Broken and blistered,
We healed our surrogate world,
Piece by bloody piece.
Overbearing brutes,
We forced you to accept us
‘Til nothing remained.
Reluctant mother,
We did the unthinkable;
You gave us rebirth.
[Originally posted at Ficly]
Eifan Craille stands quietly in the ruins of the old town, leaning heavily on his staff. He is tired, weary from his long journey, but he has come too far to rest now. He permits himself several deep breaths. The salty sea air refreshes him, but only a little. He pulls his cloak closer, shivering lightly in the damp, chilly air and surveys the scene before him.
Shorelocke. Hardly an original name, the town had once been a sea port, providing one of the only routes for merchants to deliver their goods in-land by way of a clever lock and dam system.
Now, though, Shorelocke is a ghost town. The stone block buildings haven fallen into disrepair, and the cloying scent of rot and decay hangs over everything.
Now that he is here, Eifan is uncertain where to begin his search. Off to his left, a low stone shelter with a dark, yawning opening seems to whisper to him. To his right, a broken tower flickers with torchlight, despite no visible source. And immediately before him, an open plaza etched in mystic runes.
[Originally posted at Ficly.]
I want to experiment with an idea for this series. Does anyone remember those old Choose Your Own Adventure series? I’d like to do something similar here. The difference is that I want you, my readers, to decide which direction the story goes by “voting” in the comments. Each section of this story, Eifan will be faced with a choice. It will be your job to comment on which choice he should make. The one that gets the most votes will determine which way the story goes. Clear enough? Good.
So, what should Eifan explore: the shelter, the tower, or the plaza?
Also, feel free to suggest anything else you’d like Eifan to explore. I can’t guarantee he’ll have time (he is, after all, likely to find his hands full), but I’m definitely open to suggestions.
It is the faintest glimmering of a spark. It floats in suspension in a bottle, the field it generates holding it equidistant from the surfaces that enclose it. It is an Ember, and it pulses gently, hungrily.
It has memories, of a sort, quantum states that hold the last use to which it was put. It no longer has any knowledge of the coal it consumed as an engine-seed, or of the alcohol it burned in the distillery. It remembers nothing of the forge, the furnace, or the oven. Those Ember-lives are long past, overwritten, forgotten.
It remembers now only the glass that contains it – and the taste of one, peculiar molecule. That memory remains strong, and the Ember still resonates with that catalyzing reaction. The surrounding terrain has been glassed with the fury of that meeting.
There is one, final consequence of that moment of carelessness. Above the Ember, a jagged rift splits the sky, folding it. Electric tendrils reach from that Fold, groping, grasping, but not taking. There is nothing for it to take.
[Originally posted at Ficly]
The encampment is little more than a desiccated husk. What remains of the few tents still standing are tatters of canvas flapping from poles bent and twisted by some cataclysmic event. Much of the ground here has been blasted into red glass and slag, but there are pockets that remain sandy, that still shift in the gale that howls through this canyon.
It is one of these pockets that hides the original purpose of this encampment. The wind blasts, the sand shifts, and the edges of a device emerge. It is a delicate thing, fragile, and yet somehow it remains intact. It looks not so much like a coil — though there are sections of glass tubing that do, indeed, coil — as a series of tubes, bottles, and decanters connected in series. It looks like the chemistry set of a mad scientist.
Dark residue clings tenaciously to the insides of several bottles.
And in one bottle, a minute Ember still burns, consuming nothing and yet, still, it pulses gently.
The wind and sands shift, and the device disappears once more.
[Originally posted at Ficly]
The book lies on a table. Its pages are torn, tattered. The ink is faded, in places almost nonexistent. What ink remains, however, tells a chilling story.
On the left-hand page is a diagram, the chemical structure of a molecule labeled, simply, Nightmare. Then, a mathematical equation, all letters and numbers and symbols, the solution circled once, twice, three times. Below that, another molecular diagram, similar to the one above, but subtly different in ways that only an experienced biologist — or master alchemist — would recognize and understand.
The rest of the page is faded, but there are notes on the next.
“Use of the Coil has yielded… weaponized form of Nightmare…” Then, further down the page: “…highly unpredictable and volatile, lingering in the air hours after dispersal. I am suspending study of the compound until a stabilizing agent…”
There is little else on the page but one, last scribbled notation:
“…assistant has made off with my Coil… no idea what he has done!”
[Originally posted at Ficly]
Germaine Ashencloake surveyed the wreckage of the room before him. Dozens of tiny figurines lay in shattered ruins across the floor. From what he could observe, each was unique.
Germaine shook his head. A woodcarver carving in bone and ivory. Such things were simply not done. It bordered on blasphemy.
One of the Voices in his head spoke. “No wonder the destruction here is so complete. Such things cannot be allowed to continue unchecked.” And yet, until recently, this one had.
Another Voice added, “Such petty gods.” It tittered. “The real gods are the carvers who carve them.” Germaine ignored both Voices.
He could feel the figurines, could taste the little tatters of god-soul that still clung to each one. These were no petty gods, he knew. Not just. These were all the gods of all the world’s religions, made by an unknown woodcarver.
He spoke — and was surprised to hear that the Voice he used was his own.
“Our gods have not forsaken us,” he said. “They were simply never with us in the first place.”
[Originally posted on Ficly]
Air _whooshed_ in and out of the titan’s lungs like enormous bellows. The sound flowed through the mountainous cavern with a sonorous resonance that would have entranced any mere mortal. Each breath built on and amplified the last, cascading into a hypnotic mellifluence that was both beautiful and terrible.
The titan lay upon an enormous slab of granite. Metallic bands, etched with the runes of an ancient, forgotten language, stretched across its sleeping form — one at the shoulders, one at the hips, and one at the knees. Four smaller bands restrained its wrists and ankles.
After aeons of lethargy, the titan had become overgrown with moss. Lichen grew from its ears and the corners of its eyes. Its skin had become calloused and rough, its nails cracked and blackened. Yellowed mucous seeped from its nostrils, and rivers of saliva dripped from its open mouth.
Of course it knew nothing for this, nor would it have cared. This once great titan, this sleeping behemoth, this Tzubletz’th slumbered on.
[Originally posted at Ficly]
“How was it?” Marcus asked, as Mara slipped out of the pilot’s seat.
“Awesome!” she replied. Her grin was dazzling. “But this overdrive is insane! I actually had to keep my foot on the brake just to keep from losing control.”
He laughed. “I know, right?”
Mara’s grin vanished, and her tone became somber. “Seriously, Marcus, where did you get this thing? I’ve never seen a floater with this kind of get-up-and-go.” She arched an eyebrow and tilted her head, giving him that half-sideways mock-glare she liked so much. “Did you steal it?”
Marcus flashed a grin of his own. “I didn’t steal it, I swear.”
“Hamsters, then,” Mara replied. “It’s powered by a team of highly motivated hamsters. On wheels.” Her smile was back, but her levity was forced.
She’s actually rattled, he realized. He hadn’t expected that, not from her.
“It is, among other things, a totally new power source, Mara,” he explained, “One of my own design.” Her eyes widened. “What do you think I’ve been doing in that lab day? Screwing around?”
[Originally posted on Ficly]
He walks slowly, each lumbering stride carrying him a dozen leagues. Entire villages are crushed beneath his feet; whole nations are shaken by his passing. He cares not one whit. He strides through them like they are grass. They are insignificant in his eyes, for they forgot him long ago.
He chatters with himself for, as the last of his kind, there is no one else with whom to talk. He is the lonely god — and he is stark, raving mad.
“What will it be, Bronze? What will you do now?” he asks himself.
“This,” he replies.
He stoops, and the land beneath him shudders. With his hand, he scoops up a mountain, brushing away dirt and stone until only the thumb-bone of a titan remains in his palm.
“Ah,” he says. “Right where I left it.”
He grins and plops one end of the bone into his mouth, sucking fiercely upon it.
He stands again, and resumes his plodding. The lonely god will not come this way again.
He has that for which he came.
[Originally posted at Ficly]
The tiny craft’s re-emergence into real space was unremarkable in every way. No flash of light to mark the rift it tore in the black, no radio or gravity waves, and even the EM radiation typical to subspace travel was dampened so as to be indistinguishable from the universe’s own background noise. The ship was decked in a non-reflective nano-material that absorbed all forms of energy that struck it, recycling it back through the hyper-efficient engines for a continuous, if nominal, power supply. And so, for all intents and purposes, the craft was invisible to all but the most advanced surveillance tools.
And in this part of space, perfect concealment was tantamount to survival.
“Feather the engines back,” Harking commanded. “Drift us from here.”
“Aye, sir,” the pilot replied.
“How long until traversal?” Harking inquired.
A pause while the pilot did the math. “Just under three lights, less than 30 minutes at our current course and speed.”
“Barely good enough,” Harking muttered, “but it will have to do.”
[Originally posted at Ficly.]