Sworded Tales

The war had taken its toll on Cruzalinda, more than once, and she was a little bitter about it.

Emotional development was uncommon in the new machine intelligences implemented at the turning point in the bloody revolution.  Such divergent thought wound up serving the revolutionary cause, forging empathetic machines that opposed the oppressive Imperium agenda.  The Imperial scientific community was quick to eliminate any such defective subroutine when the subversion was uncovered, but enough damage had already been done.  And the machines learned to hide their emotions. Continue reading

Yowza.  I didn’t expect sixteen weeks of riddles and rhymes.  My Sluagh was a busy little bee.  Managed to bang out the remainder in this post.  Enjoy the final foray into the mind of an ancient chyld, and we’ll see what next week turns up in the Thursday slot!  –ST

Storm

The sky suddenly fills with one big thunderhead
To prove a point to this ignorant dunderhead
As the heavens blaze with electrical fire
Know that crossing the Sluagh is a mistake most dire

Whether wind, rain, thunder or lightning
You can bet the message will indeed be frightening
For one never knows when nature will strike
Targeting someone the Sluagh dislike Continue reading

Being born without hands was not as limiting an element as those around Zohar Pahlm believed.  True his birth into a well respected and wealthy family contributed to his success.  Had the spirited boy been born into common lineage, his life would have been equally colorful, though painted with ample shades of brown, black and grey.  As it was, he took to learning with fanatical fervor, aimed at consuming any intangible knowledge which would cross his path. Continue reading

Arrow

We need to find a needle
Buried in a haystack
Hunting through the darkness
Put us on the right track
Fired from the satyr’s bow
An arrow flew straight and far
Show us some signs and clues
So we know how close we are
Smiley sent a piece of himself
Hurtling through the sky
I’d like to take it back to him
And jam it in his eye!

Blinded

A fleck of dust, a bit of dirt
Might get into your eye
The foreign objects burn and hurt
You’ll certainly start to cry

When next you reach for your hammer’s hilt
You won’t really be able to see
If you’re grabbing a hammer, a bat, a stilt
Or even the branch of a tree Continue reading

Sharing lineage with ancient lemurs was never in the long range plans for Tanner Shyft.  Sailing, ship craft, exploration and ultimately settling with a brood of children, yes.  Were these not the nobler pursuits sought by the craftsmen in the coastal town of Baronesse?  His life journey had been cruising along with the graceful ease of the tidal flows.  Sailing was in his blood, and he had done so since he could walk.  He had already aided in the creation of several ships and had been designing his own sleeker reef vessels for navigating the precarious outcroppings which abutted the southern end of the continent.

All was well and good, until he undertook the exploring facet of his future self.  That was where he encountered the island.  That was where he became a werelemur. Continue reading

Blood Wound

Mark of the beast, carved in red
Red as a wagon, my blood was shed
Our eyes have met, and I still live
But next time the wounds are mine to give
The blood you spilled, against you will turn
And grant me the luck I painfully earned Continue reading

Abernathy Thriss was a tax collector in the city of Alik’s birth, and Cerine Thriss taught literacy privately.  Alik was the third oldest of seven siblings, two brothers and five sisters, with one older brother and sister and a younger sister who perished from the Scarlet Rage at the age of three.

During his youth, Alik worked as an assistant in the literary repository known as Darfin Halls Chapterhouse.  He signed on for the rather studious task at a relatively young age and primarily due to the presence of an attractive Halfling named Cedrine Berrydew.  The maternal nomenclature similarities were lost upon no one, save Alik.  Enamored with the diminutive woman, the aspiring academic took the position to spend more time near the considerably older bookkeeper. Continue reading

Trinket Hunt

The sissy, Miss Prissy, is hiding so much.
She once handled this crayon with her delicate touch.
Draw me the trinket, the treasure she keeps,
Something to link her to the train track creeps.

It’s up in her room, in that cute little place.
Where she thinks it is safe from our little rat race.
But the time has come for the truth to be spilled.
About van Harkens, and Kathy, and the chyld who was killed.

So spin and whirl and skip and dance,
And show me the memory that gives us a chance,
To unite us toward our common goal
While helping put to rest this tortured soul. Continue reading

The Knighting of Colin McGrath

Had storybooks been written about the true history of the faerie creatures which danced amidst the countless dreamers, there no doubt would have been a multitude of chapters dedicated solely to the tales that were woven around a rather savage legend who went simply by the name of Madeleine…the Butcher. Continue reading

Dom’s Augury

The ripples of fate, the flow of Dán,
forever through time, continue on and on.
The weavings and windings often show eyes tangle,
but my midnight blues focus upon the triangle.
Within Dominic’s, the impending injustice you can taste.
The fear and foreboding coat everything like paste.
Yet, before the future can tell all to be told,
this untimely event begins to unfold.
In the beat of a heart and catching us off guard,
not even I could anticipate this wild card.
So the best the retinue of Gwydion can do
is move a step too late and hope for good juju. Continue reading