8FOLD: Mighty Medley # 13, January 2015, by Messrs. Brenton, Perron, Russell, and Stokes

[Andrew Perron]

On 1/6/2015 8:52 PM, Tom Russell wrote:
<snip>
> "Empress of Pages", by Colin Stokes
> In which we welcome Mr. Stokes to our merry coven.

WOO YEAH

> Touching briefly upon the differences, or lack thereof, between our
> heroes and our villains. The West is a gray place.

I always thought it was more red and brown.

> Eerie blue light flickered in the depths of the beachside cave,
> reflecting off pools of stagnant water and making shadows dance
> weirdly along the irregular walls of black rock.

"Dance weirdly" is on my top ten verb-adverb combinations of this week.

>     As he materialized above the flickering flames, confining his
> spirit in fleshy and delightfully visceral physical existence - the
> only method a daemon could use to affect the physical plane directly -

Good worldbuilding!

> "Do you have a name?" she
> continued, her gaze scrutinizing Fn'ordh's body with mechanistic
> precision.  "Can you even /speak/ the human tongue, or do daemons
> simply growl like /dogs/?"

Oh snap!

>     The Librarian simply smiled.  "But you /will/ remember that I made
> the offer."

Libby = the best. <3

>     "Just a man," said Silke. "All men can be scoundrels."
> ('Skilamalink' was not the sort of word Silke would use; it was more
> of an Adams kind of word, probably.)

I should start using it, to be honest

>     "The woman first," said Silke.
>     "I know," said Strife. "It just seems to me that that's not
> something a man like Peake would concern himself with. It seems to me
> that that's a way you're different."

<3

>     "The United States of America, sir," repeated Holn.  He pointed at
> Lee's driver's license.  "I didn't know what it was either, but
> Private Edmunds identified America as one of the legendary lands over
> the ocean to the west, like Atlantis or Hy-Brasil."

Oooooh, fascinating.

>     "Sergeant, I have a camp burnt to the ground by a ball of magical
> fire half a mile across, and you're bringing me fairy tales?" snapped
> Kellert with exasperation.

That is a fantastic sentence for implying things about this man and this world.

> At midnight, Melody presses her lips against Ben's, and she thinks,
> yes, this is how I want twenty-fourteen to start. It's not Ben. She
> doesn't even like Ben. Doesn't not like him, either. Just met him,
> really. It's just that she wanted to be kissed at midnight, and he did
> nicely.

Wundaful.

>     Twenty-thirteen was pretty grotty, all told.

It really was. 2014 was... less terrible, but harder.

>     But twenty-thirteen was also the year when Melody, who always knew
> her days were numbered, at last discovered what that number was. On
> December 27th of twenty-fourteen, her watch would stop, then her
> heart, then her brain.

Augh x.x

> She will still have super-speed when she dies, and in fact it
> will become more pronounced, and so her last three minutes will
> stretch out to something akin to a year.

Oh nooooooo

>     Those words sting a bit now. Because the back end of
> twenty-thirteen was when Brian went to prison for a crime he didn't
> commit and the cancer took her Aunt Dani.

!!! oh nooooooooo :<

> At 11:59:59:99, as she dodged one bolt of electricity and redirected
> another using her speed as a "static magnet" (shut up, it's totally a
> thing), Melody decides that twenty-fourteen is going to be better, and
> that it's going to start with a kiss. She scoops up a bystander in her
> arms and speeds him outside. She decides that he's cute enough to do
> in a pinch, and that his name should be Ben.

Augh. ;.;

> He smiles at
> her, still cradled in her surprisingly powerful arms, blinking and
> bewildered, and also more than a little pleased with himself. She
> smiles back, raising her eyebrows over wide green eyes as if to say,
> yep, that just happened. Then she sets him down and runs back inside.
>     Back to work.

Auuuuuuuuugh Melody I like you a lot. <3

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, a LOT a lot.