Names

I read. I write. I spend hours a day thinking about reading and writing. I constantly try to analyze why I like certain books and movies, but I hate other ones, and especially so when other people either have an overlap of those two or have the complete opposite opinion. I spend time every single day writing fiction or writing about writing fiction, posting it here on this blog. I've written on numerous occasions about my love of character development, and how that affects the way I think and whether or not I enjoy certain things. When I write my own stories, I keep the number of characters low for the express purpose of being able to focus on each of them more intimately and fully, so that they can have the time and development they need to be, in my eyes, truly great and interesting characters.

So you'd think I'd be better at coming up with names for said characters.

I was actually going to write something different tonight. A fairly typical fantasy story, really, of the knight ascending the tower or excavating a series of dangerous caverns in order to face off mano-a-mano with the dragon, all so that he might rescue the princess and take her hand in marriage for his reward. The difference was it would have been from the dragon's point of view. Who knows, I may still write it one of these days.

The problem was that I was sitting here, staring at my blank document, trying to think of a name for the dragon. I went looking for name's of famous dragons in fiction, I spent some time looking up certain words in different languages that I thought might be relevant, and eventually I had lost track in my mind of how I had even wanted to write the story.

Unfortunately, this is something that happens to me fairly often. And those are the kinds of things that I do. I look up names in lists depending on what I'm writing and who I'm naming, I translate words into different languages, and sometimes I just grab whoever is closest to me or most accessible and ask them to give me a name, the first name that comes to mind. Sometimes that works. And sometimes it doesn't.

I have this gut feeling about names when I hear them. It's never really a maybe kind of thing. When I hear a name, it either works for what I want to write, or it doesn't. Sometimes I have to ask my friends to throw a dozen or more names at me, and sometimes the first thing they give me is perfect. Sometimes a name they give me sends my brain down a spiral that ends up on a different name entirely that is exactly what I'm looking for.

As you might imagine, it can be pretty frustrating. I can know a character's entire history, every part they're going to play, even the things I want them to say and how I want them to say them, entire personalities planned out in my head, but I just can't put a name to it.

Granted, I'm also the kind of person that will recognize a voice or a face, be able to relive entire conversations in my head, and still not be able to remember their names. So maybe that's part of the problem.

Friends

It seems the days that I have the most trouble writing, and when I am most likely to succumb to memory fails and miss a day entirely, are the days when my friends come over to hang out.

I love spending time with my friends, and I generally don't turn them down when they want to hang out. There are certainly days that I have done so, but I enjoy their company most of the time, especially when we're playing video games, which is conveniently what we spend most of our time doing. But when they come over, I don't spend much of my time thinking about writing. I easily lose track of the time, and before I know it, I've missed my chance.

I don't want to kick my friends out, because I want to spend time with them. And I don't overly want to be writing while they are around, because I don't want to make them feel like I'm shafting them. But it can be quite difficult at times to do the things that I need to do with them around.

I have less trouble with this when it comes to my girlfriend. Perhaps because I've effectively trained her to be a reminder to me to write, and because she actively wants me to succeed. Perhaps because I simply feel more comfortable around her, and know that she will still be there, ready and waiting for me when I am done writing. In fact, there are times when it almost seems easier to write when she is around than when I am alone. I can't fully explain why that is, because I don't fully understand it myself, but at times it does seem to be the case.

A big part of the problem here, of course, doesn't lie with my friends at all, but with me. If I took care of my writing early in the day, instead of procrastinating and pushing things back, it wouldn't be an issue at all. But because of the fact that I don't, and I end up writing so late at night, losing track of time as the night goes on becomes a massive problem.

In writing this, I don't want to imply that I'm blaming my friends at all for me being bad about sticking to my schedule. The problem lies solely in me, and how I act with my friends around, and even how I act when they're not around. It's more of that I want to document my thoughts and get my ideas and problems written down, because I tend to remember things better once they're out in the open. I'm just trying to make sense of how I act.

Funnily enough, despite the fact that I struggle with writing when my friends are around, they have a tendency to be one of my larger sources of inspiration, whether they mean to be or not. I will occasionally throw out questions at them, seemingly out of nowhere, because I am trying to fish for ideas. Hearing other people talk about stuff is a good way of getting your own thoughts going, after all, and when stories abound from those around you, your own stories tend to come out as well. Which is exactly what I'm looking for.

Good eating

Drew sighed and fell back into his chair. Sarah chuckled from her spot, leaning against the door frame as she had been watching her new husband bringing in the groceries and putting them away. He had insisted on doing it all himself, although she had written the list, because he wanted to prove how much of a 'manly husband' he was. He had been quite determined and happy when he had left, but upon returning he didn't seem quite as up to snuff as he had been before.

She sauntered over to him and leaned against the arm of the chair to look him in the eyes. "Is my big, manly husband realizing that doing the groceries isn't quite as manly as he thought it would be?" she teased. Drew looked up at her with a look of resentment for her dripping sarcasm. "Don't give me that," she rebutted. "I told you it wasn't necessary to do it all by yourself. And it's not like you have to prove your manliness to me. I already married you."

"I don't mind doing it by myself," Drew responded, somewhat flatly. "I've been doing it by myself for years, you know that. It's the list you gave me."

Sarah sat down on the chair's arm and draped an arm around her husband's shoulders. "You know you can get things that aren't on the list, right? Those are the necessaries. You can get some optionals, too."

Drew waved off her words like they didn't mean anything. "It's all this health food. I mean, it's not like I don't enjoy it, and I know you cook it well, it's just... I miss the old days, you know? Back when we were kids, and we didn't have to worry about what kind of junk we stuffed into our fat mouths. Back when we were still growing, and our bodies were still figuring themselves out. We didn't have to do constant maintenance."

Sarah smiled and gently ran a hand through Drew's hair. "Maybe that's how it was in your family," she said softly, "but not in mine's. I remember being raised to eat right, because someday I would need to. I was taught to take care of my body instead of just letting it run on its own, because it's going to run longer that way. Like having regular service visits on a car."

Drew smiled up at his wife. "Yeah, and your body shows it," he said, half teasing. "Your figure is incredible. I'm surprised you let yourself marry a slob like me."

Sarah giggled and planted a kiss on his forehead. "That's because that slob happens to be very lovely. Besides, you promised to eat right and exercise with me. We'll get you in shape sooner or later."

Drew chuckled. "Maybe. But that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it."

Creating a language

Especially when it comes to fantasy and science fiction, some of the biggest names in fiction are those stories that have an entirely new language contained within them, from the ancient elvish languages of Lord of the Rings to Klingon in Star Trek. The fact that the languages are consistent words meant to mean specific things is impressive enough, but that they can be fully translated and learned is another thing entirely. Granted, in at least a few of these instances the author was in fact highly trained in linguistics of these natures, but regardless. It is quite the feat.

I and several people that I know would love to be able to implement that kind of system in our own stories. But unfortunately, more frequently than not that just ends in the author spending all of their time developing a language, and little to no time writing a story in which that language can even be used, much less implementing that language into the story in any meaningful way.

The easiest way to create a language is to simply develop a new alphabet, and continue to write in English (or whatever your language of choice may be) but with said new alphabet when the chance arises. However, this is both a weak cipher, as well as considerably less interesting. Not to mention finding a way to put that new language into a computer so that it can be recognized and used for typing, and then be recognized by a secondary software or a printer so that it is not lost in any part of the process.

On the other hand, you can go through the effort to fully develop a new language, with its sounds, inflections, words, and word order. If you've ever studied a secondary language, there's a good chance you've found that the order of their nouns, verbs, and objects are not the same as your home language. And when developing an entirely new language, you have to consider that part alongside the words themselves. After all, a language is not only defined by its words, but by the way those words interact with each other in order to form sentences.

But of course, none of this is even necessary. It's simply flavor that is added to the world one's story takes place inside of. You can go not only entire books, but entire series without ever stepping into this realm of writing. There are far more stories that only contain really world languages, after all, then there are ones that have brand new languages. Readability is the least of the reasons for that.

In fact, you could simply make sounds in your head, transcribe them onto paper, and arbitrarily assign meaning to those sounds if you saw fit to do so. If that secondary language is used sparingly, and only for specific situations, such as spell casting for instance, then who cares about forming sentences? You don't have to say "I summon thee, the power of fire!" when just shouting "Fire!" works just as well.

But as soon as a reader realizes that there is no discernible pattern to that secret, ancient language, it becomes significantly less fascinating. That's something I can say from personal experience. Both from losing interest in the language of a story I am reading, and seeing people reading my own stories lose interest in the strange words that I seem to use needlessly. It only serves to confuse, rather than expand.

It's a situation where adding a spice to a recipe can certainly help, but adding too much will simply ruin the entire thing.

NSFW

First and foremost, let me address that this post itself is not going to be "Not Safe For Work." It will merely be me addressing the topic of not safe for working writing, what my feelings about it are, and why I have not been writing any pieces that would fall under that category.

Not safe for work pieces, if you can't tell by the incredibly apparent name, is generally what would also be called adult pieces. Pieces with excessive gore, language, or sexual content. I have written pieces with blood, and ones with a bit of swearing, but up until this point I have tried to refrain from going anywhere excessive with these things. It's not that I don't enjoy them, and in some writings that I have done elsewhere I have gone pretty NC-17, but I have this blog available in public. I don't particularly want to have to mark the entire blog as being NSFW because of a few pieces. I also know several if not all of the people who read what I write, and I don't know how particularly comfortable I would be with knowing that they are reading something along those lines, nor how comfortable they would be reading them, knowing that I wrote them.

Sex in particular is something that people have told me that I should write, and while I have entertained the thought, I don't know about posting it on the blog for those exact reasons. It is certainly something that I should consider practicing, and it would give me a certain mindset to go under that you can't get from many other places. Even if I were to never write a book that gets published that had any sex in it, it is something that I could conceivably do as a way to practice my writing and hopefully expand my boundaries and improve myself. But there are logistical problems with doing so that I'm not sure I want to handle.

Language is one that I am more familiar with. Curses are a part of my vocabulary, and a piece that I am quite prone to using in my day to day life. I personally have no qualms with swear words, because the only weight that any word can carry is one that you place upon it, either as a reader or as a writer. The connotation I have in my head for these kinds of words, and in fact many words both tame and viscous, are potentially quite different from the connotations anyone else may have. That being said, I am aware that other people have problems with these kinds of words, and if I were to think about, I would likely not be comfortable with children hearing or reading these words. Do I have children reading the blog? Probably not. Is there a possibility that they might one day? Potentially. And because of that, I'm not sure how far I want to push it.

These are things that I think about every time that I sit down to do any piece of writing, fiction or non-fiction. Everyday I sit down and ask myself, "Is today going to be the day that I cross that line?" And thus far, the answer has always been no. But I don't know if that will last forever. In the instance that I do ever cross that line, I will ensure that I make it apparent in some way on each piece of writing that contains adult content that it is, in fact, there. But, of course, it may be that not every one reading adheres to those warnings, and thus may be caught off guard by a sudden turn from one story to the next. And so, for the time being, I will refrain from taking that action.

Ecstasy

Mark looked down at the substance that had been placed in his hand. He wasn't exactly sure what to even call it. It had just been handed to him, giving him no chance to question or object. It was a strange mixture of purple and green, somewhat swirling fading of colors, and it felt like it could be torn in two if he so much as moved his hand the wrong way.

He glanced around and saw other people holding the substance, popping into their mouths and washing it down with a glass of whatever it was they were drinking. He didn't want to be the only one still holding onto it, looking like an outcast, so he reluctantly dropped it into his mouth and tried to swallow it down with water. Despite the liquid, it felt dry going down his throat, like it was trying to grind out a fire on the way down, and he covered his mouth, trying to hide the sputtering cough that was threatening to overcome him.

The moment it hit his stomach, he began to feel weird. Colors in his eyes began to swim, and while he stayed steady in his seat, it felt as though the counter under his hand was moving up and down, like a wave on an ocean. He looked desperately around at the people he had seen previously taking the substance, only barely able to make out their shapes, but they didn't seem to be having any problems. In fact, they seemed to be even happier than they had been before.

Mark moved out of his seat, but the floor wasn't there to catch him, and he fell hard on his face. Almost immediately, two sets of arms were set around his own, lifting him back onto his feet, and holding him steady. Mark tried to look at them, but their faces were muddy, almost like they were melting away. He was in a state of panic, but he was beginning to find that his jaw hurt. He had fallen on his nose and forehead, but the pain was absent from that space.

"Take a seat, buddy," their voices came to home, but not from their faces. Forcefully, they pushed Mark back into the seat that he had been occupying. "Think you should just ride this one out."

Mark slumped against the counter, placing his hands on his face to realize that he was smiling uncontrollably, and his jaw was hanging open. He was able to think clearly, but his body was going on its own. It was like the part of his brain that experienced was going on a wild journey, while the part that thought was being left behind.

He was becoming scared. He didn't know how to deal with what was going on. But as the world around him became increasingly more bizarre, he concluded that the only choice he had was to let go and go with it. And as he did, the thoughts in his brain began to muddle as well. Like a wall that he had been holding up had abruptly fallen away. And he disappeared into the haze.

Books

I have recently been given an opportunity to work in a library, which I am quite excited about, though admittedly a good bit nervous as well. But going into this, I am also being made aware of how little time I have spent in libraries throughout my life, which is not only a shame, but somewhat stupid, given who I am and what I want to be. This is a place where I can be surrounded by the things that I want to be able to create, and it doesn't cost me so much as a dime, and yet I hardly take advantage of the fact. So I was trying to think about why that was.

A friend of mine, who for a long time worked in libraries, pointed out a problem that she had with said libraries, which I think has been a subconscious concern of mine. All too often, she saw books that had been treated incredibly poorly. Pages and covers bent and falling apart, stains on the pages, writing inside of the book. Things that some might consider to be "well-loved" but to us is just misuse and blatant disregard for that book.

I hate seeing books treated that way. I've never been one to save a couple bucks by buying a used copy of a book, because I hate that someone would let a book degrade the way far too many used books are. Hell, I prefer paperback books to hardcover, and I'll place weights on them after I've read them for a while in an attempt to reflatten the inevitably curved covers. I want books to look as good as their contents are. If I see a book that is falling apart, I don't care how good the story it holds within might be, I'm probably not going to open it, both because it doesn't look good, and because I don't want to risk damaging it any further.

I once had a book that I loved, but part way through reading it I accidentally left it in the sun for an extended period of time in the midst of the summer heat on the passenger seat of a car, and the glue holding the book together came off. The cover removed from the pages entirely, and the pages themselves split into two blocks of pages with some loose leafs in the middle. As much as I enjoyed that book, I almost put it down entirely after that. I was tempted to go out and buy a new copy of the book, just so I wouldn't have to deal with the mess that my book had become.

I have seen used, well loved books. Ones that have been kept in excellent condition over the years, and have stories inside of them simply don't exist elsewhere anymore. These, I don't mind, because they have been cared for. It doesn't take too much effort to care for a book. You don't have to feed it or clothe it, and you don't have to give it new content from time to time. You just handle it gently, you don't throw it, and you keep it away from grease or other liquids. Yet, looking through a library, so few people seem to understand this.

Maybe I'm just too picky. Maybe I just don't understand the appeal. Maybe I'm blinded by prior judgements and should learn not to, quite literally, judge a book by it's cover. But I would far prefer to spend my time in a bookstore than a library.

The old days

Cador gently pulled on the reigns of the rental horse, bringing it to a stop as they reached they crest of the hill. It had been some time since he had last ridden, but the muscle memory had been burned into him over a dozen lifetimes, and the horse he had been given was well mannered. Sarah was not quite as lucky, and while her horse was very tame, she had had much difficulty getting it to do exactly what it was she wanted. Cador had tried to explain to her, but the terms and comparisons he made were simply too outdated for her, and after several attempts, they had simply set her horse in motion to follow his own.

They sat on their horses, looking out over the valley that was before them, the ruined remains of a castle on the other side of what was once a river before them. They sat in silence for a long moment, taking in the sight, before Sarah reached out and placed her hand on Cador's shoulder, pulling his attention away from the ruins.

"This is it?" she asked. Cador had not heard such pure wonder in someone's voice for a long time. "This was the castle where...?"

Cador nodded and looked back out at the castle. "Yeah," he said. "This is it."

It took them another hour of riding to get down through the valley and actually reach the castle. It had fallen to pieces, and overgrown plants climbed the walls and filled some of the gaps that had been left behind. They dismounted and tied the horses to part of the bridge, near a new sprinkling of a creek that had shown up in the last few years so they could drink. Cador lead the way into the castle, finding the open paths and safe ways to move.

"It's been half a millennium since I was here last," he said as they climbed over a collapsed wall. "In my mind's eye, I can still see it. The hallways and rooms, the strategically placed torches along the walls, the flowing drapery that told the stories of royalty and their families. I can see the nobles and their servants walking around, talking about the current events, whether or not the farms are producing enough, and what to do about the coming winter. I can feel their souls as my fingers run along the walls, like they're still here, waiting to be released..."

Sarah dropped down onto more stable ground behind him and dusted herself off. "Do you miss them?" she asked. "The people and the way things used to be?"

Cador dusted some of the cobwebs out of the entryway. They had made their way to the throne room. He could remember so clearly the day he had been knighted for the first time, in this very room. The steps had survived. He could see the exact spot he had kneeled down. Without a word he walked to it and kneeled down, bowing his head to silently pay respect to his liege. "Yeah," he said, standing up. "Sometimes. Things were different back then. Not simpler. Not harder. Just different."

"Most people say now that life today is a lot easier."

Cador smiled. "In some ways. Maybe a lot of ways. But the things that make life simple bring their own troubles. We didn't have to worry about nations on the other side of the world sending off missiles that could destroy the world sixteen times over. We just had to worry about putting food on the table."

"Some people still have to worry about that."

"Yeah. Yeah they do."

Lair

Martha could smell the rancid smoke masked by running water as she turned the corner. The caves had been dark up until that point, and she had used her hands on the walls and the sound of the river flowing to guide her way. Finally, at the end of the stretch in front of her, she could see a light coming from the next corner. She had been sent to find the inner workings of the caves, and see if she could bring anything back out of it. She found it doubtful, but she was certainly going to try, regardless.

As she finally reached the light, her hands lightly bleeding from the scuffs of the hard rocks, she saw an intricate design of suspended pathways, outfitted with plants that glowed gently in the dark and sharp fangs left behind by beasts larger than any Martha had ever seen. She stepped gingerly out onto the first pathway to find that it was more structurally sound than she had anticipated.

As she made her way across, she could see a few paths down an altar, with a brightly glowing gemstone placed upon it. The stone around it was sharp and jagged, as though it was being held in the mouth of a beast, ready to chomp down upon anyone stupid enough to fall for its trap. Martha got that bad feeling that that was exactly what she was about to do. But if she was going to find something that would be able to help her village, that stone was probably the place to start.

It took her well over an hour to reach the stone. By the time she approached it, she was starving and thirsty, and she was only hopeful that she would be able to make it back out of the cave, much less make it out with anything of value. But she had come too far simply to give up. Examining the gem, she could see that it was a bright yellow color and seemed to glow from within, as if there was a flame burning eternally inside of it. She could see no traps attached to it, and she gently placed her hands on either side of it.

"What do you think you are doing, child?" a voice boomed inside of her head. Her entire body shook, but she felt glued to the rock. "I know that you could see the potential for a trap here. Yet you chose to approach anyway. Are you so ready to forfeit your life?"

Martha was shaking violently, her bones rattling, but she did not fall. "My village is dying," she called out, hoping that whoever was speaking to her could hear her. "I was sent here in hopes that I would be able to find something that could help us."

"What is your village dying of?"

"The only supplies that we had are running low, as bandits and crooks steal them from us, leaving us with less than enough to survive. We need something to either pay them off, or keep them out."

"And what are you able to give in return, if you have no supplies to live off of?"

Martha could feel tears welling in her eyes. "There must be something I can do."

Suddenly, the walls themselves began to quiver. Behind the glowing gemstone, the rocks themselves parted in the wall, revealing a giant, golden eyeball. Some of the claws she had seen on the path began to stretch and move. She realized she had walked directly into the lair of a dragon, and her heart nearly froze in fear.

"Yes, there may just be a use I an find for you," the dragon's voice called out to her. Suddenly the gemstone came loose and fell into her arms. "Let us go. I feel there is much work to be done."

The child death spared

Darren breathed hard, twitching away from every sound and light as the rain poured down hard overhead, pounding against the stone of the abandoned houses, and lightning and thunder cracked and boomed, lighting up the field that was the farmland surrounding the town that he had grown up in as two armies lined up on either side of it, preparing to destroy each other and anything in the way. Against his parents wishes, he had rushed back home as they fled in order to grab a toy that had been left behind - a small doll that looked vaguely like his departed sister, which his mother had given to him a few years prior in order to stifle his cries. It had taken him time to find it, and when he had run down the stairs to escape, he found he had taken too long.

He was terrified. In the flashes of lightning, he saw the the swords and armor of the soldiers brighter than anything else. Their images stayed longer than the rest of it, etched into his eyes because of their reflective nature. They looked like empty suits, possessed by the dead to fight for eternity, and drag more and more people into their endless war over nothing. Darren clutched the sister-doll close to his heart, trying very hard not to cry, because he knew if he did it would give him away. He didn't trust that these people - if they could even be called that - would spare him just because he was a child.

There was a long pause in the lightning. It was night now, and Darren couldn't see anything past his hand in front of his own face. The pour of the rain was clouding out any other sounds from being able to reach his ears. He could only wait for the next bolt to light the area, to see if he might be able to find a way to escape. But when it finally came, he saw that the armies were no longer where they had been. He lurched forward, trying to catch sight of him, and slammed headfirst into the leg of a soldier running past to reach the other side.

Darren flew back and hit the wall he had been hiding behind hard. Pain surged through his body, and there was a warm liquid pooling on his head where he had run into the soldier's armored leg, mixing with the icy drops of rain.

He couldn't help himself now. He cried hard, harder even than when his sister passed away. He wanted to see her again, but he didn't want to have to lose his parents to do it.

He sensed a figure step in front of him. Caught a glimpse of the shape of its sword as it plunged into the ground just in front of Darren. It had to be a soldier, coming to find the source of the crying. Darren only cried harder.

Another flash of lightning, and Darren so with explicit detail the form in front of him. It had stooped down to look him dead in the face, its black, empty sockets starring into his eyes. A massive figure in a black cloak, its only discernible feature the bone skull that sat on its white shoulders, barely visible under the cloak.

"Darren," an icy voice came from the skull as its jaw dropped open. "You have been a naughty boy tonight. Going places you have no business being. Seeing things young eyes should not see." The jaw opened and closed to the words as they rattled into Darren's mind, but they didn't quite fit. Like it was a face quite out of practice of talking.

"W-who are you?" Darren asked, barely able to hear his own voice over the storm.

"By all rights, you should not be leaving this town tonight," the voice continued, ignoring the boy's question. "But there is much bloodshed tonight. I have enough work to do. And so, I am in a good mood. Come with me."

Darren looked at the face as another bolt flew. It terrified him more than any soldier he had seen, but a fleeting thought came to him as he stared into the empty eye sockets. Perhaps something more terrifying was what he needed to get past the terror he had face before. Quietly, he nodded.

He felt a bony, frigid hand close around his arm. He looked down to see its lack of skin or muscle. He heard the figure loose its sword from the dirt before it led him forward.

Darren knew the town layout well. Even in the dark, he knew the feel of the main roads. They walked along them, towards the enemy from the next kingdom over. Darren could feel the sweat on his palms as the fear of what would happen if they came across them sunk into his mind. He had wanted to escape. This... creature was leading him directly into their path. But he was even more afraid of speaking up. The fear that he might be abandoned was worse than the fear of what would happen if he was found by the wrong people. And the figure had promised him safe passage. Or so he was assuming.

Through the sound of the rain, Darren began to hear the sound of battle. Steel clashing on steel, and soon momentary sparks splashed through the air, giving brief glimpses of tumbling figures on the brink of death before the sparks were extinguished by the rain. Shivers ran down his spine, and without thinking he reached up to grab hold of the hand holding his arm. The arm was thin and tough under the cloak, with a gap in the middle that Darren could slip his fingers into. The figure said nothing in response.

As the sounds grew louder and closer, Darren could feel the tears welling in his eyes. He tried to wipe them away, and as he pulled his hand away between wipes, he saw a steel cladded warrior charging almost directly at him. He screamed, but the man froze in mid strike. Darren's guide had struck in an instant, impaling the soldier on his sword. With seemingly no effort, he lifted the body into the air on the end of the blade and, with a flick of the wrist, sent it tumbling away into the darkness.

The figure did not stop walking. Darren had no choice but to follow.

The cloaked one cut a path through the battlefield for the child, as if he were cutting a path through an overgrown field. Its bony hand never left Darren's arm until they were clear of the battle. Only then did Darren realize he had been led to the path his family had used to escape.

The figure knelt down in front of him once more. "You'd best move, Darren, before I change my mind."

But Darren hesitated. "H-how do you know my name?" he asked.

The figure stood up and began to walk away, but his voice came into Darren's mind just as clear as ever. "Death knows the names of all its children. It never forgets those who have come to it, and it knows the exact moment the rest will follow. Tonight was not the death of the child, Darren. I suggest you remember that."

And then Darren was alone. But he was safe. And he had his doll.

He ran to find his family.

Memories

Jerome snuck down the stairs into the basement of his house, careful to make sure that his wife and children were still sound asleep. It wasn't that he was particularly worried that they would wake up - he just didn't want to take chances. He didn't want them to know about what was stored in the extra room. No one else spent much time in the basement, and they especially weren't going to go digging around. It was used almost solely for storage, with stacks of boxes precariously placed around the room, and most of the walls inaccessible and unseen thanks to the massive amount of old things that they really probably needed to get rid of.

Jerome very carefully slipped around the pillars of junk towards the western wall, where there was a sliding wooden door that was barely visible thanks to the dust and supplies. He slid the door open and slipped into the room.

Inside that room was much neater than the rest of the basement. Jerome kept it out of sight and out of mind, so that he could use it as his own personal space. He justified it to himself frequently - plenty of guys had man caves that they wanted to keep to themselves, right? He wasn't weird for having this space that he kept a secret from the rest of his family, from the rest of the world. The lights inside were dim - not old, but intentionally weak. There were a few boxes, precisely labelled with the exact contents kept within, and those contents kept in a specific order.

He picked up one of the boxes - labelled Jennifer - and moved it on to a small table that was left clear. Lifting the lid off the box and setting it aside, he looked at the small jars carefully arranged inside, each with a label on the lid describing the event contained within. He had one in mind that he wanted to look at.

"Jennifer - April 26, 1973 - First date"

He was always sure to reseal the lids on the jars as tight as possible, to preserve their freshness, which meant he had to be careful about taking them back off. But he had years of practice at this point. It only took a moment to pop it off.

He went to the opposite wall and pulled from it a small plate and a spoon before returning to the table and having a seat. Ever so gingerly, he lifted a spoonful of the water in the jar and placed it onto the plate. The thick water held its almost gelatinous form, and inside of it he could see that day, as though it were happening for eternity in the water. Two young teens, awkward but in love, though they did not realize it at the time. Walking down the lakeside, talking about everything in the world. Not even realizing as they slowly drifted towards each other. Kissing for the first time almost reflexively, and only for a moment, before their faces burned a bright red and they could hardly stand to look at each other.

Jerome didn't know how long he watched the scene, or how many times he let that date repeat itself. It had been a long time since he had let himself experience that day again. A part of him was afraid that if he went back to his memories too many times, he would lose them, as they degraded and faded. But he couldn't just leave them, and never see them again. They were what made him who he was. And sometimes, like after the long day he had had, he needed to remember those things.

Putting the memories away was as delicate a process as it was taking them back out. Slipping the water back in its jar, making sure not to lose a drop. Sealing the lid. Sliding the jar back in place in its box, and the box back in place among the others. And finally slipping back out into the basement proper, and making his way back up stairs. It was still late at night. But he wouldn't be getting nearly enough sleep.

But to remember... It was worth it.

Returning villains

Do you have a favorite villain? One so sick and twisted and full of spite and sickness that, though you despise them, you can't help but love them. You love to hate them, hate to love them, unable to explain it, unwilling to accept or deny it. They are undeniably, inexplicably evil. They are darkness incarnate, so intangibly dark that they infect the very air around them, so that you cannot bear to look at them, and yet you can not bare to look away. You know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are the very bane of all of existence, and that the only way for anything to continue on, to have a future, is for them to be stopped.

And yet...

And yet without them there, the story would be over. And is that really what you want? What happens next? What conflict can there be when such a threat has already been dealt with? And if they're not there, how can they wow you with their wiles? Is the good guy really so good without that presence of evil acting as a constant backdrop to show how great the hero is by comparison? In fact, without that villain there, would the good guy even be good? Or would the lack of an enemy lead them down a different path?

One-offs don't have to worry about these things. The end of that villain is the end of the story. What comes next? Who cares? It's over. Done. Kaput. The hero wins, probably gets the girl, gets to go back home and build a new life off of the lessons that he's learned.

But a series? Oh no... Once the villain is done, that doesn't mean the series is over. Sometimes, a series is far from over. Sometimes a series is only just beginning. But the bad guy is done. And they were such a good bad guy. So dark and twisted and evil. How can you follow that up?

Sometimes you can't. But the story has to go on. So what if that villain came back? Came back more powerful, more evil, more dark and twisted, more of a threat than ever before.

A lot of my favorite series do this. You can never count on the villain being dead, because they never really are, they just put that guise on so as to escape and recover to come back worse than ever.

And yet this is such a poor choice in so many ways. They've already been beaten. What threat could they really pose? Sure, they've been recovering and training, but who's to say that the heroes weren't doing the same? In fact, the heroes might not have to recover as long as the villain, so they might even be further above the power levels of the returning, supposedly more powerful villain by the time they come back into the picture.

And once they've returned once, why can't they return again? And yet, each time they return from supposed death, they become slightly less interesting. With each repeated recovery, they have less incentive to fight, and less chance for victory. Eventually they might as well just be a footsoldier that no one cares about. They literally become a joke.

So many good series fall victim to this. I understand the desire to have a common evil, a repeating trait that feels familiar to the audience. But eventually it's just not scary when they show up. You stop screaming and you start yawning.

It's not easy to think of new things all the time. I know that pretty damn well by this point. But damn, if it isn't worth it in the long run.

Walking shadow

Moriah sat on a park bench, watching the park goers walk by throughout the day, and in particular watching their shadows as they moved about. Watching the way the shadows twisted and stretched in the sunlight, falling down like heavy sheets of rain, though she knew no one else could see the sheets of light like she could. The way they wrapped around people and fell past them, leaving behind empty spaces lacking light, and leaving shadows behind.

Those shadows showed things that people overlooked so frequently. She couldn't understand how they could be so blind to the things lying just under foot. Some people saw them on occasion, but they pointed to them as funny coincidences, jokes to be made rather than the truths of their lives set out before their very eyes.

She saw one man go by, and as he turned to grab something he had dropped, his jacket flipped over his head. His shadow looked like a woman flipping her hair as she moved to grab something of hers. Then the man stood up and brushed some of the hair out of face, despite the fact it had never been there in the first place, and went on about his way, hiding the femininity that he felt inside of him.

A couple walking their dog passed through the area, their conversation cut short when the dog began to bark violently in the direction of another man. They tried to shush him, telling him that the man was nothing that he had to be afraid of. But Moriah knew what the dog was seeing. It wasn't the man at all. His shadow, hunched and pulled into itself as it lurched along, like an ape running out to protect its family against a threat it perceived in the distance.

A biker rode by, leaned far over the handlebars as he tried to maintain a racing pace for a marathon approaching in the coming days. They were on the other side of the fence, and as their shadow passed between the stakes of it, a frame by frame animation passed by, looking like a swimmer gliding through the water with fast and powerful strokes.

Moriah stood up as the sun sank low, ready to head back home. Shadows stretched all around her, spread apart as the waves of light grew heavy and tired, holding tighter to the people and smothering themselves in the comfort of those who couldn't even see them. The evening air was thick and warm, and Moriah wrapped herself in it. She knew who she was. She didn't have to look back to see the massive figure coming out from inside her.

She was followed home by that shadow, that guardian that stood above her at all times. Her heart and soul given shape, standing as a giant, silently watching and protecting.

Blackout

When I was in grade school, I absolutely loved to play wallball, which in retrospect is an utterly boring game. The entire game was that, with however many people as you could gather, you'd just bounce a ball against the wall, and whoever missed hitting the ball at the wall was the loser of that round. It was kind of like a one sided tennis match, but using something more like dodgeballs.

I was, like, ten. It was easier to entertain ourselves back then.

But I played this game almost every time I got a chance. I didn't even care if I didn't have anyone to play with, I would play it anyway. I have to imagine teachers must have seen me bouncing a ball against a wall by myself all the time and pitied me, but I didn't mind in the slightest. I thought it was fun.

One time in particular, in about fourth or fifth grade, I remember playing with a group of about five kids. We had to use a bigger wall to fit so many of us on it, so we were out in one of the bigger areas of the school campus, rather than in an off corner like we usually were, which meant that a lot of things were happening in the immediate vicinity. Lots of other kids playing their own games, many of which involved other balls.

It was the lunch period, which meant a longer recess, and it was near the end of it, so we were all getting pretty tired. That meant that a lot of us were starting to lose points as the ball soared passed our hands. One kid struck the ball particularly hard, and it bounced over our heads and went flying off towards the fields. I was the fastest kid in the group, and I shot after it without a second thought.

Unfortunately, behind us were some kids that were playing basketball, and at that moment they just so happened to have also lost control of their ball. I didn't see it until the last second, right as I planted my foot solidly on the ball, which sent me spiraling backwards.

I heard the slam of my head against concrete before everything went back. The other kids were a good distance away when I went down. But when I opened my eyes, they were all standing around me and looking down at me. I don't know how long I had been laying there, but my head was throbbing. One of the kids helped me back onto my feet and, without saying much, I made my way over to the planter to sit down.

I didn't move much until recess was over. I was feeling really weird, and my head wouldn't stop pounding in my ears. I remember someone came over to ask if I was alright, and I just waved them off.

What really got people's attention was that, when class started, I didn't go back in. I felt terrible, and I could barely hear the words coming out of anyone's mouths. It only took a couple minutes before my teacher came out to try and find me. When I told her about what happened, she immediately sent me to the principal's office to have my parents called to come and get me.

The office was very confused to find me walk in. I didn't look like I was in trouble, and I wasn't visibly injured, but as soon as I explained what happened I was pushed into the nurse's office and my house put on the line.

I felt dumb. The pain was beginning to subside, and I felt like I could have gone back to class, but no one would hear anything of it. I had a pretty sizable lump on the back of my head, too, upon closer inspection, and touching it certainly sent shocks through my system.

My grandpa was the one who came to get me. He apparently didn't have the story explained to him very well, so for about the sixth time that day by that point I explained what had happened. Before I knew it, I was in the car heading home.

I think back on that every once in a while. Surprisingly, I haven't had a lot of serious injuries in my life, and this was probably one of the more serious ones I've had. Especially given how old I was and how hard I hit the ground, I could've stayed under a lot longer, and I could have had some permanent damage. As far as I'm aware, though, I didn't, and I'm pretty lucky to be able to say that. I've experienced a lot of things in my life. Would've been a shame for them to have been cut off so early.

Last chance

Marcus somberly stepped up to the gallows, his hands chaffing thanks to the rope holding them in position behind his back, and allowed the noose to be slipped over his head, feeling its weight as it fell heavily onto his shoulders. He could feel how loosely the wooden trapdoor under his bare feet was held in place, as if it were simply begging him to make a wrong step and force it open. It wanted him to drop. Not that he would get very far.

The executioner stepped toward him and pulled the bag off of his head. For a moment, the daylight blinded him. It had been nighttime when the bag had been tied there, blinding him. He had passed in and out of consciousness since then. Looking at the sun, he could tell it was about an hour passed noon. A thought came to him - a memory, of his mother telling him when he was young that he shouldn't stare at the sun, else he be blinded for the rest of his laugh.

He laughed at that. He could stare at the sun all he wanted now. He wasn't long for this world, and the pain it brought him was nothing compared to what he was about to experience.

The crowd wasn't very big. Nobody wanted to watch him die. Or, rather, no one knew him or cared enough to see him off. A meager collection of people, most of whom simply got off at watching the hangings. He wanted to spit at them, show them his distaste for their pitiful whims that only served to prolong the party. He'd rather it just be over.

"Pretty boy," the executioner called out to him. Marcus turned to look at the man. He remembered hearing stories of large, powerful men who became executioners, swung the axe to sever heads from shoulders in one swift blow. This man, though, was nothing like that. Small in stature, with barely any meat to his bones, clearly struggling just to lift the tiny hatchet used to cut the rope holding the trapdoor in place. He looked as though he had likely been a prisoner as well, for much longer, left to starve and wither away, and take people's lives mercilessly in order to save his own. Marcus wondered how much longer he would last. "You got any last words?"

Marcus looked out over the crowd again. He knew better than to expect the face he was looking for. She would hardly want to see this. "Martha!" he screamed, knowing she would never hear his voice again. "I'm sorry! And... I love you!"

The executioner chuckled, as well as some of the audience. But there was a rustling. One person, who had a robe pulled over their head to hide their face, pushed their way to the front of the crowd. The robe was ripped aside in the process, and suddenly Martha was standing at the edge of the platform, looking up into Marcus' eyes, the tears in her lashes sparkling in the sunlight. "Marcus!" she shouted back. "I love you too!"

"Isn't that sweet?" the executioner taunted. With what little strength he had, he lifted the hatchet into the air above Marcus' last lifeline. "Too bad it's too late."

The hatchet dropped with a thunk, sticking into the wood after slicing the rope effortlessly. The trapdoor fell, and Marcus dropped with a thunk, caught around the throat by his noose. He groaned in pain, but forced back the gasp that wanted to escape his lungs, maintaining eye contact with Martha through the pain. "Never too late," he hissed between his teeth.

The rope didn't have much give, and Marcus didn't have much time. Blood was struggling to rush to his head, and the feeling was quickly draining from his toes and fingers. Rather than thrash, though, he swung his body front to back, and after only a couple swings he was able to plant his feet on the platform bed, just barely holding himself up. The executioner lunged at him, but Marcus threw his legs up around the scrawny man's waist and pulled him back with him. The old rope wasn't built to hold that much weight, and as they swung back over the pit, it snapped, and they fell to the ground.

Martha was there in an instant. It was all happening quickly, and the guards were lagging, not expecting something like this on a nobody like Marcus. She pushed the executioner off Marcus roughly, grabbing the hatchet in the motion. Marcus had landed on his face, and which had forced the little air he had out of his chest, and was suffocating. Martha slashed at the rope cuffs on his hands, freeing them so that he could tear the noose away from his neck.

The guards started coming after them just as Marcus was getting to his feet. Without waiting for him, Martha grabbed him by the arm and started to run. For a moment, she was dragging him, but he caught his feet and started running with her. They weren't weighed down by armor like the guards were, and were thus capable of hitting a full sprint.

They left the dust of the execution behind them, nowhere to go, nothing to lose, but everything to gain.

The party

David slammed the door behind him, knowing that no one at the party would hear it over the booming music and scream-talking that so heavily characterized it, as well as continued to pierce through the walls and pound on his eardrums incessantly. He was tired, and he hated crowds, and he hated the smell of smoke and alcohol that was wafting through the halls, and he just wanted to be alone so he could go to sleep but that wasn't going to happen anytime soon and he knew it. He sat down on the bed, facing away from the door, and rubbed his face. He could feel his skin crawling like a thousand ants swarmed underneath it, each sound that slipped under the door was like an ant biting off a tiny ant mouthful of his muscles and moving them around inside him.

He cringed as he heard the door open and close, letting in a boom of sound for a moment that shot through him like a bullet. He didn't turn to see who it was. He didn't want to know. Probably some drunk asshole who thought they were in the bathroom, and would try to pee on his sink or something...

"David, right?" came a vaguely familiar voice from behind. He glanced back, surprised, to see his roommate's sister, Rachel. He had only met her a couple of times, and it had really only been in passing, seeing as he was always in a rush to get to his room and away from whatever his roomie was doing when she was there. "You ok? I saw you practically bolt out of there." She was dressed in tight jeans and a loose, green tank top, and her hair was tied up in a ponytail. She looked surprisingly sober.

David turned away again, his body almost involuntarily curling up. "Too fucking loud," he muttered under his breath.

Rachel moved closer to the bed, but not into David's vision. He could feel the bed shift as she leaned against it gently. "Did Frank not tell you he was going to have a party tonight?" she asked.

"He did," he muttered back.

"Did you tell him it was ok to do that?"

"I did."

Rachel very slowly moved closer and sat beside him on the bed. David's body leaned away from her on its own. "Why?" she asked him. "You clearly aren't ok with it. You know this is your place, too, right? You have all the right to tell him to piss off."

David didn't dare to look at her. "Don't want to have to argue," he responded.

Rachel sighed. "Frank can be a reasonable guy, you know. Well, when he hasn't been drinking, at least." David didn't respond. He just sat there, bundled up, trying to pretend like the party wasn't happening. Rachel sighed again and got off of the bed. He expected her to head back out, but she moved into his vision and knelt on the ground in front of him. David looked away instinctually. "You don't like it here right now, right?" she asked. David remained silent. "Well, then, let's get out of here. You and me. We'll go find somewhere quiet, you can take a nap until the party's over maybe."

David slowly turned his head to look at her, the confusion plain as day on his face. "Why?" he asked after a moment.

Rachel smiled gently. "Cause it's my birthday," she said, "and I don't like people being sad on my birthday."

Shadows

Samantha looked around nervously, her hands clenched tightly around one another and clammy from the cold sweat that she couldn't stop from rolling over her skin. A part of her was excited. She had been crushing hard on the mysterious boy that was Alex, always dressed in black with his hair swept back, his skin incredibly pale even though she always seemed to see him outside. She had tried flirting with him for well over a year, but he never seemed to respond to her advances until just recently. She couldn't explain the wave of nervous happiness, mixed cold and hot, that washed over her when he had turned to look her in the eyes the first time.

He had asked her to join him on an "excursion" late into the night, and without a second thought she had agreed to it. Any extra time she could spend with him - and especially time alone with him - was worth whatever the cost as far as she was concerned. But now that she was out, in the dark night with the cold air piling down on top of her, she was beginning to think that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. She admittedly had not actually talked to Alex very much, and most of what she knew about him were really more of rumors. She had thought that the mystery around him was hot. Now she was reassessing that assumption.

Alex seemed undisturbed by Samantha's discomfort. He led her down a series of back alleyways, unconcerned as Samantha was about the possibility of someone trying to jump them, and he wasn't wearing so much as a coat to combat the frigid air. He was just dressed in his usual black t-shirt and black jeans. He never slowed or paused until he came to a dead halt at a dead end fence under an overhang, painted pitch black by the shadows.

"You, uh... You didn't get lost, did you?" Samantha asked timidly.

Alex turned to look at her, one eyebrow raised as he examined her. "You've seemed pretty set on going on a date with me," he responded abruptly, completely ignoring her question. Samantha's face burned beet red with blush. She did want to go on a date with him, but the way he just said it like that... "Now's your chance." He held out his hand. "Are you gonna take it or not?"

Samantha's hand was in his before she had even fully processed what he was saying. His hand was so cold, but the way his fingers weaved between hers sent shivers down her spine. She was suddenly very aware of how damp and clammy her hands had become, and her face burned even brighter. She was making such a bad impression. There was no way he could ever want to date someone like her...

She hardly noticed that he was leading her towards the wall of the dead end until he pushed her hand against the cold bricks. She gasped and turned to say something when she gasped again, this time in an almost painful way. She looked down at her hand and saw it flattening, turning pitch black as the wall it was melting into. She could barely see its outline against the deep shadows in front of her. But while it looked like she was flattening, she felt as though her hand was being stretched out beyond the three dimensions of their world. She was sinking into the shadows, but she felt like she was being expanded past that which her mind could comprehend. She wanted to scream, but no sound would come from her throat. She turned to Alex, but he was already halfway into the shadows.

Throughout the experience, she could still feel Alex's hand on hers. It wasn't until she herself was halfway into the wall that she looked down and saw that he clothes were not going with her, simply pushing up against the wall as she sunk into it. Her heart raced and her eyes widened. Would she be naked with Alex?

The entire thing lasted only a matter of seconds, but it felt like agonizing years passing by. But as soon as her last finger slipped into the shadows, the pain vanished. It took her a moment to catch her breath, which she was surprised to find she could not only still do, but that she could feel her breaths passing through her entire system, rather than just in and out of her mouth. All of her sense were enhanced. She could see for miles through the pitch blackness. There was no color, but she could see the texture of everything like it was the reflection of the sun on water. She could feel the fibers that made her up, as well as Alex.

Heat shot through her entire body as she realized they were, in fact, naked. Despite the lack of sight, the way the texture of his skin looked... It was more intense than anything she could have imagined before. And if she could see him like that, that meant that he...

"W-where are we?" she asked, trying not to think about it.

Alex smiled. "This is my home," he answered. "The shadowworld."

Backtracking

If you know anything about video games, and particularly about games with stories, chances are you've probably heard of Final Fantasy 7 at one point or another. A massive game, both in terms of the game itself and the impact it had on the gaming market at the time. Praised at the time for its revolutionary graphics, musical score, gameplay, and especially its storytelling, it is still considered today to be on of the greatest games of all times by many people.

And yet, the further we get away from when that game was released, the more people seem to argue that it really wasn't all that good. In fact, just about the only thing that is still universally praised from everything that Final Fantasy 7 had to offer is the music. Its graphics have aged poorly to the point where it is difficult to look at the game in the modern market of HD, life like visuals. The gameplay feels flat and forced, and gives little to no incentive for using the entirety of the party that is given to you. And the story... Oh boy the story. Not only are most characters frequently considered to be one note, but the actual events that transpire are often more confusing than they are suspenseful, leading up to an ending that quite literally takes place outside of the world in which the rest of the game takes place for barely understandable reasons.

Other games like Chrono Trigger manage to hold onto the praise that they received when they first released, not necessarily changing the world with their innovations, but simply by doing it right with what they had. While Final Fantasy 7 was a departure from what had come before it, Chrono Trigger took what had come before and refined and sharpened it into a work of art.

That then raises the question. If we can look back on Final Fantasy 7 with such contempt when we once looked on it with amazement and wonder, what changed? Did anything? Why did we think it was so good in the first place, if nothing about it has changed?

The thing that especially confuses me is that the things we once praised the game for, and now critique it for, seem no different to me than what we praise other games and stories for today. The main character, Cloud, is heavily critiqued for being little more than a dark, whiny git with women crawling all over him for no explicit reason other than he is the protagonist. The villain, on the other hand, is evil because he's evil. He seemingly has nothing to gain from the actions that he takes, and the more you learn about his motivations, the less he and the rest of the story make sense. The story is dark for the sake of creating depth, and the motivation at every turn is twisted and sinister. Death abounds, and rather than fighting to prevent further deaths, it seems more that the characters are fighting to avenge previous ones.

You'd be hard pressed to find someone who would call that good storytelling. And that's not even half of it. How about the fact that, rather than getting stronger, from a storytelling perspective, Cloud becomes weaker the further in you get?

And I say all of these things as one of the people who still thoroughly enjoys this game, and recognizes it as being considered one of the greatest games of all time. I love this game for the things it did. Not because it has an amazing story, or fantastic characters, but because it just had some wild and crazy ideas and threw them together regardless of how strange they seemed and managed to make it all work. When was the last time you heard of a story where one of the major plot points was doing squats to get a wig to help you crossdress to invade a playboy's mansion?

It's weird. It's not good storytelling. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or insane.

But something did change, and that's why people started looking at it differently. We started looking at the game critically, rather than experiencing it for what it is. We heard that it was great so many times that we started to try and look at why it was great. And in doing so, by trying to analyze greatness rather than experience it, we saw that for all accounts and purposes, it was anything but.

That's what happens when you backtrack. That's why some things are better left in the past. At least if you don't want to challenge your opinion of them.

Immortality

Tarrant hooked on his belt sword for the first time in a long time, and slipped the ancient steel sword into its sheath. He had spent hours sharpening and restoring it. He could have easily gotten a new one, and it might have even cost him less, but he trusted the one that he had. It had carried him through many dark times. He prayed it would be able to carry him through one more.

Gisil sat across from him, watching him quietly. She had known him her entire life. He had been there when she was born. She trusted him implicitly - more than she trusted anyone. She was drawn to him in a way. She couldn't look away from when he spoke, and she was never more comfortable than she was in his arms. There was a warmth and a light to him that wasn't present anywhere else in the world. And she knew that he felt the same way about her.

Tarrant stood up and pulled a wool shirt on before holding out a hand to Gisil. She took it and let him pull her up onto her feet. "Are you ready?" he asked her. "This is it. No turning back."

Gisil looked up at him, looking into his eyes. There was an emptiness to them that she could only notice when they were alone. He was experienced with hiding his thoughts and emotions, she had learned, but he never did when it was just the two of them. She was able to see true happiness in those dark eyes, but she was also able to see unbelievable pain that she knew no one but Tarrant could ever experience. "I'm ready," she whispered.

They walked out of Tarrant's room, hand in hand, and down the castle hallway. They could have done this in secret. Gisil had tried to convince Tarrant of going through with that plan. But Tarrant was older, wiser. He knew what it was they were fighting better than anyone. He had said that if they didn't make a point of their departure, as painful as it may be, they wouldn't be able to buy enough time. Gisil had had no choice but to concede.

Violently and abruptly, Tarrant kicked the door to the throne room open, revealing the true strength he had been gifted with all those years ago, and sending the shattered remains of the door into the far wall. Gisil tried not to look at her father, sitting on the throne.

"Tarrant?" the king asked. He had known Tarrant his entire life as well. Everyone in the castle had. Tarrant had regaled them with tales of the world before the castle had ever even been built. Before the concept of a castle had even been made. "What's wrong? What's happening?"

"I'm sorry, old friend," Tarrant replied, his face flat, but his voice taut with bitter frustration. "I'm afraid it's time for me to draw the line. I have waited for the chosen one for over a millennium, and she has arrived too late. I can not save you. I can only save she and I from having to watch the darkness win."

The king stood up roughly, but paused as Tarrant's sword leapt into his hand. "You told me she was not the one of prophecy," he called out, sadness rich in his voice. "You lied to me?"

"I had no choice," Tarrant spat back. "It has been too long. The darkness is too powerful. No prophecy could ever stand against it now."

The king looked to his daughter, but Gisil's eyes were closed, and her body was glowing. For the first time, she was releasing her powers. Tarrant's sword began to glow, dully at first, but quickly became blindingly bright.

With a flick of his wrist, the sword ripped through the air, tearing a massive hole that sucked in the air around them like a black hole. The king gripped his throne tightly, trying to maintain his feet. "Why?" he cried out desperately. "Why are you forsaking us after all this time?"

"I am old," Tarrant called out. For the first time in over a thousand years, he was crying. "But this is the only way I can give you even a chance of dying without the darkness corrupting you. I promised to see the chosen into a new world. That's what I'm going to do."

Tarrant discarded the sword and lifted Gisil into his arms. She curled tightly into a ball, gripping Tarrant's shirt with all the strength she had. He and the king locked eyes. They were both crying.

"Goodbye, old friend," Tarrant called, his voice barely audible over the whirlwind of air being sucked into the hole. Before he could hear a response, Tarrant leaped through, and the hole sealed behind him.

The king dropped to his knees. In the back of his mind, he could sense a creeping darkness that wanted to take him fall away, as if it were no longer afraid of not eventually getting there.

"Goodbye," he whispered. "Old friend."

Weather

The blizzard was raging outside, making it nearly impossible to see anything through the already heavily frosted window. Madelyn sighed and drew a frowning face one the pane by steaming it up with her breath and wiping some of it away with her finger. She hated the cold. It kept her inside, and it made her feel alone and cramped. Other people loved the snow, and making snowballs and having fights with them, or building snowmen, or making snow angels, or all kinds of other snow things. But Madelyn couldn't stand any of it. She just wanted the sun to shine and melt it all away.

Her father sat next to her on the couch and handed her a mug of hot cocoa, with two marshmallows and an appropriate sprinkling of chocolate sprinkles. Madelyn took the mug in her mittened hands, feelings its warmth through the thick wool, and held it close to her face so that she might simulate the warmth of the sun on her face.

"You know, Madelyn, I think winter might be my favorite season."

Madelyn looked up at her father with a scowl on her face, nothing but contempt for his statement, despite the great deal of love she had for her father. "Winter is terrible," she spat back at him. "There's no point to it except to make you cold. All the plants die when it comes around, it's so terrible."

Her father smiled at her and brushed aside a stray strand of hair from her face. "Is that so?" he asked. Madelyn nodded angrily. "Is that why all of the animals build themselves little homes before the winter sets, and they fill their tummies, and they sleep through the whole debacle?"

Madelyn nodded again and patted her belly. "I wish I could do that," she said. "That sounds more fun than having to deal with the cold. The cold just makes you wish that you weren't there."

Her father chuckled. "And the summer is better because it's warm?" Madelyn nodded excitedly. "Is that why people around the world despise the heat that comes in the summer, because it dwindles their already small supply of water?"

Madelyn blinked, unsure of how to respond. She had never thought about anything like that. She had never understood why anyone would dislike the summer, but she loved having her three water bottles in the summer whenever she left the house. But if she didn't have that water...

"And all the cute animals come out," her father continued, "as well as all of the dangerous ones, and you can not go to some places anymore because of those animals."

Madelyn frowned. She wasn't sure what to think now. She looked at the frosty window and down at her hot cocoa, and realized that although she loved hot chocolate, she could only have it during the winter because it was too hot to have in the summer.

She looked up at her dad. "Is there any season that is just good or bad?" she asked.

Her father smiled knowingly. "An excellent question," he replied. "What do you think?"

Inferno

The roar of the fire coming from all around was deafening. The entire building was being consumed by the flames, but Daniel and his little sister were trapped. Maria was just a baby, who had no idea what was happening other than that it was utterly terrifying. Daniel had been sent by his parents to get her and get out, but as he was struggling to get her out of her baby carriage, the supports of the door had collapsed, and the only way in or out of the room had been sealed. He had no idea what had started the fire, or how it had spread so quickly and done so much damage. All he knew was that if he didn't find a way out quick, he and his sister were goners.

But Daniel wasn't all that old either. He had only recently started the third grade. Part of the reason his parents had sent him was because they knew that he was smaller than they were, and could get under an already collapsed wall in the hallway leading down to Maria's room. He hadn't had time to think or argue. Something in him told him that this wasn't something that should be argued, and he had leapt into action.

Staring at the now sealed door, he was beginning to despise that decision.

The smoke was finally starting to get to him, too, filling his lungs and eyes and making it hard to think straight. It took him far too long to realize that Maria had stopped crying. She had passed out, and he was struck with a fear that perhaps she had already died. He considered if he would have a better chance of escaping if he left her behind, but the flaming rubble that had filled the doorway weren't going to budge for him regardless. Besides, after a bit he realized that he could still feel her breathing, though it was incredibly faint.

Outside, he could hear a distant sound of sirens. He prayed that that meant the fire department had arrived. Surely his parents wouldn't allow them to just leave the two inside. Surely they would report that they were still trapped.

Unless, of course, they hadn't made it out either. If the door to Maria's room had fallen, who was to say that others hadn't done the same? Perhaps his parents had been trapped inside as well. Or worse yet, underneath.

Daniel wanted to cry as his sister had been crying, but it was too hot. Every pore in his body was fighting to keep him cool, but they had already failed. He had never been good about drinking as much as his parents told him, and he was feeling the consequences. He had peed his pants when he had seen the flames, and while that was now dry due to the intense heat, so was the rest of him. He was completely out of water.

He dropped to the ground and wound himself into a tight ball around Maria. His body wracked itself with tearless sobs, and it didn't take long for him to begin to lose consciousness.

The last thing he saw was a single piece of rubble from the doorway pop loose from what looked like a long pole being jabbed through from the other side.

Sword fight

Rutger stood with his sword held gingerly in his hands, held just off his side, with his legs spread out in a wide, strong stance. He watched his opponent slowly circle around him, their own blade raised up and consistently pointed at Rutger's heart as he slowly turned to stay face to face with the man. Most men Rutger could take easily in a fight, but this one was different. He was fast and strong. Both of their swords had been heavily damaged by the blows they had traded, and Rutger wasn't sure how much longer his own in particular was going to withhold. The blade was old, and while it was well loved, it could only hold for so long, and this was testing its limits.

"Well, it seems you weren't the match that your friends claimed you to be," the man mocked him. Rutger glanced over his shoulder at his two friends, who had been knocked unconscious and tossed aside like day old meat by the mysterious man. He had come from nowhere and demanded to be given a good challenge. The trio had no idea what he wanted or why he had come to them, but his friends had boasted Rutger's skills.

He deeply wished they hadn't.

His breath was coming ragged to him, and blood from a head wound he had received early on while underestimating his foe's skill was dripping into his mouth. He spat it out and wiped at his face without taking his eyes off the man. "I wouldn't go taunting someone who hasn't yet fallen if I were you," he responded bitterly. Stiffly, he lifted his own blade in front of him, pointing up at an angle towards the man's face, right between his eyes, an open challenge for the fight to continue.

The man grinned cockily and lurched forward.

Rutger only had a split second to parry the strike, just barely catching it with his hilt and knocking the sword aside, letting go of his sword with one hand in the next moment to punch the man in the side of the head. But the man was already ducking out of the way, bringing the hilt of his own sword back and striking Rutger in the ribs with it. Rutger staggered back but didn't fall, bring his sword up once more as the man continued to strike. Barely parried blow after barely parried blow, Rutger was pushed backwards until he was pinned against the wall. As soon as his back touched it he hesitated, and the man struck fast, knocking Rutger's blade away and stabbing through his hand, piercing it to the wall.

The man grinned. "Not going to be much of a fighter without your sword hand," he whispered, and ripped his sword back, letting the blood from Rutger's hand splash across his own face in the process. He seemed to revel in it. He lifted his sword once more and pointed it at Rutger's face, his blood dripping from the end of the blade. "Kneel, before it is too late to forfeit."

Rutger glared at the man, nursing his hand. He hated doing this. "I'm afraid you underestimate me," he muttered. He flung his hands forward, a large amount of collected blood splashing forth, catching the man by surprise. The blood hit his body, but didn't stop. It had become solid and sharp, like a dozen knives that cut into the man, sticking into his skin like needles. The man looked down at his body for a moment in confusion, seeing the two dozen red crystalline knives sticking out of him, before looking back at Rutger.

Rutger's blood was dripping down from his hand, but it never reached the ground. It gathered together on itself, crystallizing and solidifying until it formed a new blade, which he pointed at the man. The razor edge on it was clearly sharper than his previous sword, like a freshly sharpened machete in comparison to a butter knife. "Looks like it's just getting exciting," he spat out.

The Door

Darren was covering Gerome's back as they traversed the broken land, looking for food and a place they could safe-hold in for the night. He had a large backpack stuffed full with supplies on his back, and an old sniper rifle with only a few shots still worth a damn gripped tight in his hands. Gerome was similarly stocked, but with a shotgun rather than a sniper rifle, and even fewer shots. Truth be told, weapons like theirs weren't worth much in this day and age. Whatever had happened to their world, it was apparent that it had been on the brink of destruction for quite some time, and technology was to blame. Old, physical guns like theirs were prone to misfire and failure, and could just as easily kill the wielder as the target. But they were more likely to find a bullet or two among the land's wreckage than a useable battery for a laser pistol.

Gerome stopped abruptly, and Darren did a quick sweep of the area he could see to make sure there wasn't anything coming. As he glanced over his shoulder to see what had made Gerome stop, the answer quickly became apparent. In the middle of a stretch of sand, bereft of any connected concrete or buildings, was a single door, still upright and seemingly undamaged by the events that had left their world in ruins.

"What is it?" Gerome asked quietly, speaking more to himself than to Darren.

"Well..." Darren replied, "it looks to me like a door."

Gerome glared over his shoulder at his friend and partner. "Yes, doofus, I know that part. But what is it doing out here? We've moved outside of the city, and it hardly looks like it would have even belonged there. What the hell was it a door to?"

Darren shrugged in reply and, after a moment, the two moved closer to it. They searched the area around it, sweeping away sand to see if there was any kind of hint of a structure that had once stood there, but found only hardened sandstone, which the door seemed to have almost chemically fused to. They passed their hands over it, searching for some kind of hidden compartment, but found only solid oak wood under their fingertips. After a bit, and with some hesitation, Darren put his hand on the doorknob.

Gerome looked blankly at him as though he had lost his mind. "It's just a door," he stated flatly. "It's not like it's going to lead us anywhere."

Darren sighed. "Yes, I know," he said. "But the only place left for us to potentially gather information is from the inside of the doorframe."

Gerome hesitated for a moment before nodding in agreement. Darren slowly and carefully turned the knob, afraid that the door might break from the exertion after years of disuse. As it swung open, the two saw something they had never seen before.

On the other side of the door was a world full of colors and noises and bright lights which they had never witnessed before. It was near blinding and deafening, and yet it drew them to it unavoidably. It was like something from a dream, yet it was something they never could have imagined in their wildest dreams.

Gerome swung around the outside of the door to the back of it. Nothing was there. The world was unchanged from the one he had been raised in. Dead and lifeless and brown. He looked through the door from the other side, and he could see nothing. But swinging back around to the front, he was once more exposed to this new and different experience that not even the stories of the elders could compare to.

The two looked at each and nodded in silent agreement. Guns prepared in hand, they stepped through the door.

The other side was a different world entirely. It wasn't just a narrow corridor as it had looked from the other side. It was all encompassing. Bright and colorful and loud, like a million societies bundled all together inside of it and around them. They looked back at the door as it swung shut behind them. It looked completely inconspicuous - a door to an abandoned building that not even they would think to enter. But peeking through once more, they could see their world, still there on the other side.

They took a moment to try and take in the surroundings, but it was overwhelming. They gripped their guns tightly, like their lives depended on them, and waited for their ears to adjust.

Darren looked at his friend, his head pounding. Gerome looked hardly any better. But a thought was coming to him.

"Do you think... this is the old world?"

Apocalypse

Gerome perched himself on top of a miraculously still standing steel beam that had once been the cornerstone of a skyscraper wall. He sat, one leg dangling off, and looked out over the ruined landscape. Greenery still had not succeeded in cracking the dry, dead dirt and concrete ground that spanned so far off into the distance. Broken buildings as far as the eye could see dotted the horizon. Even the mountains that were said to have once stood tall and majestic had been broken apart, and were now ragged and dangerous expansions of despair that had become the everlasting, overwhelming world in which they lived.

Gerome's best, and only, friend leaned against the beam Gerome had posted on. "You believe any of the stories?" he asked.

Gerome didn't look down at his friend. They had spent many years together. They were all the other had. Correspondingly, they had a sort of sixth sense, always aware of the other's presence or lack thereof. "You mean about how this all happened?"

"Yeah."

Gerome sighed and looked at the position of the sun. It was getting near sunset. At night time, the bottom dwellers would come out and search for any fallen that they might be able to eat. Up this high, however, he and Darren could sleep in peace. Knowing that they would need to return to the underground before the sun rose, the bottom dwellers would never dare climb so many floors of a building, even if they knew there were a hundred fallen there.

"When I was a kid, my mother told me that several generations ago, the nations had created such devastating weapons that, when the peace treaties failed, no one survived."

Darren looked up at his friend. "Then how are we still here?" he asked.

"Yeah," Gerome replied, "I never really understood that part either."

Darren nodded and looked out at the setting sun. The atmosphere was so thick they could stare directly at it for extended periods of time without sustaining damage. The sun looked like a dim flashlight being shone through thick cloth. "My dad told me that the earth itself ruptured open and the elements erupted forth and tore through everything on the surface was ripped apart."

"That explains why the bottom dwellers are still here. But what about the rest of us?"

Darren shrugged. "Same problem."

Gerome slipped down from his perch, and the two set to work setting out sleeping bags to rest for the night. As they settled in, they both continued to think on the question.

"I guess the only people who could have known are long dead," Gerome mumbled out loud.

"And the records have probably been gone for a few hundred years," Darren agreed.

They fell asleep shortly thereafter, knowing that the next day they had more ground to cover.

Life

Cador sat in his house at the dinner table, across from a young girl that he had rescued from a group of gang members who had had less than good intentions for her future. She was nervous, but had begged him to be allowed to spend more time with him after what they had been through. It had been some months since he had saved her. In that time, they had grown together as friends, and he had been able to teach her many things that she had never thought possible. Tonight, however, he had promised to explain something that she had never quite understood, and that was what was causing her nervousness.

This was why he didn't make many friends these days.

On the table between them was a collection of ancient scrolls and books, collected over a period of several lifetimes. Cador had kept them carefully stored away, so as to preserve the legacy that had been held within their pages. Next to each of them was a sword, stained with dirt and blood over the years, and in a variety of styles to match the literature it accompanied.

"What are these?" Sarah asked.

Cador opened the book closest to her, visibly the newest style, from some time in the Victorian era. Next to it was a cavalry leader's saber.

Sarah leaned forward to glance into the book. Her eyes quickly gave away her confusion. "This is a picture of you," she said. "But... You don't look any younger in it. You look exactly the same, other than the facial hair and haircut."

She grabbed the book and flipped through the pages, looking at the inked in images and glancing over the text beside them. It was a military records book, with an effective catalogue of units who had served under General Cador's command. "This..." she mumbled as she read, "This is definitely real. I've heard some of these names in school. But... Not yours. How did...?"

Cador pushed the next book towards her. A much older, more fragile style, with an inked in date on the front page of 1673. Sarah flipped through the pages once more. A journal with detailed drawings on some of the pages, by a child of...

"This can't be possible," she whispered. "There is no way that you have..." As she turned page after page, getting more frantic the further she went, she came across a very detailed face. There was no doubt about it.

It was Cador.

The next was a scroll. She rolled it out to see that it was a letter from the church, authorizing King Richard III's request to take one Sir Cador off of the front lines of battle and hide him away, so as to protect him from the invading powers.

Sarah looked up at Cador, more confused then ever. She groped wildly in her mind for some kind of answer, and the more she thought, the less of a reasonable conclusion she could come up with. These pictures were far too similar to Cador to be ancestors. They could be no one but him.

Cador waited patiently for the question. The same question. The same question he had answered countless times. The same question that he had been asked for his entire life.

"How long have you been alive?"

Cador sighed and lifted the sword closest to him, and visibly the oldest. Chipped and rotted away by rust, made of weak bronze, at the time it had seemed unstoppable.

"Entirely too long."

Anthropomorphism

Growing up, you hear a lot of stories where the main character is in some form or another an animal, and yet they can still talk, think philosophically, and other traits that are typically only attributed to humans. At the time, I never really thought anything of it. I thought that the characters were cute, and I liked to imagine what my pets might have been thinking or doing when I wasn't watching, so it was kind of cool to be able to see those ideas be put up on the big screen. But looking back, seeing how many children's stories were told this way, and especially how popular they were, I find myself questioning why.

It's not that I don't think it's a good or effective way of telling a story. Clearly it has been very effective. And it's not something particular new either, as we can look back through history and see that often times the stories of animals were told, and how they moved about the land and found homes and new ways of living that allowed them to continue to thrive, and we have passed down those stories as a way of teaching lessons.

So that leads me to the question of why? Why did we start telling stories this way in the first place? What lead us to think that, rather than telling the story of a man, we would tell the story of a dog, or a bear, or a horse? Why tell the story of a pack of wolves migrating to a new home, when you could just as easily tell the story of a tribe of humans?

Perhaps it was told this way to give the stories more of a sense of timelessness. After all, while humans have grown and evolved, finding more advanced ways to affect their lives and the lives and world around them, animals have not quite done the same. They exist in a co-dependant world that operates on a cycle, giving their lives a greater meaning that they cannot fully comprehend, but that they know on some level that they have a role to play.

It's the circle of life, as one animated, animal-centric movie would tell you.

Of course, I find it hard to believe that that was ever an intentional decision. But perhaps it never was intentional. Perhaps there have always been stories of man and beast, but it was the stories of beast that were more able to last through the generations, because they were the ones that stayed relevant. They were the stories that could be observed and verified, while the stories of man drifted into legend over the centuries.

Sight

"Alright, Sam. We're going to start taking the wrappings off of your eyes now. Are you ready?"

Sam nodded his consent, not quite trusting his lips not to betray him. He had been born since the day he was born, over seventeen years prior. He had been selected for a test procedure that may or may not be capable of reconnecting the nerves in his eyeballs to allow him to see. No one was quite sure whether or not it would work, or if would carry with it any dangerous side effects, and it was possible that it could damage him even further. But Sam had elected to go through with it. He had hoped beyond hope that he would be able to see the colors that had so frequently been described to him, but that he could never fully comprehend.

He felt the wrappings slowly be uncurled from around his head, and the familiar feeling of light falling on his face began to return. It was a warmth and, through his unseeing eyes, it gave a sense of presence that was otherwise unattainable. But as the wrappings came further and further undone, there was something more. A lessening of the blackness that had been his life that he couldn't fully understand. Something new. Something different. A sudden joy erupted in his heart, but he tried to stifle it, afraid that failure would make him hurt more than he ever had before if he let the joy take him.

He wasn't sure how long he had been under. They had given him some kind of medication that had put him under so that they could preform the operations without fear of his reactions. But with circumstances as they were, there was no telling how long the surgery would take. Sam didn't even know if it was night or day.

He felt the last wrapping be pulled away from his face. His eyes were closed tight shut, because he was afraid of what he might see. "Sam," came the gentle whisper from the nurse. "It's time to open your eyes."

Sam took a deep breath. He opened his eyes only a sliver before shutting them tight again. The brief moment of sight had been intense. The world was so bright! He couldn't make out anything he had seen. Where once his world had been nothing but darkness, in that split second it had been nothing but light. He waved his hands wildly, still afraid of what terrified noises he might make, and after a moment of desperate and quick footsteps, he could see through his eyelids the light dimming.

He tried once more. He got his eyes fully open, but things were blurry. A mess of lights and colors bombarded him. They were dim and muddy, strange on his untrained eyes, but it was so much more than he had ever experienced before. He didn't want to close his eyes, afraid that it would all go away and he would know that he had only been dreaming. But he had to blink, and for a moment it went dark again.

But his eyes opened a second time, and the world was still there. After blinking, things became a little sharper, a little more well defined. They moved past his eyes like the sound of a passing car, not quite in tune with their actual movements. He heard the nurses approaching before he registered that he had seen it.

"Sam?" she asked. He looked at her. He could see a mixture of shapes and colors, not quite sure what they were. It took him longer than he would have liked to admit to realize that they were her face. "Can you see?" He reached out slowly and tried to place his hand on her face. He didn't fully understand depth perception and he missed, but for a moment as it passed in front of his face, he saw his own hand. It was pale. Even in the dimmed lights, he could see that it was lighter than her own skin. And a thought abruptly came to him.

"I thought I was black," he whispered to the nurse.

She smiled brightly at him. "It worked!" she called out in excitement.

Complexity

A common theme in tales of the medieval variety is that, regardless of magical involvement, political enemies and alliances are the driving force. Thirsts for power through marriage and war are heavy issues of the times, and the main motivations for many villains. Clamors for land and wealth, women and power, things that are on the mind of every single member of royalty. Being able to balance this with the individuals desires of characters is what marks the truly skilled when it comes to writing these kinds of stories.

I have... attempted to do this in some small projects. And I have found that I am less than proficient. I don't think on a grand enough scale to properly imagine how a king might feel about his people, his neighbors, his allies, and his enemies. I have enough trouble trying to think within the confines of one kingdom, much less several. On even just a single continent, there can be upwards of a hundred kingdoms depending on how they are divided, and then if one was to consider any nearby island nations, or month long voyages across the ocean...

That kind of dedication and imagination is where world building gets its name from. This isn't just a pocket area in which a story takes place. This is a world with a history, where every action truly has its ramifications, and actions need to be fully thought through before they are taken, for fear of creating a future where one's children may be doomed to life long servitude or exile.

I wish that I could think a world so thoroughly through. A world in which every law is fully developed, where treaties and documents can be written and have far felt impact. Where people of even the lowest livelihoods can have a role in the events that are too transpire, and small acts of heroism can lead to great reward down the road, and the smallest thievery can lead one to taking part in a scheme to take over the world.

I suppose the biggest obstacle to being able to create this kind of world is my desire to write hastily. To have such a defined world, one would have to spend a lifetime there. Perhaps several lifetimes. One would have to think of consequences before actions have even taken place. One would have to create a history for a place that does not yet even exist. Know the wars that have already transpired, the alliances that have been forged, and how strong or tenuous the bonds that tie hundreds of people together are. Know the way children are raised by family and teachers. Know the way history is viewed by different people, with a dozen biases producing a dozen different results.

And these are all things that are to be taken care of before the story even begins. The story itself, even if focusing on only a small number of characters, would take these things and expand upon them. Show the ways in which the very fabric of the world can twisted and turned in such a way as to produce the desired results. Rewrite laws to create a brighter future. Make promises that may or may not be seen through. Make deals that my weaken what it is those characters are searching for, but without doing so they could never get close. Having to deal with the emotions that come from making those sacrifices, and trying to come to terms with all that comes with it.

And, worst of all, trying to find a way to balance of all these things so that it feels like you are reading a novel rather than a textbook.