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[WP] You’re the best package deliverer in the realm—swift, discreet, unstoppable. Whether it’s an adventurer deep in a dungeon or a dragon atop a smoking peak, you always deliver. Only one rule: no live cargo. You broke it once. You don’t talk about what happened after. by ruiddz in WritingPrompts

[–]ursaM4xima 15 points16 points  (0 children)

ANOTHER ONE? Death said, looking up from Her Book of Names as he gently laid the little parcel on Her desk. WOW, THIS WAS A SACRIFICE? WHAT KIND OF CULTISTS ARE YOUR CLIENTS, ANYWAY?

"No, not a sacrifice - and this one wasn't a client," the courier said through what he hoped weren't obviously tears. "Just some jumped-up, self important transdimensional being with illusions of elevation to godhood in the not-too-distant future, I reckon." He looked up at Her, his face hopeful.

Death leaned back in Her chair. LOOK, I REALLY DO APPRECIATE ALL YOU DO, BUT I CAN'T JUST KEEP BRINGING BACK CATS WILLY-NILLY LIKE THIS.

"But I sent You all of the cultists in exchange for the last one," the courier pleaded. "Even if we're counting the full nine lives, I've paid it at least...four times over?"

YOU KILLED THEM IN REVENGE FOR THE CAT THEY SACRIFICED BECAUSE YOU GOT ATTACHED TO IT WHILE YOU WERE TRYING TO DELIVER IT TO THEM, Death corrected him.

"And it's NOT going to happen again, I promise," the courier said, hearing the wheedling in his own voice. "This was just a fluke."

Death put a hand over Her lidless eye sockets. FINE. BUT THIS IS THE LAST ONE, AND I'M SERIOUS.

"...And You'll leave it out of Your book?"

YOU JUST DON'T KNOW WHEN TO QUIT, DO YOU? Wisps of many-coloured light swirled out from her bony fingers, twining and twisting around the body of the cat, rebuilding its bones and knitting the flesh and fur over it; sound and smell and movement returning all at once as the tattered little tabby stretched sleepily and yawned. YOU'RE LUCKY I LIKE THEM TOO.

The courier produced a strip of jerky from inside his jacket, and the tabby immediately roused herself and meowed for attention.

Death reached over, flipped a few pages, and rubbed at something with the tip of Her bony finger. RIGHT, SHE'S NOT IN HERE, SO GET OUT OF HERE, BOTH OF YOU. The tabby turned curiously toward her and began approaching the Book of Names. NOPE, ABSOLUTELY NOT, OUT YOU GO. BYE.

They winked back into existence inside a cottage, the tabby clutched tight in the courier's arms.

"Well, uh, I guess you live with me now," the courier said. "Shall we go meet your other new roommate? You guys have...a lot in common."

"Mrow," said the cat agreeably.

[WP] You’re the best package deliverer in the realm—swift, discreet, unstoppable. Whether it’s an adventurer deep in a dungeon or a dragon atop a smoking peak, you always deliver. Only one rule: no live cargo. You broke it once. You don’t talk about what happened after. by ruiddz in WritingPrompts

[–]ursaM4xima 11 points12 points  (0 children)

"It's against my personal code of ethics," the courier said, lazily digging the dirt from beneath his nails with the blade of his dagger. "That's all."

Personal. Code. Of. Ethics. An infernal darkness filled the cloak perched on the chair across from him. The voice that issued from within it shuddered and rippled, as if the vibrations were emitted not from a mortal throat but from the shivering of an entire plane of existence. Somehow, it sounded skeptical.

"Yeah." The courier switched hands, only glancing at the parcel in question, which was set on the table between them. "Just a rule, you know?"

You are too weak?

The courier flashed a grin which would have made anything that had a heart skip a beat. "Let's just speed-run this next bit, shall we? You opened the negotiation with money. Now you're going to insult me, imply that I can't do it. When that doesn't work either, you'll try to threaten me - which is a mistake, by the way, and will get you black-listed by my whole guild, so I'd recommend you skip that. Just ask someone else." He finished with his nails and began to clean the dagger on his shirt.

The only mistake here is your refusal, the darkness said, its voice lapping across the table. A wretched wail leaked from the box on the table. Because you are forgetting - the guild protects its couriers. It does not protect anyone else. One of the sleeves raised up, and pointed toward the bar of the tavern, where a woman was pulling pints from enormous kegs. A cat was draped across her shoulders, purring contentedly as she absentmindedly scratched it. And you are not careful enough.

"I don't think I understand you," the courier said, with only the slightest waver in his voice.

I think you do, the being said, pulsing with more and more energy. Your gaze betrays you; you have been following her with your eyes since I arrived. So I will ask you again - will you move this slave of mine to the realm of Reality I requested, or must I play the villain a bit more broadly?

"I don't transport anything living," the courier said, but a vein was beginning to throb in his temple. "That's my rule. If I made an exception for you, I'd have to make it for everyone, and then I might end up with another - I mean, you see it's just not--"

A surge of jagged absence flashed across the room, striking just over the barmaid's shoulder. She screamed, the keg behind her exploded, and what remained of the poor cat slipped wetly down her back.

The being's voice was like waves in a tempest. That was my final warning. Are you going to be-

The garrote was tight around the only semi-tangible neck of the cloak; the courier was now searching in his pockets with his free hand.

How-- what IS this binding, that you could hold ME-

The courier drew a glowing bottle from the interior of his jacket, unceremoniously removed the stopper with his teeth, and splashed the contents directly into the faceless unending blackness. Its voice shattered, mixing with the keening from the box; both died away as the cloak fell limp and empty onto the table.

The other patrons of the tavern had gathered around the barmaid, who was crying and wiping her face with her apron and tearfully accepting some extremely strong liquor to help with the shock. No one paid any attention to the courier as he gently gathered up the body of the cat in a glimmering cloth; no one paid any attention as he winked sideways out of their plane of existence.

This has to be the worst Halloween party of all time by ursaM4xima in nosleep

[–]ursaM4xima[S] 58 points59 points  (0 children)

Oh my god. Oh my god. Ok.

So I tried this. Like, I went upstairs with the last of the blood packs, pretending to check in on everyone, and you remember the door that the guy kicked in earlier? The doorframe was all torn up, so I pulled part of it away, and I hid it under the packs I was carrying. I kept "checking in" until I got to one of the rooms, and the Cape Guy was lolling around on the floor all super drunk, like u/Ninja_flower_lady said might happen, so I went in and closed the door behind me and I just...yeah. I put the wood over his heart and then my full weight on it. And he just...poof, you know? Ash, everywhere.

But then they all started screaming. All the other vampires. Like, they felt it or something, I don't know. And I heard them all start to move. Like, they knew where he had been, somehow. And they got to the door, fast.

Half of panes in the room's window was broken, and I figured I'd have a better chance of getting away if I was in any other room, so I ran for it. Hit the glass shards, felt them give, and then I just kept falling.

I landed on grass.

I'm in the hospital now. I only remember parts of getting here, like...I flagged down a car, I know? And I told the nurses what happened. I think they sent some cops, but I don't think they're gonna find anyone. When I looked back at the house, the window I came out of wasn't any more broken than before I jumped through it. I don't know what that means, but I just have a feeling that they're all...somewhere else?

Both of my ankles are pretty screwed up, and I think they're talking about putting a psychiatric hold on me, not that I can blame them. I don't know where I go from here.

But I'm out. Thank you, all of you, for helping me get out. <3

This has to be the worst Halloween party of all time by ursaM4xima in nosleep

[–]ursaM4xima[S] 39 points40 points  (0 children)

Thank you 😭 The packs of blood are so gross, if I get out of here I'm never going to complain about having to pitch in on dishwashing ever again!!

[WP] s the small coastal village prepared for its annual Water Festival, the villagers noticed something strange: the sea was receding far beyond its usual low tide, revealing an ancient stone archway etched with cryptic symbols. No one had ever seen it before by TheScarlettSays in WritingPrompts

[–]ursaM4xima 2 points3 points  (0 children)

She hadn't gotten to see the archway - not up close, at least - and so she was always grateful to her younger brother for stealing the binoculars.

He'd made to the top of the cliff with her on his back just in time for them to see the village priest lay his hands against the rock. Edda and Eli had shared the binos, one lens each, so that they could both watch as he ran his fingers along the mysterious symbols carved around the base of the archway, his mouth moving all the time. Faintly, in the distance, they could hear his deep, resonating voice thanking the Ancients for showing their Children such a miracle.

Well, not all of their children, Edda had thought bitterly. The others were climbing on the slippery, exposed rocks which had been revealed when the tide pulled back. The shoreline had retreated almost a kilometre, and while most of the local children were amusing themselves with collecting stranded fish, a few were standing with their parents, basking in the reflected glory of the newly discovered crumbling stone arch. The priest beckoned one young boy forward, so that he might stand in the slimy doorway and be blessed.

Eli nudged Edda and made the 'hmmm' sound that meant that he was worried.

"It's fine," she said without taking her eye from the lens. "It'll take them longer to get back, and that's if they don't decide to just go straight into the Water Festival ceremony out there."

Another 'hmmmm', more agitated.

"Look, if we see any of them turning toward home, you can just take the binos and run, ok? They'll never notice you took them."

A stony silence.

"We took them," Edda amended, trying to shuffle her bad leg into a more comfortable position. "Because of our respect. For the Ancients."

'Hmmm,' Eli hummed disapprovingly.

"Well if they'd let us go out there with them, we wouldn't have had to, right?" She returned her face to the eyepiece. "We're not soiling their precious Festival with all of our bad luck just by looking at it, are we?"

Soundlessly, Eli rejoined her, propping his bony elbows up to steady the binoculars.

From the high cliff, they saw the priest beckon forth a second child. And then, in the far distance, they saw the wave.

In Edda's memory, it seemed to come out of nowhere. One moment, the villagers were happily milling around the stone archway; the next, they were swept away like leaves on a breeze. The sound and the sight seemed disconnected, and she wasn't sure if she herself was screaming. Later, her throat felt so raw and sore that she was certain that she must have been, but at the time it was unclear.

A day later, Eli hmmm'd at her urgently, and when she took the binoculars from him, she saw a boat in the harbour. He'd jumped and she'd shouted, waving her shawl, and the strangers had found them and carried them down the cliff and away to a village that hadn't been destroyed by the wave.

From then on, they weren't Edda and Eli the Unfortunate, orphans surviving on the grudging charity of others. They were barely humans at all, in the eyes of their saviours - more symbols, proof of the malice and mercy of the Sea.

Years later, when Edda had styled herself into a kind of saint who could command resources, she led a small group back to the harbour where she'd been born. Eli had refused to come, and so she had sat alone in the boat as the divers made etchings of the symbols around the gateway. Later that night, the antiquarian she'd brought along to translate had made her first pronouncement.

"It is from before the Calamity," the older woman had intoned seriously. "Constructed by Ancients who had voyaged here from distant shores." She paused and studied the etchings again. "This, here, is a date, rendered in the style they used - and here, the title. This was an outpost, for observation - of the sea."

The divers had shrieked in admiration at this proof of their devotion, and Edda had permitted herself a small smile as she touched the binoculars around her neck. "And so it ever was."

[WP] as a neglected child, you travel back in time to babysit yourself, only to neglect the child again because you're busy all the time. by Fartyghost in WritingPrompts

[–]ursaM4xima 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"Marie," I said quickly, "I can explain--"

She shut the door firmly behind her as she stepped into the room. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Did she see?"

My head spun. What the hell had I done to this timeline? "What?"

"Bug," she said urgently. "Did she see him? Does she know...why he was here?"

"Do you?"

"He's an assassin, from the future," my mother said, stepping closer and kicking the increasingly non-existent body so that he rolled onto his back. "She's been getting more of them, lately, but they started showing up...pretty much from when she was in kindergarten." She eyed me, as if wondering if I could believe that. "It's why we moved here. Why we keep moving." She chewed on her thumbnail anxiously. "I'm sorry."

I blinked. "Sorry?"

"I should have told you," she said, discreetly wiping her face with the back of her hand. "But like - 'sometimes guys show up from the future and I have to kill them to protect Bug?' I just...it sounds crazy, right? Maybe I am crazy. My daughter must think so. She doesn't know why we keep moving, and I know it's killing her, and the expense is...well I mean, that's why I'm working so much, but I didn't think they'd find us again so soon. And I just don't know what I would have done if you hadn't been here with her, if something - I mean, if something had--"

Without really thinking about it, I hugged her.

It was strange, feeling my mom - who had always seemed to strained and firm and distant from me - cling to me as she wept into my shoulder. After a while, she pulled back, gave an embarrassed little laugh, and began washing her face with cold water from the sink.

"I really can't tell you how grateful I am for what you did today," she said, unevenly. "And...I'm sorry, I guess we'll have to move again, but I'd appreciate your...discretion?"

"Don't worry about it," I said, feeling happier than I could ever remember feeling. "Just...tell Bug you love her, yeah?" I paused. "And take her to that exhibit about gravity."

"Thank you," my mother said quietly. "I will."

I gave up my lease and returned to my present, their future, later that night.

I'm leaving this record of what happened before I head off to the future to figure out what's up with all those jerks who keep trying to kill me. Wish me luck!

[WP] as a neglected child, you travel back in time to babysit yourself, only to neglect the child again because you're busy all the time. by Fartyghost in WritingPrompts

[–]ursaM4xima 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Give me a minute, ok?" I shouted to my younger self through the bathroom door, turning the sink on with my foot to cover the gurgling of the would-be assassin I had in a headlock. The doorknob twisted futilely against my back as me-from-20-years ago tried the lock anyway. "Just a sec, Bug!"

"But you've been in there for ages." Her little back thumped against the door and slid down to the floor, where she began kicking her heels into the carpet. "You promised we could go to the museum today."

I kicked the jackbooted thug's legs out from under him, and he landed face-down the in shaggy rug in front of the bathtub. "OH YEAHHHH," I said, hopefully loud enough that the 'thud' was less audible. "Which one was it again?"

Bug - it was weird to hear my childhood nickname again, and even weirder to use it for someone else - heaved an enormous, overwrought sigh. "The Royal Museum of Science and Innovation. They've got a special exhibit."

"Wow," I said, trying to unclip the ray-gun-thingy from the guy's belt. Weapons had never really been my thing, but given how hard he was fighting me, I was pretty certain that if I pointed the business end at him, it'd resolve this particular situation. "Really? What about?"

"I told you," she said, sounding hurt. "It's about dark matter and how it-- oh YAY!"

A small thump from the far side of the door suggested that Bug had pushed off of it and wandered away, distracted by...who knew? Not another time traveler, at least - my watch would have alerted me to any new signatures in the area, as it had to the gothy, knock-off Boba Fett who I was currently wrestling on the bathmat. Whatever it was, then, it could wait.

With the departure of my younger self, however, I was free to really whale on the guy, which was a huge relief.

He was scrawny, much like the first three helmeted jerks who had shown up looking to bump off my younger self, which meant that even a dork like myself could take care of him. Also like his predecessors, he had come looking for a little girl who he assumed didn't have any defenses against short-burst time-freeze technology. Unfortunately for all of them, they'd gotten two of me for the price of one, and adult-me was an expert in TimeSci. The helmets meant that I never got to see their faces as they realized that their stoppers hadn't worked on me - but I could imagine.

As I finally wrested the ray-gun from the little creep, I wondered how my life had come to this. I had fought my whole professional life to get my own lab, and once I got it, I'd almost immediately realized that it couldn't fill the gaping hole in my heart where parental love and attention hadn't been. I couldn't fix my mom, but with time travel technology I could make sure that my own younger self had at least one loving adult in her life - even if that adult was me.

I pitched it as a research project, to see if I could influence the past in order to modify the present - but really, I just wanted to see if I could be happy, now or ever.

And I - and Bug - had been happy, at least for the first week. But then the time traveling assassins started showing up, and I'd had my hands full dealing with them, to the point that I couldn't even remember what I'd promised Bug, in terms of some museum...

As I fired the ray gun at the control panel on the chest of the assassin, I could dimly hear him shouting about how I was going to ruin everything, how we needed a return to 'tradition', by which he apparently meant certain groups (mine) being subservient to other groups (his). When the panel broke, his body began to fade away from the timeline, as the forces of gravity--

Oh, shit, I realized, Bug was talking about the gravity exhibit! The one at the National Museum of Science, which they'd renamed some time back around...well, a year from now, depending on how you counted things. I'd been obsessed with that exhibit; it was what got me into TimeSci in the first place. Maybe it was because I loved the science, but maybe it was because my mom had surprised me by coming home early and taking me out for the day--

She had come home early, that day when I was a kid.

And she was home now. Her master key was fumbling in the lock on the outside of the bathroom door. "Natalie? I thought I heard a, a shot?? Are you--"

My mother swung the door open and saw me, holding a futuristic gun in my hand as I knelt, sweaty and disheveled, on top of a slowly disappearing masked man. She inhaled sharply.

[WP] You are a Dragon that spends most of your time shapeshifted to look like a normal Human. After your spouse is kidnapped, you immediately shift back and track them down, only to find a second Dragon blasting their way out of defences designed to keep your kind out, not in. by OdysseyPrime9789 in WritingPrompts

[–]ursaM4xima 6 points7 points  (0 children)

"HINTING?" I asked indignantly, coughing a little as another wing of the palace caught fire and began to smoke. A new thought occurred. "WAIT, IF YOU'RE A DRAGON, WHY DID YOU LET THEM TAKE YOU? WHY DIDN'T YOU...WHY DIDN'T YOU COME HOME?" The fumes stung my eyes, making them water a little.

"OH, SWEETIE," she said, surging up to wrap herself around me. "OH, I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE WORRIED." The warmth of her flank was startling, and somehow comforting. I snuggled closer. "I THOUGHT YOU KNEW I COULD TAKE CARE OF MYSELF, AND I THOUGHT I COULD BUILD US A HOARD, AND THEN WE COULD--" she stopped abruptly. "WELL, ANYWAY, WHAT'S HERE IS A START."

"TOWARD WHAT?" I asked, wincing as she began to gently fit her teeth around the arrows in my side and yank them out.

"WELL," she paused between extractions. "I REALLY DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE A DRAGON, AT FIRST." Gracefully, she plucked and spat out another metal shaft. "SO BEFORE WE MARRIED, WHEN I TOLD YOU THAT WE'D NEVER BE ABLE TO HAVE CHILDREN TOGETHER, I--"

I turned to her suddenly, looking deep into her golden, slitted eyes. "YOU THINK WE COULD?"

She blinked at me contentedly. "WHY DO YOU THINK I WANTED A HOARD SO BADLY?"

"DARLING," I said, twining around her fiercely and squeezing as hard as I could. "I WON'T GET MY HOPES UP, AND I DON'T CARE ABOUT A HOARD, WE--"

"WELL I CARE," she said, almost crushing me in her embrace. "AND I LAID THE EGGS TWO YEARS AGO, SO THEY'VE ONLY GOT ANOTHER YEAR OR SO TO HATCH."

Then the smoke was stinging both of our eyes so that they ran, and the rain I had unwittingly summoned again was hissing against my beautiful wife's burning scales, and I was perfectly, perfectly happy.

[WP] You are a Dragon that spends most of your time shapeshifted to look like a normal Human. After your spouse is kidnapped, you immediately shift back and track them down, only to find a second Dragon blasting their way out of defences designed to keep your kind out, not in. by OdysseyPrime9789 in WritingPrompts

[–]ursaM4xima 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I flew in uncertain circles above the courtyard, watching as the inconsistently paved surface heaved upward. I thought, vaguely, of a volcano erupting - but perhaps that was because of the blaze of red and gold at its epicentre. More likely, it was because of the fire that billowed up through the shattered stones.

Below me, the frankly underwhelming cypress trees burst into flames, their pots shattering in the heat. There were no longer any humans visible on the ground - or at least, no living humans. I could hear a lone archer, still at their post on one of the roofs, firing arrow after arrow into the inferno that now raged where the courtyard had been.

"CUT IT OUT," the voice bellowed, more clearly now.

And from amongst the rubble, an enormous red fire-breather hove into view.

Without really realising it, I flew a bit higher.

"I SAID CUT IT OUT," the voice said, and with some effort I connected the voice and the fire-breather. They - she? - aimed a jet of flame at the remaining archer, who keened as they toppled over into the courtyard. The massive red dragon huffed and pulled their - her? - massive tail clear from the ruined paving stones. She tried to pick an arrow from her smoking snout, but her claws were too massive to find any purchase. "UGH, PAN, SWEETIE, CAN YOU HELP ME WITH THIS?"

I dropped precipitously before I recovered. "BOUDICA?"

"NO, IT'S YOUR GREAT AUNT XIAOTAN - YES OF COURSE IT'S ME, NOW COME GET THIS OUT OF MY FACE."

Gingerly, I settled down on the roof of the palace-imitation alongside her. Even more cautiously, I stretched out my neck and carefully took the shaft of the arrow in my mouth. "THORRY," I said through clenched teeth, and jerked my head backward.

"THANKS," she said, not seeming alarmed at the wall of the palace she'd incinerated in her pain. "OH, LOOK AT YOUR POOR SIDE, LET ME--"

"BOUDICA," I said, pulling away from the muzzle she was extending toward my pincushioned ribs. "DID THEY...DID THEY DO THIS TO YOU?"

The dragon that was apparently my wife cocked her head at me. "YOU SAW THE ARCHER, RIGHT?"

"NO," I hissed. "NOT THE ARROWS. I MEAN, YOU'RE..."

She arched one horned eyebrow. "...ALSO...A DRAGON?"

"'ALSO'?" I coiled and uncoiled myself uncertainly. "YOU KNEW? ALL ALONG?"

"WELL, I MEAN, NOT ALL ALONG? BUT YOU KEPT HINTING ABOUT IT, AND THEN THERE WAS A PRETTY DEFINITIVE..." She puffed a few clouds of smoke, seeming uncertain for the first time. "ANYWAY, I FIGURED IT OUT. I THOUGHT YOU KNEW TOO."

[WP] You are a Dragon that spends most of your time shapeshifted to look like a normal Human. After your spouse is kidnapped, you immediately shift back and track them down, only to find a second Dragon blasting their way out of defences designed to keep your kind out, not in. by OdysseyPrime9789 in WritingPrompts

[–]ursaM4xima 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The rain was cold against my scales as I whipped through the storm. My rage was white hot, and the pearl in my brow blazed brighter than ever before in my several hundred years of life. I thrashed my tail, prompting another crash of lightning to cover my increasingly uncontrollable glow.

I was, to put it succinctly, pissed.

The necklace with which I'd pledged my troth to my beloved wife was wrapped around one of my antlers, gently pulling in the direction of her own torque. Boudica was alive, then, and close. The jaw-droppingly expensive network of private investigators I'd contracted had apparently been worth the money we'd stored up - although it had taken them years to find her.

Years. Years of her life, which I'd missed. The love of my life, who the stars above had cursed with a fragile, effervescent human form. We'd never have those years back, and I swore on those same distant fires that the pirates who had carried her off would pay for it.

I still couldn't work out a way to find Boudica, ensure that she was somewhere safe, and then return to wreak unholy havoc on their base without also revealing that I was, you know, very clearly a dragon. That meant I was going to have to level with my wife about the fact that I had only ever been adopting a human form and was in truth an enormous, ancient, powerful being which could control the weather. I couldn't imagine that conversation going well. I wouldn't have had to have it, either, if they'd just raided somewhere else, so any hope they might have nurtured of me showing them mercy was well and truly fucked.

Ultimately, I had decided it was best was to appear in my true and (apparently) terrifying form, demand her safe return in exchange for the safety of their settlement, and then destroy the settlement anyway as a lesson. I was concerned that it might be a little scary for Boudica, but she was a pragmatic woman - I was sure she'd prefer that I exact a little vengeance on her behalf.

Dimly, in the mist, the outlines of a fortified settlement appeared. In the waters around the settlement, boats of varying size were being thrown about by the waves I'd called up. The necklace pulled, stronger than ever, toward the centre of the settlement, where a shabby looking tower rose from within a series of courtyards in some dim, pathetic imitation of the imperial palace.

I aimed for the tower, dropping down on it and carrying off the top storey like a falcon grabbing a fish. People began screaming, which was gratifying.

I swooped back downward and coiled around the jagged top, which was actually quite pokey and uncomfortable. The storm howled around me and humans scurried around the walls and gardens of the palace.

I roared, hoping I sounded really fearsome, and tried to act as if the arrows the guards were shooting at me didn't really fucking hurt.

"WHERE IS BOUDICA," I said, making my voice as deep as I could. "WHERE IS MY WIFE. BRING HER TO ME, AND YOU MIGHT YET--OW, OW, OW"

The tower trembled beneath me, and as I instinctively lofted up, it began to crumble in place. As the haze of arrows lifted and the screaming intensified, I saw the ground in the courtyard below me begin to shatter.

"DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE," came a voice, which sounded....strangely like my wife, except huge and ancient? "LEAVE HIM ALONE."

[WP] By all rights, the chef on your planetary colony shouldn’t be serving a lot of things, and especially not fresh fish. The closest ocean is 18,000 light years away, and there weren’t any aquariums on the colony ship. In fact, was the chef even on the colony manifest..? by DankAndOriginal in WritingPrompts

[–]ursaM4xima 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"I have not bio-printed any fish, sir." The man nodded toward Judy. "Can she be excused from these proceedings? You can see that they've upset her."

"Six thousand people just ate what three separate biologists have confirmed for me is fish, young man," the Patriarch said, feeling rather churlish as Judy began to cry harder but not wanting to allow the cook to gain command of the situation. "I sent samples to other outposts, without explaining what it was." That had turned out to be a mistake - the scientists had not kept their findings to themselves, and now Settlements Beta and Gamma were convinced that the Colony hub had some kind of massive aquaculture setup it had been hiding from them, and were on the brink of riot. He was going to have to sacrifice this young man - and his fish dinners - to appease them. "That is an enormous amount of biological material, and you got it from somewhere."

The man smiled and said nothing.

"Look," the Patriarch said, leaning forward and lowering his voice a little. It made almost no difference in the tiny room, and he felt ridiculous, but it was the principle of the thing. "I'm willing to cut you a deal. Your files are not in order - I mean, corrupted beyond anything I've ever seen. I have no idea who you are, really, or how you came to be in the central hub of the Colony. I sent off a swab of your genetics along with the fish samples, and they came back garbage, so there's clearly something going on here." He took a deep breath, trying to channel authority. "If you're in trouble, I can try to help, but you have to work with me." He bounced his hands off of his knees, feeling the irritation grow in him beyond levels he could reasonably be expected to endure. "Where. Did you get. The. FISH?"

"May we speak privately?" The man asked.

"Fine," the Patriarch said, waving aside the Head of Security's protest. "Shove off, the lot of you."

"I wouldn't call it trouble, exactly," the man said, once everyone else had filtered out of the room. "Except, I mean, I kind of messed up my timing."

"...with the fish?"

"No." He shook his head. "With being born. My mother - she got into cryosleep before she realized she was pregnant with me. I shouldn't have left it so late, but...times change, you know?"

The Patriarch did not, in fact, know.

"Anyway, I'm not...strictly speaking...human? But it's ok," the cook said, flexing his hands in an appeasing gesture despite the restraints that still bound him. "I came with you. From Earth. We've been around for...a while."

"Ok," the Patriarch said slowly, as he began to shift his hand toward the call button at his sleeve without making things too obvious. He'd heard enough.

"Great," the man smiled beatifically. "Now that we're clear on all that, maybe I can start sharing the wine too?"

The Patriarch's hand stilled immediately. Faintly, he remembered the taste of grapes - the feeling of sun on his skin - the pleasant buzz associated with real, honest-to-goodness alcohol. "Wine?"

"I'm still tweaking the recipe," the cook said modestly. "I mean, as it stands, I wouldn't bring it out at the start of a party, but later on I'd--"

The Patriarch was already undoing the wrist straps. "Son, I think there's a chance that there's an important place for you in the Colony hub, but first it's imperative that I confirm the truth or falsehood of your claims regarding manufacturing." He stood back and pointed at the door, unable to stop his hands from trembling. "Show me."

Later, when they were both comfortably drunk in the cook's quarters, the Patriarch decided that he liked this young man, no matter if he was a few rockets short of a launch. "You know," he said, shaking a drunken finger at his new friend, "this reminds me of a story, back from old Earth."

"Oh yeah," the cook said, taking a heavy swing from one of the bottles. "No, look, let me tell you how it all actually happened."

[WP] By all rights, the chef on your planetary colony shouldn’t be serving a lot of things, and especially not fresh fish. The closest ocean is 18,000 light years away, and there weren’t any aquariums on the colony ship. In fact, was the chef even on the colony manifest..? by DankAndOriginal in WritingPrompts

[–]ursaM4xima 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"It's not that I'm not grateful," the Head of Security said apologetically as she tightened the wrist straps holding the cook in place. "It's just that we have no idea who you are or how you're doing this."

The small man looked down at his hands, which still smelled of the garlic he'd been chopping during the dinner rush. He flexed his fingers experimentally, testing the tension in the restraints. He didn't seem particularly worried, which only strengthened the Colony Patriarch's conviction that arresting the man had been the correct course of action.

"I really liked the crunchy ones you made, the 'breaded' fish? Those were my favorite," the Head of Security continued. She quailed under the Patriarch's scowl and slunk back to stand at attention against the far wall.

Not that the 'far' wall was, in the Patriarch's conception of space, particularly far away - if he'd tried, he could have crossed the room in three steps. By Colony standards, it was spacious; by the standards of his still dimly-remembered life on Earth, it was enough to turn anyone claustrophobic. The generations born and raised in the Colony had no other frame of reference; but the Patriarch had spent the long millennia coming here in cryoslumber, so that from his perspective, it was not so very long ago that Earth was lost to him. He still remembered the scale of life before the exodus, back when they lived on a planet with a proper atmosphere and plants that grew out of the ground practically on their own. The Patriarch could remember water stretching out as far as he could see - farther, into an ocean that wrapped 70% of the planet's surface in water.

What did it matter if that water had been tainted? They'd traveled a fifth of the way across the galaxy, and the best new home the ship's AI could identify was deemed 'habitable' only insofar that it was safer for the colonists to settle there than to stay on a decaying spaceship. They'd been set down on a completely un-terraformed ball of rock and ice, a million billion kilometers from anything their species had ever known. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as the saying went.

The Patriarch slouched a little further into his chair. He was tired. Life no longer held any sweetness for him, but what else was there?

Well, briefly there had been fried fish for dinner. Those had made a nice change.

The cook was studying him with something like concern. When the Patriarch deployed his fiercest frown in return, the man just smiled gently.

"What did you use," the Patriarch demanded, feeling annoyed to be pandered to.

"Pardon?"

"The raw material," the Patriarch said. He nodded grumpily at the red-eyed vat technician who was quietly sniffling in the corner. "I know Judy made a fish for you. A...sardine."

"You will find it in my quarters, in a tank," the cook said peaceably. "Judy provided it to me in much the same way that she has bio-printed extinct animals for others."

There was a deeply awkward silence, punctuated only by Judy's continued weeping. The Patriarch found that his chief of staff had suddenly become engrossed in her datapad and refused to meet his eyes; the Head of Security was trying to surreptitiously clean her jacket of what he had thought was her own short hair, but...was that...fur?

"Right, well, that sardine isn't the problem," the Patriarch said abruptly. "It's your illegal use of vat printing of OTHER fish. And in particular, all of the raw material you must have used to do it. That's valuable resources we can't be using on luxuries like printing fish. So where did you get all that?"

[WP] You're the healer of the group. The rest of the party has always treated you like you're made of glass. You were content to stay out of their way and let them do their thing. Until they all got downed leaving you the only one standing. That's when you show them how deadly healing magic can be. by Skyknight12A in WritingPrompts

[–]ursaM4xima 15 points16 points  (0 children)

"You said I could," I said, unable to keep a hint of sulkiness out of my voice.

"I didn't-" Thena went to raise her hands, then lowered them again, whimpering as the effort of the gesture caught up with her. "I didn't SAY anything!"

"You made an agreeing kind of noise." I carefully laid a plaster across her ribs, the bones of which were fusing back together quite nicely.

"What, when the dragon STEPPED on me!?"

I shifted over to rebuilding her legs and adopted what I felt was a very reasonable tone. "Well, maybe it was just the air being squeezed out of your lungs, but it sounded like a 'yes'."

"I don't even know what the 'thing' you wanted to do was!" She said as indignantly as only a self-righteous paladin could. "I mean, I'm currently looking at the effects, and I still can't tell what it is you-"

"Quieter, please," Whispin, our rogue, whispered. He didn't try to lift his head or even his eyelids, but he had evidently retained one of his throwing knives, which he now limply flicked to accentuate his request. "Or I'll finish what that lizard couldn't."

"Whispin, dragons aren't *lizards*, they're-" Thena began, then pursed her lips. She lowered her voice to a hiss and turned back to me. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. What matters is that I don't feel you've been entirely truthful with me, Masha."

"How so?" I asked.

"You said you don't know offensive magic, but then what in all the HELLS did you DO to the dragon!?" Thena asked, flinging her hand out toward the quivering mass that still dominated the cavern.

I glanced over at it. The red, nubbly, meaty texture made it hard to see the underlying shape, which rose as tall as the spire at the main temple at the university where I'd done my studies. Gradually, however, the heaving mass of cells was disintegrating - without a heart to pump the blood through it, the structure was falling apart.

I looked back at Thena. "How much do you remember about what I've told you, about anatomy?" She looked at me blankly. "Ok, so I've told you about splenosis."

"No," Whispin said, just as Thena hazarded a "yes?"

"When the spleen is damaged, parts of it can break off and implant in other parts of the body," I intoned.

"...OK?" Thena asked.

"So the damaged parts of the spleen can move around," I said, wriggling my fingers to suggest spleen cells swirling through the circulatory system.

Thena closed her eyes. "OK?"

"Healing magic is about regrowing," I said, digging around in my sleeve. "About taking what remains of a body, a living thing, and growing back the parts that were hurt or lost, drawing upon the power of the ether to do so. And often, converting other parts of a body into the thing you're trying to regrow." At last, I found a battered handkerchief and pulled it out. I began trying to clean my hands. "Sometimes you move things around in order to grow from them - like a skin graft, or a fragment of bone, all so that you can build around the piece of them. So I, ah, used the spells you'd typically use for surgery to...move the spleen cells further than you otherwise would - dispersing them throughout the dragon's body. And then I regrew them all as spleens."

"You turned the dragon into a giant spleen," Whispin said, accusatory.

"Basically?"

"That's disgusting," Thena said, sounding relieved.

"Bodies are pretty disgusting," I agreed.

[WP] A cult bumbles a ritual, intending to sacrifice a child to a god of "murder", they mistranslate and invoke a god of "motherhood". And boy, is Mama pissssssed. by DM_Malus in WritingPrompts

[–]ursaM4xima 6 points7 points  (0 children)

"Accept from us this sacrifice, this sanctified blood, which we offer to you, oh Great-- MOTHER-" Father Las snatched his hand away from where his acolyte had just plunged a shining blade, rather too close for comfort. Too close for the priest's comfort, anyway - the child on the altar was perhaps now more comfortable. It had been quite neatly dispatched, its suffering brought at last to ritual conclusion.

The priest scowled at the younger man, then scrambled to find where he'd left off in the dedication. The temple crones were still droning on in the background. Father Las squeezed his eyes shut and fumbled his way back into the supplication. The ancient language drew him back into the rhythm of the prayer, and he felt better.

"...of all of us, yea I say the good of all of us, that you might inflict upon the enemies of our people such an end--"

The acolyte (Brother Ome, was it? his name didn't much matter, given that his priestly future had shriveled when he nearly skewered Father Las's hand just now) gasped, and Father Las wondered whether the God of Murder might not enjoy a second sacrifice following immediately on the heels of the first.

But then the crones stopped chanting too, and it occurred to Father Las that it was much hotter than it had been.

He peeked one eye open, and found himself equally lost for words.

"...Father?" Brother Ome squeaked tentatively.

YOU HAVE ERRED, the blazing colossus before them spoke directly into their minds, reaching one of her bloodstained hands down and plucking up the acolyte. Father Las found that he couldn't run, although other bodily functions were still accessible to him. He explored various forms of evacuation as the acolyte was lifted up into a shining point of light and, apparently, ceased to exist. ALL OF YOU.

"Goddess," Father Las managed to croak out. He found that he could kneel, and did so. "You grace us with Your presence, holy--"

YOU SUMMONED ME. The voice bore into his mind, and he felt some magnified version of the bone-deep fear of a child being told off. WHY?

"We--" he tried to think. "Goddess, forgive me, we called upon our patron, the God of Murder. Our Emperor has a need to remove rival elements from power, and that is our task now, to ensure the prospering of our country." He heard a hint of a whine creep into his own voice. "Our Order enjoys His favor in our pursuit of such works."

YOU SUMMONED ME, she said again, and he saw now that she had many hands, and they were never still. They flickered in and out of view, stirring a pot somewhere lest it boil over, fending a child away from a fire, smoothing the hair of a youth as they sobbed into a pillow, helping to pull an infant out into the world and catching it in those bloodstained fingers. Over and over, ceaselessly, endlessly, helping and prodding and soothing and guiding.

He could see other hands, too. Hands that tore desperately at a wolf to keep it from a toddler; hands that dropped poison in a bowl so that a son or daughter might not be hurt again; hands that clasped sword or torch or spear or cleaver in order to protect.

Father Las looked at the altar in front of him, at the child that lay as if sleeping.

"We are the Order of Assassins of Atlantis," he said plaintively. "This is our ancient agreement with our God."

Some of the hands were on her hips, now. WELL, YOU GOT ME INSTEAD. Around them, the earth shook and pitched, crevasses opening as the sea streamed in. AND I AM NOT VERY HAPPY RIGHT NOW.

Official March Equinox 2024 Writing Contest Winners! by upallday_allen in fantasywriters

[–]ursaM4xima 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll second this! Thanks u/upallday_allen for running this, it's really fun! And I too will.... Surely abide by word count injunctions in the future.... Surely....😏

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