#at this point the Disembodied Voice is just playing animal crossing and picking up people that it thinks are Neat

[waffliesinyoface]

actually i wanna post about one of my random OCs, who is a play on the "child character who is ACTUALLY an adult, no really" trope because im a firm believer in that trope being funny if its used properly. (when its NOT used properly, that is when i get Annoyed. fire emblem awakening my beloathed...)

ANYWAYS. The gist of it is that she's a mid twenties college student and low-key weeb. She gets killed/isekai'd by Truck-kun, everyone's favorite plot device, and then shows up in limbo with a disembodied voice talking about reincarnation and she's very excited because "holy shit this is just like konosuba" and immediately agrees halfway through its monologue. And then she's like, hey, if you're already going to the trouble of reincarnating me in a new body, does it have to be this one...?

She doesn't get access to a character creator screen or anything but The Voice is like "I don't see why not...?" and lets her make suggestions.

So she starts asking for things like "red eyes" and "waist-length hair" and "pointy ears" and "able to use lots of cool magic" and "ooh, can i be an elf or a half elf or whatever" and so on until she catches herself mid-rant and goes "ah, sorry, that's probably a little bit chuunibyou, huh?"

NOW, THE IMPORTANT BIT: the Omnipresent Divine Voice is not actually speaking english. It does not understand english. It doesnt even have context for language. It just "says" concepts and her brain interprets it as english. So anything she says back to it is translated back in a way it can understand. Normally this isnt a problem! It's like using machine translation for a simple conversation. A little clunky, but it works.

So, it doesn't hear the term chuunibyou as it's understood, it hears "中二病" and translates it as "middle schooler disease", after she spent several minutes listing things she'd like for her new body. It can't tell the difference between a request for traits and her admonishing herself for being lame.

She realizes her mistake when she wakes up in the new world and realizes she looks like a fucking eighth grader. Just the absolute worst. And THEN she realizes that, because she requested being an elf, she's going to look like that for a long, long time. (Longer than she thinks, even - it interpreted the "disease" part of that as "stunted growth" . Not that she figures that out until she actually meets other elves..) A key part of her outfit are boots with really big heels just so she can try to eke out just a little more height and respectability.

And the real kicker? Because she interrupted it mid-explanation, she didn't realize that the world she got isekai'd into wasnt a dragon quest-esque world with demons to defeat, it's like. Recettear. Atelier. Low stakes slice of life fantasy nonsense. She has enough magic capabilities to knock holes in a mountain, but there's no fucking use for it. (She's so overtuned that she makes runic glyphs and stuff appear in the air while firing spells. Not because magic requires it or anything, but because "it looks cooler". She makes illusions of special effects happen because she thinks magic should look like that.)

Instead, to make her way in this new world... she runs a shop. Because even though she's living in a fantasy world; she still has to work retail.

#important background lore: there have been several other reincarnees before her. #there WAS a demon overlord it was just defeated several centuries back by the REAL hero - a middle aged plumber #at this point the Disembodied Voice is just playing animal crossing and picking up people that it thinks are Neat #OC - Morgiana

[pulaasul]

Facing an Empress 2

Mitsuru executes Gai, this time with Artemesia.

Chapter 1

FFN I Ao3

---------

It's been a few days since Hiden Intelligence had a new president.

With Amatsu's new power, he turned his sights on Kirijo.

A hooded person had attempted to place a belt buckle onto Aigis but failed. She was able to defend herself from the supposed non-consensual equipping of things onto her.

"Are you certain of it Aigis?"

"Yes, Mitsuru-san," Aigis nodded. "Fuwa-san was the one who attempted to put those belt bucklers on me," She confirmed. "Although, he did not act like he was the same person."

"I also noticed an uncanny presence back when we first met the Kamen Riders." Mitsuru hummed. "It's like how we first discovered Minazuki as a different being than Sho before they merged."

"Amatsu may be worse than Ikutsuki than we originally thought."

----------

"Kirijo," Amatsu growled. "I have no business with you, scram."

"You really think yourself superior to everyone else, huh." Mitsuru observed.

"Of course, I always give 100%, no 1000% in everything I do." Amatsu scoffed.

"1000%," Mitsuru raised an eyebrow. "Awfully full of ourselves, are we?"

"Only successful people can give 1000% of everything," Amatsu gloated. "If that's all, I am in a hurry; I have two companies to run."

"We are not remotely done, Amatsu," Mitsuru brandished her rapier. "You had Aigis attacked by someone you've been controlling."

"And do you have your evidence, Kirijo?" Amatsu raised an eyebrow. "It is unbecoming of a CEO to accuse someone without evidence."

Mitsuru simply played video footage of Aigis's attack on a holographic screen she had purchased days ago, followed by a video clip of Amatsu forcing the same Belt Buckle onto a humagear.

"Fuwa Isamu, who wasn't himself, attacked Aigis, last night," Mitsuru gave the facts of her investigation. "Imagine my surprise that there was another sentient being trapped inside Fuwa's head."

Amatsu did not waste time and summoned his weapon and immediately threw it at Kirijo, specifically at the phone that had been playing the video footage a moment ago.

Kirijo saw it coming. She immediately sidestepped and dodged the projectile.

"Amatsu, without the armor, what are you?" Mitsuru questioned as she pocketed her phone and took out a gun.

"I'm a successful businessman, that will always give my 100%, no, my 1000% into all I do." Amatsu proclaimed.

"I see," Mitsuru closed her eyes as if trying to calm down. "Regardless, you attacked my friend and forced something on her, prepare for an execution!" Mitsuru declared as she unceremoniously pointed the gun to her head and pulled the trigger. "Artemisia, show no mercy!"

A masked lady in a ball gown appeared behind Mitsuru and immediately began spinning her whip as soon as she appeared.

A myriad of icicles began to appear in front of the Kirijo before they started flying towards the man.

"When the five horns cross, the golden soldier, Thouser, is born." A disembodied voice declared two animal constructs defended Amatsu from the ice projectiles before converging on him and turning into the man's golden armor.

Mitsuru paid no mind to the transformation as the giant lady behind her began lashing her whip all around.

Amatsu simply dashed forward, dodging the whip strikes along the way, before picking up the weapon he had summoned earlier.

"Jack Rise! Jacking Break!"

Amatsu pulled the knob on his sword and pushed it back down and slashed the air, summoning a bear construct that immediately charged toward Mitsuru before it turned into an icicle.

"Ice?"

Mitsuru stretched her hand and caught the icicle and threw it aside.

Before Amatsu could even react, Artemisia's whip straightened and performed a downward slash, forcing him to raise his sword and defend himself.

"H-heavy." Amatsu grunted before he angled his sword and deflected the straightened whip off of him.

"Are you just going to let your pet fight for you, Kirijo?" Amatsu taunted as he continued to defend and deflect the whips off of him.

"You have your abilities as a Kamen Rider, Amatsu, this is mine," Mitsuru stated. "However, this is not a fight, this is an execution."

"Or you're just weak that you can't fight yourself?" Amatsu taunted once more.

"If someone else heard that line, they would've fought you bare-fisted and still come out victorious." Mitsuru shrugged the taunt. "Finish this, Artemisia."

Artemisia withdrew her whip and swung it above her, separating it into several parts before it rained down on Amatsu.

Multiple purple energy constructs came flying out of Amatsu's weapon and formed a shield above him before using his weapon to block Mitsuru's incoming rapier.

Mitsuru continued her assault and kept thrusting her rapier at the golden-armored man, which left Amatsu with no time to counter-attack with his attention being divided by two attackers.

Mitsuru was successful in backing Amatsu towards a nearby wall. Once she was satisfied with her opponent's distance to the wall, she ducked and let a lone icicle pass through and hit the man's wrist, slamming his hand to the wall.

Amatsu soon found himself restrained to the wall via the ice that froze his limbs to it

"Let me go, this instant!" Amatsu tried to break free from his frigid restraints but to no avail.

Mitsuru ignored the man's protests and removed both of Amatsu's transformation trinkets from the belt, causing his armor to vanish, before dropping them to the ground.

"Next time you decide to attack Aigis or anyone connected to me, I'll have myself an ice sculpture of you displayed in my office, with you in it."

Mitsuru summoned Artemisia once more and created a large chunk of ice with its tip pointing at Amatsu's throat and promptly left the restrained man struggling to get himself free from his frigid restraints.

#mitsuru kirjo #kirijo mitsuru #kamen rider #persona 3 #kamen rider zero-one #kamen rider zero one #kamen rider 01 #gai amatsu #amatsu gai #aigis

[autumnwoodsdreamer]

For the prompt can you do Nat x Tony “when will you be home?” That is if you’re taking requests, if not don’t worry xxx ❤️

You’re in luck! I actually already had something along those lines sitting in my drafts folder!

.....

Red-eye flights are ideally inexpensive, one is guaranteed to get a seat, and waiting around in an almost empty airport is so much more manageable than an airport swarming with constant comings and goings.

It was currently quarter-past midnight. Natasha's flight was at 2 am.

These days, she no longer began new missions mere seconds after completing a previous mission, inventing covers and speed-reading through classified files while running out of taxis and catching last-minute flights. She wasn't sure how life had worked out this way, that she could go entire weeks without ever so much as glimpsing a restricted mission report. She was quite pleased with her current circumstance, even if extended periods of tranquility tended to make her nervous.

As much as she enjoyed the peace, she knew it wasn't to last, so she wasn’t all that surprised when Coulson contacted her and assigned her a new mission: a deep infiltration operation requiring an intricate and delicate cover, the likes of which she specialized in.

The call came through two hours ago, waking her from a deep, sound sleep (another benefit of her new routine). Without hesitation, she accepted the assignment. She had never declined a mission in all her espionage career, and even though she was now a member of a ragtag group of superheroes tasked with keeping the world safe, she was still an agent of SHIELD, first and foremost.

Immediately awake, she dressed and packed a rucksack of essentials in thirteen minutes flat. Sneaking out of the Tower without a farewell to her team, she caught a taxi and instructed the driver to drop her off at the airport.

Now she sat in a little airport cafe, strategically placing herself in a far corner at a small table, ignoring her cup of coffee as she read through the mission files on her smartphone and prepared herself for the mission.

Focussed on the heavily-detailed files, she tuned out the calm music, the quiet clinking and clanging of dishes and cutlery, and the infrequent but loud and emotional reunions or farewells of strangers.

Never absolutely ignorant of her surroundings, she registered the presence of a newcomer approaching her small table but easily dismissed them as a waiter. She didn't bother tearing her gaze or attention from her phone... until the person grabbed an empty chair and noisily dragged it over to join her.

She tensed for a confrontation but, when she looked up, all she saw was a very familiar face.

“Stark?” Despite her confusion, she calmed down as she realized the only danger she was in was danger of an awkward conversation with her teammate.

“Hi. Your coffee’s cold,” he said, simply, as he sat down in his obnoxiously acquired chair and placed a fresh cup of coffee on the table. He put it down in the middle, as if cautiously offering food to a ferrel animal, afraid of an attack.

“What are you doing here?” Natasha demanded, ignoring the coffee.

“Caught you heading out the Tower with a backpack,” Tony explained, his gaze fixed on his own coffee—a pitch black, triple shot espresso, Natasha noticed, but decided it was an insignificant detail in this picture. “You looked like you were heading out on a mission or something.”

“You know my missions are classified and dangerous,” she said with a blatant and serious tone. “Why did you follow me?”

He smirked, a trademark expression for him. “I know for a fact not all your missions are dangerous. Playing personal assistant to a mad scientist?” He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head.

“That was dangerous,” Natasha protested. “I worked for you for a week, and within that time, you managed to incite the rage of a rogue inventor and a shady technologist to the point that an army of drones tried to obliterate you and ended up destroying an entire expo city. And you nearly set the house on fire three times while I was there—don't think I forgot about that.”

“But did you die?” he asked and laughed a moment later. “My life's not like that all the time; it was just that week, I promise.”

“I don't believe you. Now: you didn't leave the safety of the Tower and follow me all the way to this airport to exchange banter. What do you want?”

Tony shrugged, casually, and slipped his gaze down to the coffee cups sitting idle on the table. “I don't want anything, Romanov,” he answered, plainly.

“Don't play dumb: you want to know where I'm going.”

“We've been on the same team for five months now; I'm used to you just randomly sneaking off on missions for Fury. And, okay, I'll admit: I am curious about something.”

“I don't guarantee an answer,” Natasha warned, slowly crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair.

He read her guarded expression but it didn't deter him from launching his questions, rapid-fire. “Why do you even bother being an Avenger if your loyalty is to SHIELD? Why play on one team when you're already quarterback on another? I mean, you switch sides like a chameleon changes colour. Why?”

“It would only be switching sides if one assumes SHIELD and the Avengers are on opposing sides.”

“Cryptic. Cute, but I expected that.”

“I was never actually considered for the Initiative,” she confessed, lowering her voice. “I was meant to be a part of the Secret Avengers Initiative: basically, the super spy division. Somehow, I ended up on the big leagues team, but it's just a ‘wrong time, wrong place,’ situation. This team takes on rampaging robots, tricky terrorists, and deranged dictators. The really loud stuff; it’s... it’s not my forte. But SHIELD-sanctioned missions call for my unique skills. That's why I accept these assignments, because I don't have a lot to give in this world, but what I can, I do.”

“Okay. I think I get it.” Tony paused to take a long sip of coffee. He kept his gaze on his cup for a moment longer as he seemed to consider. “So... why do you stay then?"

She opened her mouth to answer but silence—between them and in her own mind—met the simple question.

Everything she did was calculated and measured. Every action, every word—everything had to have a reason and it had to work towards a desired outcome. She didn’t do superfluous things—on a mission, that could cost precious intel or even lives.

But staying in Avengers Tower, staying on with the team... Fury hadn’t ordered her to do so and she didn’t feel like she did it just to follow Clint either.

She shrugged. “It’s home.”

Tony breathed out a light laugh that read as understanding rather than teasing. “Alright. So when will you be home?" he asked. Awaiting her reply, he sipped again at his coffee in an attempt to appear nonchalant.

“Probably sometime in January,” she said. She reached across the table and finally accepted the fresh coffee. It was full of cream, sugar, and she detected a hint of spices. Vaguely, she wondered how he knew, but dismissed the thought.

“Do your missions always take so long?”

“I was supposed to be your personal assistant for longer. Much longer. That's not how it worked out. Usually, I can determine and control when my cover is blown...”

He smiled at the jab.

They lapsed into silence after that. It was... strange. Companionable but not all that familiar. Still, neither felt pressured to fill it.

Music played on in the background: the sedate, acoustic versions of pop songs radio stations only played in the late, late hours. People came and went; the inventor and the spy watched the touching reunions and farewells as detached observers. Time ticked away. A disembodied, impartial voice called out boarding flights at regular intervals.

Words passed, unspoken, between the two as they smoothly, mutually avoided eye contact.

The voice over the loudspeaker called out another call to board. Natasha stood up and swung the rucksack over her shoulder.

“That's my flight,” she said, simply.

“I’ll walk you to the gate,” Tony offered, pushing his chair back and standing up.

They walked in step through the airport to the departure gates, letting the silence settle for just a bit longer.

“So... January?”

“Huh?” Natasha paused in the doorway to the winding corridor that would lead her to the plane. Fellow passengers continued on their way, oblivious.

“You'll be back in January, right?” Tony asked, his nonchalance fracturing with an ever so slightly furrowed brow.

“Yeah,” Natasha nodded in confirmation, her own casual mask well in place. “Not sure when exactly, but January, definitely.”

“If you want... you could call when you get back,” he said, averting his gaze again. “I could come pick you up. Unless you like taking a taxi...”

She let her own nonchalance fall away so she could give him a genuine smile. “Thanks.”

She waited a beat longer. She'd spent the last two hours watching so many farewells play out, but she hadn't expected one her own.

The voice over the loudspeaker called for boarding once again; Natasha took it as her cue to leave.

“Goodbye!” Tony called as she disappeared out of sight, just too far away to respond or even let him know she heard.

She boarded the plane, found her seat, and set her gaze out the window to watch as the lights of the airport and the city slipped away.

For the first time ever, she actually felt like she was leaving something behind... something worth returning to...

Something that felt a lot like home.

.....

Tagging @littlemsstark3000 and @katiktwilight and thanking all who read my stuff; you’ve been a great help in getting me over a bad bout of writer’s block! ;D

#tony stark #iron man #natasha romanov #black widow #ironwidow #tonynat #tonynatasha #avengers #avengers family #fic #prompt #prompt fill #mini fic #oneshot #request

[spookyspaghettisundae]

The Bloody Ransom

The coach carriage thundered down the muddy path. Its driver rhythmically whipped the two black horses that strained to draw the carriage along. A fog so thick you could cut it with a knife made it impossible to see into the dreary woods surrounding the narrow forest road.

The downpour of rain had turned into a drizzle, yet one that cut into the skin of the driver’s face with the biting wind and bitter cold of winter. Sitting inside this coach, a little girl no more than twelve winters old felt the cold too, oblivious of her breath condensing in front of her.

Instead, Magdalene stared wide-eyed at the tall and spindly man sitting across from her. His skin looked ashen and wrinkly like an old parchment and his yellow eyes like that of a snake. Over the course of minutes since their departure, his countenance had changed—from that of a regular man in fine clothing to what she thought was a snake-man. His face had become more gaunt, and he was taller and more slender. Or maybe it was the gloomy morning light of the black forest they rode through, and her eyes played tricks on her.

One thing she was certain of—he was no human. When the stranger sensed her gaze upon him, he averted his attention from the misty pines outside. His thin and chapped lips curled into a leering smile. The little girl felt more chilled by the two rows of tiny, pointy teeth than the air of deathly cold seeping into the wagon and numbing her fingers.

“I am your new caretaker. Your parents hired me, deary,” the stranger said. Every word sounded faint, of rustling papers, and oozed with malevolence and something else. Especially the last word—saying it and savoring the syllables like a tasty morsel. It dawned on Magdalene what she heard in his voice: hunger.

Immortal hunger.

She pursed her lips and did her best to show no fear.

“I take it that father pays you a king’s ransom for your new duty,” Magdalene said while staring daggers at the snake-man.

“Yes. Handsomely, indeed. I will take very good care of you,” the stranger replied.

Magdalene’s chin quivered. She knew it was all lies. The lies did not upset her as much as realizing the sorrow she felt stirring inside her upon hearing her own ruse. Her father had been dead for five years. Mother had warned her of people like this snake-man. The girl had been thoroughly taught to beware of strangers who might try to whisk her away just to demand a ransom from her wealthy mother. Such was the life of aristocracy in Crimsonport.

But the girl had not been wary of this snake-man. She had, in fact, waited for him to pick her up off the foggy streets of that blighted city, luring her into the coach with promises of sweet treats and warm tea.

As if on cue, a chorus of cawing and flapping wings indicated that a murder of crows flew by outside.

“Whoa,” shouted the driver, followed by horses neighing. The carriage came to an abrupt halt, and both its passengers inside the coach tilted an inch by the remaining momentum.

The little girl stared at the snake-man with a steely gaze unusual for a child of her age or station. The humanoid creature narrowed its eyes at her, and its leering smile drooped into a scowl as its face contorted. He looked like he was about to snarl at Magdalene like a wild animal when they both heard a loud thud outside the coach. His eyes darted to the side to peer outside the coach. He never blinked.

“Stay here,” snake-man hissed at her, without a shred of false friendliness left in his voice.

He opened the coach door and stepped outside. The thin sword from his side and the pistol from his holster had sleek metal sounds to each of them when he drew them both simultaneously. Magdalene gasped when snake-man flew backwards into the side of the carriage. A crossbow bolt stuck straight out of his neck. He clutched and yanked it out with an inhuman ferocity. Instead of blood, something chunky and purely black sputtered out of the hole in his neck.

He hissed and fired a shot towards the trees, but he had targeted something or someone outside the girl’s field of vision. The sound of the gunshot echoed and filled Magdalene’s ears with a persistent ringing sound. Another shot followed only seconds later, this time from a different flintlock pistol. It hit the snake-man in the chest. Magdalene scooted away from the coach door to the opposite end and held her breath in fear.

A figure clad in a dark tricorne hat and dark long coat emerged from the forest’s edge, appearing thoroughly drenched. A cutlass in one hand, a smoking pistol in the other, face veiled by a blood-red scarf.

“You cannot kill me this easily, fool,” snake-man said in a deep and voluminous voice that was the opposite of how he had sounded just moments ago. When telling this tale later on, Magdalene would say that he sounded like the demon inside of him had now dropped its final vestiges of a human guise.

In the blink of an eye, the attacker bridged the distance to the carriage with a few limber steps. The clash of steel between snake-man’s rapier and his foe’s cutlass rung throughout the quiet forest as they crossed blades in a series of energetic thrusts, swings, and parries. Sparks flew as the curved blade sliced along the rapier and missed its mark.

Snake-man cackled and stepped back. An unnaturally long tongue shot out of his mouth like a spear. His assailant’s blade almost shone in the morning gloom as it swung around, and Magdalene missed what happened because she blinked. In the next instant, a piece of snake-man’s tongue flapped around violently on the muddy turf for several seconds even after being disembodied. He had dropped his gun and gripped his own mouth with a hand while black mucus spilled out from in between his unnaturally long and spindly fingers.

“I can kill you easily enough because I know what you are, monster,” said a stern woman’s voice, muffled from behind the red scarf.

She dropped the pistol in her left hand and had drawn another flintlock from her coat in a flash, so quickly that Magdalene gasped. The cloud of smoke and muzzle flare exploded with its shot even before the dropped handgun had hit the ground of the muddy forest path with a squelching sound.

Snake-man staggered back into the side of the coach and hit it with such force that the entire wagon shook and wobbled as if it had been hit by an elephant. Magdalene began to wonder if he was not much heavier than he looked. Although his back was turned to her, she dreaded the thought of seeing his face now. She stared at the back of his head, pleading silently to the good God that he would not turn around to look at her. He slid past the coach window, down onto the ground, and out of her sight with painful slowness as he stared at his veiled attacker.

“How? How—how did ye,” the creature asked in vain. Every word from his lips was muffled and revealed great agony until the speech turned into unintelligible gurgling and sputtering.

“Silver bullets? You clods underestimate us puny humans,” the woman with the red scarf muttered while stepping closer to the dying snake-man.

She tipped her hat up with the muzzle of her pistol as if to get a better glimpse of the creature up close, and a lock of tussled brown hair bobbed out. Without any ado, the blade of her cutlass whistled through the air a few times, always followed by disgusting sounds akin to a butcher going to work on a dead animal. Flesh and bone being chopped through. She proceeded to hack snake-man’s head off. Magdalene closed her eyes with all her might and recoiled into her laced, expensive coat.

Several heartbeats later, the girl dared to peek between her fingers and then leaned forward to look outside the window. Kneeling down after what must have been a dozen swings, the woman in the tricorne hat lifted a severed head with black fluids dripping from its neck, paying no attention to the girl.

“Disgusting,” the woman said when she held snake-man’s head up high enough as if to look into its dead eyes before producing a burlap sack and dropping the dubious trophy into it. She tied it shut with a thick twine.

Another figure emerged from the fog and treeline. Like the woman in the hat, he too was wearing a tricorne and a drenched long coat, though his face was veiled by a dark green scarf. Magdalene wondered how he had gotten the long scar over his exposed left eye. The mud made squelching sounds under his boots as he approached the scene of slaughter and he cautiously looked at snake-man’s body while re-loading a crossbow he had been carrying.

The woman sheathed her cutlass and picked up her discarded pistol to holster that as well. She dropped the burlap sack—of which the bottom had soaked up a pitch-black fluid—onto the turf and re-loaded her firearms with bullets and powder from a horn on her belt, exerting a cold-blooded and stoic meticulousness about it. She then ducked down to pick up and hoist the sack with snake-man’s head over her shoulder in one flowing motion.

Cold air poured into the coach car when the woman opened the door. She looked straight into Magdalene’s eyes.

“Well done, Maggie. He will never hurt anyone ever again,” she said, stretching out a leather-gloved hand to Magdalene, offering to help her exit the carriage.

The man with the crossbow grunted something and turned red in the face. His eyebrows furrowed when he alternated between furiously asking and shouting, “Wait! She—she was in on this? You knowingly risked this girl’s life? You lied to me!”

The woman sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. However, Magdalene found new vigor and stretched out her silk-gloved hand. She took the hunter’s leather-gloved hand and stepped out of the coach with delicate steps. Her small white shoes sunk into the mud but her attention was more drawn to the man now.

He angrily paced back and forth before pointing a finger at the woman and ranting some more, “Oh, let me guess. There was a bounty. There was a bloody bounty, some ransom. Was there not?”

The young woman pulled her red scarf down and revealed a strikingly beautiful face.

“Justice is not served for free, Johnny,” she said to the other hunter with a lopsided grin.

Magdalene took the woman’s hand again which caused the bounty hunter’s eyes to widen in surprise. The little girl pulled towards the direction of the forest path heading back to Crimsonport. The girl took the lead, and the woman began escorting her down the road, hand in hand.

Johnn groaned and raised his hands up in frustration, then slung the crossbow over his shoulder with a leather strap and went to the horses. He walked around the driver’s body—who was lying face-down in the mud—and Johnn began unlatching a black steed from the carriage.

Not even turning to look at them, he asked, “Do you really want to walk back to the city, Nora?” The anger in his tone persisted. Nora and Magdalene turned their heads to look back at him upon hearing that. Just then, a wolf howled in the distance. Not far away enough. The woman and the girl exchanged glances and turned back to join Johnn in seizing the horses. They would ride swiftly, for abominable creatures lived in this forest.

What had howled was not just any wolf.

—Submitted by Wratts

#spoospasu #spookyspaghettisundae #horror #short story #writing #my writing #literature #spooky #fiction #submission #Crimsonport #Nora #Johnn #Magdalene #snake-man #supernatural #gothic #fantasy #gaslight #gaslight horror #romance #gore #flintlock #cutlass #blood #wolf #worg #red coast #kidnapper #missing children