The druid wandered the forest. He watched the movements of the animals and the cycles of the plants. As he travelled, he did what he could to maintain the balance of life in the forest. He felled a tree here and planted a sapling there. He drove off predators in one territory and culled grazers in another. He passed no judgement, believing harmony to be the ultimate good and caring little for the individual lives he touched. It wasn’t until he was cornered by a hungry mountain lion and had to fight for his life that he truly understood Nature.
The cockatrice stood on the bridge, its chicken head pecking at the cobblestones while the snake head tasted the air for danger. I started to rise from our hiding spot, hand on my sword, but our captain shook his head. “Never try and take a monster in a fight,” he whispered. He reached down and picked up a rock. He threw past it the chicken head. The monster squawked and chased after it, diving into the ravine. We crossed the bridge in a hurry, listening to the frantic beating of wings. “A chicken is still a chicken,” the Captain said.
The Naga keep to themselves. On rare occasions, one can be seen in the wasteland, watching silently before slithering away. They don’t mix with the other peoples of the world. Rumors say they are the remnants of a lost civilization conducting horrific rituals and worshiping strange gods in the ruins. The Naga would be bemused by the description. Their ship had crashed and stranded them on this planet decades ago. Rather than twist the world out of shape with their advanced technology, they elected to wait for the native civilizations to catch up before announcing themselves. They are very patient.
The magical forest was home to a vast mycelia network, an intelligence that connected every tree and moved with the speed of a glacier. It sensed that a darkness was coming, and that the lighting-quick creatures that moved through its paths needed to be warned. So it gathered up its energy and budded a myconid to be its messenger to the human world. The child slowly pushed their way through the soil, and broke from their mother network with a pop of fungal threads. But by the time the myconid reached the palace, it had been many years a ruin.
In this episode: Allenby throws boulders, Chibodee beats up a statuary garden, and Domon displays an amazing new technique that we will literally never see again. Plus, The Shuffle Alliance ghost Domon, and Master Asia is great at metaphors but terrible at drawing wolves, I guess.
Ooze burbled its way through the dungeon, trying to find a quiet place to puddle and feel sorry for itself. It never got the respect it deserved. It wasn’t strong, or fast. It didn’t have huge claws or strange magics. It didn’t have a terrifying or majestic visage. But it had its own techniques. It would lay in wait, dripping down from above or pooling to strike from below. By the time an adventurer felt the sting of acid underneath their armor, it was already too late. But it was always that cute dope Slime that got all the attention.
The hellhound prowled the halls of its abyssal home, leaving smoldering footprint that smelled of brimstone. The damned watched the creature pass warily. A few quaked and hid. But there was always one who would run, overcome with terror. He chased them down with sharp fangs and fiery breath. He fetched the shredded soul back and put it where it belonged, whiplike tail wagging. There was a contradiction deep in the hellhound’s heart. All dogs are good dogs, even him. But he decided long ago it was better to be a good boy in Hell than a lapdog in Heaven.
The jester sat at the foot of the throne, ready to alleviate His Majesty’s woes with a cleverly worded quip or jape. He sat on the steps as the king met with messengers, petitioners, and even other heads of state, watching to see when a well-executed pratfall or tumble would lighten the mood. Late into the night, the jester would hone his skills, writing down the best jokes for the approval of the seneschal. The seneschal made careful study of the jester’s submissions. He’d made sure the boy was sharp and observant. And the seneschal made notes of his own.
The psychic detective had his own struggling agency. He was a joke among ‘serious’ law enforcement, but he had a surprisingly high success rate. When a client came in, he’d know immediately if he should take their case. He specialized in violent crimes because they gave him a stronger impression. He would visit crime scenes and wandered around. He didn’t look for clues, but occasionally stumbled across things the police missed. Then he would go home and go to sleep, reconstructing the events in his dreams. It would be a perfect system if he didn’t wake up covered in blood.
When the company announced a new round of layoffs, Roma wasn’t worried. It was true, her last few quarters had been a bit rough, but she’d been with the company forever, and expected that her seniority would carry her through, just like it had before. But when she was called into a meeting with the Transition team, she started to get nervous. She sat in front of the pair, with their pale makeup and black dresses, as they talked about workforce reductions and belt tightening, and knew the axe was falling. But Roma never expected to be sacked by goths.
Hugh J. O'Donnell 