Field of Elbane
College was going okay for Chad so far. After move-in day he met some of the other freshmen in Wellester dorm, got acquainted with the campus, that kind of thing. Hung around, mostly -- there was nearly a full week between move-in and when classes...
Satyr Skull
So, there's a certain point in a boy's life when his parents stop interpreting his imaginary friends as revealing his rich inner narrative and burgeoning creative talent and start holding hushed conversations between them about what if their child is...
Attending to the Beast God
Cyr raised his voice with the others in the chant. The noise was an entity in itself, rolling like thunder over the ritual ground, the words themselves lost but the intonation rising to a feverish roar. At the center, the priests stepped out: looming...
Dragon Essence
It was near dusk when a wyvern flew up to the dark building towering over the city and a single figure dismounted. He strode across the suspended walk, through the lobby, up to the top floor penthouse, all in silence. The aerie at the top was dark;...
Drawn Into The Demon's Shadow
It'd looked like a usual haunting, until they'd found the portal to hell. That had been fifteen minutes ago, by his phone, and he'd spent most of that running for his life from the alarmingly corporeal demon that'd pulled itself through the portal by...
Human Experimentation
When Ildathech returned to the village with the corpse of the necromancer in his hands, the villagers looked at him as if he was some figure of legend, some mythical hero. An elderly old man even broke down sobbing, clutching at his robes, as the...
Camping Trip (pt 1)
Naoki stepped off the pier and onto the sandy beach. The boat -- a one-person sailboat -- was moored at the end, rope trailing along a piling. The island in front of him was perfectly picturesque, the arm of the cove curving along a white sand beach,...
Omega // Prologue
He got the job on a Friday. It had been a week after the interview, and the tangle of worry in his gut had peaked and then dropped out all in the time between. Even after the phone call, he hadn't caught up all at once -- he kept thinking about his...
The Nightwoods
There was a troll in one of Henry's classes. Like, a literal one. 10:00AM, Hawkins Hall, CHEM 125B, Principles of Chemistry. Henry had scrambled in nearly-late, not yet entirely on schedule for a class that early, and had taken a seat all the way up in...
Legacy of Chaos II: Reckoning
Nick picked the game up a week before heading off to college. Well, "picked up" might not have been correct -- all the worrying about moving out, over to the big city, had him among other things compulsively cleaning and arranging all his stuff. He was...
Free Agent
This Blitz season was shaping up to be a real beast. Wakka's retirement wasn't a surprise: they'd all seen him getting more and more worried about Yuna's upcoming pilgrimage. They'd all known it'd leave the Aurochs in the lurch, but out of respect,...
Chimera Boxcar
There was a chimera in the boxcar he jumped into. He'd thrown his pack ahead of him, its thump completely muffled over the scream of the rails. The train had started to really pick up speed, and with his legs aching from the day behind him there was a...