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@Prescott

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@prescott

General Bristol, fur fighters.

Username: Crystalinastar
Prompt: The Shade
Title: Seeing The Darkness

I doubt there was ever a time from the point of my creation that I truly feared. The gods of the heavens had given me the power to take out the deities of Sornieth, a speck in the universe. Yet, it was the most prosperous experiment of the gods.

I stayed in the shadows and observed. The deities shaped the earth beautifully; I had hoped this would be my eternal rest. I had hoped wrong.

Air, Water, Fire, and Earth had taken to calling themselves the Windsinger, Tidelord, Flamecaller, and Earthshaker. How quaint. However, they were warring. They destroyed most of Sornieth, and created lesser deities that could do the same.

Alas, however much as I wished for an early retirement, I had my purpose, about to be fulfilled. For the first time since my creation, I rose up into the air and scoured the broken Sornieth for the eight deities I must... kill. Such a gruesome word, perhaps, but it was my duty.

I spotted them all in a single area, convening to battle each other. Convenient, I mused, but so disappointing to see the deities having fallen to mortal emotion.

"Gods above, give me strength," I whispered as I spread my inky wings to their full length. I soared quickly toward the warring deities, ready to engulf them in eternal darkness as punishment for their sins. I grinned, hungry maws ready...

Pain. Flame danced in my eyes and I quickly surged forward once again, not to savor but to get the job done. I was hit with another blast, and another. The gods hadn't given me strength to prepare for the deities, now eight, combining their powers against me.

The gods hadn't given me strength, I lamented. The strength that I so desperately needed. As the deities pushed their combined might against me, I was shattered. In many wispy pieces, I had no choice but to flee and hide.

The gods, I realized, created me as an obstacle for the deities to overcome. Fury flowed through my veins. Never again would I be at anyone's beck and call. Never again would I be the lapdog of a god. When I could be a god myself. I shook the thought away. I mustn't get ahead of myself. The deities are my primary target.

And so I watched as the deities hid themselves away, much to my dismay. Deities need to shape the world and nourish it. Nourish it, I will.

Mankind thrived for centuries, the deities forgotten. Plague after plague I sent, and yet this new resilient species brushed it off.

But they were wiped out. The deities came out of their pillar, and they made the world flourish again. Three new deities were added to the roster. The Plaguebringer, Gladekeeper, and the Arcanist. I could taste the darkness in the last one.

After the Arcanist's wonderful deed was done, the deities spread around Sornieth, claiming land for themselves and creating dragonkind in their image. Once in a while, I found a hatchling and nourished it in a way that the deities never properly could. They would see the darkness.

I have a plan. The Arcanist is strong but fragile, with the most burdened past of all the eleven. He will see the darkness. He will turn.

And now they call me the Shade. How fitting. It is my vision that one day, the Shade will crush the deities and rule Sornieth.

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Username: LadyKnightKatsa
Prompt: Investigating a Haunted House
Title: Friendship


"Hello?" Maya called into the darkness. Her own voice echoed back at her. She peered into the curtain of dust, trying to make out the shape of a living creature other than herself. A few dust mites glittered in the light from her lantern. The darkness refused to be penetrated. Maya shrugged and stepped further in. As a rule, she wasn't much of an explorer, but this was the last place Chaya had been seen, and Maya was determined to find her friend. She moved carefully across the room, looking for any sign of her friend. Suddenly she sneezed, the sound penetrating the darkness and crackling sharply into the unknown. Maya froze. No response except the eerie creaking of the wood house settling in the harsh wind. That was odd. The weather had been so mild when she'd walked down the overgrown hill, but now she could clearly hear gusts of wind buffeting the walls loudly, howling through the upstairs windows. Maya shivered from the odd noise and kept moving. The old wood creaked even louder as she made her way through toward the doorway at the end of the hall. She stopped a few more times to sneeze from the dust, and, emboldened by the continued lack of response, she began walking faster.
The front door a slammed shut and Maya jumped. Her head whipped around to stare at the still empty hall, the wind outside now howling against the broken window panes. Maya took a deep breath to steady herself. She thought of Chaya's golden brown hair, her laugh whenever she heard any kind of joke, her arm around Maya's shoulders, and turned her mind back to the task at hand.
She walked into the next room and gasped. The dilapidated kitchen was filled with bugs. Spiderwebs dotted the walls like streamers as roaches crawled all over. Maya groaned out loud at the sight. The furniture was old and the back door was completely gone, allowing the elements to have their way with the room. Maya clenched her fists and screwed up her courage before stepping further into the room. She picked her away across the floor littered with dry husks, crickets, and ants, and finally reached the stairwell.
"Hello?" she called again into the damp air above the cellar. The stench of human and animal waste wafted up from the basement and Maya clapped a hand over her nose. Squatters had definitely come through this way. What if they were still there? What if she went down there and was attacked from the dark by some feral human lying in wait? Maya stared anxiously at the retreating steps, mind racing with worst-case scenarios and middle school warnings.
She decided to check the basement last. After all, Chaya was meticulously clean. No way she would willingly enter a room that smelled like that.
The stairs groaned loudly beneath her weight as she headed to the second floor. There were dead insects everywhere, almost blending into the molding carpeting, and Maya's eyes watered from the effort of trying not to sneeze. The wind was louder up here, shaking the old shutters and making her squirm. Maya crept past three open doors, each leading to similarly dirty rooms with scant furniture. The stained wallpaper almost felt like it was watching her as she approached the only closed door at the end of the hall. The rattling of the shutters echoed in her ears. Maya reached slowly for the door handle, the metal cold in her hand, and carefully pulled the door open.
Something shrieked in Maya's ear and grabbed her from behind. She screamed as loud as she could, dropping her lantern. Strong hands shoved her forward and Maya fell against the door, slamming it shut with a bang! Maya scrambled back gasping for breath, as her attacker burst into laughter. It sounded like...
"Chaya?" Maya asked tearfully. Her friend grinned down at her, green eyes glinting in the dim light.
"You should have seen your face!" she howled, doubling over. "You're so easy to scare Maya! I can't believe you actually thought-" her words melted into more laughter, and she made no move to help Maya up.
Maya bit her lip and heat rose to her face. "I- I was worried about you," she said weakly. Chaya grinned.
"Oh my god. You actually thought I needed you? Oh god, that's funny. Oh Maya, come on." Chaya snorted and pulled Maya to her feet. "Did you really think you were gonna find me, what, kidnapped by a ghost or something? You're crazy."
Maya felt her breath like knives in her lungs, her anxiety making her dizzy. "Did you really wait here for three days just to play a prank on me?"
Chaya snorted again. "Of course not, dummy! I went to the house a few nights ago and I just never called you when I got back. I knew you'd come in after me after a while, so I just had Anya keep an eye on your house. What, you think I'd stay in this dump? Please."
Maya felt tears prickle at the back of her eyes and but the inside of her cheek hard to keep them at bay. No way she was gonna cry in front of Chaya. Absolutely not, not again. Chaya slung an arm around Maya's shoulders and pulled her back towards the stairs.
"Come on, let's get out of here before you wet yourself. It's gonna take days to wash the stink out of my clothes just from being here."
Maya closed her eyes and let herself be led forward, but she stopped at the head of the stairs. Chaya kept walking. She never saw the pale hand that shot out of the wall and sent her flying down the stairs. Maya watched Chaya's soft brown hair fly through the air as the girl it was attached to tumbled once, twice, three times, and hit the ground with a sickening crack. The pale blue boy looked down at the body at his feet, then up at Maya at the top of the stairs. They smiled at each other.
"Another one?" the boy asked, his voice a whisper in the dusty air. Maya skipped down the stairs, whistling as she stepped over the obnoxious girl's twisted body. Chaya, pale and gray, glared at her from beside the door.
"Yes," Maya decided, breezing past her ethereal friend. She grinned. "Another."

@LadyKnightKatsa

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EDIT: Both of them have!

Username: LadyKnightKatsa
Prompt: Nightmare
Title: Love Hurts

She never understood why she was chosen. It didn't make any sense. There wasn't anything particularly special about her. She wasn't the most beautiful girl in her village, or the most important, the smartest, the tallest, the most skilled or most interesting. She just existed.
And she did it fairly well. She had friends and family, acquaintances, romantic interests. She worked hard enough to be able to relax and relaxed often enough to be able to work hard. She wasn't sick or scared or helpless. She was normal. She was happy.
It's hard for her to determine when it started. There was a time Before, and a time After, but she didn't know what was the moment between them. There was no definitive event that triggered everything, no person that suddenly changed her life. Everything just slowly became worse, a little dimmer, a little less fun. People she'd known her whole life would be rude to her, seemingly out of nowhere, and then act like it had never happened. A stranger would steal her bag, or her cloak, or her money, or even the trinkets she kept at home. Her work became harder, people less reliable, less willing to help.
The boy she thought she'd marry disappeared while traveling to the markets. He left and never came back. It hadn't been devastating, but it was sad, and it was hard. She'd met the next boy only two months later. He had been nice, and handsome, and helpful, and understanding. He loved her and he showed it, and she'd loved him back. He only hit her after they were married, only while he was drunk, only while he was mad. It took all her strength to leave him, only for him to die in a riding accident the following day.
The woman who approached her next was beautiful. She wasn't immediately giving, or immediately friendly, but she was funny and smart. She fell hard and fast, feeling safe with the woman simply from shared experience. They'd been in love- until they weren't. When the woman's jokes became sharp, when her laugh became mocking, when the shared experience became a platform to criticize, she thought about leaving. She didn't have to. The woman ripped her heart out and left instead.
There was no one else until the first boy returned, her childhood friend, back after so long. He blamed her for not waiting for him. He told her he loved her. He held her when she cried and reminded her of all the good times they'd had. He married her neighbor and moved to a different town so he wouldn't have to see her.
She gave up on people. She lived alone now, far from town, only interacting with others enough to keep herself alive. Her laugh and her sparkle, her energy and excitement were gone. She worked, she ate, she slept. She mended her clothes and fixed her house. She avoided her unsympathetic family and the friends who had left her to fend for herself. She kept a range of animals in her home, all kinds, feeding and providing for them. There was a cat whose life she had saved, a sweet tabby kitten who somehow knew exactly when she needed a soft nudge or a quiet presence. She fed and nurtured it along with three dogs, five cats, and two horses. Until the day she woke up to find her house filled with mutilated corpses, dogs and cats and horses ripped to pieces surrounding her bed, with her sweet tabby in the center, licking the blood off its claws.
That was when she officially met the shapeshifter who had chosen to torment her. Its eyes gleamed with delight at her horror and fear, and it laughed and jumped into her lap. She'd thrown it off and run for her kitchen knives but within moments a muscled pair of arms wrapped around her waist and hauled her off the floor. Its voice was deep one moment, lilting the next, a hoarse whisper in her ear and a loud call from afar. It loved her, it said. It had loved her for years. And it would always be in her life, always come back to her, always find a way to make her love it.
She didn't know if the childhood friend, or the husband, or the woman, had been real. She never knew if they were real. She would steel herself and keep her walls up, refusing to fall in love, only for the shapeshifter to find another way to get to her. A supportive friend, a one night encounter, a family member, a shopkeeper she saw every day or the village dog. Men, women, and children, people who helped her or needed her help, people who she thought she could trust because they showed no interest in her whatsoever. She didn't know how many of them were the shifter and how many were real, but all of them hurt her. All of them found a way to destroy the little she had managed to build.
The first time she tried to end her life was the closest to success she got. She was found by someone she couldn't be sure was a stranger and nursed back to health. The second time the shifter had been clear about being the one to stop her fall. The third time, the shifter had been clear about being the one to kill her brothers, and why it had. If she gave up, the shifter was there, feeding her, bathing her, binding her wounds. If she tried to get away the shifter was there, tricking her, violating her boundaries, killing anyone close to her that wasn't it. If she begged it to stop, swore she would give it what it wanted, said she would do anything, the shifter would disappear from her life until she made the mistake of thinking it was truly gone. No matter how long it would leave, it always found its way back.
She stopped talking. She stopped working. She stole what she needed and never settled down. She indulged every impulse and fought for every scrap of enjoyment she could get out of her life, giving nothing and taking nothing in return. She never thought about the shifter, never worried, reassured that tragedy would come no matter what and therefore having no reason not to have all the fun she could find. She stayed transient, speaking only when she had to.
When her neighbor appeared, trying to help her, telling her they loved her, she knew it was the shifter again. The one who had destroyed her was back, and in a flash of hot rage and desperation, she stabbed them. Blood pooled on the tavern floor as the patrons ran. She stabbed, again and again, blood flying over the walls, painting her face and hands with sweet revenge. Sitting in the cold cell the following night, lying on damp stained straw, she smiled at the thought of her pending execution, thinking for once it wouldn't be stopped.
Until one of the rats racing past the edge of the cell stopped and turned to face her. Until before her eyes, it became a monk, holding a key and smiling, unlocking the door and stepping inside.
She devoted herself to one pursuit and one pursuit alone: destroying the monster. She scoured every city, every town, every barn she had passed through, for signs of where it had come from, what it was made of, what it could do. The legends of such creatures were numerous, but none of them fit her tormentor exactly, and no source could be verified or fully trusted. She determined to try every option until she found one that worked, and set out to find the artifact. She was the first and only person to find it, and the first and only to wield it. She almost managed to succeed.
In a fit of rage, the shapeshifter played its cruelest trick yet. It made her immortal.

@Lionturtle Thank you for participating, your entry has been recorded! :)