||| Shadow Towers |||
Did you ever write all those FFFs? Sure.
Did you ever post em? Nah. And I’m not entirely sure why? I’ve just been a little up and down in the inspiration department but there’s some nice imagery in this, and I thought I’d share!
- Random scene with magic at play
- Two guys and a girl
- Possibly wraiths
- Definitely swords
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There were three purple and silver cards, the size of a palm, laid out on the polished gleaming surface of the black sports car’s roof.
The tower, the tower, the tower.
Every time Asuna had shuffled the deck, put the cards on the car roof that she was using as a table top, illustration facing down, and flipped them over; they had showed her three identical towers. This was very strange for two reasons. One. What was the odds of her pulling the same cards over and over? Seven times in a row?
And two. There was only supposed to be one card with ‘The Tower’ in the entire tarot deck she’d inherited from her grandfather.
And now there were infinite towers. Infinite cards with a picture of a lightning storm splitting the castle and burning people jumping out of the windows in screaming desperate terror.
How odd.
The lanky, dark dressed, boy from across the car roof observed her seventh reading with a narrow black glare. Then said:
“I guess we’re supposed to burn shit down tonight.” Draven wedged a fresh cigarette in between his thin pale lips on the last word.
Asuna gathered the cards expertly and stuffed them back in the deck with a frown.
“The spirits are telling us that something is burning already.”
The orange streetlight, soaring directly over the car, flickered. The parking lot outside the huge SweetBabyHuggies Outlet store was completely vacant except for two other cars, abandoned to sleep on strange ground by their owners. No shopping moms in yoga pants or whining dads dragging whinier kids for a ritual of mega materialistic consumption.
Just the orange light and the starless sky, and then, the three of them, with a trunk full of knives.
“Perhaps it’s your daddy’s ass that’s smoking, Draven. He’s a fucking prick deep in hell water if I ever saw one.” Murdock said, getting out of the driver’s seat and looking to his younger colleagues. Murdock was usually a merry sort, always good for a rude joke, but tonight even he was in an odd mood and the jesting were boardring on cruel.
Draven lit his cigarette and took a deep drag, chasing it with a nicotine hiss and then exhaling his answer in a cloud.
“Fuck you, Murdock. You don’t know shit about Milton.”
No. Murdock didn’t know shit about Draven’s mentor and father, except maybe that he really was a solid prick. A demonous drunk with revenge on the brain and a shard of broken glass in his hand to stab out the eyes of his opposers. In that way, father and son were almost identical; and being deep in hell waters wasn’t a metaphor. Milton was serving out his sentence, deep below in the Firefaces’ crib.
Murdock snorted a humorless laugh and opened the trunk. A light push on the button made the smooth hydraulic ‘sssssh’ mechanics open the boot like a spaceship gate.
“Like you do? Didn’t he spit blood and broken teeth in your face when you wanted to give him a papa hug?”
Draven slapped his hands on the roof and almost bit the cigarette in half.
“Come over and say that again you wrinkly raisin dick!!”
At this Murdock laughed, louder. Raisin.
Asuna tied the deck together with a pink glittery scrunchy, tossed the cards into the trunk and swapped them for her 1½ handed rapier.
“Stop fighting children. We have a job to do and if the spirits are warning us about a BBQ then we’re in real deep shit.” She strapped it by the sword belt to her hip, right over the little black dungarees that almost showed the world her lovely ass. “Also, Draven, put that out you’re giving the wraiths something to smell in the air.”
Draven snarled but dropped his smoke to grind out under his heel. The little Asian chick had s strange sort of power over him. He liked her. And he liked it even more when they walked side by side, and it looked like a kid airing a frothing Doberman. Besides, he knew that the wraiths loved all cancerous things and would stick to him like black fat flies on flypaper, but he didn’t mind. Not this night where everything seemed slightly amiss and the violence itched in his veins like coca-bugs directly under the skin.
Tonight they could swarm him and Draven would hack them all apart —make little neat stacks of wispy wraith limbs for Murdock to applaud sarcastically and Asuna grin at.
Let those towers come tumbling down to build up a new sort of horror.
They were ready for three times the change.
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-ciao-