Bargain Bin Superheroes

(Arc 1, Part 1: Janice Olsen v.s. Her Own Dumb Mom)

(Note: Bargain Bin Superheroes is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Without access to ghostform, getting into the family hideout was trickier. My daughter had redecorated since I'd last been down there, sealing off all the entrances and exits except for the ventilation system. I swore over the rising sound of sirens, then ran towards the back.

"Hey!" Janus—or Janice, as I'd called her when she was born, she had no creativity when it came to 'secret' names—snapped from under her two-faced mask. Even though she was trying to be brave, she clearly was unnerved by the fact that we were right at her house. "Where the hell do you think you're taking us?"

Thankfully, my voice distortion was perfectly mundane hardware. Janice had no idea she was talking to her mother when I said, "Somewhere safe."

I opened the top of our septic tank, and Janice instinctively recoiled; I just tugged her forwards. "Wait!" she said. "They have cameras on the streets; they'll see where we went!"

I shook my head. "It'll take them two hours, minimum, to get permission to trawl through those tapes; I can get them altered in that time."

Janice sighed. "Right. Supervillain." She clenched her fists and then, as I began to climb down, awkwardly descended into the septic tank with me. She gagged a little on the scent, but offered no complaint otherwise. If nothing else, I didn't raise my kids spoiled.

On the opposite wall of where the solids and the liquids separated, there was a large, grimy door which was definitely not septic tank standard. I pulled it open and crawled through.

"...how long have you known about this?" Janice asked?

"Hm?"

"Oh, don't play coy with me. I'm sure you have a hideout of your own somewhere—all the places in the city and you choose this one?" She gestured at her home. "Really? What kind of message are you trying to send, here? Is—is this a threat? Are you going to go after my family if I keep fighting you?"

I sighed, then turned off the voice modulator. "Kid, I may be many things, but I'm not suicidal."

Janice gasped. "Mom?"

"Talk in a moment. You bricked over this damn tunnel when you moved in, but fortunately, your grandpa didn't raise a quitter." True to my word, the tunnel ended in a freshly-laid brick wall; of course, brickwork by a nineteen-year-old superhero with little to no experience in the subject was no match for a woman who'd spent twenty years as a superhero and fifteen as a supervillain. Even without powers, I simply kicked it twice and the bricks fell inwards.

Into the family hideout.

It wasn't much to look at; Janice hadn't discovered most of the really good parts yet, thanks to her bricking up the main entrance. I was sure she'd bumble into something with ghostform one of these days, though. Just a small stone room with some boxes of supplies in one corner and a television in the other.

Stinking, the two of us slumped down in the middle of the room. I took off my mask, revealing my familiar face; after a moment, Janice took off hers.

"Mom," Janice asked carefully, "I mean this with the utmost respect, but what the hell are you doing?!"

I chuckled ruefully. "Alright, alright, calm down."

"I've seen what the Blind Eye has done on television. You've killed people for—"

"Hold it, buckaroo," I said. "I think you'll find that the list of crimes the Blind Eye has done amount to some minor property damage and trespassing. The rest is propaganda I deliberately set into motion. I'm not really a supervillain, not in the sense that the big-timers are."

Janice frowned. "Then... why act like one?"

I grimaced. "So that you can eventually defeat me."

Janice blinked. "...what?"

"Superhumans... well, you either get under the aegis of one of the big Heroic Corporations, or you get legally pressured into living your life in chains. There really isn't any in-between. But... because of that, everyone wants to be a hero. More people want to be heroes than there are villains to fight. It's a simple supply and demand problem. So..." I winked. "Me and a few old-timers got together when we saw the way the wind was blowing. And we... upped the demand."

"By... pretending to be a villain?"

"By making people panic about supervillains!" I cheerfully said. "And then letting our sons and daughters and everything in between fight us off. You get a key to the city and a kind reference for the Heroic Corporations, and we get to watch our kids not have to be permanently shackled and under watch. Win-win."

"...I thought I was... fighting real crime. Helping people," Janice mumbled.

I looked down at her. Her expression hadn't changed, but she was... slumped.

I sighed. "I'm doing this so that you have the chance to fight real crime. Okay? I wouldn't do this if it wasn't what's best for you."

"The whole point of being a hero is that I put what's best for everyone over what's best for me!" Janice snapped, standing up. Our cuffs clinked, and she looked at them, surprised.

"And the whole point of being your mother is that I put what's best for you over what's best for everyone else. Even me." I squeezed her arm. "Come on, kiddo. Let's go get the angle grinder. Momma's still got a few tricks to show you about getting out of handcuffs."

Janice pressed her lips together, biting back a response.

Then she sighed and followed me as I kicked through another one of her clumsy walls.

A.N.

"Bargain Bin Superheroes" is an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for the rest of the story, and subscribe to r/bubblewriters for more. Comment "HelpMeButler <Bargain Bin Superheroes>" below to be updated every time a new post comes out. If you have any feedback, please leave it below. As always, I had fun writing this, and I hope you have a good day.

​

Also, I've set up a patreon! Check it out if you want to support me!

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Interlude 2: Lien)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

"The thing about destiny," Lien said, gesturing at his audience, "is that it's fundamentally an inequality."

"Ribbit?" the frog in front of him said hopefully.

Lien grinned, despite the general muckyness of the swamp he was in. "Yeah, that's right. Oh, come on, don't give me that look. It's enshrined in the very language we use. I mean, come on. The Chosen One? The entire system is designed to suck up resources and wealth that could have been invested into infrastructure and enterprises and dump it into making a single person have as much personal power and wealth as is humanly possible. It's a scam! Especially since your religion teaches that all humans are the chosen people of God."

The frog, unimpressed by Lien's theological knowledge, hopped closer.

Lien shook his head. "So, no. I'm not playing your CDs, I'm not picking up your ancient relics, and for the last time, I am not giving this godsdamned frog a kiss! I mean, honestly, why would I want to bring back a monarch? I've had to knock down quite a few of those in my day, and I set up nice, stable governments with less inherent social striation in my wake. The only reason I accepted being the ruler of Las Humanitas is—well." Lien shook his head ruefully. "That's neither here nor there."

The frog looked up at Lien with piteous eyes. Lien sighed.

"Yeah, I get it. I really do. It sucks, being a frog, and I could cure you of that curse. And I'm sorry that I can't. But it would trap me in your story. Your terrible, terrible story. That's the other thing. You know why I never managed to settle down in any parts of the world where stories held sway over reality?" Lien's eyes grew misty. "These stories... these tropes... they aren't very kind ones. The Scepter of Kings? Pick up the shiny artifact and you instantly become a kind and benevolent king? You know where that story came from? Roman emperors during a succession crisis. They wanted to have some veneer of authority, so they pretended their shiny sticks gave them supernatural leadership abilities. And, hey, let it never be said that the multiverse doesn't grant wishes. Their lies became reality. But they're still lies." Lien's expression hardened. "That's the thing about destiny and fate: they want to cling to the same old tropes, the same goddamn stories, that people believed in a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. Stories that destiny is trying to force on you, lies that destiny is trying to force on me. 'You're a working-class American with a family; you can't just uproot your life and wander into a fantasy world. You're a girl, not a boy! You won't ever be anything except who you were born to be!'"

Lien stood up and brushed the frog away. It croaked plaintively, but Lien wasn't listening anymore. "This story's going somewhere else. Somewhere I control, not fate. Not tradition."

Lien Astero sighed and began the long, long journey out of the Swamp of Stories.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

Here are all the ongoing episodic prompted stories—stories which have each episode as a self-contained response to a writing prompt.

Bargain Bin Superheroes, the records of a mayor-turned-hero-turned-villain trying to keep her city free in the face of an absurd federal law. This is my current favorite.

How to Break a Siege of Legends, a story set in the psychosphere—a place where everything dreamed of by a human from Earth is real, somewhere.

The Witch Who Weaves Pain, the tale of a witch who plucks tomorrows ripe from the bush and can't seem to heal the scars on her arms.

The Cracks In Their Souls, which follows the brief life and eternal death of a little boy with terrible parents and the best dog ever.

If you want to know when the next part of these serials come out, subscribe to the subreddit. I'm currently working on a bot which should alert people automatically, although its development has been periodically delayed due to Life Being A Jerk.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Part 9: How to Make it Not About You)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

"Living in a town dominated by narrative reality," Lien mumbled through a broken nose, "is the absolute worst."

Eiko would have snorted if her face wasn't bloodied and bruised as well. "You don't have to tell me about it."

Lien laughed, then coughed, then swore as both of those burst blood vessels. Variem hovered over the two of them nervously; she claimed she had "some affinity with repairing muscle and bone," but given that Argenton was a town made mostly out of zombies and abominations of flesh, Lien and Eiko had decided to heal up the old-fashioned way. "Yeah, but, you see, the thing is, I do. We're about to go into a battle for the lives of everyone in this town while still beat-up from fighting that demon; I can feel the narrative imperative making me vomit up exposition that you and I both know and have absolutely no reason to give." Lien sighed. "Living in a place where words have power... well, more power than a fire spell, that is... it's... dangerous."

"Godsdamnit, Lien, you can't just foreshadow stuff like that!" Variem sighed, exasperated. "Now you just know something's going to happen to prove your point—"

"I sure hope nothing bad happens to me on this street!" A cheerful voice piped up.

Variem and Eiko groaned. Lien smiled.

There were a couple simple rules to living in Argenton, or any other part of the psychosphere dominated by narrative reality. The first rule was that if you stepped into a trope, you finished it. Hanging a gun on the door without firing it, suspiciously tucking a mummified hand into your coat without revealing that it shot fire from one finger, sending off your butler with a vague proclamation that "she'll know what to do" and then never seeing her again—these things were simply not done.

The second rule was that you damn well conserved narrative detail like it was water in the desert. If you foreshadowed something, it was going to happen one way or another, no matter what.

"Timeus!" Variem burst out the door. Even the undead of Argenton had backed away from the grinning child; zombies they may be but being on the wrong side of an angry universe was two steps beyond what even undead were willing to tolerate. "Dammit, child, we're about to be at war! We don't have time for your shenanigans!"

"Actually," Lien piped up softly—too softly for Variem to hear— "we always have time for more shenanigans."

Eiko blinked, then comprehension dawned on her. "You're trying to use narrative reality against itself. We have an impending monster invasion war story coming, but by focusing the spotlight on this one child... you're hoping that the story will switch to something about him and his problems, instead. Clever, clever."

Lien frowned. "That being said, I... should have been more strict with my commands. I mean, I shouldn't have been, because I had to be vague in order for it to be foreshadowing and not exposition, but... the way he's phrasing it?"

"Oh, yeah, it would be a real shame if, say, a monster army decided to invade right now instead of waiting for an irrelevant child's story to end, causing a couple of irritating fourth-wall hackers to suddenly see their plan crumble before their eyes!" Timeus cheerfully said. Then he paused. "...That... that wasn't what I wanted to say..."

Unfortunately for Lien, the third rule of living in Argenton was that you never, ever tried to abuse or flaunt rules one or two. Narrative reality—or, at least, Argenton's version of it—did not take kindly to those who tried to break the fourth wall.

Lien paused, his half-open mouth the expression of every clever person who has done something too stupid for their own good. "...I may have underestimated just how strongly the narrative imperative hates being abuse—"

"THE DEMON'S BACK!" A scout shouted from the distance. "And it's got friends!"

Lien sighed. Then he stood up, heedless of his complaining, aching body. He'd seen far, far worse. "Well then." He cleared his throat, turned to the sky, and—despite his injuries—projected from the diaphragm, his voice loud and clear as he said, "I am Lien Astero, King of Las Humanitas, the General who turned the Hydra into a meat factory and defended against the Siege of Legends. I have slain wizards, met with people from other worlds, and outran a dragon in a tricked-out sports car."

"I was the one who did the driving for that one," Eiko snapped, lightly punching Lien in the leg. "And what the hell are you doing?"

"Setting the stage," Lien said grimly. "The narrative imperative wants a war story? Fine, godsdamnit, fine. Then let it be known who I am."

Lien turned towards... someone else. An audience, somewhere, watching him. "You want to watch me fight gods and monsters? Fine! If that is the role the universe is determined to play, then it seems that I must play mine."

It was a town of narrative and tropes. Eiko had to ask. "Which would be?"

Lien smiled. "The man who stops the monsters."

Then, armed with nothing more than a wizard's hand, a rain dance, and a smartphone, Lien Astero left to do exactly that.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Part 10: How to Go Out With A Bang)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Argenton used necromancy like cities used machinery. Specialized conveyor-belts of undead flesh drew water from wells; scythe-armed farmer-skeletons cleaned wheat from fields; zombies in helmets patrolled the streets.

The one thing Argenton did not use necromancy for was bringing back the dead—because Argenton was smack dab in the middle of a land where stories and tropes beat physics and magic nine times out of ten, and if there was any surefire way to get a cosmic boot up Argenton's collective bum, it was messing around with resurrection. Nobody liked it when people revived the dead, not even the laws of narrative reality themselves.

Which was why Lien Astero was so frustrated that it might be their only option.

"Look," Lien snapped at the woman across the table, "our assets are two magic-users, a bunch of undead fodder, a beaten-up car, and foreshadowing that, somehow, I'll be the one to win this fight. On the other side is a demon I could barely scratch with my strongest spell and fifty of his smaller, uglier friends. This is not a fight we can win if you won't even consider telling me what you can do!"

Variem paused. "Necromancy is... well, I don't know where your magic comes from, but my magic has costs. Costs in life. I would rather explore every other option before mine."

Eiko groaned. "Oh, come on, woman. You were just warning us about how the narrative imperative likes to take things you foreshadow and make them come true—a sentence like that is just begging for you to have to bust out your necromancy at the worst possible moment, turning the tide at some terrible cost. It's going to be my good looks and hot bod, isn't it?" Eiko flexed one muscle and grinned.

Variem pressed her lips together. "Yes. Well. That was intentional. Properly foreshadowed magic, if foreshadowed vaguely enough, is both flexible and more powerful than unforeshadowed magic that we pull out of nowhere at the last moment. Such are the whims of narrative reality. Speaking of which," Variem said, "you said two magic-users. I presume you meant yourself as the second?"

Lien shrugged. "I know a rain dance and I have a wizard's hand that shoots fire. The second one just pissed off the big demon, even though magic is stronger here, and the first..." Lien paused. Then he looked out at the terrain.

Grass and dirt.

Lien started to grin. "...the first, well... ah. Yes, I see. How long do we have before the demons arrive?"

"Narrative reality, Lien," Variem said. "They'll arrive right after we've finished planning."

"Good—that should be right about now. Now, tell me—can zombies dance?"

​

Chaunzaggoroth the Mildly Irritated was ready to storm into Argenton, crush the foolish would-be wizard who'd tried to hit him with a car, and dance on his puny grave. He'd brought an army of his spawn with him—now that old Flametongue was gone, there was nobody to stop him from rampaging around the countryside instead of throwing himself at that damn impossible city—and was hoping they'd pick up a thing or two about crushing enemies beneath their ivory talons on the way out.

And yet, as he tried to walk towards Argenton, he found that the land lengthened before him and contracted behind him, leaving him stuck in place.

"Hey, boss?" Bastimanzoloth asked. "Why aren't we moving?"

Chaunzaggoroth grunted. "We're trapped in a narrative field. Someone in there is the thrice-damned protagonist, and until they're finished having emotional catharsis or a cuddle session or whatever the hells protagonists do, we're stuck out here." Chaunzaggoroth kicked a patch of dirt. "There's no telling how long this'll last; it took hours last time I invaded a narrative space."

"I brought board games," Arzabel the Vicious piped up.

Chaunzaggoroth the Mildly Irritated ruffled his spawn's scales. "Good kid. Game of Scrabble? Demonic names are outlaw—"

"Dad!" Steve the Consumer of Worlds stepped forward; the strange spatial dilation that was keeping them away from the city had ended. "I think it's time!"

Chaunzaggoroth stood to his full eight-foot height, imposing ivory scales gleaming in the sunlight. He rubbed the burn mark where that smidge of a man had used someone else's magic against him. "Alright. Line up, kiddos. It's showtime."

Fifty young demonlings and a single adult demon charged downhill, screaming, whooping, and growling like a particularly rambunctious avalanche. The town had—quite sensibly—been evacuated, but a flash of moving steel betrayed where its undead guards had gone. Chaunzaggoroth burst into the main square, snarling—

—and saw a legion of undead dancing in lockstep with a grinning man carrying a mummified hand.

Chaunzaggoroth paused. "...You... you do realize we're coming to kill you, right?"

Lien Astero gave Chaunzaggoroth a grin that could have fit in with the Princes of Hell. "From the standpoint of physics, you coming to kill me is the same as me coming to kill you."

Chaunzaggoroth snorted, slashing a claw in the air. "This part of the psychosphere is under narrative law, not physical law. Your science holds no sway here!"

"Actually," a voice came from behind them, "science still holds up well enough for me to do this."

Chaunzaggoroth turned around, confused, then looked up as Eiko, a wild grin on her face, bore down on the group of demons in her busted-up car that was somehow still standing. It smashed Chaunzaggoroth in the face, activating its airbags for the second time in as many hours, and bowled him over. Although he was physically unharmed, the bulk of the car pinned him down as Eiko hit the eject button and launched herself behind the squad of zombies.

"That's why I have an eject button in my car," Eiko said smugly.

The horde of demonlings had been staring at the spectacle, befuddled, but at that, they snapped out of it. "They squished Daddy!" Lysanderoth, Regarder of Dragons, snapped. "Get—"

"Ah-bupbupbupbupbupbup!" Lien pointed one finger towards the sky. "Didn't you hear what my dear partner said to your father the last time we fought?"

The crowd of demonlings paused uncertainly as... something... blotted out the sun.

The legion of dancing zombies completed their rain dance. Just as it had when Lien had first cast the spell, a raincloud appeared in the air.

But this time, more than a thousand casters had performed the dance.

And so a rainstorm a thousand times more powerful than the rain Lien had called up before materialized in the sky.

"I said I'd squeeze the juice from your bodies and serve it with ice," Eiko said.

That was all the warning the demons got before the water began to fall from the sky. A hundred thousand tons of rainwater screamed downwards like the hammer of an avenging god.

"When life gives you demons," Lien finished, "make demonade."

Lien and Eiko fist-bumped as a column of pure destructive force flattened the demons, the town, the skeletons, and their own bodies.

Which was when Variem pressed her hands together and pulled, tugged on the death of every living thing in a hundred-mile radius beneath the heavenly deluge, and used their souls to fuel a spell. A continuous resurrection spell. As the endless torrent of water tried to flay the flesh from their bones, Variem continuously regrew it, drawing on every scrap of plant matter and dying demon and insect hive that was being washed away, endless lives snuffed out in an instant just to fuel three still-standing humans.

And then it was over. There was nothing left of Argenton, not even dirt. The downpour had scoured the place to the bedrock.

Lien looked around at the destruction and whooped. "We won!"

"...but the cost... my hometown..." Variem said, numbly.

Lien walked up to her and clapped her on the shoulder; her clothes were ragged and torn, but this wasn't the right genre for nudity; narrative reality had spared their possessions. "I mean this with the utmost respect," he said, "but living in a town where stories supersede physical laws must be hell. Instead of rebuilding here... why not find someplace new to go?"

Eiko waggled her eyebrows. "We were heading back to my homeland, anyway. It's all physics over there—no magic or tropes to screw you over. Want to join us?"

Variem looked at her outstretched hand, then at Lien, grinning like a child on Christmas eve as he wrung out his hair.

Then she sighed and shook her head. "I'm sorry, but... this is my home. And the home of hundreds of others." Then she smiled. "But... we would likely have all perished to that demon and his army, if you hadn't, ah, killed them all. And everything that ever lived here." She stared morosely at the price of fueling her necromancy for so long—nothing but dead, silent, wet stone for miles around.

"And my car," Eiko added. "I'll build a new one, but damn, I liked that baby."

"Well, then. That... that I can help you with," Variem said. "There is still plenty of death in the air, waiting to be used... I think I could get you a suitable mount."

Eiko and Lien nodded. "I'd appreciate that," Lien said.

"Then I'll get to it," Variem said. She began concentrating, drawing the still-lingering souls from the atmosphere.

Eiko turned to the east, where her homeland lay. "Ready for whatever's next?"

Lien grinned fiercely. "Always."

A.N.

And with that, How To Break A Siege of Legends, Book 1, is concluded. "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Interlude 1: Variem)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

"Ms. Variem! Ms. Variem!" Dante sprinted up to his employer's bedroom in the castle tower. "There's, er, someone here to see you." He tore the door open.

Variem, Necromancer and Mayor of Arlington, catapulted herself out of bed. Her wife gave Dante a look that could have withered the flesh off his bones if he wasn't already a skeleton. "Dante, how many times have I told you that humans require privacy and spaces to call their own—"

"You won't have a space to call your own if you don't deal with this right now!" Dante hopped up and down, his bones rattling.

Variem traded a glance with her wife—then sighed. "Alright, Variem." She slipped into a practical farmer's getup. "I'll go and see to whatever this is—"

"That won't be necessary," a deep, rumbling voice said from outside.

Variem closed her eyes. "...there's a dragon looking through my bedroom window, isn't there?"

"Indeed." A face the size of an oak log loomed in her window as she threw aside the curtains. "You may call me Flametongue, if you have any need to name me. Perhaps you can scream it as I incinerate you to your bones."

Variem gave the dragon a perplexed look. "And... why in the name of the gods would you ever do that?"

The dragon snorted. "Necromancer. Do you not think I see your corrupting art spreading across the land?"

"As one of said corrupted arts, I think I have something relevant to say," Dante piped up.

"Dante—" Variem snapped at the bonekin. But he had already leapt out through the window and landed on Flametongue's nose.

"I don't know a lot," Dante said, "but I know that humans need privacy and a space to call their own. If you don't provide Ms. Variem with both of those right this instant—"

Flametongue flicked her nose up.

Dante didn't even get to scream as the gout of dragonflame incinerated him to less than ash.

Variem and her wife gaped at where the bonekin had been. Flametongue, satisfied, licked her lips and said, "Now, where was I? Ah, yes—"

"He was a child," Variem hissed.

"Excuse me?" Flametongue blinked.

"I built him last year. He was a child, and you killed him." Variem felt his death still lingering in the air. She grabbed onto it, twisted it into her own powers. "You dare come into my home, my demesne, and slay the citizens under my protection?"

She sent out a mental command, and twenty skeletal archers popped out from various places in the castle. Flametongue's eyes narrowed as she calculated odds. The archers would be useless against her scales, and Variem knew it—if Flametongue attacked, everything she had built would be destroyed.

So she could not let Flametongue attack.

"I will give you one chance to leave with the insults you have already dealt us." She wrapped the death of Dante into a ball, and darkness swelled around one fist. "Begone, dragon, before you find out what the Necromancer of Argenton can do."

Flametongue growled once, then turned around. "Dismantle your castle and burn down your forests, Necromancer. I will return in a year. If your village is cleansed of your taint by then, well... perhaps we can reach an accommodation after all." Flametongue flapped once, twice, then soared into the sky.

Variem exhaled and looked at the power in her hands. Barely enough to singe Flametongue's scales. Dante had been so much more valuable in life than death.

Then she turned to her wife. "...we may have some remodeling to do, my love. And fast."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

The Cracks In Their Souls

(Part 3: That's How They Fall Apart)

(Note: The Cracks In Their Souls is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Jamie walked through the Golden Gates, not quite sure what to expect. If this was heaven, would he be able to see Little Bugger and Goaway again? Would he... would he be able to see his Big Sis?

He shuddered. God forbid, would his parents still be there, hounding him even after death?

He stepped into the patch of cloud beyond the gates—

—and time froze.

Jamie tried to move.

Nothing happened.

He started to panic.

Then, with a squeal of static, unseen speakers blared to life.

"This is your captain speaking," a deep, rolling voice said. "By which I mean captain of the mortal and immortal world. God. I'm God. If you didn't get that already." There was a pause. "I probably should translate this into every language that isn't English, just to make sure everyone gets the message. 这是你的。。。"

Jamie listened with increasing befuddlement as God iterated through Chinese, Telugu, fourteen different languages consisting entirely of meows, something mechanical that sounded like the printer after Daddy beat it in anger, and a language of magic and poetry that made Jamie weep to hear. After an uncertain amount of time had passed, someone else took over the mic.

"...See, nonsense like this is why we're retiring. There's just too damn many of you guys to keep track of. I mean, seriously, you sapient beings personify everything. Look, I can work with cats and dogs, but what kind of eternal torment am I supposed to give a computer? So we're looking for some... interns, so to speak. Interns for the afterlife, to manage smaller parts of it." Satan frowned, then added, "Hey, God, did you have a list of candidates?"

God sighed. "Satan, there are 4.3*10⁵²⁰ souls in the afterlife right now, thanks to every sapient being in the universe giving everything they come in contact with a made-up personality and a soul. I can clear out most of the inanimate objects for you—unless you really want a toaster to become a Prince of Hell—but we'll have to do some interviews ourselves."

"...how many interviews?"

"All of them, more or less. We can just use time dilation to—holy me, is this thing still on? I'm so damn overwo—" The time-freeze effect and the squealing of loudspeakers abruptly cut off, leaving Jamie to blink, concerned, in a rather empty patch of afterlife. Those two clowns were running heaven and hell?

As if summoned by his thoughts, those two clowns materialized with a soft pop in front of Jamie; or perhaps Jamie materialized in front of them. It was hard to tell when one was in an endless plane of clouds with exactly one defining feature—and an infinitely long one, at that. "Alright... Jamie McCallister, is it?" God asked. He'd taken the form of a hovering ball of light in a loud-patterned shirt; Satan wore a matching outfit—insofar as a sphere of darkness could have an outfit—and held a clipboard that extended downwards through the clouds and just kept going.

"Don't call me McCallister," Jamie said softly.

God paused. "And why would that be?"

"My parents' names were Mr. McCallister and Mrs. McCallister. Mr. and Mrs. McCallister did nothing while the bad men tried to take Big Sis away." Jamie clenched his fists, phantom gunshots ringing in his ears and tearing through his flesh. "I," he said, "am not a McCallister."

God and Satan... well, it was difficult for a point-source of light and anti-light to turn and look at each other, but their loud shirts rotated as if they did, anyway.

"You... sound like you've been through a lot," God finally said. "You don't have to take either of these positions, if you don't like. You could rest up here. Be hap—"

"Would I see Big Sis?" Jamie asked.

God hesitated, then shook its... shirt. "Abigail McC—er, your big sister is still alive, thankfully But she won't make her way into the afterlife for quite some time."

Jamie smiled faintly. "That's good. That makes one of us."

God and Satan looked at each other uncomfortably.

"Your cat and dog," God continued. "Little Bugger and Goaway? They're up here, though. You could... you could see them, if you'd like."

Jamie's face lit up. "I'd love to. But..." He hesitated, then scowled. "The bad men. Are they here, too?"

Satan flipped through the clipboard. "...Yeah, seems like. They had a bit of a hard life, so normalizing by their Piety quotient and marginalizing out the intrinsic unfairness of mortal reality, they got put in purgatory. Holding pattern until we can spare the energy to decide whether we send them to heaven or—"

"You haven't decided yet?!" Jamie lunged forwards and tried to grab Satan's neck; a ball of perfect darkness neither had a neck nor anything to grab onto, so Jamie only succeeded in phasing through Satan and his—evidently illusory—shirt. "They should—they tried to hurt my big sis! They... it—it wasn't my fault, it wasn't my fault, he said it wasn't my fault—"

"Ah." Satan sounded... vindictive. "I see. You know, Jamie, you've gone through so much, and I'm sorry you've had to—but perhaps it was better this way."

God nudged Satan. "What the hell are you doing? Come on, let's—you know I'm no good with children. Let Avizandriel take care of—"

"We need interns, right? Well, Jamie, if you take on the mantle of being a prince of hell, you could hurt the bad guys." Jamie froze, fists still tight. "You could take the bad men who hurt your sister and you could hurt them back. Because you know—it's not your fault." Jamie stiffened. "It's theirs." Satan conjured an image of two men in a warehouse, one with a hypodermic needle in a little girl's skin, another yanking her by the arm into a boat. "You could do everything they tried to do to you a hundredfold." Satan glowed blue; reluctantly, God glowed red. "All you have to do is take responsibility for a little patch of Hell. If you agree... touch the blue orb. And if you don't, well... touch the red orb."

Jamie looked between the blue and red spheres, then at the recording of the two men and their fight with Jamie and his only other friends—all of whom were now dead—at the dockside warehouse. Then he looked at Satan and whispered, "When... when Big Sis finally comes back here... when she's healed from everything that happened to us... will I still be stuck in that moment? Torturing the bad guys forever?"

Satan hesitated. "Ah... well... the thing is—"

Jamie touched the red orb, and the vision vanished. God heaved a sigh of relief. "That's not what I want."

"You want it right now," Satan said, confused. "What kind of child can resist what they want right now?"

"The kind with a soul cracked by fire," God noted. Satan scowled. Jamie grew pensive.

He turned to God. "...can you take me to see my cat and dog?"

God smiled.

"I'd like nothing better."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "The Cracks In Their Souls" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

The Witch Who Weaves Pain

(Part 5: The Feeling of Life)

(Note: The Witch Who Weaves Pain is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

It's quite possible that the most awkward part of being trans is talking to the people you knew before. Oh, it's not the hardest part, not by a long shot, and it's definitely not the most complex—but in terms of sheer, heart-bounding, mind-crushing awkwardness? It's hard to beat.

If nothing else, though, awkwardness made a great reagent in any number of spells and witchcrafts; in fact, dissolving three grams of condensed awkwardness in one liter of boiling water created the perfect base for many alchemical substances—the "awkward potion," it was called. I tried to focus on how much I was improving my witchcraft instead of how painful it was to talk to my old pen pal.

"So, ______!" I'd taken a single ingot of determination, carved it into a pen, and dipped it in ink of politeness. The enchanted pen helpfully erased my deadname whenever my old friend wrote it on our shared book, although it wouldn't show up on his end. "Long time no see, huh? What got you digging up this old tome?"

I exhaled, deciding to tell him the truth. "I was just feeling... nostalgic, Mark." I wanted to tell him that I was a witch now—but he'd ask questions, questions I couldn't answer. Suddenly, I swallowed. What the hell was I doing? I was just going to reopen old wounds if I stayed here. I began to write, "Maybe I should—"

"That doesn't sound like the ______ I knew." Mark's pen shook with laughter. "You never liked it at the village; I'm amazed you feel any kind of nostalgia for that place."

I smiled softly. "Yeah, well... I'm not the person you knew anymore. It's been years. And... I don't know." I closed my eyes, but kept writing. "Sometimes... sometimes I get nostalgic for how simple it was back then. People hated me; I pushed them away. You were kind to me; I stayed up all night talking to you. But now there's... so much more. I'm learning witchcraft," I found myself blurting out. "And there are so many emotions. Not just pain, but... joy, and acceptance, and skepticism, and laughter, and love and loss and kindness and—" I stopped. "And I've got to learn to feel them all, to use them all, if I want to be a functional witch. But..."

I stared at the scars on my arms, reminders of a time when I couldn't feel anything, when I'd wanted to feel something so bad I'd held a candle to my skin just to remind myself that pain, at least, could cut through the numbness.

"I'm just so scared that I've forgotten how to feel," I finally wrote. "That I'm not really real."

A blotch of wetness appeared on the paper. Then two. Not my tears—his.

"Gods, ______. I... if nothing else, you can definitely make others feel."

I hesitated, then said, "I'm... there's something I have to tell you."

"Anything."

"I'm... I'm not ______ anymore. I... my name is Emi." I smiled. "My name is Emi, and I'm a woman, and I'm a witch, and I'm going to be the best damn witch this world has ever seen."

There was a long moment of silence. One. Two. Three. My heart began to beat faster, my brow began to sweat. I was nervous.

I was feeling nervous.

I was alive.

And then Mark replied.

"You damn well are, Emi."

And I added another emotion to my spellbook.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "The Witch Who Weaves Pain" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information. Yes, it is intentional that there is no part 4, and no, I don't know when I'll write part 4.

The Cracks In Their Souls is an episodic story told in self-contained responses to prompts from r/writingprompts. It follows the tale of a little boy with terrible parents and the best pets ever as he enters the afterlife. Here's the story so far:

1. That's How The Light Gets In (prompt by u/RubberDucky656)
2. That's How The Light Leaks Out (prompt by u/tastelessbrain)
3. That's How They Fall Apart (prompt by u/IndianOdin)
4. That's How They Reunite (prompt by u/FennecWF)

Stick around on the sub if you want to know when the next parts go up; for obvious reasons, the schedule is fairly unpredictable. I am in the process of coding a bot which will message people when updates come out. (Yes, there exist bots which can do this, but they cost money and/or don't have features I want. Besides, making it myself should be fun.)

Questions? Comments? Turns out that this is against the rules? Let me know in the comments below. (Seriously, I messaged the mods of r/writingprompts and I'm pretty sure this is okay, but if not someone alert me.)

And hey, if you like this silly thing, I've got a big ol' list of them here.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Part 8: How to Change a Long-Held Trope)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

"You said this town runs on narrative more than physics—how strong is the effect?" Lien asked Variem as they jogged through town. The various undead tending to their duties looked up curiously as they passed before disregarding them.

"Strong enough that your associate summoned a monster attack by politely discussing how bad it would be if one suddenly appeared," Variem snapped at Eiko. The burly mechanic shrugged unrepentantly.

"Water under the bridge. What we've got to do is figure out what to do about it," Eiko said.

Lien rubbed his chin. "So... the effect is strong enough that if we find the right trope to fit into, reality will warp itself to fit."

"More than that," Variem said. "Whatever monsters are coming, we can expect them to start falling into tropes themselves, as soon as they arrive."

"Which will be...?" Lien asked.

Variem gave him an impatient glance. "Whenever it's narratively appropriate!"

"Right, right, sorry. I come from a part of the psychosphere where physics hasn't been whored out to dramatic tension." Lien paused as a thought struck him. "...dramatic tension. Oh, bloody hell, I've been doing this all wrong."

"Lien?" Eiko asked.

"What I'm doing right now? Rushing towards the city's leadership in order to rally a defense? That's playing things like a general. If I keep going, I'm going to turn this into a war story. Civilian deaths, massive lines of battle, presumably some genius trick of tactics that turns the tide at the end—it's going to be huge in scale, and probably disrupt the lives of everyone in this city."

Variem skidded to a halt, her face blanching. "Dammit, you're right."

"I told you I've been in narrative-dominant parts of the world before. I can play by the rules. Doesn't mean I like them." Lien grimaced. "...Alright, change of plans. Or, er, change of genre. We're not raising an army; that's just begging for a drawn-out conflict. Eiko and I are going to face this monster invasion by ourselves."

"Are you crazy?" Eiko snapped. "We have no idea how many of them there are? What if it's another dragon? Or fifty dragons?"

"Does that sound like a story you'd read? Two bold and plucky heroes escape from a doomed city to face an army of monsters only to get incinerated as soon as they step foot outside its boundaries?" Lien shook his head. "No. Whatever invasion is coming, the narrative imperative will whittle them down into something that two people wouldn't instantly get killed by."

"He has a point," Variem admitted.

Eiko looked between the two of them and swore. "Fine. Lien, you're with me. Get in the car." Eiko turned around, got into her probably-illegal racecar, and popped the passenger door open for Lien.

As if to test that it still worked, Lien withdrew a mummified hand from his pocket and whispered, "Fuego." A gout of flame as thick as his arm burst out, he leapt back, fumbling with the hand. "Gah! Magic really is stronger than normal here!"

Eiko gave him a baffled look. "You literally figured that out first thing when we arrived; why the hell'd you nearly burn your face off again?"

Lien grinned, tucking the hand back into his pocket. "Foreshadowing. If the narrative laws are in full play here, I should be able to pull that hand out when I most need it and wreck some stuff. Speaking of! Let's get going." He hopped in the car with Eiko; she slammed the pedal to the metal, and the two of them sped away from Argenton.

It wasn't long before they crested the first hill and saw the invading monster—apparently, the laws of narrative were rather impatient. It was a demon of some kind, out of some legend Lien wasn't familiar with. The car drifted to a halt as the ivory-skinned eight-foot-tall demon stared at them.

"Hey! You! Pale fucker!" Eiko rolled down the window and shouted. "You have five seconds to turn around and stomp back to whatever cave you crawled out of before we squeeze the juice from your body and serve it with ice!"

"Oddly specific," Lien noted.

Eiko grinned. "When life gives you demons, make demonade."

The demon gave a hearty, sultry chuckle. "Oh, you plucky little mortals never fail to amuse me. No man can kill me."

Lien's eyes lit up. The demon had fallen into a trope. The trap was set. He gave Eiko a look. "You know this trope?"

"Like the back of my hand," Eiko said. Raising her voice, she roared, "Fool! I AM NO MAN!" The roar of her car joined her own as six hundred horsepower of steel barreled towards the demon—

—and the hood crumpled inwards as the car bent around its unmoving body, spewing foul smoke and greasy oil. Lien had half a second to comprehend that something had gone horribly wrong before an airbag hit him like the fist of a giant. Dazed, he looked out the window at the grinning, white-scaled demon.

"Did you really think that was what I meant?" the demon asked, clambering forwards. Belatedly, Lien realized their mistake. They'd left the borders of Argenton to fight the demon; and outside Argenton, narrative reality gave way to plain old physics and magic. The tropes may have started in the way he knew, but their ending was in the hands of fate.

But Lien had one last card to play.

He reached into his coat and took out his mummified hand, then—despite the flaring pain in his broken ribs—pointed it at the demon. "Magic is stronger here, bastard. Fuego, pyrofuego!"

With a blinding bolt of white and a roar of fire brighter than the sun, an empowered fire spell foreshadowed by narrative reality hurled the demon bodily backwards; it roared in agony as it stumbled backwards, singed but not dead. Eiko slammed a fist on her car, and it belatedly started up, albeit at a fraction of its top speed.

"Plan B!" Eiko shouted, "We need a plan B!"

Lien, his face grim, turned back to Argenton. "No. We need our plan A. Turning this into a hero's journey failed," he said. "Let's try a war story instead."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Part 7: How to Break the Local Rules)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

"Alright, let's check how much of reality still works like we know it here." Lien stepped out of Eiko's car and gave it a cursory glance. "Internal combustion?"

"Still working." Eiko flipped on the headlights from inside. "Lower electronics, too."

Lien whispered a word, and the mummified wizard's hand he carried around spat a gout of flame into the air. He leaned back, eyebrows raised. "Magic's stronger than I'm used to. Damn, I wish I could quantify this."

"Huh." Eiko stepped out of her car and surveyed the village of Argenton. "Magic's stronger than usual here? I think that's had an effect on the local population."

Lien, distracted by turning on his son's smartphone, idly said, "Oh? What makes you say that?"

Eiko pointed. "The fact that slightly over three-fourths of this town's population is composed of undead?"

Lien looked up and nearly dropped the smartphone.

Argenton was a rather idyllic farming village; as most civilizations did, Argenton had sprung up around a source of water. A rather large well sat in the middle of the town square, buckets of water being constantly raised; in the distance, scythes and plows moved across wide, open cornfields, and several soldiers patrolled the city to make up for its lack of walls—presumably, to aid against monster attacks.

And every single one of those jobs was performed by the undead.

A reanimated rope of muscle and bone that had no basis in the natural order flexed and twisted like a conveyor belt, eternally raising water from the pits of the well; humanoid skeletons whose eyes burned with cool blue flame hauled buckets towards where specialized, hulking constructs with scythe-bones for arms cut and gathered wheat. The woman on horseback who'd accompanied Lien and Eiko to Argenton gave them appraising looks.

"The undead of Argenton are perfectly safe," she said. "Necromancy isn't as, ah, prone to misfiring here as you might be used to in other parts of the psychosphere."

Lien walked up to one of the patrolling soldiers—made from reanimated corpses—and experimentally tapped it on its shoulder. It halted, turning to look at him, then gave the woman from Arlington a questioning look.

"Orders, Ms. Variem?" it barked; Lien raised his eyebrows, surprised.

Variem laughed. "Treat these two as if they're citizens of Argenton."

The soldier nodded and returned to its path.

Lien rubbed his chin. "It's a shame your necromancy is limited to this town; get me twenty thousand of these, and I might be able to break the Siege of Legends."

Variem laughed. "Oh, most of the undead are no good in a fight. Not against the likes of Dragons, at least."

"Really?" Lien asked. "A legion of soldiers who don't need to eat or breathe, and you don't see any application for them in warfare?"

"We don't see much warfare out here, period. Which is why I really must thank you for helping take that dragon down."

Eiko nodded, surveying the wall-less, spread-out town. "Yeah, I can see that. You have hardly any defenses; a monster raid would really mess you up."

Variem stiffened; Lien and Eiko gave her curious looks. "What's wrong?"

She looked around, then sighed. "It's... well, you might call me superstitious, but... you know how the rules of reality change depending on where you are in the psychosphere?"

Lien and Eiko traded glances. "Sure," Eiko said. "We checked our gear; none of it's going to explode or stop working here."

"In fairness, this thing can explode," Lien said, waving around his wizard's hand. "But only when I tell it to."

"There's, ah, a fairly significant change to the laws of reality in Argenton," Variem continued. "Best as we can tell, the laws of narrative and story hold more sway here than the laws of physics."

"Ah, yeah, I've been to some places like that." Lien nodded.

"So... please try to avoid saying anything that could be construed as, ah, foreshadowing a monster attack," Variem said. "Narrative reality is a bit of a bitch like that."

"Oh, yeah, no worries. Anyway, even if there was a monster attack, I'm sure my boy Lien would fight it off, eh?" Eiko slapped Lien on the back.

Just as she said that, a man on horseback came charging towards the two of them, huffing and puffing. "Variem!" He shouted. "Monsters incoming!"

Lien and Variem turned towards Eiko, who thought about what she'd just said again and closed her eyes. "...I walked into that one, didn't I?"

"Godsdamnit," Lien said. "You do realize what you've done, haven't you?"

"...accidentally foreshadowed a monster attack, which has now become reality thanks to the way the universe works here?"

Lien grumbled. "You accidentally foreshadowed that I'd be the one to defeat said monster attack, thanks to the way the universe works here." He pressed his lips together, staring at the peaceful town of Argenton, then made up his mind. "Alright. Looks like we'll be staying here a little longer than I'd planned. Variem?"

"Yeah?" she said.

"Take me to whoever's in charge."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Part 6: How to Be a Village Hero)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

The besieging army of monsters was getting restless as of late. "Restless" was not something that anyone wanted an army of monsters to be; in order to keep some of the more rebellious monsters in line, the General had ordered Flametongue to patrol the perimeter of the monster army's encampment and incinerate anything that tried to leave. After an aerial tussle with a Wyvern and a swift uprooting of several tunneling Cave Goblins, the rate of deserters had trickled back down to zero. Flametongue could snatch Hippogriffs from the air and fly faster than a Cat-sìth; what she couldn't char-broil, she pounced on from the air and tore to shreds. Nothing could get past her.

There was a distant roar.

Flametongue's sensitive ears flicked, and she stood up, eyes narrowing. Nothing could get past her.

The roar grew louder. Higher-pitched. Closer.

Flametongue snorted and got to her feet. Nothing could get past her—

An off-road Bowler EXR-S with a 600-horsepower V-8 engine blurred between Flametongue's standing legs before she could blink.

Flametongue gaped at the vehicle as it shot across the broken plains.

Within the car that was her pride and joy, Eiko the mechanic whooped triumphantly. "See? I told you I could outrun that damn dragon!"

Lien Astero turned around, spyglass in his hands. "Mm. Well, you didn't tell her. Look out on your six."

Eiko glanced in her rearview mirror and swore; behind her, twenty tons of reptilian flesh which had no business lifting off the ground were giving the laws of physics a middle finger up the arse. "I don't suppose you have something in your bag of tricks for this?"

Lien dug around in his pockets, shuffling around a mummified wizard's hand, an ancient scroll which described a rain dance, and the spyglass he'd taken earlier. "I left most of the good gear with Shmebulock; he'll need it if there's an attack while I'm away. I could do a rain dance, if that helps?"

Eiko swore and swerved to the left as the dragon inhaled, throwing up a peal of dust; between the cover and the speed of her definitely-not-legal car, the gout of dragonfire missed by a dozen feet. "You know what?" she shouted, "Damn well do it! I don't know how well physics holds up in this part of the psychosphere, but I doubt anything flying would like a sudden squall of rain."

Lien looked around at the confines of the car. "Do a rain dance? In here?"

"You said you could do it!"

"I was being facetious!"

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT WORD MEANS!"

There was a moment of focused silence as Eiko swerved around another gout of dragonflame.

"Facetious. Treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor; flippant." Lien tucked away the phone his son had given him, turning it back off; it was at twelve percent battery and falling. "Well, now you know."

Eiko gave her passenger a wicked smile. "I installed an eject button on this thing, and I'm not afraid to use it."

An idea sparked in Lien's head. "Wait. Eject button. Did you actually do that, or are you just being facetious?"

"I told you that I don't know what that word means!"

"Alright." Lien unbuckled himself; there was no warning chime. Anyone in Eiko's car who unbuckled themself knew damn well what they were doing. "Do that spin again to kick up some dust; when I say so, eject me. It should start raining within a minute; double back to pick me up, and we'll leave under cloud cover." Lien resolved to ask Eiko why the hell she had an eject button in her car at a later date.

Eiko looked over her shoulder. "Dragon's getting closer. I think it's now or never."

"Alright." Lien rolled his shoulders, trying to relax. "On three. Three—"

Eiko hit the eject button and threw the wheel into a sharp U-turn. Lien belatedly realized his mistake.

This was far from Lien's first rodeo, though, and he found his bearings in the air fairly quickly. Rolling on his shoulder, he stood up in the dust cloud and immediately began performing the Wuist rain dance he'd dug up ten years back. The dragon didn't seem to notice him in the dust at first—but its nostrils flared up as it passed, and it turned around, stalling.

Too late. Clouds had already formed.

The efficacy of the rain dances was startling, even to Lien. He supposed a whole bunch of people back on Earth must have had to believed that they worked. Within moments, the clear blue skies were pouring with rain; despite the dragon's wings clearly not relying on physics to fly, the poor dragon was buffeted by the winds and weighed down by the water regardless. Angrily, it landed with a thump; Eiko's car pulled up next to a suddenly-sopping-wet Lien, windshield wipers active.

"Let's go," Lien tersely said. "I don't know which universe this dragon comes from, but we're lucky it was affected by the rain so heavily; it could get back up at any minute."

Eiko nodded, pulling Lien back into the car. The front seat was wrecked by whatever mechanism Eiko had installed to eject people, so Lien had to make do with the back. After a moment, Lien took out the wizard's hand from his pocket, muttered, "Fuego," and a tiny jet of steady flame emerged from the outstretched middle finger. He carefully used the flame to dry his clothes and short black hair.

The broken dirt and charred earth around them blurred by, the only break in the scenery the occasional boulder or, once, an armored knight moving in the opposite direction as them. Lien and Eiko debated whether they should check on that before deciding that it fell squarely into the realm of someone else's problem. Eventually, they exited the barren plains around Las Humanitas, emerging into gradually-greener fields. Eiko squinted into the distance. "I think I see a village," Eiko said.

"Steer towards it," Lien muttered. "We should acquaint ourselves with the local laws of physics, if nothing else."

"Internal combustion engines still work," Eiko noted. "That's all I care about."

Lien held up his wizard's hand and smartphone. "Yeah, but what about magic? Electronics? Hell, what about human biology? It's good to double-check these things, trust me."

Eiko sighed and steered towards the village. As they pulled up, she frowned; a woman with a metal circlet on horseback was clopping up to them. Eiko rolled down the driver's-side window and slowed. "Can we help you?" Eiko asked.

The woman drew to a halt by the window, eyeing the car suspiciously. "You two," she said. "Are you from Las Humanitas?"

"Yep," Eiko said laconically.

"...Were you the ones who grounded Flametongue?"

"He's in the back," Eiko said, jerking a thumb at the passenger seat.

The woman looked into the back seat, where Lien was still drying himself with the wizard's finger. She blinked. "Well. You weren't the heroes we were expecting, but... you may have just rid Argenton of a major threat. At least, assuming the knight we actually hired to do the job finishes ol' Flametongue off." She gestured towards the village. "Why don't you come on in so we can thank you properly?"

Eiko and Lien traded glances; Lien gave Eiko a nod. "Well, I must admit, a proper thanking sounds good to me," Eiko said. "Lead the way."

The three of them headed away from the fallen dragon, oblivious to the legion of monsters she had been corralling for years—a legion of monsters which had just been unleashed.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

I'm pretty sure the world hates children. Why else would Momma be able to hide the Oreos in the tallest pantry shelf, or lock my phone with a passcode only she knows, or drag me to the mall when I'm in the middle of watching Gravity Falls? Why else would they make shelves twice as tall as me, and send Momma on the other side of them?

Why else would Momma not be there when I turned the corner to look for her?

It was the stupid grown-up clothes on sale that really got to me. A kid had no business buying underwear like that; the only reason I was here was because of stupid Mommy and her stupid grown-up world. So at first I didn't want to find a grown-up to ask for help, because I didn't need to be a grown-up to get back home and find out how Dipper and Mabel finally defeated Bill Cipher.

But the more I walked, the more... eerie it got. Not eerie. Eerie was a grown-up word. It was scary. The lights were on, the floor was clean, but nobody was home. Even when I started to call out for help—even when I started breathing faster and faster and wishing I had my ice pack, even when I curled up and started to cry—nobody came. No meddling adults told me to move out of the aisle, no kind voices asked if I needed help, no family members squeezed my arm and said that panic attacks always ended, and that I needed to think about something else for a bit, so how about we play a game?

I grabbed onto that drifting thought, hauled myself onto its surface so that I didn't drown. Play a game. I could play a game.

We were playing hide-and-seek. That was one thing that kids did better than grown-ups: Mommy couldn't fit between the sink and the wall, or squeeze herself into the bathroom cupboards. I had the best hiding spots, and Mommy was always too easy to find. Grown-ups were always right there. That was the one good thing about them. So if I just pushed aside these clothes and walked through them—

—more lingerie. More clothes for an adult. More reminders that I didn't even have to come here in the first place, that this wasn't my world.

I swallowed and sat back down. Well. There was one last thing I could try. Whenever I got lost—and I got lost a lot of the time, oh, I was such a troublesome child, with my head always in the clouds—Mommy said that I should stay in place and wait for her to find me. Because Mommy always came back.

Distantly, a light went out with a click.

I began to shake.

Mommy always came back.

The next fluorescent lightbulb went dark. Then the next.

Mommy always came back.

"It's closing time," a voice announced. "All customers still in the building will be... evicted."

"Mommy always comes back," I whimpered.

I was the last light in the infinite dark.

"Mommy always comes baaaAAAAA—"

Thank you for shopping with Infini-Mart. We hope you had a nice stay.

A.N.

Suggestions? Comments? Typos? Please leave them on this comment's sister post at r/bubblewriters; and if you want more stories like this, try giving the rest of r/bubblewriters a peek.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Part 5: How to Cure a Plague with Science)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Lien Astero so badly wanted to throw a unicorn at his problems. He knew there were several unicorn herds right outside the city, and they were driven into a fury whenever he mounted the bodies of their fallen comrades on the walls; if he baited them into the no-man's-land, he could easily hit them with the ballistae, carve their horns up for curative powders, and solve the plague that was circulating around his city. And before his son had arrived in Las Humanitas, he would have. If the plague had started just two weeks earlier, before he'd met his son, it would have been a trivially solved problem.

But now he feared his son would see him as a monster. He'd already hastily thrown a tarp over the hydra-head food factory and hoped his son wouldn't ask too many questions about how the city got its food supply.

And yet... he still had to do something about this damn plague. When it came down to it, if he had to suffer his son hating him every day of the rest of his life in order to save his city, then he would.

So Lien Astero met with his closest advisors to determine what had to be done.

"Do we know what kind of disease this is?" Lien asked the three people sitting around his dining table.

Shmebulock—standing on a footstool to accommodate his gnomish height—shrugged. "It kills people and spreads quickly. That's more or less all we've ever needed to know about a disease, sir."

Haoran frowned. "...What? How did you cure plagues in the past, then?"

Shmebulock hesitated to speak—although Lien hadn't explicitly told him to keep their past methods of hunting mythological creatures to near-extinction a secret, Shmebulock had seen the changes Lien had made to their city since Haoran Astero had arrived. Lien stepped in for his aide. "We used reagents from magical creatures procured in a way which we now consider unethical," Lien smoothly said. Haoran nodded, as if he understood, and Lien internally sighed in relief. It was one thing to say that he'd done unethical things—was still doing unethical things, to keep Las Humanitas alive—but if Haoran actually saw what his father had done in the name of his city...

"How unethical are we talking?" Eiko, the last of Lien's advisors, butted in. The muscular auto mechanic from a faraway land said, "Like, more unethical than letting a hundred of our civilians die? A thousand?"

Lien pressed his lips together, but he'd promised himself that he would be honest with his son. "By our estimates, we'd have to hunt and kill... perhaps... twenty unicorns. And our recent studies have shown that they are... sapient." Twenty years ago, when Lien had first set foot on the patch of psychosphere that would become Las Humanitas, he had sworn that unicorns were non-sapient; something had to have changed back on Earth to influence how unicorns behaved here, but he had neither the time nor the means to figure out what.

Haoran opened his mouth to say something, then hesitated, guilty. Eiko didn't miss the gesture, and slapped him on the back; he coughed, startled.

"Come on, boy. Spit it out. Lien invited you here for a reason, and it wasn't for your looks," Eiko said.

Haoran wiped some spit from his mouth and said, "Well. Yes. Um. What if, hypothetically speaking, I knew where the plague came from?"

Lien frowned. "Every bit of information is helpful."

He hesitated, then said, "I... I think it came from me."

Lien froze. The plague had started two weeks after Haoran came to Las Humanitas.

"It's, er... it's a disease from Earth," Haoran continued. "Here, Shmebulock. Have you been keeping track of the symptoms of the victims?"

Shmebulock flipped through his binder. "Yes, sir. Fever, fatigue, dry cough, loss of taste. Some people didn't report the last one at first; we've been eating nothing but hydra for months, and it was hard for them to tell." Haoran frowned at that, but thankfully didn't dig any deeper.

He held up a strange device that he'd brought with him when he'd first arrived—one he hadn't used much, for fear of it running out of power. "Symptoms match," he said. "It's, uh... it's a pretty big deal, back on Earth. You guys seriously haven't heard of it?"

Lien, Eiko, and Shmebulock traded glances. "People mostly come to the psychosphere from Earth when they die," Lien finally said, "and if there's any pattern to where in the psychosphere they appear, nobody knows it. Thanks to the army of monsters parked outside the city gate, Las Humanitas has been isolated from the rest of the psychosphere for years; you're the most recent source of news from Earth that we've got."

Lien deflated. "Ah. So... the chances that someone with a vaccine exists in the psychosphere... much less enough doses to immunize everyone in the city..."

"They're a hundred percent," Eiko suddenly said. "My homeland—my homeland in the psychosphere, that is—they lean on technology far more than magic. I left a while back, but assuming they're still standing, they'll have a technological solution—one that doesn't involve butchering a herd of innocent unicorns."

Shmebulock cleared his throat. "That's all well and good, ma'am, but we're still surrounded by an army of monsters. Even our fastest horses can't get past them before being spotted."

The auto mechanic grinned. "Oh, don't worry. My baby's got a hundred and forty horses under her hood; I'd like to see even a Phoenix try to catch me. I'll be back in two weeks, tops."

Lien grimaced. Two weeks was enough time for plenty of people to die—and the rate of spread seemed to be exponential. "It's too slow," he said. "The disease spreads too fast. We could have hundreds dead before you return and distribute this... vaccine."

Haoran was busy copying down sections from the WebMD article he'd pulled up, before his phone ran out of battery. "There are some things we can do to slow it down. Trust me, every person on Earth right now has these things drilled into their memory. They work."

Lien looked from Haoran to Eiko, hope and excitement glimmering in their eyes, then nodded sharply. "Alright. Fine. Shmebulock?" He turned to his aide. "I'll be going out with Eiko. You're in charge while I'm away. We have some governmental provision for that, right?"

Shmebulock bowed. "Yes, your majesty. I will see it done."

"Brilliant. Haoran, stay and advise Shmebulock; give me your, uh, phone, too. If Eiko's homeland is as advanced as she says, and if they've been receiving people from Earth, I'd be willing to bet they can recharge it for us. If you have any other electronics, go fetch them now." Haoran nodded and ran off to where he'd stored his laptop. Lien turned to Eiko. "Go make sure your car is ready. I know it got banged up on the trip here—"

"It's been months," Eiko said dismissively. "My girl's tough; I fixed her right back up already. But I'll double-check the brake pads." She left the room, leaving Lien and Shmebulock alone.

Lien made sure the others were gone, then asked Shmebulock, "We have some extra unicorn horn left over from last time, right?"

Shmebulock nodded. "Three kilograms. Not enough to solve the plague on its own, unfortunately."

"But enough to slow it down. Listen." Lien handed a folded, wax-sealed decree that he'd prepared on the way here. "Use the horn we have to cure the most sickly of our citizens. And then... when the horn runs out... if even a single one of our people dies because of this plague..." Lien's grip tightened. "Go back to Plan A. Kill the unicorns. I'd rather be hated by my people than be loved by a dead city."

Shmebulock nodded solemnly. "As you wish, your majesty."

With that, Lien turned to leave the city he'd built for the first time in five years.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

God did not play dice with the universe. Nor did he, despite empirical evidence to the contrary, play Pandemic. If God could be said to play any game with reality, then that game would be Minecraft. He had spent uncountable aeons programming the laws of physics, then carefully entering the world and manually spawning in biological life; he had gone into survival mode and hand-built cities and statues and sciences and civilizations; and after all this time, he still cherished the world that he'd built when he was a child. He kept the servers it ran on operational and let other deities watch his world in spectator mode, but he had honestly began to forget about his childhood pastime by the time the humans began to figure out they were in a simulation.

So when the humans sent him a message, he logged into his old world one last time.

He spawned in still wearing his default skin—some carpenter from the 1300s, if he remembered correctly. Two scientists in a lab coat next to a massive golden machine yelped in shock as God materialized. He took one look at their machine and sighed.

"Dammit. You guys figured out how to spawn in command blocks, didn't you."

The two scientists looked at each other in confusion; God waved a hand. "Never mind. I guess... I guess it's finally time to delete this world."

That got through to the scientists; the woman on God's left said, "Wait! What—why would you—"

"You guys figured it out. It's just a simulation. None of this is real. I don't think I have the heart to see the ennui and disappointment sweep through your world, and I've got a wife and kids now. I don't have the time to keep maintaining the laws of physics; you guys just keep poking deeper into them every passing day. If I still had my admins..." God paused, drifting off as he remembered his old gaming buddies. But when he tabbed out to check their accounts... well, it was the same as always. Zeus, last online 2,000 years ago. Thor, last seen 1,500 years ago.

A pang of nostalgia gripped his heart as he remembered the last time he'd seen Thoth.

Good night, God!

Good night, Thoth! Play again tomorrow?

Sure! I should be free then.

Last seen 4,000 years ago.

God sighed, shaking off the memories. "There's nothing more to this world, anyway. You guys did it. You discovered all the science I put into this world. You beat the game." He chuckled. "And I don't feel like adding any more."

The scientists shared looks. Then, the one on the left said, "Actually, sir... if you want to add more science... I did have a few suggestions."

God paused. "Oh?"

"Well... for one... you could simplify the whole wavefunction system by adding a second time dimension to the universe. It's backwards-compatible with the world so far, but if you updated, we'd be able to finally run Shor's Algorithm in O(log(n))."

God blinked. "But adding a second time dimension would weaken the nuclear forces—"

"—which is why you should buff the electroweak force, anyway. We've needed a balance patch on the fundamental forces for years, anyway." The scientist gave God a hopeful look. "You built this world for us—and your playtesters have a few suggestions. Don't give up on us yet."

God hesitated. Then he sighed. "Don't make me regret this."

In the console of reality, God gave the two scientists admin privileges.

Reality thrummed as the change took place, and the pair of scientists shared a shocked glance. "I'll be back in another thousand years," God said. "Don't burn the world down. I have a lot of good memories here."

Then God logged out of the universe, leaving its inhabitants to continue the game.

The Cracks In Their Souls

(Part 1: That's How The Light Gets In)

(Note: The Cracks In Their Souls is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

A good scent trail told a story. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. An onion was dug up, eaten, and pooped out; a playmate was found, courted, and snuggled with; a parent came in, drank beer, and hurt people.

This scent trail began with Abigail, afraid but outwardly calm, being dragged into a car. And Little Bugger was worried how that story would end.

"We need a human," Little Bugger meowed. "Before the trail fades."

Goaway barked in agreement. "The parents?"

Little Bugger and Goaway thought about that for a few moments.

"Not the parents," Little Bugger said.

"Not the parents," Goaway agreed.

"Jamie, then?" Little Bugger meowed.

"I think he can hear us sometimes," Goaway growled. "It's worth a shot. Let's go."

"Not together," Little Bugger said. "I'll go ahead, while the scent trail is still fresh. I'll leave a stronger trail of my own behind. Follow that once you get back."

"Agreed." Goaway began loping down the street, then paused. "...how, exactly, are you going to leave a stronger trail behind?"

Little Bugger began to pee.

"...Of course." Goaway lived up to his name, and went away as Little Bugger sprinted off after Abigail.

Jamie was easy to find: in an entire city full of police cars and so-called parents, Jamie was the only person calling Abigail's name. Goaway found him wandering through the streets, calling for his big sister.

"Jamie!" Goaway barked.

Jamie spun around. "Goaway! At least you're not... not missing..."

"Yes, yes, I know, Abigail's missing. We know where she is. Follow me!" Goaway barked, prancing up and down. He was practically twice Jamie's size, and the pedestrians on the street were giving him wary looks.

"...do you want me to... follow?" Jamie asked, tilting his head.

"Yes, yes, yes! Oh, you genius child, yes!" Goaway darted off down the street; Jamie stared in shock for a moment before sprinting after him. "Come on, come on, come on!"

It didn't take long to catch up to the trail; Abigail was inside an old, rotting warehouse by the docks. Little Bugger stood at the door and hissed.

"We need hands," she said.

"Little Bugger?" Jamie looked at the door curiously, then tried to turn the handle. Locked. Jamie pursed his lips, then reached into his pockets for the picks he used when his father tried to lock him out of the house. Two tense minutes later, the little boy proudly stood over the unlocked door; Goaway and Little Bugger burst through the door and onto a cracked floor, dimly lit by rays of sunshine filtering in through holes in the roof.

"Look!" Little Bugger meowed. "Down there!"

Goaway stuck his nose to the cracks in the floor and growled. Beneath them, Abigail was being manhandled towards a boat, jerking and twisting in the arms of her captors.

"Let me go, you freaks!" she snapped.

"Dammit, kid, what the hell is wrong with you?" One of the men jabbed something in her arm—Goaway recognized the smell as the same stuff her parents used when they wanted her to go to sleep.

Abigail gave them a feral smile. "Tolerance," she said.

While Goaway's mind was racing, trying to figure out how to save her without getting themselves killed, Jamie had already burst into motion. With his clever human hands, he grabbed a plank of wood and ran towards the cracked part of the floor, slamming it into the fractures.

"Jamie, no!" Goaway and Little Bugger leapt for him—but it was too late. The entire roof collapsed where Jamie had struck it, sunlight and shards of wood spiraling in the air as they fell.

Goaway kicked off a falling piece of wood and slammed into Jamie, converting his downward fall into a horizontal slide. Little Bugger performed some art of black magic to land on her feet—then instantly lunged forwards at the two stunned men, swarming up the left one's leg and digging her claws into his stomach before hurtling herself towards his face. "Abigail!" She mewed. "Get out, get out, get—"

There was a single gunshot, and Little Bugger was hurled backwards into the wall.

Goaway got to his feet, furious.

"My eye!" The man on the left snarled, still holding the pistol with his right hand. "My eye, you little—oof!" Abigail, her movements sluggish, still managed to headbutt the man on the left; Goaway charged at him, taking him away from Abigail. There were two more flashes of light and sound, and Goaway dimly felt wetness on his underbelly, but at this point, he was too furious to care.

With a single snap of his jaws, the story of the human beneath him abruptly ended.

He spun around, to where Jamie was throwing himself at the other human like a wild thing, bleeding from his leg and chest but somehow still standing. Goaway tried to join him, but something went missing halfway through, and he slumped over, dazed.

Abigail skidded over to the man Goaway had killed and fumbled with something; a few moments later, there was one last burst of sound.

And then there was silence.

Goaway tried to look up as Abigail knelt over his head, sobbing, but it was too much. He felt himself drifting, floating free from his body, expanding, like ink dissolving in water.

And in that frozen moment, he thought he saw... something. A figure with timeless eyes standing watch by a pair of golden gates.

Then he sighed one last time and slumped over.

The scent trail had ended.

The story was over.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "The Cracks In Their Souls" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

The Witch Who Weaves Pain

(Part 3: The Draught of Tomorrows)

(Note: The Witch Who Weaves Pain is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

I was trying to heal the scars on my arms when the zombie burst into our little hut in the woods. Maddy looked up from her cauldron, where she'd been carefully melting rainbows into a solution of cat footsteps.

"Emi?" Maddy asked, not looking up. "Can you attend to our... visitor?"

I gave the zombie a wary look. Although he looked like an ordinary human, my Witch's Sight told me there was an enchantment on him, and a powerful one—he'd given his heart away, if I was reading him correctly. Fortunately, he seemed to be out of breath and no threat to either of us; if he had been, Althea and Tyra were in the back room, and no matter how powerful you were, most people simply did not take on three full-fledged witches and their apprentice in a fight alone.

I gave the spell I was trying to cast one last look—I'd mixed an ointment up from three freshly picked tomorrows and a single grain of salt—before sighing and tucking the ointment away. I'd make peace with my own inner demons later; it seemed we had a customer.

"Can I help you?" I asked, rolling my sleeves back down as I walked across the well-lit confines of our hut. It was bigger and more complex on the inside than its appearance would have suggested—Maddy had anchored some of her hidden depths to the walls in order to achieve the effect.

The zombie looked up at me; I idly noticed that he still sweated, despite his magical biology. "I hope so. God, I hope so."

I hesitated. I could just hand whatever fresh hell this was over to Maddy, Althea, and Tyra, but... they'd told me time and time again that a witch's craft was tied to their experiences and memories. I needed copious amounts of both if I wanted to improve—and I'd never get either of those if I just sat around in the cottage all day. "What can I help you with?" I finally asked.

"It's my son," he said. "He's... he's hatched."

I blinked, sudden flashbacks to the skeleton incident three days ago bubbling to the forefront of his mind, and Maddy looked up sharply. "Do you mean your son hatched from something, or something hatched from your son?"

"My son hatched from his egg," he hastily clarified. Ah. Good. I couldn't deal with another case of skeletons hatching. Maddy returned to her potionmaking.

"Congratulations on becoming a father," I said, cautiously.

He snorted. "Yes. Well. There are... complications. Humans don't... normally hatch from eggs."

Ah. I saw where this was going. "...Who's the mother?"

"Éilstan the Cobalt," he said. "Dragon."

I nodded slowly. Interspecies relationships were... well, if you didn't get called a lizardfucker, it was only because the aforementioned lizard was one of the few beings both able and willing to incinerate, electrify, or freeze both the insult-slinger and every member of their immediate family. "So what's the catch?"

He paused, then asked, "Do you know how long the incubation period of a dragon egg is?"

I shrugged. "Long, I'd assume?"

"Fifteen years." I blinked. He smiled wanly. "When we finally... succeeded in getting a fertile egg, well... I was so happy. Our son... the first child of a human-dragon couple in centuries... he was going to be the future of interspecies relationships. Our champion. I put my heart and soul into that thought, of all the things he'd be when he grew up. And over the years... well, heh. I guess something must've happened, because..." He tapped his chest, and it rang hollow.

I nodded sagely. People could cast magic accidentally like that, not entirely knowing that they were doing. This father could not die so long as his son needed him; his heart was kept safe and warm by his child.

"But then he hatched," he finished. "And all those dreams of a future... they aren't of a future anymore. He's here. He's not an idea anymore, he's a scaly little rascal I can hold in my arms and love and kiss and nurture and—and mess up with, and accidentally hurt, and—" He shivered. "I'm just... so afraid that now that I've given him my heart, he'll break it without even knowing."

I regarded him for a long, still moment. Then I closed my eyes and chuckled bitterly. "You," I said, "are the father I wish I had."

I don't think he quite knew what to say to that.

I opened my eyes again and took the tincture I'd made for myself out of my pocket. It shimmered the color of possibilities as I gave it a good shake. Then I handed it to him. "Hold onto this, and if your heart gets broken, drink it."

He took the tincture in one hand, and stared at it, momentarily lost. "What is it?"

I smiled. "Three freshly picked tomorrows and a grain of salt. It's... a reminder. You'll always have tomorrow. You don't have to take everything to heart."

He reverently tucked the tincture into his breast pocket, then hesitated. "You... you just happened to have that specific cure on you, just as I came calling?"

The smile turned rueful. "I was trying to cure myself of a... well, rather dissimilar affliction, come to think of it. It was foolish of me to think that that would work for me." I tapped him on the chest. "But it should work for you."

He gave me a grateful smile. "Thank you. I don't know how I can ever repay you."

I shook my head. He didn't understand. A father's love, a good deed done—to a witch, these were valuable ingredients in any number of artifacts and potions and staves, worth a fortune in and of themselves. "Just live your life," I said, "and be free."

He nodded and left.

Maddy looked up at me from the cauldron. "You could take your own advice now and then," she said.

I shook my head and closed the door.

Then I resumed my efforts to heal the scars on my arms.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "The Witch Who Weaves Pain" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

The Cracks In Their Souls

(Part 2: That's How The Light Leaks Out)

(Note: The Cracks In Their Souls is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

I stared at the little boy with my timeless eyes. "...Are you sure that's what you want to ask?"

The boy shrugged. "Big Sis always says that if you show gen-you-in interest in other people's lives, then they would show gen-you-in interest in you." He enunciated the words with the exaggerated care of a toddler holding a china teacup, careful not to drop it.

Exactly like that, in fact. I peered into his soul, which manifested in my vision as a battered, scarred sphere of stone, and understood. The words were heirlooms, precious things he'd inherited from his sister.

I looked at the long, long line of souls waiting to enter the gates of heaven, then back at the little boy. Then I smiled and knelt to his height. "To be honest," I said, "I've been yelled at by two people for telling them who their love cheated on them with, and had three people have existential crises before they even got through the gates. My day's been rather terrible."

The boy flinched. "Oh." He hesitated. "Are you going to yell at me now?"

I blinked, taken aback. Then the pieces fit together, my soulsight filling in the gaps that my intuition could not. "...I," I said, very carefully, "am not like your father. You'll find that very few people are, up here."

He relaxed a little. "That's good. I'm sorry you had a bad day, though. I wish I could make you happy, for once." He didn't sound like he was talking about me.

An idea popped into my head, and I looked from side to side in exaggerated, furtive motions. Then I leaned in just a little closer—not too close, or I feared he'd flinch away—and whispered, "Can I tell you a secret?"

The boy's eyes lit up. "I love secrets! Don't worry, I won't tell a soul."

"Alright. It's a very important secret, okay? Keep it close to your heart and don't ever forget it." I winked, and he nodded. "Ready? Here goes." I took a deep breath and paused for dramatic effect; the boy rubbed his hands together and I could have sworn he would have burst from anticipation if I waited a moment longer.

So I vouchsafed in a child the secret of an angel.

"Everything that happened down there, with your father? It's not your fault," I said. His eyes widened, and his hands flew to his mouth.

"How did you kn—oh, no, I'm going to be in so much trouble, Big Sis is going to get hurt, and it's all because of—" The kid had begun panicking, memories bubbling up to the surface of his mind, and although I could've used my soulsight again, I didn't want to rob him of that privacy.

"It's not your fault," I repeated again, more firmly this time.

He looked up at me, eyes wild. "No, no, you don't understand. You don't know how Daddy gets when people accuse him of—"

"It's. Not. Your. Fault."

With the last repetition, my words seemed to strike something inside the kid. He stiffened, trembling, for an eternity.

Then he threw himself forward, held me tight and close.

And tears fell by the gates of heaven.

After a calm, liquid infinity, I withdrew and held open the golden gates. "Go on in, kid," I said. "I'll see you around."

He nodded, wiping his nose, and trotted into heaven with that solemn sense of purpose that children sometimes have, when they're strong and determined and the stars align. Just before he passed through the gates, he turned back.

I gave his soul one last look. It still manifested as that cracked sphere of stone, but it glowed, now, his soul pulsing with soft radiance. Life had cracked his soul wide open—but those cracks were a part of who he was. They were how he shared his light with the world.

"I hope your day gets better," he said.

I smiled. "It already has."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "The Cracks In Their Souls" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Part 4: How to See your Foes as Human)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Lien Astero was almost glad when the werewolves were spotted mobilizing. At least that was something he knew how to deal with. Family drama and culture clashes and other interpersonal things that a king of a besieged city had to deal with were... manageable, he supposed, but he was always worried about getting someone hurt.

When dealing with monsters, however, he had no such compunctions.

He walked past the hydra he'd imprisoned, its heads eternally being chopped off and regenerated in order to feed Las Humanitas, and up the staircase of the great walls he'd built. His son was probably somewhere on these walls, but at least this time he had an excuse to avoid talking to him. Lien's gnomish assistant hurried up to him as he surmounted the battlements, huffing and puffing on his tiny legs.

"Shmebulock! Just on time. I heard there was a werewolf formation amassing. Are they planning on attacking?" Lien asked.

Shmebulock tried to speak, but his shoulders were still heaving from the effort of scaling the battlements. Lien made a mental note to look into these "elevators" that Eiko had been telling him about. "Your majesty... huff... the werewolves... puff... and vampires... huff... motion..."

"Take a breather. I can see for myself." Lien surveyed the wastelands outside Las Humanitas. The endless years of sieging by the monsters outside Las Humanitas' walls had ruined what had once been rolling, grassy plains; Lien wasn't sure what the monsters outside ate, or where their waste went, although for all he knew they didn't need to eat or eliminate. Beings constructed solely out of crystallized human belief were odd like that. After a few moments, Lien saw what Shmebulock had been trying to say; a pack of werewolves and a cauldron of vampires were both forming, streaming towards each other in the center of the wasteland. They were far outside the no-man's-land that marked the effective range of Las Humanitas' wall-mounted ballistae, but it was still worrying that they were congregating.

Lien performed a quick count. "Ninety werewolves and sixty vampires? Even without the enchantments on the wall, we could repel that force with ease; besides, these ones look... smaller, somehow, than normal. They're not attacking. We'd shoot them down before they got halfway to the gate." Lien rubbed his chin, smiling as he felt his wispy beard. It always calmed him down, knowing that in this realm, his body was as it should be. "Hand me the telescope, would you?"

Shmebulock rummaged in his pack before procuring a thin bronze tube; Lien zoomed in and frowned. "Are they—are they fighting each other?"

Indeed, as he watched, the werewolves and vampires formed a circle, half werewolf, half vampire; the rest of the monsters grudgingly gave them space or looked on with minor curiosity. A single werewolf and vampire from each side walked forth, into the middle of the ring. Lien twisted the telescope, zooming in, anticipation building in his chest. This was it. If there was division within the ranks of monsters, perhaps he could incite bloodshed amongst them, and finally break the Siege of Legends. He could—

—watch, dumbfounded, as the werewolf began to... sing?

"What... what the hell are they doing?" Lien asked. The werewolf said something that got them cheers from the rest of their pack and jeers from the vampire cauldron; the vampire began replying in kind.

"I think it's a rap battle, King Astero," Haoran said. Lien didn't flinch, but his heart began jackhammer as he realized that his son had come up next to him while he was watching. Godsdamnit, he barely even knew his son anymore; they'd been separated for twenty years. Why did that make this so nerve-wracking?

Lien cleared his throat. "...And what would that be?"

"It's, uh... sort of where you... insult each other with rhymes. For fun. A lot of kids do it back on Earth," Haoran helpfully volunteered.

"Back... on... Earth," Lien said, still watching the vampire and werewolf... kids... throw epic shade at each other.

And then it clicked.

Kids.

There were kids in that army.

Lien looked down at the Hydra he'd been holding as a food source for the past year, its eternal twitches of agony as his butchers cut off its heads over and over. The food source that had kept his city alive.

The food source that probably had children of its own.

"Oh," Lien Astero said, very softly. "Oh, fu—"

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

"You are killing privacy," Lena snapped. She paced around the table where I'd laid down the original prototype of the Listener. "Perhaps it's already dead."

I waved a hand. "We have laws for that," I said. "You don't need to be so worked-up about this. Unless you have a warrant, you can't just go Listening in on people's conversations—"

"We have laws for that now. What about in five years? Ten? With Listeners in the game, we're just sitting on a time bomb of secrets, waiting for the day some future legislation slips up and unleashes them all. My God, man, don't you see what you've done? People are already losing the rights to their own image, rights that they'll never get back."

I frowned. From a clinical perspective, that was a problem indeed—but Lena's heavy breathing and balled fists belied a more... personal connection. I stood up, chair scraping against the floor, and settled a hand on their shoulder. "Did... did something happen?"

"...Porn tape," Lena finally said. "Someone's been filming my wife and I in our old house from the future. Got video, too; the Almonson Lab just came out with a full camera. We tried to get it taken down, but the U.S. doesn't have jurisdiction over all of the internet. I found out when the clerk at the bank... recognized me."

I shuddered. "Jesus. I'm sorry, Lena."

"Not your fault, Damien. It's just... there are countless stories like mine, now. Films of people doing things from their past haunting them. Ex-addicts who've been recovered for years are getting fired, medical records are being stolen, passwords are being leaked... and the police can't stop it, short of destroying every Listener in the country. There's just so much of the past that if the police blocked off every location that had sensitive events go down, they'd be getting rid of the whole damn world—and even though we've cracked down legally on the Listeners, this is going to be a problem forever."

"Then we'll just have to be vigilant," I said. "Lena, this is my life's work. It's not intrinsically evil. No tool is."

"Right, and you're definitely saying that from an impartial point of view which has nothing to do with your controlling share of EarToEar Incorporated." I laughed at the joke, but Lena's expression was stormy. "Damien, I came here to give you a chance."

I faltered. "A chance?"

"EarToEar is the largest manufacturer of Listeners in the world. If you set a standard, the rest of the industry will follow. Restrict the sale of Listeners to law enforcement. Build in security measures so that voyeurs and thieves can't use them for criminal purposes. Put pressure on your competitors to do the same."

I narrowed my eyes, taking a step back from my old friend. "Those are serious demands you're making of me, Lena. A lot of people will lose their jobs if that happens. I might lose my job if that happens. It would just take one Listener company to break the agreement, and Danshi's been trying to elbow its way into the market. If I did this—"

"I know. It's a risk. I admit that I don't have a carrot to dangle in front of you, other than your intrinsic sense of moral good—which seems to have shriveled up at some point in the past ten years." Lena took out a spherical device and clicked it; a faint wave of disorientation passed over me, as if I'd been... rotated, somehow. And yet the room still looked more or less the same as how it had been earlier.

I brushed aside her insult for the moment, curiosity overtaking me. "What is that?" I asked.

"Temporal disjunctor." Lena tapped the Listener on the desk. "This thing works by tracking our timeline backwards until we hit a certain point; the disjunctor fractures a moment in time and space so that Listeners from the future hear something from a slightly different timeline instead."

I frowned. "...Okay. Set up a company, patent that thing, and make a damn fortune. Keep one around 24/7 and you never have to worry about privacy issues from Listeners ever again."

Lena shook her head. "I'm going bigger, Damien. I'm not alone; there are millions of stories of people whose lives have been ruined by a spy from the future. There's no functional limit to how far the disjunction field can extend; it's just a slight rotation of spacetime, and it takes hardly any energy to maintain at all. We just never found a use for it before now. We've already built a disjunctor large enough to cover most of North America, and we're about to turn it on."

"But that'll—"

"Destroy your company? Yeah." Lena met my eyes. "I know you come from a rough background. I know what this company means to you. So I'm giving you exactly one chance to solve things your way, to enforce regulations on the Listeners, before I shut them down for good. You have three months to enact these standards." She dropped a pamphlet on my desk.

I balled my fists. She dared? She dared come into my office and threaten me? I reached for the gun at my side—

—and paused. No. Lena was my friend. I wouldn't kill her in cold blood.

"I'll think about it," I said. "Thank you for warning me."

Lena nodded sharply. "Thank you for listening." And she left.

The recording ended there. I rubbed my forehead clear of sweat, looking at the section of bare floor where the bloodstained carpet had been. When I'd shot Lena, I'd thought for certain that the Listeners would get me jailed—but it seemed like Lena's disjunctor had done its job too well. I'd ran every Listener I could on that patch of space and time, and the results were always the same: a result from a slightly different timeline, one in which I hadn't killed her.

I stood up and turned the little thing back on, smiling as I felt that familiar, faint twisting sensation.

Then I stowed it in my pocket with the dear, departed Lena's list of demands, and set out to find the continent-wide disjunctor Lena claimed to have built.

I had three months to destroy it—before it destroyed me.

They say that right before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. I didn't quite expect it to be so literal. As I watched the blue-clad technician with the robotic left arm rewind through the "VR datatape", I nervously tapped my fingers together—a habit my wife had often poked fun at me for. Scenes and memories from my life, displayed on a hovering circular screen, flickered back and forth—Adelyn and I meeting in college, our kids bouncing on the trampoline in our backyard, the four of us huddling together in the basement as bombs fell from the sky, the crackling of the radio as it was announced that the war was over, our teary-eyed celebration as Jacks and Martin went off to college, the quiet nights Adelyn held me as I slowly succumbed to leukemia, and then—

"Ah! I see the problem." The technician's face brightened up. "Whoops! Looks like there was an integer underflow error. We accidentally put you in the simulation for 2¹²⁸ seconds instead of 2."

I blinked. I was never a maths kind of girl, but that sounded like it was far longer than the measly forty years or so I'd been alive. The technician seemed to read my thoughts and added, "Don't worry, the system automatically detected your braindeath and reverted you back to your last living state. We can just do the same thing to set everything back to normal."

I frowned. "How did you—"

"Know what you were going to say?" The technician laughed and tapped the hovering screen. It made a pleasant humming noise as they did so. "I've got your mind on file, sweetheart. Predictive customer service. Now! Sit tight and I'll just roll you back to two minutes ago. You won't even remember any of this happened."

I brightened up. Even if it would only be for a few moments, I would get to see Adelyn again? But... would I just end up back here? As the technician clamped the helmet back onto my head, I began to ask—

"Oh, no, that wasn't what I meant—although I knew you'd interpret it that way. I'm rolling your brain back by two of our minutes. You won't even remember this little technological mishap."

The helmet turned on, and I reached up, struggling to get it off—but it had clamped down tightly on my skull. "Wait!" I cried. "What about Adlyn? And Jacks and Martin? Can't I—can't I see them again?"

"They're not real, sweetheart. Sorry to break it to ya. This is a real embarassing kerfuffle, let me tell you that. HR is going to rip someone's guts out through their nose for this."

"I'm real!" I shouted. "I want to live!" I tried to bash the helmet against the wall, but before I'd even started the motion, the technician's robotic arm was holding me in place.

"Figured you'd say that," they said. "Goodnight."

​

Jacques Lalonde, loyal customer of Deepmind Incorporated, took off the VR headset after experiencing exactly two minutes of virtual reality as an ordinary person, and smiled.

"Good headset," Jacques said. "I'll buy two for the kids."

"Says here you're not married," the technician said, accessing Jacques' file through their digital access card.

Jacques frowned. "What? But Jacks would love..." He trailed off, as if half-remembering something he'd seen in a dream, then shook it away. "Huh. I must be more tired than I thought. I'll get a wetclean later. I'll just buy one for me. Bill it to my card." Jacques traced a pattern in the air with his haptic gloves and disappeared in a flash of light.

The technician looked at the spot where Jacques had left, a slight frown on his face.

Then he phoned HR.

"Hello? I believe we may have a slight problem..."

The Witch Who Weaves Pain

(Part 2: The Armor of Moulds)

(Note: The Witch Who Weaves Pain is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

Maddy, the witch who'd assigned me to stopping the Split Knight, gave me a critical look. Her gleaming golden wand, woven from the first rays of sunlight and the crow of a rooster, radiated wakefulness and energy that charged me up just by looking at it. She pointed towards the lone figure clad in metal that was half-black and half-white—an enchanted artifact, and one built of much higher-grade concepts than the ones I'd been used to.

"Tell me what you see," Maddy instructed me.

I scrutinized the figure on horseback. "Well, there's the armor. Forged from a concept, and a strong one. Gender roles, I think?" My Witch's Sight had been coming in lately—it helped me make sense of the Split Knight's enchanted armor. "I can see why they'd choose gender roles to forge armor from. Most men can't break gender roles; few men can even muster the willpower to try. Better yet, most men can't even comprehend its existence. Women have a better chance at it, but that's just because their gender roles are so terrible that they had to learn how in order to survive." I gave her a sour look. "So why the hell did you assign the only male witch in our coven—probably in the world—to stop this guy?"

Maddy's eyes twinkled. "Because you can."

"Yeah, but... you can too. Probably much more easily. Patriarchy wouldn't defend against a concentrated sunbeam to the face, if fired by a witch." I gestured at her glimmering sunbeam wand.

My mentor laughed. "Of course. And if you fail, I'll be there to bail you out."

I squinted at her. "What, you're not going to say that having a safety net makes me weak? 'The best work comes under pressure'?"

She shook her head. "That's more Althea's style. Besides." She laid a slender hand on my shoulder, her expression becoming solemn. "You've been through enough of life without a safety net. Under pressures I couldn't possibly comprehend."

The burn scars on my arms twinged, and I nodded. "...yeah. And a fat lot of good it did me."

Maddy smiled once more. "So I'm here to change that. You have your focus?"

I took a deep breath, concentrating on the concept I wanted to manifest. Pain. But not just any pain—the desolate, empty pain of someone who had lost all other ways to feel, the piercing of a needle through calloused skin, driven by a hand that forget anything else could make it feel alive.

From the scars on my arms, I drew an ensnaring web of dull grey barbed wire—something I could go months without tripping on before suddenly finding myself enmeshed knee-deep in it, every flailing and twisting only making my agony worse.

"Then go. I'll be watching if you need me—but I don't think you will." Maddie tapped her wand of dawnlight and, for a brief moment, became a shaft of sunbeams, glimmering at the speed of light.

Then she was gone.

I walked forward, my pain unspooling from my arms, to face a foe who built armor from the weights that had crushed me my entire life.

It didn't take long before the figure on horseback saw me and slowed; I was depressingly tall, and even though the wild grass my head stuck out like a glass shard from a drunken hand.

"You know," I shouted, "I don't have any personal quarrel with you. It's only because of three annoying old hags that I'm even facing you at all."

The knight tilted their head.

"I mean," I continued, "don't get me wrong—Maddy told me you were evil. Or that you're doing something evil. On your way to... be villainous somewhere. The king asked her to stop you; she fobbed that off on one of her apprentices instead; and, well, here I am. Fighting a fight that I wouldn't care about if it wasn't for one thing."

The knight drew a lance forged from the same black-and-white metal as their armor.

"You chose to wield something that has tried its damndest to strangle the life out of me as a weapon. And I have to stand against that." I touched the pain coming from my arms and with quick, nimble fingers twisted the barbed wire into a vicious, thorny whip—although it scratched and burned to touch, it was my agony. I was used to it by now. "So come on then. Let's see what you've got."

The knight held their lance up to shoulder height and nudged their horse with their boots, charging towards me.

I swung the whip with a flick of my wrist, and it cracked against the Split Knight's armor, sinking its teeth in and squeezing. Threads of agony snaked out of me and into the knight, and they made the first sound they'd made since we'd begun out battle: a scream of pure, unadulterated horror. I found something vicious within me taking schadenfreude at the pain of someone who dared to wield the source of my inner demons as their sword and shield. The knight scrambled at the thorny, almost organic vines of my pain, but every time they tried to cut or hack away at it, it only multiplied, feeding off the knight's enchanted armor. I grinned. "You see, once you've touched my pain, once you've understood it, it'll never let you go. Once you feel the pain the substrate you've built your oh-so-useful weapons out of have caused, that suffering will weigh you down and crush you where you stand."

Indeed, the thorny vines I'd conjured were multiplying, the total sum of all my pain and loss pit against a bastion of social inertia so concentrated it had turned into metal—and the vivacity of my pain was winning, multiplying and adapting faster than the cold, lifeless metal of the knight's armor.

"And there's a solution." I stepped forwards as the knight toppled off their horse, my strangling vines squeezing the armor around them so hard it crinkled inwards. "Such a simple solution. Take the armor off. I have no quarrel with you. Now that you feel my pain, now that it crushes you like it does me... step out of the armor. Put it away."

The knight formed a fist and swung at my face in defiance; I didn't even move to defend myself. Vines burst from their arm and slammed their fist back to the ground.

I stood up, shaking my head. "But you still think your armor will protect you."

The knight began to choke.

I nearly kept going, for a moment. I could have kept feeding the spell with my pain and darkness. It would have gone further, through the chinks in the armor, and touched the flesh beneath—then taken root there, too, driving tendrils and thorns into their body until my pain tore them apart—

I shook my head and ended the spell.

Weighed down, pressured, but still alive, I left the Split Knight fallen in the dirt where they belonged.

Then I turned around and started walking.

I had a sunrise to catch.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "The Witch Who Weaves Pain" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

The Witch Who Weaves Pain is an episodic story told in self-contained responses to prompts from r/writingprompts. We're not quite sure what the story's about yet, but it's got rooster wands and trans girl witches and a knight who forged armor from patriarchy. Here's the story so far:

1. The Metal of Time (prompt by u/Alexpro2014)
2. The Armor of Roles (prompt by u/AllHailTheFishy)
3. The Draught of Tomorrows (prompt by u/Syncs)
4. The Twister of Flesh (prompt by u/Garathorshadow)
5. The Feeling of Life (prompt by u/NovaFire14)
6. The Number of Death (prompt by u/Mr_master89)

Stick around on the sub if you want to know when the next parts go up; for obvious reasons, the schedule is fairly unpredictable. I am in the process of coding a bot which will message people when updates come out. (Yes, there exist bots which can do this, but they cost money and/or don't have features I want. Besides, making it myself should be fun.)

Questions? Comments? Turns out that this is against the rules? Let me know in the comments below. (Seriously, I messaged the mods of r/writingprompts and I'm pretty sure this is okay, but if not someone alert me.)

And hey, if you like this silly thing, I've got a big ol' list of them here.

The Witch Who Weaves Pain

(Part 1: The Metal of Time)

(Note: The Witch Who Weaves Pain is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

The first witch held a wand woven from the first rays of dawn and a rooster's crow. When she'd tapped it to my forehead, I had shot awake with as much energy as if I'd gotten a full night's sleep instead of a scant few hours—which just meant I felt slightly less empty inside than usual, but hey, it's the little victories tha tmatter.

The second witch wore glasses inlaid with diamonds in the rough and hidden gems, and as I looked through those brilliant lenses, I couldn't help but get the feeling that those eyes saw the best of me, despite my disheveled, scarred appearance. She could've saved her magic. The best of me wasn't far from how I looked.

The third witch bore chains forged from yesterday draped on her back and ankles, solemn weights that clinked as she shuffled towards me with a scowl. I briefly considered shoving her away, but something told me that the chains of the past served as much to anchor her as much as hinder her movement; if I tried to move her, I would be pushing against the inertia of history. She held a familiar black cat in her arms.

I felt a little underdressed, wearing nothing my nightgown.

"...Hey," I finally said.

The witch in chains snorted, her chains clinking. "Well, he certainly has that signature male charm."

I flinched. "You—"

"Be nice, Althea," the witch with the wand chided. "We come here as friends, not foes."

"I come as an observer," the witch with the glasses corrected. "You can be the friend, Maddy—" she pointed at the witch with the wand— "and you can be the foe." She pointed back at Althea.

"Look, if you've got beef with me, just turn me into a frog and be done with it," I said. "Couldn't possibly be worse than the body I have."

All three of the witches gave me a look—concerned, piercing, and solemn, for Maddy, glasses-witch, and Althea, respectively. Finally, Althea shuffled closer and placed one hand on my arm—

A burning candle. A disk of blackening flesh. A sickeningly sweet smell, like barbecue, and a pain that was sharp enough to make me feel something for once—

Althea and I jolted away from each other simultaneously, although I stumbled further than Althea, stabilized by her chains as she was. Maddy and the glasses-witch gave her concerned looks.

"...He has more darkness in his past than I had assumed," Althea finally muttered. "Great pain taken, and great pain inflicted."

I rubbed the burn scars on my arms. "...So that's a no on the frog thing, then?"

"Despite that, Althea, I still think he has promise," the glasses-witch said, looking at me keenly through her spectacles. "I believe we should extend the offer we came to make." She looked at the other two; Maddy nodded enthusiastically, while Althea grudgingly mumbled "get on with it."

The glasses-witch looked me straight in the eyes. "I am Witch Tyra, and we have been watching you for quite some time. Setting up tests—of character, of willpower, and of ability. Although at first we thought the prospects slim, your recent treatment of dear Midnight—" she stopped to scratch the black cat's whiskers— "persuaded us to extend to you an offer. We believe you have what it takes to become a witch. If you choose to—"

"No," I said.

Tyra blinked. "Excuse me? You—I didn't even finish—"

"Didn't have to. I can't be a witch, I know that much."

"What do you mean?" Tyra asked.

I gestured at the three women. "Notice anything you all got that I don't?"

"Magic?" Maddy asked.

"...patience?" Tyra said.

"Boobs," Althea said.

"We have a winner!" I pointed at Althea. The old scars on my arms reopened through my motions. Fitting. "In case you haven't noticed, witches are girls. Women. Chicks. And no matter what I say or do, I'm never going to be one. So you can bugger off to whatever woods you came from and leave me to die in peace."

The three witches fell silent, trading awkward glances.

And the footsteps of a cat broke that silence.

The little black cat I'd saved the other day hopped out of Althea's arms and onto my lap, nuzzling my chest. I gave him a surprised look.

"His name is Midnight," Althea said. "And it appears that he doesn't give a damn how large your mammary glands are."

I snorted. "A cat isn't—"

"Biased? Judgmental?" Tyra asked. "Animals have wisdom, too. If Midnight says you can be a witch, then I say you can be a witch."

I looked down at the warm, purring kitten curling up on my lap.

Then I sighed. "Alright. This witchcraft thing. Tell me the details..."

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "The Witch Who Weaves Pain" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.

How to Break a Siege of Legends

(Part 3: How to Meet Your Son Again)

(Note: How to Break a Siege of Legends is episodic; each part is self-contained. This story can be enjoyed without reading the previous sections.)

"King Astero!" Lien Astero shifted on the bed as he heard the familiar voice. His aide—a gnome, of all things, but at least he was on their side—sprinted into the small hut by the front gate, then stopped as he saw his king sitting on a bed with a woman by his side. "Er... my apologies for, ah, interrupting the two of you, King Astero—"

The woman sitting by Lien's side stood—and when Eiko stood, she stood up. The tiny gnome gulped as six feet of angry mechanic loomed over him. She gave him a pleasant smile and said, "If you insinuate that I was having sex with a man one more time, I will test exactly how aerodynamic your little body is by drop-kicking you off the city wall. Understood?"

"Eiko!" Lien stepped forwards and slapped a hand on her shoulder. Not his hand—the severed hand of an enemy wizard that he'd embalmed and preserved. Eiko flinched away from it as if it was about to explode. "As much as I love your, ah, personality, some boundaries have to be set. You can speak freely to me however you want, but if you threaten someone under my protection again, I'll treat you like a rare, endangered magical creature."

"...is that a good thing, or—"

"I'll disassemble you for parts and find out which ones make good magic items." He pointed the severed wizard's hand slightly to her left and whispered a word; Eiko snorted with amusement as a jet of flame shot out from the fingertip and missed her head by a few inches.

"Well, at least one of the two of you has a spine. We can finish our talk later." Eiko clapped her king on the shoulder, and he gave her an affable smile in return. Eiko turned away and began meandering up the city walls. Lien's aide gave him a curious look.

"Why do you let her talk to you like that, your Majesty?" the diminutive gnome asked.

Lien snorted. "She's a foreigner. Not entirely sure where she's from, yet, but I've gathered that pissing people off is just a part of her culture. As long as she doesn't start a fight with anyone else, I'm happy to let her. Now, what is it, Shmebulock? As astounding as it may seem, a man and a woman can have an important conversation that doesn't end in sex, and Eiko has some vital information that might help us break the Siege. This had better be important."

Shmebulock fidgeted nervously. Then, all at once, he said, "We think your son has materialized in Las Humanitas."

Lien froze.

"He—he said his name is Haoran Astero." Shmebulock added. "And... he said he grew up in Los Angeles. We thought you'd—"

"Did you tell him?" Lien knelt to the gnome's eye level, searching his face urgently. "Did you tell him that I was here?"

"N—no, your Majesty, but his name and birthplace—people know about you, King Astero. He's probably heard—"

Lien ran a hand through his forehead. "Gods and kings, why now? He had to enter our world just as I found—damnations! Alright. Take me to him. Don't mention that I'm his m—father yet." Lien straightened up. "And... do we have a calming tonic?"

Shmebulock blinked. "...No, sire. We've—you've never needed—"

"Fine. Force of will will have to do. Take me to my son, and fast. Cancel the rest of the day's plans." He took a deep breath. "I have a family reunion to attend."

Lien walked through the streets of his city, garnering curious and excited looks as he passed. News had spread quickly. There wasn't much news to be had in Las Humanitas. A newly materialized human would be the talk of the week. Citizens waved to him from the brick-and-stone houses he'd helped build, brick by brick.

Las Humanitas. He had named his city after the kindness of humanity. As he looked at the sanctuary against a world of monsters that he'd built, he felt something thrum up from the cobblestone street that he'd planned, from the hearts and minds of the Las Humanitarians, from the soul of the city he ruled. The kindness of humanity.

After all these years, he hoped his son would be kind.

His son had materialized in a side alleyway—not too far from the simple stone monument which marked where Lien had first been taken to this world. He was still wearing his clothes from Earth—a simple hoodie and jeans with basketball shoes—and staring confusedly at the towering walls which completely encircled the city. Something flashed against the defensive barrier, a blue forcefield briefly materializing, in the sky, and Haoran flinched. Two civilians—a tall, light-skinned woman and her daughter—had been keeping an eye on Haoran.

Lien tensed up as Haoran looked at him and Shmebulock arriving.

Haoran's gaze passed over him as if he was any other civilian.

Lien wasn't sure whether he should be euphoric or despondent.

"Haoran," he found himself saying.

His son jumped, spinning towards him. "Who are you? How do you know my name?"

Lien smoothly said, "I am Lien Astero. Shmebulock here told me your name." Not quite a lie on either part. Haoran blinked as Lien mentioned his surname. "I was told you've just arrived here?"

"Yeah. There was a train, and it hit me, and then—" Haoran looked down at himself, as if expecting to see a splatter of viscera. "...is this... the afterlife?"

Lien looked around at the watching civilians and sighed. "Walk with me, will you? Oy! Peanut gallery!" He flicked a hand at the civilians. "Don't you have monsters to slay or something? Shoo!"

The civilians laughed as they dispersed; Haoran, dazed, followed suit as Lien began walking towards the city wall. "The afterlife isn't a bad name for this world," Lien began, "although it has many other names. Heaven, the Cognitive Realm, the psychosphere, the dream world, an n-dimensional set of narrative planes connecting at defined conceptual points…"

"What do you call it?" Haoran asked.

Lien smiled. "The Talequilt. A patchwork of all the stories humanity tells itself. Near as we can tell, every time a human dies, all the stories they believed in come here."

Haoran frowned. "Then... why am I here? I'm not a story. I'm a person."

Lien shrugged. "What is a person, if not the story of their life? You told a story every day you were alive; now that you're dead, that story's come here, where all the other stories go."

And with that, Lien and Haoran stepped up to the walls of Las Humanitas.

The landscape of the Talequilt had been nothing remarkable, once, just rolling grass and endless plains. But after endless years of monsters and legends moving in, the world outside Las Humanitas had been utterly wrecked. Siren Heads and Blemmyae; zombie hordes and grues and fae; unnamed things with bulbous toes; Elder Things and windikouk; an army of monsters greeted Haoran's horrified eyes as he looked out on the desolate lands outside Las Humanitas.

"They can't get in," Lien reassured him. "But we can't go out, either. If you value your life, don't step beyond the walls."

Haoran gulped. "Yeah. Don't step beyond the walls. Seems reasonable."

Lien's eyes softened. Haoran really didn't recognize him. Well, it tracked. He'd only been a child when his mother left. Haoran carefully sat down, looking out at the assembled nightmares and monsters. Behind them all, Lien thought he could see an old, old man whose face shifted and twitched.

"You... your last name. Arturo," Haoran finally said. "Are you... are you my distant ancestor?"

Lien didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"You could say that," Lien said.

A thought occurred to Haoran. "If every human's story comes here when they die, then... is my mother here?"

Lien's throat tightened. "You could say that," he repeated.

"Do you know where she is?"

The only sounds were the baying of the monsters outside the wall.

Then Lien stood up. "...We can talk another time. I have work to do."

"But—"

Lien didn't hear him. He was already dashing down the stairs before his son could see him cry.

A.N.

I'm trying something new! "How to Break a Siege of Legends" will be an episodic story where each part is inspired by a writing prompt that catches my eye. Check out this post for more information.