First Campaigner Challenge: Tainted

This is my entry to the First Campaigner Challenge. Here are the rules:

Write a short story/flash fiction story in 200 words or less, excluding the title. It can be in any format, including a poem. Begin the story with the words, “Shadows crept across the wall”. These five words will be included in the word count.

If you want to give yourself an added challenge (optional), do one or more of these:

• end the story with the words: "everything faded." (also included in the word count) (Check)

• include the word "orange" in the story

• write in the same genre you normally write (Check)
  

• make your story 200 words exactly!

Tainted

Shadows crept across the wall and along the floor, attaching to clawed feet and thick tails that scraped along the ground. Arre watched her kin pass. She wouldn’t take part in the search for survivors. A shudder ran along her spine; the creatures were like mirror images of herself. Stunted wings folded against drawn skin, black tongues writhing in their maws, awaiting the taste of flesh.

What a distorted, hated being she’d become, marred by the use of tainted magic. One time wouldn’t affect her, she had thought. She’d protected her village from the onslaught of monsters, but they never stopped coming. Each time she changed a little, until she became one of them.

She opened her maw wide, wishing she could devour herself and end her cursed existence.

Rays of light flowed along the earth, bouncing off the armor of a hired warrior. She’d killed him. Even he had failed to defeat her, not once had the blade touched her. Awkwardly her clawed fingers curled around the blade’s handle. She lifted it, pressed the tip against her chest, shifted it a little to the left.

Relief mingled with pain rushed through her. Everything faded.

---

If you enjoyed the story, please like it here. I'm number 163.

Tag!

I got tagged by Colleen Chen. Here are my answers to her questions.

1. If you had to change your name, what would you change it to?
I like Kyllikki, Mielikki and Mansikki, but those are traditional Finnish cow names… I’d go with Annikki, though it ends with –ikki, it’s not a cow name.

2. Which Greek or Roman (or other culture's mythological) deity would you be (either who you'd like to be or who you most resemble)?
Mielikki, the Finnish goddess of woods (yes, also a traditional cow name).

3. Would you like to marry a Vulcan?
I’m not sure how boyfriend would react if I said yes, so I’ll have to say no. Plus I kinda prefer elves.

4. Would you choose immortal life with the elves, or a human, mortal life with the one you love and a child-to-be?
Hmm… I want kids to brainwash into reading. I’ll have to go with the mortal life.

5. If you had to write fan fiction, what fictional world would you choose to write in?
My brain asploded. So many to choose from... Let's say Fillory from
The Magicians and Magician King by Lev Grossman. The place is so messed up I could do almost anything with it.

6. Do you believe in any conspiracy theories?
No *shifty eyes*, should I?

7. What do you consider your best quality?
I am kind and caring.

8. What do you consider your worst quality?
I am often too kind and sensitive. I’m no doormat anymore, but I still have the feeling that the world ends if someone gets angry at me.

9. Do you ever feel over-exposed on your blog?
I’ve posted mostly stories so far, so not yet.

10. If you were to reincarnate, what would you like to be?
A lap dog. My coton de tulear has it easy, she just sleeps, eats and begs for more food.

11. What is your biggest pet peeve?
I have trouble composing my thoughts in a coherent sentence when trying to comment on blogs. I try to say what the post makes me feel, but all I get is ”eeerr…ummm…uhh…” and the like.

I’m a bit late and everyone is probably busy with the first task so I’m not tagging anyone. If someone wants my 11 questions just ask and I’ll give them.

Fourth Writers' Platform-Building Campaign

Again it's time for the Writers' Platform-Building Campaign, “a way to link those of us in the writing community together with the aim of helping to build our online platforms.”

Read more about the campaign on Rachael Harrie's blog. You can join until February 15th.

Nightgale Blog Challenge: The Unfinished Tale

Fourth and last entry to Nightgale blog challenge. Thank you Glitterlady and other participants for the great stories. David A. Ludwig has written a summary of the challenge, read it here.

Emma sought the words her father would have chosen. Did the dragon’s scales glint or gleam as it shifted atop its mound of treasure? No, he would have first described the gold, rubies, and magical relics strewn into a pile and then revealed the dragon lying atop the fortune.

The words were right, now she had to write them down. She held up one of her father’s pages, studied the form of the letters. How the top of t’s curved, how the i’s were a little slanted and how the ink stains became more frequent when the pace of the story grew faster.

Like a muse, the memory of her father guided her hand. She worked throughout the night, studying the pages her father had written before death had claimed him. When her work was done she snuck back into her father’s study and hid the papers below a cupboard. As if they’d fallen there.

Come morning, she pretended to find them. She held her breath for a moment; she would have to sound surprised and elated at the “discovery”, otherwise they would see through her ruse.

“Mama! Lil’ brother!” Emma held one of the papers in her hand. “Come see what I found!”

“I’m not little!”

“I found some papers. The letters look like dad’s handwriting. ” She swallowed; mother had furrowed her brow. “And they pick up where father’s story left off.”

“Mama, read it to me!” Her brother bounced up and down, brown locks mimicking the movement. He’d believed the lie. Not much else mattered. “I want to know what happens next!”

“You’ll have to sit down and listen.” Mother had a knowing smile on her face as she walked in to the den holding the papers and began reading her daughter’s words.

Emma smiled; father hadn’t told her the ending of the story, but it had been clear to her. The beggar boy would outwit the dragon, not slay it, and return to his family a rich young man. Her little brother liked simple, happy endings. They made him smile when nothing else could.

Nigthgale Blog Challenge: A Final Gift

My third entry to Glitterlady's Nightgale blog challenge. Takes place in Verannia.

The earth mage plodded through the woods, fingers touching rough bark of a pine and naked limb of a birch as he walked past his old friends. Snow crunched beneath his feet and clung to his boots.

Weariness forced him to sit under a pine. The tree was old, wounded by the years and twisted by the wind. The mage studied the signs of great age with mild envy; he had lost the opportunity to grow old.

He had healed the ill and lifted the spirits of those in need for ten years now. But when the plague had come to North, he had spread himself too thin trying to help everyone, and caught the damn disease himself. It was a mistake and he had to pay the price, but he refused to die behind closed doors, surrounded by sorrow and decay.

He would die in the pure snow; his body would feed the earth and the trees which stood sentry between his home and the Ice Barrens. Gently he touched the scaly bark of the pine. Perhaps he could help the tree survive a little longer.

He reached outwards, grasped the threads of life flowing beneath the smooth bark, and began binding his body to the trunk. The predators would have to find something else to eat; besides, his diseased flesh might sicken the animals.

Tears appeared along the surface of the tree, resin seeped down onto his shoulders. The golden resin flowed down along his body until it touched the ground, where it hardened. More resin covered him, reaching up to his neck. The mage sighed out his last breath as he left the world behind. But a part of him would stay in this world, feeding the old tree.

Nighgale Blog Challenge: The Sacrifice

This is my second entry to Glitterlady's Nightgale blog challenge. I'm sorry it's late, I had a busy week and hit a wall with the story.

PROMPT:

Immortality comes to you, you do not go to Immortality.

The sacrifice had ceased screaming. Blood from the tear on his throat trickled down the sides of the stone altar, dripping on to the white flowers laid around the slab. Gibbet smiled; the first victim had been hard, but the time he got to the tenth he’d gotten used to the pleading and the threats. All a part of his quest for immortality.

The deity of life had ignored his request for years, but he could not ignore the death knells of his followers for long.

The dead man’s hand twitched and Gibbet quickly stepped back. Was it time?

Slowly the corpse’s hand rose to the gaping wound on his throat. Pinching the wound close, the man sat up and stared Gibbet in the eyes.

”Stop killing my followers!” The corpse’s face was beetroot red from anger. “I’m busy enough as it is without having to resurrect them.”

Good, he had the deity’s attention now. “Give me what I prayed for and the slaughter will end.”

The man’s mouth twisted as the deity considered. “Eternal youth is only for the High Priests.”

Gibbet’s mind wandered to the painting he had walked past every morning. Men like him being ripped apart by monsters, drowning in waste, subjected to horrors beyond his imagination. He’d committed murder several times. It was either immortality or the Underworld for him.

“I will continue killing your followers until you strike me down.”

The deity arched an eyebrow. “And why wouldn’t I do that right now?”

Gibbet hid his fear in false scoff, “What kind of deity of life would you be?”

“Hmm… you are correct. I cannot kill.” The deity lifted the man’s free hand to rub his chin. “Ah, if you will stop slaughtering my followers, then yes, I shall grant you immortality.”

The deity set the dead man’s hand atop his head and muttered in a low voice. For a moment Gibbet feared the deity would twist his head, snapping his neck, but the god of life couldn’t kill.

He felt the deity’s voice more than heard it. The words settled on him and slipped beneath. He could feel a change, something fundamental leaving his body.

“You’re now an immortal, bastard.” The deity spat the words.

Gibbet smiled as he bowed his head. “I will never grow old, I am forever young.”

The deity burst into laughter. “Forever young? Hah! No, you will rot, but you will not die. I was impressed with you, working and praying diligently. I would have answered your prayers and given you eternal youth, but you strayed from the righteous path.”

All expression faded from the man’s face. His hand fell from his throat; the deep wound had knitted shut, leaving behind only a thin scar. The priest’s eyelids slid down, then shot open widen.

“You slit my throat!” The man shouted, pointing an accusing finger at Gibbet, who just stared at him blankly. This had gone all wrong. Perhaps the god of death would grant him real immortality or at least take back his brother’s curse.