I pay new writers to start writing their ideas!

"Ack!!" I was only seconds away from being a pancake. Emilia fell next to me as a giant lump. "You okay Emi?" I rush over to her side concern filling me. She pushes herself up and starts laughing. I breathe a sigh of relief. I swear my little sister was determined to give me a heart attack. She stood up and brushes off her dress. I roll my eyes and pull her into a hug. She smiles and I know she has no idea what I'm doing. I let her go and she runs off probably to disturb Yuri. I sigh and immediately collapse to the ground. That was terrifying. Elias stood over to me looking at me with pity. "Is it that scary?" I scoff as tears start to fall down my cheeks. I hate this power. It's amazing to see the dead, what a joke. I will never be able to tell who is alive or dead anymore. I scream into the grass and dirt of the gardens, hoping that it may rid me of this curse.

“Mushrooms? Really? What’s so scary about that? I’ll just torch them!” Candlice shot her index out like a pistol, a flame spurting out at the end. Her finger dripped like wax, sizzling stains into the table.

“Could you not do that? It’s mahogany,” Nox sighed. They stuck up a single finger, beginning their explanation, “You of course know that each Attribute can only have one host.”

Candlice nodded. This was basic knowledge among the Avatars. Candlice was the only Candle Avatar, Nox the only Bat, and so on and so forth.
“Well not the Mushroom, they can have infinite hosts. It isn’t like other Avatars either; the Mushroom Avatars have a single hive mind that takes over them. Unifies them into One glorious Mushroom.”

“So I’m fighting a bunch of bodies with one dumb mushroom brain? Big deal!”

“It’s more than that. As a Candle, your Attribute is naturally linked to fire. But Mushrooms… Death, decay, and life again. They’ll break you down cell by cell, only to build you back up again. Over, and over. An infinity of feeling every part of you destroyed and rebuilt.”

Candlice shivered, less confident in her flame. She secretly hoped to never encounter a Mushroom, failing to notice the small fungi sprouting from the back of Nox’s neck.

• An excerpt of a conversation from before the Great Unification

The scar around the woman's neck glowed molten as she spoke, the voice reaching him as if through a trance. "Ami tells me you became a Childe of the Temple last solstice. Has it been exciting?"
"I-uh, yes. Sometimes. I mean, yes." Hei's provided less eloquently.
To say Hei was fascinated by the Queen might have been an understatement, her unassuming presence fighting to match the years of Temple gossip and sweetly servile books on planetary histories he was growing up on. The Temple had always seen a steady stream of visitors and pilgrims through its hallways, but never had one of the gods themselves set foot across the plinth.
"Hei is nervous." Ami answered for him. "I was too when I ascended a few years ago."
At this, Queen Manaht tilted her head back and laughed, the tendrils of midnight hair floating about her face, as if weightless. As if underwater. "Oh yes, I remember! You used to send me pages upon pages of how you would be horrible at it, the same drivel for days."
"It wasn't drivel! It was a very difficult time."
"Yes, yes. And once you became a Childe, the letters went back to talking about the newest meteors and my father's bad poetry."
Manaht's scar became a near-constant halo around her throat as the two women spoke about everything and nothing, meeting after almost a decade of a friendship hosted only through space mail and planetary comms. Hei's own voice felt too tight when they politely tried to engage him; he had barged in out of feverish curiosity and was now lodged in like a third prong.

Hi there. I don't need to be paid, but I'd happily contribute just for fun! I'm trying to be a larger presence on Tapas by participating!

Her body felt like static, loose and noisy. She sucked in a deep breath, the light vanishing from view as she went down, down, down all the way to the loose dirt on the floor, the size of the same pins her mother used to pry beneath her nails.

"Kiara?" Her brother asked, peering into the one-room cottage with a frown. "Are you here?"

It was easier like this. Easier for him not to know where she'd gone, or why.

Because Kiara was special. She could make herself small. She always could, though maybe not like this. And instead of making herself small in spirit, one day she'd learned how to make herself small in the most literal of ways. She could go somewhere, become something, and she'd never need to feel the burning palm of a disappointed mother or the stinging words of a drunkard father ever again.

She'd come back for her brother. She promised that. But for now, for him, it was easier to believe she had simply disappeared.

Golly, this is a thing. I will throw my hat into it.
Inspiration via my novel and creative writing class.

“This is not you, please.” a plea, one that fell against deafened ears. The silence that spread across the battlefield, despite the swords that flew and the lives that ended, it drowned out any sort of calamity that flew about.

“Not me,” laughed Evangeline as she licked the blood off the devil’s blade. The taste, sweet to the touch, only enhanced the mania that flew in between Evangeline’s head. “No, darling, this has always been me. I just forgot how good it felt to take the lives of those undeserving to live.”

Vance winced as he stood up slowly; the obvious attempt to move past the wound taken to his abdomen had hardly succeeded. Blood dripped from the cut, deep into his body. Yet, perhaps it wasn’t the only wound. It may have not even been the wound that hurt the worst. It was betrayal that stung more than the gash to his abdomen.

Evangeline walked closer to Vance, her sword high, ready to strike like a cobra. The venom being her own magic. Blood magic. She could have killed Vance instantly, given him a death that was sweet, short. No, she intended to make him pay for his sins, to avenge those he had killed.

Evangeline's sword lit up with a purple mist, potent and brimming with toxins. She inched closer to Vance who swayed side by side, attempting to hold his sword up with as much strength as he could muster.

Spitting blood out of his mouth, Vance weakly held his sword up, his eyes flashing gold as his muscles tensed.

"Oh? A visit by the beast?"

"Enough, Evangeline!"

Things came to a stop as Evangeline and Vance's attention were turned away as Fletcher stepped forward alone. He didn't wear blood on his armor, rather he appeared fresh and renewed. The hairs on his head starting to gray as his told cold eyes wore a look of hatred.

"Oh, Chief! How I missed you! I must admit your sins," Evangeline froze for a moment, scanning the aura that surrounded Fletcher. It was a light purple mist that emitted from his being. "Magic, is it? When and where did you obtain this?"

"That would be my doing," another voice poked out as a figure came next to Fletcher, the look of faerie wings coming into vision as Evangeline 'tsk'd'. Of course, things would never be this simple. Yet, she had taken more lives more ravenous then this bunch.

"Really, Ezra? I thought we were friends, partners in crime. Now you want to play good guy?"

"I realized what I did was wrong, but you are done. This is more than enough. We are your friends! Please, Evangeline, if you're in there just know Anastasia is locked in a bunker, waiting for your return. Do you want to kill her too?"

Okay, it's messy but I kinda dig it.

The air was stale. Midas found it hard to breathe in the foul stench surrounding him. Surprisingly enough, this stench came from his very men. More specifically, the men he had led in battle and towards their death. The sea of bodies seemed to stretch for miles with more bodies being added by Midas and his biggest enemy from the Polinian empire. The enemy was known as the god of war, while Midas was the god of greed. But both these descriptions were wrong.
As Midas pulled his sword out of his enemy, he saw on the other side of the battlefield, on top of all the bodies of his men, sat his mortal enemy. Midas made his way towards him, stepping over the bodies of his men and his enemies until he reached in front of him.
"It's been a while," Midas said to him.
"Indeed it has." He answered.
"Should we finally end this Himas?" Midas asked as he pulled a bottle of mead out of his coat.
"Our rivalry will not end here and you know it," Himas replied. "Because we will no doubt be reborn again and we shall fight again for all of eternity."
"When Zeus gave us this punishment I didn't think much of it," Midas said as he threw the mead towards Himas, who caught it and began to drink as well. "He sent us, the two gods of power to the human world, on this land of Ethra to be killed and be reborn by each other's hands for all of eternity. It started getting boring after the 60th rebirth."
"Do we have another choice," Himas said as he stood up and picked up his sword. "We will only ever wage war on this planet and because of us, the land of Ethra will never prosper."
"I agree old friend," Midas answered as he also picked up his sword and shield. "We shall see each other in the next life. I wonder what name and title will we get next."
"Can't be worse than the ones we have now you generous prick," Himas said as he chuckled.
"Same to you, you peaceful bastard," Midas answered.
As the conversation ended, both of the former gods rushed at each other to fight yet another battle in a never-ending war.

I found myself somewhere that was... I don't even think indescribably begin to explain this place. There was nothing. No sky, no ground, no color. No darkness or light, just an existence. I tried to move my arms but found myself without a body. Wherever this was, there seemed to be an utter lack of anything that could be described as anything. This was...

"Chaos?"

That voice. That dammed mage was the one who sent me here. The woman who claimed to be an incarnation of chaos herself, that vile creature, said she could show me what true chaos was. And yet I am in a void. I can not even scream my complaints, as my mere being has ceased to exist in physical terms. And yet her voice still rings in this plane of what can be loosely called existence.

"Yes. This is Chaos. True chaos. Just like the rest, you show a lack of understanding of the concept. You can not understand chaos. You cannot plan chaos. You cannot witness chaos because chaos is nothing. Chaos is a void in which all becomes nothing. There's no truth, no light, no darkness. Chaos is not managed. Chaos is."

Those were the last words I ever heard. The last thing I ever grasped onto before my mind crumbled to chaos.

My stumbling became a futile attempt to escape from the creature before me. I collapsed onto the ground, my heart racing, pulsing through my nerves. The "thing" stood in front of me. What once was the town beggar just stood there, slouching with a lifeless stare.

The blood on his face, his throat cut from a blade, most likely from the guards trying to "clean up" the streets. His clothes, only rags compared to others, were drenched in the life water that spilled from his wound. Poor man, what have I done? Such magics I was told not to toy with. How could I resist? How could I just let these things happen? I couldn't, I can't. The poor beggar knew what would happen, he did. He knew what I would do, and he allowed it. I just know he didn't think it would happen like this.

I'm sorry…

The shell of the beggar stared at me. It would not come to harm me, unlike the others that roam in places people shouldn't be. He awaited my command. His emotionless pale blood covered face sought purpose through my words.

"We must hide." I whispered at the corpse. So we did. We went back to my home on the outskirts, luckily no one was around. I recalled that my home had a secret cellar that acted a shelter during the "Old War". I could hide the beggar there.

After some time passed, I was able to stow away my companion. What was just one soon became three. Three became seven. They became more…

I can bring them back. I can control them. Just wait Sigurd, what you've done. What all of you have done…we're coming…