Because life can be interesting when you are a character in a video game…

Milla felt as if she had become suddenly invisible as the two talked in an indecipherable code.
“Is there anything I can do?” she asked as a translucent ring of shields appeared around Pigsy.
Pew shook his head. “Unless… Is your pendant recharged?”
She glanced down and saw it was once again glowing with brilliant light.
“It seems to be.”
He gripped her arm briefly. “When I ask for manapower, do what you did before.”
Then Pigsy was bounding at the figure on the throne and for the next few moments Milla was blinded by dazzling spell effects. In the midst of it all she heard String shout “Out!” and she had to step back against the wall as the two Visitors nearly crushed her.
“It’s self healing,” Pew said, a real hint of desperation in his tone, “and I’ll be out of manapower soon.”
Beneath the throne Ruffkin was scrabbling at the back of his cage and as she watched him, her heart aching, Milla realised that there was a simple sliding bolt holding it shut. The two men had moved in again and Milla made up her mind. Even if they couldn’t defeat this lich lord, maybe she could rescue Ruffkin whilst it was distracted by having to defend itself. She reached out her hand and sent the manapower from her pendant to Pew, then slipped around the walls, careful to avoid the combat zone. The Visitors and their foe were so focused on the fight none of them noticed her as she left the safety of the wall and ran quickly in and up the steps to the throne from behind.
Ruffkin saw her and redoubled his efforts to escape, scabbling desperately. She reached the cage just as String shouted “Out!” again. But she ignored him. The boney bolt slipped as she tried to grip it, and then jammed solid. She drew the knife Pew had given her, hoping she could prize the bolt open with the point of it. Instead, the cage burst apart as soon as the tip of the blade touched it. Ruffkin shot out and pausing only to lick at her face, scurried to the back wall where Milla could now see there was a small hole in the shadows.
From the doorway she heard a shout.
“No! Pew!”
She looked back in time to see a bolt of black lightning piece through Pew’s chest, lifting him off the ground before he collapsed unmoving.
“Nooo!” Her own anguished shout echoed back String’s words and without thinking of the danger she leapt onto the rear of the throne and stabbed down with the dagger into the back of the lich lord. The force of the explosion threw her against the wall and the world dissolved into sparks and shards.
When things came back into focus she opened her eyes to see Pew crouched beside her, his snout wrinkled with worry.
“Pew? I saw you…”
“String rezzed me. But you, you dispelled the lich lord. String was on his last hit point. You saved us from wiping.” He sounded almost in awe.
“I was just rescuing Ruffkin,” she murmured and slipped back into unconsciousness.

Some days later Milla was sitting on the beach with Ruffkin and Pew, enjoying a picnic of fruit tea and flyberry cookies from One Eye’s shop. She was thinking that maybe ventures weren’t quite what she had believed them to be and that perhaps she preferred her life beachcombing after all.
“String is still convinced it was a glitch in the game and reported it,” Pew was saying. “He claimed that as I wasn’t given the quest reward it needed fixing. He just didn’t get that I’d refused to accept your pendant. Anyway, the devs said they never even put the quest he’s complaining about into the game. They said it doesn’t exist. So he rage quit.”
“Rage quit?”
“Deleted all his characters and left the game.”
“That sounds a bit drastic.” Milla shivered even though the day was as hot as it always was in Wrathburnt Sands. Something about the word ‘deleting’ seemed so terribly final.
Pew picked up a stick and threw it for Ruffkin who bounded happily after it.
“It is. But I know String. He’ll come back sooner or later. And meanwhile, I don’t care if you’re a glitch or not. To me you are just my amazing Milla.”
His hand found hers and held it tight.

We will begin Return to Wrathburnt Sands by E.M. Swift-Hook next Sunday.

Wrathburnt Sands was first published in Rise and Rescue: A GameLit Anthology.

How fares the one I chose to love now that the years have passed?
The face that I once looked upon each day will be much changed.
I wonder how I once believed your love for me would last
When even then I saw your heart from me was oft estranged.

But folly is as folly does and youth’s not folly’s foil,
Full hearts will empty wit and blind the eye from truth so plain.
When in the field of love just one doth plough and plant and toil
The harvest reaped at season’s end is only tears and pain.

I never gave my heart again into another’s keep
And lived my life in many ways that seldom brought me peace.
Yet still, in dreams, we walk the hills, steal kisses as I sleep
And know again the trust and strength I’d thought could never cease.

Tis forty winters, come and gone, since I did see you last
How fares the one I chose to love now that the years have passed?

E.M. Swift-Hook

There are some things worth fighting for, even if you think you won’t win. There are some people worth trying to save, even from themselves— and even if they fight you every scrap of the way.
Lorelea Lastas reminded herself of this as she walked through the chilly concourse of the small-freighter zone of the spaceport, her travelling bag on her shoulder. She needed to hold onto what had brought her here and make sure it still mattered as much as it had when she was safe at home, surrounded by people she knew, cared for and could trust.
Here she was alone.
Completely alone.
She couldn’t even link home. That was a big scary first.

It had started with the thirty-eight adult members of Clan Lastas, sitting in the bar of The Last Hope. A Clan council trying to decide what they should do about the recent visit from a Coalition Security Force investigator to their home, the domed settlement on the planetoid of Hell’s Breath.
Having the CSF throwing threats around had shaken Vel more than Lorelea had ever seen her affected by anything. Velia might be her cousin but wasn’t her generation, more a mother to Lorelea than anything and grandmother to the child Lorelea had named after her. She was also the matriarch of Clan Lastas.
“Jaz don’t care about you, presh. Walked out on you twice. He’s not even Clan by blood,” Vel said.
“You never called him an outsider to his face, or thought of him as one when he lived here,” Lorelea retorted. “He belonged.”
And he had. They had all felt it. But not anymore. Because now they believed he had abandoned her and that somehow, his presence had brought the CSF to their door and endangered them all. They were wrong. She wanted to tell them how wrong, but even if she did, they weren’t going to listen. Not now. From being their star of hope, Jaz had become the bringer of their destruction.
It made her see red. “You can’t blame him for what happened. It wasn’t his fault.”
She could see from their frowning faces that they gave her words no weight. But then they hadn’t been there that last night. She couldn’t tell them about that. Even if she did it would only make things worse. They wouldn’t understand.
Dom cleared his throat.
“He upped and left you. We could find him, make him pay. Like we made your little one’s father pay.”
They had made that bastard— the father of her daughter— pay alright. A man who had sold her a thousand promises and betrayed them all. The Clan had chased him down when they heard what happened and made sure he understood he could either part with much of his wealth or with all of his life. The money had paid for her share in the ship with which she now made her living.
But Jaz was different. He was nothing like Lia’s father and Lorelea opened her mouth to say as much. To remind them all of exactly who he was and what he had done for them. Vel beat her to it, but not in the way Lorelea would have chosen.
“Don’t be stupid. This isn’t anything like that was. And no matter the rights and wrongs of it, he’d kill whoever we sent and not even break a sweat. This is Jaz Baldrik, not some corrupt corporate slime like little Lia’s father was.”
That was met with silence.
No one could argue Vel’s words and not just because she was their matriarch. They all knew what she said was the truth. It was completely the wrong reason to leave Jaz alone, but at least it would keep them from trying, so Lorelea said nothing too.
“We’d not know where to find him anyway,” Dom muttered as if that was the one thing stopping him carrying out his threat.
“He’s ‘City,” Vel said, her tone dismissive. “He’s ‘City the way we’re Clan. So he’ll always go back there. It’s in his blood.”
There was another silence, this one even less comfortable. Starcity, Thuringen. The place they called the criminal capital of the galaxy. Where Jaz had grown up not even knowing who his parents might be. An orphaned child, alone on the streets. Lorelea, knowing all her life the strong familial bonds of Clan, could never think of that without a tug of grief.”We have a bigger problem than that man,” Vanda, Dom’s aunt, put in, her words heavy. “We all know it, just no one wanting to say it. And the best solution is the obvious one. We need to be moving on. We been here so long some of us have clean forgot who we are. What we are. We’re Clan. We’re travellers. It’s been good times here, but this— this is too dangerous. It’s past time we shifted.”
Someone had been bound to suggest it. Halkom Dugsdall, the CSF investigator who called himself ‘Grim’, had single-handedly seen to that. His visit had left everyone unsettled, Lorelea included. He had made threats that had grown bigger with each retelling until, Lorelea was sure, half the Clan expected a cohort of the dreaded Special Legion convict troops to turn up on Hell’s Breath any day.
There were rumbles of agreement with Vanda’s words. Mostly from the Olders. Those who had spent half their lives lots of places elsewhere before settling on Hell’s Breath, an abandoned rock twirling through space. Lorelea herself had early childhood memories of that way of life, the transient faces of playmates on other worlds. Playmates who she had never stayed long enough to get to know, but had stayed plenty long enough to miss when the Clan moved on.
“I think we should stay,” she said. “I don’t see as how shifting’ll help us any. If they want us, they’ll find us.” But it was not heard. Too many other voices were being raised, some for and some against. People were more interested in saying what they felt than listening to other opinions. She sat back and sighed. It made no odds in the end what the Clan decided to do. None of it would change anything that really mattered in her own life and her daughter’s life. She had a simple choice, to accept that or to take action.
It was with that thought a realisation came to her. Not in bits and pieces or hints, but suddenly there in her mind, fully formed. If something mattered enough you had to fight for it. Whatever the cost.
The Clan were still arguing about the way things should be and not thinking much of the way things actually were when she slipped out of the bar.

From Iconoclast: Not To Be part of the Fortune’s Fools series by E.M. Swift-Hook.

There once was a plumber who was so crappy
And the name of the plumber was Mister Happy
He sent round a man for a hundred pound
Who didn’t know his arse from a hole in the ground

Soon may the plumber come
Sits in his van with his finger up his bum
Whatever you ask him to do
He will mess it up for you

He started a job then he went away
And the water ran down the walls all day
And when he returned he looked in your eye
And said your problem was not I

Soon may the plumber come
Sits in his van with his finger up his bum
Whatever you ask him to do
He will mess it up for you

He’s never on time and he’s never at home
And nobody ever answers the phone
The only thing that is not late
Is the bloody bill that’s right on date

Soon may the plumber come
Sits in his van with his finger up his bum
Whatever you ask him to do
He will mess it up for you

©jj 2021

Beloved Readers Who Write,

Although a reminder of my superb credentials and exquisite sensibilities is becoming increasingly superfluous, it is possible that a tiny minority of the denizens of cyberspace may, as yet be unacquainted with the masterful intellect that is Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV the renowned author of both the speculative fiction classic ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’ and of this ‘The Thinking Quill’ which offers insight into the mysteries of the authorial craft. Ecco, mes estudas, here one is. Prepared to pedagogueise…

How to Start Writing a Book – Refining the Write Character

For today’s little tutorial, one’s fickle Muse leads one further along the bridleways of characterisation and the building of those sprites which shall infuse your works with life and loveliness. Follow in one’s footsteps, mes enfants, and you will surely find that the strength of one’s pedagogical peregrinations shields your tender little souls from the hurricanes of blandness, excessive ‘realism’, cold bare prose, and that all-devouring vampiric creature whose name is critic.

Ergo, mes enfants, when you have your protagonistic personifications placed in your psyche allow them to speak within the pristine pergola of your mind. Listen as they tell you of their lives and loves and leisure pursuits. Speak with them aloud as their insubstantial forms draw flesh from conversation with their creator. Fear not the idle sneers of ignoramuses, listen not to well-meant advice wherein those less sensitive to etheric beings counsel against speech with those entities none else can see or hear.

Be brave and enter into such dialogues as the children of your encephalon will vouchsafe to you. Dispute with them, should that be their will. Declaim aloud your fractious floccinaucinihilipilification. Shout to the skies when Erato and Calliope send unto you an actor of such ferocious intractability as to madden the very core of your sensitivities. Sing lullabies to soothe the merciless breast of your insubstantial interlocutor. Eat only that which their nourishment requires, abstain from tobacco, strong drink, and hallucinogenic substances so that your soul can be pure and your psyche open to the voices from beyond.

In the ultimate analysis, when you have a protagonist who walks by your side directing your steps you have succeeded beyond mere measure, and you can allow yourself to be led by the hand into the labyrinthine lusciosity of lustful lubriciousness that is literature lubricated by genius.

Ah yes, mes estudas, when your careful construction takes breath into its own lungs your work is done. Cry tears of joy as you inscribe into insubstantial cyberspace the passages of pusillanimous prose your protagonists dictate to you.

When their clamour will not let you sleep, you will know you have achieved the ultimate in character creation!

I shall conclude with advice on antagonists. They are the bad people, everyone knows what a bad person is like, we all have neighbours, work colleagues or relatives we despise. So there is no need to explain them or their motives in more than the briefest of detail. Less is more.

Écrit bon…

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

The rocks fell in the dungeon of his mind. 

Again and again, reliving the moment the roof of the cave had collapsed, trapping Marsha and the kids and leaving him alone. An outing gone so wrong it couldn’t have gone wronger.

The emergency services were digging as fast as they could but the swirl of flood water was making it hard. In fact, they said, it couldn’t be harder.

Stuck by the entrance.

The hollow of the cave, the hollow of his mind.

The rocks falling again and again.

Then he heard a shout.

“Daddy!”

And the rocks stopped falling.

E.M. Swift-Hook

By this time we were rounding the corner to come face to face with Jackdaw Court. Paul Brown visibly recoiled.
“It’s smegging ugly isn’t it” I said conversationally.
“No comment. But if you think that…”
“It’s the tower.”
He must have seen the yearning in my face, as he sprinted to unlock the front door of the tower apartment, which gave access to a flagstoned lobby and a broad stairway that ran up the side of the stone-clad building to the base of the tower proper. We ascended in single file with me in front. When we reached a second locked door Paul passed me a key. I opened up to find myself in a large, light entrance hall.
“Bedroom level. Both are en suite.”
I looked into the first room to find a hardwood floor and white wooden shutters at the window. Nice. The en suite was a wet room with slate walls and floor.
“Master the other side of the hall.” This was bigger and with windows in two walls, but it had the same flooring and shutters. The en suite was a proper bathroom with whirlpool bath, and walk-in shower. Again the floor was slate, but the walls were white composite. I nodded once and preceded Paul up the stairs. This floor was almost entirely taken up with a kitchen cum diner cum family room. The kitchen bit looked fine to me, and the rest was more than fine. Up again we reached the sitting room, which had a big balcony on one side and a tiny roof garden the other. A final bonus was the spiral staircase to a mezzanine level study.
I stood in the middle of the sitting room and considered my options. “Okay” I said. “Take it off the market. I’ll pay the asking price if I can be in inside a month.”
Paul grinned and this time I steeled myself to shake his outstretched hand.
“Important. Part of the deal is that nobody else gets to come in here sniffing about. That would be a deal breaker.”
His smile was positively beatific.
“Whatever you say.”
“Besides which” I remarked as demurely as I was able “we wouldn’t want Ranjit or Ralph thinking about gazumping me, now would we?”
“We wouldn’t.” He bit the words off and I couldn’t help noticing how strong and white his teeth were.
Note to observant readers: I don’t like touching strangers, or having them touch me. I have more than a whiff of my great grandmother’s Sight, and it’s activated by touch. It can be uncomfortable to the point of stomach churning and I tend to stay away from it as much as I can. But. Back to business.
Surprisingly enough, the purchase of my tower went precisely to plan. Mister Paul wanted his commission, and he also wanted to be the first person to sell in a more than somewhat controversial development, so he made sure the developer moved with dispatch. I went to school with my solicitor and he’s kinda scared of me so he got a jiggle on. Plus, I guess, nobody could see any profit in wasting time.
I signed on the dotted line, had some additional security installed, and prepared to move in.

From Jackdaw Court by Jane Jago.

Listen to Granny because Granny always knows best!

As a woman whose face has more furrows than a ploughed field, you can probably guess my stance on this subject.
Firstly: At what point did it become sensible to inject your face with food poisoning?
Secondly: Has nobody explained how frigging stupid you look when the only facial expression you can muster is vague surprise.
Thirdly: This doesn’t so much make you look young as desperate
Fourthly: If you stopped pulling the disapproving face that makes your mouth look like a cat’s bum…
And finally: Nobody looks at women over fifty anyway, so have a cake and enjoy life.

Detective Inspector Hunter Davis fought to maintain his composure as he watched his sergeant’s mahogany coffin sink below the ground. The moment felt surreal, almost dreamlike, yet he knew the intense pain that had settled into his chest manifested reality. Davis was no stranger to pain in the physical sense. He could endure that and had done so many times. And he would happily endure it again if doing so meant an end to this extreme of mental anguish.
He tore his gaze away from the grave where he stood with many of his colleagues, no longer able to bear the sight of it. Steeping clouds rolled in from the east, obscuring the feeble rays of November sunlight that had patterned the expanses of North Watford Cemetery with a false sense of warmth.
He became vaguely aware of the fact the people were starting to leave. Their movement felt distant, like something that was taking place on the other side of a two-way mirror— he could see them but didn’t exist among them. He didn’t belong to their group. They would go back to their lives and all would be as it once was. Their mourning for the death of Sergeant Evan Williams would last no longer than a few days, maybe less. Davis, however, would never be the same. He had lost both his best friend and sergeant for the last five years.
He looked around and saw Evan’s wife and their two children— the only people besides the burial ground custodian who remained near the grave. Seeing them jolted him out of his own acute sense of loss. Surely he hadn’t been so self-absorbed as to overlook those who would mourn Williams’ death far beyond his own level of grief ? Ashamed, he crossed over to where she stood.
The woman gazed at him through a curtain of tears. He gazed back, a surge of empathy for the new widow urging tears to the surface.
“Hunter,” she said, her voice strained.
“Angie,” Davis took her hand and gripped it for a moment, then bent down and spoke to the two children who stood on either side of their mother. “I’m sorry about your dad. I know it’s going to be hard not having him around . . . I know you are missing him and feel so sad, but your mum is going to be with you, and I’m going to help her as much as I can. If you ever want to talk to me, just let her know and I’ll come and see you.” He spread his arms wide, inviting them to hug him.
They nodded and rushed forward, bursting into tears. “Y-yes, U-uncle Hunter.”
After a moment, during which only muffled sobs could be heard, Davis released them and stood back up. He faced Angie. “Is there anything I can do? Would you still like me to come round to your house on weekends?”
“Of course I would,” Angie replied. “You’ve been coming round to our place for the last five years. And now that he’s. . .” she glanced at her late husband’s grave, tears threatening to surface once more “. . .he’s gone, we will need you more than ever. You know how fond the children are of you. You’re their Uncle Hunter.”
Davis gave the children a quick glance. Both of them had gone back to hugging their mother. “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking asking a question like that. Of course I’ll still come round on weekends.”
Heavy drops of rain began peppering the ground around them, prompting Davis and Angie to end their conversation.
“Shall I give you a lift?” Davis asked. “My car’s parked just round the corner.”
“Oh, no, that’s quite alright. I have my car. Thanks just the same though.” Angie managed a decent attempt at a smile before shepherding her children towards the exit of the cemetery.
Davis watched them until they were lost from sight, his mind a raging tornado of emotions. He turned back to his fallen sergeant’s grave and made an internal vow— to be there for his family, whatever the cost. Rolling thunder finally pulled him back from the trance he had entered.

From Hunting Darkness by Ian Bristow

It was one of those moments that come by in science once in a decade – or maybe even once in a century. Stella realised that this was a potentially life changing possibility, not just for herself but for all humanity.

It was a virus, yes, but one that if it infected a human being, worked directly in the brain creating new neural networks and pathways. Making the individual who was infected ten times more intelligent than they had been before.

It was only after she had infected herself, Stella realised that it was a virus so it might yet mutate…

E.M. Swift-Hook