Royce's Random Thoughts

For ankewehner: “Tez meeting (or thinking about) Swan after Maria's death.”

* * *

You have a great deal of nerve would have been the obvious thing to say. But then, Swan was his daughter. The observation would have been redundant. So Tez waited until she had bent her head over Maria's coffin, the prayers had been spoken, and they had all shuffled out of the temple to follow the hearse to the graveyard.

He fell in beside her as they walked behind it along the road, a little ahead of the other children. “Why?” he asked quietly. “You know I'm going to kill you.”

“You'll try,” she replied serenely. “But not today.”

“I could snap your neck right now.”

“Right in front of all the grandchildren? Yes, I'm sure Mother would appreciate that.”

“Like I care.”

“You do care, or I would have been dead the moment you caught sight of me. Half the others are wondering why you even let me in here. But you're not going to sully this day. Tomorrow perhaps I'll die, but not today.”

"Which still begs the question. Why?"

"She was my mother. Don't you think I had the right to see again?"

"You lost that right when you sold her to the dragons," he growled.

For lilfluff: "€Anything based on any foolish questions you may have been asked about parenthood..."

Note: I thought you wanted a drabble, not a novella¦

* * *

Most of the folk of the town knew both he, Maria, and their ever growing brood. So he felt absolutely no compunction to be polite when a stranger€'s voice asked, "€Is that your child?"

Tez shifted his grip on Davin'€s legs. The brown skinned child with small horns growing out of his scalp looked at the stranger curiously from his perch on his father's shoulders. It was another elf speaking, of course, a maiden in a merchant's robes.

"€No,"€ he replied. "€I decided to steal another couple's child off the street, and I€'ve convinced the rest of the town to go along with it. Hence the lack of screaming and pursuit."

"That'€s not what I meant,"€ the elf said.

"€No,"€ Tez interrupted. "What you meant was '€I wonder what business you have thinning out our race'€s blood copulating with animals.'"€

"No," the maiden shot back hotly. "€I was going ask whether your child is a free birth or not."

Tez blinked. "€I'€m sorry?"€

She pointed to the collar around his neck. You â€re owned. I wanted to make sure your child wasn't"

"€I'€m free," Davin popped in. "Daddy isn'€t, but he doesn'€t mind."

"€No?"€

"You'€d have to meet Maria to understand."€

For shadur: "One of your characters, victorious, and wishing they weren't."


"Please, I don't even know who that person is!"

"She's you. Faces can change, but gene scans never lie," Tez said, holding up the amulet, blinking green as it tasted a drop of each of their blood. "You changed your face, even erased your memory, but you can't escape your fate. Not after what you did to your mother."

"Please, I've got..." She let a screech as the injector entered her vein. "I've got... I've... Oh gods..." Then, abruptly, she began sobbing.

"You remember now."

"I was Swan. I hurt Mother... I'm... Sorry."

"I know," he sighed, drawing his knife.

For colliemommie: "Exactly what it says on the box."

* * *

Maria turned the box over in her hands, reading the label. "It doesn't actually mean that, right?"

Tez smiled. "'Unlimited power'? Yes, it does."

"I mean, how does it work? Do I plant seeds in the ground and get an army?"

"No."

"Does it have a tiara that grants me wishes?"

"Not at all."

She opened the box, revealing a stubby cylinder with a toothed gear on the top and a toggle switch on the side. She flipped it and the gear started turning. "What's making it turn?"

"I've forgotten. But until you flip that switch again it'll never stop."

For Naziha Zahed: "Tez telling his kids why Maria hates penguins."


"But that's silly!" Meribeth exclaimed, Swan nodding in agreement. "Everybody likes penguins!"

"Well now that the treaty has been signed, certainly," Tez agreed. "But back then they gave us no end of problems."

Maria swept into the room. "Tez, they're far too young to hear that story," she said firmly.

Tez went on, ignoring her. "When we first visited them, we ended up being chased by them, until we both fell through the ice into a lake. Being elven, I was safe, but Maria became hypothermic. So to warm her up I began to…"

"Aaaand now it's time for bed!"

For lilfluff: "A convenient random plot device affects Tez and Maria making them both children. How do they react? Will whoever caused it to happen survive? "


"Maria," Tez said with remarkable calm, "the next you experiment with potions, please make sure they won't explode, nor are skin permeable." He fingered his collar, hanging loosely from his neck, not being fitted for a youngling of only fifty years. He clamped down on his emotions, which were railing at the wrong, wrong, wrong, sensory inputs of being in a building instead of a nurturing forest. Hurts.

Maria, appearing about eight and falling out of her dress, stuttered, "Y-yes, s-sir."

Oh, no... "Maria, you're eight again, you're not..."

She dropped to her knees, whimpering in abasement.

Physical, and emotional.

* * *

Maria did not have a fun childhood, no.

And so it begins. One down, 364 to go.

Note: I've received seven prompts, all of which are written at this point. I'm going to need a lot more to reach the end of 2013. Please click on the original prompt call and let me know what I should write next.

* * *

For rix_scaedu. "An unexpected visit."

Maria blinked, as Tez stood up from their afternoon luncheon, as the murderous expression on his face was suddenly masked by polite courtesy, as an elf clad in gleaming white was led towards them by a manor servant.

"Rider Avanar," he greeted. "How did you find me?"

Avanar bowed deeply. "Eldest, you were not difficult to locate. The Death Worshipers have been in considerable disarray since your... owner's... recent miracle became known."

"And what do you want now?"

"I have been ordered by the Council to free you from your vile enslavement." He drew his sword. "By whatever means necessary."

It had taken some searching to find the bunker. It had not been, as Tez had first supposed, in the center of the city, as his ego thought it would demand. Instead it had been nearly a hundred miles away, deep in a cave complex, anonymous.

I hate it when I'm overclever, he thought.

"You must understand, we are not dealing with a true artificial intelligence," he said, as he set the charges on the sealed door. "That's impossible, been impossible, always will be impossible. I know, I've tried to create them often enough. This is more like an incredibly complex spreadsheet program, with hundred of thousands of branching IF/THEN decision points. An amazing achievement in and of itself, given it's kept the city running for literally eons."

"Orin, do you have any idea what he's saying?" Maria asked her grandson.

"More or less," he said with a shrug.

"All right, cover your ears," Tez told them. They did and he fired off the charge, destroying the hinges and lock mechanism with a bang that echoed through the caves. The door, long since sealed by rust, stayed in place, until Maria and Orin moved in with crowbars and pried it loosed, the heavy steel hatch falling to ground with a clank. "Let me go in first," he advised them both. "If the security systems are working, they'll recognize me. And if they're malfunctioning, it isn't like they could kill me anyway."

They were stripped of their robes and had their arms folded and bound behind them, then they were stuffed into a van and driven for nearly an hour, before being pulled out and and brought into a tall golden palace/administration center.

"Where are we going?" Maria whispered to Tez.

"Trial and execution I'm guessing, not necessarily in that order," he whispered back.

"Silence!" one of the Not-Maria guards shouted.

"Yes, yes. 'Resistance is useless,'" Tez muttered softly. Maria bit down hard on her lip. Now was not the time to burst out in panic induced laughter.

They were dragged into a high chambered... Yes it was definitely a throne room. Though the throne itself, a surprisingly plain and uncomfortable looking granite construction, was empty.

"Kneel before the Center of Power," the Guard Captain growled.

"Do it," Tez advised. "It's not worth the beating right now." Maria nodded and knelt with him on the floor, all of the guards save the Captain himself joining them.

"Immortal One," the Guard Captain announced to the empty throne. "We bring you a renegade Swan-Kin and her elf slave. They claim to have arrived from the Barbarian Lands and have no papers."

Swan-Kin? Maria thought.

There was a shimmering in the air above the throne, then a face appeared, floating in nothingness. To Maria's artistic eye it looked like a sketch brought to life, all inked lines with no color. A bald head with an elf's pointed ears, it wasn't until it spoke that she recognized it.

"Who are you?" The head paused, focusing on Tez. "Who dares mock the Immortal One by wearing Our face?"

"A giant floating head," Tez muttered again. "I am becoming cliched in my old age."

And back to Tez and Maria.

* * *

Tez stood on his feet, hands clasped behind his back, glaring at the goat folk surrounding them and giving them his best I am insane and you do not want to be within a mile of me rictus smile. Which wasn't his first choice of expressions, but it was the only one he could use without bursting out laughing, as Maria continued her rant at the village elder.

"You are naughty, naughty people!" she shouted at the top of her lungs, which given her size in comparison to the goat folk was extremely impressive. Still gripping the naked blade in her bleeding palm, she waved the pommel in the village elder's face. "I am very disappointed in you! I come all the way from another world and the best you can think of is to make some stupid blood sacrifice to appease me? Where are the flowers?! Where's the food? Where is the epic poetry?! Where are the children singing traditional ethnic songs off key?!" She went on, sounding less like "Angry Goddess" and more like "Scolding Mother". "Further more I'm still half naked, my hand hurts now and I'm running out of insults." Still, she had worked herself up enough that she was managing get her eyes blood engorged, to the point that they were appearing red, which was always impressive to the uninitiated who knew nothing of early onset retinal hemorrhaging.

Still smiling, Tez stood up and stood behind the village, resting his chin on top of the goat man's head as he felt the elder start trembling in fear. "Perhaps we can dial it back a bit, Mistress," he answer in an evil tone. "Try some reconciliation."

"Right!" She sat back down, flipping the blade around so she was holding the pommel, and tossed it back at the elder, where in a bit of luck it stuck in the ground blade first between his feet. Lowering her voice a bit she said, "Tez, get the poor kid over here before the elder gets any more stupid ideas."

"Yes, Mistress." He grabbed the boy who had first found them, pulling him by the horns and pushing him down until he knelt at Maria's left, while Tez sat on her right. The poor boy was nearly frozen in fear and didn't dare move.

Maria made a fist with her bleeding palm and as the elder began to kowtow, said in a much more relaxed tone. "I'm so glad we had this discussion. Tez, why don't we take this young fellow back to our camp while we figure out what to do next."

"Good plan, Mistress."