Challenge #02839-G282: Rage in the Dark
What if animals/entities such as the chupacabra, skin walker, and yowie didn’t originate here on earth, but were test subjects sent through a black hole. – Latino Thor
[AN: I am WAY too white to play with native legend domains, so I’ll try some other stuff]
Theoretically, it is a slow and painful death. Theoretically. From the outside, it is quick. The vessel and the victim inside stretch out and blend with the aura of light around the event horizon, and then they are gone.
Inside… it is long. Time stretches out. You see the Universe’s life play out before you, behind you, all at once. It’s enough to ruin a mind. Did you know? That which travels through a black hole is changed forever.
It is not death. Not really. It’s far, far worse than death. This is not death. It is not life, not as we understand it. It is worse than life. It is worse than dying. I have forgotten my crime, but I remember the fall. The Universe’s destiny. Stars dying. Darkness. So much darkness.
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Challenge #02829-G272: Outside Influences
Before humans knew that beings existed outside of their own world, before, in fact, humans had gone much further than sending a couple of people to their local moon, they visited. They’d always managed to remain hidden, but their work was kinda starting to get noticed. They’d find those who were sick and injured, and amongst the human there were many. Mostly, they worked with kids, however. At night, when the entire area was asleep, they would take the children aboard their ship and treat their illnesses and injuries, then, before dawn, send them safely back to their homes and their beds. Problem is, someone’s always gonna notice when a kid who seemed to be at death’s door due to conditions like cancer, is suddenly completely healed. – Anon Guest
To damn them with faint praise, the Vae meant well. They came to examine a pre-industrial civilisation and all the duckblinds in the world could not prevent empathy from growing in their midst. They were especially long-lived and as a result, their fecundity suffered. Therefore, they were especially fond of watching the native children.
In a pre-industrial society, there is little to prevent disease. Indeed, this culture had yet to encounter germ theory, and attributed ill health to bad smells whilst building their housing with a mixture of sticks, mud, and animal feces. The cultural medicine relied heavily on solutions that felt like they were doing any good and were only co-incidentally therepeutic.
The Vae could not stand to watch children die. They could not watch children become abandoned in the deep forests if such children were inconvenient to their parents. They could not watch infants wither. So they took matters into their own hands whilst trying to be ethical about it.
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Challenge #02774-G217: Finding a Smile
“No, thank you.”
…
“Get that out of my face.”
…
“STOP” – Anon Guest
They said, Give a sweet thing to a sour face. Which was the very essence of the Sunshine Festival. Enough smiles, and the sun would rise, bringing an end to the cold of winter. Which was why the marketplace was overloaded with cloth flowers that had been soaked in cloying perfume. Honey-cakes abounded. Beautiful music filled every corner and turned every road into a cacophony.
Compliments that usually didn’t enter Neg’s ears flowed from every painted lip. People wore bright colours, lit every lamp, and there were blazing fires in every brazier, as if everyone were trying to give the sun an unsubtle hint. It was the worst day to beg for a bowl of stew, but Neg had to do it anyway. It was the only way he got to eat.
Honey cakes could fill his belly, but they would not keep him warm in the chill of the night. For that, Neg needed nutrition. Something that was lacking in the joyful atmosphere of the Sunshine Festival. He needed to fortify himself against the night, and there was no amount of false flowers that would insulate him against the lingering winter chill.
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Challenge #02581-G024: Forgotten Good
A pervert once told me that pride was like a knife, with it you can cut down your enemies, and your allies. There are time when you do not throw it away but leave it on the ground right beside you so you can pick it up once again. – Anon Guest
Pride is a knife, the teacher said. Use it to cut others and it will cut you. It shines, it gleams, it hurts, and it makes it all the easier to hurt yourself. Pride is a gleaming prize that can be reached for, but never achieved. No matter what, pride will turn on you and cut you down. Pride can be a tool. Pride can be earned. Pride can be a poison.
It’s a complicated thing to have. Harder than diamond, stronger than stone, ephemeral as mist… all of them at once. Rarest of all prizes for the downtrodden and unworthy like Pia. The Mistress called her ugly at every turn, even her own parents didn’t want her and nobody else had until the Mistress had chosen her for training. Then… another found her and trained her for other things.
That was the teacher, and they took Pia away from the Mistress at any time they liked to bring her… here… and teach her things. Pia wasn’t certain how it worked, the teacher kept things foggy, but it never seemed far and it never seemed to take very long, despite the fact that Pia was always working at it for hours. This lesson on Pride had taken but a minute, yet the arguing of it took far, far longer. “Y'ain’t gonna make me poison the Mistress, is you? I ain’t gonna poison th’ Mistress.”
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Challenge #02483-F293: Sudden Onset Deification
A young human in her early teens, a mere military cadet, is forced to fight in a war against an invading tyrant’s forces and ended up facing off with the tyrant himself. Either due to her own small ability which was to cause someone to freeze for a few seconds which she usually used to escape bullies, or he made an error in the heat of battle, she got in a fatal blow, and his head fell from his shoulders. He had been a Greater War God. And at his defeat, the power of a god, and the command of his legions and the lands from which they came, fell upon her. The angels of war surrendered to the humans and then, kneeling before the young human, held up their swords to her swearing their fealty to their new goddess. However, that night, she left her tent in the encampments and fled. She was terrified of having that kind of power and did not want that kind of responsibility. Since the tyrant’s forces were defeated and the human’s lands were now safe, the search began to find her. But would she be found by those that wanted to aid her? Or those that wanted to control her for their own nefarious plans? She feared the immense power she now held, reluctant to accept she was the new goddess of war, and continued to run. – DaniAndShali
This is the reason why the gods should not tread the same soil as the mortals who are their charges. In such a world, things like… well… this… are wont to happen. Gamin, fresh new god of war, was running from the scene of her crime. She had -however accidentally- just killed the previous god of war. The sword she used keeps coming back to her hand, no matter how many times she throws it aside. It still drips with the somehow ephemeral, and simultaneously visceral, blood of a former deity. Tears streak her face and terror grips her heart. She wants to run until there is no more ‘run’ left in her body but…
Gods never tire.
She is breathing out of habit. Crying out of habit. Running… well the running is simply because she, Gamin Helfarro, is now and always has been a pacifist. She never wanted to be in the army. She never wanted to be in the base. She never wanted to wear a uniform and she certainly never wanted to carry a sword, let alone swing it at any living being.
But the gods aren’t exactly alive, aren’t exactly living. Even though they can be killed, they are not exactly alive.
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