300-word Writing Challenge #31 (October 2018) -- VICTORY TO VICTORIA SILVERWOLF!

[Ursa major]

THE CHALLENGE:

To write a story in 300 words or fewer
INSPIRED by the image provided below, in the genre of
Science Fiction, Fantasy, or other Speculative Fiction



SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

There will be a Prize for the Winner:

The Empyreus Proof by Bryan Wigmore (paperback or ebook)



THE RULES:

Only one entry per person

All stories Copyright 2018 by their respective authors,
who grant the Chronicles Network the non-exclusive right to publish them here


This thread will be closed until October the 10th
-- as soon as the thread is unlocked, you may post your story

Entries must be posted no later than October the 31st 2018,
at 11:59 pm GMT

​

Voting will close November the 15th, 2018 at 11:59 pm GMT
(unless moderators choose to make an extension based on the number of stories)

You do not have to enter a story to vote -- in fact, we encourage ALL Chronicles members
to read the stories and vote for their favourites

You may cast THREE votes


NO links, commentary or extraneous material in the posts, please -- the stories must stand on their own


PLEASE REMEMBER THIS IS A FAMILY-FRIENDLY FORUM


For a further explanation of the rules see Rules for the Writing Challenges


The inspiration image for this month is:

Image credit: AlexH​

This thread to be used for entries only.
Please keep all comments to the DISCUSSION THREAD​

Please do not "Like" posts in this thread​

​

 

[elvet]

The Escape

Did he see me?
While the panels on the circular weirs were not solid, they were translucent to a degree that let a shadow through. A moving shadow could catch a watchful eye.
I could see the dock getting smaller. My flat-boat moved silently through the calm waters as I rowed towards safety on the other side. I was trying hard not to make any sound, thankful for my training as a waterman.
Surely, they would have found out by now? I heard no alarms. There was no sign of activity on the shoreline in front of me. I glanced at the object at my feet. Would they miss the necklace more than me? Watermen were valuable for their ability to calm the great fish that swam in the weirs. We were their keepers, and without us, the food supply for the city would dwindle. The necklace was .... well, pretty. I was hoping it would fetch some coin when I reached my destination.
I had been planning this for a while. It was just luck that one of the breeder fish was about to spawn. I had an excuse ready. I needed to check the breeder’s enclosure, even though they rarely let us out this early. Now all I had to do was avoid the patrolling guard, and cross the unmarked border between the two realms.
My oars dipped silently through the surface of the lake. Sacrificing speed for stealth, it seemed like an eternity before the lake shallowed up. The weedy bottom turned to sand, and then came the satisfying crunch of a boat hitting the shore. I got out and grabbed my cargo.
A quick look back, and I had my answer.
No, he didn’t.

 

[Harliebunny]

Into the Styx

Stella stood calmly on a jetty by a large lake partly shrouded in a swirling mist. She waited, for what she was unsure. Death had not been as bad as she expected. Sure it was painful and confusing but now she felt strangely calm. Looking around she could see a nearby river fed the lake, there were enclosures constructed with long thin poles joined by odd netting that shimmered in the strange half-light. She could see rowing boats emerge from the mist, their occupants rowing around the irregular enclosures or through unconnected poles before disappearing once again. A man took shape beside her staring at a gold coin in his open palm. Stella looked at it too, then at her own empty hand. What did that mean? No words passed between them. More boats appeared, Stella recognised one occupant from earlier.

A mournful bell began to sound. An ancient oak boat emerged from the mist gliding toward them, only the bell on the bow heralded its approach. A hooded figure punted the boat through the water and deftly angled it so it slid silently beside the jetty. Stella stepped forward but Charon's bony hand barred her way. She could not see under the hood and shifted her gaze to the now open palm. Showing her hands to be empty, Charon nodded and retracted his hand. Turning he loosened a rope from the back of the boat and handed it to her pointing at the lake. The man stepped forward giving Charon his coin before climbing into the boat. Stella looked down at a small rowing boat realising she had to find her own way to the other side. Charon began to move the boat until they faded away. Stella got into her boat and rowed into the Styx.

 

[Cathbad]

Landon’s Run


Landon ran down a hill to the water, though one couldn’t make the water easily; for a ragtag bunch of variously shaped houseboats lined the bay.

Without hesitation, Landon leapt upon the nearest houseboat. He grabbed a hook and kept his balance on the thin walkway.

He raced westward, then followed the walkway around to the opposite side. Spotting his opportunity, he leapt to a dilapidated junk, on the wide aft end. The spot he’d leapt from exploded, as a laser blast hit it just as his foot left!

He ran down a wider walkway. After passing an opening, a small man ran out screaming in Cantonese, “You get off my boat!” He got no more out, for something – or someone – unseen slammed into his back, knocking him over the railless side and into the dirty bay water!

“They’re catching up!” Landon shouted. “Where are you?!”

“I’m here,” came a calm voice from his wrist computer. He dared a look – and, thanks to his night vision contacts, saw the unlit speedboat tearing through the water, just beginning a sweeping turn that would bring it alongside the line of boats.

Landon picked up speed, leapt to the third boat, then leapt out over the water.

He landed on the speeder, rolled once and crashed into the opposite side.

“Ow!” Landon complained, as the boat’s force field absorbed laser shots from unseen assailants on the boat he’d just left. Picking himself up, he added, “Girl, these last second rescues are beginning to suck!”

As she added more speed, heading out of the bay, Gayle laughed. You know you love the excitement, Agent Landon!

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Guanyan's Journey of Destiny​

From my cabin’s doorway I look into the empty corridor, opalescent with its glowing, nanofibre walls. The whispering airflow makes me feel desperately hollow. My mother once held a seashell to my ear, and this sounds like that – but if I was trapped, alone, inside the deepest chamber of the pearlescent, corkscrewed shell.
“Close,” I call, and the door whisks shut. “Sofa.” The furnicube reshapes itself.
“Hello, Astra.”
She answers with programmed calmness. “May I help you, Vasiliev?”
“Vodka – litre bottle. Then activate the viewscreen.
"Repeat sequence: Google Earth, date 8-1-2150, loc QR279BL. Google Mars, 11-10-2178, loc 69GX4. Google Space, 57 days ago, Xinjiang’s course toward Proxima Centauri.”
“Vasiliev … Alexander, is this wise?”
“Please, Astra.”
Vented air wooshes over me – Astra’s exasperated sighing – then the sequence begins:
~ Fujian province, the fisheries of Guanyan’s parents, her day of birth; she would work there and dream of becoming the first star voyager.
~ Mars, Eurasia United’s terraforming base; beside the New Sea, the cairn we’d built to commemorate our marriage.
~ The point between stars where Guanyan died.

“Birthday,” I whisper, “cairn, space.” I’ve no idea how long I drink, this time.

Guanyan’s the engineer – she insists she make the repairs. “Space’s no place for a pilot,” she says, laughing, while suiting up. ...
She screams, as an interstellar pebble tears through her. ...
Dressing, hurrying outside … her body distant, the ship speeding relentlessly away.

“Uhh – wha’?”
I’m awake …
... hungover …
... shattered.
“Astra.”
“Alexander.”
“External 3D projection, album 7W.”
Air sighs over me. The lights extinguish, the cabin’s outer wall becomes transparent.
I’m sprawled before the Universe.
Within the vacuum, against star-bejeweled darkness, Guanyan on our wedding day – beautiful, smiling, my joy personified.
Guanyan, voyaging amongst the stars.
Guanyan, a pearl set into eternity’s crown.

At least until I finish this bottle, and abandon her again.

 

[Rafellin]

The Coming of the Duobei King

Nephal brushes some ashes aside, contemplates what is revealed, then looks up at the circle of unhappy faces.

“The embers say we remain beholden.”

Laiti disagrees: “The song says we were released.”

“The truth remains unsung.”

“Then tell us.”

Firelight flickers on the half circle of nets draped across drying frames. Night draws in across the lake; reflections of stars as unmoving as their counterparts above.

He sighs.

“We slaved for the Phoenix until Panhu raised a mighty dragon stick and led us into the mountains. There we found lakes and first learned how to corral fish. Then, Panhu saved us again by winning the love of a princess. Her father, the Duobei King, placed our debt in abeyance until such a time as he had need of our land.

From that wedding gift, we lived there for centuries. When a new world was found for us to call home, we rejoiced. Kept ignorant of reneging on the debt, we journeyed here.”

Laiti claps her hands: “That’s why the chiefs of the Great Journey are excluded from the Fang Songs!”

He nods.

A voice is raised: “What else from the embers?”

Nephal shrugs: “A descendant of the Duobei King comes to collect, but the embers sing of sanctuary, not burden. Still your fears.”

Reassured, the crowd disperses.

Laiti crouches down and whispers: “What do some of the other unsung truths tell us?”

“The burst transmission says they’re fleeing a coup. Only him and his girlfriend escaped. They’re delighted the family secret actually exists.”

“I hope he can fish.”

“All warriors can.”

“What?”

“The original lineage fell from grace. He’s a guardsman accompanying the Duobei Princess, his beloved.”

“Didn’t this all start with a princess?”

Nephal wags his finger at her: “Stop that. I’m trying to ignore lurking portents.”

 

[Danny McG]

The terrible day the hell world portal opened to it's full width.

Frantically she paddled away from the holding pens, ominous bubbles were rising ever larger to the surface all around her.

A quick glance back showed her the shattered wooden stakes, no match for the awesome size of a full grown Kraken.
Soon she was drawing near to the village, by now the watch keepers had noticed the catastrophe and the sirens were wailing thinly.

Guards came dashing out of the barracks and forming up on the pebbled beach, their long spears and flintlock pistols suddenly inadequate. For decades they'd only had to cope with youngling Kraken, no larger than oxen, the only size that could slip through the portal; the newly massive portal.

Hastily she steered now to the beach, not her original goal of the rickety jetty, as she neared it the sirens stopped and the garrison’s one small cannon cracked out uselessly.
White faced troops muttered nervously and some broke ranks and cried out in fear as the drama played out.

With a scream of triumph she launched herself up the smooth stones and lashed her spiked tentacles down amongst the milling troops, her vicious beak impaling and shredding more with each stab.

Behind her loud screams added to the caconaphy as her Kraken brethren charged in hunger for the shore, soon this world would be theirs.

 

[Dan Jones]

The Travels Of Sir Reginald Rigmarole, Part 94

So! After slipping the clutches of El Boppo, whose bravura combination of sadism and slapstick had had him branded by the Nicaraguan press as the most hilarious drugs capo in the country, I yomped with rare magnificence to a fundraiser in Xiapu for fabulously wealthy heiresses cruelly deprived of a career in rowing by dint of their inability to row. The more beautiful of the creatures enjoyed gaggles of hormonally dysfunctional males kayaking around them, panting hypothetically at the sight of a well-turned buttock, or a nice pointy hat.

But I was interested in the more ugsome individuals, and invited a banal, flapping monster named Ergo to the Cardomoms, the quite brilliant name I'd given my London bolthole, just outside Buxton, off the A53.

"Oh seňor, tu tienes tantos manos, como el pulpo!" she snorted through her single nostril, offering me a coffee absolutely riddled with Colombian honking powder.

"No gracias, generalamente yo hago Dry January," I hollered, quaffing the lot with humble élan.

But zoinks! The wazzo drink caused such virulent hallucinaballinations that I witnessed a merry score of Jezebels armed with AK47s osmosing through the walls! The most hithersome of them produced a rubber mallet and twonked me about the fizzog with such dexterity that it tempered my nausea with a frisson of admiration.

Slowly, Ergo peeled away her rubber mask to reveal the smiling, twiglet-featured boat race of El Boppo himself!

To the cheers of his amoeba-brained henchmen he produced a large feline chicken festooned with rubber noblets from his underchatterers and my heart, already yampering from the charlie, soared into a panicked (but groovy) rhythm, for I well knew El Boppo's tortuous methods.

"¡Es el ora para la Unión de la pollo y la bumbum!" he squealed with irresistible pleasure.

Foiled again!

 

[Luiglin]

Caelum’s Return

A pencil dug irregular furrows back and forth across the paper. The markings were chaotic, no single one the same but all written with purpose. If it were a language, then there was nothing discernible for them to even consider a translation.

“How long have they been writing?”

“Since 04:00. They started to scratch on the walls before we gave them the paper and pencils.”

“Any other sign of consciousness?”

“None. All test results show no higher brain functions.”

Commander Jonsson glanced at the other monitors. Each showed another member of the Caelum crew, all of them writing. The mission had been a resounding success, landing on Caelus, the legendary Planet X. Readings and samples had been taken, experiments completed. Caelum had been on return approach to Pluto Station when the mission went dark, a final message, a short burst of binary – 100111011.

Caelum docked on emergency autopilot, its AI wiped clean. The crew were still within their acceleration couches, life monitors having registered brain death at the same time of the binary code.

100111011, 315 in decimal, it meant nothing to Jonsson.

“How long before we hear from Earth?”

“10 hours at the earliest,” said his Deputy, Ukagu, her voice tremulous.

“You alright?”

“It’s stupid,” she replied.

“But?” Something caught his eye on a monitor.

“If you split the binary you get 10011 and 1011 or 19 11.”

“So?” The crew had stopped writing, instead now arranging the sheets of paper. He altered the cameras.

“19:11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war,” Ukagu said softly.

Across the six monitors, sheets of paper were twisted into position, becoming one image, a final revelation... The Word of God.

 

[Appello]

Nets

I was born to the bite of iron at my throat.

It's what I remember best. That, and my mother's cry as they tore me from her breast. You'll always be mine, she'd whispered, and I clung to those words like a prayer for years. But I never did see her again.

They keep ten of us to a net. There's not enough room, and our tails waste from disuse. I try to keep active by swimming in mindless circles, but the others push and shove at me when I get in their way. They don't understand why I keep fighting. Fool, they spit, and I duck my head from the censure in their eyes.

The harvesters arrive before the sun. I try to hide, swimming down to the very bottom of my net, but it never works for long. Their machines reach to the sea floor and drag me out, pinning my arms and clasping my tail while needles burrow into my spine. Afterwards, I'm too weak to do more than float across the filmy surface of the water, drifting listlessly while the sun burns and the insects feast. It takes hours to recover enough to swim back into the blissful darkness.

It's there in the depths that I spy it. The tiniest of holes, barely large enough to accommodate my fist. I can hardly believe it. For weeks I watch it widen, willing the powerful electric currents to die away and the fabric to degrade. Little by little it grows, until finally it's big enough for me to slip through.

Freedom. The word bubbles in my chest, buoying me to the surface for one last breath.

Hope flares, then withers. I survey the horizon. Shadows congeal; my heart sinks.

The repair crews have come.

 

[mosaix]

Big Fish, Little Fish.

“He says we should leave.”

“You sure?”

“Sure as I can be with just gestures and 'hand' signals. But we haven't been too far adrift understanding each other before. There's little reason to doubt now.”

We thought the fishing village was a good place to make contact with the locals and the barren offshore island seemed an ideal place to put down. Good visibility, no possibility of being surprised by aggressive flora or fauna. After a cautious approach the natives turned out to be friendly enough even though a little grotesque when viewed through human eyes.

“Did he say why?”

'He' was the village elder. The 'wise man'. Funny how you can sense authority and wisdom in an individual even when they look much the same as the other 'spiders'.

“He says there's some big fish out here. So big we have no idea. Bigger than big. Offshore is not a good place to be. It's approaching spawning time and they get unpredictable, apparently.”

“Never been threatened by a fish before. You sure he said 'fish'?”

“Closest I could get - 'thing in the sea'.”

“Okay. We're over a hundred metres from the beach in any direction and we'll double the guard. That should be sufficient - whatever comes ashore.”

“So we're not leaving?”

“Leaving? Hell no. We've made useful contact here. There's some important work to do. We're reasonably well armed and we can be airborne in under thirty minutes. I appreciate the village elder's warning but a big fish is obviously more of a threat to a flimsy fishing boat than to a well armed research lander.”

“It's just that he seemed so...”

It was about now that observers in the orbiting mother ship watched in horror as the island slowly rolled over, blew air, and slipped beneath the waves.

 

[Calliopenjo]

The Worst Punishment

They put me on the wagon to move me to Dragon Sealock because I set the camp on fire. Not on purpose, but the old telling of a swift wind burst came true. The arrow set fire to the lead fieldhouse. My fellows practiced in that landspan, and I did not believe there would be a problem. I guessed wrong.

My malodorous headship gave me the impulse to smell roses as a sweotol lack of hygiene became self-standing. That went away when I found myself on the way to what had been called, through the elds, Lonely Sealock. One gets put there and one does not expect to get out. At least, not anytime soon.

Dragon Sealock had been betokened as such because they use the area to spawn Water Dragon eyren. It takes anywhere from a decade to half-a-century for one to incubate. So why put people there if it takes until retirement to hatch?

The outing to the landspan, according to hearsay, could take a couple of fortnights. The trail has been littered with boulders, fallen trees and kingdoms, change of steeds and wagons, supply pick up, and anything else that would cause a problem to reach any destination. Many roads needed to be taken to arrive at such a keen place. That sealock never sees the sun.

Unable to locate anything that would hasten my dengang, I was forced to listen to the constant goings on of my companion. I had never been so glad for someone to leave. I never knew someone could talk so much about nothing at all.

 

[Peter V]

Careful What You Fish For

Never go alone to the birthing ponds, that’s what they always said. But Spencer needed cash and Jules had told him that there was no danger if you stayed focused. Besides, no one had been lost to the Ayeni for years and everyone knew their interest in humans had waned.

It was still two hours till sun up when Spencer reached the water’s edge, so unlikely he’d be spotted by an over officious constable. He unpacked his rod, selected a juicy grub for the line and settled down to fish.

Spencer stared at the float, wiling it to bob under. He focused on it, ignoring a rustling amongst the rushes to his left.

Anything that lived in the waters of the birthing ponds absorbed the ‘gleam’ but fish were definitely best. Half a dozen, that’s all he needed. It wouldn’t make him rich, nor be enough to draw him to the attention of the cartel but he could settle his debt and maybe live a little for a while. Just so long as he didn’t sample the merchandise. That’s how he’d gotten into this mess.

A splash. Those rushes again. Spencer glanced away momentarily then quickly returned his attention to the float. Focus!

Join with us.

The voice is his head was soft and welcoming. Spencer closed his eyes and told himself it was nothing to be scared of, that the trembling in the rod was due to the cold.

When he opened his eyes he was in the middle of the pond, serenely floating and staring up at the twin moons. He felt no pain when the Ayeni fused with him and why should he? It was a wonderful thing. His lungs filled with water as he sank beneath the surface.

It didn’t matter, he wouldn’t need them again.

 

[Heijan Xavier]

Forgotten Harvest

The harvesters row in circles. They search the lagoon for days without sleep, weeks without food, months without sitting, years without speaking, and lifetimes without love. Some have forgotten for what they search, yet they remain focused on the forgotten.

Those who disrupt the harvest, pay with pain.

One small child approaches a harvester, rippling the water in the lagoon, rippling the harvester’s focus. The harvester wastes no time and slashes at the groin of the small child with a razor-sharp oar and expressionlessly returns to the harvest. The small child does not scream in agony though, it leans backward, eyes rolled white to the back of its head and mouth dumbly agape.

Why mutilate children? I think, aghast. I shift my seething, panicked gaze to the harvester. It acts as though nothing has happened. To the harvester you see, nothing has happened; it has already forgotten.

I return to the small child, whose wounds are exposed. A swarm of hornets rises therefrom. I am scared, petrified, paralyzed. How can I not be? The hornets appear harmless, however, and in fact ARE harmless; they are illusions cast around floating metallic bubbles which coalesce into one giant hornet, but not a nasty one, a bulbous one, like a child’s plaything. I set my mind to wonder.

And to wander.

The small child is now one of many small children, standing on the small raft in the still lagoon.

Giggling, they set free the bulbous hornet. Then, they look at me through calm wise eyes that say,

We know something you don’t know. Condescension is not our intent, but we cannot tell you the truth; we can only pray that you figure it out for yourself.

We can only pray, Harvester, that you remember what you have forgotten.

 

[SaitamXVII]

Wine and reeds

Diei prayed his grandfather didn’t notice the doubt in his balance, the extra effort he had to make to remain on top of the raft. Turned out the rice wine he was given last night was far stronger than he was assured. Thankfully it seemed the old man was too busy checking the murky waters surrounded by nets.

“Can you see any holes on that side?” he was suddenly asked from across the hatchery. The question made him stumble for a second, raising small waves that quickly extended along the shallow waters, cutting the reflection of the sun’s rays. He almost lost one of the oars trying to regain his balance.

He shot a quick glance across the pond in panic, and saw his grandfather was looking at him. He inmediately turned down his gaze, but knew he was too late. Nothing escaped the old man’s narrow eyes, his withering stare. Diei could already hear the reproach again, the same old story of how ten generations of Zheis had arrived from Old Terra to make a living in these remote lands, in this remote planet, only for him to make be a disgrace.

Too submerged in the sorrow of knowing what awaited him, he lost his footing and quickly found himself actually submerged. Fortunately, this time his feet didn’t get tangled in the reeds that covered the bottom. He surfaced just in time to see the tip of the long pole coming down in an arc, striking him square in the head. The old man could seem frail, but he could make that raft fly across the water.

-“Next time no rice wine for you!”

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Noncombatants

Manuel grunted as he hauled in the net, heavy with fish. Salt stung the many small cuts on his hands. They would soon heal, adding to the web of pale scars on his skin. Felipe helped him empty their catch into the boat.

"A dolphin, Papa." The boy pointed out to sea.

The animal neared their boat. Manuel grinned. Dolphins always brought good luck. He threw a large fish to it.

"Look," Felipe said. "On its head."

Manuel squinted. A silver disk the size of an infant's hand glittered near its blowhole. He dangled another fish over the water to draw the dolphin closer.

"Come here, my friend." He stroked its smooth gray skin. The dolphin showed no fear, as if it had often been among people. He pried the disk off its head. The dolphin squealed, but did not back away.

"What is it, Papa?"

"A thing to kill. The government, or the rebels, or the Norteamericanos make these, and use dolphins to carry them to the ships of their enemies." Manuel tossed it far away. The disk sank into the sea, where it would do no harm. The dolphin swam off.

"Mama will not be pleased that we have given away so much of our catch," Felipe said.

"Let that remain a secret between men. We will say that the fishing was poor today."

"Only you and I will know that it was a good day."

"Yes. It was a very good day, my son."

They rowed to shore, watching the dying sun paint the ocean scarlet and gold. In the distance, the dolphin leapt out of the sea, drops of water gleaming on its body like pearls. It laughed as it danced in the air, as a wanderer laughs at the first sight of home.

 

[Karn's Return]

Atlantis, Atlantis, Wherefore Art Thou, Atlantis?​

The sun beat down upon the two men as they scanned the horizon.
“Dad, I’m not sure this is a good idea…” Sam muttered to his father. “I think that pirate gave us a faulty map.” He squinted at the piece of paper. “For one thing, I think it’s written in blue and green crayon. And these instructions on how to navigate the Strait of Gibraltar are written on a wooden leg. Which is very hard to read, by the way…”
“It’s the only lead we have!” his father snapped. “And he told us that this was the best way to avoid Charybdis and that Kraken!”
“Yeah, but…”
“Look. The elves wanted us on this job, and we have to do it correctly. You don’t want to be eaten or sucked under by a massive whirlpool, do you?”
“Well no, but…”
“They’re paying us handsomely for the job, and we get a bonus if we finish in a month! So god damn it, Sam, shut up and help! Think of the money! A hundred thousand gold crowns, and a potential fifty percent bonus!”
Sam sighed. “Dad…come on…we’re trying to find Atlantis.”
“Yeah, and we’re getting there!”
“Not in a rowboat, we’re not!”

 

[Shyrka]

The Drowned Kings

I was there when my brother was born. I still remember his newborn form slipping from my mother and into my trembling, outstretched hands, red-raw and screaming.

I caught his form again, ten years later, as it fell backward, trailing crimson from the crater left by the Invader’s arquebus. I was there when my brother died.

A basket of sweet berries from mamma’s kitchen gets me close to their guards. The knife from mamma’s kitchen gets me past them.

They’ve drained the lake – the Drowned Kings’ stone crowns where we swam and played are fully exposed now, revealed as the rotten, protruding tips of great sinkholes that fall away into darkness below. The Invaders must be after the Drowned Kings’ power. Old Gratsby used to tell tales of how their wrath had drowned the world. I don’t care. All I know now is fury.

I descend into a metal cave full of bright star-lamps and hissing steam so cold it numbs your fingers. At the centre of it all stands one of them: an ancient king, a great cylindrical tower, tall as a mountain and crowned not with gold but a sharp, tapering point the colour of blood. It rumbles, bleeding cold steam, as if waiting for something.

The Invaders I catch aren’t armed, too busy poking and prodding at the cave’s mechanisms. I am no fighter but there is nothing left of me but fury. The ancient king stands silent, a mute witness to my butchery. It seems to approve. Calmly, I raise my arm to strike at the hissing machinery.

“No!” A shout from afar – an Invader I hadn’t seen. “If you destroy it you’ll kill everyone!”

I am fury.

But I am also grief.

I close my eyes.

Let the Kings’ Wrath take us all.

 

[Daysman]

Marvellous Things

The day has a festival feel with so many families crowding the shore. There's food and drink and every child has a hand me down smartphone ready to stream images from the weather balloons when they ascend. As the countdown begins they all join in and at zero they punch the air as a hundred translucent sacks of hydrogen leap up into the bowl of the neon sky.

I see it all from a tiny flat bottomed fishing boat moored offshore. But along with the other onlookers I quickly abandon reality and dive into feeds from above, drawn in by tumbling images of the dwindling coastline, the growing curve of the earth and the rush towards the edge of space.

By dusk the fleet sits some thirty kilometres above the Pacific. On shore, a lucky lottery winner holds a phone aloft and at her signal a meticulously packed tether unfurls from the first balloon. The near weightless ribbon resembles a child's scribble as we watch its fall. Within minutes, similar coils of low cost superconductor unravel beneath each balloon.

The tethers that find the surface immediately short circuit the atmosphere and pent up terrestrial charge paints a bright corona around the suspended fleet. This fragile aurora is best observed from space. It lasts only minutes but fills the sky above the drowned coastline where so many communities have been lost.

So it is those at the shore hope to draw the attention of those above, given no significant help on Earth. This is their declaration. They are resilient and they will persist and they are capable of marvellous things, but they need our assistance.

As the crowds return home along torchlit paths, I submit my experiences to upload.

I trust Lagrange will take note.

 

[Perpetual Man]

The Final

Thrall hissed through his teeth as he forced the skiff faster. It turned on its side, threatening to capsize, but he shifted his muscular form and it dropped into the water with a resounding splash.

His long-term nemesis, winner of The Lake’s Medallion three years in a row, Karang was on the other side of the water, gaining points with an ease that made Thrall… jealous. As always Karang pulled a small raft after his skiff, extra weight, slower speed, it never seemed to hinder him.

The champion reached one of the hidden levers and pulled. Creaking like ancient bones, one of the half-submerged stick cages, sank out of view and what it held rose.

Water sheen on rubbery skin.

A Kraken, a bloody Kraken, the very thing that did him in the previous year.

His spin went rigid with fear, he was vaguely aware of Karang waving, his face caressing a cheeky grin.
And then it was all tentacles, beak and red eyes.

Suckers squelched as they attached to his leg, his chest.

In desperation he used his oar as a weapon slamming it into the maw, only for it to snap shut, reducing the pole to matchwood.

Breath of sardine and tuna, the beak snapped, preparing to snip him in half.

So, he did something ridiculous and bit the tentacle that ensnared him.

To everyone’s surprise the beast reacted, threw him through the air, smashing right onto the rear of Karang’s raft. Sudden weight change, plunging the raft down, dragging the skiff with it.

Thrall barely has the presence of mind to leap, his battered body alighting on one of the fences.

As Karang cursed and doggy-paddled, his gathered treasures sank to the depths.

The Lake’s had a new champion.

The duel was over.