three fables / #170, #171, #172

[ap0cryphal]

COMMON TAGS
Original Fiction or Fanfiction: Original
Characters/Pairings: N/A
Rating: PG-13 / K+
Warnings: Violence, Trauma
Disclaimer: Original work, my own stuffs, etc.
General notes: sages, scholars and spymasters. i'm rollin' in once-upon-a-time fabletowne vibes with these, i guess. also apologies in advance if cut-tags are wonky, dw cuts are being frickin' weird for me lately.

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Title: "Reconstruction"
Challenge/Prompt: #170 / Puzzle
Summary: Can't aim right anymore.
Notes: :|

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"Started after they cut me open," the archer says. His hands shake, between nocking an arrow and raising his bow. The arrowhead jitters as he draws the string back.

Inhale, the sage thinks, observing. Inhale, exhale, release. Her fingers echo his grip on the bow, the tension on the string.

"Can't aim right anymore," the archer says, dry-voiced, after his arrow digs into a prisoner's eye instead of the wooden target. "Can't hit things. People get in the way."

"I can help you," the sage says, contemplating puzzles in cognitive rewiring, the mechanics of programmable souls. "I can fix you."



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Title: "Uninterred"
Challenge/Prompt: #171 / Star
Summary: You, a Sage? Then I'm a Lion!
Notes: :|

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The caravan makes camp at a long-dead oasis. Merchants sleep, guards bicker with scouts and nurses croon to babies. The scholar, meanwhile, pores over gravestones.

"You, a sage? Then I'm a lion!" a hyena giggles from a tomb, pawing at desperate scorpions. "Nought under them graves, anyhow."

"Happy little lion you are," the scholar says. "But wrong about the graves. These three were heroes, champions. Ascended minor dieties."

"Here to pray, then?"

"Wishing upon minor stars, feeble godlings? No, my happy little friend," she smiles, holding up a rusted dagger, her eyes burning black. "I'm here to kill a constellation."

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Title: "Ouroboros"
Challenge/Prompt: #172 / Invitation
Summary: A noble, righteous soul
Notes: not a fan of monarchies, fictional or not...so. yeah.

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First, there was a queen, righteous and stern. Her people prospered, and grumbled only a little. Second, there was a king. Ambitious and corruptible. His people suffered, and after decades of grumbling, rebelled.

"What of his younger sister, the exile?" the council leading the rebellion asked their spymaster, three years into the revolution. "She's a soldier, a tactician, sympathetic to our struggles."

"A noble, righteous soul," the spymaster said. "A useful figurehead, a believable leader. Request her service, but not her leadership."

"Why?"

"Because if she learns ambition, her children become kings, queens. And our children fight our fight, again."

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