Monday September 2nd, 2019

The exercise:

Write about a: dominion.

2 comments:

Greg said...

Empire building? New Netflix show? Showing the boys how to build a pillow fort? Enquiring minds demand answers!

Dominion
“Do you know anything about Ezcaray?” asked Scuffles. They all looked at him, and he looked back, then shrugged.
“No,” said Raka. “It sounds like something he—” she pointed at Pestilence “—would give someone.”
“That’s eczema,” said Pestilence easily. “You can get artistic with that. I once gave a whole primary school eczema so that when you lined them up in order of height the blotches and scaly bits were a 200:1 scale map of an Italian village.”
“Creative, fam,” said Famine. “I like it.”
“This has been… fun?” said Raka. “I need to go find someone to feed to Rijbka though, so I’m going to leave you. Do you want the doggie back? She seems to like me.”
“You’re warm,” said War. “She’d cuddle up to an erupting volcano if she could. Yes, stick her on the hippo and send her over.” He looked over at Scuffles. “I thought I asked you not to conjure hippos for her.”
“We needed transportation,” said Pestilence. “Though I didn’t know they were so hard to steer.”
“Elephants are easier,” said War. “You can take them over mountains if you have to, but hippos? They’re good in swamp-land but they get almost as grumpy as the Boss if you let them dry out. Send them back; we need to find this Ezcaray place and see what’s going on before it disturbs any more of the Sleepers. Can you imagine what mood the Boss is going to be in if he finds out there’s even just two of them awake?”

Death watched Mercy climb the stairs to the musicians’s gallery where she amused herself plucking at the strings of a harp, and then he sat down on the high chair. It was still slightly warm from where Mercy had been earlier, but the chill of the afterlife quickly dealt with that, and frost formed on the arms and legs of the chair. He gazed across the room, feeling faint vibrations throughout the valley around him as the people he was hear to meet realised he had arrived and reacted, and permitted himself a single, bony smile. His dominion never ceased to exist, but him being in it gave it weight in the world.
Famine, he said, and though no sound emerged from his skull, the words resounded inside Famine’s head like an alarm-clock going off in an echo chamber.
Sis! That’s not teapot!
Famine, shut up. Mercy has very carefully made sure to drop some documents into my possession, which is very unlikely to be a coincidence. They’re in the Library. Go and read them and find out what it is she wants me to think.
You couldn’t do this yourself?
I suspect a trap.
You could at least tell me to be careful, fam. Where’s the broship?
Why… why can I smell fish?
In the Library, right. On my way, boss!
Death tried to frown, forgetting for a moment he was wearing his true face. Light reflected off bone and the room seemed to get colder. Then the door to the Long Hall opened again.

Marc said...

Greg - just thought it would make for a good horsemen prompt :)

Death talking to Famine is one of my favorite things in this tale so far. The smelling fish lines... so great :D