cynicalchristian

84. A witchy tale from the perspective of the familiar.81. The town's witch has gone missing and no one is looking for her but her two familiars - a crow and a black cat, plus the teen who has always been scared of her.~~~Eclipse is a raven familiar, an invasive Corvus splendens in small-town coastal Louisiana. He serves an outsider called Mamman Simbi, a witch hidden between a Catholic and Voodoo culture, when a new witch is born into Cajun bloodlines (Tammy Broussard, b. 1977). Being overburdened in soul leads to the new witch having dangerous fevers that Eclipse and Simbi protect her from until she's old enough to take over as Mung Bean's witch (Simbi's rescue cat the same age as the girl). Familiars take on that excess spirit and help manage their partners health and daily work, becoming as human as their masters.The process of protecting Tammy leaves her frightened of Mamman Simbi, and parents in denial don't push children to stray outside their culture.But the world has never been safe for their kind, and just as the deep south starts to recover from a painful recession, the witches hiding in their culture start disappearing, leaving Simbi too distracted to reach out to a fearful child. Then Simbi disappears from a gathering during the worst years for murders in New Orleans (1994), with police corruption running rampant. Mung Bean and Tammy, both now 16, run away from home soon after, leaving Eclipse to sort out how much is safe to tell the young witch's parents, Rafe and Dinah Broussard, and Simbi's boyfriend, T-Beau LeBlanc. Can Eclipse find his master, ride herd on two teens (a witch and her familiar), keep mere humans safe, and not lose himself to the humanity he's avoided as a crow? Life wasn't supposed to be so complicated for a bird brain.…

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#47 A seemingly normal day ends with the disappearance of every adult on the planet, and it's up to the most unlikely of heroes to bring them back.#52 "And that is how that world was lost and a new one, our world, was born."#80 "Meet me next life."~The battles with demons were so commonplace, and their world shrank so much that everyday prayer changed. No "Give us this day our daily bread," but more "Can there be bread, tomorrow?"The former Commander 1st Class of the Holy Knights and Laypriest of Arden, Valentine Auger, fought these monsters that spilled into their realm for 2 decades. In his last battle, the Rapture began, taking any native creature bigger than a beetle from the face of his world--except for him. For another 2 decades, he evaded the demons he once fought, until even they were gone. He was facing his 60s when he discovered there might be a way to restore the world he once knew. It was a long shot, but it would be better than the years spent with two silent ghost dogs, seeing his memories collapse under rot and ruin, until the day he'd walk into his grave, left alone by the Goddess Arden.Little did he know that this task was riddled with the mistakes of the other times he chose this path, making the entirety of his existence an exercise in a living hell.…

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#99 The royal family needs a male heir to the throne, and they're willing to accept any boy, even if he's born to their least hinged relative.~~~When family is twisted around madness, dark things happen. But is it really madness, or the symptom of a deeper truth than the world could bear? Ivan the Bloodthirsty rebelled against the crown and was locked up for his misdeeds. King Boris and Queen Radoslava were as unworthy of the crown as Ivan, but as they wee the couple in power, they wrote the rules on who was fit to rule and who was not.Ivan's half-brother Andrej and wife Nadia rose to power after Boris died, but as they tried to have children, every chance for an heir failed. Andrej knew what his mother, Radoslava, had done, and blamed The Cup of Madness, a demonic chalice that warped the world into bouts of decay and destruction for their current misfortunes. As he felt injustice was wrapped around their futures, he chose to secretly gain an heir off his mad brother, which meant having a woman, Milena, seduce him while he was imprisoned. Raising Prince Laszlo and Princess Leena would have been a fairytale in a happy kingdom, but decay rots their world, men are monsters, and the only protection for a little girl in need comes from the demon within the chalice. And it only holds enough power to make more demons, in order to save the world. Will the child drink deep from the cup and sacrifice herself to fix what went wrong?Trigger Warnings: Mildly Graphic Murder,…

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"#97. It is your first day at your first job, and you discover the library you'll be working in is very haunted."Constance Penrose has worked before. Not for a job, but the make-work of the workhouses of Victorian England, for those they couldn't sell to the factories. That and the money made off her labor wasn't her's to keep. This was not the place an Earl's granddaughter was supposed to end up in. Reconciliation with her family landed her back in the lap of luxury, where the inevitability of her world was marrying a cousin, much like Queen Victoria, a stranger without the wealth to back a season, or a job the family wouldn't balk at. Cousins marrying in the Victorian era wasn't too uncommon, but Constance was pushed into the workhouse by Aunt Letitia's machinations once, and marrying into the family she wanted to hurt promised to be a life of misery, whether it be the polished heir Victor, the indecently wild Walter, or the rebellious child James. If only her love for them was stronger than her hate of their mother, she could give in.Instead, Constance persuades her parents to let her find work or gain an education, anything but the fate of a Tragedy. Mother's mysterious past helps introduce her to Lord Listings, and Constance is offered a job at Listings Women's Library, if she can handle the oddities that surround the Women's Library. And haunted is just the start of it.…

cynicalchristian

Dark short stories. Many of them will be for competitions, but others are just to clear out things I need to clear up. Each chapter will be a complete story.…

cynicalchristian

B1: Begging is for LosersWhat if mates weren't soulmates?Rachael Fields fits stereotypes surrounding Lunas enough to make mistakes spiral into Fate. The Alpha's son, Nathaniel Hall, never had respect for people-including himself. Their first time together was supposed to be inconsequential, not something that pulled them together. What purpose drew them together? Or was she destined for another?The Luna of Lunas is not the only Goddess. Deep in Nevada's deserts, a stone Goddess sealed by time is waging a cold war built on people's lives, hell-bent on adding to the casualties without a care for lives. Backed by a messed-up pack house full of near-adult wolves and the aid of the Omega Council, they navigate their faith and what they must sacrifice, whether mates or themselves. Anyone who is special is merely a tool for battle.B2: Through a Mirror, DarklyThey survived the clash of the Goddesses, but can they survive a pack war?The circumstances that made Rachael Fields a good pawn and Luna made her a trophy to other Alphas. New Gods became involved. With her mate away for training, she's left to navigate the still-broken pack while her very self is forcibly stripped away as a lie.Moriah, her mother, is the worst of the liars. Believable lies use truth, and it's true that Rachael wasn't the blonde Valley Girl she knew. Goddess and Mother had conspired to strip a small child of everything, including her Amazonian pack and personality.She's now not the woman her mate fell for and he has a bad history with self-control. Rachael shuts down contact with her mate, in order to focus on ousting her mother from her life, making dangerous deals, be they even stronger Alphas or Gods.The consequences of these decisions comes to a head, when their first pack battle doesn't fully go to plan. Her decisions could cost her a mate, and lives lost. She then loses the Goddess' support. Can Rachael still be a Luna without Her?B3: Nathaniel's Notes…

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9 There's an urban legend that's been circulating for years about a taxi cab that doesn't take you where you want to go, but where you need to go. One night, you stepped into this cab.~~~ Maria Vitale was a good Catholic girl whose family spanned multiple continents. When in college, almost-engaged, about to have a boring and normal life, her grandmother back in Sicily had a frightening dream and called Maria to come visit. Of course, the busy college co-ed didn't think much of it until Grandma Vitale landed in a hospital on a vent. Like most broke students, she would have to borrow money for that trip, so she asked her well-off boyfriend for help with the plane tickets. He refused, so she was left to find her own way across the Atlantic, with no guarantee of seeing her grandmother alive.But there was an urban legend of a cab that could take you where you most needed to go, and Maria was desperate enough to risk everything in order to fulfill her grandmother's dying wish.…

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5 Flip the coin and make a life choice with it. Two choices, one coin, and no turning back. Do you dare?~~~A beautiful, noble maiden saved from certain death in a battle by a Paladin. Sounds like the start to a great romance, right? Well, not when you both spend years in your nation's army: him as commander, you as a fighting cook. Family long gone, other lovers over time, surely this chance is long lost. But Commander Abbot was the person who held your battle-contract, not the King, and he's been called home to take up his unexpected inheritance as Duke. He also needs a wife, not a servant: and that comes with just as many orders as merely being a cook would. Certainly, there's attraction and lust, but is this enough to rebuild an ailing dynasty?And frustratingly, the only answer the Gods may give rests in a flip of a coin.…

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12 An evil sorcerer offers you an immense amount of power-but it comes with a price. ~~~When a King has three sons and only one kingdom to inherit, he raises his heirs to serve different purposes. Fjell-og-dal had a wise and business-friendly Crown Prince (Pawel) who could rule justly in times of peace, and a decisive warrior in the 2nd prince (Olbretch). What would such a king do with a 3rd son? Anselm was a fool, a prince stuffed full of fairy tales, useless in days of peace or war. Or was he? Neither were the cause of devastation in their kingdom-something malignant was changing their world. Perhaps the king had known he needed a 3rd path, where someone was trained to understand the strange ways of fairytales, in order to save them all. The problem is that Anselm isn't a fool, and he doesn't trust what his father made of him because a man trained for foolishness isn't needed once the folly has been averted. Every step his father laid out for him was a brilliant lunacy-a lie wrapped in truth.He brought his brothers along as a precaution-to save them or to save himself? The 3rd prince had no clue.What awaited the brothers at the end of their journey was immense power with a terrible price-but only 1 had to pay. Would they make a good decision in a series of consequences that they could not run from?…

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38 A seemingly bottomless pit was found, for which the depth can't be determined. Over time, scores of people began using it to illegally dump trash. Many have jumped believing that they'll find life's answers within it. Today, we learn the truth about the hole.~~~ Susan "Maysie" May Hornsby was a toddler when the sinkhole opened on the edge of the Missouri River, in the Tristate area (and six towns of Sioux City). It drastically changed her nation (drying up the Mississippi, slowing interstate trade to a standstill, making drinkable water a concern, forcing the nation to reroute a whole major waterway-not to mention the dumping and jumpers) but the child herself couldn't understand any of that. This made her nightmares all the more remarkable-though no one would know it, at the time. When the world ended, she was left with "the bad man" Alder Nahimana as her sole guardian. She was raised in the void of space as "the only people left alive". But there were more humans out there-and once her guardian passed, she sets out to find them, accidentally becoming crucial to the preservation of her mankind along the way.Not bad for a child whose world ended when she was 5.…

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72 On the twilight of their sixteenth birthday, a shy bookworm escapes their surprise party to find refuge in their favorite library. While walking through the shelves in search of a good read, they stumble onto a peculiar book that changes their life.~~~Being a Great-Granddaughter of Greek Gods doesn't make you special. In fact, there was maybe two people who thought about Grace Rose Sterling and special at the same time, and she didn't believe it was because they understood her. Aglaea and Hephastus knew she had the family talent, but talent on loan from Gods isn't the same as being known.Sharp but shy, Grace could hold her own if she was willing to be burdened by people who wanted favors, not friends, but she was very unwilling to play social games. They even roped in her childhood crush as her personal temple guard, making her his obligation, not his choice. It was enough to push a girl to hiding in the small library attached to the ballroom they held her Sweet 16 in. Problem is that the Gods truly did know her, and worse, they had ancient Greek ideas involving God-tier tasks. So, they gave her a burden in the form of the scariest Love Djinn they knew. Either she would control the monster threatening her sleep, or she would brave everyone else to stay free of his machinations. One way or another, her talents would be forced to the surface.Either way, a young demi-god is not allowed to be shy-or herself.~~~Trigger Warning: This is a 16 year old kid, not a Reverse Harem story. That being said, the Djinn is intimidating and may be too much for some readers.…

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prompt 52: There is someone you dream about every night, but you never imagine meeting them in real life.Daniel Faith didn't know himself all that well, existing with the bad boys, at least a good kid at home, and a homicidal rage against the friend who kept dragging him back down. Perhaps he wouldn't be as upset if he didn't have warning dreams unsettling his conscience every night. Fantastic things, dreams that couldn't be real, kept pointing towards how toxic his life was becoming. That is, until the day he meet the monster in his dreams, and found out exactly how evil his own nature could be.But the task given to him is heavy: root out the worst evil in his school and neighborhood, atone for what he had become.Trigger Warning: I'm not sure how far I'm going to let violence go in this story, as of yet. Too much and I'll go over the 20K mark, so hopefully not too much. But still, this is supposed to be a disturbed story.…

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prompt # 1 When a giant monster chases you, all you can do is throw a stick and hope they'd play fetch.Harou and X Bunny.That sounds cool, like a post-apocalyptical Power Couple. Yeah, that's not us. He's a mythos-born Alpha's son of a werewolf (third born), in the middle of Nowhere, America. Me? Just a regular curse-born were-rabbit, stuck in The Warrens.He's my ticket out of here: my mate.Werewolf packs are harsh, but structured as they weren't trapped in a loop failure and unfulfillment, living to the worst traits of rabbits while owning a human brain. Everything about wolves is an upgrade I'm willing to take on. And Harou is a great guy, couldn't ask for a better friend or family.I hate "It's not you, it's me," but I don't like the curse. Some of it's cool, but some of it is a burden, like not having noticeable sex traits until our late teens. I don't know what I am, and I have this very male mate. But there's some safety in this, too. I don't have to be like my mom or the men in her life. So I constantly want to grow up and move on, but am still scared.Life isn't all about me:Why is there a hunter working with The Warren? Will the uneasy truce hold? There's always a fear of humans finding out. Why won't Harou follow a tossed stick?Wait, I know that last one--that's my fault. Come on in and find out what the heck I did to that poor wolf to get him to ignore his instincts.....Trigger warnings: 1. This is NOT a gender-identity story, as there is a physical difference between the MC and their people. We constantly say "sex and gender aren't the same thing" so let's not conflate the two. The MC's issues are unique to their situation, and are not meant to represent anyone else's journey.2. I'm an older adult writer, and so I cover adult topics without much thought. I treat them gently, not prone to being gory so nothing should be severe, but consider this your warning.…

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Esme had one big fear in life: being captured as a thief by the city's guardsmen and being executed for her crimes, and that so heavily weighed on her mind that she increased her risks by being distracted in the middle of a heist. That's when she runs into Althalos Fourthborn: Inner Circle Guardsman, one of the many princes of the realm, an Aelif (Dark Elf, local dialect)...and her betrothed by treaty. (That was something her almost human mind could not handle.)So she calls off the heist, gets demoted into a far more risky job, learns the true bitter depth of what this treaty's bond is like, and lands safely by her prince's side....sort of. There were people who still wanted to end her life, even if she was in what most people would call a Happily Ever After. That and her prince had his own living fears that were gnawing at any chance they had. That and she might just lose her mind from everyday boredom. But the one she couldn't wrap her all-too human mind around was that she would one day grow wings and fly away from her almost Happily Ever After to live in a hive with ancestors more alien than a hottie with pointed ears and abandonment issues.~~~~Yes, there are adult themes in this book, and difficult subjects, but nothing is excessive, as this is probably my simplest story.So, trigger warnings:A history of assault. Occasional vulgar language. References to partial cannibaliam. Extremely mild, light, and rare sex scenes. At least one elitist mentality.~~~~Ages of MC/ML:Esme: Apparent age of 24, roughly 20 years lived (mostly human).Althalos: Apparent age of 30, roughly 65 years lived (Elves mature slower).…

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Trace spent years searching for a mate that never showed, only to have Jodi taken from him just as he found her.And so the Goddess was merciful, giving him a Second Chance. But did it have to be a woman who preferred to stand barefoot in the mud decked out like some ancient hunter rather than dress up appropriately for pack meetings? This Cajun wolf was too earthy for his expectations.------Ages: Jodi: 49Trace: 32-35Eva: just shy of 20------This is a cross between prompt 23 and 28.23: the female lead is keeping secrets about her "curse".28: the curse is what makes her a wolf--or not--but she's definitely a badass seagull to the pack's dragons.…

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What happens when you try to write a high school romance around cows?Anise Laurel Finley restarted her local 4H chapter to better sell her cows, not to pad her college resume. After all, she only wanted an Associates to follow her dreams. Hell, she really didn't even want to leave her podunk county. Vance Leighton is just looking for a club to add to his college applications, as he doesn't think he's going to get a scholarship for football. Plays Center--not that it matters, but his best friend is that Quarterback Heartthrob, by the name of Aaron MacArthur.And Anise's friend, Kaylee McKinney is the best friend that brags about having been with half the football team, can't be half believed.In a rational world, Anise and Vance would be supporting characters for the drama of the century, but no, we're doing a story about a girl who walks with Mini Moos. So, let's follow the Lateral Pass.---This is from prompt 101 of the 2022 Open Novella Contest. Right now it's under Romance, but it might be moved if it's considered "innocent enough", though I'm questioning that.…

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This is going to be some ideas about varying descriptions of people, places, things because I get tired of monotonous repetition in my own work, forget everyone else.Feel free to use anything in here as an inspiration. Heck, tag things back to it, lol.…

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The current tropes for werewolves doesn't really fit the way most guys think, so as a mental exercise, here's a ton of shorts on how meeting your mate would affect human males. - 1st chapter is an in-world synopsis, so it's difficult to follow, but it breaks down how mates find each other.- Concrete Thinker is an excerpt from a pioneer era journal.- Artistic Soul follows a male's thoughts through life on the same day each year.- Terrorized is a male who is in therapy because he's been bit by a werewolf.- Nerd meets his mate at Mechacon.- The Lost is a fb excerpt of a male who never mated.- Normal is about an abuse case who wants a normal life but instead gets werwolves.- The Player is the only fully female perspective. It's about how she got her mate to reject her without revealing she's a werewolf.- Stereotyped is the type of male young were females hope they get.- Incel is severe immaturity in group form.- Monotony is a tired rich playboy.- Misogyny is about an arrogant boxer whose mate is better.- Husband Material is about a man who will not be shaken off "the one", not even by a Civil War era African Alpha whose territory the couple is invading.- Desperation is about finding your mate after you are happily married.- Curmudgeon is about a grumpy tech who momentarily fails his own moralizing lectures.- Costly is an eccentric multi-millionaire who finds out his secretary is a secret agent werewolf.- Old Faithful is about a Civil Rights era African American human who grew up protected in an Alabama pack, who meets his mate on an interview about his memories of the era. Very lightly handled.~~~I don't really do trigger warnings.Consider yourself warned.Editing and formatting complete. Shouldn't have much to correct.…