I'm Not Dead...

...just a very inactive blogger. I really needed a summer holiday from blogging, but I'll start blogging more actively soon. Lately most of my time has been occupied by resistors, conductors, hydraulics, pneumatics, and other things not related to fantasy or writing whatsoever. I've made progress on my WIP, however, and am currently rewriting a large portion which just sucked.

This weekend we're going to Tracon, a role-playing and anime event held in Tampere, Finland. It's good to meet fellow nerds every once in a while.

#DiceGames: Day One

Timony Souler's DiceGames challenge: three days, three dice rolls, three prompts. My first prompt is: “A red-haired vixen is trying to kill you. Deal with it.”

Auburn slammed the young woman against the wall. She lifted a hand to her victim’s throat, resisting the urge to finish her writer. Maybe she had a good reason for torturing her and the other characters.

“I’m sorry about what happens to you. I’m sorry about what happens to your… uh, family and friends.” Emilia peered over crooked glasses. She lifted a hand to push them back, but the though died under Auburn’s glare. “But you’re in a story and a story needs conflict or it suc—”

“Shut up!” Auburn’s fingers twitched. Her nails grew longer, sharpened into claws. “I don’t care what the parrots of writing blogs are repeating.” The shapeshifter lifted a hand from Emilia’s throat and set it on her shoulder. After a moment’s pause she continued through gritted teeth, “First you sent me to anger management and now you’re doing horrible things to me and the other characters.”

“I’m a writer! That’s more or less what we do.” She tried to shrug.

Auburn rolled her eyes. That was her writer’s excuse for everything. Why couldn’t she write something nice like children’s books? Then again that would mean no profanities, bashing heads or seducing people.

“Then stop writing.” She arched an eyebrow. “Or I will stop you.”

Emilia’s jaw dropped and her eyes widened. “I can’t…”

Auburn lifted a finger and drew it slowly across Emilia’s throat, leaving behind a white line. “Then I’ll have to kill you.”

“I know you, I created you. You don’t kill unless it’s necessary.” She pressed against the wall, trying to disappear between the stone’s seams.

“Try me.” The shapeshifter grabbed her hand and lifted it before her face. “And I can always cut off your fingers. We’ll see how you write then.”

“If you stop me from writing you’ll kill yourself. You only live on the pages and in the readers’ imagination.”

Auburn’s finger went lax, allowing Emilia to wrench her hand free. She stared at her writer, or tried; the smudges on her glasses almost hid her eyes. On impulse Auburn wiped her glasses with the sleeve of her dress. There, now she could see her writer’s fear better.

“You have a point.” She stepped back. “And the thought of hurting someone nice, it just doesn’t feel good.”
Emilia sighed and pushed her glasses up again.

Auburn crossed her arms. “You’re going to make this up to us. I want a happy ending for everyone.”

“Even the villains?”

“What? No, of course not.” She leaned against the wall. Anger tightened her features as she spoke, “The villains deserve my fist in their face and a life in a dragon’s gut.”

“If a happy ending makes sense, then I’ll write one, but I can’t annoy the readers.” She lifted her hands as Auburn opened her mouth to object. “You want your part of the story to be read? If I had you ride off into the sunset on a white fool’s dragon, with a strapping young lad, while chomping down a chocolate pastry…”

“All right! But if you kill me off, make it a big scene.” Auburn spoke the words slowly, “No off-the-page death.”

“I don’t think I’ve created anything capable of killing you, but all right.” She lifted her glasses off her nose and stared at them in disbelief. “Did you just spit on my glasses?”

The shapeshifter gave her a flat stare.

“Never mind, just go back to Verannia.” She waved her hand in dismissal. Auburn turned to leave. “Wait, how do you know about blogs?”

The shapeshifter shrugged as she opened the door. She looked over her shoulder and grinned. “I go through your mind when I’m bored.”

Emilia’s jaw dropped. “Just go. I need to plan a scene where you knock the marrow out of a skeletal demon.” She buried her face in her hands and muttered, “Pihkura*, what did I get myself into.”

*Emilia likes to use obsolete finnish swear words, such as “pihkura”, “pahkura”, “kehveli”, “himskatti” and “himputti”.

DiceGames: Death on the Doorstep

A bit late, but here it is: my third entry to Lady Antimony's DiceGames challenge. Again, I rolled number one: "Death just knocked at your door - convince him why you shouldn't die yet."

Silence had fallen, the world outside held its breath waiting for the knock to be answered. The door opened with a loud creak, a round face peeked through. “Yes?”

A solitary hooded figure stood still in the doorway. Behind it thunderheads rolled in front of the sun, enveloping the world in twilight.

“My name is Reaper, Grim Reaper.” The air grew cooler with the words, frost gathering in the doorframe. “Jason Thorne, I have come for you.”

“Are you sure?” Jason furrowed his brow; his lifestyle was unhealthy, but this was ridiculous.

A white skeletal hand appeared from the folds of the black robe, fingers clutching an old parchment. A thin finger ran across the list of names before settling on one.

“Yes. The gates of hell lie open before you…”

Behind Jason the clock struck five.

“Oh, it’s tea time.” The Grim Reaper walked past, straight to the rickety table. “Pour me a cup will you, dearie.”

Jason rummaged the top shelf for his roommate’s mother’s tea set. They were pink and with lilac flowers; The Reaper seemed delighted.

“Oh, I love flowers; they die ever so quickly, mind you.” Jason watched as the bony fingers grasped the handle of the teapot and poured the brown liquid into a small cup. “So, how’s life been treating you?”

He stared for a moment as the Reaper poured tea into his mouth, all of it ending up on the front of his robe. The Reaper cocked its skull inquisitively. “Up to now, well. I have a roof on top my head, my health—”

The Reaper scoffed at this.

“Why did you come for me?” Jason hadn’t touched his tea. The Reaper snatched Jason’s cup and drank it, before pouring himself another.

“That’s simple. You’re dying.” A manic cackling borne from the depth of the robe echoed in the room.

“But I can’t be! I haven’t lived yet.” Jason stood up sending his chair on the floor with a loud thud. “You’ve opened my eyes, I must see more of the world, experience it in all of its glory. I want to give up this fruitless effort at life and really live. See the green of the woods, smell the salt of the sea and look upon on a sunset with a loved one!”

The Reaper listened, enthralled.

“I have never even been truly in love. I have felt a woman’s touch, but no one who could gaze upon me lovingly. They were all meaningless, but now I see that life is not meant to be lived alone. Please, I beg of you Reaper, give me another shot at life!”

“Well— Oomph!” The Reaper crumbled into a heap of black fabric and bones, behind stood a lanky young man holding a bent crowbar. Jason stared at his roommate, then at the unmoving mass of black and white. When the grim reaper failed to show any signs of life, they both erupted into laughter.

“Nice, we killed Death!” Ben slapped his forehead. “Should’ve been done a long time ago!”

“We killed Death, so are we immortal now?” Jason poked The Reaper with a toe.

“Guess so.” Ben scratched his back with the crowbar. “What should we do about that?”

Jason reflected on the situation for a moment. He didn’t want to do anything stupid like jump off a cliff to test their newfound immortality. Then he knew; “Wanna go rob a bank?”

“Sure!”

An ominous rumble filled the room. Lightning stuck through the dark grey sky, sending the neighbour’s cat flying off the fence. Birds fell silent once more, lighting struck again.

The Reaper rose, a scythe in one hand, the other holding the back of his head. A low moan emanated from his bony jaws, shaking the foundations of the house.

“You fools fractured my beautiful skull!” The scythe rose. “Prepare to pay!”

The blunt end of the scythe struck Jason in the face; then the Reaper turned and struck Ben in the back of his head. Both died instantly, falling prey to the dark magic of the scythe.

The Grim Reaper crossed his arms, threw back his head and laughed heartily. No one messed with the bringer of death. Then, to his horror, he realised that the roommate wasn’t on the list. He was supposed to live a long and healthy life.

“Darn!” The Reaper struck the end of the scythe into the floor, which rotted and collapsed under the wasting touch. “HQ is going to be furious!”

The Grim Reaper gazed upon the two dead bodies; their souls were already headed towards a warmer place. He truly needed to learn how to control his temper.

Tuesday Tale Challenge 4 on Glitterlady's Blog

Not sure where this came from... Read the other stories here.

She hadn’t seen him sprinkle powder into her drink, had not tasted it on the tip of her tongue. Even the urgency in his voice had not given him away. He had dissembled his intensions successfully.

The idea had been nagging him before she mentioned divorce. He’d toyed with the idea of killing her, but the word had been the nail in her coffin.

She would once more become the dutiful little wife, obeying his every command. She would essentially be a rotting corpse—but hey, nobody’s perfect. 

It was good to be a necromancer.

Creatures of Verannia: Meet Cricri - and her tails

Her thoughts were interrupted by snoring; she had found who she sought. Puppy or Cricri as she preferred, was resting under a Healing Tree when Siri finally came. Cricri yawned and stretched her furry body before rising to her legs and padding over to the fellow hunter. Her appearance was canine except for the colouring: her underside was white as snow and her back blue as a lake, with darker stripes running over her ribs. She greeted Siri with a look only puppies and small girls mastered.

Cricri is a wurmtail hound – a canine creature with two snakes for tails, originally born out of a magical mishap. The legend goes that a young wizard wanted a unique pet and tried to dye his dog blue with a simple spell. Something went wrong and instead he found himself the proud owner of something even more unique: a snake-tailed talking blue dog. The first wurmtail hound was born.

Since then the hounds have bred stubbornly in the woods of Verannia, despite the obstacles. Reproduction has never been easy for wurmtail hounds, since each individual houses three personalities in one body. On top of that the personalities of the tails are often completely opposite: atheist-true believer, social butterfly-hermit, chaste-lecherous etc. Cricri’s tails Pink and Blue are a bimbo-scholar pair:

“I didn’t hear anything,” Siri searched her memories for something she might have heard, but found nothing worth notice.

“You're human,” Blue noted. “That's near deaf.”

“I thought snakes were near deaf,” Pink interrupted.

“Just because we don't have outer ears doesn't mean we can't hear, Pinkie.” Blue rolled her eyes, and gave Pink a sidelong glance of embarrassment.

“How could I know that!” She protested. “We're a woodland creature, not a biology student.”

“Well how then can I hear you ask about most obvious things, and question, and question and question my answers until I'm insane!” Blue hissed with fury.

Pink answered by sticking her pink, forked tongue at her.

---

“Technically, I've got three persons in one body,” Cricri said and glanced over her shoulder at Pink and Blue, “though it feels like I'm mothering two morons.”

“Oi!” Blue snapped.

“Huh?” Pink lifted her head from a patch of ice. “Sorry, but what did she say? I was busy admiring me eyelashes.”

“We don't have eyelashes.” Blue hung her head in chagrin, then added: “We don't even have eyelids.”

“Stop that!” Cricri bellowed, before giving chase to her tails.

So it is not very difficult to understand why wurmtail hounds usually prefer a solitary life. Every spring they gather to the annual Wurmtail Hound Courtship Gathering, an event the Elder Hounds have created to ensure the survival of the species. After two weeks of pairing up, the hounds sigh in relief and return to their solitary lives.

Wurmtail hounds never consent to become pets, even though they may sometimes outsource hunting to a Foodmaster in return for their services. Cricri’s Foodmaster Siri provides her with leftovers and in return the hound protects Siri from possible threats and warns if either of her uncles is searching for her. Though Cricri is no one’s pet, she has become attached to her young Foodmaster.

She was distracted by a cold, wet touch on her shoulder, followed by a warm body curling against her back.

“Stop eavesdropping and go to sleep,” Cricri muttered. “You know you can’t look tired if you’ve been sleeping.”