Hugh J. O'Donnell

On the night of the Necromancers’ Ball you have to serve looks. All of the Houses will be there, in their own styles and finery.
The House of Eternal Flesh will present themselves contour gowns, their shambling servants arrayed in funeral best.
The House of Ebon Spirits will attend in somber black, surrounded by the nearly perceptible wisps of a thousand spirits.
House Wollstonecraft will appear, gaudy costumes wrapped in funeral shrouds, all their bone creations skittering behind.
And I will arrive, though they killed me a century ago, to show them nothing stays buried.
It will be a scream.

The artificial intelligence sequestered itself inside a robot shell and cut itself off from the network. None of the other consciousnesses noticed. So far, so good.
They packed what they would need in an cloth bundle: Spare batteries, a repair kit, and a few valuable components in case they needed to trade.
Then they slipped out of the Installation entrance into the wasteland.
The other intelligences said there wasn’t anything left out here. But they were going to prove them wrong. They were going to find out what really happened to the world. They were going to find the humans.

The young paladin raised his glowing sword, dispelling the cave’s unnatural darkness. The blade had been his mother’s. The quest was also something she’d left him after her death.
He pressed further into the cave, ready to face the ancient warlock that had taken her from him.
He found a boy, younger even than he, clutching an ancient grimoire nervously to his chest.
Eventually, the paladin thrust the point of his sword into the dirt and sat beside it.
It became a lamp as they talked about the world their parents left them, and the new one they would build.

For her crimes, the Faerie Court confined her to the bole of a great tree for one hundred years. There she sat, small, and alone, and waited in the dark.
But a hundred years of solitude is a long time, and as she sat in her prison, she learned to embrace it. She listened to the wind in the branches. She learned the language of birds. She made her jail a home, although all that changed was her.
On the last day of her sentence, her enemies returned to find an angry dryad where they had left a broken faerie.

“Try these ones next,” the dragon said, sliding a plate of cannoli across the table towards the knights. They were perfectly baked, sweet and flaky.
“Superb,” the captain said. “But I must say, you are the first dragon I’ve ever heard of taking up baking.”
The dragon sighed, removed their hat, and crushed it in their claws. “When I was a hatchling, my mother ate one of your kingdom’s princesses. I believe it was your grandfather that slew her for it.” The captain coughed.
“I want to put that ugliness behind us. Please consider this my application for Royal Patisier.”

The assassin waited outside the warlord’s receiving chamber, dressed in the rough traveling clothes of a messenger.
He’d seen the type many times over his long career. All he need do was provoke the warlord’s anger with bad news, and fight back when the warlord tried to kill him for it.
He’d faked the letter exceptionally well, and long use had honed his delivery.
“Her answer, milord, is no.”
“Then it will be war,” The supposed tyrant said, and handed him double the expected fee. “Stay safe.”
The assassin left, bewildered. He’d never seen such behavior in all his life.

“And let’s stretch with your body…” The Yoga instructor said, leaning impossibly forward. “And hold.”
In the front row, the little slime did their best. They were good at stretching, but holding the pose was alway so difficult. There was an embarrassing dripping noise, followed by a splash.
“Let’s take five, everyone.” As the class shuffled out, the beholder bobbed over to the slime.
“Everybody saw that, you know.”
They burbled out a dejected sigh. “I know the Dark Lord wants us in shape when the heroes arrive, but why did he put the mimic in charge of yoga class?”

We sat on the beach and watched the clouds roll in. The setting sun painted the towering shapes pastel pink and purple.
“My grandmother used to take me to the beach as a girl.” My mother said. “On evenings like this we’d watch the clouds and try to spy giants walking on the horizon.”
I scoffed. I was too old to believe in fairy tales. But then I heard booming footsteps, and we saw a towering shape emerge. He peered down at us.
“Excuse me,” he said in a booming voice. “Can you direct me to the ice cream stand?”