5/8/2025

6/20/2025 11:21 PM

8

2

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Sage

Story A

Story B

Accompany Tibault, the Mad Wizard of Cantonney, on a wholesome fairytale romance for the ages!

Full disclosure, if this had been a LINEAR short story contest like I'd anticipated, I would've made a completely different thing with 60% less words! But then there were moving parts required and I could barely find places to add them. I do so hate this thing I've done!

For the Battle of the Mods!

Story C - Kraken, My Love

unpublished

Story D - Mole

unpublished

Play as a member of a cave-dwelling species in this modern-fantasy interrogation storygame. Born with a dependence and addiction to the moss, the Grey Dominion is your last hope to acquire a batch with the ongoing conflicts elsewhere- but the task they assign may bring out the worst in you.

For the Battle of the Mods!

You sound insane.

Vote here for which child with an L name you prefer.

(The theme: Prompt 12, A story involving trying to survive some sort of disaster while also protecting/saving at least one loved one.)

Update: This vote has ended.

Story B The Captain's warning was broadcasted on the screen above the upper deck pool. Terrified persons escaped their tanning and swimming beneath the ship's false sun. Children were swept by arms by their parents, confused as to why. The warning sirens pierced your soul, something was suddenly not right on your cruise. Most of those persons rushed through cramped hallways - to their rooms, hoping that perhaps they would find safety there. But how did these creatures, these aliens, find their way onto the ship in the first place? If they found their way onto the ship, then they could most likely find their way into your room. You grasped your daughter's wrist tightly. There was a scream on an upper deck. "Put your hands on your ears," you begged Lilah. She was hesitant but quietly obeyed. You were not running to your room, you knew better. You were moving to the escape shuttles. You tore mercilessly through the crowds - only one vision on your eyes, and that was saving Lilah. It was a fierce motherly instinct that overcame you. It filled your veins with adrenaline, turned your muscles to steel, made your eyesight red. Other mothers, other fathers, other people, yelled at you as you shoved your way through them. More, louder screams echoed through the ship. These creatures were everywhere. They had been everywhere, incubating, growing, waiting for the most vulnerable time to strike. And that was now. You pulled Lilah into your arms, hoisting her halfway over your shoulder. You had not carried her like this in years - she was too big now. But your old bones did not feel the weight of her - only the adrenaline. You smashed the screen, unlocking the escape shuttle. You tore through an elderly couple. All was fair when your daughter's life was on the line. "Look out the window," you hissed at Lilah. She had never seen you like this before. Perhaps once before, when she sprawled crayon along your kitchen cabinets. Even then, she was quickly forgiven. Regardless, she knew to follow your directions. Behind you, the elderly couple pounded on the door that slid shut behind you, begging you to allow them in. But you turned from them quickly, taking a seat at the console. For all you knew, they too had those creatures in them. You slammed the large red launch button, before Lilah had even fastened her seatbelt. The escape pod launched into space. You watched the cruise ship move away from you. In reality, you were moving away from it. Lilah tumbled from her feet. "I'm sorry, baby," you told her. "Momma," Lilah whispered, "what happened?" She watched the cruise ship as well. Tiny hands clasped the ledges of the windows. You could see her little mind working to make sense of this all. Hells, yours was too. There was no use lying to Lilah, she was a smart girl - you made sure of it. And the situation was dire. But the least you could put it to her gently. You flipped through a dusty manual about driving the escape shuttle. Thankfully, it was in layman's terms. Put the ignition key in the blue ignition slot. Type in coordinates. Coordinates for Earth Two - RA 14h 29m 43s | Dec -62° 40' 46?. Send warning signal to nearby craft - press shiny green button. The shiny green button barely pressed down. You muttered, "Uh, there were creatures that got into the ship." "Like mice?" Lilah asked. Now she was almost intrigued. She had a kind soul. You would capture the house mice and release them in the woods. It seemed cruel to kill them in crude traps. "Yes, like mice. But they were biting people - hurting people. We had to leave," you explained. Lilah, gentle as she was, nodded at you, watching the cruise ship Paradise drift away. It seemed so unassuming from here. One would think it was paradise there. You saw fifteen floors of lights begin to flicker. The globe-like glass that enveloped the entire top deck turned foggy. You could not imagine what was happening there now. You turned forward. One would think that space was crowded with planets and their moons, stars and supernovas. Black holes that threatened the galaxies in the far distance. Sprawling galactic clusters that shimmered brightly and lit your way. But the truth was there was so much distance between one star and another, sometimes light years. You and Lilah melted through the inky darkness for hours. The stars in front of you hardly moved. It felt like you had not moved at all. The feeling made you sick. There was a disconnect between your eyes and your body that rocked back and forth on the shuttle. Lilah curled up in a chair with her own eyes tightly closed. You knew she felt the same. "Are we going home?" she asked, breaking a long, lulling silence. "Yes," you lied. Or rather, you hoped. Home was a hundred light years away, easy enough to warp to with a ship, but you were not so sure with a shuttle. And now that you realized how vast space was. It might be forever. You knew one thing - you were going to try. You owed it to Lilah, you owed it to motherhood. To survive. Your sight glazed over. Wandering eyes only had so many stars to glance between. Lilah managed to fall asleep. Her long, red hair draped over her shoulders, encasing her like a soft, shimmering blanket. Like she was a beautiful sleeping princess. She got the red hair from her father. As gorgeous as it was, it reminded you of him. You reminded yourself that she was not him. That she was just a blessing he gave you, that she was entirely her own little human. Her own, gentle soul. And surely, better than him in every way. You felt immensely guilty - booking this cruise. You had read the screen at home. The deal was a steal. A week in space, from this galaxy to the next. A most glorious sightseeing adventure - and three heated pools on deck. You knew it was too good to be true. You wanted to take Lilah on an adventure. ~~~ Lilah loved to read. In a world of holographic movies and games, Lilah preferred the sweet solitude of one of her many books. She had her own library at home. Shelves and shelves full of fairytales. She was an escapist like yourself. She brought a dozen books in a pink bag with her on the cruise. Sally the Mechanic. A Mermaid's Adventure. Three versions of Cinderella. You imagined that little pink bag now, left in your room on the ship - to never be opened and read by a little girl again. You wished you had a book here for her now. But all you really had was that dusty shuttle manual. You humored yourself - that perhaps she would read the entire manual and learn how to be a ship engineer. She could rig this shuttle to be faster - to get home sooner. The shuttle murmured on. You were exhausted. Fear and sadness replaced the adrenaline, your eyelids were heavy. You pulled Lilah up. She muttered in her sleep. You sat down where she had been, pulled her into your lap and pulled a silverly blanket around you both. Her presence soothed you enough to fall asleep, if only for a little while. Small trivial things - like heated pools, plastic dolls, matching socks - did not seem to matter now. How quickly these things fall from one's worries, when one's life was suddenly on the line. How quickly, massive space cruise ships, filled with technology sometimes even beyond yourself, were only shells that could be invaded at any moment. And how suddenly your worries turn to survival. You were alive now. You had a dream about Lilah and her father - a simpler time on Earth Two. Where the sun was not simulated nor just one sparkly dot in space, light years away from you. You basked in the dream, and the rude awakening brought tears down your cheeks. You refused to sob and wake your delicate Lilah. You held Lilah close. Had no one heard your emergency signal yet? Beneath the chair, something shuffled.

Story A Little Larthi lay in Sethra's arms, sound asleep. Mother and daughter they were, travelling in the back of a creaking and ill-oiled wagon. Velian, the old man who had raised the bony-bellied cow that now pulled this wagon, kneeled on a dried bag of oats as he urged the creature along at a steady plod. Their few worldly belongings laid about them, slotted in carefully with everything the rest of the village could pack. Tarquin, Sethra's husband, had died in the reaving along the way-- It was a blessing that she still had sisters and neighbors to turn to at the end of the world. It had been three hard autumns, each worse than the last, when the elders had declared their home, Lesuca, a dead land. The rain had stopped, and the gods grew silent on the matter, despite increasing pleas. On the first year of the drought, travelers from lands further north than anyone had ever heard of, let alone seen, crossed through their village, apparently on an exodus of their own. They were mostly young men, armed and frightening, but terrified themselves. Through what little language they shared, they told tales of fields turned to barren dust where the corns no longer grew. Tales of vast expanses of land where forest had been cleared of trees, turning to plains where dustclouds grew from mud, and where desperate wolves hunted men, for the antelope had left these places. They told tales of a season they called Winter, and said they had not enough food nor firewood to survive the day when freezing winds descended from their home in the mountains and buried their world in a storm of icy, white sand that gnawed skin from bone. The men without wives or children thought it best to leave their homes behind rather than compete for food with their own families. They were heading south and east, where all the trade routes led. Perhaps, they reasoned, as seemingly all the world's tin travelled to that place, perhaps food and fortune would also have congregated there. The next year, more travelers came through, but they were rarely young men. Women, children, fathers and grandparents. Hastily armed with makeshift weapons, hunting bows and old bronze tools. Battered and withered people. They carried stories with them too. Stories of a freeze without end. Stories of the earth itself resisting the plough. Stories of sickness and broken teeth, of huddling around a cauldron of soup made from boiling leather and coarse brown grass. Some had dark, distant eyes, hollow with shame. A deep shame, a shame that Velian recognized and would not speak openly of. When Sethra asked him what he meant, he would only speak in a hoarse whisper-- Many of these people, in the endless night of winter, had eaten their dead. This year, the people of Lesuca did not wait for more travelers after the harvest. They did not wait to eat their dead. They all had done what they could, they had prayed and sacrificed at great expense, but the gods could not acknowledge them. Their intention was clear. The end of the world was rolling in like fog from the north and west, and the world of the dead was soaking into the land of the living. The grayest of the elders, whose time was near, decided that they would stay behind and await. Everyone else took up what they could and left-- Melting their statues, their bells, their sacred ribs, and their ritual bowls into ingots. Their Gods would have to protect them in the form of armor and hatchets now. They huddled onto ships, across the sea, then onto wagons, in search of the legendary cities beyond the sands. In his forty summers, Velian had seen more of the world, and spoken more languages, than most of the Lesucans. He had sailed to the empire once, and seen wondrous things. A village the size of many fields, possessed of towering temples, man-made mountains of brickwork. On auspicious days, they commanded elephants and lions to walk passively down their streets. Their city was defended by walls that were built a hundred feet high, and colored by bricks of polished blue stone, with gold reliefs of lions. A city where beer was drunk from great urns by the streetside, and mutton was for sale year round! A city of painted walls and flowering fruit trees, bustling like a beating heart at the center of a region where mighty rivers had turned the desert *green*. This city was the king of other cities like it, each one ruled by a God, or so they said. With the sights and sounds, it was hard to believe otherwise. From these cities, many finely-worked items of gold and bronze flowed throughout the world, and to these cities, exotic cattle and rich women from all over the world were sold. The Lesucans were loathe to leave their home, but their home could no longer have them. Velian's tales of splendor in the distance were some small comfort to their clan-- And, as it happened, the many other clans that came to join them on the shores of this land at the center of the world. But what they saw at the center of the world was not encouraging. The port at which they landed was silent, empty, methodically stripped of all wood and cloth. Many buildings were burnt, or entirely collapsed. There was no sound from a living thing, save for the rummaging of speechless men and women in ragged furs, picking through ashen rubble and fighting over the corpses of dogs... And, in the night, the alternate sobbing and cackling of hyenas. It seemed even this golden land was grim and rainless, with a sun even crueler than it had ever been in Lesuca. Larthi spent most days clinging to her mother's hand for a sense of safety, and, for the same feeling, Sethra spent most days clinging to the pouch of teeth around her neck. In proper times, had Tarquin died so young, he would have slept beneath the family house, with the other ancestors, for *many* years, until the time came that the earth had taken all his temporary parts away. Then a true necklace could have been made from his teeth, to protect Sethra in her old age. But this was not to be-- Tarquin slept with his body scattered in the bellies of fat vultures and starving horses. It was a great but deeply unorthodox favor the Firekeeper had done, to take his teeth prematurely so that Tarquin could keep his wife safe when there was no time for burial. The signs in the abandoned port city were clear-- The ships floating unmanned in the bay, pushed ashore and tipped by the current, the dugouts and coracles that had were alternately left to float away into the sea or dragged onto the sand and left behind without a sign of their owners-- The lingering sense of *bloodshed*. The Lesucans and the other tribes assembled were not the first to have come here. They were also, likely, not the last. Velian stated that it was only a matter of time before the tentative campsite hospitality erupted into squabbling over each other's supplies, however, and he urged the Lesucans to carry on further inland, downstream from the great rivers. Many others seemed to have the same idea-- But if they moved together, and perhaps shared whatever they found in the ruins around here, they could work together, too. Days passed as the tribes searched the ruined land for signs of the city at the center of a green world. Following the river, they found mazes of irrigation trenches where the water had gone stagnant and the fields became sandy mud. The few buildings that remained standing sometimes contained scraps of past-its-prime food, or at the very least dried dung for fires. It was clear that the best had been taken months ago. But between all these scavengers and intrepid fishermen, they did find *just* enough to survive the blistering day and spend another night on the trail. It was early one morning that they came to a road paved in stone, that cut across a landscape of sparse yellow grass and bald palm trees. Trails of smoke, some too large to have been from chimneys, painted the sky. But despite the burgeoning sun, the wanderers found themselves covered in shadow-- The shadow of walls a hundred feet high. Much of these walls were blue, and decorated with golden lions. But at the same time, mostly at the ground level, it seemed so many of the shimmering blue bricks had been chipped away by looters, and more still had been knocked away by hurled stones. Ahead of the walls, where fields of grain had withered to pale grass, were burst and bloated bodies propped up on barricades. For lack of barley, *heads* grew on wooden stalks, oozing the remnants of life into the ground. From their seat at the wagon, Sethra found herself shielding her daughter's eyes from the sight, and Larthi found herself shielding her ears from the cacophony of snapping whips, thundering feet, and bellowing horns, as an *army* poured out of the gates. They were great in number-- There had to be at least several hundred of them, all in varying degrees of jingling bronze armor. But, Sethra couldn't help but notice, they were a small, well-armed bulwark compared to the *tide* of bodies that was gradually gathering to look at what was making all this noise. They were too far away to tell for sure, but Sethra could swear that, while many of them were uniform in their beards and formation, a few of them didn't seem like they were *from* the same place as the others-- She could swear she had seen one of these faces, three hard autumns ago. They were different now, wearing armor that fit them oddly, like it had been handed down from someone else, and aged beyond their years... A parade of chariots parted the men-- Terrifying vehicles, with terrifying faces painted on them, teamed by men in gleaming armor, with every battlefield weapon conceived of. Escorted by a procession of these horse-drawn warriors was an even larger chariot adorned in gold ornament, drawn by six horses, and teamed by five people. Towering above the other four was quite the largest and most terrifying man Sethra had ever seen. His face was obscured by a mask of gold that resembled a lion's face, from whose jaws a massive beard of ringlets spilled like a tongue. The helmet seemed to amplify an already booming voice, and his speech quickly compelled the world to silence. "Greetings, *Sea People*," Velian found himself translating the speech instinctively, "You are in the presence of Aburhunakaz, Prince of the World and All the Known Cosmos, Guardian of the Twin Rivers and Son of the Sun. It is no secret to me that you have come to my land seeking your ordained purpose. The corpse of the Great Serpent has been eaten to the bone, and mortal men, maggots that they are, starve in the absence of her bounty. You seek the hand of the Firmament, to join in the great City of Aburh and partake in its Eternity. But I fear the most exalted positions are filled. Already I have too far tempted the wrath of my divine ancestors with my squanderous mercy, and the fields of my nation grow pale with their discontent. There is but one place I can offer you in my empire, so hear my warning and hear it well--" Velian stumbled over his words, clearly stunned by what he was hearing, but continued, "Return whence you came, or rejuvenate my soil with your blood and bones. This is the choice before you." From what little most of the crowd understood, there was much discontented grumbling. And Sethra's eyes widened in horror as she noticed the crowd of bronze-clad men readying their bows. A compacted army of hardened killers, preparing to rain death upon an army of half-organized despair. Sethra reached into the pile of supplies in the back of their wagon and dislodged the great cooking cauldron just in time. Larthi and her mother were sheltered from what sounded like sharp, scraping hailstones, but from the pained bellowing and the sudden *lurch* as the cow pulling the wagon fell forward, Sethra could tell they were the lucky ones. "Momma, what's happening!?" "A dangerous rain falls..." "I'm scared!" "Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh. It's okay, little duck. I will always protect you." Sethra grew increasingly unconfident in her words as the screaming and clattering of war drew nearer. Sethra reached under one of the saltfish jars that had been tied down to the wagon, pulling out Tarquin's old belt, and his long dagger with it. "Listen very carefully, Larthi," Sethra said, "I have to go." "NO!" "SHHH! Remember what I said. I will *always* protect you. You will be safe if you stay under this pot. Don't make a sound, and don't come out unless you can hear me, or one of your cousins, or Uncle Velian looking for you. Do you understand?" Larthi nodded, but her breath was too shaky to speak. Sethra reached for the string around her neck, and pressed the pouch into her daughter's hands, "Papa will always protect you, too. He'll be here while I'm out, it shouldn't be too long, alright?" When the sound of arrowfall slowed to a stop, Sethra crawled out from under the cauldron. To her horror, finding the elder slumped up against his dying cow with an arrow in his eye, chest, and shoulder. She wasted no time in untying his helmet and his vest of copper scales to protect herself, before drawing her husband's blade. The sun had risen high over the walls by now, but the air was foggy with dust. She could make out a thick battle line up ahead of the wagon, and more and more men from the camps behind rushing to meet the enemy. There was so much screaming. The line of men ahead of her couldn't quite reach the archers and spearmen to fight with them, chariots kept cycling between over and over again, keeping the masses at bay with their own spears, and a hail of missiles. Fortunately, those who were fortunate enough to have shields had deployed them by now. It all seemed like a hopeless case, before a cry of instruction came out in a language she didn't recognize-- And a flurry of javelins found their way into the heart of a horse, sending a chariot headlong over its team of screaming beasts and dashing the men within against the ground. The golden chariot swerved to avoid it, and scythes attached to the wheels rended men in twain as the Emperor steered close to their formation, but the vehicle ground to a halt as the animals ahead of this chariot were also cut to pieces. The attendants of Aburhunakaz fell one by one as men climbed up the wheels and began to swarm the emperor-- Soon, it was only the giant standing among them, beating men back with a great bronze mace, splattering them like boiled pommegranates, even as spears embedded themselves in his sinewy armored body. "He bleeds!" Sethra heard someone shout, "Today, a Star-God dines on clay in Irkalla with the rest of us mortals!" Sethra's grip on her blade tightened, and she picked up a spear from one of the dead lying around her. A hideous death approached her daughter from the front, and a slow death by privation awaited them both from behind. If the only way forward was *through* this wretched deity, then there was no time to waste! She ran to the mob and began climbing over bodies. One way or another, she would pierce his black heart!

Sentinel and Hatter slipped out the door, and those who had witnessed the strange events hurried after, leaving Capy's Grim Pizza once more in darkness, now with a busted arcade machine and back door hanging ajar. Damn hooligans.

The group swelled swiftly in number, curious onlookers tagging along on the way to the arena, as the good people of CYStia always do when their mods seem to be preparing for violence.

A number of traditional weapons were laid out; hammers, chainsaws, scythes, text walls. But these were bypassed in favpr of the VERY traditional; Hatter took up a paintbrush, and Sentinel grabbed a spork.

Hatter's eyes narrowed when she saw it.

Sentinel only laughed with a gesture at the crowd. "They always see us united as mods. Few remain now who remember our ancient enmity. But we both know there's something far older and more important at stake here than a mere battle to entertain the masses."

"Indeed, Penguinite." With a flick of her paintbrush, the Hatter drew into existence a dessert glass with a chilled pink...substance inside. Sentinel involuntarily shuddered to look upon it, clutching his spork in a warding gesture. But Hatter only smiled, helping herself to a spoonful of sweet strawberry bliss. "Somebody did once say that revenge is a dish best served cold."

Whoops I mean, fuck the mods, TDA out!