Happy World Poetry Day!

On By MaryIn Poetry, WritingLeave a comment

I’ve always been rather fond of Stephen Crane’s poetry, most especially “A Man Said to the Universe,” “I Saw a Man Pursuing the Horizon,” “In The Desert,” and “Should the Wide World Roll Away.” There is something in each of them that really encapsulates my world view to some degree, and of all of his poems they’re the ones I come back to again and again. Perhaps it is how succint they are – I do like my poetry to be shorter.

I’m also fond of a few of ee cummings love poems, specifically “since feeling is first” – and I would be remiss to not mention Emily Dickinson, since my overuse of dashes is entirely her fault. Shel Silverstein is fun to read in general, but I keep Masks on my phone as a reminder to always shamelessly be myself.

Even some of the cheesy instagram poetry hits just right at times, most especially a particular one by Beau Taplin.

Well, the month of April is also National Poetry Month. The friend that I did the 2023 Writing Challenge with is going to join me in another, much shorter challenge – we’re going to write a poem for every day of April.

The rules are as follows for the 2024 April Poetry Challenge:

  1. We must complete 1 poem daily, on that day, and post it to our blogs.
  2. Because life happens, we may build up a lee-way of 3 poems before April to use if we cannot update that day.
  3. Every effort should be made to write a poem that day, and the lee-way poems are only a last minute back up if that cannot be done.

So starting April 1st and going until April 30th, we’ll see how we do with daily poetry updates! If we do create any lee-way poetry as a buffer, we will post those after the 30th. This also coincides with the ends of our 2023 Writing Challenge stories, and give us a break from thinking about those before we settle into rewrites.

Sidequests Week 11

On By MaryIn SidequestsLeave a comment

The sidequests for this week were to remove one thing from my space that is sabotaging my best life, to learn a card or magic trick, and to drink my favorite beverage.

Well! Is is cheating if I count something that I did last week for that first card? Probably, but the effects of the choice have been so great and I only tossed the items related to it in question this week. I’ll count it!

I changed back to pine pellet litter for the cats, which meant doing a new litter box set up entirely and having to throw away the old ones.

About 5’ish years ago I had changed to pine pellet litter and generally liked it, but had an issue with one of the cats always pooping right outside the litter box. It wasn’t hard to clean up, because the litter box was situated on a hard floor, so it was easy to pick up and wipe down and sanitize the area each time, but it was mildly annoying. “Maybe they don’t like that litter you use,” my dad insisted.

So I figured, okay, fine. I’ll try regular litter again, we’ll see how this works out.

I dislike the smell of regular cat litter, especially the more used it gets. I also have cats with very fluffy paws, so it tracks everywhere. I had to vacuum daily, only to see litter tracked across the floors several hours later. I would wake up to grit in my bed. Not only that, but one of the other cats disliked the feel of it getting wet close to her paws, so she started pissing over the side of the litter box, which was a whole new issue.

And whoever was pooping right outside the litter box was still doing it.

I didn’t immediately change back to wood litter, instead trying to stick out using the regular litter, especially because buying new litter boxes and setting everything up is a little bit of a time/financial investment. But finally last week I’d had enough, and switched back. The smell is a lot nicer, for one. Sometimes the wood litter gets tracked around the house, but there’s fewer pieces of it. So I only had to sweep during my weekly clean instead of vacuuming daily.

And someone is still pooping outside of the litter box, but I can wipe that down pretty easily.

I love it so much more. The setup is pretty decent too. I found a reddit post where someone had recommended years ago buying a restaurant drain bin with a bin that fits under it and gives a few inches of space leeway so you can push the dissolved wood litter through, and using a litterbox liner in the bottom bin to collect that.

So maybe it’s cheating because I did it before I pulled the card officially, but this really helps me with my best life.

Drinking a favorite beverage was a bit harder to decide. I really like a lot of things? So what do I declare my favorite? The blueberry Red Bull? The Dr. Pepper? The bottle of water? It seemed that I should treat myself to something special, but I realized that quite belatedly into the week, and instead of dropping by a local boba tea store, I ended up napping my last free day away.

But, I do have boba tea mix and tapioca pearls at home, so it’s simple enough to make.

I use the DeDe instant mixes for boba, and I kind of ignore the directions and use milk instead of water. The only downside is, it’s been so long since I made boba that I think my tapioca is expired. Alas! The tea itself was pretty good though.

And then there was learning a card or magic trick. This is hard in a completely different way in that tricks of these sort require dexterity and sleight of hand, which I lack. Still, there are apparently some card tricks that are more logic than sleight of hand, and a few of them can be found in this video.

The next question is will I actually retain this and ever use it?

The answer is no.

But! I did kind of learn about it.

….

I know, I cheat my way through a lot of these. Bwahahaha.

53. Lucas

On By MaryIn 2023, WritingLeave a comment

Everything was chaos. I felt useless holding back, summoning vines to help entangle Shadawn whenever I had the chance. Sometimes it worked, but he had learned to watch for my trick and had gotten more adept at moving away from them quickly. It was like being benched during an important game, and I felt frustrated that I couldn’t do more to help. Peyton’s hand was on my shoulder, her fingers digging into my skin, and I knew that she felt exactly the same. The glowing third eye swiveled to watch Shadawn as the battle raged before us.

Raella and Zolambi worked in tandem – she seemed to focus on keeping barriers around the two of them and somehow boosting his abilities, and he lobbed spell after spell at Shadawn’s shifting form. Between him and Lyre, the ethereal echoing of Primordial chanting seemed to fill the cavern. Asterollan seemed to be doing the most damage with his blazing sword, but Shadawn was aware of it and focused on keeping the golden-haired man out of range. Every time his blade bit flesh, I could hear Peyton cry out briefly in victory.

Shadawn also seemed frustrated with Lyre’s massive fire spells. I wasn’t sure if Lyre would have the energy to keep the display up – after the massive wave of fire, he had managed three massive balls of twisting flame, spiraling like an out-of-control vortex of fire, as well as some smaller fireballs. Now he stood back, still glowing with magic and chanting to form the next spell. He was obviously winded and panting hard. Shadawn pulled back several feet to avoid Asterollan’s blade and focused on sending his own dark tendriling magic toward Lyre, sensing the nearing completion of his next spell. Again, the energy dissipated before reaching him, sparking and crackling into the air in a series of blue flashes. A look of anger flashed across Shadawn’s face and I heard him hiss, “T’Keran!”

Lyre loosed another monumental wall of flame, and seeing it, I sent vines to grip at Shadawn’s feet. This time as the wall of flame engulfed him, I could hear Shadawn scream in pain and frustration, and Peyton gave another victory whoop. “Is it time?” I asked her.

She shook her head, but still looked please. “Not yet, but a few more shots like that…”

I glanced over at Lyre. The light of magic had faded around him, and he looked exhausted, his shoulders visibly slumped as he panted. “I don’t think we’re getting any more of those,” I said.

Peyton followed my gaze and cursed slightly under her breath as she saw what I saw. Shadawn emerged from the dwindling spell – despite the scream he looked untouched to my eyes. He rushed forward, straight toward Lyre, his eyes focused angrily on the pale elf. He hit an invisible barrier, but as he came into contact with it, it exuded sparks, and streaks of lightning went skittering and sparkling up a rounded dome that seemed to surround Lyre. Lyre stepped back, his eyes wide as he looked in surprise at the dome, and then he stumbled and fell as it visibly shattered under Shadawn’s push forward.

Shadawn was on him shortly after, physically reaching out to grip at the front of Lyre’s shirt, and pulling back his fist to punch him. He must have been furious to have dropped all pretense of using magic – once, twice, he slammed his fist hard into the elf’s face. Before the third strike, Asterollan came sprinting through and tackled Shadawn bodily, sending him skidding back. Asterollan reached down and helped pull Lyre back up to his feet. “Get closer to Raella,” I heard him say. Lyre nodded and moved away, limping, his nose bloody.

Shadawn was standing, brushing his robes off, glaring at Asterollan. “Of course, Cenastrum chooses a human – he always favored your festering race. Surprising, though, that his Chosen is a man that murders on the orders of his superiors.” Shadawn smirked slightly. “But then, he always did love unquestioning obeisance.” Asterollan narrowed his eyes slightly, shifting back into a more defensive position with his sword, but otherwise did not appear bated by the words. Shadawn sighed. “I do not prefer playing this way,” he said as he summoned a sword of his own into his hands – it was dark and dripping with shifting shadows.

He rushed forward, and the swords clashed together, the sound more a hum of energy and the faint sounds of screams than the clang of metal. The tendriling darkness of Shadawn’s sword seemed to creep over Asterollan’s blade, causing the light to flicker. I could see Asterollan’s expression falter in the light of his sword as the darkness moved to wrap around his wrist. He disengaged and jumped back, studying Shadawn with a deep frown as he shook the hand, almost as though the darkness had numbed it.

Shadawn pulled himself up to his full height with a satisfied smirk, then shifted suddenly out of the way of one of Zolambi’s spells. As he reappeared, Shadawn glared over in the direction of Zolambi, Raella, and Lyre. Then, with seemingly no need to prepare for it at all, he released a massive wall of shadow on par with one of Lyre’s previous walls of flame.

As it released, Asterollan dashed forward to slide his blade down across Shadawn’s back. Shadawn cried out in pain and rage, and turned to swipe at Asterollan with his own sword. The spell had already loosed though, and continued to roar off towards the others.

Raella and Zolambi both focused on erecting barriers – but when the first barrier shattered easily under the force of the dark energy, Raella gasped and turned to focus instead on shoving with her magic, sending Lyre and Zolambi out of the path of the spell. They cried out in surprise as they unexpectantly went sliding away, so forcefully that both hit the wall of the cavern and fell to the ground, alarmingly still.

I watched the massive wave of shadow in shock, my mouth gaping wide, the immense size of it taking me by surprise. As I watched the second barrier shatter, I finally roused myself and grasped forward with my vines, intending to pull Raella out of the way of the oncoming spell. I did manage, but almost too late – it was a glancing blow that caught her just as she was pulled off her feet by my vines, but it must have been bad – she let out an inhumanly pained shriek. She lay on the ground where my vines had carried her, not immediately getting up, whimpering and writhing on the ground.

“This isn’t good,” Peyton noted grimly, watching Asterollan and Shadawn fight one on one. The third eye shifted, looking at each of our companions briefly, and then focusing back toward the main battle. “Lucas.” Her grip on my shoulder tightened briefly. I glanced over at her, frowning. “Go check on them. I’m going to help Asterollan.”

“Are we even close at all?” I wondered.

She shook her head. “No. We’re only halfway there.” And then she sprinted forward, summoning massive shards of ice in the air to hurtle at Shadawn.

“Oh. Well shit,” I grumbled to myself, then sprinted over to check on the person nearest to me, which was Raella. As I reached her, I could see that she had curled up into a ball and was sobbing. I gripped her shoulder, shaking her briefly. “Are you okay?” I asked, feeling a bit stupid to ask since she obviously wasn’t. Another wracking sob shook her body. I focused on the healing magic I had learned, and while there were some physical injuries, she wasn’t badly hurt – the dark energy must have done something to her mentally. I healed her anyway.

After a few moments, her sobs quieted and her eyes flashed open to look at me. She sat up, wiping at the uncharacteristic tears that wet her face. “That was…” she gasped, and shook her head. “That was… intense. He chose fear as his domain, I believe you said?” I nodded, and she sniffed. “I see.” She glanced around to see what was occurring – Asterollan and Peyton were fighting Shadawn, and Lyre and Zolambi still lay still close to the wall. She nodded to them. “I’m fine. Go attend to them.”

I nodded and got up to jog over. I checked on Lyre first – he was unconscious. Even after I healed him, he remained passed out, and I wondered if the massive spells he had used had completely drained him. I could hear Raella approach me from behind as I checked on Zolambi as well, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I found that he was also only unconscious. His eyes fluttered open as I healed him. Raella sat with a sigh next to Zolambi, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I’m not sure how much more we can do,” she admitted.

I nodded, understanding, and turned to watch the battle. “I… should I join?” I asked, uncertain.

“We need you fresh for the end of this thing. Wait a bit longer,” Raella said. I grimaced, watching as Shadawn’s form seemed to enlarge and he viciously backhanded Asterollan into a nearby wall.

“How much energy could the stupid spell use anyway?” I asked.

Zolambi and Raella exchanged looks, but said nothing. I frowned, watching Peyton help Asterollan up. They both looked winded, though the light of magic still burned around them. Shadawn moved in on them, still enlarged.

I moved forward, ignoring Raella’s shouted warning, and focused on summoning an entire area of thorned vines. They shot up, gripping at Shadawn. I don’t know how I understood that I could do it, but I did understand naturally that it was possible – the flowers shifted, growing fangs, and latched onto Shadawn’s flesh, pumping him full of venom. He screamed angrily. I considered pulling upon the power of death that was at my hands, not with the kill spell but perhaps something weaker, but hesitated at the thought of draining myself of any magic I might need later.

Shadawn screamed and pulsed with dark energy again, the way he had before, blasting the vines away and causing them to wither and fade to dust. He turned to glare at me angrily, and raised a hand in my direction. I heard Peyton yell something, but didn’t quite catch the words. I watched as the tendrils of darkness seemed to swirl around his hand, almost moving in slow motion as I focused on that point…

There was a sudden deafening screech from above, almost like a musical bird call. Near the top of the cavern where the platform had descended initially, I could see a bright light. A figure of flame with outstretched wings like some sort of magnificent bird descended quickly through the air. It wasn’t long before it swooped down, landing between me and Shadawn. The shadow turned to stare at the figure impassively as it shrunk down to a smaller size.

Shadawn studied the flaming figure. “And what are you?” he asked.

The flames coalesced and the wings drew in, but she was still lit brightly, a beacon of raw magical energy. Lexie.  “I’M. FUCKING. PISSED!”

She wasn’t looking at Shadawn though. She was looking at me.

“LUCAS! I can’t believe you did that!” she screeched.

I held up both hands in surrender. “I’m sorry?” The firey aura around her grew, compounded in her rage, and I shifted my hands up protectively in front of myself. But instead of focusing the flames on me, she turned and blasted Shadawn, who cried out in shock and anger. After a few tentative moments, I moved closer to where she stood. “Ah, I thought you were going to attack me,” I admitted under my breath.

“Later,” she promised gruffly, her eyes focused on the whirling flames. I grimaced and nodded. Shadawn emerged, looking angrier than before – and he was actually starting to look winded. My gaze shifted to Peyton as I wondered if he was damaged enough yet, but she shook her head as she heard my thoughts.

Shadawn released another massive wall of black energy. I gasped, but in response, Lexie released a massive wall of flame, larger and more intensely hot than the ones Lyre had been producing before. The energies collied, the fire burning through the shadow with ease, and Shadawn let out an angry yell. He began to send wave after wave – similar, but smaller than his previous attacks. Lexie released another massive blast of fire, but it didn’t burn through all of them, and the darkness shifted, focusing on attacking her. I shoved Lexie out of the way of one of the smaller waves of dark energy, and felt it strike me.

First there was pain. It was intense, like someone had taken several bricks and lined them with needles and then slammed them into one side of my body, the side where the dark wave had physically touched me. And then something else took over completely, that made me understand why Raella had been left a sobbing mess.

Terror.

It was instant and overwhelming and in every nerve ending: pure terror. I felt how truly insignificant I was for several long seconds, like every cell in my body had been reminded that I was nothing but a bag of meat and blood that could be easily torn apart by chance or whim. It was like being dumped into a pool of spiders and feeling a million tiny skittering feet run across my skin and into my open and screaming mouth, and feeling them bite and hearing them skitter into my ear canal, and feeling myself grow numb and cold with death. It was like hearing a single overwhelming note hum incessantly, and realizing it was the sound of a heart flatlining, and…

“Lucas! Lucas!” I could feel hands shaking me hard. Coppery brown hair floated around my face and I looked up into blue eyes.

“That was shit,” I said groggily, gripping Peyton’s arms tightly as she helped me sit up. “That was so much shit.”

She frowned, worried, and brushed tears off my cheek. I hadn’t even realized I’d been crying. I shifted slightly on the ground and breathed a sigh of relief that I hadn’t shit my pants, and she chuckled, having read my thoughts. I looked up to see that there was fire everywhere – the cavern was an absolute inferno. “Yeah, Lexie doesn’t really hold back,” Peyton said, reading my thoughts. And as she read my next one, her frown returned and she shook her head. “No. It’s not time – not yet. But it’s close.”

As she spoke, she stood and offered a hand to me. I allowed her to help me up. I realized I couldn’t see Asterollan anywhere, and Peyton gestured, though I couldn’t see what she had gestured toward. “He got knocked out coming to help you. I think he’s fine… I dragged him off to the side and tried healing him of the worst of it…”

Sidequests Week 10

On By MaryIn SidequestsLeave a comment

The sidequests for this week were to listen to my 5 favorite songs, draw a fictional character, and to draw or write about a spacecraft and what it’s used for and what features it has.

The top 5 favorite songs is simultaneously easy and hard. First off, my favorites tend to have a revolving door, so sometimes something new comes along and completely occupies me before moving on to be replaced by the next new thing. There are some that have a pretty special place in my heart though, so I added several of them to a playlist and after some deliberation deleted and pruned until I had 5.

And even amongst those, the answer might be completely different if I had made the decision on a different day of the week. See! Hard!

And then I sat and listened to the choices. Anyhow, the choices were as follows:

  1. Aria di Mezzo Carattere – Nobuo Uematsu
  2. Bittersweet Symphony – The Verve
  3. Needing/Getting – OK Go
  4. Berzerk – Eminem
  5. Lose Control – Teddy Swims

Starting off is a song from one of my favorite childhood video games, Final Fantasy 6 (originally FF3 in its initial US release). Nobuo Uematsu is a Japanese composer that has provided the music for the Final Fantasy series, and there are a lot of songs from the series that I absolutely adore. The FF Victory theme lives in my head rent free, and I had a hard time choosing between this song and “A Place to Call Home” from FF9. This particular song is a little more than background music and actually has lyrics and a place in the plot.

The next song, Bittersweet Symphony, came out when I was in middle school. I think my childhood friend loved it first, and it always makes me think of her, but it’s also a great song. Also the lyrics stick with me a lot more as an adult than they did as a kid. As far as songs that make me think of her, this and Wonderwall were pretty much tied for contenders on the list. But Wonderwall has other and numerous associations.

The next is Needing/Getting by OK Go. I’ve always loved OK Go and most of the music they make, but the significance of this song for me is that I relate it back to someone I used to love. There were several songs that I relate to him that ended up on the list, including White Flag by Dido, Why Don’t You and I by Chad Kroeger and Santana, and Last Leaf by OK Go. This one really could have changed out any other day of the week. Fun thing about this song though: the car in the music video is the same one I currently drive. Which, speaking of, OK Go makes really fun music videos! Go watch them!

Berzerk by Eminem is probably my favorite Eminem song. It’s also great to add to any workout playlist, and can usually be found on mine whenever I make one.

The current revolving favorite is the last one – Lose Control by Teddy Swims. I’ve had this song on repeat a lot lately – so much so that it’s almost on its way out.

For the spacecraft, I will describe the alien ship in my story a little better, but probably briefly and it will likely change as I make things more concrete in rewrites. I still don’t really have a name for the tripod-bastards, unfortunately. Naming things is hard, guys.

The ship has about 4 levels. The bottom level is storage of supplies and has vast areas for training and staging for large scale invasions of planets. Since their entire “culture” revolves around seeking out alien worlds and destroying them for their resources, this area is large enough to accomodate everything they take. This is also where the smaller, faster ships for attacking are kept.

Every level has smaller vehicles lining the outside edge of the ship. These are for the convenience of the crew, and can also act as emergency vehicles to escape – but since their entire life is built around their ship, they don’t use basic escape pods. After all, their goal would be to protect it as their “home.”

The next level up is the prison section – there are two large cell blocks on each side of the ship, each containing multiple halls full of detention areas. Splitting the prison blocks is an engineering section.

Above that is the command center, and the areas of the ship where the actual “work” of maintaining, running, and operating the ship takes place. They have it spaced here to have better access to engineering and to keep an eye on the prison sections, and to provide a buffer between the prisons and the residential area.

The top level is the residential area, where they keep their families and live their normal off-duty lives out. There are likely conveniences here to make it more “homely” such as parks and entertainment and cafeterias.

It’s a pretty basic description, I guess, but it’ll do.

As for drawing a fictional character – I decided to draw Goku, from Dragonball.

Earlier this month, Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragonball and Dr. Slump, died. Dragonball has had a major influence on my life. I initially started watching the very chopped up dubs of DBZ as a kid in the late 90s, when they would show the first few arcs of DBZ and had split a few of the movies into episode side chunks and aired those as well. After I moved to Oklahoma, they started the Toonami block on Cartoon Network and I was able to continue enjoying the show there. Most of my initial online life was spent in chats and forums and fansites for Dragonball. I don’t think it was my first foray into anime, as the SciFi channel used to air their Saturday morning anime movies. But it was one of the first longer series I became obsessed with.

Even to this day, Piccolo is my all time favorite character.

RIP Toriyama.

52. Lucas

On By MaryIn 2023, WritingLeave a comment

We stood in front of the platform that would take us the final leg of our journey, down to the seal and to Shadawn. “Do we have a plan?” Peyton asked, running her hand along the edge of the panel. She turned to face us when she finished speaking.

“Free the asshole, hit him with everything we’ve got, and then when you give the signal, I’ll kill him,” I said. Asterollan and Lexie both nodded in agreement as I spoke, though I noticed that Lyre frowned.

Peyton sighed. “So that means you and I have to hold back enough to make sure we stay alive until the end of the battle. No running directly into the fray for me and you, and try to keep our attacks at a distance and reserve our energy as much as possible.” I frowned, thinking of every time she had run directly into the most dangerous situations, and she narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re right,” she said after a moment.

I started singing Baby Shark in my head. “So you and I focus on things we can do from a distance. And Lexie, Asterollan, Lyre, Raella, and Zolambi keep his attention off us by attacking – hard.” I glanced over at Peter thoughtfully. “Should I bring Peter?”

“No, you can’t bring Peter. What if he dies!?” Lexie said immediately.

“There was a little bag of gunpowder in Cassandra’s things. I was thinking maybe he could hang on to that and lob it at Shadawn if he gets a chance.” Lyre had offered up Cassandra’s bag of supplies for anything useful, and I had found the small bag of black powder while sifting through it.

Lexie turned to me, her eyes wide with alarm. “You are not going to kamikaze your spider!” she said, her voice shrill.

“That wasn’t what I meant. I was thinking he could just drop it on the guy and one of us could light it with fire…”

“Is… can Peter even understand a plan that complicated?” Peyton asked. We all turned to look at the giant jumping spider. It clicked its jaws, happily waving a leg into the air.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. Peter chirped happily. “Well, let’s see.” I scanned the ground and picked up a nearby rock. I held it out to Peter and leaned in close, watching the reflection of my face glitter in its eyes. It occurred to me that being this close to it was something I would never have been able to manage before. “Here, take this.” The spider obediently moved forward, taking the rock from my hand. I knelt closer to it, whispering, “Go to the ceiling and lob this at Lexie when I say ‘good boy.’” Peter obediently chirped and moved out of sight.

“Regardless, is a little black powder going to make a difference?” Peyton crossed her arms, tapping her fingers gently against her elbow as she watched Peter disappear out of view overhead.

“Maybe not a little, but if there was some way to make a lot…” Asterollan said. “I’ve seen a lot of it blow a ship to smithereens.” Lyre’s frown deepened into a scowl momentarily as Asterollan spoke, before he caught me watching and then his expression evened out.

Peyton turned to look at Raella thoughtfully. “We can summon water… and make plants grow from nothing. Could we create more black powder with magic?”

Raella looked surprised at the question. “I’m not really sure. I suppose… hand me the bag of powder.”

Lyre stepped forward to provide the bag to Raella. “Good boy,” I commented loudly. He tilted his head in confusion at my statement just as I heard a soft thump and watched Lexie’s hand fly up to rub at the back of her head. “Oh! He understands! Good boy!”

“What the…” Lexie grimaced, frowning at me.

Raella ignored us, opening the bag to sift her fingers through the course powder. She studied it for a time, the light of magic surrounding her as she focused on it, and then shook her head. “It’s not an impossible idea, but not something we’re going to accomplish in such a short time frame.” She handed the bag back to Lyre. “We can’t spend forever camped here, after all.”

We all stared at the platform hesitantly. Peter jumped down from wherever he had been hiding and crawled along the edge of the platform, tapping the sides as he went. “The Underlings will find a way here eventually,” Zolambi said finally. “We need to go.”

No one immediately moved, but then Peyton sighed and boosted herself up onto the platform. She turned around to look at us, and said, “If we sit and plan too long, we’ll lose our nerve. We’re running out of time and our chances won’t get any better. We go now. It’s now or never.” I nodded, and moved to join her on the platform – she reached down and offered her hand. I paused a moment and took it, allowing her to help me up.

“Now or never,” I agreed. Then I started wondering if that sounded stupid, and added, “Now. Definitely now,” guaranteeing that I sounded stupid. The others joined us on the platform.

Raella, who Jon Umberling had shown the controls to, moved towards them and began to work on using them.

The dwarven soldiers, Captain Kaphryn, Jon Umberling, and Chase all stared up at us from below. “I should be going,” Chase said, watching as the platform lit up along the bottom and edges. She looked like she was debating jumping on to join us, but Zolambi only smiled and shook his head at her wordlessly. She sighed, staring at each of us as though it might be the last time she saw us. I wondered for a moment if it was.

“Good luck,” Jon Umberling said, looking somber. “Our very world depends on you.”

Lexie was standing very near the edge of the platform. She placed her hands on her hips as she looked down at the small gathering before us. “It’s all good,” she said confidently. “We’ll have this world saved in no time!” Peter chittered like he agreed with her, his front legs waving in the air.

The platform started to inch forward. And I made a split-second decision. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Lexie was just turning her head to look at me with a slight frown on her face, wondering why I had apologized, when I shoved her off the platform. Twisting vines were already reaching up from the ground below to catch her, softening her fall and grasping her limbs, holding her in place. The platform gained speed, pulling away quickly, and I could just barely see the look of shock making the whites of her eyes stand out before we were away. “Lucas! What the fuuuuck!”

The platform swooped into the next tunnel and I stared back at the spot of light at the end of it as it grew small in the distance. Turning to face my remaining companions, I could see Peyton regarding me with a warm smile on her face. Asterollan frowned, his arms crossed. “You plan to die today, one way or the other, I see. You know she’s going to kill you for that, right?” Peyton said, though her tone lacked any venom.

I sighed. “But at least she’ll be alive to do it.”

“She would have been useful to have in the fight ahead of us,” Asterollan said, less pleased. “She’s stronger than you give her credit for.”

“And what will we do if we need to reform the seal?” Raella asked. Her face was carefully composed and emotionless, but her tone betrayed the seething anger underneath.

“We’ll deal with it when we deal with it,” I said. I didn’t look at either of them as I spoke though – I found myself staring directly at Peyton. My thoughts were only on one thing: winning this fight.

The trip was shorter than I had thought it would be.

The platform exited the tunnel from high up on the wall of a massive cavern. I gasped, ducking down to place my hands on the platform as it tilted, but despite the angle we weren’t sliding off. Far below and approaching fast was what I assumed was the seal.

My breath caught in my throat as I stared at it. I think I had expected something massive in scope, especially given that it supposedly contained all the gods and not just Shadawn. But it hovered very near the floor, a pulsing ball of light. The platform floated to a stop as it reached the ground, the ball still several yards away. We each dropped down and approached.

The surface of it was volatile, more like looking at something molten or made of plasma. It seemed to thrum and pulse with energy in front of us, and I could see tiny hairline fractures of darkness along its surface. I handed Peter the gunpowder and told him to hide in the ceiling and throw the bag at the bad guy when I called for him. He scurried away, disappearing into the dark, and I felt a little better that he would be out of sight for the battle.

I wasn’t sure how any of this was going to go. “How are we going to break the seal?” I asked.

Peyton approached the ball first. She turned to look at the rest of us. “He’s been asking me to free him since the beginning… he showed me how.” She took a deep breath, and I realized she was calming herself, steeling her nerves for what was going to happen. Her nervousness made me nervous, and I swallowed hard. “Remember, Lucas. We need to move away quick, let the other handle this.” I nodded and set my jaw.

Her eyes lingered on mine for a moment, and I nodded again for her. She reached out and placed her hands on the surface of the ball, and muttered, “All right, you bastard. Let’s start this.”

I wasn’t sure if anything was happening at first. The ball seemed to shrink for a moment, and grow dim. Then there was a loud noise – like a tear in fabric, or an explosion, or a scream, or all of it at once, and it seemed to come from everywhere without and within. I flinched, and I could hear some of the other shout out in shock at the sudden noise. The ball seemed to suddenly expand to encompass us all and then shattered with a noise like breaking glass.

Peyton, Asterollan, and I all immediately lit up. I wasn’t even aware I was reaching for magic – in retrospect, it would have been smart to have been ready, but I had made no conscious decision. It was simply like the wall between myself and magic vanished, and I wondered if that was what it meant to truly hold all the power of my god. I gasped as I felt the power surge through me. The sudden rush of it was euphoric, the auras around the three of us bright and instantly overwhelming the entire cavern. Asterollan shone so bright it was hard to look directly at him, so I focused on Peyton – her floating eye was focused off to the side.

Following its gaze, I could see darkness coalescing.

Shadawn was taking shape.

It was like the shadows creeped into each other, whispering as they gathered, and a humanoid shape took form within. When he appeared, he looked like any other elven man. In fact, it was almost disappointing how normal he appeared. Despite that appearance, there was a sense of apprehension in the air, something that made me internally shiver like I was hearing nails scratch across a chalkboard. I realized the revulsion was almost like concentrated fear, and remembered what domain he had chosen.

He was tall – about my height – and thin, with pale skin and long, angular features. His eyes glowed faintly. He smiled at Peyton, a smile that conveyed no actual warmth. “I see you’ve put the knowledge I gave you to use. Even if you intend to use it against me.” And then, without any visible sign of wielding magic, no gesture, no shout – a rush of tendriling darkness moved to grab Peyton.

She looked as surprised as I felt. The only thing I could think to do was to summon vines to grip her and pull her back – we needed to stay further from the fight, and she was too close. She gasped as my vines pulled her forcibly back, though it was hardly necessary – a barrier had erected in front of her, and the darkness crawled along the edges of it like it had its own living will.

As I ran over to where I had pulled Peyton, I could see that Raella was focused on maintaining the barrier. Shadawn narrowed his eyes at her, annoyed at her interference, his expression speaking of his absolute disdain for a mere mortal. And then everything exploded into chaos.

It was crazy to watch – Asterollan had moved forward, his blazing sword of light swinging with precision, but Shadawn moved unnaturally, almost like he didn’t exist as a physical object in space. He shifted easily out of the way of Asterollan’s magical weapon, and easily brushed off the spells that Zolambi was hurling at him. Raella seemed to focus on defense, quickly pushing Shadawn’s offensive spells away or creating barriers to deflect them.

As I reached Peyton, she shot me an annoyed look. “Really? Vines?”

“You’re welcome,” I said. I turned to watch the battle. “Are we even hurting him at all?”

She was watching as well, the floating third eye focused on the battle. She nodded after a moment. “They’re doing damage. He’s just… very strong. Final boss energy.”

I watched him continue to move quickly and easily away from Asterollan’s sword, and focused on summoning vines just beneath him, springing up to grip his legs and thighs. Despite the unnatural shifting, the vines held him tight – it surprised me, because I hadn’t expected them to, and I wondered if there was something about the divine nature in the vines that helped against him. Asterollan’s next strike cut him deep across the abdomen – it looked fatal, but the wound reformed quickly and he growled angrily, hitting Asterollan hard and sending him skidding back several feet.

He turned to glare at me, but as he did, a massive wall of flame rose up in front of Lyre, blocking him from view. “It’s working,” Peyton said. “We’re doing damage. But this is going to take awhile.”

“Oh, that’s nice and fucky,” I commented, trying to sound as cheerful as I could as the fire faded and Shadawn came back into view. If he had been hurt like Peyton claimed, there was no physical sign of it yet. Mostly he just looked annoyed, but thankfully that anger seemed to have shifted away from me and towards Lyre, who he regarded carefully after the fire spell.

He pointed at Lyre and a lance of shadow struck out, lightning fast and jagged. It seemed to hit something in the air and dissolved in sparks, though it didn’t look like Raella had managed to summon a barrier in time.  Lyre looked just as surprised as Shadawn did, who let loose a low hiss of anger as his attack dissolved, his eyes narrowing. He inhaled deeply, and focused, the air wavering around him, and then waves of dark energy exploded from around him, knocking all of us back and off our feet – but more than that, when the wave hit, there was a sudden explosion of pain from inside of my skull. It was like hearing a thousand voices screaming in terror at once – it hurt so bad it left my vision flashing and left me dazed. I hadn’t even realized I’d been knocked off my feet until that pain subsided.

As I lay on the ground for a moment, gasping, I realized this was just the beginning of the fight.