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Twitch Stream Story: The Crossing Guard

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: Vampires and werewolves are exposed to the human population, and so the military begins a cleansing operation using their weaknesses. The story follows a vampire woman trying to live through the cleansing.

Life was nothing but painful contradictions. That was the the new truth they had to embrace. A silver chain would take your freedom, but convince everyone you weren’t dangerous. A necklace of garlic would dampen your powers, burn your skin, and mark you as an outcast. If you accepted these you wouldn’t be killed. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Tick Tock Lullaby

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: The first child raised by artificial intelligence goes out into the human world for the first time.

Elta was the city of the future. All the signs said so, and they weren’t liars like the signs down in the medicine district. Even in its earliest stages it promised the world’s cleanest streets, automaton public servants, and a grand subterranean clock that would keep everything on schedule for all time, provided someone occasionally went down and scraped off the rust. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Measure of a Monster

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

An Incremented Dragon’s Tale Inspired by the Art of SamJFraser

There was no need to count the number of paces. Their path was already trodden, ten thousand times over. Every footprint was visible, as they went deep into the dirt. Mother and daughter moved through easily enough, even in the seventh day of their journey, because their booted feet fit perfectly into the prints of old. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Sob Stories

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt – A young hero, determined to live a plain simple life, has avoided his destiny so far. Fate is getting annoyed and resorting to ever more subtle ways to trick him into heroism.

It was a part of the world that hadn’t seen rain in over four years; there was no spot better suited to clearing his mind. He lived under a shelf of rock that kept the desert heat at bay. This was his first entire week of life without interruption, which allowed him to plant a seed of hope in that massive shadow. Perhaps he could stay there forever. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Stitching Stanzas

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A poet pixie has to use her writing to save the world, but she only speaks in haiku.

It was the darkest place she’d ever been, and it wasn’t until that point that she truly understood what darkness was. Before, up in the forests, it was just like the weather, coming and going and never taking up all the air. There was always something to break it up: fireflies, the moon, the stars, the distant glow of human villages… Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Brutal Sacrifice

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: An old but beautiful woman meets the last dragon in a canyon. The dragon moves in to kill her; what stops him?

The canyon was not difficult to find, given the plethora of dragon bones around its edges. None of them were intact; every last skull and wing had been crushed to chips or powder. The mass grave was left, undisturbed, for decades. Even though every part of a dragon was rich in magic, nobody wanted the bone chips, for they feared their use in enchantments posed a risk of bringing the beasts back. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Gooperson

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: The mad genius woke from his cryo-sleep, groggy, his mind fading from consciousness every few seconds, and emerged from his lair.  He looks out and sees a utopia ripe for the picking.

It wasn’t a very dignified rebirth. Dr. Larry Gooperson spilled out of the cryogenic pod and collapsed onto a flowing floor of living wood. He sputtered and spat, expectorating globs of the blue nutrient fluid that had remained undigested. He held one hand up, before even lifting his face, expecting his robotic assistant to hand him a towel or a steaming beverage. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Never to be Unearthed

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A young female forced-to-be-leader of a great army struggles to come to terms with her fear of power and being the greatest leader ever.

The antique computer banks were their greatest possession. They had no water source, no reliable farming, and no livestock. The only thing their mobile town could do was crunch the numbers for everybody else who couldn’t keep their machines dry. They were the town of Flopheart, they were on the giant worn tires of an age gone, and they were led by a girl barely out of her teens: Rusher Larn. Continue reading →