Round 4 - You Win or You Die (Adam vs Sam)

[Kaez]

For this round, you must write a fantasy story in less than 750 words. The deadline is the 26th at 11:59pm PST.

[ASGetty ((Zovo))]

The Banyan Tree

Kaeo did not move when Una said the blessing. He did move when the hands placed him within the soil. Kaeo did not move when the cool earth covered his body, his arms, his legs, his mouth and eyes. He lay unmoving within the earth. It was not until he slept that Kaeo awakened.

But his soul stirred.

Kaeo was restless. For decades he had been imprisoned. For too long had he been entombed in his casing of mortal flesh and blood. For too long had he been enslaved by wants and desires; food, drink, love, laughter… Kaeo thought of his children. Each had grown, had children of their own. All but one, one who slept now beneath banyan. One who died while she was young. One with whom he was to be reuited.

His spirit yearned.

Oh, how he had missed young Hani’ei. Kaeo had been stoic while her mother had wept. He had been strong and straight and proud, when he placed her here beneath the tree, though in his heart he was twisted and broken. His daughter’s lifetime had passed threefold since then. Kaeo was old now, too old for this world.

His body waited.

Soon, this tomb would be gone. This body, would rot and be no more. His bones would rest in the shade and those tendril roots looming above would dig into the soil of his grave. They would seek out his essence and take hold; a passage to those long past. His soul would climb to be reunited with his mother, his father, Hani’ei and ancestors of whom he’d only heard tales. One, once again, in Kapu’ila; the ancient, eternal family. A hundred living souls, strong and straight and proud, enbodying the same ascending spirit, forever in the sun.

Never Unseen.

[Ad Absurdum]

Dragon

Call me the Chosen One.

Concur. Dissent. It is irrelevant. The sword chooses. The pearl-gold of its handle warms only for my palm. Its compass-blade only speaks truth for my soul.

I am the prophecy. Sword descended unto me, freshly forged in the luminous furnaces of the heavens. A blade of star-metal. The tip weighs heavy; it points me towards the mountains.

Towards the beast’s cave.

The scriptures carve out our destinies, etches them in stone. My head adorned with the floral crown of my people. My blade thrust upon his wyrm-throat.

The prophecies don’t lie. It is time they be made flesh.

~ ~ ~

Dragon. Draconem. Nrgwenya

That’s what the humans call me. Their languages so vapid, so simplistic, that all such beings that have wings, that snarl flame between ebony teeth, must be lumped together.

Words cannot do such a body justice. Scales slivers of shaved ruby and topaz, inflamed by the splashes of plasma from my corona-snout.

Words cannot do such might justice. Tail spikes jagged like mountain peaks.

Words cannot do such divinity justice. The blessed will witness soon enough.

~ ~ ~

Call me the Fist of the Gods.

Doltish perhaps, but ritual weighs down on my city. I must partake. Body paints and incense upon tiered pyramids. Chants and meditation suites from priests. My body is a tapestry, a cataclysmic swirl of events yet to unfold.

Twin hawks descended the Talon of the Gods to me. The blade plunged from the sky, a platinum teardrop smeared across the nightscape. It reverberates now, strapped to my back, embracing my turquoise skin.

The asphalt crust of the volcano crumbles beneath. It gives away to glassed obsidian, as hot as oven grilles. What else could it be but the breath of the demon?

Between the tectonic bones of the mountains, in the fontanel pulp of the earth. I will find it. The one who drenches lava upon our cities, whose soot breath exhales from the jagged summits.

I have the Talon of the Gods, I cannot lose.

~ ~ ~

I am the core.

My lair is Ptolemaic. Circles within circles. The ruins of civilizations orbit my great body, caught in the cyclonic frenzy of my beating wings. Monuments of kingdoms, statues of gods, thrones of rulers, they crash and detonate upon one another.

Hungry for space, desperate for relevance–they’re all ruins now. Antiques. Collectables. Riches. Jewels and gold and other fallible currency. It glimmers like prismatic stardust upon my being; ephemeral shivers of wealth from cities long gone.

~ ~ ~

Call me the Son of Sons.

Not a name granted by myself, nor my rulers, but rather from the solar dance above. Where others’ skin is blistered raw, mine glows and bathes, symbols charred upon bronzed flesh.

The astral blade is removed from the eternal forge, brought from its sacred oasis. It sears into my flesh as I grasp it. I did not ask for this. I do not want this.

But between the will of the gods and the will of mortals, who can win?

They adorn me lavishly, the royals and the peasants. They carry me to the sinkhole, an ellipitical maw that swallows the sand around it. Far down in its depths, an ember glow shines like a fallen planet. It taunts me.

The one who receives the kiss of the sun is meant to slay the furnace serpent. It is written in the sandstone cliffs.

With that, I will erase the desert. The world will bloom again, it will gush greens and blues and flowers and animals. These promises are inscribed in dance around me, and then I am pushed.

The sinkhole swallows greedily. The world goes black, and then scarlet–all searing.

~ ~ ~

I am the centre.

Centre of earth. All tunnels lead to me. All land crushes on my coal-heart singularity. All rock flows back to my throat, I bathe in the molten soup.

Centre of prophecy. I am magnetic. All myths swarm to me. All of their swords and omens and chosen ones. All heroes need monsters.

All monsters need food. My sons and daughters. My loyal metals. They crave to return. To come back to their source. Metal to metal. My swords. Such good servants, in the grasp of such tender flesh. It grows so lonely here.

Let the heroes come. The Fists of Gods. The Sons of Sons. All cultures attempt to deface the primal, all civilizations try to smite the gods.

Yet who remains?

[Kaez]

Zovo

Flash is hard to review. Bear with me.

I liked this story. It's virtually all internal. You didn't waste your 750 words doing much scene painting, you got right to the lean meat of what's going on. The human struggle. It answers enough questions that I never felt confused or uncertain while reading it, and yet it leaves open enough mystery that I want to know more. It doesn't feel too short, but it still makes me want it to be longer. That's a hard balance to strike and I think you struck it well.

I do think you could've packed in a little more emotion. For a story that thrives solely on its human element, a little more feeling would've been great. What am I meant to feel, exactly? Is it a melancholy? A joy? A bittersweetness? I could see it being a few things. But I'm not sure. And I do wish that I was. I wish that it carried home a certain feeling. It's fine to be a little ambiguous in tone with a longer story, but with something this short, I really wish it carried a very specific and identifiable tone.

I also... don't really know how much fantasy is here. This is very, very light on the fantasy. And fantasy was the sole requirement of you beyond the wordcount.

***

Sam

It's interesting, because this story is kind of the opposite of Adam's in a lot of ways. My compliment to Adam's is that he's not frivolous, he's economic. But my critique is that he's a little ambiguous. You managed to fill 750 words with a lot of purple, a lot of thick detail and colorful language, but... it gets a little full-of-itself at times.

Like, you've got a great line like "All myths swarm to me," right next to a line line, "I bathe in the molten soup." That's just... that's just a -silly- sentence. But I do think that you used the absolute most of the 750 words. I didn't wordcount this but I'm guessing it's at like 740. You used all of the word to tell a story - a relatively complex one at that, given the limitations - and you definitely conjured a very particular aesthetic. The flowery language, though not always perfect, fleshes it out. Each one word you use might've been three or four words if it had been written less poetically. And that makes it feel full and brimming.

There's also the potential for some symbolism and metaphor here. I'm not sure how much of it was intentional, but the mere potential for that is cool.

***

Both of these stories were good, honestly. Sam was teetering on the edge, in my opinion, of slipping up, but I think he managed to avoid doing so and the result was a story that was a little more full, a little more powerful, and captured the topic better.