21
Nov
NaNo has been going really slowly for me, and I’ve lost interest in working on it at the moment, hence this story, which is the first in a short series. Hopefully I can pick things up in the next couple days.
With a twang, the rope snapped. Fryca cursed. “The bloody thing broke again. We’ll need another day or two to reset.”
Ellgis patted her on the shoulder. “It’s nothing, we’ll have it sorted out soon enough.”
“Nothing? Nothing? How can you say that! We’ve got those damn Wheelies breathing down our necks, and if this doesn’t work, they’re going to capture us.”
“We have enough. This one doesn’t matter that much.”
“But it does! If we’ve trapped them on the path through the swamp, this will sweep them into the murk and bury them there.”
Ellgis looked out over the path, where dead logs and hidden trips and pressured stones covered the ground. If the device worked, it was supposed to fire branches as spears, swing dead logs across the path, and then drop mud on those in the water. He was sure the Knights of the Broken Wheel would have never seen something like this before. And they still wouldn’t have if they didn’t get the counterweight working. Three times they had tried to attach it, but each time the ropes had failed.
They’d used stronger weaves, and more of them, but each time the massive basket of stones failed. And with the scouts reporting that the Wheelies and their soldiers were little more than a day away, if this contraption didn’t work, well, the village would have to flee deeper into the swamp. And that meant losing all of the inventions they had created.
To Ellgis, the machines were more important than the villagers. People could be replaced. Years of experiments could not. Fryca felt the same way, and so the two of them were out here, late at night, trying to fix that blasted basket. If they saved the rest of the villagers as a result, well and good.
They fumbled in the dark for some time, but without enough light to see, they became more and more frustrated, until Fryca threw her lantern into the swamp and stormed off. Ellgis followed, and the two went home.
The next morning they resumed their work, but they found the basket of stones had sunk into the swamp, and they had to spend many an hour digging it out of the muck. By the time they were ready to lift it into the air again, the scouts had fled back into the village, and the Knights of the Broken Wheel were at the edge of the swamp. This would be a trying time.
15
Nov
Had a sudden burst of flash fiction inspiration. Yes, I should have been writing NaNo (I didn’t today), but I’ll cope. Hope you like it.
The earth split apart, and the seas rushed in, and where once there had stood fertile land, now no sounds could be heard but the crashing of waves against rock, and the cry of the gulls as they flew overhead. Water danced above the grave of civilization, for down in those murky depths dwelt cities and villages full of corpses, the remnants of a bygone age.
They had sought to rule, to corral the powers of this world before their thrones, and in return the world had cracked asunder, wrenched apart by their overbearing might. And as they had torn the world, so their kingdoms were rent apart by the peasants, for those of lowly stature had never enjoyed the great benefits of magic, and had been forced to bow and scrape to the will of those who possessed such power.
No more would they do so, for in a rage they had stormed the walled cities and razed the houses of the gentry, and burnt the books of magic. Over their thighs they had broken the magicians’ staves, and in so doing doomed the earth to its fate, for no longer was there a force powerful enough to turn back nature.
And so now the waters lap above the graves of mortal men, and magic is outlawed, while those few who possess it are hunted down and lynched. It is a hard land, a harsh land, for chivalry is unknown and starvation is rampant. Even now, many decades after the collapse, the population still must fight tooth and nail for their very survival.
Amidst the ruins of the old there comes the first buds of a new country, a new society, as irrigation spreads water across dry fields, and men of great ingenuity ply their trade in secret workshops. But all about does danger stalk, for those with little love for the new order seek to take what they can, and these bands of marauders have grown great and terrible in the time following the cataclysm.
And in the west, there is a new stirring of magic, a bitter magic, a cold magic, feeding its hunger for revenge, for retribution against the peasants who wounded it so. Not yet recovered, the world stands atop the precipice of a great chasm, and a single push will send it teetering over the edge. They intend to give it that push.
12
Oct
So, this is a bit of a departure from the pieces I normally put up here. It’s a bit of curious exploration behind the life of dragons, and the cultural impact they have. Because of my background, most of these tales will be drawn from Europe.
Dragons are a universal constant. They exist in stories from Wales to China, and all the countries in between. In the Western world, whenever you open a fantasy story, bets are it will have dragons. The most famous roleplaying game of all time is called Dungeons & Dragons. The Hobbit has a dragon. Whole series are based around the premise of dragons (Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern). And yet the myths and legends that tell of the first dragons are ancient, far enough back that some of them are lost to the mists of time.
Grendel, from the old Germanic tale of Beowulf, is one of the early examples of a creature that has fallen under the title of dragon. Then there is King Arthur, and the tales of slaying a dragon. Or St. George and the Dragon. The Welsh flag is Y Ddraig Goch, “The Red Dragon”. Stories abound in Wales about dragons.
What I am curious about is where does this universal constant come from? Why are dragons so old that they disappear back before recorded time in European and Asian history? What about these giant lizards makes them so mythical and special? Is it their alien size and immense power, their wisdom, their magic? All of those are constants across cultural boundaries, but something must give dragons the special place they hold in the hearts of humanity. I’m hoping you can answer the question in the comments.
24
Sep
Days passed by, and I wept in sadness for their loss. Months strolled along, and I waved goodbye with my heart aching. Years disappeared into the mists, and I bawled openly. I saw friends come and go, family born and dying, the kindness of strangers, all the little acts of life. But I was not in any of these scenes. I had been redacted, removed from life by fate.
I watched from the sidelines now, seeing life as it would have been without me. I lived a movie, seeing someone else take my place, take over the actions I once made. I saw other men father my children, other men raise them, and I shuddered inside. I saw my wife beaten, and I howled in rage, but could do nothing.
Every day that I watched became an agony, and when the story of my life had swept before my eyes and I had been tortured once more, the reel would flicker, and then it would start again, another telling of my family’s life without me. Each was subtly different, and all horrible. Eventually, I began to doubt my own existence, to wonder if I had ever met my wife or had children.
I wished for the peace of death, but I long ago had been shown death was no release for me. I shuddered in memory of what had happened to my liver. But this, this was a thousand times worse. I had been let free, given the gift of a normal life, only to have it snatched away at the end and used to torture me again and again.
The movie showed another man meeting my wife for the first time. My heart broke.
23
Sep
Wind whipped Isabella’s hair as she leaned out the window. “David, come here!” David obediently looked out, then sat back down to his book. “Beautiful, dear”.
“You have all the romance of a shrew, husband. We are flying across the country on a beautiful clear day, and you’ve got your nose buried in some tripe about a long lost jungle creature.”
“Izzy, I am quick content with my lot in life. I have seen the country many a time. I have not seen this book before.”
“You are such a bore.” Isabella flounced off, heading to the bar where someone of more suitable personality would entertain her. Above, the engines of the mighty dirigible whirred and whined, a constant background hum.
Isabella was quite pleasantly drunk when she returned to their cabin. David glanced up and sighed. He’d have to tuck her in again, and make sure she didn’t do anything stupid. She was a wonderful lady, but hardly the most skilled with self-control. Rather unbecoming to her stature, but all the more endearing because of it.
David was hopeful their escape had gone unnoticed, but became more and more apprehensive as the days passed. Airships were hardly inconspicuous, and someone had to have noticed.
His premonitions were proven right the next day, as dawn broke not with the rising of the sun, but with the rattle of gunfire and the deep-throated cough of cannons. Dashing to the window, David saw small gnats buzzing in the distance, charging about the dirigible. “Blast! Isabella, we have to get you to the emergency plane!” She moaned in response, still sleeping off her exuberant consumption of alcohol.
Grabbing her by the arm, David threw Isabella over his shoulder and ran down the corridor, bumping into walls and doors as the airship slewed about, trying to defend against those pesky bi-planes that harassed her.
A soldier stepped into David’s way, banning his entry into the escape chamber. David growled, and the soldier stepped aside, suitably chastened. Handing a still sleeping Isabella into the escape plane, David waited. Here, deep in the bowls of the airship, there was nothing that could be heard except occasional vibrations.
The order to abandon ship came over the speakers soon after. Isabella, now awake, squawked with indignation at the command, but silenced when David climbed into the pilot’s seat. Behind him, two more pilots climbed into the other escape planes. Today, they would not be trying to escape, but instead draw the pursuers away.
Isabella grabbed onto David’s shoulders as the bottom dropped out from under them. The rotary engine sputtered into life, the retaining hook let go, and they were off. Above them, the airship listed badly to one side, helium chambers punctured and spilling buoyancy. There were three gnats angrily buzzing about, and they broke off from their attack on the airship to speed down upon David’s biplane.
Their attack was too predictable, and cannonfire from the dirigible downed the third in line. The second swung away at the flak burst, but the first raked his guns across the wings despite David’s best effort to dodge. The metal groaned, but held together. Isabella shouted imprecations at the aircraft, then grabbed the ring-mounted machine gun in the rear turret. She wasn’t going to let those bastards get an easy run at it the second time.
The second plane came in high and from the right, but between Isabella’s gunfire and the arrival of the other two escape planes, it was driven off before it could fire a shot. Seeing numbers evenly matched, the escape planes engaged the gnats in a dogfight, trying to force them away from David and towards the still functioning firepower of the dirigible.
One escape plane fell to the ground, struck by guns mounted on the airship. The other was soon on fire, bright flames gushing from holes in the fuel tank. Leaving it to its death, the two gnats swung back around, chasing down the fleeing biplane. David turned the plane at an angle to their pursuit, giving Isabella angle to fire around the rudder.
The pursuit split, one coming high, the other low. Machineguns crackled, and Isabella launched an answering stream of tracer. The bursts fell wide, and the two pursuers swung around for another pass.
The lower of the two planes disappeared into a cloud, and failed to come out again. Perhaps luck was on their side. The higher stooped like a hawk, coming down at a steep angle to avoid incoming fire. The tactic worked, for Isabella’s turret could not aim high enough to shoot the fighter, and his fire came down unimpeded onto the biplane, tearing off a corner of the upper wing. Isabella swung the turret and waited, and as the gnat flew past, she unleashed a close range burst into the top of the plane. It burst into flames and spiralled down, the dive ending with a heavy crash into the ground.
Lifting her hand to his lips, David gallantly kissed his wife, then settled into the task of escaping from this damn country. The deposed queen and her husband flew north, hoping some day to come home once more.
21
Sep
Figured I might as well jump back into the JNY-35197 saga, but rather than do it right away, I’m going to drop an interlude in there. This is practice for me getting back to that writing style, and remembering everything that’s going on with the story as well.
This interlude takes place on a nameless planet where they are fighting a different alien race than the one in the main storyline. As such, certain terminology is different as I try and remember what everything is called.
Oh hell. This was ugly. Blastbolts flew overhead, impacting on the hillside behind. Right into the teeth. Three, two, charge! Up, up, dodge left, right. Oh crap, there goes a squad. Bugger, what was that? Shrapnel in my arm. Can’t stop now. Almost there. Why had we gotten trapped on a hill again?
Into the trench. Land firing, slugs ripping apart the T’Ckah. Idiots never wore body armour. Look around for support. Got three men with me. Down, blasterbolts! Make that two. Sweep east. Two gestures and we’re off. I get point.
That’s a bunker, isn’t it? In goes the grenades. Quickly, quickly. Speed is all we’ve got. A repeater nest. Two quick bursts and the crews are in pieces. Counter-fire. Friendly down. There’s only one now. We’re getting torn apart. I think only a third even made it to the trench. Damn T’Ckah breed like cockroaches. Hell, they are cockroaches.
Right, on, on. We’ve got at least a small section clear. Keep pushing. More bolts. Scorch marks on my armour. Glad they missed. Got the bastard too. Another bunker, another grenade. Peek inside. Tunnels, not bunkers. Sod that, I’m not going down there.
Keeping scouting ahead. Trenches appear clear. They either retreated or are in the tunnels. Which outcome do I bet on? The crap one. We’ll need special gear to go down there. Or an earthquaker.
Huh, trench is clear of meatbags too. Check the radio. Nothing but static. Blocking must not have let up yet. Tagged two more cockroaches. This last soldier is pretty damn skippy with his slug thrower. Picked one off sneaking up behind us.
Right, push on. Oh. They didn’t retreat. They bunched. There’s a swarm of T’Ckah coming down the trench at us. And it’s too wide for two to hold. Burst fire and retreat! Crap crap crap. We’re going to eat it. They’re damn fast too. Flick out the last grenade as cover and dive into that bunker we cleared. Hope they didn’t see us through the flame.
Burrowing underground. Humans are not meant for this. Except we’re organ replacements, not humans, I suppose. Down we go. IR and UV and sonar on. Bright as day down here. Radio sure as hell isn’t going to work down here either. Keep the gun in front, crawl along. Listening devices picking up noise, keep moving away. T’Ckah marching past.
Tapped on the leg, look back at organ replacement. Holding up two hands. Means he just got the phase two beep. That’s the charge past the trench structure one. Guess it went better on the surface than I thought. Time to find a tunnel upwards.
Sonar says that one. Off we go. Crawl, crawl. Scary and boring at the same time. Weird what happens when the juices are going. Now is this bunker occupied? Yes it is. With corpses. I like my slugs.
Open air. That’s nice. Clap my mate on the shoulder. We’re both grinning like idiots. Phase three chirps over the radio. The air defences are down and the earthquakers are going in. I guess we mark this as a victory. I’d estimate casualties at sixty percent. At least us clones are damn cheap.
11
Sep
The ideas that occur while showering…
I raged against the dying of the light, but it was an empty rage, a hollow rage. All but the last glimmers of the sun had gone, and the death that is twilight stole over the land. I knew this time had to come, and I accepted it, for I had been a party to the slaying, to the degradation. My hand was one of those that had held the sickle, and through action and inaction I had let it drop. Thus had I helped slay the light.
Now came the dark times, the end times, as the world built a bitter cold shell about itself, hoping to protect what little remained of the glorious times when light had gleamed fully across the land. Perhaps it would work, perhaps not. I only knew that I would not be here to see the ending. Those of us who had slain the light had looked at one another and parted in sorrow and sadness, one last night of hedonism before a shadow stole across us. That next morning, we said tearful goodbyes and walked away, never to see or hear from one another again.
We each travelled long and far, heading to distant peaks and observatories where we could see what we had done, where we could see the dying of the light. For my part, I choose mountains near my home, where I could see what I had done, and impale myself on the spear of shame.
I was the last of the slayers, the last to keep a tenuous grip on life. One by one, I had felt the others slay themselves as they had the sun, dying in the hopes that it would resurrect the great beauty of the skies. I alone remained, and a bitter anger fuelled me. I would not die until I had seen what I had wrought, until I was the last creature to walk the living planet. I would force myself to see each moment, to live each day in pain, to face the anguish as I woke and saw no sun. I would not take the easy road, the sure road, the quick road. No, I would stay, stay until there was nothing left but me.
And so here I stand, my eyes turned west, watching the setting of the sun for the last time. The sky to the east is the black of night, and no stars twinkle in the heavens above. Below me, the village of my home cries out in fear, for rumour and knowledge has reached them, and they turn to the old ways, the evil ways. Tonight, my daughter will be sacrificed, a foolish demand that the sun return. Tomorrow, it will be another man’s daughter, and so on until there are no more left. Then it will be the turn of the boys. This village will not last.
I go to my cave now, for I have seen the dying of the light. I have seen the sun sink below the horizon for the last time. Now I will wait, and I will watch for the end of all things.
9
Sep
Life was a strange beast here, for it ebbed and flowed with the tides of the moon. In the morning, all creatures would die, and in the afternoon, find themselves revived as they once were. Even those that had been consumed as prey woke up once more in their homes.
The moon was a cruel mistress, for it did not remove the memories of their deaths. Every day, another death would be added to a long litany of memory, and so creatures became warped and twisted things, their memories consumed by pain. Some sought suicide as a way out, thinking that if they killed themselves, they would be well and truly dead. Alas, that was not to be, and so they grew despondent, dying but never dead.
Evolution was a slow and stunted thing on a world where every creature died at six hour intervals, but progress was made, and eventually the creatures decided that they must crack the moon, must sweep their cruel mistress from the sky. Many years passed in frustration and failure, as despair overwhelmed the creatures and anguish caused them to destroy their own experiments. But all things come with the passing of time, and a weapon was created that could crack the great devil in the sky.
It was used, and low and behold the demon of the skies split apart in a great explosion. The moon swept across her children one last time, and cursed them with ash and fire and destruction that lasted for many aeons, and when it was done, the creatures rejoiced and danced and sung. A great celebration was held, and all manner of joyous speeches were proclaimed.
That evening, as the sun swept out of the sky, all creatures died, to wake with the rising of the fiery globe.
There’s four historical artefacts tucked away in this story. Four that I’m aware of putting there, anyway. One of them is the building where the bell is found. I’m curious if readers can name them all.
In Freedom’s Name Do These Bells Ring. There it was, a little inscription tucked away on the inside lip of the bell. Geoff and his team had been searching for these bells for weeks. And now they were going to melt them down. The damn things had been held up as a symbol of what was right. Well, this symbol was going to die, and never be found again. And look at it, cracked. Geoff struck the bell with his rifle butt. A barely heard sound.
What kind of idiots think a cracked bell that cannot ring is a symbol? Next thing they’ll be telling stories of a drum that summon ancient admirals. Geoff jerked his hand, and the bell was lifted onto a truck and carted away. That was the end of that.
Next, he waved the demolitions team into place. No building which had housed fugitives or fugitive objects would be allowed to stand. It wasn’t his directive, but he loved the work. Seeing all these hideous old buildings going up in smoke was one of the highlights of his work. Like that damn fake Grecian temple down south. The resistance had put up quite a battle not to have that one destroyed. In the end, the air force had had to come in and level it with bombs, because getting near it on the ground was too damn dangerous.
Well, the resistance was crumbling now. Their symbols were all but destroyed, their history was written out of the textbooks and would die off in a generation, and even their race was being bred out of existence. Resisters were sterilized whenever they were found. Inferior cretins, not recognizing our right to rule, and our long legacy of supremacy.
After disease had ruined their population and climate change had thickened the clouds in the northern sky, they had come all but begging to us, asking to be saved from the predicament they had caused. Only those south of the equator had survived intact, and what a wonderful opportunity that had been. Geoff loved to listen to the stories his grandfather would tell, the great masses of infantry and mechs sweeping north, pacifying and eradicating all serious resistance. He wished he’d been alive then, to march alongside his old man, gather some of that glory to himself.
Geoff looked at his watch and gestured to his team. It was quitting time, another good day’s work done. Only the demolitions to go. Outside, Geoff popped the champagne cork, and served it up to his team. With that, the building rumbled and collapsed, to a cheer and a toast. Not as glorious as the Great Conquest, but good enough.
A second, a third, a fourth, a fifth rumble followed that of the collapsed building. Geoff spun about, and saw great pillars of fire arcing upwards into the sky, curving over onto a southerly track. He wondered what the columns were. He was still wondering when a sniper’s bullet smashed his brains onto the pavement.
Guidelines
- Maximum word count of 1,000
- Any type of flash is acceptable
- Up to three entries allowed
- Post your entries on your own blog, titled like this: Writer’s Carnival: Flash Title
- Add your stories to the collector
- Once the blog carnival post is up, please link to it from your blog
- Place these guidelines at the end of your entry posts
3
Sep
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore… Oh what is this crap? It’s as occult as a cheeseburger. I wanted to do real magic.” Tim’s nasal whine cut through the dark room.
Jacob answered. “It is occult, it’s from the witch trials of ancient North America. The writer of this got burned as a witch. That means it was occult.”
“It just sounds like bad poetry to me. Who talks like that now, really?”
Amanda glared at both of them. “Shut up, both of you. You’re spoiling it.”
“While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. `’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door.”
“He must have been visited by a ghost!”
“You’ll become a ghost if you don’t shut up!”
Timothy and Jacob withered under the glare, and Amanda continued reading from the book of occult lore. She droned on and on, her voice flat and unemotional, attempting an Old American dialect and failing miserably.
The three teenagers sat in a room pitch black except for the dim candles at the five points of the pentagram. It was the basement of Amanda’s mother’s house, but it felt occult to the three of them. It was an old house, all concrete and steel and it never creaked once, and that always spooked the children at night.
“On this home by horror haunted – tell me truly, I implore – is there – is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!”
“Would you children stop butchering my poem and disturbing my rest! I can’t sleep with you nattering on like this! And you, young lady, that is the worst reading ever attempted. Five year old school children have done better.” Standing in the middle of the pentagram was the ghost of a dark gentleman, his forehead high and his face covered by a thin moustache.
“Who… who are you?”
“What! You’re reading my poem and you don’t know who I am? I wrote The Raven, that beautiful poem you’re butchering. Are you children really sunken that far?”
“It’s not a poem, it’s an occult spell that got a witch burned at the stake in North America!”
“Oh dear… you have fallen far, haven’t you? No history, no nothing.”
“We know our history, and we’re right! It is an occult spell!”
The ghost shook his head. “Children these days… You want occult magic? Fine. I’ll show you real magic.”
“Really? That’s great!” The children all squealed with glee.
“Oh yes.” The ghost grinned. “Your souls from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted – nevermore!”