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Protected: Five Locks – a Patreon Story
Last Bid – Patreon Story
This story was written to Wyste’s prompt on my “Write something short, Lyn” prompt call here. It is set in my Tír na Cali setting; read more about Cali here.
2️⃣
The buyers were all bored, or perhaps they simply didn’t like the opening bid. More interesting purchases had gone first, prettier people, stronger people. No it was down to this boy in chains, trying not to panic.
The auction ended with no bids, not even a desultory bargain-basement sort of suggestion, below his asking price, below what any well-behaved slave should ever sell for. The boy in chains raised his chin and stared out at the thinning crowd. He was not going to cry, not for them. He was to good for that.
He was too good for the work camps, too, but that’s where he’d end up. The auctioneer was making the final call for bids. The woman’s voice was trailing off as she looked over at the boy. She caught his eye, somehow. He noticed the way that her teeth caught her lip.
“Ladies and gentleman,” she called, as she picked her cell phone up as if reading a message. From where he stood, the boy could see her screen: no message. Nothing but a picture of lavender fields. “Ladies, gentleman and sundry, this is most unusual.”
The discussion in the room stopped.
The auctioneer cleared her throat. “I appear to have gotten a bid by text. While this is unprecedented, it is not, technically, disallowed by the rules of the auction hall. The buyer wishes to be anonymous, of course, but her La – that is, the opening bid is ten thousand dollars.”
A card went up in the back of the room immediately. “Eleven thousand!”
And the bidding was off. The boy posed, his false smile becoming a real smile, as the numbers rose and rose and rose.
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The Warlord’s Cat – a Patreon story
This story is written to @Dahob’s prompt to May 2015’s “Love Stories” theme. The fact that she is a warlord might have something to do with me watching Fury Road last weekend.
~
“He loves you very much.” The ambassador’s eyes followed the warlord’s slave as he left the room. He moved gracefully, like a predator. The chains around his wrists and ankles, shiny and decorative for all their strength, seemed to hamper him not at all.
“He loves me like a cat loves its human,” the warlord answered, her voice bored. “He knows where the roof and the warmth are, the food and the safety. Even predators like a safe space to sleep.” Continue reading
Protected: Ashes and Love – Patreon Story
Down, Down, Down – a Patreon Story
This is written to Clare K. R. Miller ‘s request for “…more Doug being awesome? More of this.” It follows after the linked story, which itself follows, in part, after Addergoole: Year 9.
~
Doug was back in a war zone. They were in the bowels of Addergoole, battling creatures that would not see reason. They’d brought Agmund down with them — three of Doug’s cy’ree, two of Luke’s, and two of Agmund’s were guarding the rear, in case anything got through — but these creatures seemed impervious to Panida Workings. Just in case, they’d tried Intinn and Tlacatl. Nothing.
“They are either animals or they are Makers,” Agmund had declared firmly. “If they cannot be read by Intinn, they are animals.”
Whatever let him sleep at night. Doug ripped his blade through another one and began to burn the body before it had stopped bleeding. These things, if you didn’t get them all the way dead on the first go, they got back up again. Whatever they were.
“That’s the last of them, I think.” Luke cleaned his blade on the scorched, ashy hide of the creature. It looked like the unclean offspring of a warthog and a wyvern by way of a platypus, and now by way of a woodchipper and a fireplace. “I hope Laurel’s figured out what the blazes they were doing down—”
“Hsst.” Doug moved forward, tracking the faintest sound. “There’s still something down here.”
They each muttered their own not-here Workings, silencing them, hiding them, and strode forward. Doug’s wing-stubs twitched with each broken wall and glass-windowed door. He wanted to cleanse this place with fire, the whole thing. He wanted to bury it.
He saw a faint shimmer as Luke — hopefully it was Luke — pushed open the next door. Doug readied a fireball and his blade.
That wasn’t a monster. He pulled the fire back so quickly it nearly scorched his throat, before he had processed more than that. Those weren’t monsters. They were people. Those were kids.
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Protected: Leaving the Land of the Free
Protected: Whispers, for Patreon
Protected: After the Storm
The Storm Prince of Death
This is a story of Doomsday and Fae Apoc, written much-belatedly for January, whose theme was “I’m writing a lot of Doomsday.” Posted to WordPress as part of my ongoing “cross post everything to WordPress for archiving” project.
~~
The village Damson had grown up in had three scars which were never painted over, never repaired, never hidden, and it had four portraits in the Village Center which, unlike the portraits of Mayors and short-term heroes, were never moved or rotated to less prominent positions.
Damson had grown up with the stories: the Warrior That Comes With the Wind, the Storm Prince of Death, the Judgement On the Lightning. He had grown up with the old fighters – Galston and Tamera, Corby and Rodin – and their scars and their stories. He had taken classes in the Village Center, under the shifting and changing face of the Demon Prince, the the devil’s own smile constant, the rest shifting with the painter and the era.
And he had grown up with the deep scar across the town square where lightning had struck, the bite out of the outer wall where a dragon had landed, and the long scorched line of fire across the general store’s front. “The Storm Prince fought here,” he’d heard, more times than he could count. “Four times he has visited – one in his aspect as the Harbinger of Doom, the Woman on the Wind. Four times he has visited. And, while he has pulled our bacon from the fire many times, he has found us wanting many more. Beware the Storm Prince, because he will see the sin in your soul and scourge it clean.”
There were bodies in the local graveyard, too, Damson knew, who had been found too wanting by the Wind-Warrior. Those were graves with small stones and apologetic epitaphs. There were families who cursed the portraits of the Demon Prince – and Damson’s widowed mother and grandmother were among them. You had to whisper your curses, but Damson had picked them all up nonetheless.
And now he was standing in the center of the much-vaunted Doomsday Academy, in Cloverleaf, the City Built from Dirt. And he was staring up at the chin of the Demon Prince, while Professor Doomsday introduced him.
“And this is Leofric, Professor Inazuma. He teaches science, math, and combat. Leo, this is our newest student, Damson…”
Damson kicked the Demon Prince square in the knee and took off, running as fast as he could.