Ix is happy. It has found a pool of clean water, not the bad stuff outside. It curls its leg upwards, showing its hoof, before plunging its flat face into the water. It drinks deeply, its ears flicking back.
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Gaia Conflict (urban fantasy)
Ix is happy. It has found a pool of clean water, not the bad stuff outside. It curls its leg upwards, showing its hoof, before plunging its flat face into the water. It drinks deeply, its ears flicking back.
I saw a child crying, “I don’t like the elevator, mommy.”
The elevator in question was a little old, a little creaky; I could see why the kid didn’t like it. His mother had to get him inside that lift somehow, and I felt sorry for the both of them, because he was still crying and she looked like she was late for something.
The dwarves and the dragons are the progenitors of our world. At first they lived in peace, each holding dominion of one half; height and depth, darkness and light, air and earth. The most potent of these contrasts were the sacred tongues of truth and lies: these were their true charges, for both truth and lies in their purest form could alter reality.
My name is Mladenka, insect, and what I just told you is a sacred lie.
Oh, you don’t understand? You don’t understand? It must be nice to live such a sheltered life.
No, child, it is a sacred lie. There is truth in this world, as there is Truth, and this is Truth’s counterpart: the elegant tapestry of lies. Yes, like elven glamours. The elves come from us, you know, just as you come from the dwarves. No, I shan’t explain. I have no time for progenics.
Your task is simple: Steal one of the dwarven artifacts and return it to me. My magic is insufficient, and I am set on discovering the magic of my enemies.
Impossible?! Worm! I give you a trivial task! You shall complete it — lest I crush you where you stand!
Run! Run far, and do not return until the artifact may be returned to me!
Sydney had an old pick-up truck on loan from the university, a rusty ‘010 Galaxy, which worked if you pounded the bonnet in just the right spot. It was all they had to make their trip to the city, and he was fairly sure — pretty sure — it’d survive the trip. Old Linda had come by again that evening, to give Teal a cloak (“There’s no use gettin’ to the city and just gettin’ took away ‘cause you look green around the gills!”, she’d crowed), and to try and give Sydney a handgun and some shells. He refused, of course, because that sort of thing would never fly in the city.
Sydney couldn’t convince the strange boy to eat anything he brought out, but eventually he was able to convince him to take a drink of water. He sat outside with the green child as the sun set in the West, his backyard bathed in shades of red and pink.
Sydney’s house was a small and quiet affair, with a month’s emergency provisions in the pantry — Linda always berated him for being so unprepared — and a pot plant next to his well-worn lounge, sunlight streaming through the one open window to feed its hungry leaves. It was only by luck that they placed the boy on that particular couch, instead of in the chair beside it: the light revitalised him. He stirred underneath it, and his mouth opened, tongue stretching out as if to catch the motes of dust captured by the sunlight. His eyes opened next, and he took a shuddering breath; his gaze fell upon the plant. Tenderly he reached for it, to gently trace the shapes created by its twisted stem.
1.
The high noon heat pounded into Dellatrey’s classroom with a vengeance. Sydney, 37-HA, felt an almost irresistible urge to lay down his head and sleep — but he knew that if his eyes drifted down, their instructor would be on him like a particularly buxom hawk. He struggled to keep his eyes on the words she pointed out on the giant screen behind her, phrases like “brink effect” and “presumed foreign biological warfare”, her heavy accent on that first contemptuous word.
He really tried, but it was no use.
