Strange Happenings
Midnight. They always came at midnight. The chimes from the old grandfather clock in the den jolted Daniel out of his restless dreams. It wasn't the chimes that woke him so much as the knowledge that They were coming. It was the same horrifying ritual, every single night.
The room was illuminated by an eerie pale green glow. Three figures in haz-mat suits stood around his bed. One of them held a large briefcase, another held a gun, and the third--the apparent leader, from the way he acted--was making entries into a large handheld computer. Daniel tried to escape, to run, to even move, but some unseen force held him in place, as immobile as the bed itself. The leader looked up from his computer and signaled to the one holding the briefcase, who set the case down and began to open it. Daniel strained to see its contents, but couldn't from his position. If only he could move...
The leader reached forward, grabbed the bedcovers and--
The shrill blast of Daniel's alarm clock filled the room. He'd had that dream again, the same one he'd been having every night for nearly a month. Except that it didn't feel like a normal dream. It felt more like a memory, but one that had been partially forgotten. Anyway, Dan had more important things to worry about, so he pushed whatever it was aside for the moment. Today was the last day of school, finally. All he had to do was survive his last few final exams, and he'd be home free. He wasn't about to let a creepy dream get him down.
***
Dr. DiCaoz glanced over his biology classroom. "Is anybody still working on the final?" he asked tiredly. He paused for a moment, then said, "If everybody is finished, you may talk quietly amongst yourselves for the remainder of the period." As the class erupted in chatter, he went back to nursing his hangover.
Daniel loved his biology class. It wasn't just that he was good at it, or that it was the last class of the day. By some bit of luck or fate, he happened to be in the same class as his four closest friends, Gassan, David, Pammy, and Jake. Gassan, David, and Pammy had become absurdly popular since coming to high school. Gassan was Lebanese and therefore "exotic," David was a star swimmer, and Pammy was a cheerleader. In retrospect, popularity was an inevitability. To the other popular kids, Jake an avid follower of the Furry subculture (he called it a craze, but nobody else did) and Daniel, the introspective writer, were social liabilities. Still, Gassan, David, and Pam never let their newfound "friends" keep them away from Jake and Dan. Privately, Daniel was grateful that he had managed to befriend the four people who appeared to be immune to high school drama.
"So, what'd you guys think?" Pammy whispered.
"I'm pretty sure Dr. Di is a nutcase," Gassan answered quickly. He was met with a chorus of approval from his companions.
"Anyway," Pam continued, "are we having our annual Thank-God-The-Schoolyear's-Over party tonight?"
"I can't go," Jake said, "I've got a convention."
"I can't go either," said David, "My dad's taking me camping. He's on a back-to-nature kick."
"I'm visiting my grandma," Gassan said. Pammy rolled her eyes.
"Alright," she sighed, "when do you guys get back?"
"Sunday"
"Sunday evening"
"Sunday, but it'll be late."
"So," Pammy continued, "is Monday night alright with everyone?"
***
The days passed quickly. By the time Monday arrived, he had gone an entire weekend without his mysterious dreams. He was mostly relieved, but part of him wished the visitors would come back so he could find out what they were up to.
The streets were charged with an eerie calm. A summer storm was coming. As Daniel reached Pam's door, he couldn't help but feel a strange foreboding. Something was decidedly wrong. He rang the bell.
"Come in," called Pammy. Dan opened the door and found friend sitting on the floor in a tidy circle. They were all staring at him, an unsettling hunger in their eyes. "We are playing Truth or Dare," Pammy intoned mechanically. "Please, join us. Truth or Dare?"
"Please choose Dare," Gassan said, in the same unearthly voice.
"The Truth is never any fun," agreed David, still in the same tone. Throughout the exchange, none of the four took their eyes off of Daniel.
"Is everything alright?" he asked. "You all seem...different."
Pammy answered in the same monotone as before: "We are collectively unnerved at a series of recurring dreams we have been having. Perhaps you too are experiencing these visions?"
"Yeah," Dan said, "but I'm not acting that weird about it."
"Perhaps," Pammy said, "All will be made more clear if you answer this simple question: Truth...or Dare?"
Written by Zodiac on 31 May 2008
Gaming
When the matter of the flying werewolf first surfaced,you thought it only another stupid hoax or internet story that somehow had found its way in the pages of a regular newspaper.
It was the middle of the summer, a time you hate worse than any other in the year. Yeah, people would be running about, enjoying the sun and the bright sky, but you prefer the cold, damp isolation of your room. Safely seated behind your computer, talking to your friends and working on grinding a few more levels in Shell Shock.
The game was some kind of hidden indie pearl that you and your friends had discovered in the last year. The game showed a near-future demon invasion storyline, in which Earth was being conquered by parasitic demons from the hellish dimensions. These parasites would take over humans and animals hosts, corrupt and twist them for their nefarious purposes, equipped with advanced weaponry and eldritch sorcery they had overwhelmed most of the humanity.
In the game, you play a human recruit in the Heaven Alliance, tasked with using a variety of advanced weapons, deadly spells, and fierce chimeras to fight off the invasion.
The game had little over a million active players all around the world, but even then clawing your way up into the top ten had been no easy feat. What the Shell Shock players lacked in number they compensated in determination and skill.It took you the best part of the year in daily practice before you could even manage to get to the top one hundred. But after that you seem to have found your balance, and in the months that followed, you made a spectacular rise into the top ten.
Written by Ashley-natter on 04 October 2016
Talk
You pull up your friends list. David, Pammy and Jake were already logged in. You quickly switch on your microphone and join on their private voice-chat line.
“You still won’t admit I’m right?” David was shouting as you logged in.
“I told you, your argument proves nothing!” Pammy said. “I still think that episode 7 was much better than anything in the new trilogy! Anakin and Obi Wan spent the whole time twirling and spinning like some kind of ballet dancer! Meanwhile in episode 7 they were having a sword fight!”
“But that’s because they are masters in the force and can predict each other moves!” David retorted.
“I don’t care,” Pammy said gleefully. “It was still really lame and relied too much in impossible acrobatics and set pieces to be an awesome duel. With the new one you can feel each blow and see the fighters struggling to get the upper hand!”
“Sorry to interrupt, guys,” You say. “Are you two still going at it?”
“Daniel!” David called out. “I didn’t see you log in!”
“You’re late, noob,” Pammy said. “And David won’t shut up about Star Wars!”
“I’m right on time,” You say. “We have a few minutes before the mission begins.”
“Yeah, but you are the one that likes to obsess over your loadout and fighting formations…” Pammy said.
“Today we will have to improvise,” You say.
You don’t want to tell them, but you have been felling weird all day. You feel distant, disconnected.
“Hey guys,” Gassan says as he log in. “It’s raining really heavily around here, so maybe I’ll randomly disconnect during the match.”
You clear your throat. “Time is short. Let’s talk mission, guys.”
“If this is another Juggernaut takedown, I’m out,” David said. “I’ll bail and play Battlefield instead.”
“What’s the matter?” You ask. “Don’t you enjoy a challenge?”
“I enjoy a challenge,” David replies. “I’m not a masochist like you.”
Written by Ashley-natter on 11 October 2016
The Juggernaut
You can understand him. The Juggernaut was a powerful new weapon the demonic parasites had unveiled recently. A giant war machine seemed built from parts of battleships, and with enough firepower to level a small town in seconds.The thing was equipped with nuclear artillery, flak cannons, homing missiles and capable of emitting beams of hellish energy that could heal and even resurrect fallen enemies. For the past few weeks, all of the game’s most devoted players had been trying to figure out how to go through its defenses and kill the damn thing. But so far it remained unbeaten.
Despite the endless barrage of complaints claiming that the developers had committed some kind of mistake during the introduction of this new enemy, the company refused to remove the Juggernaut from the enemy’s arsenal or nerf it. Many players were expecting a new update that would bring bigger and more powerful weapons to the humans, something to level the battlefield, but so far the developers remained silent.
“It’s a new mission,” You say. “Be optimistic. There might not be a Juggernaut in it.”
“Yeah,” Pammy said. “Maye they will finally introduce those new spells they have been hinting on them forums.”
“Those damn mages,” David spoke, pacified by now. “I don’t know how you can mess around with all that arcane scripting that goes in the spell system. I just need to point to whatever I want dead and squeeze the trigger.”
“I’ll remember that,” Gassan immediately chimed in. “When you are bleeding on the floor and begging for one of my healing spells.”
Thankfully, an alert sounded in your headphone just then, signaling the start of the mission. The game immediately changes from the loadout screen to the loading screen. As the other players finishes loading you see their avatars materializing around. David and Pammy are the first to appear, Jake and Gassan appear shortly after that.
In the fictional near-future reality of Shell Shock, the five of you are soldiers stationed in the remains of Washington, the front line of the war. David and Pammy are soldiers, they fight mostly with advanced weaponry and armor; Jake is a scout and assassin fighting with very long range weapons and mixing technology with a few basic spells; Gassan is the team healer, using advanced spells to keep everyone mostly alive for the duration of the missions.
Written by Ashley-natter on 18 October 2016
Chimera Jockey.
You are something else entirely: you are a Chimera Jockey. Using powerful spells you control one arcane abomination, a creature altered through the use of barely understood magic.
Most players like to use the big dragons or even eldritch unicorns, but you have found your place with the gryphons. Those sly flyers had become your immediate favorite since the first moment you controlled one of them. It was almost instinctive with them; you knew how to use their abilities to the best.
The screen dimmed, and the spinning crest of the Heaven Alliance appeared on the screen in front of you. As the crest faded away, it was replaced by the familiar face of Konnor Lowell, Grand-Wizard and leader of the human resistance. In the background story he had been the first human to learn about the demonic forces crossing into our world and had single-handled created the basis of what would become the Heaven Alliance.
“Greetings, soldiers,” he says with a tired expression, it was a running gag by now that the Grand-Wizard never had a good night of sleep in his life. “I’m not going to lie to you, today will not be a normal mission, but it’s one I have been waiting for since these vermin first begun invading our planet.Our suffering is far from the end, but today we will make them pay.”
The Gran-wizard points to a board next to him, you can see what appears to be the blueprints of an old aircraft carrier.
“You should recognize the USS Nimitz, we have rescued it from demonic forces during one of our first missions.” The scene cuts to pictures from the giant ship, you can still remember that mission, the fight to retake it had been bloody and intense. The players not only had to destroy the forces outside the ship, but also needed to go into the cramped corners of the battleship and fight almost room by room.
Written by Ashley-natter on 02 November 2016
To the enemy homeland
“During the last months it has been repaired and fitted with our most advanced arcane technology and now we will send it direct to Hell and attack the enemy homeland!”
“Hell yeah!” David shouted, perfectly echoing your own reaction.
In all Shell Shock missions so far the fight had been confined to Earth itself, mostly fighting over the ruins of cities and the new fortified settlements. Even though the portals to Hell were a common sight amidst the demonic hives it was impossible to cross them. Or, at least it had been so far. This was the first mission that had ever involved an offensive straight into Hell.
“As soon as the Nimitz crosses into Hell,” Connor went on, “it will begin a full scale invasion, we will have full support from the artillery positions on Earth using trans-dimensional ammunition, but we will not have any reinforcements unless we can conquer one of the portals. That’s our primary objective, don’t try to kill every enemy you see. Focus on your objective.”
The Grand-Wizard began to show some photos taken by the clairvoyants. What little you could see of the city showed a true fortress inhabited by what appeared to be thousands of demons, there were defensive positions and gun emplacements almost as if waiting for you.
“Damn, that will be awesome!” Gassan says. “Try not to run too far from me, the place looks like a maze.”
“At least we will not see any Juggernaut around here.” David celebrates.
“Huh,” Pammy says. “Why do you think so?”
“Those things are made with part of battleships, so they should only exist on Earth.”
“Don’t count on that,” Jake replied. ”Who knows what these creatures really look like under all that armor, maybe we will find some of them in their natural state.”
“That would be interesting,” Pammy agrees.
“Don’t jinx it!” David complains.
The screen changed this time to reveal the inside of the giant carrier filled with troops, military and arcane hardware, all kinds of war machines and all the chimeras they could cram inside the ship. You see the elevators working non-stop to take the flying chimeras and the compact fighters to the launching ramps.
You suddenly see yourself in control of your gryphon being lifted to the main deck of the carrier, dozens of other chimeras getting ready to launch, most of them are the big fighting dragons, but you see at least four others gryphon and some other exotics creatures that were added on the latest patches.
Written by Ashley-natter on 18 November 2016
It Begins
The sky is suddenly covered with artillery fire from the positions on Earth, the shells simply appearing out of nowhere and hitting the city with a thunderous roar. The demons are quick to fight back, reports come back from Earth that massive hordes of demons had converged on the artillery positions.
You smile as their towers collapse. After months of being almost defeated and struggling to defend the few remaining cities on Earth, this chance to strike back at them and for once destroy their cities was going to be awesome.
“Your mission is to secure any of the portals inside the city. Our troops on Earth are waiting to launch an attack on the other side of the portal to secure it and begin sending reinforcements!”
Flying demons begun to take to the skies as the volume of artillery diminished, there were thousands upon thousands of them and probably there should be even more demons on the ground.
“It’s another suicide mission,” David says. “But it still looks fun.”
You close your eyes for a moment, getting in the right mood. At the same time the gryphon on the screen stretch his wings. For a moment you could swear you almost felt it.
In your headset the voices of your friends seem distant and muffled, you almost can hear the wind blowing around. You hear the clacking of your claws on the steel deck and the hot wind blowing against your face, your eyes are sharper and more accurate than even the most advanced sensors
humans can built easily. For a single moment you feel the strength under your wings and the power of your wings.
You are pulled back to reality by Pammy’s voice.
“Can we count on you for air support?”
It takes you a moment to recover your voice. “Yeah, don’t worry. I’ll try to stick close, any of you have the signal flares?”
“I have some,” David spoke. “I couldn’t craft more, needed the phosphorus to craft more incendiary grenades.”
“I always can use my signaling spells.” Gassan adds.
“Good luck, soldiers. Everyone on Earth is counting on you.”
The grand-Wizard snapped you a farewell salute, and his image winked out, replaced by the loadout selection screen.
Written by Ashley-natter on 03 December 2016
Air Support
You select your kit for air-support. A harness carrying several anti-material bombs, some light armor made of enchanted steel, and enchanted blades on your claws. You love the weird combination of magic and technology from the game.
You reached out to blindly place your hands on the controllers in front of you, adjusting their placement in preparation for the mission. Then you took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, trying to relax. This was usually the best part of your day, when you got to escape your existence for a few hours.
But tonight, you didn’t feel like you was escaping anything. You felt anxious. Excited. You feel the smell of sulphur in the air and the napalm burning their city.
On the screen you see the strip, you hear the roar of the heavy dragons launching themselves to the sky and some of them jumping on the warm waters. You can swear you can smell their powerful scent, maybe you are going crazy.
Your hands seem glued to the keyboard and mouse, your hands move without thought or doubt to the correct buttons and you launch yourself to the sky, a hot gust of war coming from the city makes it easy to climb higher and higher in a short span of time.
The sun rose unhurriedly from the sea, and you strain against the steep sky, breathing deep. You feel your body tickling, but you can’t move to scratch it. The sea roars below you as the water dragons face against the sea demons. Your mind flickers lightly in the thin air, you are gasping for air.
Yours… No, the gryphon’s wings drew in and flapped out sluggishly. You bank to the left to face the incoming horde, your heart is pounding fast. You fell dizziness, maybe you will pass out in front of the computer, but you can’t stop it. You don’t know how you are controlling the avatar anymore, your hands don’t seem to answer to your commands.
Your friends are talking, but their voices seem distant and faded. You struggle against it, this mysterious force that seems to chain you, but there is a single point of escape. The gryphon flies free and unrestrained.
A shiver glided down your spine to your feathered tail.
No… that’s not right, you don’t have a feathered tail. Do you?
Written by Ashley-natter on 20 December 2016
Attack
You launch yourself against one of the first flying demons, ripping him apart with your claws, his hot blood splatters over your beak. You don’t stop there, quickly taking another of the vile creatures in your claws and ripping it in half.
You feel the fury rushing through your blood, the strength in your claws ripping the creatures with ease and the powerful wings that keep you aloft and propel you with amazing speed.
No! That’s wrong, it’s only a game! You are controlling it with your hands. You are human.
You try to resist, but the creature in the screen moves almost by itself, pouncing against the enemies, biting and clawing at them with the ferocity of a prime predator. There is nothing that can stand in front of you.
With ease you maneuver around one of the bigger demons and kill him with a deep slash of your claws. You are bathed in his blood, but you emerge victorious.
Why wouldn’t you want to be like that?
Why would you want to be human?
Let go, allow yourself to be powerful and free.
You crave for the skies, the unbound freedom of the flight.
You can feel your wings flapping with force in the warm air. One wing stroke, then another. Doesn’t it feel natural? You ride the warm currents with ease, your powerful eyes tracking those that oppose you.
New fire blooms under your feathers, flushing your skin, giving you strength. Narrowing your wings, you hurtle straight toward your next enemy. You talons stretched out for the kill. Your razor beak opened wide.
Are you scared of the change? Scared of losing your humanity?
You claw at the creature even as his sharp jaws close around your leg, the pain is fierce, but you don’t stop. Your claws reach for his eyes.
You are a brave warrior. You are a perfect predator, nothing hunts you. Nothing scares you.
The creature screams in pain and you bite hard, your beak cutting his flesh easily. You are victorious once more. You flatten your wings and dive over the ground enemies, slashing and killing them without problem, your claws rip their shields and your beak crushes their skulls.
Allow yourself to be that powerful.
Written by Ashley-natter on 03 January 2017
Fight on
You trample over them, helping those weak humans to fight against those abominable creatures. You feel so good to not be as weak as those humans.
You jump over a bigger creature, this one receives you with his horns. You feel the pain, but don’t care. Your claws rip his flesh and your talons cut deep into his eyes. The demonic entity screams loudly and tries to crush you against the ground, but with supernatural agility you escape from his clutch.
Yes! You can feel it, don’t you? The power, the strength, the freedom! Allow it to become you!
It’s so easy to accept, to simply let go of your human weakness.
Are you still struggling? Why do you clingy to your humanity when you could be so much more?
The battle rages on, you jump over a big demonic siege weapon and with unbound fury you dismantle it with strikes of your sharp talons. The metal forged on the fires of hell is like paper to you.
Yes! I see it.
Your shape trembles in front of you, the changes are slightly and subtle, but to you they are tremendous. The creature you control is not a male anymore, she is a beautiful griffon with sharp colored feathers and a sly frame.
You don’t have words, but it simply feel more natural. A heavy burden is lifted from your back. You had never even noticed it was there, but you felt it your entire life.
Have you even been human to start with?
It could as well have been some twisted dream.
This is you now, this always have been you.
You asked me for a spell to dream of what would be human, but now you need to wake up, my beautiful gryphoness.
There is a bright light, far too bright. It took you a few seconds to understand you are seeing the computer screen, but your eyes simply seem much more perceptive. You try to close your eyes, but your body is unresponsive.
Written by Ashley-natter on 18 January 2017
Game Crash
You see yourself reflected in the computer screen. Your eyes are bulged out, unnaturally golden like those of an eagle. Then you begin to feel the pulses of heat rushing through your body, your flesh twisting and shifting under your skin and cracking sounds of your bones realigning themselves.
It should be painful, it should feel like hell. You can only feel a suave tingle all over your body.
Your body grows in pulses. You feel the clothing ripping apart as your new muscles rapidly increase in size and strength. There is a long ripping sound and from you back two bony structures emerge violently. In front of your eyes you see the flesh covering the white bones and then come the skin. The feathers grow in quick succession all over your new wings and quickly spreading trough the upper half of your body, changing your skin as it spread.
Sharp, black claws erupt from the tips of your fingers, with yellow scales growing on your hands and forearms.
The lower part of your body is rapidly covered in a fine golden fur, your feet change shapes, becoming like big paws with vicious claws. From your lower back a long tail with a feathered tip sprouts.
You fall to the ground, the changes inside you keep going, everything settling in place as you face contorts and shapes into a long and strong beak. At the same time you fell your genitals shrinking and into your crotch and shaping themselves into a pussy.
You come to yourself some time later, curled on the floor amidst your ripped clothes, the voices of your friends coming from the computer.
Moving is hard, it seems you will need to relearn how to use your muscles.
You try to talk, but your voice comes out as a mighty screech.
They are complaining about the game, it seems that it has completely crashed and you have been making strange noises all along.
You try to talk to them, but you new form makes it impossible.
You hear a strange lullaby calling for you outside.
Written by Ashley-natter on 31 January 2017
Outside
You jump through the window, amazed at how you managed to so easily squeeze trough the small frame of the window with your new massive body. The cold air of the night against your body feels amazing, feels like freedom.
You jump over to the street with ease and for the first time in your life you really run. With surprising grace you run through the streets, breathing deeply the cold air. It’s wonderful!
You wings spread almost instinctively, the strokes come naturally with each step as you discover muscles you never had used before. You jumps as high as you can, flaring your wings to catch the first draft and soar high.
You stroke the wind and rose until the houses were dark, slumbering humps in a sea of electric lights. You pump your wings harder, eager to climb higher and higher in the night sky, to reach the stars and touch the moon.
Your eyes capture a strange movement coming from the streets below. What at first you see as a horse running through the streets, but your sharp eyes quickly distinguish the protruding horn in its head. Not much farther away is another strange creature, a giant black hound with three heads. And soon you caught the glimpse of other gryphon like you gaining the skies.
You try to reach the other gryphon only to see that he seems to be following something you can’t discern. Easily you follow him through the night sky, for your new eyes the faint light of the moon is more than enough to keep track of him. And you are sure this one is a male, only by his smell you know he is not a female like you.
You caught yourself suddenly having strange new thoughts about this creature. Sex and even dating had never had any allure for you before, but this new shape seems to have released you from shackles you never had even realized where there. You want to fly close to him, to show off your skill.Maybe caught his sight.
You giggle silently as you try to approach him, but as he seems to notice you he dives and seems to be avoiding you at first, but a quick turn of his head and a wink convinces you it’s only a game. Probably the most enticing game you have ever played.
You dive after him, slightly twisting your wings to make a sharp turn over your potential mate.
You freeze mid-flight, almost falling from the sky as the word hits your mind. Mate. For the first time in your life you crave for the attention of other person, your new body pulses with the alluring desires of lust. You flap your wings harder to recover some altitude.
Written by Ashley-natter on 03 February 2017
Your Destination
Before you can catch him however all of you are called towards a small clearing in the middle of a park. You recognize the place easily, you used to pass by it everyday coming back from school, but with you new senses you immediately notices dozens of details you had never noticed before. The most obvious is the flaming pentagram right in the middle.
The other creatures seem to be converging towards it and the more you look the more creatures you begin to notice. From all over the place you seem the gallant Unicorns and the mischievous Nightmares, at least two big manticores seems to half-fly and half-run around trough the buildings on the park. Two long sea serpents emerge from the small lake in the middle of the park and slither in the direction of the strange event.
The biggest of them all are the dragons. They fly sluggish, but they have a royal aura about them. The moonlight shine on their lustrous scales and you quickly notice that their scales are still intact. Just like you they must have been just changed.
You graciously land on the clearing in front of the strange pentagram and anxiously wait to what is going to happen. The other male gryphon sits right next to you. Without even thinking you get closer to him andput your head on his shoulder. He looks surprised at first, but seems to like it.
Then, to your complete surprise and astonishment, Konnor Lowell appears in the middle of the flaming pentagram.
“Welcome one, welcome all!” He proclaims. “Don’t be shy, come closer, this is a magnificent moment! Look at all of you, such an amazing group!”
He looks around, getting his time to see and quickly talk with each group of creatures.
“Gryphons!” He says when he comes next to you and the other gryphon. “Such amazing predators, that’s brilliant! And a male and a female! Oh this is simply brilliant!”
He proceeds around praising every species with great enthusiasm and seemingly infinite energy, his movements exaggerated and almost cartoony.
He eventually returns to the circle. When he speaks again his voices booms, amplified by subtle enchantments.
“I know you must be asking yourselves what happened and more important: How that handsome Grand-Wizard become real!”
He stops for a moment as if waiting a round of applause, but considering that most of you don’t have hands it becomes a long and awkward silence.
Written by Ashley-natter on 11 February 2017
An explanation
He then proceeded to explain that the cycle had finally turned; He knew the Change had come at last, and magic was returning to our world.
For a thousand years and more magic had been fading, withering, dying, but now the gates were open once more. Wonderful and wild magic was spilling out into our boring and mundane reality.
All that magic, and no one who knew how to use it!
He became the first one to crack the code, to discover the hidden knowledge on the ancient tomes and combined them with the processing power of modern computers. He knew that sooner or later others would come to the same knowledge, so he needed an army.
But! Guns and bullets were of little use against powerful wizards, so he would need to recruit powerful and mystical creatures to do his bidding. It was a shame when he discovered that no such creature seemed to have survived the thousand years of fading! But he had discovered an ancient and powerful spell that could bring back those creature to life through an human sacrifice.
He tweaked the spell a bit to remove the need of a sacrifice, changing the human into the creature instead. However he would need a great number of voluntaries, people that would agree to forgo their humanity in exchange for a new shape.
He had pondered for a long time about how to find these rare and valuable candidates. He moment of biggest brilliance came just as he was ready to discard the idea: A game! He used his magical powers to create a game that could work to select valuable candidates and when the moment was right to transfer the spell through their computers.
“Magnificent don’t you all agree?” He concluded and once again seemed to be waiting for a round of applauses.
“So, what we should do now?” You manage to ask. You know you should feel angry at being manipulated by what appear to be some poor illusionist that lucked out in the greatest power of all.
“Isn’t it obvious?” He says. “You are my army and the entire world will be my kingdom!”
He pulled a long wand from his jacket and with a simple swing from it he created for himself a golden crown. Another simple gesture and his clothes turned into a shining armor embellished with precious gems and eldritch runes.
Written by Ashley-natter on 19 February 2017
"Wait, you really expect us to conquer the world in your name?"
“Wait, you really expect us to conquer the world in your name?” You ask confused.
“Of course, my little birdie. I gave all of you astonishing bodies and shackled your minds to my direct control…”
He suddenly stopped and hit his face with his free hand.
“Dammit! I knew I had forgotten something important! I completely forgot to add the mind control portion of the spell!”
He pulls a long book out of nowhere and begin to look around it.
“If you all could just wait a moment…” He tries to say, but before he could even finish the sentence you hit him with a powerful punch, surprised with your new strength.
He still tries to grab hold of his wand, but one of the unicorns dashes forward and grabs the thing in her mouth. He begins the movements to summon other just as one of the sea serpents try to grab him.
He teleport away from it, but ends up just in the reach of the majestic dragons. The magician unleashes a flurry of thunder against the scaled beasts to get himself some time.
Written by Ashley-natter on 27 February 2017
