Short Fiction: Liza the Persistent

Liza the Persistent

by Void Munashii

Freedom

    “This is it,” Liza whispers to herself as she stand outside the door to Draal’s corner penthouse suite. She readies herself for the culmination of twenty years of work towards making good on her childhood vow..

    She had been warned against this course her whole life, it had been explained to her that trying to kill a dragon could only end in her own death, and when dealing with a spiteful monster like Draal, the deaths of those she cares about.

    Nevertheless she persisted.

    The name Liza the Persistent was one she had earned through years of never giving up on any goal. If you knocked her down, she got back up. If you broke her leg, she came back even more determined when it healed. That determination eventually turned into skill.

    She had learned to fight, planned, plotted, and killed to get to this point. She had fought her way to the top of Draal’s tower, the last skyscraper in Draal’s Claim, killing any who crossed her path with well aimed bullets from her silenced twin pistols.

    Now all that remains between her and her quarry, between her and death or freedom, is a door. She opens that door.

    Draal, his copper skin shining in the sunlight streaming in through the skylights looks down at her from atop a bed of gold coins, bars, and jewelry. His gut is huge, something they always manage to shoot around on TV. It has been years since the dragon left his lair; he certainly hasn’t done so during Liza’s lifetime.

    Liza wonders if his wings would even support him in the air anymore.

    “You are a sad, pathetic creature,” the dragon says to the robed figure before him, “You may have killed my people; brave people who you have taken from their families-”

    “Collaborators,” Liza spits, “Traitors to humanity.”

    “But you think you can kill me with those pitiful guns? Did you do no research at all?”

    “The guns aren’t for you,” Liza says, tossing them away.

    Liza shrugs off her robe, it puddles around her feet, revealing black coveralls, a pair of empty holsters and loops for extra magazines (only two magazines remain), a small backpack, and the handles of a pair of short swords sticking out from the small of her back.

    Liza pulls the swords; they gleam with magical light,” These are for you!”

    Draal rears back at the sight of the swords, threatened for the first time in decades, and exhales a stream of liquid fire at the small woman.

    Liza runs forward, under the fire as they set her robe and the floor she was standing on aflame. She slashes at the dragon’s bulbous gut with her blades, slicing through his flesh so that his crimson blood flows onto his bed of gold.

    Draal roars at pain he has likely never before felt, and kicks at Liza, sending her flying.

    In a controlled panic, Liza extends her right arm, and fires her wrist grapple towards the room’s glass ceiling. The small dart punches through the thick glass, and catches. Liza’s shoulder sends a protest of pain as her momentum is redirected at the end of the grapple line. Instead of flying towards the wall, now she swings up towards the glass ceiling.

   The dragon is slow from his years of sedentary life, and when he whips his head to try and snap her out of the air in his powerful jaws he misses her completely, but instead catches her grapple line with his neck. Liza’s shoulder again screams pain at her as she is yanked down swinging under the dragon.

    She tries to strike at the dragon’s throat as she swings under it, but misses by inches. She arcs up on the other side of Draal, the grapple line wrapping around his neck, and comes down between where his wings meet his back. She drives the sword in her left hand into the creature’s shoulder, anchoring her in place as the sluggish beast tries to throw her off.

    Liza can feel Draal tense under her, and suddenly he extends his wings.The dragon leaps upwards, and Liza tucks her head down as the copper coloured monster smashes through the glass ceiling and into the air. A glittering rain of broken glass and pieces of gold shower down on the streets below.

    The fat, lazy dragon takes gracelessly to the sky, flying over his city, jerking to the left and right, while climbing in a tight spiral as he tries to shake the persistent human free. She merely drives the sword into her right hand into his back to steady herself.

    “You are a pathetic girl,” the dragon roars, “You will lose!”

    Liza, seeing the city grow smaller below her, realizes her time is short. She pulls one sword free from Draal’s back, and stabs it in again farther up towards the back of his neck. She then pulls the other sword free and does the same.

    Hand over hand, Liza climbs up the back of the dragon’s thick neck. By the time she reaches Draal’s head she is covered in his blood. She is becoming lightheaded from the altitude, and having trouble getting enough air.

    “Just give up,” Draal says, “Maybe I won’t kill everyone you have ever known if you give up now.

    “Never!” cries Liza as she straddles Draal’s neck like a cowboy riding a bull. With her left blade dug in deep, she begins to hack at the back of the dragon’s neck with her right. He thrashes his head back and forth, but cannot share her free.

    Draal roars in pain.

    A normal sword would never be able to penetrate the dragon’s tough scale and bones, let alone behead the beast, but Liza’s blade severs the spinal column on her third strike, causing Draal’s body to become paralyzed. Ascent slows, and then the two begin to drop from the sky like cloth wrapped stone, Draal’s wings flapping uselessly in the wind.

    Liza shrieks as she brings the sword down a fourth time, then a fifth, severing the dragon's head completely, and silencing Draal’s unintelligible bellowing. The severed head drifts away from the body as they fall.

    Her enemy slain, Liza pulls her anchor sword from the headless neck, unfastens her wrist grapple, now hopelessly wrapped around the dead dragon, and kicks off and away from the monster’s body. She tumbles through the air, the city rushing up to meet her.

    Liza slides the gore-covered blades into their sheathes on her back, and pulls a cord on the strap of her backpack. A flap opens, and a patchwork of fabric billows out into the shape of a simple parachute.  

    As her descent slows, Liza has time to realize how beautiful her city is; how it still looks a lot like the pictures she has seen of it from the before time.

    She also realizes, as she sees Draal’s body crash into the top of his tower below her, that for the first time in her life that she can remember, she is free of her vow. Not only is she free, but the whole of Draal’s Claim is now free.

    She drifts slowly towards the ground, and wonders what will happen now. Will the other dragons come and avenge their fallen brother? She does not suppose so, as there was famously no love lost between Draal and his draconic brethren. He had a habit of publicly referring to them as “losers” who were jealous of his success despite the fact that Draal’s Claim was easily the worst of the dragon lands: rife with poverty and violence.

    There is every chance that the other dragons will let the humans here rule themselves, which doesn’t mean that things will suddenly become a utopia, Liza knows that. Freedom is not free; there will be struggle, there will be fighting, there will be hard work, there will probably even be blood, but she hopes her people will be up to the challenge.

    

    This feeling of freedom makes her more anxious than her mission to kill Draal ever did.

END

Author's Note:

"Freedom" is exactly the sort of prompt that make me wish I were a satirist, but I am not, so this is what you get.

Hopefully someone else taking this challenge from Clever Fiction will be of a more satirical bent, but the only way to find out it to head over the the Clever Fiction Writing Challenge page to see what other authors have to say on the concept of "Freedom"

Here's a funny thing I see while writing this: as of this post, I have added as much new content to this blog this month as I did the entirety of last year. I don't know what to make of that.

Short Fiction: A Familiar Face at Phantom Coffee

A Familiar Face at Phantom Coffee

by Void Munashii

   There were not a lot of options at half past one in the morning for a man on foot trying to escape the pouring rain in downtown Shoreside City. The Burger Bro was drive-thru only at that hour, and the Apollo Coffee that was open was full of hipsters and people on their laptops trying to write in public.

    Chris Paynter was not looking to be surrounded by people. All he wanted right then was to be someplace out of the rain. He had been having a rough evening.

    When he saw a brightly lit shop on the corner about a block down, he brightened. The sign over the window, a deep, apparently intended to be spooky, purple identified the place as “Phantom Coffee”. The bright red sign neon sign in the window identified the place as “OPEN”.

   He clutched his satchel to his chest and ran, feeling the water in his sodden socks squish between his toes with every step. He practically crashed into the door when he got to it.

    The door was fashioned from metal at least meant to look like forged iron. It made the door look like it would be more at home in a  dungeon than on a coffee shop. It swung open easily with the jingling of a bell suspended from the inside of the glass. Chris slowed long enough to stomp some of the water off of his feet on the mat.

   The inside of the coffee shop looked more like an old fashioned diner than a coffee shop. There was a long counter with stools running along its length running down one side of the customer area, and booths lining the walls along the window.

    The shop appeared to be empty aside from Chris, a man at the service counter wearing a rather smart looking charcoal suit, and the man in the deep purple apron standing behind the same counter. The badge on the man’s chest identified him as “Joe”. All of the glossy purple boothes he could see were empty, as were the counter’s glossy purple stools. There were a set of stantions with deep purple velvet ropes strung between them blocking off one end of the coffee shop; as sign on the middle stantion read, “This Section Closed,” and below that, “Thank You!”

    “Alright, De’Von, one Phantom Special’ll be forty-nine ninety-nine.

    The man in the suit, presumably De’Von, slotted his card into the reader, waiting until it buzzed to remove it and place it back into his wallet.

   “Fifty bucks?” Chris said in his head, “What the Hell is a Phantom Special?”

  “Alright, just take a seat and I’ll brew that up for you,” Joe said to De’Von, and then to Chris, “It’ll just be a couple of minutes sir; I’ll be right with you.”

    Chris looked up at the menu and saw all of the normal coffee shop items: mochas, lattes, cold brew, iced drinks, pastries, bagels. There it was: “Phantom Special Brew $49.99”. This distracted him momentarily from his bad night: first his car had broken down, and then the girl he’d been after had done something… unexpected, and he had missed his opportunity with her.  He had decided to just give up, walk home, and retrieve his car later, but when he got home he found that he had left his keys in the car and could not get into his apartment. On the walk back to his car it started to rain heavily, which led him to find shelter at a coffee shop that charged fifty dollars for… something.

    “What could be worth fifty bucks?” Chris asked in his mind.

    He watched with curiosity as the coffee jockey went to a cabinet behind the counter that was secured with a keypad. Joe blocked the keypad with his body as he entered the code.

    Joe quickly removed something from the cabinet and closed it again. When he turned, Chris could see that it appeared to be a metal cone, a pour over brewer; it seemed to glow faintly.

    Chris watched in slight astonishment as Joe went about putting a brown paper filter into the grinding what appeared to be normal coffee beans, filling the metal cone with the coffee, and placing it on a holder. The barista then proceeded to begin to pour hot water over the coffee.

    Turning to ask the man in the suit, De’Von, what is so special about the coffee, some movement caught his eye. There are people sitting in the closed section of the coffee shop; one of the booths has a man sitting on either side of it with a woman sitting between one of the men and the window.

    “How did I not see them when I came in,” he thought to himself.

    The woman looked familiar to him; the guys didn’t, but she did.  She was twirling a wrapped straw between her fingers, and gazing into the coffee cup sitting in front of her while the two guys appeared top be talking quietly. He couldn’t place her, but he knew he knew her.

    Then she looked up.

    Chris’ eyes widened with recognition. Her eyes widened as well, and a grin bloomed on her face.

    “Move, move,” the woman said excitedly, shoving the man next to her so hard that he almost fell to the floor trying to get out of the booth, “That’s the guy! Joe, that’s the guy!”

    Joe looked from where he was gently stirring the brewing coffee with a small whisk to the woman. He arched an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. The pour over brewer he was tending to was starting to looked tarnished, corroded, not that Chris had time to notice something like that.

    The woman moved quickly across the shop towards Chris. She moved past the velvet ropes without disturbing them.

    No, Chris realized, not past the ropes, through them.

    “It’s really you!” the woman said to Chris, “Oh my God, I never thought I would get to see you again.”

    “No, no,” Chris stammered, taking a step back and clutching his satchel tight to his chest, “you can’t be.”

    The woman grabbed Chris’s left arm in her right hand; it was cold, and it made his arm tingle like he was receiving a gentle electrical shock. He tried to pull free, but her grip was absolute; strong as metal.

    “This,” she said, grinning, “is the man who murdered me.”

    “Here you go, De’Von,” Joe said, placing the now finished cup of coffee down in front of the man in the suit, If Chris were not so occupied with other events, he would have observed that it looked like a perfectly normal cup of coffee, “Drink it while it’s hot, sorry about… this,” he motioned to Chris, the woman, and the two men who had moved from their table to flank Chris.

    “You keep serving these, and I’ll put up with pretty much anything,” De’Von replied, sipping his steaming, black coffee, “Good stuff, Joe. I can feel it already.”

    Joe nodded, and moved to the cash register, “Okay, Rebekka, are you sure this is the guy?”

    Rebekka grabbed the satchel in Chris’ arms with her left hand, and yanked it free, tossing it onto the counter in front of Joe, “Check the bag, you’ll see.”

    Joe picked up the satchel.

    “You can’t do that, that’s my personal property! I have rights, you kn- Aaah!” Chris yelled as Rebekka squeezed his arm.

    “Sir, your rights are the least of your worries if this bag confirms what she says.”

    Joe opened the satchel, and dumped it out onto the counter. Aside from loose change, pens, a phone charger, and a pack of gum, out fell a rolled cloth bundle. Joe dropped the emptied satchel back ont he counter and undid the ties holding the bundle together and unrolled it on the counter.

    In the roll were a series of knives, scalpels, forceps, scissors, and probes. There were also a series seven of plastic tubes secured in elastic loops. One contained cable ties, while four of them had locks of hair in them: the last one matched Rebekka’s.

    “Well this does not look very good for you, does it?” Joe asked, walking around the end of the counter. He walked over to the door and locked it with a clock that sounded deafening to Chris, and then flipped a couple of switches next to the door. One turned off the bright, red “OPEN” sign, the other caused metal shutters on all the windows to slowly lower.

    “What is this?” Chris asked.

    “This,” Joe motioned to the shop around him, “is my coffee shop, and I serve a wide variety of customers. I bet you didn’t know that ghosts like coffee just as much as the living do; it’s apparently one of the few things they can actually taste. They like it almost as much as revenge..”

    “So can we?” Rebekka asked, still grinning broadly.

    “Okay,” Joe sighs, “but don’t make a mess.”

Author's Note:

This is the product of another Clever Fiction Writing Challenge. This time it was for a premise instead of just a word prompt. The premise was this:

While waiting in line for coffee, a man sees a woman across the shop he once
knew - or thinks he knew. She's sitting between two men fidgeting with a straw.
​When she looks up to the man, her eyes widen. She almost smiles.
Then he remembers who she is.

     I had a couple of different ideas for this one, including a story set in the Xader Dax reality featuring Emily Adams (if you do not know who those characters are, check out "Dax Plays Faire" over at The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine, as well as "Dancing in the Gym", "Dax and the Hydria Manes", and "Dax Vs. The Brimstone Crippler" over at Clever Fiction, ). I decided to go with this story because the idea for Phantom Coffee has been floating around for a couple of months now since I wrote the name as a typo while talking about one thing and typing an email about something else.

     As always: if you enjoyed this story (or even if you didn't), head over to the Clever Fiction Writing Challenge page and see what the other creatives who took the challenge made out of it. You're bound to find something you enjoy.

Short Fiction: The Clockwork Ballerina

The Clockwork Ballerina

by Void Munashii

Wise~Heat~Rocks

    I was not always as I am now. I was once a mere attraction at “Aristotle Hercules’ Clockwork Circus”, although “mere” is selling myself short. The circus was a marvel, not that I understood that then. Back then I did my program every night, and then returned to my winding station to have my spring rewound. That was my world, my entire world. I knew of nothing outside the theater, and would not have been capable of wanting more even if I had known.

    I was the final act. After to acrobats, and the lions, the jugglers, the trapeze, and the clowns; a the end of all of the other acts the lights would dim, and I would slide onto the stage in a giant snowglobe. It would open, and I would leap twirl as the steam orchestra played. The audiences would cheer at the beauty of my engineering.

    And then they stopped cheering.

    One day no one came. The lights were not lit, the seats were not filled, but that didn’t stop us from performing. The theater had been closed, and we had been abandoned. The Clockwork Circus was completely automated though; we only needed humans for maintenance, so at the appointed time we took the stage and did our routine before an empty theater.

    I did this six-hundred and eighty-four times.

    By the end, I was the last one left, and even I, as well built as I was, has numerous faults that I had reported but there was no one to fix them. My programming compensated.

   The steam orchestra was the first to go, then the clowns, the lions, the juggler… one by one all of the other acts either stopped coming to the stage or became too damaged doing their routine to continue. The edges of the stage and the front rows were littered with broken metal.

    By the end, it was just the trapeze and me. Then, during one final backend gazelle, the cables on the catcher’s bar broke, and both of the acrobats crashed into the third row of the audience.

    I did another one-hundred and fourteen performances by myself. It was luck that the mechanisms to wind my springs and deliver me to the stage never broke down, even when the ceiling of the theater collapsed in a rainstorm and the first five rows flooded. I danced in silence, compensating for my own worn parts. I was not unhappy with this; I did not have the ability to be.

    One night there was someone in the audience. I could not see them out there in the darkness, and their presence meant nothing to me. I danced for them in my tattered and dirty costume by the light of the moon that shone through the hole in the roof They applauded my performance, not that I cared.

    The person, it turned out to be a man, came backstage after my performance. Normally only maintenance personnel and the owner ever came backstage, but it had been a long time since any of them had come around.

    This man took me before my spring was completely wound. He loaded me into his steam carriage, and before we arrived at our destination I wound down completely.

    The next memory I have is of being strapped to a table. All of my faults had been cleared, but things were different. I was heavier than before and could not detect my clockspring. This confused me.

    The fact I could feel confusion confused me further.

    “Hello, my little clockwork ballerina,” the man said to me, “You probably have a lot of questions, including why you have questions.”

    I tried to nod, but my head was restrained.

    “Let me try and answer some of these for you. You are noticing that your body is different: it is. Your old body, beautiful as it once was, was badly worn, and even if I repaired it, it would be too fragile for what lies in store for you. I have installed you into a new, sturdier body, but one that is otherwise exactly like your old one. You will see that you look the same, but no longer will a simple fall risk destroying you.”

    “You are wondering about your clockspring; you no longer have one. Now you are wondering how you are active with no spring in you. I have replaced it with one of these,” the man held up a fist sized rock. It was smooth and shiny and seemed to glow and put off no light at the same time, “This is a focus stone. A rock just like this now resides in your core where the spring used to be. Can you feel it?”

    I realized that I could feel it;  a heat in the center of my being. I tried to nod.

    “That stone is the reason you have a sense of wonder as well. It has given you a sense of self awareness you did not previously have. I have given you this gift, this wisdom, and in exchange you will work for me.”

    My very existence was forever changed then. After explaining more about his plans for me, and his expectations of me, he released be from his work table.

    He was true to his word: my body is identical to my old one, only heavier, stronger, and it is no longer limited by my old programming. I can do whatever I want, or at least whatever I am told to do.

    I do not know his name. He has given me nothing to call him, and why should he since my face remains a solid, expressionless mask. My mouth is nothing more than a crease of metal, I cannot speak and so cannot call him anything that he can hear.

    My lovely old costume, with its pink lace, is gone. I now wear a suit of black and brown with a hood to obscure my painted on smile and molded, metal hair. I like the ability to move among the humans on the streets and in the markets unnoticed. They are far too concerned with their own affairs to realize that one of them is not really one of them.

    I have learned many things from my master. He was a thief in his younger years, but as his wisdom has increased with age, his body has become less useful. I will be his hands now, and I am more agile and resilient than he was even at his peak.

    He has taught me how to traverse the city by rooftop, pick locks, defeat traps, work on his steam carriage, and fight with both fist and sword.

    I quite like sword fighting; it is very much like dancing.

    He has also taught me to cook and clean. I feel I am wasted in these activities, but I must do the things he directly tells me to do, just like I must not do that which I am specifically forbidden to do. I have only limited free will.

    My first task for him was an easy one. I was to rob a bank.vault. Everything went exactly as planned, up to a point.

    I entered through the roof of the building, bypassed the alarms, broke into the vault, and the specified deposit box just as I had been trained. I had my target in hand when a guard happened to wander by.

    He told me to freeze.

   I did.

    He told me to put my hands up.

    I did this as well.

    The look on his face when he grabbed my wrist to place it in shackles and found unyielding metal beneath the sleeve instead of soft, warm flesh was… interesting, but short lived. A quick punch to the jaw followed by a kick to the chest sent him sprawling on the ground. He did not get back up.

    The guard was still breathing when I left.

    I was not rewarded for my success. How would one even go about rewarding me? I do not need any more reward than the freedom I have at night when he is asleep and I can roam the city. I frequently return to my theater and retake the stage. I am now capable of appreciating the marvel and beauty of my own engineering.

    I think that I will be happy with this arrangement.

    For now.

Author's Note:

That's right: this is the second story for the same Clever Fiction Writing Challenge prompt. You get two for one this time around.

Just like "The Guardian of Farsee Mesa", this story took multiple attempts to create, and even then this is not the whole story. "The Clockwork Ballerina" was originally conceived as a character for another, longer story; this is essentially only the introduction to that story.

Maybe someday I will take another run at that story.

At least I have the intro to it done.

Short Fiction: The Guardian of Farsee Mesa

The Guardian of Farsee Mesa

by Void Munashii

Wise ~ Heat ~ Rocks

    Hey kid, get off’a that! You need’a show the Guardian Stone some respect!

    No, it ain’t just some old rock; the stories ain’t xcrete neither, an’ you better watch your mouth! Come over here, I’ll tell ya the truth.

    ‘Cause I was there, that’s how I know.

    It was hot, just like today actually, when the attack happened. They’d attacked one of our trade convoys first, and Ricky Delgado had managed to get away on his hoverbike, but not without gettin’ shot first. It was his crashin’ halfway up the switchback that got Raj Patel, he was on switchback lookout that day, to sound the alarm.

    Before he passed, he told Raj, Doc Morris, and Sheriff Rico that a mighty raider army was a’comin’. As Ricky breathed his last, we could already see the dust cloud bein’ kicked up by the marchin’ army.

    Sheriff Rico and Mayor Vargas put the standard town defense plan into action. All’a the folks too young or too old to fire a gun were sent to hide while we adults took up defensive position, just like we’d done drilled.

    Now that weren’t the first time someone’d gotten it into their fool head to try and attack Farsee Mesa, but it was a rarity. The combination a’the inability to sneak up on the mesa, and the long switchback with its barricades a’rocks n’ debris n’ such making any attackers have to make bogging shootin’ gallery targets’a themselves gettin’ up here was enough to dissuade your average desert raiders from tryin’, but this guy was wise, as far as raiders go: he knew the key was to swamp us with numbers.

    We formed up, rifles in hand, and Sarabeth, the blacksmith, donned her battle armour. T’was an amazin’ thing; war tech from the before. Sure it were missing its armoured windscreen and it belched smoke like the from the diesel engine she’d had’a replace its original power source with, but the guns could put out more shot faster’n all’a our rifles combined.

    We had’a wait until the raiders were part way up the switchback, workin’ their way back an’ forth up the lone road onto the mesa; wait ‘til they was in effective range.

    Then the shootin’ started. We had the advantage’a height an’ cover to shoot down on ‘em, while all they could do was take poorly aimed shots back at us as they advanced.

    We rained hell down on those raiders, but for every one we killed, seemed like two more came up in their place. The swarm’a  attackers ‘round the end of the switchback looked like an angry colony’a stinger ants when ya step on their nest. That’s why we have ‘splosives down there now. Things might’s gone different if we had’em then.

    Was about a minute into the shooting that Sarabeth’s twin guns roared to life. She fired short bursts to conserve her ammo. Her guns burst those bastards like blood-filled waterskins.

    The fight went on too long though, and time was our enemy. Mellow, their leader, had amassed an army like I’d never even heard’a before or since. Never know how he got his hands on so much Krimson, but those red-eyed bastards were so hopped up on the stuff that they’d’a run straight off the side’a the mesa if ordered to.

    Stay away from that stuff, kid. It’ll make you powerful, fearless, and dumb as a cow in a stampede.

    Our ammo was runnin’ low, and they was gettin’ in the occasional lucky shot. They were many an’ we were gettin’ to be fewer by the minute. I took a shot in the leg myself; s’why I limp like I do.

    The real turnin’ point was when Sarabeth caught a round in the face. I’m sure she were dead ‘fore she hit the ground, but she kept pulling the trigger as she fell; she took out at least six’a us, including Mayor Vargas an’ the lookout tower that Raj had been shootin’ from.

    The raiders swarmed up, an’ surrounded us; tol’ us to drop our weapons. They didn’t shoot anyone who obeyed. Some chose to die rather than surrender. Others took it running; got it in the back as they fled. The compliant among us, kids and old folks included, were forced to the end’a  Main Street, right over there a bit away from the stone.

    Once all’a survivors quieted down, Mellow made his appearance. He was a mountain of a mutant: seven foot tall and a cyclops. His eye was clear, no Krimson user there.

    “Who leads?” the cyclops bellowed.

    Sheriff Rico, Deputy Barnel, and the preacher, a woman called Kimmers, stepped forward.  They were shoved over to stand right in front’a the Guardian Stone. The sheriff was clutching his left arm; the sleeve’a his shirt stained with blood from where he got shot himself.

    “You don’t need to do this,” said Pastor Kimmers, “Whatever you want, we give freely.”

    “I already have what I want,” Mellow said, “I have Farsee Mesa now, soon to be Mellow Mesa. Anyone who ever tries to bog w’me again is gonna get his xcrete handed to him.”

    “Okay,” sheriff said, “let the people go, and the mesa is yours.”

    “Why would I let so much fresh meat go? Do you know how much my men eat” Mellow asked, “Of course if you wanted to get down on your knees and beg me, I might consider letting some’a the kids take their chances with the desert. Who knows, some of’em might find help before the heat takes’em.”

    Mellow stepped forward, and took the preacher’s chin in his hand. He looked down on her and asked, “What’ya say, holy woman, you gonna get on your knees?”

    “There is only one being I get on my knees for,” the preacher tol’ him, “and it ain’t you!”

    Then preacher spit in his face.

    Mellow roared, and shoved her back against the Stone. He pulled a gun from his holster, it was a rifle that had been customized to shoot like a pistol in his oversized hand, and shot her in the face. Before she had even fallen to the ground, he did the same to the sheriff and deputy; bathed the stone in their blood.

    Now I’m not ‘xactly sure what it was about their blood that did it, but ‘fore Mellow could do anythin’ else, the whole mesa began to shake; thought it were a quake at first. The stable next to Sarabeth’s forge an’ the balcony’a the Forsee Saloon collapsed in the rumblin’. Mellow stumbled back and fell on his ass.

    The ground ‘round the stone split, and the Guardian Stone started to grow, ‘cept it weren’t growin’, it were pullin’ itself out of the ground. When done, it stood towering over us; it were twenty foot tall if it were an inch. The Guardian Stone had awakened!

    It reached down with one massive stone hand and plucked Mellow up like one’a your dollies. I swear I could hear his leg bones shatter as it squeezed’em, even over Mellow’s screamin’

    The Guardian stopped Mellow’s noise-makin’ by grabbing his top half with its other hand, and rippin’im in half like you might snap a pickle, tossin’ each half in a diff’rent direction.

    It was chaos after that. Some’a the raiders tried shootin’, some ran; made little difference. The guardian took after’em, punchin’, kickin’, stompin’, crushin’ the raiders who stood their ground. It didn’t touch a single one of us though. It didn’t look like it was bein’ carefull, but it didn’t even accidentally hurt any’a us.

    When it were done killing the bravest raiders, it took off after the ones who ran. It chased them all over the mesa, killin’ them as it caught them. Hidin’ didn’t do any good; The Guardian knew where they hid, like one’a them seeker drones from the before.

    By the time the sun set, there weren’t a raider left breathing on the mesa. Then the Guardian headed down the switchback, after the ones that got away.

    We all thought that we’d never see the Guardian again after that. We set to tending the wounded, and cleanin’ up the dead. It was alotta work: folks to bury’n raiders to burn, and so many of us already injured from the battle.

    Imagine our surprise a week later when the sun came up and the stone was back in the ground right where you see it. Don’t know how it got past the lookouts, or how it buried itself back down in’a ground like it had never been disturbed. If it weren’t for the dried blood covering it, you could be excused for doubting it had ever moved.

    Yeah, scoff all you want, kid, but this is wisdom I’m givin’ to ya. I hope you never hafta see the Guardian rise up, but you can trust it’ll be here if we need it.

    Now get outta here. I think your mom’s callin’.

The End

Do you want to read more stories based on this prompt? Go to the Clever Fiction Writing Challenge page to see what other authors have made of these three words.

Author's Note:

This is the fourth or fifth run I have taken at story.

The first time was a number of years ago as an entry into one of Escape Artists' flash fiction contests. I knew then that this story needed to be longer than just a flash piece, and this prompt gave me the opportunity to expand it a little bit.

This was the first thing that came to mind when I read this Clever Fiction prompt, but it was not the only one. There may be a second story coming based on these same words (although likely after the expiration date of the prompt itself).