Prompt: A female assassin turns out to be a queen, hired by the royal family that stole the throne from hers.
“We got another letter from her,” Arch-Adviser Grackle said nervously, nearly wiping the sweat from his forehead with the envelope. He spoke in hushed tones, because anything louder might get his name written down inside one of those black letters with the gold writing. Continue reading
Prompt: A football player is the high school standout. All the teachers love him and he never gets in trouble, but none know his dark secret: membership in the mafia.
The big game was in its final quarter. It wasn’t the final game of the season, and the crowd was only half the size it would be if their team had the same record as last year, but it was the big game for Hans Allred. It was the grand finale of his collusion with the Allred crime family. Continue reading
Prompt: A young necromancer exists in a world filled with fairy tale tropes. They set out on a quest to prove that dark magic does not make you an evil person.
Nothing would ever convince him that gratitude was not the appropriate response. Yes, Orkey Simth was still very young, just fifteen, but he knew right from wrong. He knew that undoing death was right, and one day the others would be convinced. Hopefully it was this day. He could smell something awfully dead inside the cave. It needed his help. Continue reading
Prompt: What do Atlanteans think our world is like?
Miles below the Pacific ocean, on part of the ninety percent or so of the seabed that had never been sea with human or camera eyes, there stood a city of spires that spewed billowing clouds of boiling black chemicals. Life at the tips of these vents was nearly impossible, but polychaete worms and ghostly crabs and bacterial mats managed. Continue reading
Prompt: A reporter’s friend suffers a major injury. It seems like foul play was involved, but the victim can’t remember anything that happened that day. The reporter investigates.
It was the third attack that week, but Detective Carter didn’t yet know they were trying to complete the set. They wanted all seven of this week and all seven of next and all seven… Continue reading
Prompt: A young filmmaker survives a plane crash and is discovered by a tribe of Amazon warriors who have avoided contact with men until now.
There are so many myths when it comes to the Amazon. White people think of it as a magical place, the same way they think anything without a dollar sign attached (or too many dollar signs) is magical. No matter how much it shrinks they’ll always think of it as an untamed expanse of poisonous frogs and mosquito swarms and little fish that can sense the presence of your most delicate orifices. Continue reading
Prompt: Nobody dared go near the tower, as a fearsome dragon lay at the top. One day a knight rode up. “Do you need help to get down?” “Please.”
His horse could only go so far before the magic took effect. The animal had no idea what was happening, just that its legs were giving out. It collapsed onto its side with a panicked whinny, tossing its rider into the dirt. They should’ve been safely in the shade, but nothing was right in the area around the tower. Continue reading
Prompt: A detective finds a hidden underground technological race pulling all the strings
It was proving to be a very rough year for detective work, something especially discouraging because of the three rough years that preceded it. Mauritius Cook dealt with the lack of business by picking up a few hobbies. There was no money to facilitate the picking up process, so he chose free things like bird watching and sketching the ocean from the beach. Continue reading
Prompt: There’s a huge lizard-like creature in front of me with scales shining like black diamonds, its glimmering eyes staring fixedly. It seems to say something solemnly, but unfortunately I can’t hear anything.
I’ve always valued pets more than people. We’re living in an age where I don’t even have to explain that anymore. Everybody just knows how awful everybody else is. A violent person is a maniac, a rapist, a murderer, a thief, a gangster, a politician even… A violent animal is just a scared or hungry one. Continue reading
Prompt: A man discovers all his memories and desires are not his own, merely the amalgamation of a video game’s code. He must now decided what to do with himself.
“And what should be my reward, were I to take up this task?” the knight asked. He wore red and gold, and was thus under the command of Lord Sprice. He was supposed to help the villagers regardless of reward, but they had their own sets of arcane rules. Rumors swirled of shadowy texts kept not in bookcases, but in the shadows of such cases. Continue reading
Blaine Arcade 