[writing-prompt-s]

You find a "Safe Zone" in the middle of a galactic battlefield. It’s a garden planet, untouched by war. You soon realize the "flowers" are growing out of the mouths of millions of paralyzed, immortal enemy soldiers

[writingwithgeoffrey]

It was a simple crash-landing, the type you’d prepared for in dozens, if not hundreds of simulations, a controlled burn as you fell through the atmosphere until you could safely eject and parachute to safety.

Protocol carried you to the nearest planet designated as a “Safe Zone,” one of the many neutral grounds where wounded soldiers could retreat and get their injuries tended to. You ignored all the warnings from your computer about this being a planet for the enemy, driven on by the desperation born of several broken ribs.

An explosion rocked the cockpit. You tightened your grip on the controls. Your gaze flicked between the instruments on the control panel and the flames just outside your window. Your ship hadn’t been designed to handle reentry at this speed or angle.

The ship rattled. You could feel it under your palms, the entire thing mere moments away from giving in. All you could do was maintain your course and hope for the best.

You gulped when a panel flew off the nose of your ship and whipped past your window. A warning popped up on your control panel: temperature spike in the computer systems. Soon, you’d be flying blind, and not long after, you’d be dead.

You gritted your teeth, mouthed a silent prayer to the higher power you held faith in, and prepared to finally meet the force that had put you into this damned universe.

As if that single prayer had reached the ears of an actual divine being, everything eased off. The flames died down as the worst of the reentry passed. The ship stopped rattling so terribly as the air acted somewhat as a cushion. The temperature spike eased back down into acceptable levels.

You didn’t let yourself relax, yet. This was still an enemy planet with wounded soldiers on it. That meant medical facilities, and that meant having to avoid them.

With the flames gone from your windows, you could peer past them at the surface far below. Much of it was land, though off on the edges of the horizon, you could make out the tiniest slivers of sapphire oceans glowing in the light of the planet’s sun.

You were expecting the land itself to be green, or maybe a slate gray resembling the sprawling maze that would be high-tech medical facilities. Instead, the land was a vibrant pink, like a blanket of cherry blossoms had descended across the entire planet. There were larger patches in the shadows of mountains that settled for a deeper violet, and patches in valleys that chose a soft cerulean for their hues.

You stared for a moment, wondering if this was simply the non-industrialized side of the planet. Once the surprise had passed, you thanked your higher power that you wouldn’t have to worry about destroying any facilities. All you had to do was point at the ground and coast.

So, you did. No alerts came in on your control panel that the enemy was targeting you. Hell, there weren’t even alerts that showed they knew you were here. Not even transmissions.

You removed one hand from the controls and slipped it to the ejector tab between your legs. You were still many kilometers up, far too high for a completely safe ejection, but you hooked your fingers in it lightly as a wave of something rose inside of you.

It wasn’t nausea, that would’ve barred you from entering the aerial corps. No, this was closer to an instinctual reaction, a primal revulsion to something that screamed danger to you.

Nothing about the planet gave you any reason to trust your instincts. It was entirely possible that these were simply flowers. Perhaps this side of the planet had been cultivated for herbs with medicinal properties.

But what if they weren’t? What if this was a trap? What if this wasn’t a Safe Zone? It would go against every convention set up by the Galactic Unity’s Wartime Agreement, but then again, when did any warring civilization fully follow such conventions?

The automated ejection alert came on. You pulled the ejector tab. The dome above your exploded off. Your seat shot out of your doomed ship. Moments later, your parachute opened.

You sat there, buckled in, floating gently toward the surface. The whole time, you watched your ship careen off into the distance, before crashing into the surface. Instantly, a small patch of the world went up in flames, just a few kilometers out.

As you kept your gaze on it, that patch crept ever outward. Then, all at once, as if a puff of breath were putting out a candle, the entire area stopped burning. All that remained was a tiny gray scar, but even that faded back to the land’s natural pink after just a few seconds.

Your seat landed somewhat roughly on uneven ground. The impact rattled your teeth. Shaking hands undid the buckles holding you in. Trembling legs hauled you onto your feet.

And your gaze fell on the ground before you, and you stopped. There, staring back at you, was a Yusharvan. After all your deployments, you’d recognize the one-eyed bastards anywhere. Their skin was as sickly white as every other one you’d ever seen, and their gaunt limbs supported their upper body as they crawled toward you.

Except they weren’t crawling, and they certainly weren’t alive. Their eye stared lifelessly at you, hanging glassy over a single flower that sprouted from their mouth. Five-petaled, it carried the same soft pink hue you’d seen from the air, and fluttered in a gentle breeze.

You backed away in a heartbeat, stumbling over your discarded seat, but never once did you take your eyes off the Yusharvan.

In the next heartbeat, the rest of the world came into view. Everywhere you looked, there was another Yusharvan. Some sat on their knees and leaned back, their gazes tipped to the heavens as a flower grew from their mouth. Others were on their hands and knees, caught in the middle of evacuating their stomachs and prevented by those same flowers.

You returned your gaze to the one that had greeted you. The eye was no longer glassy. It had regained the subtle shine of life. You crept closer, keeping one hand on your sidearm. As you approached, the pupil dilated. It was still alive.

“Well, you must be my visitor.”

You spun toward the voice. There, standing a few meters away, was what you could only describe as a hybrid between a man and the foxes you’d seen in textbooks on old Terran wildlife. Five eyes stared out at you, glowing with a golden hue, while a single bushy tail swished behind them. They wore simple robes that matched the hue of the flowers around them, the fabric hiding much of their body.

“Wh-what is this place?” You gripped your sidearm. “I-I thought it was a Safe Zone.”

The creature chuckled and grinned. “It is. For me, of course.” It approached one of the flowers, its hand caressing the gentle stalk that held it out of a Yusharvan’s mouth. “I’ve lived here for thousands of years, cultivating these precious little blossoms. Then, these wonderful creatures decided to descend from the heavens and attempt to sully their beauty.”

As you kept your gaze on the creature, a dull throbbing started up in your brain. Soon enough, it turned into a pounding migraine, like someone was taking a chisel and hammer to the inside of your skull. You blinked rapidly as the light seemed to intensify, your eyes squinting as it became harder to keep your eyes on the creature.

“You’re not like them, are you?”

“N-no, I’m human.” You blinked again. In the span of that blink, the blurry visage of another tail appeared behind the creature. “What are you?”

“I’m but a humble gardener in a war, and you are but a humble warrior in a garden.”

The light grew far too brilliant to simply stare at the creature. Keeping one hand on your sidearm, you raised your other arm to block the light. It did barely enough to let you watch as more and more tails appeared behind the creature, until it had nine in total.

“Can you help me? I’m injured.”

The creature grinned. “Oh, yes. I can most definitely help you.”

Your next breath caught in your throat. Whatever words you were wanting to say were strangled out of you. Both hands shot for your neck. You dropped to your knees as it became impossible to draw a breath in.

The creature approached. “Ah, yes. That is most certainly a lovely appearance.” It caressed your cheek. “You’ll do quite nicely in my garden.”

The edges of your vision began to darken as you stared the creature in its eyes. Yet, before everything went truly dark, you were treated to one final sight: a simple stalk curving up in front of your face, tipped in a five-petaled flower that reminded you of cherry blossoms.

[writing-prompt-s]

Every cleric has the ability to directly manifest their deity. It can only be done once in their lifetimes, and the cost is enormous. The invaders are getting ready to raze the town. You're the last defense, though you worship the god of harvest and childbirth, not war. You begin the ritual.

[writingwithgeoffrey]

The world is cold. A heavy rain thunders across the land, blotting out what little light the evening sun had still provided. The fields are flooded, the footpaths nothing more than mired mud pits. In the distance, fires cast their glow into the sky, raging against the downpour that fights to extinguish them.

Yet, you stand strong. You are the last line of defense, the lone cleric tasked with protecting this village by your chosen god. So long as the breath exists within your chest, you refuse to stand down and let the people perish.

You’ve forgotten already just how many of them you’d cut down. That does nothing to stem the tide. They seem eager to throw themselves onto your blade, bloodthirsty barbarians hellbent on ruining everything that is precious in your world.

The fatigue, however. With each passing moment, with every life taken by your hands, the ache in your muscles deepens. The adrenaline coursing through your system and the screams of terrified children pushes you ever onward, but you know such vigor would never outlast an entire army.

You pull your sword free of an invader’s chest. The others back off. You meet the gaze of the one in front, blood-red meeting golden amber across a field of dead. Neither voice says nothing, an unsteady truce for the time being.

It only takes a moment to understand why. Their reinforcements have shown up, at least another hundred that you can count hidden in the veil of mist. Their armor glistens, patches of toughened steel clasped on over hearts or entire shields that cover their blindsides.

You raise your sword, prepared to go on, and feel your body give way. All your weight drops to a knee, supported only by the strength of your blade. Your chest heaves. Your mouth hangs agape, sucking in deep breaths in what momentary reprieve you’ve been allowed.

Dimly, a memory comes to the forefront of your thoughts. You hear his voice, the voice of your god, the words he spoke to you on that fateful day you’d signed the covenant.

“I am not as the others. I am one simple facet of life. I reside over harvest and childbirth. I rule over the end of one life and the burgeoning of another. That is all I am. Neither war, nor famine, nor pestilence, nor even conquest do I stand for. I wait, and I listen, and I harvest, and I guide. I expect you to do the same for so long as you are mine.”

There’s a rush in your blood, a swelling of pride in your chest. He is your god, and you are his proud cleric. For decades, he has watched over you as you have watched over your village.

But you have failed. There is no more strength left in your bones, no more energy to push yourself from the mud and face the encroaching invaders yourself. It pains you to consider the act you’re about to undertake, a possibility you’d once thought you would never stoop to.

You have no choice. You slump backward, yank your blade free of the mud and soil, and rest its sharpened edge against your palm. The skin there is calloused from your time spent in the fields. You grind your teeth against one another, then drag the blade through the skin of your palm.

“Hear me, oh god of harvest and childbirth! I, your lowly devotee, beseech your aid! I am sorry I have failed you!”

You raise your bloodied palm to the heavens.

“There is no power more superior than you, no greater force to be reckoned with! Please, where I have failed to illuminate and eliminate, guide these warriors! Where I have failed to deliver them, I ask that you take them yourself!”

Thunder rumbles. Lightning crashes. A harsh gust sweeps across the land. Fires go out. The rain falls silent. Your breathing deadens. Not a single sound dares to propagate. There is nothing but the stillness of a god besmirched.

The clouds roll away. In the fading sun, between you and the army, there stands a single individual. Draped in black cloaks of the finest silk, they wield but a single weapon. Its crooked handle rests gently within their skeletal palm, its curving blade glistening in the light.

“I have heard your plea, my child. Now, I shall harvest that which will have been mine.”

[writing-prompt-s]

As the new student lost in a superhero college, you spot your girlfriend. Excited, you run up and hug her, saying “Hey Babe, can you show me around? I’m lost” The room goes silent cause you just hugged the “Blizzard Baroness” a cursed prodigy who’s cold hearted to basically everyone

[writingwithgeoffrey]

The room went silent, and not in an “everyone just stopped talking” sort of way. No, this was an oppressive silence, like the stillness of the air hanging over a desolate arctic wasteland. No one dared to move as the temperature in the room dropped, from a balmy heat to a deep chill that dug deep into your bones.

You glanced around the room, and found a hundred pairs of eyes all looking back at you and your girlfriend. Gone was whatever kind-hearted warmth they could’ve once offered. Gone were the smiles and the jokes and the chatter. All that remained was a reception colder than the tundra.

“What happened?” you asked. “Was it something I said?”

This had always been your greatest fear growing up, wondering if you in your infinite buffoonery had done something wrong. Whether it was using the wrong door or saying the wrong things, you always managed to mess it up. This time felt no different.

“W-well, anyway …”

You turned back to your girlfriend. In the light of the atrium, her silver-blond hair seemed to shimmer like a million ice crystals hanging in the air. Her eyes were usually a soft, icy-blue, like snowflakes drifting from the sky, but in this touch of light, they seemed to grow harsh, like the deep blues of a solid glacier. Even her normally fair skin seemed tinged by a layer of frost across every inch.

“C-can you help me find my first class?”

A murmur spread through the crowd when you asked the question. You couldn’t make out much, but from the people nearest you, you heard enough.

“How do they know the Blizzard Baroness?”

“Did they call her ‘babe’?”

“How has she not given them frostbite yet?”

“Oh, God, they’re gonna die.”

Your girlfriend shot a freezing glare toward the nearest person. In a heartbeat, everyone fell silent once more. The entire crowd seemed to lock up, as if worried what her next move would be. Still, she said nothing.

“Are you okay?” you asked.

Your girlfriend took one last moment to make sure no one else would speak up, then turned to face you fully. It was as if a switch had flipped. The ice on her skin thawed, her gaze softened, her hair dimmed to a simpler blond. She smiled, and those cute little dimples you’d always been so fond of appeared, tinged with the slightest hint of rose.

“Just fine, now that you’re here.”

It was like all the air had rushed out of the room, leaving you and her as the only ones capable of speaking, or even breathing. All you could hear was her voice and the warmth in its tone, the truth that lay beyond the tip of the iceberg.

The others melted out of focus as you reached out for her cheek. She didn’t pull back or show any sign of embarrassment. She simply leaned into your palm, filling it with a heat that showed she was as alive as ever. Your gazes met, and the world vanished behind a gentle veil of snow.

Somewhere beyond that veil of snow, barely audible, the other voices picked up. They were curious, concerned, terrified, but none of them dared intrude on the little safe space your girlfriend had created for you both.

There, in the heart of it all, you were alone. There, in the center of the snow, you were together. There, in the eye of the storm, you were warm.

[writing-prompt-s]

A mage's familiar uses the magic of their bond to swap bodies with their mage as the mage is bleeding out. Just before the familiar's 'new' body dies, a party member notices the magic and heals them.

[writingwithgeoffrey]

It was such a simple act to carry out. The tiny dragon had spent its entire life beside the mage, devoted to their life and cause. Every waking moment had been spent together, aiding them and toiling alongside them. It had spent the years protecting the mage from harm, or helping it cast the more demanding spells.

When it had seen the attack approaching, a massive ball of dark flames, it hadn’t hesitated. Despite knowing the attack would be fatal, it charged forward to intercept it.

It hadn’t arrived in time. The dragon watched, wide-eyed, as the mage was struck down. If the fire hadn’t done enough damage, leaving seared limbs in its wake, the sheer force of it would’ve. Purely solid, it carried enough energy to shatter bones and lacerate skin.

The dragon dropped beside their mage, watching with tears in its eyes as blood pooled around its ivory paws. It tipped its snout down and nosed at the unmoving mage, an expectant child desperate not to lose its parent. It couldn’t. Not after everything they’d been through.

The mage raised a trembling hand. The dragon nuzzled into it, its head resting on the mage’s chest.

“Don’t worry,” they spoke. “This wasn’t your fault.”

The mage’s eyes eased shut. The dragon whimpered, its body sagging. If it didn’t do something soon, their mage would perish. But what could they do? What magic could they use to heal such egregious injuries?

As the dragon searched for an answer in its own natural abilities, only one solution presented itself. It was a solution the two of them had practiced several times, and one they had utilized for reconnaissance purposes over the years. Ordinarily, it was temporary, but in this situation?

The dragon straightened up, staring down at the mage’s peaceful expression. It was as if they were lost in a gentle slumber rather than the lulls of death.

The dragon nuzzled the mage’s cheek once, then shut its eyes and channeled magic through its body and soul. As it had plenty of times before, it let the very essence of its being emerge from its physical form, and in turn, drew out the mage’s own soul.

Two tiny flames, each no larger than a fist and glowing an ethereal, ephemeral blue, drifted upward from their bodies. They engaged in a dance, swirling around one another as they rose ever higher. Two became one, then one became two. As they dropped, they returned not to their original bodies.

The mage’s body slivered its eyes open, now under control of the dragon. The dragon’s body picked its head up, taking a moment to register its surroundings.

“Wh-what?”

The dragon’s body looked down. Its eyes went wide. “P-Pyrrhus!” The mage-turned-dragon clutched at their old body, tugging against sleeves and nosing up against limbs in an effort to move it aside.

“Pyrrhus, switch back now!”

The dragon-turned-mage raised its hand. It trembled for a moment, then flopped weakly atop the mage’s newly draconic back.

“Master … safe …” it murmured. “Pyrrhus … not matter …”

The mage’s eyes grew wet, tears sizzling away the moment they met their draconic cheeks. “It should’ve been me, Pyrrhus. You should’ve gotten to live a life without me. You should’ve—”

“Oh, sorry, coming through.”

Pyrrhus and the mage both lifted their heads as much as they could to see the cleric working his way past the dead bodies of the enemy horde.

“Don’t worry, you lout. I gotcha.”

The cleric knelt beside the mage’s battered, scorched body, her hands glowing with a divine light. Within moments, the mage’s injuries vanished, healed under the power of an immense god.

“There you go. All better now, yeah?”

As the cleric rose, headed for the next wounded party member, Pyrrhus and the mage simply stared at one another. For a moment, there were no words. Then, the two of them burst into joyous laughter. They hugged, they held each other tight, and they cheered. And those cheers devolved into cries, and then sobs as they realized that everything would be all right. That they would both live to see another sunrise together.

“I’m sorry,” the mage whispered once his soul had returned to his body. “I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger.”

[writing-prompt-s]

The super villain gave a disappointed sigh. It was bad enough to be invited to the funeral of their superhero arch-nemesis. But it was even worse to be the only person to show up.

[writingwithgeoffrey]

Dark gray clouds blotted out the once-hopeful rays of the sun. A gentle rain flitted down upon the land. In the distance, the wind howled through the barren limbs of ancient trees.

No one was around for as far as the eye could see. None dared tread the sacred land here. The souls who rested within the cemetery had paid their due upon the surface world, and now they lay beneath the soil, forever resting.

Only three people stood within the cemetery on that dreary day. The officiant remained beside the open grave, reciting lines from memory. He spoke of the wonders of the deceased, of the miracles they had performed in life, and of the people whose hearts they had touched. He spoke of all the good that had left the world, and all the good that would carry on the mission in their stead.

The groundskeeper stood behind the headstone, gaze pointed off into the distance as he leaned against his shovel. He chewed on a wad of tobacco, the rhythmic motion the slightest distraction from the mundanity of it all.

And there, at the foot of the grave, staring down upon the lowered casket, was a single man dressed in a three-piece suit. His harsh silvery gaze had once glistened with excitement, but now it was as dull as the clouds above. No longer would his life be as enchanting as it once had been.

The officiant finished and met the man’s gaze. The man returned the stare only for a moment, before returning his attention to the grave. Without a word spoken, the officiant and the groundskeeper parted. The man stood there, silent only for as long as it took the other two to leave earshot.

“It’s hard to believe it’s come to this, Solberg. To think, you were once one of the most respected heroes in the world.”

The man chuckled, then groaned as he eased himself down beside the grave. Never once did he look away.

“You know, I always thought I would be the one to take you out. You and your silly little light shows were always a marvel.”

The man let a breath out through his nose and stared up into the rain.

“Do you remember our first fight? I was nineteen, fresh off of discovering my own powers. Those first few crimes, where I hid in literal shadows and robbed old ladies? God, they seem so childish now, but to me, they were everything. And you?”

The tiniest of smiles formed on the man’s face as he looked once more at the casket.

“You were younger than me. Had to be still in high school, but you cut through my darkness like a ray of sunshine. We had our petty squabbles, our arguments over moral stances. You were so immature, so simple-minded in your philosophy. I was, too, but at the time, we both thought we were right.”

A single tear slipped down the man’s cheek, hidden among the trails of rain washing down his face.

“You always won. Or maybe I let you win. Maybe, deep down, I never really wanted to be a villain. Maybe, coming from a broken home, all I wanted was someone to talk to. Someone to have fun with. Someone like me. Maybe that’s why you never captured me. Maybe you also knew that I needed it.”

The man stared down at the grass between his legs, one hand idly playing with the grass.

“I wonder, what did you see in me? Did you see someone struggling? Or were you simply following your childish moral code? Were you just doing what you were told to do as a ‘hero’ and sparing me?”

Once more, the man’s gaze drifted to the casket.

“You didn’t deserve to die. The good never deserve to die. You … you were a beacon for everyone, even in the darkest of storms. You were the mountain from which the sun was always visible. You were … my everything.”

The man took in a shaky breath.

“You taught me that life is so much more than our rock bottoms. You taught me that there is always joy to be found, even in the smallest, darkest corners. You taught me that no one is ever truly alone. And for that, I am grateful. And I’m upset.”

The man looked around. Still no one else had arrived.

“Where are your fans now? Where are the other members of your hero league? Where are those people who said they would stand by you, through thick and thin, through every difficult patch you would ever face?”

The man squeezed his eyes shut, his voice coming out as nothing more than a whisper.

“Where were they when you died?”

The man hunched over. His chest heaved as he fought to keep from sobbing. He pressed his palms into his eyes, he gritted his teeth, he dug his nails into the skin of his scalp. Anything to fight back the tears.

“Where was I when you died? Why did you leave me alone in this world? Why, after everything you did for me, for them, did you throw your life away so carelessly?”

The man leaped to his feet, his hands balling into fists.

“Why were you such an idiot? Why did you go into battle against him alone? Did you honestly think your light could outshine his fire? Did you truly believe that you were strong enough to overcome pure destruction?”

The man stared down at the casket through tears. He wanted to look away. He wanted to tear his gaze away and let the anger out. He wanted to let the shadows roiling at his feet spread outward and consume everything in the cemetery.

He couldn’t. He didn’t have the strength to do so. As it all left his body, he dropped to his knees beside the grave.

“It should be me in that stupid wooden box, Solberg. You had everything, and I have nothing. Not without you.”

The man slumped forward, his hands resting against the grass between his legs.

“I don’t have anything to live for anymore. No children, no loved ones, no you.”

The man sniffled, looked away, and wiped his nose on a sleeve.

“And that means no reason to stop myself from getting revenge.”

[writing-prompt-s]

You were a god of textiles; respected, but generally considered a minor deity. But everything changed when mortals started regularly describing spacetime and reality as a 'fabric'.

[writingwithgeoffrey]

You remember the day that you had first faded into existence. Your life wasn’t that special. Bearer of a thousand hands, you represented the slow, meticulous work of a weaver, the love and dedication that they put into their craft. You were the one to whom they prayed whenever a blanket was created, and you were the one who bestowed warmth. You stood strong as a barrier between humanity and the world, ensuring no fabric came undone needlessly.

You weren’t a major deity; you never had been. You’d never wanted to be a major deity, though. Yes, the dreams of the other gods included masses of followers and elaborate temples. You were content to merely sit back and admire the view of all the textiles you’d blessed. Everything, from the thinnest shirt to the most luxurious carpet, lay in your domain. You stood for a portion of what humanity did best: creation.

The others faded into obscurity. It was a natural progression. As humanity learned more about their world, as they came to understand the natural phenomena all around them, the other gods lost power. No longer were storms the work of some higher power. Now, they were the work of the weather. No longer was fire an enigmatic tool. Now, it sat in the engines that let humanity spread.

But not textiles. Your domain lay untouched by the ravages of progress, for humanity had understood it far earlier than any other. They understood that what you blessed and watched over, they would never have survived without. They understood that if you had never shown them how to weave in their earliest days, they would never have left the dust.

Over the years, you simply remained steadfast in your domain. Some days, you wove a banner representing the whole of someone’s life, blessing their departure from the world. Other days, once the god of night ceased to be, you wove the tapestry of stars that twinkled in the night sky.

And then you heard a familiar word in an unfamiliar context.

“The fabric,” a human had said. No one in particular, no one of any importance, at least as far as you were aware. “The fabric of space and time.”

You pulled your hands away from the night sky, and stared into the nothingness of your domain. It sat empty, as it always had, yet you were connected to every textile on the planet. You could feel how they were loved, could hear the stories of the humans who owned them. You could hug them back and provide warmth, or offer comfort to those who sobbed into them.

This was different. This was … new. It was exciting. And scary. And fascinating. And a million other words that you could never have otherwise thought of, if not for humanity and the kindness they had whispered to you over the millennia.

And you understood. For how many years now had you been pulling light from above and tangling its lovely threads into a beautiful night sky? For how many years had you tangled the roots of tress in an elegant balance, ensuring they never ensnared one another? For how many years had you sat there, in your domain, watching as the other gods’ domains fell into your purview?

Perhaps once, long ago, you had tired of the same old routine, every day and night, blessing a blanket here or a shirt there. Now, though, you had a purpose once more. Now, you did more than provide warmth.

As diligent as ever, with your thousand hands, you became that which held the universe together. Half of your hands caressed the threads, admiring their silky nature as you fed them into your loom. The other half wove like they’d never woven before. They roamed the fabric, searching for snags, or holes that needed patching, or anything else that might catch humanity off guard.

You remained a minor deity, a force of goodwill that humanity could pray to. You remained a simple god, a voice in the sky that humanity could ask for warmth and comfort. You didn’t have legions of followers, or massive temples situated in the hearts of cities. You didn’t want them. All you wanted was to sit back in your domain and admire all the textiles that you had blessed.

Now, however, you were content to work forevermore, if it meant that humanity could one day see the universe you had woven for them.

[writing-prompt-s]

We assumed the "Great Silence" meant aliens were dead or hiding. We were wrong. The universe is teeming with life, but they all communicate via gravity waves. When humanity invented the Warp Drive, we didn't just break the speed limit, we started screaming on the universal frequency.

[writingwithgeoffrey]

It was an honest mistake on our parts. How were we to know that life elsewhere didn’t speak through sound? How were we to know that we were the odd ones out, instead of them?

It happened on the seventeenth of December, 2987. We had tested warp drives for a decade at that point, and were ready to embark on our first journey between star systems. We were ready to see what was out there beyond our humble little ring of planets.

A crew of ten went aboard, just enough to keep the systems running and report any anomalies with them on our way out. They were brave, and bold, and the best of the best at what they did.

We weren’t expecting to find life out there. For almost a millennium, everywhere we’d tuned our satellites was dead silent. There was no sign that any advanced life lived anywhere beyond our solar system. We assumed that we would find planets teeming with simple life, or perhaps even mindless animals.

When that ship arrived to its destination planet, an earth-like orbiting around Kepler, we knew our theories were wrong. The crew reported satellites orbiting the planet that matched no design philosophies we’d ever seen. They numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands, and were spaced out exactly as ours were to provide coverage across the entire planet.

That was the first anomaly. The second anomaly happened mere seconds after dropping from warp speed. Satellites careened into one another, smashing apart into flaming balls of wreckage or dropping suddenly through the atmosphere to burn up.

The crew watched, horrified, scrambling to discover if this was their fault. If, somehow, they had disengaged the warp drive too close to the planet’s gravitational field.

Nevertheless, once they had switched to main engines, they began their descent. They remained on edge as the atmosphere ablated away heat shielding, but never once showed true fear. They held trust in our engineering advances, remaining steadfast as they saw extraterrestrial life for the first time.

It was beautiful, with verdant forests comprised of trees they never once could’ve imagined, or oceans that shimmered an almost-violet instead of the blues they were familiar with.

The animals, however, were odd. Strange, ray-like birds soared through the air, but without any of the grace that could be expected from an animal that’d evolved such a body plan. Ground scans revealed legged animals lying on the ground, convulsing, as if in a horrible seizure.

When the first cities rose above the horizon, great, shimmering metropolises of crystal and glass, the crew was ecstatic. They took pictures and captured videos, prepared to show the scientists at home all the data they’d accrued.

Until they touched down at the edge of the city and ventured in. Yes, they found life. Yes, they assumed it was intelligent. But no, no one greeted them.

Everywhere they looked, they saw individuals with two legs and four arms, and a chitinous exterior similar to the insects on Earth. They had mandibles and compound eyes, and antennae that seemed to twitch in an endless wave.

And every single one of them was captured in the throes of a heavy seizure, and within the hour, an entire city was found to have perished.

We only realized when we visited the second planet orbiting Kepler, when we disengaged the warp drive again, and when we touched down in another city.

We only realized that gravity was the medium through which every other language spoke, and when we used our warp drives to bend that medium to our will, we were sending a destructive wave ahead of us.

Singlehandedly, we were ruining entire civilizations. Singlehandedly, we were ending lives in minutes. Singlehandedly, we had become the monsters we swore we would never become again after the Sixth Great War.

And so I, singlehandedly, initiated the self-destruct sequence on our only warp-capable ship, stranding our crew on an alien planet for the rest of their lives.

[writing-prompt-s]

Humans are considered the "Eldritch Horrors" of the galaxy. We heal from grievous wounds rapidly, we consume toxic substances like capsaicin and ethanol for fun, and we require unconscious hallucinations (sleep) for 8 hours a day to function.

[writingwithgeoffrey]

You always assumed that the others were lying when they spoke about humanity like some cosmic horror. The thought was absolutely absurd. Every civilized species across the galaxy knew that any wound larger than a cut would leave someone bedridden for months, let alone such an injury as a lost limb.

Yet, that was the one story you heard the most about the humans. That a cut could stop bleeding in minutes, that it could heal over in hours, if not days. That they could lose a limb, survive long enough to get to the medic, and then come away with a replacement.

“Completely ridiculous,” you always told them. “That would kill someone.”

But the stories never stopped. Soon enough, your crew beneath you began talking about humans in different ways. They spoke of how humans would consume literal rotten wheats and vegetables that had been fermenting in water.

You scoffed. “Ethanol is extremely poisonous. Even a drop would kill any of us in a heartbeat.”

They always clamored in their efforts to convince you otherwise. You never listened. Humans were nothing special. They were hairless, upright bipeds with limited technology and brainpower.

“And then there’s this thing called ‘sleep.’ They need, like, eight hours of it a day.”

“Eight hours a day? That’s a third of a day!”

“A complete waste,” you muttered beneath your breath. “No species would ever evolve to require it. They would evolve away from it.”

Your crew never stopped the stories. No matter how much you limited their rations or what humiliating jobs you assigned them onboard, the rumors spread like wildfire. Even when you called an all-hands assembly to touch base on this information, they all stood in staunch opposition. Every single set of eyes in front of you gleamed with a light that said they finally believed they’d gotten one over on you.

It was a year after humanity had first come onto the interplanetary scene that you were finally assigned one to your vessel. You had just pulled into port for your monthly crew swap and supply stop when you received the news. You remember the ledger of names, and how odd it felt to see the human one among it.

Axorniu, Zihulvu, and Gragragraf … those were normal names. Korlatz, Heenobu, and Milenpor were a bit weirder, but you always assumed their parents had to be “Special.”

Then, at the very bottom of the list, right beside the picture of a hairless biped showing teeth, was the name “John Smith.” You stared at it for what felt like forever, trying to work out how it was meant to be pronounced, only to struggle whenever you caught a glimpse of their picture. Something about how they bared their fangs in their crew picture, combined with the unmistakable sense of joy in their amber eyes, filled you with a dread unlike any other. How could such a simple species find joy in showing off their greatest natural weapons like a predator?

“John Smith, reporting for duty.”

When the human finally came aboard, he was similar to his picture, but without the teeth. You were grateful for that. You didn’t need him causing a riot among the rest of the crew simply by existing.

“Captain Relani. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

You held out a hand. The human hesitated for a moment, then shook it and showed their teeth again. You tightened your grip in an almost instinctual fear response, and they showed their teeth more as they tightened their grip.

“Pleasure to meet you, sir. I’ve been looking forward to serving on an alien vessel since we humans first left Earth.”

“Right.” You gave enough of a tug to pull your hand from theirs. “First step is a bag check. Nothing illegal or dangerous onboard.”

The human complied wordlessly, dropping the bag from his shoulders and handing it over. A glass bottle clinked from within. You arched an eye ridge at the human, and the skin on their face reddened some. A fear response of their own, you assumed.

You found the zipper—a primitive latch, in your opinion—and tugged. It took some searching and digging through piles of clothes and photos of other humans before you found what you were looking for. It was two glass bottles, about the size of your forearm, filled with a clear liquid. You studied the human glyphs on the labels, but were unable to understand any of them.

“What is this?” you asked.

“Vodka.”

You stared past the bottles at the human. “What?”

“Vodka. You know, for drinking at the end of the day.”

“Water?” you asked, assuming the translator chip embedded in your brain was malfunctioning.

The human scoffed. “With all due respect, sir, water ain’t gonna get you drunk.”

Your gaze narrowed as you broke the seal on the bottle and unscrewed the cap. Right away, the starch odor of ethanol hit your nostrils. You gagged and held the bottle at arm’s length.

“What the hell are you thinking, bringing a poison onto my ship?”

You replaced the cap and were half a second away from throwing it into the wastebin beside you, when the human clamored and grabbed the bottle away.

“It’s not poison, sir. Just alcohol.”

“A poison,” you reiterated.

The human shrugged. “W-well, I suppose, but it’s fun to drink it.”

You stared. For the first time in your life, you were at a loss for words. There you were, right in front of the first human you’d ever encountered, hearing that they had fun drinking ethanol. In a rush, all the stories you’d heard about humans came back to the forefront of your thoughts.

You shook your head and steeled your gaze again. If one of those “facts” was true, then that meant every other fact carried weight. Lucky for you, you had the perfect way to test the veracity of it all.

“Drink some.”

The human stared for a moment, then chuckled. “Sir, are you sure it’s all right to drink some before we’ve even left port?”

“Prove it’s not poisonous.”

The human shrugged, twisted off the cap, then raised the bottle to their lips. You watched, wide-eyed, as they downed an eighth of the bottle in one go. They let out a heavy breath as they pulled the bottle away, once again showing teeth. But not once did they keel over and perish, nor did they burst into flames like you’d seen happen a couple of times. No, they simply stood there, returning the lid to the bottle.

“See? Just vodka.”

You didn’t say anything. You couldn’t say anything. In one swift, simple act, the human before you had shattered all of your beliefs about how life in the galaxy worked. You planned about how best to accommodate the human and their “sleep pattern,” you considered how close they needed to be to the medical bay, and, worst of all, you wondered what the supply cost would be to keep him availed of ethanol during his month on your vessel.

“Yes.” You handed over the other bottle. “Just vodka. Go aboard, John Smith.”

[writing-prompt-s]

"We've never attempted to contact a civilization like this one. Their planet is protected by an incredibly sophisticated, fully autonomous orbital defense system, but their society is peaceful and agrarian with almost no technology."

[writingwithgeoffrey]

“We’ve never attempted to contact a civilization like this one. Their planet is protected by an incredibly sophisticated, fully autonomous orbital defense system, but their society is peaceful and agrarian with almost no technology.”

That was how they’d described the task to you. You weren’t backing down, though. You’d been with the Intergalactic Unity for a hundred and seventeen years, and in that time, you’d welcomed almost four hundred planets into the wider world of the universal stage. This would be nothing more than a routine stop.

You stood in the cockpit of your ship, preparing for your departure from the nearest starbase. You stretched your arms, rolled your shoulders, and cracked all the kinks out of your spine. Then, you donned your finest silk robes and grabbed a box of welcome gifts from across the galaxy.

“Whenever you’re ready,” came a voice from your radio.

You set the box down in the copilot’s seat, then settled in behind the controls. Other delegates to the Intergalactic Unity had chauffeurs to shuttle them between planets and galaxies, or entire sophisticated teleportation systems so they could cross the universe in the blink of an eye. You, however, had always preferred to keep things in your own hand, to feel the thrum of the engines beneath the soles of your feet and watch as the starfield changed in accordance with your manipulation of such a large vessel.

Once you were strapped in and ready to go, once the starbase had given you clearance for your departure, you headed out.

The starbase was nestled at the very edge of the star system, inside the dense bubble of frozen water, methane, and ammonia. Ahead of you lay the system itself, with a simple star in the center. From all measurements, it was a main-sequence star, G-class. Nothing too fancy, with a nice habitable zone for the easy support of life.

There was only one planet that held any life, however. It was the third one from the sun. Sensors had picked up on organic chemistry from a few star systems over, but none had bothered to check up on it. Until now, of course.

You still had quite a distance to go, though, so you decided to enjoy your flight. You skirted past a massive ring of asteroids and planetoids, drew nearer to gargantuan gas giants that were as blue as the oceans of your home planet, and rode along the rings of a beautiful, banded planet.

The largest planet in the system was the most stunning, however. Bands of gas and clouds sped across its surface, creams and soft tans and whites. The most startling feature, however, was the presence of a vibrant red storm raging in the planet’s lower hemisphere. You stopped for a few moments simply to stare and marvel at the beauty of physical laws in action.

When the task at hand returned to the forefront of your mind, you tore your gaze away from the gas giant and headed for your destination. It lay beyond a belt of asteroids and smaller planetoids, beyond a planet colored red by iron oxide in its soil.

Before you had even ventured into the asteroid field, you spotted it. It was there, hovering in a single concentrated beam of light from the star. Against the inky black backdrop of space, it was nothing more than a pale blue dot.

You neared it in a matter of minutes, being careful not to accidentally shatter the planet with your warp drive. Thankfully, the system disengaged automatically once you were near enough.

And you gawked. It wasn’t anywhere near as beautiful as your homeworld, but it was a splendid sight in its own regard. Seven large landmasses broke up a world covered almost entirely in oceans. Vast stretches of brown soil and greenery covered the surface, while wispy white clouds obscured much of it from view.

You orbited around it for a short while, observing it from afar. In the light of its star, it seemed to almost shimmer and glow, while the dark side of the planet was almost entirely dark. Only a single moon illuminated the night sky, roughly two percent of the planet’s volume, but enough to create tides.

You wished you could’ve stayed there forever, but alas, you had a job to do. So, you started up the engines and edged closer to the planet’s atmosphere, keeping an eye out for any structures on the surface that could be their ground-to-orbit weapons.

You never made it. A field of satellites appeared before you, spreading outward in a wave that soon enveloped the entre planet. You slammed on the reverse thrusters, startled by their sudden appearance. They hadn’t been there moments before, you were certain of it. Somehow, they’d blended in entirely against the backdrop of stars and the planet’s surface.

There had to have been thousands, if not millions of them, each knitted together into a weave that left nowhere near enough room for your ship to squeeze through.

A message crackled to life from your radio. The auto-translate systems in your ship analyzed the data and parsed it out into something you could understand.

“This is an automated message from the planetary defense system. Do not come closer. Do not attempt first contact. Do not attempt to attack. Failure to comply will result in your destruction. This message will now repeat.”

And repeat, it did. You turned the radio down enough so you could focus on figuring out a way through. You saw no weaponry on any of the satellites. At least, none you could recognize. Your ship wasn’t necessarily a fighter, but you were confident enough in the ability of its engines to get you away from harm.

Then again, if you broke through, would there be anywhere safe from the defensive blanket? Or would the entire thing simply close in around you and destroy you before you could even hit the atmosphere?

A new message came through. You turned the volume on your radio up once more and waited for the translation.

“Non-compliance detected. Switching to directive Seventeen-A.”

You didn’t see the shot. It came too fast for your eyes to register, too quick for even the ship’s self-defense systems to engage. The ones that followed were just as swift. In a matter of moments, your engines had been damaged, your hull was failing, and your life-support was leaking into the void of space.

You scrambled for the life pod, stumbling as your ship was thrown and rocked by each incoming blast. Along the way, you heard one more message come through.

“Let this be a reminder to all who venture to this planet. Earth is not to be messed with.”

[writing-prompt-s]

You are a time traveller. There are other time travellers that also exist. There is a year called "the anomaly" that no time traveller ever returns from. The anomaly is starting to expand, reaching into years before and after it and steadily growing larger.

[writingwithgeoffrey]

Maverick jolted upright at his desk at the first hint of an alarm. A red light bathed every inch of the compound, while the klaxons blared over the speakers. Around him, all the other time agents flew into a panic.

“Wh-what’s happening?”

“There shouldn’t have been any branches!”

“What happened to Agent Smith?”

The cacophony of voices soon grew overwhelming, to the point he could hardly hear himself think anymore. He staggered away from his desk and pushed through the crowd, heading for the commander’s office. It stood at the end of the hallway. If he could just reach it, then maybe he could get an answer. Maybe he could figure out what the hell was going on.

The commander stepped out of her office before Maverick could knock on the door, her brow furrowed. She stared into his eyes for a moment, realized she would receive no answers from him, then pushed past.

“W-wait!” he called after her, but she was already halfway down the hall, long stride filled with a sense of purpose.

Maverick arrived back in the main chamber shortly after she did, having jogged to catch up. She took one look around at the chaos, sighed and shook her head, then grabbed a bullhorn from a hook on the nearby wall.

“Quiet!”

The main chamber fell deathly silent. Only the klaxons continued to blare, though even they were little more than echoes from the opposite corridor.

The commander pointed at a woman who’d been frantically working at a computer. “You. Jinora. Sitrep.”

Jinora never took her eyes off her computer, though her expression let show how horrible the situation was before she’d opened her mouth.

“We lost Agent Smith in two-nine-oh-eight. I-I was in contact with him, and I was receiving bodycam footage up until his departure from nine-seven-one-six, but then—”

“That’s no cause for a five bell alarm, Jinora.” The commander approached the desk. “So, I’m going to ask again. Sitrep.”

Jinora stopped her work, fingers trembling as they hovered over the keyboard. “I sent Agents Acosta and Maurice after Smith, but …”

Jinora’s voice trailed off into a murmur. The commander leaned in.

“Repeat that.”

“Same thing. I lost contact the moment they traveled to two-nine-oh-eight.”

Even from halfway across the chamber, Maverick saw how the commander’s gaze narrowed, how the gears turned in her head as she stared at the screen in front of her.

“Bodycam footage?”

“Just this.”

A video pulled up on the massive screen on one side of the main chamber. It was timestamped for just ten minutes before, temporally locked in to the destination of the seventeenth of October, 2908.

Agent Smith tapped against his wristband, entering the nine-dimensional coordinates for his destination. He narrated his actions as he did so. He radioed in to the control center for confirmation of spatio-temporal shift. A circular rift opened up in front of him. Everything was standard operation.

Except the rift. It wasn’t the see-through rift of any other shift. There was no discerning what time period lay beyond the rift, nor what sort of dangers Agent Smith was about to venture into. Instead, it was inky black, the thin surface tension between tie periods bubbling and roiling. Even the edges of the rift were non-uniform.

Agent Smith hadn’t noticed. His first mistake was not look up from his wristband. He didn’t hear the gurgles and grumbles from the rift. That was his second mistake. His last mistake was venturing forth.

Rifts were smooth. One stepped through them like they were an open doorway, while a special field ensured only the agent and their approved belongings could travel between time periods.

This one was not smooth. It took less than a second, mere thousandths, for Agent Smith to vanish. The bodycam footage cut out the moment the toe of his boot contacted the rift.

The main chamber fell into silence. The klaxons faded into the background. No one moved, all of them offering a silent prayer for the agent whose life had just been lost.

A minute passed before the commander straightened up, her voice calm, but subdued. “Pull up Acosta and Maurice.”

Jinora wasted no time. The footage from their bodycams pulled up on the big screen. Acosta was more hesitant when the rift opened, holding back and making audible observations to her handler. Maurice was more gung-ho. He leaped into the rift without a second thought. Acosta’s bodycam caught the event in full detail.

Like a black hole devouring its stellar neighbor, the rift engulfed Maurice in an instant. Jinora tried to let the event play out in full speed. The commander took control and slowed the footage down.

It started with Maurice’s leading forearm. It had been the first part of his body to come in contact with the rift. In the span of one frame, it had been yanked taut, strung out into a mass of spaghetti. He pulled back on instinct, as much as his body physically could in the next thousandth of a second. The rest of his arm followed close behind, then his torso and all the viscera inside.

Maurice’s head was last to go, squished and smashed into a rift that had no need for his flesh. Not that it mattered. His death had been quick, far too quick for his brain to register the pain. It was as simple as existing one moment and not existing the next.

“Track Maurice’s temporal signature.”

As shaken as everyone was by the footage, it took several seconds for Jinora to recognize the command. “What?”

“Track it.”

Jinora gulped, nodded once, and set to work. The bodycam footage was replaced by a single diagram, a spiderweb of glowing lines representing the nine-dimensional field of all of space and time. She zeroed in on the seventeenth of October, 2908.

There, connecting it to the twelfth of August, 9716, was a single golden line representing Maurice’s travels through spacetime. Except that line had grown black and diseased the moment it touched his destination.

The commander cursed beneath her breath. She ran a hand through her hair. She pulled her gaze away from the screen and took a few steps to center herself. With a deep breath, she headed to the screen and turned to face the rest of the main chamber.

“Agents of the Time Authority, we have an anomaly on our hands.”

A gasp spread through the crowd. Murmurs started up. Within seconds, those murmurs had crescendoed into panic. The commander remained in place, letting everyone work it through their systems.

Maverick tried his best not to panic as he looked toward Maurice’s temporal signature. In the upper-right corner of the screen, there was a single status line intended for displaying whether the associated agent was alive or dead.

Maurice was alive. The commander noticed it at the same time, and across the room, she met Maverick’s gaze.

He glanced back at the screen. Maurice was still traveling. His temporal signature was still present in nine-dimensional spacetime. But it wasn’t him anymore. Whatever it was that had stolen the rift, whatever it was that had taken his body, it was leaving the seventeenth of October, 2908.

The commander pulled out the bullhorn again. Again, everyone fell silent. Still, she waited until even the murmurs had died out.

“Agents of the Time Authority, we have an anomaly, and it’s spreading.”

[writing-prompt-s]

"I thought only the Chosen may wield the power of the blade?" "Well yeah but it's still a pretty good sword without it."

[writingwithgeoffrey]

“I mean, look at this thing. You see how beautiful it is? The hilt is wrapped in genuine dragon leather, guaranteed not to break or fray. Hell, it’ll probably last longer than the rest of the sword. And that blade. Perfectly straight edges. Have you ever seen anything else like it from our terrible blacksmiths? Oh, and look at that point. Not too thick, not too narrow, just right for stabbing into something while maintaining the ideal sharpness so you can swipe with it.

And don’t even get me started on the fuller. You see how it’s got that groove running down the center of the blade? Most people will tell you that it’s for blood, or that it’ll make the blade go pop when it hits something. Nope. Nuh-uh. This baby right here reduces weight but keeps the blade as strong as ever. Makes it so you can swing it around without your arms getting tired so much.

And then there’s the ricasso. You know that part, right? This bit, right below the blade but above the guard? I mean, come on, how the hell else are you gonna get such a perfectly sized section of unsharpened blade than through divine means? Seriously, you could grab it and increase your leverage with it, and never have to worry about cutting your hand up.

The guard, too. Look, I’ve held plenty of swords in my life, but I have never, ever, seen one that is so elegant in its design. Swept hilt? Nah. Cross guard? No way. Knuckle guard? You wish. No, this bad boy has a beautifully crafted basket hilt. Now, you might be wonderin’ to yourself, ‘A basket hilt? On such a long sword?’ And you’d be right. Normally.

This isn’t a normal sword, obviously. No, this is a divine work of art crafted by a goddess, and meant to invoke every ounce of her cosmic beauty. And the hilt does exactly that. Have you ever seen anything mimic the natural sea of stars that you see every night? That swish of the galaxy as it looms overhead? The addition of gemstones only adds to that beauty.

And, come on. Look at the glyphs on this thing. Genuine glyphs of the goddess. This is literally the language she was speaking since she was born, made physical for us mortals to understand. This one reads ‘Blade of Heaven.’ Isn’t that incredible?”

“But you can’t wield the power of the blade?”

“Nope.”

“Because you’re not the Chosen?”

“But, I mean— Come on, though. It is a pretty nice sword.”

[writing-prompt-s]

You have an illegal superpower, allegedly. As far as you know, you are entirely powerless, but law enforcement and even the army wont leave you in peace until you are either dead or captured.

[writingwithgeoffrey]

Superpowers … Your entire life, you watched others acquire them through a variety of means, both wacky and not. Some of them were cool superpowers, like the ability to fly or shapeshift, and others were more ridiculous, like the ability to speak and understand the chatter of babies.

You were, unfortunately, not one of the lucky thousand who had superpowers. Instead of living your life among the gods, fate had deigned fit to abandon you upon the soil. Instead of holding yourself as a paragon of humanity, the universe said you would be just another human.

You didn’t mind, though. It was boring as hell, but it was also safe. You didn’t have to worry about some supervillain coming to take away your family as a bargaining chip, or about fighting some crazed gunman who could fire his bones. If it meant living a safe life, you were all right with being an office worker. It was a shame the universe had finally decided to take it a step too far.

You were at work when it first happened. An entire platoon of soldiers showed up at the office building, storming stairwells or breaking plate glass just to get to you. You remember screaming and running, and, somehow, escaping. There was a flash of color that you recognized as belonging to the world’s top superpower, so maybe that had had something to do with it. All you knew was that you needed to get out of there, and fast.

You didn’t stop, and you didn’t look back until you’d driven clear out of one town and to the next one over. And the next, and the next, and the next.

For what felt like weeks, they followed. Everywhere you went, soldiers lay in wait. Every shop you tried to step into for food, soldiers were out front. Soon enough, there was nowhere left to go.

You sat in an abandoned shed, knees to your chest, panicking as lights encroached on your hiding spot from all directions. The shouts of commanders pulled soldiers into position, the readying of rifles and tanks pierced the air, and you knew you were out of hope. For a reason that nobody would tell you, you were being hunted by the government, and this was where it all would end.

Then, as if the universe had heard just one of your countless pleas, you heard a whoosh. You poked your head up just enough to peek out the window, and felt a tremendous weight leave your body.

Omega-Man had arrived, the world’s greatest superhero. Everyone knew him, and about his unending moral goodness. Hell, he was the closest to being a literal god on Earth, yet he always chose to help people rather than take control. And he was hovering there, between you and the army. But he was facing you.

“Don’t make me come in there.” His voice boomed through the night, rattling the shed’s walls. “Come out. Let us take you peacefully.”

You groaned and clutched at your hair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Your superpower is the most dangerous,” came the answer.

Without thinking about it, with your mind in a stressed, exhausted state, you reverted to childhood taunts. With your eyes squeezed shut, you shouted, “I wish you would all die and just leave me alone!”

Silence fell. Nothing made a sound. Not the insects, not the birds, not even the wind wished to breeze through the grass. There was nothing but pure silence for the first time in your life. It was eerie, yet it made you feel at peace.

Was this the afterlife? Had they killed you simply for your childish outburst?

Not that it mattered. You were finally free of them. You were finally able to have the solitude you’d wanted all this time. You were finally, truly alone.

You opened your eyes. You wished you hadn’t.

[writing-prompt-s]

You might be a hero, but you have always maintained a rather cordial relationship to the villains. Some of them you would even call friends. So when your child was supposedly kidnapped by one of them you didn't believe it for one second.

[writingwithgeoffrey]

You paced in your living room, one hand clutching tightly the note you’d just found in your kid’s bedroom. It was a messy scrawl that you’d never seen before, not in the three decades you’d been holding back villainy. There was no match to any of the much neater handwriting you’d come to know from wedding invitations and birthday cards.

On it was a single message, one that you’d read a dozen times in the past few minutes.

“We have your child. If you wish to see them again, surrender yourself at the park in the center of the city. You have until midnight.”

You glanced at the clock. There were only a few hours left until it hit midnight. You were great, one of the most powerful heroes in the world, but against an unknown threat, not even you could scour the entire city in that time.

So, with no other course of action, you dug out your phone. Even then, your finger hovered over the call button, as if your body was making one final check-in to see if this was what you really wanted. It is, you decided. And so, you placed the call.

It took two rings for the person on the other end to answer, and with it came a cheery voice despite the late hour.

“Hey there, Masterwork. Bit late for a call tonight, isn’t it?”

You gripped your phone tighter as Hue-Man spoke. He was one of the villains you faced off against regularly, and although you’d been to his wedding, you would never have called him this late at night. He had his own things to take care of at home. But he was a parent, just like you were. That meant he would understand.

“What’s goin’—”

“Someone took them.”

The other end of the line went silent. For a long while, all you could hear was the sound of his breathing. Then, “Someone took your kid?”

“I found a note. They said I have until midnight to surrender at the park, but—”

“Give me thirty minutes. See you at the park.”

Hue-man hung up. You dropped your phone to the ground, crushed the note in your hand, bunched your legs up beneath you for a fraction of a second, and flew off through your roof. You’d worry about repairs later. There were more important things at hand.

Mere seconds after you’d left, you slammed down into the center of the park. Onlookers screamed and scattered, but some stayed, curious. A police officer approached, but the moment you shot him a nasty glare, he backed off.

You didn’t realize until a few moments later that you’d gone out without any sort of disguise. It didn’t matter, though. You figured this would be a good lesson, a reminder that anyone who messed with your family wasn’t messing with a hero. They were messing with a parent.

“There you are, Masterwork.”

Your gaze snapped in the direction of Hue-man’s voice. He wasn’t alone, though. There, standing behind him and at his beck and call, was every other villain in the city, from the lowliest thug to the highest kingpin. They were decked out and ready for a fight. But there wouldn’t be one.

Hue-Man came over. In his arms was a sight better than any you could’ve asked for. It was your child, safe and sound, and unharmed, and asleep in the older man’s embrace.

You took your child into your arms graciously and asked, “Where did you find them?”

Hue-Man nodded toward the crowd of villains. They parted to reveal a man tied up in chains, someone you’d never seen among their ranks before. He struggled and breathed fire toward his captors, but they had Firebrand in the crowd keeping his flames at bay.

“That bastard figured he could hide from you,” Hue-Man said. “But we ain’t you.”

“You’re right. You aren’t me.” Once again, you handed off your child. “And he’s about to learn the difference.”

[writing-prompt-s]

"so your father is a half dragon half demon who rules the 8th circle." Said the man to his fiance. "And your mother is half fae half giant and is the queen of summer court." Finished the man "Exactly what do your parents do?" Said the fiance "my mom's a teacher and dads an accountant."

[writingwithgeoffrey]

Matthew had always been an ordinary sort of fellow, from the earliest moments in childhood all the way through his first couple of jobs. He’d always believed he would live that ordinary life forever, and that nothing truly spectacular would come out of it.

Then, he met her. Her name was Alana, and she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She was tall, easily taller than most other men, with skin that always seemed free of blemishes of any kind. Her hair was long, yet perfectly maintained, a blonde that seemed to shimmer with fairy dust. Then, there were her eyes. No matter what sort of light they were in, they always seemed to glow with an internal fire.

It had started out simply enough, with the two of them working in the same office. However, as these things tend to happen, once they’d started talking, there was no stopping. Their conversations began about work life, and then over the weeks, transitioned into hobbies, and preferences.

The first date had been as much as a surprise as it hadn’t been. They may have planned it out, a simple dinner at a bar, but the end of the night was vastly different from the beginning, and the two of them found a shared love for drunkenly enjoying bar food.

That had been a year ago now, but Matthew still held onto every second of that memory like it was the most precious thing in the world. In fact, it was that memory, and the many others that followed it, that drove him to ask the question. And so, on a cliff overlooking a beach, he got down on one knee and presented Alana with a ring capped by a diamond.

If only he’d known how different his ordinary life was about to become, perhaps he would’ve reconsidered. Yet, it was too late for that now.

Matthew gulped as he stood outside of the ancient castle, his throat dry and his body stiff. Alana stood beside him, his hand in hers, but she held no such fear.

“This is where your parents live?” he asked.

“Yeah. Don’t worry, though, they’re friendly.” Alana flashed her fiancé a smile that was somehow comforting and mischievous at the same time. “You have your food, yeah?”

Matthew held up a packed lunch. He’d found it curious that he would bring one to dinner, but Alana had insisted, and he wasn’t going to question it, lest they be late.

“Perfect. Come on.”

Matthew followed a couple steps behind as Alana grabbed the massive knocker on the door. It was shaped like a dragon’s head biting down onto a skull, and as it knocked against the wood, it produced a sharp sound that rang through the air. He stared at the knocker as they waited for a response, and found the skull’s hollow eyes staring back at him. To say he was unsettled was the greatest understatement of his life.

After only a minute that seemed to drag on for eternity, the door creaked open. There, standing just a few inches taller than Alana, was a man. At least, they seemed like a man.

They were some sort of dragon-man, with blood-red scales and a quartet of crooked horns that branched backward to form a crown of bone. Two pairs of longer teeth stuck out barely past their lips, lips which soon enough peeled back to reveal a row of sharp, serrated teeth. And he was wearing a rather nice three-piece suit.

“You must be the fiancé.”

Matthew stared as the dragon-man extended a hand, his mind refusing to rationalize the statement.

“My name’s Malacoda. What’s yours, son?”

When Matthew still couldn’t put together a response, Alana gave him a little nudge.

“Go on, don’t be shy.”

It took all of Matthew’s willpower for him to take the dragon-man’s hand. The moment he did, his fingers were almost crushed in a grip firmer than anything he’d ever experienced. He bit his lip to avoid screaming or pulling away. “M-Matthew, sir,” he managed to get out.

“Nice to meet you, Matthew.”

“You know, I used to know someone named Matthew. Don’t talk to him much now that he’s, you know …” Malacoda pointed to the sky. “Anyway, come on in, you two.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Alana gave her father a hug, which only left Matthew more confused than before. “Come on, Matt.”

Matthew followed without a sound, now choosing to stick at Alana’s side rather than linger a few steps behind. That was the best choice he could’ve made. The inside of the castle wasn’t entirely dark, but it was illuminated only by candles, rather than any sort of electric lighting.

“Th-that was your dad?” Matthew asked once they were out of earshot.

“Yep.”

“But he’s … you know …”

“A Demon-dragon hybrid?”

Matthew gawked. He would never have imagined the answer would be so blunt, yet there it was.

“He’s a pretty big name in Hell, too. Rules the Eighth Circle.”

“I … I just …”

Alana giggled, and despite the situation, Matthew found the noise was still a calming balm for his troubled soul. At once, he found himself at ease, and with her hand returning to his, he felt ready to embrace whatever came next.

They traveled down a hallway and rounded a corner into a massive dining room, the center of which held an enormous table loaded down with food. Everything, from the tiniest appetizer of grapes to the largest roasted pig he’d ever seen, looked positively scrumptious. There were bowls of some golden leafy vegetables, and plates of toasted bread and jams, and skewers of fruits and meats that seemed to still steam away into the air.

“Alana, my wonderful daughter.” This voice floated from another doorway, a beautiful lilting tone that Matthew found himself unable to resist turning toward. There, he saw another woman standing, much, much taller than Alana.

Matthew knew it was disrespectful to stare, but how could he not? She was gorgeous. Shimmering blond hair—no doubt where Alana got it from—rolled over the woman’s shoulders and down her back like a river of gold, while her skin was pale. Almost too pale, like a perfect little porcelain doll. Her eyes were a soft blue, yet they glowed in the light of the candles. Even the gown she wore was the image of perfection, an iridescent garment that trailed down to the floor and seemed to flutter in a nonexistent breeze.

“This is my mother, Matthew.”

Alana’s mother drew closer, seeming to float across the floor. “My name is Titania, dear. May I have yours?”

“My name’s—”

Alana shoved a hand over Matthew’s mouth, keeping him from finishing his sentence. “Come on, Mom. We talked about this. No stealing names.”

Titania giggled and waved it off. “Oh, sorry. Force of habit.” She turned to Matthew with a grin that was more mischievous than understanding. “Please, tell me your name. I promise I won’t take it.”

“M-Matthew?”

When nothing happened, he let out an audible sigh. He didn’t even know what was happening anymore. This whole visit had already been a massive shock, and they hadn’t even started dinner yet! What else would come out of the night?

“Th-the food looks delicious, ma’am.”

“Oh, you.” Titania went to pluck a grape from its cluster. “Here, have a little snack.”

Alana smacked the grape away before her fiancé could accept it. “No food either, Mom.”

“You’re no fun, dear,” Titania said with yet another giggle.

Matthew stared at the grape, having forgotten all about Alana’s warnings. That wasn’t the only thing that returned to the forefront of his memories, though. Suddenly, everything Alana had said about her parents made sense.

She’d always called her father a Demon, which he’d come to interpret as him being an asshole, or perhaps a lawyer. And Alana had always said her mother was a fairy queen, which, again, he took to mean she was a gracious individual, someone who would give and welcome.

He never would’ve expected a literal Demon and a fairy queen. Yet, now that he was here, and now that he was past the initial shock, he found that it didn’t bother him as much as it should’ve.

“Your parents are kind of amazing,” he whispered to Alana.

“That’s rather kind of you, son.”

Matthew spun toward Malacoda’s voice, the Demon looming behind him. “Wh-where’d you come from?”

“Well, it’s time for dinner, isn’t it?” Malacoda sat at the head of the table beside Titania. “You know, it was this wonderful woman’s cooking that ensnared me all those years ago.”

“Oh, you kidder.” Titania took her husband’s hand and gave it a quick kiss.

“What about your parents, son?” Malacoda asked. “What do they do for a living?”

“O-oh! Well …” Matthew rubbed the back of his neck as he sat beside Alana. He had never liked talking about his parents, mostly because he always felt like there wasn’t much to talk about. “My mother’s a teacher, and my father’s an accountant.”

Malacoda burst into laughter. “Well, looks like you got your own Demon and fairy queen at home then, yeah?”

[writing-prompt-s]

Humanity has spread to the stars. One group of space colonists land on a habitable world and discover a native primitive species. But unbeknownst to them, these are a former Type 3 civilization that chose a simpler life.

[writingwithgeoffrey]

James stood at the base of the ramp, staring up at the massive colony ship before him. Even though there was no need for its shape to be streamlined, thanks to the advances in warp tech, the eggheads had still designed it to mimic the old-school shuttles. Only this one was much larger, suitable enough to carry a couple hundred colonists and all the food they’d need for two years.

However, James was nervous. Sure, warp tech may have made travel between the stars trivial, but he’d grown up on Earth. To leave behind his friends and family for a new world, to forget about it all for two years, was a daunting task. He may have been chosen for it, but he would’ve chosen anything else.

“All crew aboard,” came the captain’s call.

With one final glance back at his home, he carried his bags up the ramp. His steps were slow, as if his body were trying to buy him just a few more precious seconds. Some of his fellow colonists joined his march, while others charged on ahead of him without a stitch of fear.

The interior of the shuttle was roomy, with seats laid out similar to the inside of a commercial jetliner. Yet, unlike the profit-hungry airlines with their cramped seats, each of these was a veritable first-class experience.

James found his assigned seat; it was nestled against a window beside the wing. Not the best view of the ground, but then again, there would be no ground inside the warp bubble. So, maybe the view wouldn’t be so bad.

With that thought in mind, James stashed his bags, then strapped himself into the harness and waited. As he waited, he watched the others. With an hour to launch, they had taken up the chance to chat among one another, small groups forming here and there.

They all wore the same style of outfit, off-white jumpsuits and work boots, differentiated only by colored bands on their upper arms to signify what branch of the colony they belonged to. Red for perimeter defense, green for resource gathering, blue for construction and planning, and purple for leadership roles.

James was a blue-band, which he was thankful for. At least as part of the construction crew, he could stay close to the shuttle. And yet, he couldn’t deny the fact that exploring an alien world would’ve been just as exciting as building a new town.

“All crew to their seats.” To say the colonists scrambled at the captain’s call was far from accurate. They treated this entire ordeal with as much care as they would an ordinary Earth-bound flight, dragging their feet and still trying to keep up conversations.

A moment later, the captain and his copilot emerged from the cockpit. They wore the same jumpsuits as everyone else, though theirs were lined with gold. A quick, handy visual reminder of who was truly in charge of the entire operation.

“It’s a pleasure to have you all here today, ladies and gentlemen.” His voice carried not a hint of uncertainty, as if this were just another routine flight. “Our destination is a small Earth-sized planet in the Crab Nebula. Preliminary observational reports have discovered a viable atmosphere, as well as several bio-markers associated with complex life.”

James perked up at that. It wasn’t often that one of these colony ships was aimed at a thriving planet. Usually, their goal was to start the process of terraforming, too, even if the results would take decades, if not centuries, to arise.

“Upon landing, the teams will carry out their assigned tasks, and upon completion of said tasks, we will reconvene for the next viable steps. Is that understood?”

The entire cabin filled with a unified, “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now, if there are no questions or complaints, strap yourselves in and enjoy the flight.”

James leaned his head back against his seat and shut his eyes, shifting a bit to get comfortable. This whole ordeal was still just a touch scary to him, but now, with the promise of cataloguing native life, there was a hint of excitement welling up inside of him.

As he settled in for the five-hour flight, ready for a quick nap, visions of hopping space-bunnies and dogs filled his head. He only hoped they were as nice in real life as he imagined them to be.

* * *

The planet below was absolutely gorgeous, a span of vibrant blue-greens ringed by oceans of the deepest blue he’d ever seen. Wispy clouds covered much of the planet, but what he could see was already tantalizing. Never in his life would James have imagined another planet could match the beauty of Earth.

Their descent was slow, a controlled drop so as not to burn up, and that only made James antsier. His prior misgivings were all gone at this point, replaced with a sense of almost childlike wonder. It was ridiculous for a grown man to act this way, yet there he was, oohing and aahing at the stretches of blue-green forests and red rolling plains.

The shuttle descended for one of those plains, settling down in a spot near the edge of a forest. James’s wing just so happened to be on the side facing the trees, giving him a nice glimpse into the subdued light beneath the gnarled, crooked trunks of the alien flora.

There were no animals in sight as of yet, but James had a feeling they’d all been spooked by the shuttle. No doubt, given enough time for things to calm down, the more curious specimens would pay their camp a visit.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. We have arrived at 429-Alpha. The weather is nice, an overcast day. Temperatures are in the seventies, with a wind blowing from the east. Oxygen levels are well within breathable range, and preliminary scans show no toxins in the plant life. Please gather your belongings and enjoy your stay as you work toward a better future.”

In a complete turnaround to boarding, James was among the first to disembark. The first breath of air from an alien planet was sweeter than James had been expecting. It was nothing like Earth, with the lingering effects of industrialization hanging in the air. No, this was pure, clean air, untouched by anyone who may have cared to harm the natural balance.

That thought alone made James a bit sad. The camp would start out small, not very many machines, but how long would it be before more humans arrived and mucked it all up? How many years would it take for this rolling meadow to be replaced by a sprawling cityscape?

James let such thoughts leave his mind for the moment, more content to enjoy the sights and smells as he joined the rest of the construction crew.

Their work was simple. Part of that was unloading all of the necessary supplies to pitch tents and whatnot. After that came the construction of holo-fences. The poles were easy enough to plant six feet deep, and the generators were heavy, but an extra set of hands was all it took to get them into place.

Before an hour had passed, they had set up their own little slice of heaven. James stood there at the entrance to the camp, hands on his hips as he admired his handiwork. The glowing green walls may have been an eyesore compared to the red of the grass, but it was home.

“Home …”

It only just hit him then. The smile dropped from his face as he settled all his weight onto a nearby crate. This would be home for the next two years, maybe longer. How long would it be until he saw his mother and father again, or the wife and children he’d left behind? How long until he could see their smiling faces and hear their laughter?

Already, the scent of the grass was twisting. No longer was it purely sweet. Now it was sickly so, and in a way that made his stomach churn. He would much rather have had the smoggy air than this.

“Hey, man.” One of the others came over and clapped a hand on James’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. It’ll get easier.”

James met the man’s gaze, then shifted his sights to the forest. “I hope so.”

* * *

James should never have been this far out from camp. He was part of the construction crew, not the resource crew. And yet, due to some clerical error, they were short of the supplies they needed. So, with the rest of the resource crew out and about, he’d volunteered for a quick jaunt into the forest.

He clutched the holopad close. He knew what he needed to keep an eye out for. Initial studies had shown that not all of the trees were fit for building with, and that only ones with a particular texture to their trunks could be fashioned into usable wood.

He stopped at every tree on his way farther into the woods, pressing two fingers into the bark of each one. They all felt spongy. Not yet ripe, according to the eggheads.

James scoffed as he abandoned what had to have been his hundredth tree. Off in the distance, there was the chatter of alien wildlife. There were birds, or rather, something akin to them. He’d seen them once or twice up close, the little creatures appearing almost like manta rays that swam through the air. Their little bellies were always swollen, and the science crew had discovered hydrogen sacks inside their bodies.

“Focus on the search, James. You just need one tree, then you can ping the resource crew.”

James did just that, putting his head down and ignoring the sights and splendors present the deeper he ventured. However, before long, he’d traveled farther than anyone else from the crew had gone. The trees were no nearer to each other, but they were older, their canopies more densely overlapping. Less sunlight filtered through, casting him into a gloomy shade that filled him with unease.

“Are you lost?”

He spun on the voice. Standing there beside one of the trees was a humanoid sort of creature, but more animal and covered in fur. To James’s unaccustomed eye, it seemed almost like a fox.

Yet, the closer he looked, the more he realized how different it was. Its head had four ears, each of which was pointed his way to hear his words. It also had five eyes positioned almost like the rays of a rising sun. Each amber eye gazed his way, and all of them blinked in unison.

“Wh-who are you?” James asked, holding his holopad out front like it would keep him safe. He’d been a fool not to bring some kind of weapon. “H-how do you speak English?”

The creature chuckled, a trio of thick, bushy tails wagging behind it. “We speak the language of the universe, my friend. You hear English, I hear Kitsune.” The creature placed one hand against its chest and bowed. “My name is Yun-Jaze. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“J-James, and same.”

James relaxed a tiny bit. The creature didn’t seem dangerous, yet he could never be too certain. After all, there was every possibility they were stashing some kind of weapon beneath their loose robes.

“Where are you from, friend?”

“A planet called Earth. We’re here to colonize this planet.”

“Ah, I see.” Yun-Jaze placed a hand against the nearby tree, their gaze trailing up its trunk. “Well, I’m afraid this planet is already claimed.”

“By the Kits— whatever you are?”

“The Kitsune, yes.” Yun-Jaze chuckled again.

“And who are the Kitsune?”

The smile dropped from Yun-Jaze’s face. “Seers, warmongers, thinkers … we harnessed the entire energy output of our galaxy, leashed every star and every planet to the needs of our armada. And the response was hatred. The response was disgust and a desire for our entire kind to be wiped out. When none remained who held such beliefs, we realized those beliefs had already poisoned our minds.”

Yun-Jaze turned to face James, a smile once again on their face. “But that is in the past. Now, those who remain have chosen to settle here, on this planet, where we can live out our days as one with the universe.”

“Look, that sounds great and all.” James trembled all over. Not only was he the first human in existence to speak with another intelligent lifeform, but he’d also just been told about all of their destructive ways. That would’ve turned anyone’s knees to jelly. “But we need this planet. Ours is running out of space.”

Yun-Jaze chuckled and met James’s gaze. “I don’t think you understand what I’ve said, friend.” Their hand raised. The claws on that hand glowed a vibrant gold, as if coated in some form of energy. “This planet is claimed. Don’t make us go to war.”