Hugh J. O'Donnell

They only return to the city when necessary. She hates it there. Even when she is dressed to blend in with the latest fashions, her wolf companion always draws attention.
She hates the echoing concrete and the buzzing neon. The stench of civilization. She only comes back when she needs to resupply, or some errand takes her back. She spends all her time wishing for the dark forest she calls home.
The wolf loves the city. He is fascinated by its novelty The human world is full of interesting smells and strange sounds. He loves the feeling of being seen.

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The judges looked up at the golem and scoffed. It was thirty feet tall and clearly didn’t meet the requirements of the competition. One of them his attention to the teenage artificer, who looked like she was about to cry.
“While the details on your golem are impressive, you were supposed to make your golem out of household items.”
He was interrupted by ground-shaking footsteps. A giant crested the hill and stood bellowing outside the city, demanding to know who had stolen his teapot and smashed his clock.
“I did,” she insisted. “I just used ones from a bigger house!”

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The pair of explorers wandered the city. They walked the wide streets, climbed broad staircases, and marveled at the vast squares decorated with dry fountains and exquisite marble statues. They met nobody in their travels, yet they had the eerie feeling that they were being watched.
The tall stone buildings had no means of entry. They couldn’t budge the heavy locked doors, and none of the windows were low enough to climb through.
Frustrated, they left the city to its ghosts.
Somewhere beyond their understanding, beings jotted down their observations and reset the maze for the next group of subjects.

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Sometimes she wondered why she bothered.
Every week, it was the same thing. Half the books came in damaged or delayed, and she had to eat the costs. The shop was always hovering on the edge of the red. She thought about giving up and going back to the corporate grind.
Then she spotted the kid. She was about seven, staring up in awe at a display of colorful superheroes.
“Excuse me,” her dad said with a sheepish grin. “We’re here to pick up her first comic. Do you have any advice?”
And she fell in love all over again.

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The hunter stalks his quarry. He has pursued it for days. But in a larger sense, he spent years tracking the beast. He trained to deadly accuracy with the bow, learned how to walk through the forest without making a sound, and studied every sign of the creature’s passage.
He passes through a curtain of tall grass and spots it drinking from a lake. He is awestruck by the creature’s grace and beauty, limned by the rising sun. He readies his bow.
The hunter fires the arrow, aiming for a killing blow.
It bounces harmlessly off the dragon’s impenetrable scales.

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He remembered fire and heat. He dreamed of an endless desert of smoldering rocks and roiling sand under clouds of steam that rained molten flames on an endlessly burning village.
But that was impossible. He was just a man.
His memory problems came from his injuries. They told him so when he woke up in the infirmary. He was a soldier in the Sorcerer King’s army. He tried to believe it.
Until the day he found the chamber where they had conducted the summoning. And the Ifrit remembered everything.
The Sorcerer King had played with fire. And he would burn.

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She launched the little boat in the dead of night, just when the storm broke over the water. It would’ve been safer to wait for dawn, or for clear skies. But she didn’t have that luxury.
She raised the sail and lashed herself to the mast. She knew the odds were slim that she’d make it to the mainland, but all the larger boats were smashed, and the message had to get through.
War had come to her island, and someone had to warn the capital.
She looked back one last time as her home was lost in the storm.

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She was a practitioner of forbidden arts. The elders decreed combat should only be fought with tooth and claw, or perhaps the sword. Of course, such weapons would be harmless to her fellow vampires. She pursued the art of the stake.
Her fascination made her a pariah, but they always found themselves needing her services eventually. She practiced discernment in such matters, refusing to descend into politics or petty squabbles. She was an artist, not an assassin.
If she would prey on her own people, she would cull the worst to preserve the herd, as a gardener prunes a branch.

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