Following up more on the fairy tale post, I mentioned I like to write things that take a well-known idea or stereotype and twist it around. I wrote the following story last summer, and I'm still pretty pleased with it. It was heavily influenced by several hours of playing Diablo II around the same time. (It has also been posted on my writing blog, but that has pretty much gone dark of late.) Be warned, this is a first draft, and I've not touched it at all since it was first written. Enjoy!
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“I know it’s been 127 years since we last saw each other!” Ruby snapped. Her fingers loosed a bolt of lightning down the infested hall before she ducked back down behind the rubble. “Do you think I can’t count?”
Trin gripped a small throwing dagger with one hand and covered the blade with his fingers. The metal turned white as he forced the ice spell through it. “You really want me to answer that?” he shouted back as he let it fly toward the approaching horde of creatures. One went down. The others stopped long enough to stare curiously at their fallen comrade, then continued scrambling over the wreckage.
“I’ve been a bit busy, saving the world and all.” She shot lightning toward the roof, bringing another shower of stone down on our enemies’ heads. “You know, like you were supposed to?”
“Yeah, looks like you’re doing a swell job.” Down went another of the creatures, an ugly mix of a goblin and a turkey. A thick shield of ice formed between us and the goblins. They tore through it in a matter of seconds. “Besides, I had other plans.”
“Weak.” She threw an arm out, and a wall of pure energy stretched from floor to the remains of the ceiling. Several of the stupid monsters were electrocuted before they finally figured out not to touch it. “And I was not the one who was hell bent on discovering the hundred most moronic ways to die! Maybe if you hadn’t run off with what’s-her-ass – ”
“Justine! Her name was Justine – ”
A group of four or five goblins launched themselves at the lightning shield. Every one of them fell in a twitching pile, but they took the shield down with them. The others tripped over their own feet as they tried to rush toward us.
“She killed you three times! Who cares what her name was?” One of the goblins came within reach. Ruby darted away from the rubble long enough to whack him on the nose with her staff. The goblin paused long enough to realise it had been hurt, then burst into tears and went running in the opposite direction.
“The first time was an accident,” Trin said, narrowing his eyes at her. He launched a giant ball of ice toward the goblins without looking. It missed by at least three feet.
“And the other times?” She gripped her staff in both hands. The purple gem embedded into the top flickered once or twice, then died. “Damn cheap thing,” she muttered.
Trin shifted uncomfortably, but looked back at their target. “She wanted to see if I really couldn’t die.” He yanked another dagger from his belt and threw it.
“Oh, that’s right. Because it’s such a damn novelty!” Ruby smacked yet another goblin, then threw up another temporary lightning shield. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you that your sister was out in the world getting attacked by an army of turkey-goblins!”
“You lived.”
Ruby changed targets long enough to drop her heavy staff down on Trin’s head. “Not. The. Point.”
“Gah!” Trin grabbed the staff and jerked it from Ruby’s hands. “You want to do this now?”
The lightning shield broke as a wall of goblins leaped through it. Most of them died before reaching the ground. The few that lived went straight overhead. They landed in pathetic heaps. Ruby and Trin raised their hands to throw a flurry of spells.
Trin let his go first. A hundred tiny arrows of ice flew out in all directions, striking goblins hard enough to send them staggering backward several steps.
Ruby shrieked. Trin glanced over to see an ice arrow buried deep into her arm. It melted away rapidly, leaving a bloody wound behind.
The goblins still standing laughed.
“Oh, hell,” Trin said under his breath.
Ruby let out another shriek, then whipped both arms toward the ground at Trin’s feet. Lightning sprayed from her fingers. The stone floor exploded and pitched Trin high into the air, close enough to the ceiling that luck alone kept him from cracking his skull on it. He came down in the middle of a crowd of turkey-goblins.
They stopped for a heartbeat, just long enough for their most fortunate turn of events to occur to them, then all at once seized Trin’s arms and legs. He was hoisted into the air and carried away from Ruby as the goblins cheered and clucked.
“Really hard to save the world if I get eaten by bloody turkey-goblins!” Trin shouted as his sister disappeared from his vision.
Her cheerful voice echoed through the remains of the ruined hall. “You’ll live!”
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