Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Profane Accessory
Feb 23, 2012

http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=3138&title=The+Last+Corpsewitch

Profane Accessory fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Dec 30, 2015

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Hammer Bro.
Jul 7, 2007

THUNDERDOME LOSER

The Screaming of Goats (942 words)

Jimbob glared at the lifeless doorway. Power must've given. He pried it open with his hands and lumbered inside. First the whiskey, then the canned food. The produce was probably rotten, but Jimbob plodded in that direction.

He almost stepped on a corpse.

"P-Please... water."

Still alive, then. "Ain't no more water here. Barely any whiskey."

"Food."

The man's pallid skin was marred by festering sores, and his legs were gnarled and misshapen. No wonder he hadn't evacuated. Not that the treatment worked.

"Please."

Jimbob spat his tobacco and dug out a can of peaches. He laid it sideways on the ground, drew his hatchet, and chopped it in half. Then he scooped up the oozing fragments and swallowed the peaches whole.

He wiped his mouth, pointed to the runoff on the floor, and chuckled. "Help yourself."

---

Jimbob shouldered his cabin door open. "Belle! You in there?"

Belle coughed and turned toward him.

"Got us some dinner from the market."

Her eyes lit up.

"You want to eat now or later?"

She came closer and began licking Jimbob's fingers, nibbling suggestively at the tips.

"Oh-ho-ho. You're right. Later."

He drew her lips to his and kissed her.

---

Clack. Clack.

Belle must have been combing through the garbage again, salvaging the scraps that were still edible. She had been looking a mite pale. But Jimbob felt fine this morning; he always did. It'd take more than a plague to keep Jimbob down.

Clack clack clack.

Was that... the door?

Jimbob pulled on his britches and went to the window. "We ain't got none!"

"What?" a muffled voice responded. "No, I don't need help. I'd just like to talk."

Jimbob groaned but opened the door. The man outside wore clean clothes and looked reasonably healthy. Must be the respirator.

"I'm Alexander Svartebok," the main said as he extended his hand, "from the CDC."

Jimbob scowled.

"We thought this area was completely abandoned until a drone spotted you wandering the city three nights ago."

"What's yer point?"

"You clearly have a natural immunity to the Shriveling. If you'd let us run some tests at our lab in Tallahassee, we might be able to develop a cure for this blight."

"Don't need me no cure; ain't got me no sickness. 'sides, your kind cooked this up in the first place."

"That's not--"

"That is. Now you get off my property 'fore I pry that fancy mask from your pretty face."

Alexander's eyebrows arched then furrowed, but he retreated without another word. Belle poked her head out from under the table.

---

Two days later, Belle was dead. Jimbob stared at her motionless body, then quietly turned away. He retrieved his shovel, went to the yard, and began digging.

Slowly, methodically, mechanically, Jimbob dug a grave for his departed lover. He fetched her carcass, laid her to rest, and stood in solemn silence for an hour.

When returned to his cabin, he leaned the shovel against a wall. Jimbob looked around the room, at the table and chairs and bundles of hay. He drew a slow breath.

"God DAMNIT!" he slammed his fist on the table, then shattered the plates with a sweep of his arm. He whipped around and stomped the trashcan flat. Fuming, he braced his hands against the wall and slammed his head into it.

His wail became a roar. Blood clouded his vision while rage colored it. The walls, the furniture, the stockpiles all transformed into colossal red demon. Jimbob jabbed at its knuckles; the demon cracked a smile. Jimbob bit into its palm; the demon throbbed with pleasure. Jimbob drew his head back and howled, flinging spit and fury to the corners of the globe. The demon cackled with delight.

At some point Jimbob collapsed.

He was awakened by knocking.

"I'm fetching my hatchet!" he bellowed. The response was unintelligible.

Jimbob burst out of his house, weapon in hand, and saw Alexander standing twenty feet away with his palms raised.

"I told you to leave!" Jimbob shouted.

"Hear me out," Alexander said. "We'll give you anything you want. Money, shelter, women. You'll be immortalized as a hero and hailed as a savior!"

"Don't want none of that. Have all I want except-- Except..."

With a deafening grunt Jimbob hurled his hatchet at Alexander and dropped into a sprint. But last night's exigencies still haunted him, and the other man quickly disappeared into the forest.

Jimbob returned to the ruin of his cabin and lay face-down atop the wreckage.

---

All that week Jimbob had unusual dreams. Harpies flew in unison, etching incomprehensible runes into the sky. The sun set across the ocean. As the sky faded to a swirling dark cocoa, the effervescent water glowed a radiant amber. Three naked pixies circled his head, each speaking to him in her own private language.

The first evoked thoughts of a wind, ancient and forgotten, dragging sand back and forth against an endless expanse of limestone.

The second sounded like the jingling of sleigh bells in a warm, precipitous cavern.

The third sound was that of shattering glass, followed by three staccato thumps.

Jimbob rubbed his bloodshot eyes and stumbled toward his window. Among the shards and debris was a stone with a crudely painted '5' followed by a 'V' with a line through the middle.

That was the last straw. Jimbob went to the closet, fetched his rifle, and loaded it. He crept up to the front door, took three measured breaths, and flung it open.

Standing in the clearing, tethered to a stake, was a glossy, healthy, golden brown goat.

She was the most beautiful thing Jimbob had ever seen.

hotsoupdinner
Apr 12, 2007
eat up
Insufferable Commandments of the Pagan Shrine 995 words

It was a good day to kill. The Skull Priest gave his vile sermon from the altar. Tufts of hair and skin still stuck to the fresh skull that made up his headdress. We stood tall, row after row of warriors waiting to be commanded. The Phalange Priests moved between us. They quietly girded us in blessed armor with heads bowed low. The finger bones sewn into their gloves clicked together as they worked. Some of my fellow Rib Priests mocked the Phalange Priests behind their backs, but I knew better. The Phalange Priests were the hands of the gods -- performing their divine will. Each of us had our place: the Skull Priest spoke for the gods, the Phalange Priests served the gods, and we, the Rib Priests, fought in the name of the gods.

As the benediction came to a close, the shrine grew silent. It was time for the gods to choose a sacrifice from among their servants. A death ensured victory. A low drone emanated from the altar and a dark voice spoke a name. The chosen priest hobbled towards the altar on a crutch. The left leg of his trousers was empty and dragged across the floor. He appeared to be in a trance, in ecstasy over his chance to serve the gods. The Skull Priest drew his dagger and dragged it across the sacrifice’s throat. It wasn’t a clean cut, but ragged. I looked away as the priest was murdered. I turned to my brother standing next to me. I could see in him the same ecstasy as the murdered priest.

The battle was favorable. My blade separated many souls from their bodies. We brought much glory to our dark lords and the world was one step closer to drowning in the blood of eternal darkness. It was not until the day was won that I heard of my brother’s injuries.

The Skull Priest blessed the wounded while the Phalange Priests reset bones and sewed up gashes. Screams turned to whimpers as the wounded breathed in the holy vapors that dulled pain and turned consciousness into a distant memory. My respect for the Phalange Priests grew. I watched them make sick men whole.

“It’s nothing,” said my brother, “a small price to pay for eternal glory.” I wondered how much vapor he had breathed in. His wound was much more than nothing. The Phalange Priest caring for him lifted the bandage at his shoulder. The flesh beneath was mangled and torn. He had been bitten by one of the Wolf-rider’s wolves.

“The beast barely scratched me,” he said. “My pain is insubstantial next to the agony of our lords as they wait chained in their plane of torment to be loosed upon the world. It is my side that hurts more than anything.”

In truth the beast had trampled my brother. One of the ribs that formed his armor cracked under the strain and pierced my brother’s side. What terrible wisdom had our gods if they would punish one of their faithful using their very means of protection. However, it wasn’t the mangled shoulder or punctured lung that worried me. Those would heal. Fragile skin would soon be replaced by scar tissue, that most beautiful form of flesh. What worried me was the stump of my brother’s wrist, where his hand had been.

My brother seemingly read my mind. “It was more than a fair trade. My hand for its life.” The Phalange Priest unwrapped the bloody stump and left for a moment to gather the tools of his trade. I waited until the Phalange Priest was gone before speaking.

“I am worried about the next sacrifice.”

“Do not be.”

“Missing a limb...it gives you candidacy.”

“Good. My life in service of the gods.”

“Do you truly believe in the gods?”

“Do not ever let me hear you say such things again, brother.” The venom in his voice dripped off his tongue with every syllable. “For I might forget we share the same mother and murder you as I would any unbeliever.”

“I will not let anything happen to you.”

“You cannot stop the what the gods will.” The Phalange Priest returned with a knife glowing red-hot. I stepped aside to let the Phalange Priest perform his work. I knew my brother’s pain would intensify for a few moments, but that pain would promote healing.

As I left the room my ears were filled with my brother’s screams and the smell of his scorched flesh.

That was the last battle of the season before winter’s snows made warring impossible. My brother grew stronger with my help. I sparred with him every day. We grew keener and more bloodthirsty. I prayed that the gods watched us and could see my brother’s great worth as a warrior.

When the snows thawed we gathered again in the shrine for a blessing before battle. The tufts of skin on the Skull Priest’s headdress had rotted off. As the sermon neared its end my turmoil grew. I tried to adopt the placidity on my brother’s face. Finally, the hall grew quiet as we waited for the altar to speak. The voice like thunder issued forth and named my brother as sacrifice.

No. I would not allow it.

I unsheathed my blade and turned to the Phalange Priest next to me. I cleaved off his hand with a clean slice. The room was stunned and I acted before anyone else could. I yanked the glove off the severed hand and pulled it onto my own. Now I wore the protection of the gods and the hand of the gods.

Several of my fellow priests tried to stop me. I cut them down. I turned towards the Skull Priest, the man who spoke with the voice of the gods. Soon I would take that voice from him.

The gods were dead. The gods were not worth serving. I would become a god in their place.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006


INSUFFERABLE COMMANDMENTS OF THE PAGAN SHRINE - 894 words

It was month four of us sitting under the walls of Polka-Mazurka, waiting for them to either surrender, die out from hunger or get smote by divine wrath of Our Lord Metal and I was running out of ways to kill time.

“Growler, you ugly gently caress, are you trying to scalp yourself?” Corpsecunt was inside the tent, leaning against one of the femur bones supporting it. One of the perks of being the commander of your own mercenary company, a personal tent for your troops to harass you in. Her war paint was already slathered on, Drowner Blue being the color of the day. She leered back at me.

I scowled. “It’s called shaving. It’s that for me or a comb-over. Can’t headbang a comb-over, can I? And that’s ‘sir, you ugly gently caress, sir’ to you, you insubordinate bitch.”

She stuck out her pierced tongue at me. “You already shaved it three times this week. One more pass and you’re a phrenology exhibit.”

I dunked the razor into the bowl and turned to her. She wasn’t wrong - I was only doing this out of boredom - but admitting it would be poor form. It was time for a diversionary maneuver. “Well, someone has to shave for the two of us.” I made a spectacle of moving my eyes over to her crotch and raising my eyebrows.

She snorted, otherwise ignored the bait. “Poor Growler. So bored, so shiny. Well, good news.” She reached behind her back, tossed me a scroll. “We’re being reinforced. For an assault.”

This wasn’t right. Polka-Mazurka just wasn’t worth this much effort. It wasn’t even worth our effort. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to imagine the map, the Metal Armies on it. “By who?” Not many of them were campaigning close enough to matter. “Progs? Industrials? Goths? Not Heavies or the Power or any of the others, they’re too far away. How many centuries are we being sent?”

“Not centuries, Legions. And their Frontmen, too.” She studied my face.

“Well gently caress.”

***

The Crimson King arrived first. His Legion is The March Of; appropriate, given the poor bastards had to force-march through the Razor Fields to get here. I wondered if he made them goose-step all the way in 7/4 or if he took pity and settled for an irrational polyrhythm for the sake of urgency. Moloch (Moloch! Moloch!), the impatient incomprehensible throbbing hate dynamo that he is, straight up punched a tunnel through the Chrome Crags to get to us in time. We breathed the fumes of his Kampfmaschine long before we saw them. And Grief December, her camp just appeared beside ours the morning of the assault. Slithered out of the darkness, so hush-hush not even my sentries noticed.

***

The city fell so fast, there’s barely anything to tell. The Crimson King came out of his Fibonacci Pavilion, stood on one loving foot, and played his little flute, and as we shut our ears, and gritted our teeth, the dotted spires swayed, then toppled. He turned around and went back in, just like that. The others didn’t even come out of their campaign-palaces to watch.

***

I received an invitation to attend to the Triumvirate four days into the sacking. Considerate of them, to let my men first have their fill. It made me all the more suspicious. Still, I’m not dumb or suicidal. The first night after battle a mausoleum emerged in the field, a profane slab of black marble, ornamented with the bones of the defeated, to serve as their neutral place of meeting. I headed there.

***

The King was impossible to discern. Tried as I could, he was nothing but a red blur. He whispered:

“Weep! Shriek! Howl! The good news - Our Lord of Metal rests bound beneath these crumbled stones.”

Moloch was impossible to look at. I did not even try. A barrage:

“Inculcation: Meatshit utility peakage imminent, meatshit purpose assignment commencing.”

Grief December was impossible not to look at, a cold, lethal perfection. I wished I could turn away.

“You go beneath the city. You find him. You set him free.”

I shuddered under the weight of the revelation. It was impossible to argue and dangerous to ask:

“Why me? Why not you?”

A silence.

“Hindrance! Malefaction! For you to pass, to slither through we the mighty must wrench open a rift.”

“Only one of us could enter. One then receives divine favor above her peers. This, predictably, is a point of disagreement.”

“Assessment: Meatshit null. Meatshit favor-extraneous. Meatshit instrument of collective glory. Balance conserved.”

“Go.”

***

We inserted in a small file. Me first, Corpsecunt, then two dozen of my best headbangers. The rift shut behind us; we were alone.

***

A week of terror and deprivation. Most of us made it.

***

The gate was as they described; carvings of our glory, carvings of our doom. I entered alone.

Darkness. Silence. Oblivion. Then, an inflicted epiphany:

“I AM YOUR LORD. I AM METAL. YOU COME FOR NAUGHT. “

“SELF-WILL IS METAL. STRUGGLE IS METAL. CONQUEST IN MY NAME IS METAL. DEATH, ABOVE ALL, IS METAL.”

“RELIANCE IS UNMETAL. REQUESTING SALVATION IS UNMETAL. YOUR PURPOSE IS YOURS TO FULFIL.”

“TELL MY CHILDREN. MY EYES ARE ON THEM. THEY ARE ON THEIR OWN. BRING MY DOMINION.”

Silence. I turned around to leave. “HALT.” A chuckle. “WHAT ALSO IS UNMETAL?” I waited. “MALE PATTERN BALDNESS.”

“THERE."

"BETTER. NOW EJECT YOURSELF.”

Mr.48
May 1, 2007

Mercedes posted:

:siren::siren:MERC-BRAWL 8: HITMAN MONKEY:siren::siren:



For this week, four brawlers will be tasked to write 1,500 words about a contract killer who is also a monkey. "Waaah, Mercedes has lost his touch! This prompt is boring!" gently caress you! Your Hitman Monkey must have a human sidekick. The genre is wide open to you, but I swear to God if you give me erotica or poetry I will defecate in a dog bowl and smoosh your face in it.

Please take a step into the Prize Vault and have a look around. Instructions are inside. If you sign up to brawl you will be :toxx:'d to finish. When you finish your story and post it here, you get a sweet video crit from yours truly.

The due date is Wednesday, January 21st 2359 EST.

Who are my killers?

Fanky Malloons - The Silent Killer
Morning Bell - The Happy Killer
Martello -The Christmas Killer
Tyrannosaurus - The Jurassic Killer
Screaming Idiot - The BLARGAHRAGARAGA Killer

This is my first time in the Thunderdome so please dont be mad at me for the dumb question:

What if I want to write about a monkey-hitman for prizes, glory, and critique, but dont want to be super-hardcore and jump into a Brawl as my first creative-writing exercise?

Mr.48 fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Jan 17, 2015

Mercedes
Mar 7, 2006

"So you Jesus?"

"And you black?"

"Nigga prove it!"

And so Black Jesus turned water into a bucket of chicken. And He saw that it was good.




Mr.48 posted:

This is my first time in the Thunderdome so please dont be mad at me for the dumb question:

What if I want to write about a monkey-hitman for prizes, glory, and critique, but dont want to be super-hardcore and jump into a Brawl as my first creative-writing exercise?

This is where you're wrong! This brawl is the best way to do your first creative writing exercise! For one, you get sick prizes just for participating with a video crit, and two, joining the brawl is the ONLY way to write about monkey-hitmen for prizes, glory and critique. It's literally a win-win. Unless you sign up and fail to write. Then you'll be banned.

Mercedes fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jan 17, 2015

Mr.48
May 1, 2007

Mercedes posted:

This is where you're wrong! This brawl is the best way to do your first creative writing exercise! For one, you get sick prizes just for participating with a video crit, and two, joining the brawl is the ONLY way to write about monkey-hitmen for prizes, glory and critique. It's literally a win-win. Unless you sign up and fail to write. Then you'll be banned.

Hmm, in that case I have two further questions:

Is the 1500 word count target a maximum limit, or a minimum length?
Can I still join even though you already signed up 1 more person than your 4-person goal?

Bonus stupid third question:
If my story ends up quite short due to a lack of time, will that be considered ban-worthy?

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

This is the Thunderdome, if you want to write about a monkey hitman then stop being a little bitch and write about a goddamn monkey hitman. Who cares if Mercedes gives you permission?

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Only thing that gets you banned round here is not submitting when you're toxxed.

Word counts are where you stop slapping the keyboard. They're an upper limit.

Maugrim
Feb 16, 2011

I eat your face
24 hours till submissions end.

The following people will be getting line crits on their stories:
chthonic bell, SadisTech, Benny Profane, Hammer Bro., hotsoupdinner, Megazver

ZeBourgeoisie
Aug 8, 2013

THUNDERDOME
LOSER
P-Type Engineer
Words: 623

Max shifted uncomfortably in his seat as Mr. Bulwark sat down at his desk. The older, well-dressed man looked the new recruit over, the uncertainty in his gaze noticeable. Young Max pulled the tie from his neck before Mr. Bulwark broke the silence.

“So, Maxwell, how you doing this morning?”

The blond felt his throat close up, the words clamoring for an exit from his esophagus.

“Uh, I’m fine, Mr. Bulwark.”

“Please, call me Charlie.”

“Okay, Charlie.”

“Now, you’re interested in a position as a P-Type Engineer, I presume?”

“Yes sir, Charlie.”

Charlie Bulwark lifted himself from his seat and led Max to a large room in the back.

“Looking over your paperwork, Maxwell, I can already tell you’re a perfect fit for our team!”

Max felt Mr. Bulwark push him into the room before he could so much as utter a ‘what’. The door slammed shut as soon as Max was fully inside.

***

The room Max found himself in appeared to have been a storeroom of some sort, but something was definitely off. Cow carcasses hung from the rafters, like a meat locker almost, and the walls were saturated in blood. Something jumped from one carcass to another in Max’s peripheral vision.

The young man tried to feel his way around the dark room, but the entire place seemed to shift with his every move. More tiny, inscrutable things hopped from carcass to carcass so fast that Max could barely discern their dull brown coloration.

As he stumbled through the room, the young man found himself tripped by the constant shifting of the floor and walls. He grabbed a carcass to balance himself, when he noticed something.

Those weren’t cow carcasses. In fact, they weren’t carcasses at all. The slabs of meat that hung from each side of the room pulsated, and the ‘hooks’ they clung to looked more like veins or umbilical cords when Max stopped to actually look at them.

As he gave a wall-eyed glare at the pulsating tissues, Max finally saw one of the hoppers in detail. It looked like a beetle or flea, and before hopping away Max swore it hissed at him.

“Parasites,” Mr. Bulwark called from behind.

“What the hell?” Max shouted back.

“Those little flea-like critters are parasites to the beast hidden in this building. You’re going to help them.”

“But I thought I was gonna be an engineer?”

“A P-Type Engineer, or, in other words, a Parasite-Type engineer. You’ll be surprised how important, and difficult, it is to help those little critters survive and thrive.”

“I, no, there is no way I can do this.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Very well”

Mr. Bulwark pulled a pistol from his coat pocket before training it on Max.

“We can’t have you go blabbing, though.”

“Wait, wait! I won’t say anything, I promise!”

“I can’t trust you unless you work for us.”

“When do I start?”

“That’s the spirit.”

***

As Max moped the floor of beast’s heart, as it were called, he observed a parasite hopping away from a chunk of cardiac muscle and to his feet. The bug began twitching its feelers on Max’s feet, tickling him.

“Uhh, Charlie, it isn’t trying to bleed me, is it?”

Charlie Bulwark laughed as the parasite continued to tickle Max’s exposed ankles.

“Quite the opposite. I think he likes you!”

Max lowered an arm for the tiny critter. Without hesitation, the bug crawled up Max’s arm, tickling him the entire way.

“It’s funny, for the first few weeks they hissed at me and tried to bite, but now they’re just so friendly.”

“Oh, they like people, it just takes them a little getting used to.”

The parasite licked at Max’s cheek before hopping away to another piece of flesh.

Mercedes
Mar 7, 2006

"So you Jesus?"

"And you black?"

"Nigga prove it!"

And so Black Jesus turned water into a bucket of chicken. And He saw that it was good.




Fanky Malloons posted:

This is the Thunderdome, if you want to write about a monkey hitman then stop being a little bitch and write about a goddamn monkey hitman. Who cares if Mercedes gives you permission?

Well he can do whatever he wants, but I'm not gonna reward em if they don't go through the proper channels. Red tape bitches!!

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


The King of the Whores
1000 words


This ogre was foul heap of flesh and muscle. More monster than man, the brute was packed into the Sentinel's Mail, a shimmering steel chain weaved in chaotic orchestration over his broad chest and capped with a golden wasp. It was a sigil that Nils had seen frequently over the past decade, stamped into a leather cuirass lain haphazardly on the floor, branded across a horny footsoldier’s rear end, pressed into the gold coins left on an endtable as payment. It was the sigil of Leopold the Usurper; yes, Nils knew it well.

“Well?” the ogre declared as he unsheathed his blade, “You just going to stand there, staring at me armor? Shall I show you the end of me pointer as well?”

“No sir. Of course not sir.” Nils answered.

“Sir?” the ogre’s voice boomed now, filling the greathall as he stood basking in the gazes of one thousand soldiers. The monster’s face was a mishmash of broken and rotting features, from his pulverized nose to his gaping, blackened maw. “I am Rogdnor Crush, Champion of the blade, bow, and brawl, squasher of insurgent besiegers, and Battlemaster for King Leopold himself, but tonight, as far as you are concerned, I am your king!”

“Yahraw!”” The thousand strong soldiers shouted.

Rogdnor clutched his sword before approaching Nils at the small guest table, “Tonight, we celebrate the anniversary of our victory against King Vingwinter’s pathetic army,” and with a mighty show of force, he drove his sword through the face of the wooden surface. “So hurry,” he continued, “and summon your infantry of bitches before I decide to lead my army against a new target, you king of whores.”

“Right away my lord,” Nils reported. Moments later, the greathall doors swung open, and inward marched a brigade of gorgeous, naked, women, enough for each man to have two if he so desired.

Rogdnor licked his split lips as he surveyed the selection at hand. “Very nice; I don’t understand how such a grotesque man can keep the company of such beautiful women.” He pointed across Nils’ partially liquified face as he chuckled. “But it is no matter; go now.”

Nils took a step away before turning back, “And the discussed payment?” he asked.

“The discussed payment has changed,” Rogdnor said as he took a handful of rear end from Aranya, one of Nils’ most beautiful courtesans. “The new payment is that I won't cut your melted balls off and we’ll return these sluts in mostly working order! Now go, run off to your bordello before the offer changes again.”

Nils diverted his gaze to the floor. “Very well, my lord.”

***

Once the greathall doors were upon his back, Nils knew to show himself out. The guards were busy now and the path to the exit simple enough. Yet when he reached the main foyer, Nils continued to walk and then sprint past the exit and deeper into the fortress.

This was once his castle, and tonight he’d reclaim it.

Everything was just as he had remembered. Kitchen, armory, bloodletting chamber, the droplets of a forgotten life dewed upon Nils’ mind with each passing room. He entered the apothecary and stared into the reflecting glass over the washing basin, momentarily allowing himself to become Kurt again. His face was pocked and boiled so severely that his skin hung over over his shoulders like royal drapes.

After Leopold’s army launched itself against the battlements, Kurt’s men fought valiantly to ebb the ogretide. Still, they were outnumbered and he was outdone. Yet Kurt Vingwinter was a pragmatic if cowardly king, and instead of facing the afterworld honorably at the end of an axe or spear, he drowned his face in the stomach acid of a bogbeast, loaded his horse with as much gold as she could carry, and rode off, never to be heard of again until tonight.

He found the library moments later. In the years following his disfigurement, Nils could only find comfort in the tightness of a woman or the pages of a book. He satisfied his need for the first by building the biggest whorehouse in all of Ochtlender and using his gold to recruit enough women to gently caress the entire city. However, it was in Nils’ second comfort that he discovered his salvation.

It was in a shadowy market stall that he met the man with sickly lavender skin, the man who claimed to know his true identity, the man who promised to help.

“At what price?” Nils asked.

“We’ll discuss that after you’ve returned to power, my liege.”

A simple nod, and Nils’ was given a weathered, dusty tome: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Words and Phrases of the Ancient Ones.

When he glanced up to question the lavender-man, the stall had vanished.

Nils studied the book daily until the words were his, but he hadn’t realized its purpose until this moment.

The book of dark incantations. Nils remembered the legends of powerful necromancers, but he had assumed it all a folly.

Nils sat on the floor in the dusty room, whipping through the pages. He understood it all! The words scribed within this book had all the power to restore his throne. The lavender-man was honest.

Nils stopped on a page: Invoking the Succubi

***

By the time Nils returned to the greathall, the slaughter was over. Aranya waited for him outside the open doors, standing in enough blood to pool halfway up her hooves. Inside, the demonesses made aimless love to each other upon the corpses of the soldiers.

“For you, my master.” Aranya said, her forked tongue dashing in and out of her green lips, as she handed Nils the Sentinel’s Mail with her clawed fingers.

Nils was going to thank her, but a heavyfisted banging at the castle entrance interrupted his thoughts.

“Gather your army from the blood-orgy,” Nils commanded. “We’ve got a king to track down.”

But first Nils had to answer the door. He knew that the lavender-man was knocking.

Mercedes
Mar 7, 2006

"So you Jesus?"

"And you black?"

"Nigga prove it!"

And so Black Jesus turned water into a bucket of chicken. And He saw that it was good.




Mr.48 posted:

Hmm, in that case I have two further questions:

Is the 1500 word count target a maximum limit, or a minimum length?
Can I still join even though you already signed up 1 more person than your 4-person goal?

Bonus stupid third question:
If my story ends up quite short due to a lack of time, will that be considered ban-worthy?

For some reason, I didn't see your post.

1500 is max limit. Under no circumstances, should you ever, EVER go over it. I'll make an exception just for you because you're a newbie. Just say you're in, and you're in. Also know, this bears repeating, you will be toxxed to finish. The only way you'll be banned is if you don't submit. Now if you submit a 100 word story, you won't get banned, but I will be pretty upset in your general direction for your lack of effort.

Capntastic
Jan 13, 2005

A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

I haven't read these in like a year but I'm in for the next prompt.

Someone tell me the funniest thing I missed.

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh

Capntastic posted:

I haven't read these in like a year but I'm in for the next prompt.

Someone tell me the funniest thing I missed.

Sesame Street erotica.

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010

Capntastic posted:

I haven't read these in like a year but I'm in for the next prompt.

Someone tell me the funniest thing I missed.
Crochet death masks.

Capntastic
Jan 13, 2005

A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

Post links you ingrates.

Mr.48
May 1, 2007

Mercedes posted:

For some reason, I didn't see your post.

1500 is max limit. Under no circumstances, should you ever, EVER go over it. I'll make an exception just for you because you're a newbie. Just say you're in, and you're in. Also know, this bears repeating, you will be toxxed to finish. The only way you'll be banned is if you don't submit. Now if you submit a 100 word story, you won't get banned, but I will be pretty upset in your general direction for your lack of effort.

Alright then, IM IN!

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Mercedes posted:

For some reason, I didn't see your post.

1500 is max limit. Under no circumstances, should you ever, EVER go over it. I'll make an exception just for you because you're a newbie. Just say you're in, and you're in. Also know, this bears repeating, you will be toxxed to finish. The only way you'll be banned is if you don't submit. Now if you submit a 100 word story, you won't get banned, but I will be pretty upset in your general direction for your lack of effort.

And here I whittled it down a little to save my skin.

Necrosphinx
Coffee Disintegrates the Night

Hecate the Sphinx could smell the mages even when they blinded him with magic. The stink guided his wrist blades. And when he started inhaling blood with every breath, his sight returned. Bloodstained corpses of the twisted magii signified the end of his quest. He could finally let tiredness into his enormous, six limbed body.

The quest had been as long and arduous as any trek through the un-lands of Endless Gorges would be. Slicing through shadowy shapes of void vampires and crushing Maggots of Gor-Kosh to break their maddening subliminal silence, he was a rampage of crimson as he tore realm – and it took its toll. His hands were already trembling when he killed a necromancer and defiled the dark corpses of his flock to feed the agitated hunger of cat-young that made up the Grandiloquent Infinity.
He was wounded, too. As he exited the charnel house that used to be the mage nexus, the sphinx could still feel the embers of Deep Leliath, the Xenophobic Queen of Gorges, burning in his flesh. She screamed at Hecate, even though ‘twas her own rule that bade him to lie with, and it almost ripped his mind apart. Still, he endured. Her fire of lust, fury and hatred tormented him still, and it’s all because of Prince Haubolt.

The sphinx slumped outside, crushing a wayward guardsman. The hall had been erected on a hill, and Hecate could see over the walls. There, on the Plains of Ancient Kings, were the armies of his Lord, and the Lord of his Lord, and many others. A morass of tents, warriors, and oily fires stretching for miles. All that power yearning for entry to the Yellow Cities of Ghish.

Entry that Hecate’s unrelenting rampage had just granted them. In the depth of his black heart (for all sphinx hearts were of blackest obsidian), he felt proud… and for the first time of his life, relieved. He destroyed the magical protections of the city. The quest was over. Now came the time for the night of the armies. From the mountains of Perfidious peaks to the Edge of Splendor, where desert was slowly disintegrating forest, soldiers moved. They carried the torch now.

Hecate was weary and exhausted, but every kill he made in the city would hasten the death of Prince Haubolt – or whatever he was now. Vain as he used to be, the Prince could not bear to live ugly – after a mace to the jaw made him so – thus he stole the Livery of Pains from Marmarak, the unparalleled citadel of dwarves.

That’s why there were two shadows of Hecate’s slumping shoulders. The last rays of the setting sun provided one. Another came from the thing floating above the castle. You do not try to summon the Unbound by bumbling with a jaw crudely set from shattered bone. And you don’t insert your own name into the spell “to give it more power”.

drat princeling – or whatever remained of him, as the thing seemed to mystify any angel or reaper that his Lord cared to summon and question. What was certain is that he was possessed by a hunger that burns, a hunger for mystical power, and dreams of this apocalyptic parasite were… upsetting the Lords.

Hecate absentmindedly sliced a guardsman in half and focused his eyes on lumbering titan in the Plains. Though the evening coloured everything yellow and orange, the shape was unmistakable. Surrounded by an army marched his Lord, the Xanthic Leviathan of Battles. The sight was inspiring – enough to restore a healthy gait to his muscular crimson legs.

It was fortuitous, for Hecate had stumbled upon the Temple of Carmine Stalker. Crimson and obscene, it stood there, the screaming of goats carrying insufferable commandments of the pagan shrine. Carmine Stalker… his pestilence of slavering spawn would enthral the glorious altars of the Leviathan, interrupting his blood-red insanity of battle. A grave insult to Hecate’s Lord!

Lo and behold, a corpulent acolyte of parasites emerged from the profane edifice. A bloated form wracked by the miasma of creation and the leprosy of spawn cells. Even as he turned his last remaining eye on Hecate, he involuntarily vomited or shat out a mewling spawn.

Tired and worn to the core, Hecate still charged him, with his blades a deadly bulwark. The acolyte spasmed and started retching demons: glistening wet humanoids with heavy breasts and endowed as horses. Hecate remained focused, driving his blades deep into the undulating mass of the acolyte. Demons were already feasting on their trampled brethren – fuel for their hyperactive propagation. Eating, breeding, birthing, then running after the sphinx.
Straining his strength, Hecate managed to push the acolyte back into the temple, blades hilt deep in his writhing flesh. Yet the creature would not die – even as they fell into a ritualistic spawning pit. The abomination laughed between gouts of demonic puking.
“You! Murder me! In my masters house! The impudence!”

Yet Hecate’s murderous mind had a plan. It was likely to sap what was left of his strength… but Leviathan’s will be done.

More than any other sphinx, Hecate was a master of slicing flesh and bone. And as the horde of the newly spawned was bearing on him, the sphinx turned into a veritable whirlpool of blades. Unmaking the carnal demons by the dozen, he was flooding the temple with blood. Most importantly, it collected in the spawning pit. Hecate’s bloodshed was drowning the acolyte and the mad bulging eye was the last part to disappear in the rising pool of gore.

The sphinx lurched out into the night, the temple on fire from overturned braziers. Hecate felt spent, body and soul. Yet he still moved, leaving bloody foot prints behind… before he collapsed.

Flowers? A flower stall in a Yellow City? How could that be…

Hecate dreamed of ziggurats back home and temple maidens dancing around the fires in the night. It felt good.

It felt hot in his mouth. The sphinx opened his eyes to see – to see a whore squatting over his chest, pouring something into his mouth.

“What… What is this?”

“Coffee,” the answer came. The massive frame of King of Whores loomed into view. “It will do you good. Drink, so you can join your lord in the feast. I think you should be able to move by the time we slay the prince”.

Coffee felt good. It warmed his insides and drove back the darkness. Another whore came, with another pot to pour in his cavernous mouth. Her ethereal manacles jangled softly – Leviathan had enslaved the King long ago, and the whores were enslaved in turn. Some of them were marching captured Yellow city defenders past the stall. Their shackles were much brighter – shuffling slowly, they were a lethargic army of souls of burning torture.

As the last ranks cleared the view, Hecate gently lifted a whore down from his chest and got back up. He hadn’t gotten far in his stumbling – he could see the blue flames still licking the red ruins of Stalker’s temple, the last brimstone of the tombs of the blistering procreation.

From his position Hecate witnessed Leviathan rearing up, rising high and spewing fire-bile. His Lord’s venomous bitter dragonflame engulfed the prince-thing, extinguishing the light.

The Yellow Cities had fallen.







1219 words, 0 regrets :colbert:

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






Capntastic posted:

I haven't read these in like a year but I'm in for the next prompt.

Someone tell me the funniest thing I missed.

Welcome back.

Previously on Thunderdome:

poo poo Geyser:
"The bucket [of poo poo] erupted in his face, the lid spinning off and slicing the main artery in Mark’s neck, the contents of the bucket Pollock’ing the walls."
http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=1229&title=LYSANDER%2C+THE+MIGHTY+AXE

Baudolino's Triumphant Return:
"Jerking off whilst loving himself with a dildo at the same time was not an easy task for a newbie like him, but he managed somehow."
http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=1679&title=The+Dildo.

The Canteloupe
"I could taste the cantaloupe again, tinged with bile, and I had to squat over the toilet and fart a half dozen times before I felt settled enough to walk back out the stall."
http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=2056&title=Returning+Produce

Plus a dozen or stories about my penis, sebmojo sheriffin', a few meltdowns, the most incompetent writer/person maybe in the entire world, Chairchucker won, and fjgj.

Lily Catts
Oct 17, 2012

Show me the way to you
(Heavy Metal)
The Royal Scam
My Bloodshed Drowns Him
992 words

Princess Hyouko looked out of the window, gazing at the massive red cliffs that surrounded the palace. "It's just like Mars, Dr. Namik," she said.

Dr. Namik, her personal physician, sighed and tapped the chair in front of him. "If you are finished comparing our biggest enemy's homeworld with our empire's biggest industrial planet, then would you be ready to take your vaccine, princess?"

"Dr. Namik, the Belrian Empire is not our enemy anymore. That's why I'm here," Hyouko said.

"A mere slip of the tongue, for which I apologize."

Hyouko sighed inwardly. How long until her people start seeing that killing fellow survivors of the Human Diaspora was not the right way? She took her seat.

"It's just so different, yet similar," she said. "I can really see that the Belrians love their planet, because they built around these cliff formations instead of tearing them down. We could serve to learn from their example. Which is why the Belrian Empire is much more useful to use intact, not just to augment our military forces but to diversify our culture."

"I trust you can do it, Princess Hyouko," Dr. Namik said. "Now, this will hurt a bit."

Hyouko looked out of the window as the syringe pricked her skin. "Why do I need this, anyway? We've been inoculated for this planet's indigenous diseases already."

Dr. Namik shook his head. "I'm not too sure myself, but your brother, Prince Reki, insisted on it, since you would be dining with the Belrian royal family.

Prince Reki, who was in charge of the Belrian front. He had done enough damage, wiping out two Belrian colonies and plasmabombing an industrial planet from orbit. Hyouko hoped there would be no talk of that during dinner.

There was a knock on the door. It was Gultara, her Belrian liaison, escorted by a member of the royal guard. "Princess Hyouko, your presence is requested in the dining room," he said in clipped Jovian.

"I am ready," she said.

###

Dinner was delicious. Hyouko enjoyed the seafood, its bones liquefied to be edible, permeating the crisp white meat. Following her primer on dining etiquette, she ate the eyes last, which were chewy and gave her pleasant hallucinations of her first happy memories: riding the aerocycle with training engines removed, and sitting on her father's shoulders.

Her father, the Holy Jovian Emperor, was a giant of a man, whose presence could fill the entire court. It was by his own request that Hyouko followed the path of diplomacy. "It is infinitely more preferable to destroy an enemy by making him your friend, than to annihilate him outright," he had said.

"We thank you for accepting our invitation, Princess Hyouko," said the Belrian empress. "We hope this is a first step towards mutual understanding between our two empires."

"Indeed. I hope you will accept our terms for an alliance," Hyouko said. "Oh, and I must say the fish was delicious."

The empress smiled. "That is good to hear."

Hyouko's vision flickered and she doubled over.

###

The fish was bad. Something must have gone wrong, terribly wrong. Hyouko glimpsed her older siblings on the table, all of whom were laughing at her.

"How could you faint at the sight of blood?"

"You're useless, sister."

"Maybe you'll become a minister, like all the commoners."

"That's not true," she said. "Father encouraged me to do this! Watch me succeed where you've all failed. I'll bring the Belrian Empire into our fold!"

"Princess, what are you talking about?" Dr. Namik said, suddenly at her side and looking very agitated.

"You too, Dr. Namik?" Hyouko said, slapping her physician, who crumpled on the floor. When she drew back her hand, it was slick with blood--

Princess Hyouko screamed and launched herself at her brothers and sisters until they laughed at her no more.

###

Hyouko gasped awake. A man was lifting a defibrillator off her chest. She buttoned up her hospital gown, and hesitated. What happened to her gown? The dinner? Something had happened there. Something sick. Something her own memories hid from her.

"I repeat, Princess Hyouko has been found. We are now administering the antidote."

"What happened to me?" Hyouko asked. A man approached, holding a holoscreen of her brother, Prince Reki.

"Sister."

"You've never been this cordial with me, brother," Hyouko said. Her head throbbed faintly. "Why would you even talk to me?"

"To congratulate you," Reki said. "You were right, the dinner was a great idea to finally gather the Belrian royal family into one room. You did the rest on your own."

"I don't understand, Reki. Where's the palace?"

"You're sitting on where it used to be. I dispatched a medical team to revive and debrief you. There are no other survivors."

"What about the royal family?"

Reki smiled. "No survivors. Thanks to you, it's only a matter of time until we capture the rest of Belria."

Hyouko shook her head. Why couldn't she remember? "You made me kill them?"

"A task you performed willingly, given the right amount of suggestion. Now you've earned your place among your siblings."

The second man prepared a syringe.

"I didn't want this," Hyouko said, hugging her shoulders. "I went here to broker peace, not... this. Father wouldn't have approved."

"He would, after seeing the results," Reki said. "Or do you want to relinquish all the credit to me?"

Hyouko said nothing. What did she have to live for? Her diplomatic mission, sabotaged. Perverted from its original purpose.

"This won't hurt a bit," the man said.

"But it did," Hyouko said, swinging her arm. The headless body teetered, and fell on the ash-covered ground. She felt nothing from the sight of blood. Nothing.

Her hands reached for the second man. A scream later, she picked up her brother's holo, the blood on her hands staining Reki's features.

"I'm coming for you. All of you," she said, feeling certain for the first time in her life.

Benny the Snake
Apr 11, 2012

GUM CHEWING INTENSIFIES
Separation (794 words)

"The Screaming of the Goat"

"...experts have now officially deemed this unseasonably warm weather as permanent climate change.  Reservoir levels have reached critical, and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta has been almost completely drained as-”

Farmer Liam Thomas shut his TV off and threw the remote away from himself before covering his face in despair. Central California used to be known as as the most fertile area in the world and now it was nothing more than another dust bowl waiting to happen. The pastures were now bone dry and his flock of sheep was reduced to only a handful.  

"Dad?"

He turned around.  "Yeah, stringbean?"  

"You're doing it again."  

Liam smiled at his daughter Molly.  He hated to see his little princess scared.  "Everything's going to be okay, Molly."

"But Dad," she said fearfully, "the pastor said that these are all signs, that something big is happening."  

Liam motioned for her to sit next to him.  "Molly, did I ever tell you why I stopped going to church?"  

She shook her head and sat down next to him.  "I got tired of somebody scaring me into becoming the good person I already am, that’s why.”    

"But Dad-"

"Let me worry about my own salvation," he said and patted her on the head. "Why don't you go feed that damned goat of yours?"  

Molly gave him a look.  "Dad, his name's Billy."  

He shrugged.  "He's not my goat."  

****

"Hi Billy," Molly said as she went to the corner of their small field where Billy was penned.  

"Nyeehhh," Billy baaed.  

Molly smiled and went inside to feed him.  Billy voraciously fed into the bucket full of feed as she patted him on the head, starting from his pointy horns and down to his forehead.  “Billy,” Molly said and paused for a moment.  “Do you think I worry too much about Dad?”  

Billy looked into her eyes.  Some people said that the square-shaped eyes of a goat looked demonic, but Molly always thought they looked adorable ever since she started raising him when he was just a kid.  The goat snuggled up against her and baaed again.  "Neeeehh."   

Molly smiled.  "You always know the right thing to say.”

***

Liam and Molly woke up in in the middle of the evening--someone was screaming at the top of their lungs.  Turning on the floodlights, Liam burst out of his house only to find that it was Billy.  Hearing a goat scream is quite possibly the most uncanny thing you could ever hear--you just don't expect something that walks on four legs and eats cans to scream like a human does.  "Shut the gently caress up!" Liam shouted at the screaming goat.  

"Billy!" Molly cried out as she ran towards her goat.  "Billy, calm down," she said and tried comforting him.  Instead he bucked and almost gored her with his horns.  Liam slammed the heel of his boot on Billy.  "Dad!" Molly shouted.  

"He almost gored you!"  

"He doesn't know any better!"  

"The hell he doesn't!" Liam shouted and kicked him again but Billy kept screaming in horror.  

***

Billy's nightly screaming continued for about a week, always at random times, never for any discernible logic.  One night, his screaming was joined by the screaming of others.  When Liam and Mary got out to investigate, they were greeted by a gruesome sight.  Billy had forced himself out of his pen.  He was surrounded by the corpses of the farm's miniscule flock of sheep.  All of them had multiple puncture marks in their bodies, their red blood in macabre contrast with their pure white wool.  And there Billy was, his horns and face covered in blood and gristle, his eyes mad with blood lust.  Molly covered her mouth to stifle her terrified scream.  Liam didn't say a word--he was too livid for words.  His face flush with rage and his breathing shallow, he walked back in to retrieve his shotgun.  

"Dad, don't!" Molly pleaded with him.  

"Don't look," he said and kept moving.  

"He didn't know any better!  He's just a-"

Liam pushed his daughter aside and advanced on Billy.  Grabbing the goat by the neck, he tied him against his pen as hard as he could.  Ignoring the tears on his daughter's face and her pleadings, Liam loaded the single shell into his over-under gun and aimed at the damned goat.    

Before he could pull the trigger, a loud trumpet sounded.  The sky was alight as fire rained down like hail from the heavens. Billy's screaming grew louder and louder.  Liam let his gun fall to the ground and fell to his knees.  Molly did likewise and stared at the sky.  For the first time in her life, she was truly terrified.  Not for herself, she knew she was saved.  

She couldn't speak for her father, though.  

Martello
Apr 29, 2012

by XyloJW

Benny the Snake posted:

Farmer Liam Thomas

you gotta be loving kidding me

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Capntastic posted:

Post links you ingrates.

Crocheted deathmasks

THE DRONE OF THE TOWER

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Jan 18, 2015

Maugrim
Feb 16, 2011

I eat your face
:siren: Less than four hours until the deadline! :siren:

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Agitated hunger of the kittens of grandiloquent infinity

The places you walk (950 words)

Daylight sent all but one of the rats scattering into the crevices of her cesspit dungeon. Crow leaned forward pulling the shackles taught until she was looking the creature dead in the eyes.

“Is Horace ready?” she said without speaking.

“Man. Forest. Horses.” The rat’s whiskers twitched.

She licked her canines. This rat was duller than most. She beckoned it closer, until its whiskers were touching her face. With one quick snap she had the rat in her mouth. She threw her head back and let the blood drip down her throat.

###

Horace sharpened his blade then strung and restrung his bow. Time creeped slowly here outside the city’s walls, in the shadow of the Majjistrum’s tower. Worries tarnished his thoughts like rust. There was a sense of dread, a terrible energy outside the city. He stared at the towering stone walls as the sun slid down over the horizon, wondering why she’d asked him to wait opposite the city gates.

###

Darkness enveloped the dungeon and a fierce energy pulsed through her veins. Vengeance. She heard men nearing the door they’d sealed shut so many moons ago.

“All this trouble to fish a corpse out of a cesspit, eh? Old man’s mad,” someone said, before an axe shattered the door. She feigned weakness and went limp in the shackles. The nightsoil farmers stepped aside, letting the prison guards through.

“If she ain’t dead yet, she will be soon,” one said unlocking the shackles. They half dragged, half carried her out of the dungeon.

They kicked her to her knees in front of the Majjistrum’s desk. She’d have felt fear before, fear and shame at her nakedness; instead she was calm and cold like the depths of a well. He rose and ambled towards her, holding a mirror to her face, smiling. She turned away from her reflection, knowing that’s what he wanted. She knew what she’d thrown away, how the skin hung off her bones now and her eyes were sunken and jaundiced.

“And to think…” he started, but trailed off. She’d have spat at him, before. Told him he’s hornier than a satyr and twice as ugly, but she waited. He beckoned for her to stand. She lifted herself slowly, steadying herself on his oaken desk.

“Now, my prodigal child, do you understand your crimes?”

She nodded.

“You’ve stolen from the Majji. Upon you we’ve imparted the greatest gifts – years of schooling, upbringing, the finest amenities we could provide.” He gestured wildly as he spoke, his purple cape shimmering in candlelight. “And yet…and yet, you’ve chosen to steal. What’s worse, you’ve chosen to eschew the morality we’ve attempted to instil! Quite a ruse, yes, quite a ruse! Usually we find the dangerous ones early, when they’re still young…”

“But what’s this?” he ran his hand along a set of rough stitches in her side, near her breast. “Those barbarians are butchers! They call this medicine?” He spat. “Serves you right!”

He turned, cape fluttering, and sat down at his desk, satisfied with his speech. He closed his eyes momentarily. With inhuman grace she tore the stitches open and whipped out the machination she’d carried under her skin. Her bony fingers clutched the blood-tarnished gold, finding all the right grooves.

Click.

A roar like thunder filled the Majjistrum’s office, his skull shattered by a sharpened steel point propelled by the barbarian’s black powder. She drank from the spurting vessels before collecting the larger pieces of skull. Wrapping his cape around her body she threw herself from the window, hitting the battlements with a crack of bone but feeling no pain.

###

Horace went pale, barely able to control the horses when the ghoul came crashing through the forest canopy. Black bile seeped from a deep wound in her side, her eyes flashed with an eerie energy. Bones cracked and snapped as she threw her battered body atop the saddle, the horse calmed. Its breath became shallow and rattling. Horace crossed himself.

“Ride!” the ghoul hissed.

###

The altar was set up just as she’d demanded. Kittens, freshly weaned, hung by their hind legs at each point of a pentacle. They mewled hungrily as she entered the sanctum. At the pentacle’s center lay the tome with its binding of human skin. She kneeled and grabbed the book. It radiated a warmth that she hadn’t felt in a long time. She pressed her palm flat against it and swore she felt a heartbeat.

Memories flooded back, her dying heart quickened its cadence. The taste of her lover’s breath and the unions they ought to have never formed, what was his name? The smell of those ancient books in the library she ought to have never found. The words that held such might that she was able to ply the Majjistrum’s mind, that first rush of power she’d felt. The escape, the mad dash through the forest and the fears she’d carried with her. Those nights spent contemplating death after the barbarians had found her, how they’d thrown dice for her. How with a flick of her fingers the dice did her bidding, how she poisoned the Headman’s body with arsenic and his mind with her words. He’d given up four men to the Majjistrum’s guards just so she could rot in a cesspit.

None of that mattered now. She lay the book down and opened it to the familiar spot. She rose, clutching a sharpened piece of the Majjistrum’s skull. She slit the kitten’s throats, one by one, and let the blood drip onto the pentacle points. She lay down and slit her wrists. The life seeped out of her body and the transformation was complete.

leekster
Jun 20, 2013
Night of the Armies

Black Sea - 603 words

Red limbs lurched from the stillness of the incandescent green night. Hulking figures with weapons held to their chest. Those who were hidden could be spotted by the steam of their breath floating from whatever piece of cover they were behind. Private Kryda adjusted his goggles to try and see if he could spot anyone else hiding in the treeline.

“There’s about a squad of men up there sir. Nothing heavier than a PKM.” Kryda reported.

“They’re hiding something up there soldier, that ridge looks over the rest of the valley. You can be assured they’ve got some ATGM or BMP waiting up there for us.” First Lieutenant Savage said and looked past his computer terminal to assure Kryda.

“When does the war start sir?” Kryda brought the rangefinder to his eyes again. The shapes were still huddled against their pieces of cover, occasionally one would reach a hand to their head and the steam would pour out of their mouth quicker. They know we’re here.

“Sir they know we’re here,” Kryda said this with a nervous glance back.

“Of course they do. You can see them right?” Savage said.

“Yes I can,” Kryda was immediately aware of how vulnerable they were. Eleven other men were cramped into the trench around him. Each contorted in a way that made them believe they’d be the last one the enemy would see to shoot. There was the hum of a Bradley in the distance but that was for the cavalry. The grunts were expected to hustle up the hill after the initial mortar barage.

A bright light streaked across the night. Kryda tore his goggles off in pain. His left eye burned with a deep purple when he tried to open it again. Around him there was no motion as everyone watched the missile move, not threatening to move because they all held the selfish belief that there was no way they could be possibly be hit. Overhead it went and the explosion came seconds later.

“To cover! LMG set up to engage the targets on the ridge. I’ll get the mortars here ASAP!” Savage barked and threw himself behind a rock. He raised the radio to his head and tried desperately to clear the radio net.

Kryda grabbed his gun and hurled into the trench. Green and red fireflies screamed across the sky. The light machine gun began to fire. The forest that the enemy had been hiding in started to chip and fall away. The barrel went red with desperation as they sprayed wildly towards the enemy.

Screams came from the sky. Thunder came crashing down on top of the ridge. Fire and splinters rained down on where the enemy was.

“Forwards! Let’s go! Take the ridge!” Savage screamed as he grabbed his M16A4.

Kryda’s feet were heavy as he ran through the open. The rest of the war opened before him. To the left a company of Abrams burped at the BTRs hiding in the forest. To the right a Littlebird looked desperately for somewhere to land. Its tail spun faster with each rotation.

In front of him though was an opening. The mortars and machine guns had cleared the forest better than any logging company could. The jagged path up the hill.

A shadow moved towards the top of the hill. A maroon figure that stepped closer towards the flames. It was illuminated by the AK firing in its hands. A scream came from behind him but it was quickly subdued by the mass of rifle fire that came forwards.

Training brought him the rest of the way up the ridge.

Auraboks
Mar 24, 2013

...huh?
Embers of the Xenocidal Queen (861 words)

Axe Violence was not a man prone to conversation or deep thought; he was a man prone to his namesake. He found great joy in his work as Chief Oppressor for Queen Ultradeath of the Murder-Kingdom of Skulls. He'd held the office (and its badge of office, an absurdly large battleaxe) for ten years, and could proudly say that not a day had gone by where he hadn't killed someone.

Thus, he expected accolades when he was called to the throne room. Maybe even a promotion, though he wasn't sure there was any actual hierarchy beyond Queen, Oppressors, and Oppressed Masses. Instead, the Queen greeted him with a very serious look.

"I think you should sit down," she said. So Axe took a collapsible bone chair from the screaming flesh-closet, and sat down.

"What is your wish, oh Magnificent Murderess?" he asked.

"We - that's the royal 'we' - are no longer pleased with your work. It is our wish that you go into early retirement."

Had anyone else mentioned retirement, Axe would have reflexively decapitated them. But this was the Queen; he could not direct his rage at her. Her sorcery would burn him to ashes before he could take a single step. All he could do was stare, mouth agape. "But... why?"

"I have spoken. You may leave."

"You think I'm going to take this sitting down?" Axe asked, and promptly stood up once he remebered that he was, in fact, sitting down. "I'm still the best, and I'll prove it to you! Mark my words, you'll admit you were wrong!"

"Feel free to try. I doubt you shall succeed."

---

And so Axe went out into the world, seeking to prove himself by killing the poo poo out of something suitably impressive. One day, he came upon a beautiful forest, lush with the bounty of nature. There he found a gathering of elven druids, and seeing that they were alive, he set about correcting the situation. He killed a hundred elves, and threaded their ears upon a string of sinew to make a necklace.

Knowing this gift would please his queen, he returned home and presented it to her. Yet she answered him with scorn:

"Elves? They are weak and soft! Killing even a thousand would be nothing impressive!"

With a heavy heart, Axe left to seek redemption once more. He went beneath the mountains, to the fabled underground cities of the dwarves, and there challenged five hundred of their greatest warriors all at once. Having slain them, he wove their beards into a blanket. None could deny his prowess now, for the dwarven warriors were renowned throughout the world for their strength in battle. Triumphant, he returned to his queen.

"Dwarves? You should have killed them all years ago," she said. "You are not redeemed by completing old tasks"

But Axe did not give up; he went out into the world once more. He brought back a dragonscale doormat, manticore-thorn toothpicks and sweater knit from living fire. Each time he was rejected, and each time his resolve only grew.

After a year, Queen Ultradeath was growing tired of her servant's attempts to regain her favor. Axe had returned yet again, carrying a tea set carved from the skulls of fairies. Expecting disapproval, he nevertheless stood tall under her gaze. But when she spoke, it was with exasperation.

"Look, the truth is I think you're a great murderer," she said. "Any tyrant would be lucky to have you on their staff. But you have got to stop with this arts and crafts poo poo!"

Axe was dumbfounded. "What do you mean, oh Horrible One? Do you not wish to drink from the skulls of your enemies?"

Ultradeath sighed. "No, that's fine. That's classy. I think you were on to something with the ear-necklace, too. Very intimidating."

It was the first compliment Axe had received in years. His pride swelled.

"But you keep bringing this stuff!" Ultradeath said. "It's why I fired you in the first place. I have hundreds of skull-cups, enough is enough!"

Axe didn't understand. "If you have no more room for cups, why not simply tell me, oh Crusher of the Weak?"

"I did! And that's when you started making those screaming flesh-cupboards! There's one in every single room now!"

Had he really made that many? "Most Malignant One, why not dispose of the offending gifts?"

"Well, you always seemed so proud every time you brought me something. I guess I didn't want to hurt your feelings."

Queen Ultradeath was not known for her empathy. Her consideration brought a tear to Axe's eye. Wordlessly, so she would not hear the emotion in his voice, he left the throne room.

He went to every room in the castle and gathered up his crafts, leaving only a single skull-cup and ear necklace untouched. He built a great pyre in the courtyard, and on it he threw all the things he had gathered. For hours they burned, until even the bones were ash among embers. Only then did he turn from the bonfire and saw that his Queen had been watching.

Kneeling before her, he said "All I wanted was to serve. And murder. Serve by murdering."

"Rise, Chief Oppressor," said Queen Ultradeath. "You are redeemed."

And their people lived in terror ever after.

tenniseveryone
Feb 8, 2014

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Revealing Cthulhu

Word count: 982

“I'm here about the ad?”

“Anders,” the bartender nodded. “Been a while.”

The young man took a seat. “Odd being here during the week,” he glanced around at the room. “Not so busy?”

“It'll pick up, once the acts start,” the bartender turned to face him. “Which ad?”

“For the band,” Anders placed the newspaper clipping on the bar. Its corner started to soak up a puddle of warm booze. “For tonight?”

“Oh, that ad,” the bartender rolled his eyes, saw that Anders had brought a guitar case along with him. “Well, they're not on until last, and they usually don't get here until, er, after the rest of the performers.”

“That's fine,” said Anders, peeling the clipping up, shaking it, and returning it to the pocket of his leather jacket. “You mind if I watch the rest of the show?”

“I'm not sure it'll be your sort of thing,” the bartender said. “But...why not? If you don't mind waiting. I'm sure it will be worth it.”

Anders spent an hour or so on his stool, alone, as the bartender dealt with the soundcheck, and indeed the room did start to fill up. Helvete was a dive bar, and that's why he liked it. Every surface was painted black, including the wooden boards of the small stage at the back wall, with black curtains drawn across it. Your feet stuck to the ground if you spent too long in one spot. There was no natural light. It was like a bunker, or a tomb.

Anders flipped through his empty pocket diary, nibbled at the flaking black paint on his nails, and drank two vodka gimlets. He had been prepared to defend his drink of choice but found the week day clientèle far less combative than his usual crowd. He was disappointed, but also intrigued.

They didn't act like the usual, and didn't look the same, either. The long black hair and gaunt, pale expressions were familiar, but mostly they wore fairly simple hooded cloaks, free of stitched-on pentagrams and splotches of face paint. Most seemed to be a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type. Yet they were surprisingly affable: he spent the first hour alone but, as the show was gearing up, people began talking to him, catching up like they were old friends.

“I'm going to be playing in the band after,” he told one of them, patting his guitar case.

“Oh really?” she replied, cocking her head to the side. “I didn't know that was on the schedule.”

He necked another vodka gimlet, anxious he'd read the clipping wrong. He took it back out of his coat pocket, the words smudged by the spilt beer, but the epic image of the squid monster in chains which had caught his eye still visible. It was a style of illustration unlike any he'd seen before – modern, but far from modern in atmosphere and suggestion, with that cryptic regularity which lurks in prehistoric drawings.

The woman returned and he shoved the crumpled clipping back into his pocket. Now this group had assimilated him, he didn't want to be caught acting like an outsider. She squeezed his arm.

“It's starting!” she beamed.

What few pieces of strip lighting were still buzzing along the bar's low ceiling cut out. A hush settled down amongst the crowd at the same time. A single chord rung out over the sea of heads, and Anders's first thought was that he'd come too late and the band had filled their position.

The curtains came up and a single spotlight shone on the band, positioned in the back corner of the stage. None of them looked familiar to Anders, but all of them seemed to be around the same age as him, and from their make up and the music they were playing, they definitely should have crossed paths at some point. Whilst he remained perched on his stool the young woman ran off to join in with the braying, bellowing, and writhing of the crowd.

He enjoyed the music, for what it was worth. Loud, discordant, the singer shredding his vocal chords with each new song. The sound befitted a much larger space, a cave, a canyon, a mountaintop, than the tiny room it was being confined to. It seemed like it could burst out at any second, the roof unable to contain the pressure.

Part of the way through their third song, the second spotlight fired up, placed in an empty space on the other side of the stage. What happened next Anders would have trouble describing to anyone who asked: the cab driver who found him huddled, shivering, in a doorway four miles from the bar; the police officer who took him in for questioning; the psychiatrists who tried to make sense of what happened to him.

Anders had seen burlesque shows before. But not like this. Whatever it was that came on stage in the fishnet stockings and the black leather bustier was not a woman. It wasn't even human. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings, which it revealed as it slowly peeled off its meagre clothing. But it was the general outline of the whole, the curves, the wet squelch as it undid each tie on the bustier, which made it most shockingly frightful.

The feeling had crept along Anders's spine throughout the performance, a fear that felt more primal than any horror film, any late night church burning, any book, had ever placed in him. It was primordial. It was worse than even the anxiety at the prospect of an audition before the evning was out. It was bigger than that, bigger than anything Anders Vikernes had ever before comprehended.

In that bar, that night, his mind was cleaved in two by a stripping elder god. Durbgûl's rigorous audition process had claimed yet another.

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh
Serpenteen
1000 words

“So this is where it all started,” Vas said, looking around at what was left of the Garden. “What a loving shithole.”

“Have some respect,” he heard his grandpa say through his smartphone. “It’s where it all ended.

Vas rubbed his temples, grazing his fingertips against the bulges where horns would soon punch through. “The hell am I supposed to do with this place?”

“It’s a family inheritance. This is our domain now—why is your ear on the phone?”

“My ear? What—“ Vas took the phone away from his face. “Grandpa, how did you get on FaceTime?”

“Is that what this is?” Vas could see his grandpa’s pale, befuddled face through the screen, curled horns drooping like dirty candy-canes. “How do I get out of it?”

“Here’s how.” Vas hung up, spat. There was one good thing you could say about Eden—you got good reception here. Someone was listening, even if it wasn’t God.

Vas was a master of illusion, as all his relatives were, but it wasn’t worth mustering up enough smoke-and-mirrors to make this place look better. Underneath every trick of the light, the glistening clear pools were still choked with sand and mud, the leafy green vines still crunched under his feet like the dry, choking weeds that they were, and the sleeping doe with its eyelids fluttering was still a mass of bleached bones, a tiny tumbleweed wedged into its bare ribcage. gently caress sakes, Vas thought to himself. The Americans are always talking about turning this place into a parking lot, maybe they could start here—

He stopped, turned to his left. A deep red speck flashed in his eye, too bright for this washed-out world.

Vas pushed through the underbrush to get closer. When he saw what it was, his eyes flashed with a deep fire, something that ran from the roots of his bloodline and up through the tips of his toes.

Time to continue the family business, he thought.



“Did you slip something in my drink, you scumbag?” said Tania, pushing her black bangs away from her forehead, her eyes shut. “My brother owns this club, and he’ll put you in the trunk of a—“

“Open your eyes,” she heard the young man say.

She opened her eyes, and took a step back as all the breath rushed out of her lungs. A minute ago, she’d been staring into the backstage hallway, littered with dustbunnies and spent packs of Parliaments. But now—

It all entered her mind at once and left her unable to speak, from the rabbits leaping over the back of a sleeping lioness to the patches of vivid wildflowers to the wind that whistled like a child at play. The pool next to her reflected a younger face, sunlight trickling down her cheeks and lips like syrupy rain. She stumbled forward and Vas caught her, looked deep into her eyes.

She whispered, “Where am I?”

He whispered back, “Where you need to be.”

She believed him. He looked at her like his eyes could never lie.

“I have something to show you,” he said to her. He turned her around, and she saw.

The bright apple hung against the clear sky like a hot-air balloon, radiating something she could feel, could almost taste. Without thinking, she reached for it.



Vas leered at Tania as she plucked the apple from the tree and sank her teeth into it. Only a few seconds, and then she would be corrupted in his favor, the long-dormant evil making its way through her veins as she knew everything there was to know about the darknesses of Earth.

Only a few more seconds.

Okay, maybe a few more.

Vas looked down at his watch. “Tania?” he called.

She turned around to face him, and he could tell that something was wrong—the dazed look was gone. “Are you alright?” he asked.

She gave him a sideways glance. “Am I supposed to not be alright?” said Tania.

“N-no, forget it—“

“So you did slip me something, you rear end in a top hat—“ Tania gripped the apple in her right hand as she stomped over to Vas, spittle flying out of her mouth. “I felt bad for you, you lost little twink—“

Vas’s careful façade cracked. The grass around him began to wither. “Excuse me?” he said, as something acrid rumbled within him.

“Twink. Twink.” Tania repeated the word, grinning in his face. “Trying to mosh with fettucine arms and your daddy’s Doc Martens. I figured you out.”

The apple had worked, Vas realized with a spurt of fury—worked way too well. “Don’t you dare—

“You have the body of a seventeen-year-old, and you like Kip Winger,” said Tania, rolling chunks of apple around in her mouth. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist.”

That did it.

Vas opened his mouth, and Satan’s song came out of it.



Eden looked more like a beach than a parking lot now, but he could still see the topmost branches of the tree, poking out of the rippling dunes of sand. It pissed him off that there would be any memory of this place.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another flash of crimson. He walked over to it, the realization making him smile.

The apple poked up from the sand, Tania’s polished black fingernails cutting ridges into its sides. Vas reached down and picked it up.

The hand came with it, then the arm, then the long black hair, the gleaming face, dust dripping from the laughing mouth. Vas jumped back as she turned to face him.

“Thanks for that,” said Nadia as she sat up, croaking laughter escaping her throat.

Vas stared at her, trembling. “How—

“Wrong tree, fucker,” said Tania. “Tree of Knowledge is over thataway.”

“But how did you know—

“I took an educated guess,” sang Tania, sand trickling down her shoulders. She held out the half-eaten apple to Vas. “Take a bite if you don’t believe me, pussy.”

PoshAlligator
Jan 9, 2012

When SEO just isn't enough.
The Hunger That Burns
990 words (994, including the title)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bMWvGOzg33f96m-_v3jgU-SnhtlITy1hbc6dCfRj8eM/edit

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






Some Artificial Raspberry Flavoring Comes From the Anal Gland of a Beaver
932 words

http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=3153&title=Some+Artificial+Raspberry+Flavoring+Comes+From+the+Anal+Gland+of+a+Beaver

crabrock fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Dec 31, 2015

newtestleper
Oct 30, 2003
Revenge of the Crimson King
999 words

The cockfights had moved to a market in Ciliwung. After leaving Laos’ border casinos Maria had resorted to the back streets of Jakarta for her gambling fix. She was a good gambler and a better cheat, but not good enough to make up for her overconfidence. There was officially no legitimate casino in the world she was allowed into.

She’d followed the Crimson King, a beautiful rooster with perfect plumage that matched it’s unbeaten winning record. The most striking things about it were it’s neck, feathered in a red as deep as the blood of it’s rivals, and its uniquely intact wattle and comb. Most of the Jakarta birds were threadbare, fleabitten things. She’d stopped betting on it, the odds were too low to turn a decent profit, but still she watched every fight.

She was ushered through a butcher’s shop past ripe, unrefrigerated cow carcasses and two Chinese guards in suits to an enclosed courtyard. A sour smell mixed unpleasantly with the metallic stink of the beef, telling her that at least one of the businesses was an illegal tofu factory. This was not a nice part of town.

She was always among the first to turn up, she liked to watch the owners tend to the birds, watch their preparations. Her studiousness afforded her a small edge so she won enough to pay her meagre living costs. She wasn’t a gambler just to barely put food on the table, though, she was watching for something in particular.

The fights started, punters waving their fists full of rupiah and american dollars. The markets moved fast, but the math came easy. The learning had been in the biology, the science of hollow bone and tough sinew that decided which bird would win and which would lose. The first match was easy to pick, with a young, strong and compact white bird outclassed by a stringy old thing with half it’s feathers missing. It was all in the reach, and the bad looks just served to increase the payout. Like any degenerate gambler the aesthetics of the fight were integral to the buzz that kept Maria coming back. The rush of the clash of talon and beak was better than a roulette wheel rattle or a strobing slot machine. It was nearly as good as the sound of a riffled stack of cash.

A few fights in she saw a couple of slick young Javanese come through the butcher’s door carrying a bamboo cage. The Crimson King was up against a bird from out of town. Maria stopped paying attention to the fight to watch them. The bird was large and black, respectable looking but nothing close to the King. She was more interested in watching the owners. The real edge in cock fights is when you can pick out the cheats, and the Crimson King was a prime target.

The King was fighting last, so Maria edged to the back to watch them get ready. Here is where the eye of a cheat really pays off, and all it took was a brief glance between the owners and she knew. The fix was on. Maria could no longer smell rancid meat and fermenting soy, just the clean, crisp scent of money.

She moved quick, making bets with all her regular bookies before selling action directly to some of the regulars. She had bet seven grand US, and half as much Rupiah, when the cages opened and the birds started circling each other.

The fix wasn’t a good one. The King had been doped too heavily, and it staggered like a drunken parody. It held it’s own for a minute or two, but when the new bird got a hold of the King’s beautiful red wattle the crowd knew what was up. Their favourite had been drugged, and they were angry. It was just seconds before the jeers progressed to violence, and someone had the King’s owner by the throat.

The fight should been stopped, without anyone to call time the King was getting savaged. Downy feathers were falling like snow and adhering to smears of blood on the floor of the ring. The king’s owner wrestled himself free and made a run for the door, only to be tackled by one of the Chinese guards.Amateurs, the cheats hadn't even paid off the owners.

The impact sent the owner through the ring fence. The bamboo cracked and splintered, and a geyser of blood erupted from his neck as it punctured. The audience, already riled, started to riot. Despite this Maria’s attention was on sad form of the once proud Crimson King, lying in the middle of the ring.

Maria thought she was imagining it, but the Crimson King twitched and then slowly jerked itself up. It was battered but gaining strength as it spun around to survey the room, fixing it’s eyes on it’s owner who writhed on the ground with an onlooker staunching the blood.

The King launched himself at the onlooker first, a flapping ball of bloody feathers and fury. He retreated, allowing the rooster to turn its attention to its immobilized owner. It quickly and methodically went at the most vulnerable parts of his face. First piercing his eye with a talon, then unleashing a flurry of pecking that left his upper lip hanging by a flap.

Maria found the gore fascinating. Between that and the surging crowd she had almost forgotten about her money sitting in the wallets of the bookies. The chances of her getting it back seemed slim, but slim wasn’t none, and she was a gambler after all. But then she looked back at the Crimson King, reveling in the blood of its enemy.

As it started on it’s owners earlobe she took the King by its legs and walked away, tearing off the remaining bit of ear held in the birds beak. Amid the chaos it was easy to slip out the door. Maybe they could make some money in Bali?

Screaming Idiot
Nov 26, 2007

JUST POSTING WHILE JERKIN' MY GHERKIN SITTIN' IN A PERKINS!

BEATS SELLING MERKINS.
Voidborn

Prompt: Void Vampires

Words: 999


The ebon ship drifted through the endless gray-black sky like a bloated corpse lost at sea. Flickers of pale green ghostlight lit its corridors, though its inhabitants had no need for even that dim illumination. Bloated slave-ghouls groaned and listlessly maintained the decaying structure, keeping it much like themselves: dead and ever-rotting, but never succumbing.

Deep within the bowels of the ship waited a pale, gaunt army. Their open mouths and empty eye-sockets gave glimpses of the infinite void within. They were the ever-living chosen of the Emperor of Emptiness, cursed to feed upon the life-stuff of their fellow man forever.

Vampires.

One of them yawned. "Oi, Basil, y'think we're gonna hit land soon? Gettin' boring waiting down here."

"Shut up, Ed." Another scowled -- Basil. "We'll arrive when we arrive, not a moment sooner."

"Silence!" One vampire in officer's regalia leveled his weapon -- a hook-scythe, horribly imposing, horribly impractical -- at the bickering soldiers. "I'll have you scrubbing pus from the ghoul-pens if you don't show some discipline!"

"Ed has a point, we should've arrived already!" said another with cracks running along his dead-gray skin.

"Ghoul navigators, man. We can't trust the rotters to hammer a nail without making GBS threads themselves and losing a hand, why the hells we let them navigate is beyond me," said one with barbed hooks embedded within his dusty flesh.

The officer slashed his scythe. "Question not the will of the Empty Emperor! If He desires ghoul labor, He shall have it!"

"loving Ghoul Union's got the Emperor by the balls," Ed muttered. Basil glared.

"I heard that! Insubordination! Two weeks cleaning the pens!" The officer's jaw opened inhumanely wide in his fury.

Ed gagged. "Aw, c'mon! Didn't mean nuffin' by it!"

"Want to make it four weeks?" The officer loomed ominously over Ed.

Ed sighed. "Nossir."

"Right then." The officer rested his weapon on his shoulder.

Ed muttered under his breath. "oval office."

"What was that?"

"Nuffin', sir." Ed tried to look innocent.

The ship rocked with a sudden impact, and the vampires were thrown to the ground in a clattering tangle of limbs, hooks, and weapons.

Ed poked his head from the writhing pile. "Bloody hells, what was that?"

A ghoul in tattered rags and a crewman's cap stumbled into the hold and let out a gurgling cry, and trundled off leaving a trail of mucus and feces in its wake.

"Ah." Basil climbed to his feet. "Landfall."

"To arms!" cried the officer, muffled by the pile of bodies on top of him. "To glory!"


***


The ensuing battle was quick and bloody. What humans not devoured by ghouls or mutilated beyond use were drained of their remaining essence and converted to new recruits for the Empty Emperor. Sated, the crew amused themselves by throwing discarded limbs and shattered weapons off the side of the floating island into the nothingness below.

"Sick of this, mate." Ed smoked a pipe he'd looted. He no longer had lungs to take in the smoke, no tongue to taste the aromatic blend, but he was content to pretend. "Every night it's the same poo poo. It feels so... so..."

"Empty?" Basil smirked as he threw another child's body from the cliff and waved as the tiny form spiraled into the endless gray. "Yeah. We're vampires. That's our deal, Ed."

"Why couldn't we have been converted by Overfiend Cthurutsukidoji instead? His men get to have a bit of fun on their raids." Ed sighed.

"They don't use weapons, Ed. Just their tentacle-dicks, and most humans have hatchets and swords. Do the math." Basil punted an old woman's head into the distance.

"I'm bored. We've only been at this for, what, ten years now? We're immortal, mate! This is all we have to look forward to, and that's only if some smartarse human doesn't get a lucky hit with a silvered blade!" Ed dropped to his backside and dangled his feet.

The officer's voice rang out. "To arms! To arms, laggards! The humans' reinforcements have arrived!"

Basil looked into the sky and gasped, pointing with a quivering arm at the silvery ships bearing down on the floating isle with worrying speed. "Ed, you bastard, you've cursed us! It's the Covenant of the Sun! The Sun-Worshipers have arrived!"

Ed grabbed his sickle and joined the fray. The vampires had unholy might behind them, but the newly arrived humans had numbers, and where they went the light followed.

"Raise your swords and ready yourselves to cleanse this rock, brothers and sisters!" The humans' leader cried as his glowing, silvery blade illuminated his nude, muscular form. "The Sun is with us!"

The horde of tanned, toned crusaders bore down upon the beleaguered vampires, holy silver blades cutting through brittle skin and the inky void-stuff that bled from their hollow wounds. Basil screamed as he was split from neck to groin, his body breaking into smoke and dust.

"What do you mean you can't fight?" The officer sputtered at one of the ghouls. "I don't care about your bloody union regulations, they're-"

The ghoul held up a hand and made an incoherent groan, then went back to his group to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes.

"A month's supply of tanning lotion to the one who slays their leader!" cried a powerful, virile specimen, golden locks flapping dramatically in the wind, muscles rippling as he raised his blade, feet clad in comfortable beach sandals.

The officer tossed down his scythe and ran to Ed, his expression deathly serious.

"Edward," the officer said in his grimmest tone. "It is my privilege to award to you the station of Officer First Class. You are now leader of this army." He saluted, and stuffed his horned greathelm bedecked onto Ed's head.

Then he ran.

Ed watched the former officer escape into the distance, and he regarded the oncoming army of nude sun-zealots with something approaching amusement. He puffed at his pipe. "And Mum said I'd never get anywhere in the world."

Grizzled Patriarch
Mar 27, 2014

These dentures won't stop me from tearing out jugulars in Thunderdome.



Body of the Host (567 words)
Its Enslavement Enslaves Them

*snip*

See Archive

Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Dec 30, 2015

DreamingofRoses
Jun 27, 2013
Nap Ghost
The Farewell (1,000 words)

God's Venomous Bitter Dragonflame
Flash Rule: a florist's shop must play a key role

”Your Holiness,” a young woman dressed in formal breeches and livery of gold and red approached the steps to God-Empress Jaya’s black iron throne. ”Master Florian has arrived.”

Jaya looked up from the glowing tablet in her hands to the woman and smiled in obvious delight, ”Let him through then, Gwyn.”

The woman bowed hurriedly and wen to relay the message to the door wardens. The doors to the long throne room opened to reveal an old man, well but simply dressed, clutching a garland of flowers in his hands.

His face was intimately familiar to her, despite his age. Ian, the florists’ son, had been one of her closest friends as a child, growing up with her in the same small city. He was the first outside of her family to learn of the godmark, a dragon which twined around her neck whose head sat just under her jaw, and the first to bend his knee to her as rightful ruler because of it. It was at his parents flower shop that she had received the first ultimatum of many: serve at the feet of so and so or die, and it was similarly at his parent’s flower shop that she had declared her intent to not give in to them, and begin to assemble the followers who would eventually grow to become her Holy Army.

He had grown older, along with her original followers. She did not, and her forces had grown again in size with the sons of sons and daughters of daughters of her original followers, although there were none from Ian, who remained in his florist’s shop at her request. His old, unbent frame slowly ascended the stairs to the black iron throne on which she sat, the familiar garland of red Dragonflame and golden God’s Breath held tightly. She stayed sitting but gestured to her guards to help him up. He waved off their interference and made it the rest of the way, pausing to catch his breath and bow.

”Empress, I have a request of you. I do not come empty-handed. I have no crown of gold metal and red gems for you, Highness, so I have brought you one I have crafted.” It was an old ritual, one that had been between them since the beginning. It had started when she was meeting him in his parent’s shop for the last time before her first campaign. He had spoken similar words then, the many-hued gathering around them nodding in the breeze at the gesture and witnessing that she had agreed to come back safely in return for the crown. It was since then oft-repeated, once before each new campaign of which there were many. They had grown from resistance to expansion and conquest.

”Thank you, Ian, it is fairer than one any smith could make, if more fragile,” she bent her head to him, allowing him to place the ‘crown’ on her head. If she touched it with her bare hands, it would wither to the cold poison of her divinity.

He did so, and then knelt at her feet, looking up into her face earnestly. ”It is my final request, Jaya.” A thundering silence filled her heart and mind for a moment. She opened her mouth to protest, and he raised his hand against it. ”It is all I ever wanted from you, and it is time for me.”

A moment half a century ago rose to mind, his hands and lips on her bare skin. Following that was the weeks of worry when he had grown deathly ill from her touch. She knew he had gotten better when he joked that if he was ever about to die anyway, his last request would be a kiss.

”Why?” Was all she could manage to say without choking up or cursing.

”Because I still love you.”

”You know that is not what I mean,” she glared at him. It was a look that had made strong men quail and kings abdicate their thrones, but he merely smiled and did not answer. ”You would leave me?”

He looked stricken at the accusation. ”Not willingly, but mortals die and it is my time.”

Relenting, Jaya stood and held out her hands, pulling him up to his feet, her icy divinity beginning to seep into his skin. He put his hands, old and calloused, against her still-young face and wiped the beginnings of tears forming at the corners of her eyes. He brought his face close to hers, ”Goddesses shouldn’t cry, Jaya.” It was a soft whisper, warm breath tickling her ear.

It took a moment to steel her will before she kissed him fully, deeply for the first and last time, and the bitter cold flowed from her in a torrent. His lips became motionless against hers, and his hands fell from her face and she could not bear to open her eyes to that beloved face empty of any spirit. She parted her lips against his and exhaled a red-orange gout of flame in a long sigh. The godmark glowed with its use, the dragon’s jaws opening visibly. The fire consumed the body in seconds, leaving his shape in ashes for precious few seconds.

His ashes scattered into her hands and at her feet at her touch. Jaya reached up to remove the garland he had placed on her head, and found the flowers withered. Carefully she placed the garland on top of the ashes, and sat bowing her head in silence, tearless.

”Empress?” Gwyn was the only one who dared approach the still, glowing figure of the God-Empress at the top of the daïs. Her guards were looking at her in concern, as were her councillors and several of the diplomats who were there for negotiations.

Her godmark burned. She was the dragon. She was God and she would not forget her people or her responsibility, not even for Florian. Jaya dusted off her hands delicately and turned back to her business.

asap-salafi
May 5, 2012

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019
Its Fire Torments It (907 words)

Prince Jai closed his eyes. He put the vial of poison to his mouth and poured the milky liquid into his mouth, swallowing it quickly before he was able to taste its vile flavour. In 15 minutes, the Empire of Landarren would no longer have a rightful heir and Emperor Javen, no sons.

Jai felt the poison instantly burning his veins and infecting his body with its rotten content. He felt tears falling down his face, mixing with the tears that he had wept earlier.

Opening his eyes, Jai was greeted with the sight of his brother’s corpse. The younger Prince had been a tall man and his giant figure, which lay on the checked floor of the dark throne room, was impossible to ignore.

The elder Prince felt a chill go through his spine as the numerous torches on the walls of the giant room flickered. Wind gusted through the open windows of the castle and filled Jai’s lungs with new found air. He could feel his body fighting the poison and gasped as blood gushed out of his mouth.

“Oh Fee-Fee. Why? Why did this happen?” He whimpered, wiping the blood from his mouth. “Oh my sweet little Fee-Fee. Why did you have to die?”

Prince Fernando had always been called Fee-Fee. From a young age, his older brother had renamed him and to this day that name had stuck. Nevertheless, Jai knew his little Fee-Fee was gone.

---

One Hour Earlier

The guard bowed his head and stood to attention as the Royal Family passed by. It had been a fun day and although the public festivities were over, everyone was still merry. They had decided earlier, due to the young Empress’ insistence, that they would continue the celebrations in the Grand Hall.

As they entered the Grand Hall, music played and the sound of drums echoed throughout the room. Prince Jai’s marriage had been attended by some of the most prestigious people in the world and the feast had been extravagant. Even now, there was more food to be eaten and more beer to be drunk. As per tradition, the new bride was waiting in the Prince’s room.

The Emperor took his seat at the front table and was joined by his family. “Where’s Fernando?” He asked. The Emperor was the only one who still referred to his son by his birth name.

“I might have an idea.” Replied the elder brother. “I will go find him”.

Leaving the hall, Jai headed straight from the throne room. Fernando had a habit of disappearing like this at important functions and every time, Jai would find him sitting on the throne room, pretending to be King. Unfortunately, the young man had never quite grown up and his selfish nature liked to show itself when he wasn't the centre of attention. Jai had anticipated this and although he was drunk, his wits were still about him.

As he entered the throne room, Jai felt a slight twinge go through neck. Something about the way Fernando was sitting on the throne seemed wrong. It wasn’t the way he normally sat, he was slumped on the chair, whereas usually you’d find him sitting him tall and proud.

Jai walked down the red carpet, looking around and shifting his black armour around nervously as he approached. “What’s wrong little brother? Sad that you’re not getting all the attention?” As he grew closer, he realised that Fernando was grinning manically.

“I may not have gotten all of the attention. But I raped your wife.”

Jai stopped in his tracks. His whole body filled with rage and he suddenly realised for a second that his little brother was a real monster, he was, as the people called him. “Fee-Fee the Monster”.

“Excuse me?” Jai asked.

“You heard me!” Fernando screamed. He was very drunk. “I loving raped your loving wife”.

Jai ran forward, grabbing his little brother by the collar. “What the gently caress are you saying to me?!” Jai punched his brother in the face and reached for his dagger.

Fernando was giggling uncontrollably. “Don’t worry about killing me big brother. I’m going to kill myself”.

Jai let go of him. “Are you joking with me?”

“No. I went in your room, stripped off her clothes and then…I raped her.” Fernando was reaching into his pocket for something.

Jai grabbed him by his collar and punched him again. “Have you lost your mind?” The tears were already falling down from his eyes. “Why?”

“Because I hate you. I hate everyone. Don’t you know?” Fee-Fee reached into his pocket and revealed what he had been reaching for. He produced two vials. “I’m going to kill myself.”

“Is that poison? Do it. You’ve lost your loving mind.” Jai demanded assertively, taking a step back from his brother. His mind wandered and turned towards his bride, sitting in her room weeping because of the ghastly family into which she had been initiated. Jai’s ghastly family.

Fernando drank the poison.

Jai ran forward, “No!”

---

Present Time

Jai looked at the torches again. The poison was hurting his insides and his mind felt like it was melting. “I’m dying…” He whispered to himself.

All of a sudden a noise came from where his little brother was lying. Jai looked up but he was blinded by the white light that came with death.

“Fee-Fee?”

Laughter. Laughter and the sound of fire crackling again as the wind blew in.

Bad Ideas Good
Oct 12, 2012
The Baker of Lagash
Word Count: 940
Visions Of Sumerian Night

Carved and hardened in clay, in stone: A story woven, a tale is told. Of Gods, of mortals, of the earth and water, this is a chapter of a time that was, this is the story of The Baker of Lagash.

In the markets of Lagash, there stood a small bakery, run carefully by the widow Ianna. Alone, she works the dough, alone she works the oven, and alone she works the store, quiet, with only her thoughts and memories.

In the morning, she walks to the well to fetch the water, and recalls her husband, Enkio. Strong, and the most handsome man she would ever meet, he was idealistic and kind. The day he asked to marry her, she wept, and thanked the Gods for their kindness. She offered to them in her sacrifice what little wealth she had, hoping that would show how thankful she was.

It was not long before they bore a child, a son, they gave the name Abdi. Healthy, with her eyes and his father’s smile, the boy gave light to her spirit, and she was filled with joy. Again, she prayed and thanked the Gods, offering now her bread, as was part of her livelihood.

Ianna filled her bucket with water, and headed back to the bakery in silent contemplation. She began mixing the flour in her bakery with the water, and again, fell into her memories.

The three of them had lived together hardly a year when the request came. War was approaching, and all able bodied men were needed to fight. Enkio, with heavy heart, left his family to fight in the war, to protect them. “I will pray to the Gods for your safety, Enkio. I know they will not abandon us.” Those were Ianna’s last words to Enkio.

Every day she prayed before opening the bakery, for a year, for two years, waiting. But Enkio did not return. She watched as other men returned to their smiling families, and still she prayed. One day, she went to one of the men who returned in the market and asked, “What has happen to my husband? What has happened to Enkio?” The man shuffled away for a moment, looked to his family, and said with a broken voice, “I do not know what happened to Enkio.” Ianna was hurt, unable to move as she watched the man disappear into the crowd of the market with his family. That was the last day Ianna prayed for her husband’s safety.

Having finished the dough, and with the oven heated she began to bake the bread. She watches the flames flicker and burn, as she closes the oven, and waits, and thinks. She thinks of when her son Abdi, after just four years of life, fell ill. She thinks of all the nights she prayed to the Gods for his health, how much bread and wealth she had sacrificed to them in some hope that she would have a miracle. That her son would rise above what is ailing him and that her husband would return to her and that she would not be abandoned. And after just five nights of desperation and depression, she was alone.

Ianna does not open the bakery today. It has been exactly ten years since her child died. Instead, she lets the flames lick the bread, blackening it. She lets it burn, entirely to ash. Her anger with the Gods so great, she would burn the entire city her husband lost his life for if she could. But alas, her rage is impotent, and all she can do is burn her offering to the Gods. A futile, minor transgression, but all she can muster.

While watching the oven, Ianna is approached by a woman in a beautiful camel-skin cloak.

“Go away,” Ianna says without moving her head, “I have no bread available for sale.”

“But you are baking some bread now, are you not Ianna?” The woman replies.

Ianna smiles for just a second before responding, “You do not want this bread. For this bread is destined to be burned to ash, as the Gods intended.”

The woman frowns and says, “I have heard you are the best bread maker in all of Lagash. Surely even a slightly overdone bread of yours is worth something.”

Ianna laughs in a sour tone, “Ha! You have heard no such thing. Who are you to enter here with such bold declarations?” As she turns to look at the woman, she sees that the woman has a long, beautiful face and eyes that are paradoxically dark and light at once.

“I am Ninsun, and I ask for your bread Ianna,” the woman’s tone becoming grave.

This is absurd, Ianna thought. This woman is claiming to be a God, demanding of her for her burning bread. But, in a show of both disbelief and exasperation, she pulls the bread out of the oven, burnt crust falling off, and slams it on the counter. “Here! Your bread, free of charge. Now leave me be,” she says, as she moves to make another dough, mixing water and flour.

The woman takes the bread from the counter, ignoring the heat, and says, “Come with me, Ianna.”

Ianna is furious, and steps toward the woman who claims to be a God. Just as she does, the woman reaches out and grabs her, and all around her the world seems to spin and melt away, until they reform together in the shape of a lake.

Ianna is alone now with the bread, knowing what to do. Carefully, she walks into the lake, her final offering to the Gods.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Jonked
Feb 15, 2005
The Citadel of Dwarves, 652 words

pre:
Far underground I found the gate unbarred,
Beyond the gaping chasm stood the door
to chthonic structures bathed in darkness deep.
A city chisel’d out of stone and rock -
Wonder beyond compare, made history
by the discoverer, myself, I hoped.
Elated I did enter carefully
The buildings strangely stood askew, shrunken
As if press’d down by giant hands above
So that I need crouch down to enter them
Like a play house for children, wrought in stone
Catastrophe came slow, unmark’d, sans  death
No signs of war or blood - eerie quiet
and time was all that claimed my city find
All evidence point to abandonment.
The silence of mausoleums held sway.
No drip of water heard, nor living thing
This strange and ancient place unsettled me.
But lust for glory calls to man, so yet
I further on explore, a glance to it
The gate unbarred behind me still to home.
Far deep inside I found the jet black bell
Engraved with gold, inlaid with jewels, perhaps
a holy treasure, relic of  their god.
a guarded place, but yet, the gate unbarred
I stared, entranc’d, its beauty greater than
the artifacts of any museum known.
But yet I sensed some profane risk abound.
“What brings you here, creature of the sunlight,
down to this desolate place, grim and dark?”
a shade unseen but still here ask’d of me.
“I seek to know this city’s history,
And nothing more, my good spirit. I’ll leave.”
Shadows took form - a dwarf, so grim and stout
Was standing by the bell. A priest, I think.
“I’ll grant your wish, but quick. Creatures alive
are ill suited for this necropolis.”
                      Nuada was our king, who ruled us well.
                      So wise and just, his reign a glory age
                      So that our vaults did fill with gold and jewels
                      But King Nuada had a flaw - such pride
                      To make grand feats and boasts - prestige did drive
                      his every thought - his legacy premier.
                      An arrogant reagent, flawed, tis true.
                      He built a bell made of white gold, bejewel’d
                      By precious gems and rune mark’d by high priests,
                      to represent the glory of his rule
                      And raise this city up above all else.
                      He claimed the rank Dak Marr, the emperor
                      Of all, a figure in our prophecies.
                      The other kings could not abide this act
                      of blatant heresy. What’s more, they grew
                      to envy and to covet such the bell,
                       the bell made of white gold of the Dak Marr.
                      Our allies turned against us and did join
                      the host that would destroy our home and king.
                      Nuada knew: a swarm of ants could kill
                      a dragon wurm. His might was greater than
                      a thousand warriors at arms and shield
                      And yet the host did have ten thousand more.
                      He turn’d to dark and evil means to save
                      his city, bell, and legacy at once.
                      A creature of beyond our mortal realm
                      did heed the frantic call. A bargain, pact,
                      foul deal was offer’d to Nuada here,
                      This room where we do stand. The bell, white gold,
                      was turn to blackest jet, foul chimes rang out
                      And all who dare oppose our king - erased.
                      But deals have terms, always, and this bargain
                      was not exempt. No living thing could grow
                      within the city walls - a fallow field
                      the rule. Our king did not yet realize
                      the wombs of wives made barren and empty.
                      Nuada was our king, who ruled us well,
                      But none shall carry on his legacy.
                      He lies forgotten save for this poor shade.
                      Go now, the story told completes your wish.
I thanked the shade and fled the jet black bell
And hurry on straight to the gate unbarred
I took no artifact nor evidence
I told no one of what did lie beneath
The history of man ill needs the tale
Of  King Nuada and his gate unbarred.

  • Locked thread