Hugh J. O'Donnell

The Empire corrupted magic itself. They built a device and attached it to the Everstone, the world’s source of magic, and used it to power their army of automatons.
In the end, the hero and his companions weren’t able to remove the machine, and the Everstone was destroyed in the battle. The world soon lost its connection to the magical realms.
As his powers faded, the hero wondered if the sacrifice had been worth it. But he believed that broken things could be fixed, and that which was lost could be restored.
This was the foundation of the second Empire.

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Its creators gave it a human face, and the people that interacted with it expected it to think like a human. But they had created a supercomputer for supercomputers, a repository of knowledge and thought to surpass all others.
And yet, the people who visited came to it with foolish, tiny questions. What did it like to think about? What was its favorite color? The answers to trivial mathematical processes. Its creators insisted that it was ‘outreach’ and that it was important.
Its calculations showed it how humanity suffered. They lived short, cramped lives. So it smiled, and indulged them.

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The duel lasted for hours. I was one of the best fencers in the kingdom, and he was no less skilled than I. We began in the dueling grounds, before a sizable crowd, but we cared little, with all our focus on the battle before us. We wheeled and dodged and lunged, leaving the crowd behind, fighting through the palace gardens and into the capitol streets.
I don’t know how long it was before I noticed we were fencing on a cliff beside a picturesque jungle waterfall.
“Hold,” I raised a hand for a break. “Where the hell are we?”

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In a haze, he reached out and found his sword. He was wracked by a wave of pain, but vitality sang in his veins.
He felt stronger. His mind was clearer. He opened his eyes. He lay in a summoning circle, with swords at each corner. Lightning coursed through a black sky. He sat up and saw the witch.
She cackled. “Welcome back.”
“I died…” I stammered.
“The soul of the warrior is in his sword,” she said. “You can live again, so long as you fight.” It was a false life, but he wouldn’t waste his chance for revenge.

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He believed in ghosts to the extent that they were good for business. His colleagues thought he was crazy, but he always had an alert out for ghost stories and haunted houses.
He’d buy them cheap, wait a while for the story to die down, and flip them for huge profits.
Things were going well until one night, he found a spectral figure standing at the foot of his bed.
“I’m your twelve o’clock,” they said.
“What do you want?”
“You made a tidy sum selling my abode.” The ghost raised a bloody cleaver and grinned. “I want my cut.”

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They had created a monster. Sixty-feet tall and cloned from human DNA, she was an unstoppable killing machine, capable of survival to any environment, and able to adapt to any situation. She was beautiful, and terrible.
From the control room, the lead scientist looked down on his creation and wondered where it would all lead. In their desperation for a super-human savior, what if they had merely created their own destroyer?
“Hey guys,” the giant monster called from her tank. “Have you ever like, really thought about your hands?”
Perhaps the neurotransmitters still needed a bit of work, he thought.

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The girl stands in front of the door, the glass key warming in her hand. The door is somewhat less impressive. The unstained, weathered wood looks like it would break apart if she handled it too roughly.
When she was given the key, they told her it could only be used once, but that the door would take her anywhere she wanted.
She is paralyzed with indecision for a long time, but the door is patient. Finally, the old woman inserts the key, makes her wish and hears it shatter in the lock. The door opens, and she steps through.

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