fantasy

Twitch Stream Stories Redux #2: Cheater Wings

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

These stories were written live on stream based on prompts provided by the viewers. They have been edited, with this second more in-depth edit occurring much later, but not meaningfully rewritten or expanded so as to preserve the spirit of the exercise. Sadly, the prompts themselves were not recorded until many stories in.  Sometimes the prompts were silly challenges, or quirky thoughts, or dark ideas, or utter nonsense.  I did my best each time.

If you enjoy this, please check out the other activities from the stream. If you would like something longer and much more thoroughly planned, simply investigate my more traditional work at the top of the page.

Cheater Wings

prompt provided by Simlover48

The altar to the Earth god Gohees was buried deep in the ashen forest, surrounded by trees that had looked an inch from death for six thousand years. Fineesh’s path to it would normally have been fraught with danger, but she was there in her capacity as the Earth-friend.

And not just the Earth-friend, but the peacekeeper for all the other gods as well. She was water-friend, fire-friend, air-friend, and Earth-friend. She could show no favoritism, only respect. Gone was the age where the arguments of the gods sundered continents. Now they used one human from every generation as their friend. Fineesh, a girl of fourteen, was but the latest.

Continue reading →

Heirs of Cain: Venus in Quarantine

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Severin Molochi is in love with a goddess.  She’s not the kind found in a church, or that you can take with you to church for that matter.  She’s of the old, muddy, animal line of Cain: those who gained power in the world’s first murder.  Just as Severin and his goddess Wanda are settling in their new home, setting up her future dominion, her jealous siblings come calling, but they’re not after her.  They want every gods’ most valuable asset, the mortal chosen as the conduit between them and the people, who in this case happens to share her bed.

Heirs of Cain, a gothic horror fantasy erotic thriller novelette series, continues here.

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 27 minutes)

Heirs of Cain

Venus in Quarantine

After the thirtieth entry or so I realized what was so familiar about the process; it was as if these unsuspecting people were being added to a menu, complete with their prices, and the intention was to serve them all to a solitary but reliable customer who would appear out of the dark and damp at the same time each day without the ring of a doorbell, like a fox fed once and then forever entitled.

And her name was Wanda Blasphemer Pelts. My Wanda. My whole world, to have her tell it and me experience it. She did not permit me what used to be the most basic knowledge of position spatial and chronological, which still prevented a precise understanding of both my location and the year, but I knew that she and I had recorded three months of paradigm-gnawing history together, written in an ink of sweat and a sensual but possession-gnarled hand, our bodies intertwined like two pages stuck together, the words of experience on her, still wet, transferred messily to my blank by rapturous spineless contact. Continue reading →

Update on my Choose-your-own-Adventure

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Greetings all.  This is just a quick update on my one and only gamebook: Through the Bottom of the World: A Choose-your-own-Speed-run.  It’s a novel length romp through a fantasy land, but each path is only about as long as a short story.  Every decision gets you closer to one of many wildly different endings, some complete duds, some mastery of reality itself, and some in nooks and crannies between all that.

This gamebook is heavily infused with the format of video game speed running, with the protagonist usually on a quest to complete her life as quickly as possible (a handy time is provided at chapter’s end).  A fresh edit has just been completed, so I’m reposting the introduction to maybe catch a few new eyes.  The whole gamebook is free to read, same as all my other work.  So forge ahead and pick a path in the lands of Shook and Cain!

Through the Bottom of the World – beginning

Heirs of Cain: Venus in Transit

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

Severin Molochi is aboard a train… but to where?  And come to think of it, what year is it?  He has lost his place and time in the world.  Could it be the work of the bewitching predatory woman who enters his private car, wrapped in furs, with designs and desire in her eyes?  Heirs of Cain, a gothic horror fantasy erotic thriller novelette series, begins here.

(estimated reading time: 1 hour and 33 minutes)

Heirs of Cain

Venus in Transit

by

Blaine Arcade

The number one… followed some time later and after strenuous mental investigation by the number eight. What was the one? One of the seven? One of the six? One of the two? All of these number were suddenly in my head, throbbing as if of great importance, but they were a distraction.

What had I been searching for? It was difficult to recall as I had my forehead pressed against the cold glass of a locomotive window, eyes chilled as if dangling just outside by threads. What I saw was snow-cloaked firs by the thousands, with a stormy winter tailor still in the process of garbing them. Continue reading →

Tourney at the Hanging Gardens (finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Practice

The palm reader couldn’t find his friends. He knew he was their friend because he had read that information right off his own third hand, of the four that he had. How he got four was a mystery. One day the second pair was just there, one scratching his back while the rest stretched into the air with a morning yawn.

There was no one to mentor him in the skill of palm reading; it was just something he learned by immersion, like someone dumped into a foreign land adjusting to the language. Almost everyone had palms, so it seemed strange nobody else responded to that pressure the way he naturally did, by struggling to understand them. Continue reading →

Tourney at the Hanging Gardens (part three)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Multitasking

Babylon’s sky was the only sight humanity would ever see that could truly convince them they had left their world of origin. Even the celestial ocean swimming with stars was still their world, despite being inhospitable. The hanging gardens themselves could be felt and thus understood, but they were just grit forced deep into a wound and healed over. The realm itself was foreign, and they were all immortal because they didn’t belong there.

As such the endless fields of orange and gold clouds, while breathtaking and sometimes even breathkeeping, eventually wore on the soul like the unblinking eyes of a disapproving parent. The only refuge was heading for the core of the gardens where there were walls on all sides and mindless chatter about nothing could bring them back to a sense of normalcy. Except the weather. They couldn’t make soothing small talk about that, as Babylon didn’t have any. Continue reading →

Tourney at the Hanging Gardens (part two)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Respawn Chat Log

There was a place inside the hanging gardens of Babylon where ghosts gathered. It was sealed off from its endless colorful sky, lit only by the pale white energy of a crystal formation at its center, standing more than fifty feet tall. It had tree-like branches, more than thick enough to support the weight of living creatures, but only the ethereal dead were present.

The ghost of Flippers sat on one such branch, kicking his feet, just waiting. Nothing in the game stayed dead forever. The crystal tomb was much more like a waiting room or a penalty box. Really it was an admirable extra step from the game’s developers. A lot of other multiplayer games just cut to another active player’s camera when the countdown to respawn started. Continue reading →

Tourney at the Hanging Gardens (part one)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Atlantis wasn’t the only advanced civilization to suffer a sudden and precipitous fall; there was also Ys, Norumbega, Arcadia, and others… at least according to the lore of the hit video game Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Jenny Handerly (who goes by Handzy online) is also seeking her own path to paradise, through the game.  If her ragtag team of friends can win the next Hanging Gardens tournament she’ll be set toward the future of her dreams, but there are plenty of obstacles in the way, in the gardens and well beyond them in the ruthless, youth-obsessed, and often bigoted world of E-sports.

Tourney at the Hanging Gardens

by

Blaine Arcade

Tutorial

The party had journeyed deep into the caverns of the hanging gardens of Babylon. It was not a place that knew true darkness, so no matter how far down they went they would always be able to see their way. Still, it was as dim and cool as it ever got in their paradise, and it had them all on edge.

They hadn’t constructed the gardens, and they didn’t know any of those who had, so all of the small questions about its functioning were allowed to fester and grow into giant frightening shadows in the back of their minds. Continue reading →

Challenging Applause (finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(reading time: 47 minutes)

Sneak the Applause

Little Wars was underway, and both Forward Commander Snaps and Lord Ludmenti were missing it. The Challenging Applause that they had worked so hard to assemble, and actually assembled at the last second, was now fully deployed upon the battle board, inspiring and commanding Zoukas’s volunteered myrmidons against Tarkower’s crystallized shards of wit and their pocket Atlases.

They’d had precious little time for recovery after their scuffle with the Wonderland expectoration. Felicity was promptly refilled with flower petals to replace missing wads of cotton and sewn back up. Hans accepted no treatment for his loss of quills, and Momotaro shrugged off the bruises in his fruity flesh. Root Beer and Nero had partaken of the ‘drink me’ concoction and returned to their normal proportions. Continue reading →

Challenging Applause (part three)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(reading time: 1 hour, 3 minutes)

Scatter the Applause

It wasn’t hard for her two lieutenants to guess where the Olympian went directly from under Formaldeheidi’s dress, as within the hour the entire country knew the situation. Minimil was put on lockdown. All traffic in and out that was not Foraging and Reconnaissance was ceased. The main overhead lantern was given special oil so it burned with a reddish alarm flame. All citizens were encouraged to get doubly indoors and pack their most essential belongings should they need to evacuate.

Their escape route was not mentioned however, so many of the citizens assumed they would be alright. Minimil was a country of refugees where not many were born who were not myrmidons, and all the ones who were came from Queen Zoukas alone. Confidence was not placed in parents, or even in the goddess, but in Forward Commander Snaps and Lord Gumbonero Ludmenti of the twin handfuls, of the freshly announced Challenging Applause. Continue reading →