Archive | November 2015

In the Real World, Chapter Two of The Portal Closed

Nov11

Chapter One

“I’ve been delegated to ask what the four of you think you’re doing.” Mr. Richardson, the school’s guidance counselor, looked more than a little amused as he stared at them over folded hands. “So: what, exactly, do the four of you think you’re doing?”

What they had been doing was sorting out life here on earth at the same time as they tried to prepare themselves for their next adventure. It hadn’t occurred to them that the staff of their school would notice. They stared at Mr. Richardson, attempting to slot a staff that paid attention into their plans.

Barbara recovered first, if weakly. “College?” she tried. “College entrance reports.”

“It was you, I believe, who told me three months ago that you couldn’t give a fig about college, that it was years away. And after that you, Clarence, added that ‘who knew if you’d get to college anyway,’ which seemed more than a bit fatalistic for such bright children, I might add.” His bushy eyebrows went up. “So something has changed. I repeat: what are you doing?”

Ralph sat up a bit straighter. “There comes a time when the doors of childhood slam shut in your face and you must face adulthood, whether or not you’re ready.” Ralph had spent five years as a troubador, and his turn of phrase brought him no end of romantic attention – when he was in a body which could grow a beard and had a voice which didn’t still sound like a girl’s. “We’re simply stepping forward as adults now. Which requires some preparation.”

Mr. Richardson looked down at his notes. “Fencing club. Heavy weapons club. I’ll note that both of these are new – no, pardon me. Fencing club was reinstated.”

Barbara had done the research; Diane had convinced Mr. Prewitt, their gym teacher, to reinstate Fencing Club. Clarence had done his best Hurt Masculinity act and gotten Mr. Prewitt to also start a “proper swordfighting” club. They were finding the clubs helpful, if occasionally frustrating. Diane had this habit of attempting to run the targets all the way through.

“Don’t forget trying to restart debate club,” Clarence offered helpfully. “It’s not like we haven’t done that one before, it’s just that we had a little… conflict… about how it should go.”

“You mean that you and Barbara trounced everyone and were insufficiently apologetic about winning.” Mr. Richardson’s mustache moved in what had to be a concealed smile.

Barbara jutted her chin forward. “We were good. I don’t see any reason to apologize for being good.”

“And you shouldn’t.” Mr. Richardson nodded approvingly. “However, I understand that not everyone in the school feels that way.”

“What, exactly, are these unknown people concerned about, sir?” Diana was sitting very primly, her hands folded in her lap. Barbara couldn’t help but wonder if Mr. Richardson had seen Diane’s fencing targets. Or her archery targets. “We’re not doing anything wrong.“

“I don’t suppose you could?” He brushed the request off with a hand, smiling widely enough to show beneath the mustache. “No, no. Of course not. But when four bright students who have been actively disengaged change all of a sudden, and all together, I suppose the administration worries they’re missing something.”

“If they are,” Ralph offered, “it is only that we have always worked as a team, and so we’re… well, we’re growing up as a team. Paying attention to our physical and mental health together, that sort of thing.”

“Mmm.” Mr. Richardson made a note in his folder. “I’ll tell them that. And if you’re planning on starting any more clubs, come talk to me first, all right? I’m sure I can find a way to soften the blow to the Administration. Children being active. Heaven forbid.”

Barbara found herself smiling at the man. They should have engaged his help years ago; he might not be a sorceress, he might not be Verdana, but he seemed plenty wise enough for them.

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1143339.html

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The Portal Closed, a beginning/introduction/Prelude

Nov10

“It’s all your fault!”

They were fourteen – except Ralph, who had always been the baby of the group and was just turning thirteen – when the portal into Ombrion stopped opening for them.

They had known it was coming. Only children could enter Ombrion through the portals. And for the past year, the openings had been rarer and rarer. Two months had passed when the four of them huddled around the door in the old abandoned school library and called out toVerdana, who had guided them. They lit the candles, even though they knew the candles weren’t necessary. They wished on the fullness of the moon, all of it the way they had the first time.

The gates stayed closed. Verdana did not answer. And to all of them, the gates felt more sealed, more dead, than they ever had before.

“It’s got to be you.” Clarence glared at Barbara. “With your…” He flapped his hand in vague disgust.

She sneered back at him, uninterested in his squeamishness. “What about you? With your voice changing, with all the squeaking through the calling there?”

“Maybe it’s Ralph…” Clarence flopped against the old wooden doors that had, until so recently, been their portal to Ombrion. “No. They’re just done with us.”

They’d been seven and eight the first time, full of the books they were reading and playing make-believe, no matter what the other students said about growing up, when they’d first opened the portal. They’d tumbled through the door again and again, only to come back with only a few minutes, a few hours having passed.

Until now. No matter how many times they grew up in Ombrion, today they’d grown up too much in America.

“Maybe if we…” Ralph moved the candles despondently. “I can’t believe that’s it. Just – ‘thanks for saving us, go back to your world now and be teenagers.'”

Barbara put her face in her hands. “I can’t believe Verdana just abandoned us. I mean.” She held up her hand, because Clarence liked to poke at everything lately. “I can believe it, I know, she always told us she would. But it makes me angry.”

“Guys…” Diane had said nothing at all, which was, for Diane, not that uncommon. But she was staring off into the shadows with a look that had, once, presaged her saving an entire nation. “The way I see it, we have a few options.”

The rest of them settled in to listen. Of the many things they had learned over their decades in Ombrion, “listen to Diane” had been one of the first lessons.

She ticked off on her fingers. “We can sit here and complain. We can go out there and live our lives. Come on, how many teenagers have the experience we have? I tried; I don’t have the muscle memory but I have all the knowledge of swordcraft, for example. It would give us a leg up, whatever we decided to do.”

She paused, and despite the fact that dramatic pauses were far more Ralph’s purview than Diane’s, they all leaned forward. “Or we can do one better. We can find magic here. We can find other portals.”

“The portal’s closed.” Clarence’s voice was harsh and angry.

“This portal is closed. Only this one. What did Verdana say? The portal led to that world, and always has. Oh, what was it?” She closed her eyes.

Barbara picked it up. She’d had nightmares about that part. “‘I shudder to think about what would have happened, if you four had found some other door, some world that ‘needed’ you for some far more nefarious purpose.”

The words hung in the air, but it was Ralph who picked them up. “There are other worlds.” The conclusion was inescapable.

“There are other words.” Clarence breathed it out slowly. “And we aren’t the children we were, back then.”

“If you count experience,” Diane added dryly, “we’re ancients. And I do count experience. You guys remember that debate club debacle last year.”

They’d been disqualified, Barbara and Clarence. The teachers had been certain they’d gotten outside coaching. In a sense, they had – in the small room behind the throne room, in Ombrion, before the ambassadors from Fregoran visited.

Barbara nodded slowly. “Let’s do it. Let’s find another portal. Let’s find all the portals.”

If the portals needed people, let it be them, who already knew how to live two lives at once. If they needed soldiers, generals, diplomats, let it be them.

She had no desire to spend her entire life remembering what it was like to be a Warrior Queen.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1007793.html. You can comment here or there.

A Storm Brewing Over the Skies of … Setting

Nov9

“My Father is going to hear about this!”

He knew how he sounded. He knew exactly what they thought when he turned his back and stomped off.

The sycophants, they would think his father, yes. And his mother. They have the power, and that much power might rub off on us.

The Other Side, The Enemy, they would think what a prissy little ponce. But they would know that his father and mother had power that they weren’t ready, yet, to cross.

And the ones that didn’t care either way, the ones who were very determinedly Team No Hat, they would think what a loud little bitch and go on looking for power in some other way, some way that didn’t mean being For or Against the Young Dragon’s family.

He watched that all flicker across their faces, even as he wished he could cram the words back down his own throat. My father will hear about this. What stupid child said things like that?

He counted to three silently. Dragons did not take things back. Dragons did not ever concede that the power of the family wasn’t all-important and all-encompassing. “Unless…”

Dragons did not say unless. They didn’t bargain.

He met her eyes. Her. The Enemy. The born daughter of everything his family stood against. “Unless, daughter of the Leviathan, you’d care to settle this right here?” He lifted his left hand in a post of magic and challenge.

She watched his hand as if it were a strange object. A beat passed. Another A third. “Don’t be foolish, young dragon. The leviathan do not duel.”

She left him hanging just long enough that he was ready to gather up his pride and stomp off again. And then she smiled.

She smiled, daughter of the sea and all things cold and unforgiving, daughter of the Leviathan. “But if you’d like… Taranis… we might settle this over a deck of cards and a pint of beer.”

The Leviathan and the Dragon did not drink together. The son of the dragon raised his eyebrows in perfectly patrician surprise.

“Let’s,” he agreed, surprising not only the crowed that surrounded them, that always surrounded them when they fought, but himself and perhaps the daughter of the Leviathan as well. “Tomorrow at 8, at the Crooked Rooster.” He picked out of the crowd one of those who determinedly didn’t care. “Perry of the Lion. Bring a deck of cards, would you?”

It got a laugh. And when he looked back at Levina of the Leviathan, she was grinning at him.

The son of the Dragon decided his father didn’t need to hear about this one just yet.

If this sounds like a certain school with a certain blonde bratchild and some other certain people just a bit here and there, I blame this version of Fall Out Boy’s Centuries and what happens when you let youtube have its head after that.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1007341.html. You can comment here or there.

Let’s Play Turnabout

Nov9

Content includes insinuated rough sex and manipulation.

“That’s it, my Master. Lay down, right here.”

Landyn wasn’t sure why he’d agreed to this. He was the Master, as she’d said, and she was his slave, bought on the market, fair and square. She’d been marked and collared and chained. She was a possession.

And he was a Noble.

But “let’s play,” Keely had suggested. Keely liked to play, and for some reason, Landyn always found himself agreeing to her games.

“Let’s play,” she’d said, and they’d been running around the forgotten sections of the old Habitat. “Let’s play,” she’s purred, and they’d put on Citizen’s jumpsuits and covered her collar and his tattoos with scarves and jewelry and gone running through the town-bubbles like they were just normal Citizen kids. “Let’s play,” she’d whispered, and they’d dressed up in their finest and crashed the wedding of a rich Citizen’s eldest daughter.

“Let’s play,” she’d suggested, and now Landyn was wearing no clothes at all, nothing except a makeshift collar made of his own belt, face down on the bed while his own slave crawled up over him, her long hair dangling over his back and the token chains on her wrists and ankles jingling.

“This isn’t how it happens, not really,” she whispered in his ear. “Because I like you, my Master. And because you play with me. And because you’re a Noble. If we played for real, if we did it the way it happens…”

“What?” Landyn’s voice was muffled against the pillow. He craned his neck, trying to look at her.

Keely put her hand over his eyes, blocking his view. “The way it happens when you become a thing. When they take it all away from you.”

Landyn swallowed. “Just play, you said. Just play.”

Her hand trailed over his back. “Just play, of course, my Master.” Her fingers slid down lower, down to the bottom of his spine. “Like I said, you’re a Noble. And everyone knows that the Nobles couldn’t handle the hard life.”

It stung his pride, even as he found himself lifting his hips to her touch. “I’m not weak. I’m not delicate.”

“Of course not, my Master. Bite the pillow, that’s a good boy, and show me how not delicate you are.”

Landyn wasn’t sure why he’d agreed to this, but as he arched to her touch, he knew there was no way he was going to back out this time. He wasn’t weak. He wasn’t some frail Habitat-hider. He’d been out in town. He’d…

As his moans grew louder and she shoved his face into the pillow, as he bit down on the feathers, transfixed between pain and pleasure, it occurred to Landyn, if only for a moment, that perhaps that was exactly what Keely wanted him to try to prove.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1007058.html. You can comment here or there.

Chocolate Fudge for the Holidays, a drabble of the Aunt Family

Nov7

Evangaline was making chocolate fudge for the high school holiday bake sale.

In a normal house, in a normal family, this would be a nice, sane, normal activity.

In a normal house she probably wouldn’t be using her great-grandmother’s recipe, written out on an old index card, likely by her grandmother or her mother. Or she might, but she might not be using her great-great-aunt’s measuring spoons, the ones that had a tendency to yell at you when you were going to put in too much of just about anything.

And if she hadn’t been using her great-grandmother’s recipe, she wouldn’t have been grinding cinnamon sticks and dried cayenne peppers by hand, nor what she have been putting in a tiny drop of devil’s tears or the shake of pixie dust.

Her family’s fudge always sold out, no matter how many trays they made. “It just makes the holidays more magical,” Mrs. Steinberg down the street liked to say, with a wink and a laugh that suggested she, too, kept her great-grandmother’s recipes wrapped in silk and boxed in ivory and ironwood.

Evangaline always made sure to get an extra helping of Mrs. Steinberg’s chocolate babka, too. It made the holidays feel… proper.

And maybe a little bit more magical.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1006645.html. You can comment here or there.

Into Lannamer First and Last lines, 5th day of nano (yesterday)

Nov6

First line of yesterday, Into Lannamer:
He sat back and glared at her. “You want to disguise me.”

Last line of yesterday, Into Lannamer:
He’d have to pay closer attention if he didn’t want to get caught in the middle of escaping.

290 words yesterday on Into Lannamer, bringing the total to 3582

Total of 2673 words yesterday, bringing the total to 10,258.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1006388.html. You can comment here or there.

A Presentation to the Honored Grigori, 2111

Nov6

It was 2111, and Regine was using Powerpoint.

She found that amusing.

Certainly, computer programming was not a skill in high circulation at the moment – it seemed limited to a few sad enclaves still trying to hold on to the old world – and so there were few new options. But more than that, it was such a Grigori thing to do, to use antiquated technology decades past its prime.

Regine hoped there were Grigori in the audience young enough – or flexible enough – to appreciate the humor in this. She was going to need every advantage she could get today.

She did not clear her throat; it would considered an unnecessary and thus useless gesture by this crowd. Instead she stilled her posture and waited for silence.

“I am here today to state unequivocally that the terms ‘pure-blooded’, ‘half-breed’, and ‘Faded’ are outdated terms based on an archaic understanding and, as such, should immediately be dropped out of usage by Grigori.”

This was a Grigori meeting; there was no shouting. There were, however, murmurs and lifted eyebrows, shared glances and worried expressions. Regine catalogued them all. Michael would want to know about them.

She waited just long enough to allow the hubbub, such as it was, to die down, and then she began to present her proof.

She started with what Mike called her Jamian Point, because Jamian had been her first success. She brought up pictures – un-Masked pictures: “This is a Faded. This is a half-breed.” And then a picture of Jamian and the others. “This is their ‘full-blooded’ child.” Pictures of the next generation, both full-blooded and half-breed. “Their children with various other parents.” And the next generation, and the next. And then, because it was important, her ‘success children’s’ half-siblings. “These are other children from the same original parent groups, but in different combinations. The selection we call ‘full-blooded’ are merely a specific combination of genes which can be replicated with no recent ‘full-blooded’ ancestors.”

She raised her voice over the growing murmur. “Copies of all of my data are available for those who doubt my methods.”

She waited, as Michael and Ambrus had suggested, for silence to reign again before she began the next part of her speech.

“The ‘full-blooded’ Changes represent three combinations that occur commonly in bloodlines. They are not the only patterns to occur in bloodlines, although they may be the oldest. Putting weight on those above others handicaps us.

“Because of ‘half-blooded’ precognitives, we were able to correctly predict the return of the so-called gods and thus be better prepared to meet them. Because of ‘half-blooded’ space-shapers and time-movers, if you will pardon the casual term, we were able to face the ‘gods’ in manners and in places they were not expecting.”

Slide, slide, slide. Photographs of people who were very clearly half-breeds: Shira Pelletier. Porter, Shiva. Rohanna. Scenes of combat, some of those taken from mid-air in the middle of a teleport jump. Scenes of half-breeds beating down Hunters and Mara.

“They were older than us, on average. They were more powerful, on average, than we were. And yet we beat them. The world is bent but not broken, and it is still, after everything, ours.” She raised her chin and glared out at the perfect room of perfect people. “Will you tell me that any one of those who saved the world is worth less than you, because of a simple change in gene sequence?”

A pause. They wanted to say yes. They were so very comfortable with being on top.

“It’s a new world, honored Grigori. Let’s act like it.”

Open to more properly scientific terms for “The Jamian Point” and “space-shapers and time-movers”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1005842.html. You can comment here or there.

The Mall, a short horror story for Patreon Patrons

Nov6

The thing is, our town isn’t that big. It’s a city, technically, yeah, but the next city away is an hour in any direction, and most of those aren’t very big either. So the mall is the only real shopping around except Wal-Mart and Main Street, which is to say, the only real shopping at all.

Or at least, it was…

read on…

For just $1/month, you can read all the Patreon stories!
For $5/month you can prompt me AND vote on the serial topic!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1005568.html. You can comment here or there.