Modern Fantasy Readers and Writers discussion

"A drunkard stumbles in from the street. His clothes are dirty and shredded showing sweat stains around the neck and armpits. What's left of his white hair is ratted and standing on end. The man is mumbling incoherently.

The bum stops in the center of the bar, his eyes roll back in his head and the mumbling takes on a rhythmic quality. "Aghmenon, terrenon, aghmenon, suldmaine, aghmenon, terrenon, aghmenon, suldmaine!"

Heat erupts throughout the bar as the man's body becomes flame, clothes and hair consumed as the fire pours over his skin."

The stench of sulfur ripped through the bar forcing Strant Illian to take his eyes from the Human sitting in the chair opposite him. Strant had not seen the man who was now bathed in flame enter the bar, yet the memory of an odd odor arriving at the same time tickled at the back of his mind.

Though I smell no flesh burning.

The Human who shared his table, a puny thing Strant would not have normally associated with, had jumped up so fast his chair now lay on its back on the straw-littered floor.

When Strant was satisfied the burning man held no immediate danger for him, he returned his attention to the task at hand. “Sit, Frith. I have no time for this.” When the man did not move, he allowed a low growl to rumble out of his chest. “It is I that you need fear, Human, not that pile of ash.”

With a start, Frith glanced back to Strant. The large Kithian flexed a paw, allowing his claws to extend and retract. With a shudder, the man bent and retrieved his seat, then returned to the table, never quite removing his attention from the burning man standing before the bar.

Strant stretched out a paw and placed one sharp claw against the man’s jowl, turning his head so they once again locked eyes. “You say you have information that will help me. I will hear it now.”

The man began to raise a hand to grasp Strant’s paw, hesitated, then left it floating in the air. With a grin that left his fangs exposed, Strant removed his claw from Frith’s flesh. Reaching up, the man whipped the small drop of blood that had trickled from the small nick left on his cheek. “Yes. Yes I do.” The proper amount of fear laced the Human’s tone. “The Mah’Sukai you seek has arrived in the city.”

Jason wrote: Heat errupts throughout

Just a crappy edit, and I am not sure how detailed we want to get with edits as this should be an exercise about story and character development and not technical aspects, but "erupts" is the correct spelling.

MAD

Thanks for the catch Max, I just wrote that up quick to get us started.

Outoy watched all of this with little understanding. As the sun rose, he had oozed under the door and taken the replaced the fake plants in the middle of the bar with himself. In the unnatural lighting of the bar, no one had been able to recognize him thus far as being non human. That was, he was beginning to realize, less of an issue than he had thought, as a lion like creature and a burning human had entered with little fan fare.

Perhaps that wizard had truly done him an ill-service when he had been forced through the portal. It seemed highly unlikely that he was still in the same world. The human he knew feared those who were not. And these all had strange magical devices which allowed the to communicate with other distant humans, or at least he assumed they spoke to humans.

Realizing that hiding was gaining him very little, he oozed off of the pot and formed himself into a vaguely humanoid shape. He approach the lion-like creature and said, "No harm little man."

The lionlike creature snarled, then jumped back as its gaze fell upon him. Its surprise did not last long, as the creature backhanded Outoy with a clawed paw. Outoy was a little disappointed to see several green blobs of its body splash as it struck the ground.

The lion-like creature turned back to the human, only to find that he had left. With a roar the creature jumped upon Outoy.