Hugh J. O'Donnell

Huddled in our makeshift camp at the base of the valley, we heard trickling water for the first time in years. We searched and found a little pool collecting a rivulet flowing off a high mountain. We drank our fill.
I climbed to the summit and was amazed by what I found.
The gateway opened to another, better world. On the other side, a stream flowed out of a grassy field. I felt the breeze on my face and heard actual birdsong. I smelled the fresh air.
I wandered through, enraptured. The soldiers waited for me just out of sight.

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The goddess looked out over the battlefield and wept. Bodies from her army and her brothers littered the field.
The battle had been intoxicating. She rode out in her shining armor and drank in worship. Now that it was over, and those worshipers lay dead, the high had faded.
“Let it go,” her brother said, their argument already forgotten. “They’re mortal. Dying is what they do.”
Poets said that flowers grew where the gods shed blood. She waived a hand, and crimson blossoms sprang up to cover the corpses. This blood belonged to her, and she would repay her debt.

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Stilttown stood in the middle of desolation. When the world was dying, they took their supplies and sheet metal walls and built upward, securing all the lumber they could before the forest burned. They watched the End of the World from on high, believing that it could not reach them.
When the refugees came after, they still sat and watched, condemning them to die.
When I came to Stilttown, I called up. They still refused my entry. So I took out my solar-powered electric chainsaw, a valuable relic of the old days, and showed them that no perch is inviolable.

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The Inter-County Varsity Basketball Tournament was the most important sporting event of the year, and Hillcrest Private School always won. But this year, we had an ace up our sleeve.
“What is that?” The River Heights coach demanded, pointing at one of my players.
“Transfer student.”
“That is not a transfer student!” he pointed to the twenty-foot tall, three-skulled being hovering above the court on ebon wings.
“That’s Luci,” I said.
“You Lowville Public Highschool losers won’t get away with this!” He shouted.
“Hey, there ain’t no rule that says a demon lord of the inner pit can’t play basketball!”

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He exited superluminal space discombobulated, but his ship’s medical computer detected no injuries. He had done the impossible, traveling farther and faster than any human before him. And he returned to tell the tale.
Earth was just as beautiful as when he left, but that was understandable. A two-week superluminal trip for him equated to two years of Earth time.
He brought up his communications hub to brag about his accomplishment. But as he logged into Earth’s network, he felt a rising panic. His social media feeds were gone, decimated in his absence. He wept for all the lost memes.

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She was the best weaver in Atlantis and knew all the secrets of her ancient art. She knew how to treat the seaweed fibers to make them strong and light and the correct method for curving fish spines.
But nobody cared about the old ways anymore. The crowd passed over her baskets in the market and favored cheap, mass-produced crap that barely lasted a season before breaking.
If baskets were out, she found new uses for her skills. She used them to create a new building material that was strong, light, and sustainable.
She would show them who was useless.

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His grandfather taught him the prayer but didn’t tell him what the words meant or what language they were. He said it was an Orison, something to say in times of trouble or when you were looking for divine protection.
He whispered it over his grandfather’s casket and in the nursery after his son was born. He recited them on the ship as they left Earth for the last time.
On a distant planet, under a strange Sun, he taught the words to his granddaughter. He never learned what they meant, but it was enough that he passed them on.

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The crack appeared in the air along the side of the highway, near a stretch of road they called ‘The Deadly Curve.’ It made the trees behind it glow with an odd, sunset-colored light. It reminded him of the broken monitor on his desk.
He went to test his theory, sneaking passed the cops on guard duty. He picked up a rock and threw it at the crack. It made a ripple in the ‘air,’ and the damage expanded. He stared at the sky for a long time, knowing the boundary of his cage for the first time.

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She grew up in The Spire, a beautiful city of terraced towers that grew up from the sea, ruled by a benevolent council of wizards.
Unless you lived in Undercroft, the sprawling neighborhood huddled at the bottom. She dwelt in the shadows at the base of the towers and lived off of whatever the upper class dropped.
One day, she found a weathered and stained book. The tome was still legible, if dirty and damp: A grimoire full of the ruling magicians’ secret arts.
She studied it eagerly, waiting for the day she would use her oppressors’ magic against them.

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When the girl fell from the heavens, the villagers thought she was a goddess. Aside from the glowing, you’d never know it to look at her. She was curious and kind, and while she never spoke, she seemed to hear everything the villagers said, although she didn’t always understand.
The village took her in and adopted her. That year, they had the best harvest ever recorded.
When their lord came to collect the girl, for he liked fine things and cared little for the village, she didn’t want to go.
That was when they discovered her benevolence had a limit.

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