RE: Write-Off! (NEW VARIATION? Taking signups!)
02-21-2016, 03:50 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-21-2016, 03:52 PM by AgentBlue.)
Mine is done and it's awful
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SpoilerGATE 49/NOT
---
The House of the Flame-Scorned. Proud traders across the planes, their scions and psions straddled the narrow boundary in between existence and void, creating the lucrative market in selling to infinite eldritch horrors residing in the space between universes. Theirs were the Gates of Is/Not, twisting pale tendrils wound about great orbital towers that removed space from the universe and replaced it with… the other thing.
Leiletta, heir to House Flame-Scorned, stood before the Gate, black lip curled. Her red eyes flashed with impatience and anger; her foot, sheathed in an elegant too-sheer high-heeled boot, tapped impatiently on the obsidian deck. Her husband, Danel, had failed to return with the universe shards she had sent him after, and his retinue, too. Not that she minded so much, but he had been carrying their child (Her? The Demon Queen of the Flame-Scorned, born of the union between the Void and the Real, the Unbroken Gatekeeper of the Zerofjords, the Omega Constant for the very Universe, spend months carrying a dependent around in her body? Perish the thought, the Flame-Scorned clan had said, and made the useless ones do it instead), and genetic spawn were so bothersome to replace. Plus, the familes of the lost staff were bound to seek recompense...
---
BEYOND THE VEIL AND
---
Onto the lapping waves of a black sea against the black sands of a black shore…
In pieces, Snowy awoke. She coughed, then vomited, spewing dark, sweet water onto the blackened grains under her face. She whimpered, feeling the cold fluid puddle against her muzzle, but she couldn’t find the strength to move. It was as if she’d been repeatedly battered in the brain with a rock tumbler, leaving disconnected thoughts to roil in a grey slurry.
There was a hand on her cheek. Weakly, she turned her head, but the touch was gone as quickly as it had come. Cautiously, but fearing the worst, she reached for her leg, for the knife strapped there - the one she hoped she’d never have to use. It was gone, of course. Probably swept away in the… the… what had happened, anyway?
“fngnan, little one. poor, poor, child.” The touch was back, and this time it came with a silky, calming voice. “the waters did let you go. others were not lucky as you were.” Snowy felt stroking motions with in her fur, and the sensation as she slowly shrank back into her humanoid form. “your form was strong, and the waters could not take you all. the rest are no more.”
“No, no…” she began, but the hand (pale and waxy, but reassuringly five-digited) shushed her. She felt herself be lifted upright, though the painful blackness of the light made it difficult to take in her surroundings. “I’m sorry.”
“why, my little chonut? are you afeared for the others? they broke with such glory. and the child is the next of the fire-clan. we will return her in time.”
Snowy’s eyes brimmed with tears, not least because of the anti-light, and she sputtered, “The Demon Queen will kill me! I was supposed to protect Danel and their baby, and, and, and...I’m so sorry, you don’t want to hear me talk…” She tried to look up at her savior, but through the tears and the light, all she got was a pale, blurry mess.
“my name is r’nthis-” and here all Snowy got was a cluster of interlapping, meaningless syllables - “-eneyrhl’neyathkknen-ro'esn.” A pause. “but you may be better to call me risen.”
“Risen.” She staggered to her feet, brushing sand from her ripped and torn combat uniform. “R’nthnn… Sorry. Yes. Risen. I’m Snowy. McPhearson.”
“be careful. do not touch eyes.” Snowy’s hands, halfway to her teary sight globes, stopped in their tracks. “let us go home. away from the glory sea. beautiful, but not home. better to you that we leave the waters behind us.”
“Can we get back to a gate? Back to my plane?” She tried to shake her head to get the water out, like she would as a wolf, but the effect was muted on her short gray hair. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Risen… I’m so sorry to be dumping this on you. She’s going to banish me back to here, won’t she? And it won’t be a nice dip in the glory sea, she’ll put me right over the Zerofjords and I’ll go mad right then and there in the infinite...”
Risen seemed to contemplate this for a moment. “we can explain to the fire-clan monarch. i will come. will you feel comforted? i will come and say, ‘it will be okay’, as you say.” The voice was surprisingly warm. “i do not desire to see you hurt.”
“Oh, would you, would you? Maybe if you explain, she’ll spare me. Please, it was an accident! Was… was it? Why can’t I…”
“the seas took much from you, kgnleyh. your container came through the gate and fell, fell up into the waters, swallowed, as like a spark in the neverending void.”
“An accident.” Snowy held firm to her conviction. “Risen, can we get back to the gate?”
The blur that was the eldritch figure with nice hands made a motion that might have been a nod. “another. your old one is closed now. may have made mistake, your directioners, opened the gate in the glory sea. it has happened times in abundance.”
“Good. Thank you. Sorry.” Snowy’s thoughts were scattering again. The pounding at her head was back, and the water seemed so warm and inexplicable… “Risen, I think we have to go. Now.”
“where is the fire-clan queen? describe it to me.”
“She… she…” Snowy fought to think. “She’ll be in her palace office. At Gate 1/Not. Waiting for a report. F-from me. It’s a nice room, all wood paneled and carpeted, but the walls still smell like blood...”
“hold my hand.”
---
Leiletta was toying idly with her favorite cat-o-nine tails in her luxuriously appointed office - she occasionally took a swing at a virtual model to test her injury scores - when every Gate in the system opened at once. Instantly, she was on her feet, cooly receiving reports and issuing orders - at first, to lock down the terminals, and then to scram the gate reactors when it became clear the failsafes were themselves failing. In all the fuss, she didn’t notice the tear in reality open behind her… at least until Snowy fell face-first onto her desk.
The lip curled. “Where’s Danel.” As flat as the curl was cruel. A slowly-smoldering hand clutched the handle of the many-tongued whip.
Snowy knelt as low as she could go, prostated on the floor before her queen. “I’m so sorry, I’m so, so, sorry, I’m sorry, I’m-”
“Enough!” The Demon Queen punctuated her sentence with a mighty whip-crack against an innocent end table, which shattered. “Where’s Danel,” she began, “and this time, answer me, or I’ll have to-”
“Danel is dead.” Risen’s voice emanated from all corners of the room. A black-blue mist began to pour from the open tear into the Void, settling on the floor and obscuring the carpets. “The contingent was lost in the Uncomprehencean. Their ship suffered a fatal containment failure and breached, filling the cabin with Lethean waters.”
“It was an accident, my queen!” Snowy shouted from the floor, even as the mist blocked her from view. Above ground level, the mist-shrouded figure stepped from the fracture, one foot, then another. But all could see his handsome mouth as the dark clouds cleared away, and all saw his white and pointed teeth as he said…
“Accident, my arse.” Risen rose, shrugging off the clouds like a cloak. “Untold infinities I spent in there, no more than an eldritch ghost. I’d forgotten this bright and beautiful world. Poor, poor Snowy. All I needed from you was a tiny little memory, and then it all came flooding back.”
“Risen Rose.” Leiletta spat. My family sealed you behind the Gates in the very beginning, when we first took the Void Pact. “The First of the Vampyres, the Sanguine Voidspawn.”
Risen sneered at her. “Good, you haven’t forgotten me. I already joyed in reducing your unborn daughter to shreds. Now I will joy in doing the same to you!”
“Come and get me, you undead shadow of a blood lord!” In one motion, she set the cat-o-nine-tails aflame with a blue, shimmering fire. Neatly, Risen returned the gesture by drawing a sword of voidmetal, with a black, searing blade. They ran at each other across the narrow confines of the room, and the resulting battle was an epic not worth telling.
And Snowy was sorry.
And so was the rest of the universe.
Eventually.
THE END
---
The House of the Flame-Scorned. Proud traders across the planes, their scions and psions straddled the narrow boundary in between existence and void, creating the lucrative market in selling to infinite eldritch horrors residing in the space between universes. Theirs were the Gates of Is/Not, twisting pale tendrils wound about great orbital towers that removed space from the universe and replaced it with… the other thing.
Leiletta, heir to House Flame-Scorned, stood before the Gate, black lip curled. Her red eyes flashed with impatience and anger; her foot, sheathed in an elegant too-sheer high-heeled boot, tapped impatiently on the obsidian deck. Her husband, Danel, had failed to return with the universe shards she had sent him after, and his retinue, too. Not that she minded so much, but he had been carrying their child (Her? The Demon Queen of the Flame-Scorned, born of the union between the Void and the Real, the Unbroken Gatekeeper of the Zerofjords, the Omega Constant for the very Universe, spend months carrying a dependent around in her body? Perish the thought, the Flame-Scorned clan had said, and made the useless ones do it instead), and genetic spawn were so bothersome to replace. Plus, the familes of the lost staff were bound to seek recompense...
---
BEYOND THE VEIL AND
---
Onto the lapping waves of a black sea against the black sands of a black shore…
In pieces, Snowy awoke. She coughed, then vomited, spewing dark, sweet water onto the blackened grains under her face. She whimpered, feeling the cold fluid puddle against her muzzle, but she couldn’t find the strength to move. It was as if she’d been repeatedly battered in the brain with a rock tumbler, leaving disconnected thoughts to roil in a grey slurry.
There was a hand on her cheek. Weakly, she turned her head, but the touch was gone as quickly as it had come. Cautiously, but fearing the worst, she reached for her leg, for the knife strapped there - the one she hoped she’d never have to use. It was gone, of course. Probably swept away in the… the… what had happened, anyway?
“fngnan, little one. poor, poor, child.” The touch was back, and this time it came with a silky, calming voice. “the waters did let you go. others were not lucky as you were.” Snowy felt stroking motions with in her fur, and the sensation as she slowly shrank back into her humanoid form. “your form was strong, and the waters could not take you all. the rest are no more.”
“No, no…” she began, but the hand (pale and waxy, but reassuringly five-digited) shushed her. She felt herself be lifted upright, though the painful blackness of the light made it difficult to take in her surroundings. “I’m sorry.”
“why, my little chonut? are you afeared for the others? they broke with such glory. and the child is the next of the fire-clan. we will return her in time.”
Snowy’s eyes brimmed with tears, not least because of the anti-light, and she sputtered, “The Demon Queen will kill me! I was supposed to protect Danel and their baby, and, and, and...I’m so sorry, you don’t want to hear me talk…” She tried to look up at her savior, but through the tears and the light, all she got was a pale, blurry mess.
“my name is r’nthis-” and here all Snowy got was a cluster of interlapping, meaningless syllables - “-eneyrhl’neyathkknen-ro'esn.” A pause. “but you may be better to call me risen.”
“Risen.” She staggered to her feet, brushing sand from her ripped and torn combat uniform. “R’nthnn… Sorry. Yes. Risen. I’m Snowy. McPhearson.”
“be careful. do not touch eyes.” Snowy’s hands, halfway to her teary sight globes, stopped in their tracks. “let us go home. away from the glory sea. beautiful, but not home. better to you that we leave the waters behind us.”
“Can we get back to a gate? Back to my plane?” She tried to shake her head to get the water out, like she would as a wolf, but the effect was muted on her short gray hair. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Risen… I’m so sorry to be dumping this on you. She’s going to banish me back to here, won’t she? And it won’t be a nice dip in the glory sea, she’ll put me right over the Zerofjords and I’ll go mad right then and there in the infinite...”
Risen seemed to contemplate this for a moment. “we can explain to the fire-clan monarch. i will come. will you feel comforted? i will come and say, ‘it will be okay’, as you say.” The voice was surprisingly warm. “i do not desire to see you hurt.”
“Oh, would you, would you? Maybe if you explain, she’ll spare me. Please, it was an accident! Was… was it? Why can’t I…”
“the seas took much from you, kgnleyh. your container came through the gate and fell, fell up into the waters, swallowed, as like a spark in the neverending void.”
“An accident.” Snowy held firm to her conviction. “Risen, can we get back to the gate?”
The blur that was the eldritch figure with nice hands made a motion that might have been a nod. “another. your old one is closed now. may have made mistake, your directioners, opened the gate in the glory sea. it has happened times in abundance.”
“Good. Thank you. Sorry.” Snowy’s thoughts were scattering again. The pounding at her head was back, and the water seemed so warm and inexplicable… “Risen, I think we have to go. Now.”
“where is the fire-clan queen? describe it to me.”
“She… she…” Snowy fought to think. “She’ll be in her palace office. At Gate 1/Not. Waiting for a report. F-from me. It’s a nice room, all wood paneled and carpeted, but the walls still smell like blood...”
“hold my hand.”
---
Leiletta was toying idly with her favorite cat-o-nine tails in her luxuriously appointed office - she occasionally took a swing at a virtual model to test her injury scores - when every Gate in the system opened at once. Instantly, she was on her feet, cooly receiving reports and issuing orders - at first, to lock down the terminals, and then to scram the gate reactors when it became clear the failsafes were themselves failing. In all the fuss, she didn’t notice the tear in reality open behind her… at least until Snowy fell face-first onto her desk.
The lip curled. “Where’s Danel.” As flat as the curl was cruel. A slowly-smoldering hand clutched the handle of the many-tongued whip.
Snowy knelt as low as she could go, prostated on the floor before her queen. “I’m so sorry, I’m so, so, sorry, I’m sorry, I’m-”
“Enough!” The Demon Queen punctuated her sentence with a mighty whip-crack against an innocent end table, which shattered. “Where’s Danel,” she began, “and this time, answer me, or I’ll have to-”
“Danel is dead.” Risen’s voice emanated from all corners of the room. A black-blue mist began to pour from the open tear into the Void, settling on the floor and obscuring the carpets. “The contingent was lost in the Uncomprehencean. Their ship suffered a fatal containment failure and breached, filling the cabin with Lethean waters.”
“It was an accident, my queen!” Snowy shouted from the floor, even as the mist blocked her from view. Above ground level, the mist-shrouded figure stepped from the fracture, one foot, then another. But all could see his handsome mouth as the dark clouds cleared away, and all saw his white and pointed teeth as he said…
“Accident, my arse.” Risen rose, shrugging off the clouds like a cloak. “Untold infinities I spent in there, no more than an eldritch ghost. I’d forgotten this bright and beautiful world. Poor, poor Snowy. All I needed from you was a tiny little memory, and then it all came flooding back.”
“Risen Rose.” Leiletta spat. My family sealed you behind the Gates in the very beginning, when we first took the Void Pact. “The First of the Vampyres, the Sanguine Voidspawn.”
Risen sneered at her. “Good, you haven’t forgotten me. I already joyed in reducing your unborn daughter to shreds. Now I will joy in doing the same to you!”
“Come and get me, you undead shadow of a blood lord!” In one motion, she set the cat-o-nine-tails aflame with a blue, shimmering fire. Neatly, Risen returned the gesture by drawing a sword of voidmetal, with a black, searing blade. They ran at each other across the narrow confines of the room, and the resulting battle was an epic not worth telling.
And Snowy was sorry.
And so was the rest of the universe.
Eventually.
THE END
----
So very British / But then again | People are machines Machines are people | Oh hai there | There's no time
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Superhero 1920s noir | Multigenre Half-Life | Changing the future | Command line interface
Tu ventire felix? | Clockwork for eternity | Explosions in spacetime