I love how well you wrote into it that the ''alien'' was human, very nice

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(A Wayfarer gets a job?)

So here I am, sitting behind a rather ordinary desk in a not so ordinary office at the Junction of Souls...where Souls get sent to their next lives. 'Why am I even here?' You may ask. Well, the answer to that won't be what you think. I'm just doing a favor for my friend Zariel. Most deity-level beings know him as the 'God of Reincarnation'.

No joke, he came up to me one day and asked me to cover for him for a couple of weeks. "I need a vacation." were the words that he said. Then again, I did owe him that favor. Plus, the fact that I ripped my own soul out of the Cycle helps too. Guy was pretty mad about that but eventually cooled off.

All in all, a pretty uneventful set of weeks at the post. Some get a second chance, while others...

"My name is Jeb Forest of the South-" Yeah, those like him get the worst reincarnation possible. For fairness, we do eliminate their collected Karma. In case they're nicer in the next life.

But a strange occurrence was a singular soul that seemed to be a repeat customer. "Marcos. Again man?" Luckly, I was told about him beforehand.

"Yeah. I seem to be unlucky."

"There's Unlucky, and then there's problematic.." Seriously. Maybe I should do something about that. Sounds like this guy has a pretty strong curse on his soul...maybe more than his soul is affected.

"You have a point. Wait, you're not Zariel." Oh so he noticed.

"He's on vaction. I'm just filling the shift for a couple more days." Speaking of, time dialation here is kinda screwy. A soul would think that a day passes normally when they get here, right? Well, it doesn't. One normal human day is about 30 - 40 years here.

"Didn't know Gods needed vacations." Most don't.

"He's been doing this since the dawn of time. Pretty sure all primordials are afforded some vacation time." My jobs are far easier and far less messier than most gods. I'm more or less a trans-dimensional mercenary.

"I'm back-" Was all Zariel got out before seeing who I was talking to. "Marcos. Again?" And he seemed annoyed. Talk about a bad return.

"He's cursed." I stated. "In fact-" I activated a special ability of mine and looked at Marcos. What I found kinda made me mad. Just so much evil literally tied to his very being, like a acutal bow tie. And its evil I know too well. "Serval did it."

"That useless prick." Zariel said. Looks like he knew why Jashin did it. Zariel can't get rid of heavy curses tied to the reincarinated soul's being. Looks like Serval forgot what I can do, or the fact that I'm even here. I reached over to Marcos' soul and shattered the evil like it was a glass vase.

"Problem solved. Out of curiosity, why were you cursed anyway?" I asked. There's gotta be a reason for this.

"Well....I met a girl. She introduced herself and said she was Serval's daughter. We went on a few dates and got into something, if you know what I mean." Marcos explained.

"Nice." Zariel and I said. What? A human and a God's daughter falling for one another is good stuff.

"Right, Off you go now. Also, my friend put a protection on your soul. You'll get your memories of back if you meet Serval's daughter again." Zariel said, sending Marcos on to the next life.

"You know: for an Evil God's daughter, she seems to love the idea of 'Together Forever.' "I said. I never met said daughter myself. "But now that you're back, I'ma go pay Serval a visit."

As I was leaving, I heard Zariel say "Have fun!". Oh, it will be...

I've never read it. So I can't speak to it's quality If I were to recommend any long form webnovels it would have to be practical guide to evil, mother of learning, and a hesitant recommendation for the gods are bastards as it seems to be a forever hiatus.

"What do you mean about the fertility thing?" I asked, mentally kicking myself even as I did so, "I mean I know I don't go on a lot of dates and I haven't got any kids but it's totally in my life plan, I think. And the dates thing is looking up, I'm actually meant to be seeing someone tonight which reall-"
She cut me off.
"Not your fertility. Hers."
The woman pointed outside my kitchen window and I gazed out to see what random woman I'd apparently managed to block the fertility of. To my surprise and slight amusement there were no women out there at all but there was one very loved but rather dimwitted cat.
"I'm not allowed salt... because I got my cat fixed?" I asked, desparately trying not to laugh.
"Fixed??" the goddess bellowed, "She was perfect and you-"
I cut her off without thinking.
"Yeah, sorry. I mispoke. It's just we don't have room or money for any kittens. And I wouldn't want pets I can't look after. I didn't mean to upset you, I didn't even know you existed. It's just that I really love Tosspot and so I took her to the vet to check she was healthy and I got her... spayed so that there wouldn't be anymore strays. She was sad
when I met her. I don't want there to be other sad cats."
Outside, Tosspot raced along the fence and leapt down out of sight.
"It was a gift." the salt/fetility goddess said quietly.
"I understand. It just wasn't a gift that was useful to us. I'm sorry."
My eyes darted to the clock without thinking. My date would be coming in half an hour. It was ridiculous in some ways that in the midst of all of this craziness I was calculating if I was still going to have time to prepare the food before she arrived but I guess I really liked her. Either that or human brains really, really don't know how to cope with events that are this surreal.
"So." I said after a while, "What happens now? I didn't mean to reject your gift. I'm a huge fan of kittens when there's space for them and fertility in general, I guess. Not that I've thought about it... but I wouldn't be here if you weren't out there giving gifts to people. Salt's great too so good job on that. Is there some way this can turn out that actually everything's good between us?"
"You didn't know who I was."
"No." I admitted. "But I appreciated you without knowing you were there.A lot of people probably do. And I am sorry. I meant no offense and if I'd had a chance to talk to you then I'd have been able to explain things before I offended you."
"You wish more opportunity to talk with me?"
Oh. Not really.
"Sure. If that'll make things clearer between us."
"Then we shall speak again." The woman said and just like that the whole process reversed itself.
The goddess turned back into a tall stack of salt and then that salt leapt from whereshe'd stood back onto the counter, diminishing itself as it did so. The container was broken by the explosion but a small pile of saltformed where it had stood. I stepped closer and examined it warily.
It seemed to be normal salt though. It didn't move and there was nothing to it butshiny white granules. Even so, I watched it out of the corner of my eye as I cooked. I could have thrown it away but somehow I knew that my new friend would know if I did so. So I cooked the recipe as intended and when the time came, I added salt to a dish for the first time in years.
Just a pinch.

I don't buy salt. I don't have some sort of strange aversion to it - I've eaten salty food when I've been out with friends and whilst I think it's a stronger taste than they seem to I certainly don't hate it. It isn't even as though I've never bought salt but it seemed to be the one spice (herb? condiment? flavour?) that I would always lose or run out of. It's fine, I know I misplace things more than the average person and honestly a life without salt wasn't all that bad. My blood pressure is pretty awesome despite not having the healthiest diet known to man and it encouraged me to use other herbs and spices to ensure my cooking had some sort of flavour (mostly just garlic, lots of garlic).
But tonight was different. I'm okay with my cooking being saltless when it's just me in the house but tonight was the first time Marie was coming over and I wanted to be sure things were perfect. I put the brand new container of salt on the counter, mildly paranoid that storing it in a cupboard for even a second would cause it to spontaneously disappear. It sounds silly but on the other hand I can lose a set of house keys in three seconds flat so maybe it's just a sensible precaution at this point.
The salt didn't disappear though. It stayed right where it was but it almost looked like it was bulging. Can salt go off? I mean, it's just rocks isn't it?
I was wondering if I'd have to head back to the store when the salt container exploded. More salt than you'd think could fit inside cascaded across the counter and onto the floor whilst a few tiny grains shot up to the ceiling. The salt kept coming. There was supposed to be 500g of salt there, I think. Even if I'd misremembered there can't have been meant to be more than a kilogram. But salt kept flowing until there was a human-sized pile collecting on the floor. I had to shuffle backwards to get away from it and it just wouldn't stop.
Until finally it did. The salt stopped appearing from wherever it'd been coming from and instead started stacking. I didn't really have time to decide whether salt managing to stack itself was worse than irt multiplying and fllaing to the floor before it sculpted itself into a humanoid shape and changed form entirely.
The woman who was now standing in my kitchen towered over me in a water-patterned dress
and yellow face paint. She wore a tall paper crown that brushed the ceiling with its tips and had beautiful feathers hanging down from it. Her legs had small bells tied to them and her feet were wearing sandals that looked out of place in the chilly kitchen.
I didn't take this in all at once, of course. THe only things I noticed when this woman first appeared was that she was in between me and the only way out and she did not look happy.
"Hello?" I asked, even though 'hello' isn't really a question.
She glared at me.
"Can I offer you some tea?" I asked her after a moment's thought and regretted it instantly.
I don't know what you're supposed to do when mysterious beings arrive in your kitchen
without warning but I felt as soon as I'd spoken that 'offer them tea' was not it.
"You attempt to reject your punishment." the woman said.
"Right. Sorry about that." I said with a nod and then added, "Quick question though - what is my punishment, who are you and why am I being punished anyway?"
"You don't know my name?" the woman said with an alarming increase in volume.
"No, of course I do. Yup. Um, just the other two questions."
"You have been punished for rejecting my gift of fertility and your punishment has been set as a life devoid of salt. Yet you attempt to cheat this judgement and bring ever more salt into your domicile."
There was frankly no part of this that made sense to me. I didn't even know what to address first.
"You've been stealing my salt?" I asked without thinking.
"Salt is my gift and you are no longer permitted to enjoy it! How dare you think that you have the right to my generousity after offending me so!"
"Right, of course. Sorry."
Which only left the fertility thing. I didn't understand it but only a complete idiot would ask a strange god who apparently rules all salt to clarify something like that. You'd have to be mind numbingly dumb to ask a creature like that to go into the ins and outs of exactly how
you'd offended her.

[Continued below...]

"You have guessed, I'll warrant." said Barbicayne, "That the nature and pedigree of Barbicayne the Fool, such as it is, is not so simple as it appears to be?"

"The less canny among my peers believe you're just what you appear to be: a common man, if slightly mad, who's a savant of song and verse." Lord Gray said. "Those who are more perceptive think that you're the king's spymaster, your guise as a fool a pretense to keep you close to the monarch and his court."

"The best stories have layers," Barbicayne said, with a grin, spreading his hands expressively. "A little something for everyone."

"And the truth?" Lord Gray pressed. "You're no common man -- if you are one at all."

"Questioning my manhood? Really, Lord Gray, I'd have thought such base jibes were beneath you." Barbicayne smirked.

"Rather your humanity, Master Barbicayne." the old scholar replied.

"Ah! Well, I've given some cause to question that, over the years. But I am quite human, as it happens -- on my mother's side, at least." the jester said.

"Is this story of yours going to start soon?" Lord Gray asked, impatiently.

"It started long ago, m'lord." Barbicayne replied crisply. "My story begins before great Sigismund the Wanderer first looked upon these fair lands while they dozed beneath a layer of orange autumn leaves, and fell in love with his new 'Amber Home'."

"There are no primary sources that authenticate the tale of Sigismund; that's just an old legend." Lord Gray protested.

"Then it's in good company with me," the fool retorted, crisply. "Now where was I? In those days this world was still new, like a young child still surrounded by its jostling elder siblings. Once such older sister to the world of man coveted its youth and beauty, and her children sought to lay claim on it."

"The Magi speak of a time beyond memory, when worlds overlapped and converged..." Lord Gray mused.

"At the moment, I speak of it." Barbicayne observed, testily.

Lord Gray raised his hands in placation, and the jester continued.

"The denizens of that world were powerful, with vast knowledge born of countless eons. And yet, the world they sought was not made for them. Too many substances common to this land proved to be their bane. Iron, hawthorn wood -- the sort of thing every peasant farmer trusts to ward away evil spirits, even today." Barbicayne went on. "Still, they were unwilling to abandon their conquest, even though this world was all but poison to them. Instead, they beget children with mortals, offspring who could have both a share in the power of these Outer Lords, and birthright to the world they coveted."

"You...you are..." Lord Gray said, eyes widening.

"A changeling? A fetch? A hellspawned wretch?" Barbicayne wryly rhymed. "We have been called such, my lord, and not without cause. But before we were any of those things, we were but children. What more can be asked of a child, than that he learn the lessons his parents teach, and do as they bid him?"

"Do you...do their bidding still?" he asked, uneasily.

The jester shook his head. "That ended long ago. The worlds were pulled apart by forces even the Outer Lords could not resist, and their voices could no longer reach the progeny they left behind."

"So you were abandoned." Lord Gray said, his expression softening.

"Yes. But this is not the sad part of the story, my lord." Barbicayne said. "We were better for it. We were bereft of our parents' power, yes, but we had a measure of that in our own right. More importantly, we had our freedom. Though many of us abandoned the ambition of ruling over this world, which was never really our ambition to begin with, the children of our second and now only home were not quick to forgive. We were hunted, and despite our power we were few, and they were many."

Lord Gray frowned. "So it often fares with men among each other, as well. The lust for vengeance is a bloody circle."

"Until one decides to break it." the fool observed. "As did the warrior sent to hunt me down: Sigismund of the Red Blade."

"The Wanderer?" Lord Gray exclaimed. "You're saying he actually was real?"

"Real indeed, though not called 'Wanderer' then. That epithet came afterward, when he was exiled from the mountains he hailed from, for the crime of sparing the monster he'd been commanded to dispatch." Barbicayne sighed. "His own kith and kin turned their backs on him, spat upon his name, and banished him on pain of death should he ever return."

"Incredible..." the scholar murmured. "The stories were always fragmentary, but most thought he was called wanderer because he was an explorer, not an outcast."

"Time does strange things to history, as you well know. It did even stranger things, before you started writing it down." Barbicayne said. "But don't look so glum. That is not the sad part of the story, either."

The jester leaned against the wall. "As you may have guessed, I decided to travel with Sigismund. I was already gravely injured when he found me, and needed time to regain my strength -- at the time, he was the only man I could trust not to kill me, if given the chance. He was an extraordinary man, and eventually became the closest thing to a brother, to me. I stayed with him even when he settled in his beloved Amber Home, and he founded what would eventually become the royal line."

"And that is how you came to be the power behind the throne?" Lord Gray demanded. "Ruler of your friend's kingdom in all but name, his descendants merely your puppets?"

Barbicayne sighed. "As I have said, the ambition to rule was never mine -- that was the will of the Outer Lords, and I am long since free of it. No, my lord, that is not why I do what I do. Before he died, Sigismund called me to his side, and asked me to protect his kingdom, and guide his heirs. Amber Home was still a tiny kingdom then, with wild and quarrelsome lands upon its borders, and he feared for its survival when he was no longer there to protect it. So, I gave him my word that I would do as he asked."

"And have you?" Lord Gray pressed. "Is this...charade truly what he desired?"

Barbicayne shook his head, slowly. "Of course not. But it is not what I desired, either. For generations, I stood by the throne, and offered my advice and insight. Only Sigismund knew the full extent of what I was, and what I could do, of course, and that remained his secret. His heirs knew only that I was something old and wise, whose counsel could be trusted -- but that became a problem."

"Their trust was a problem?"

"A great one. They trusted me implicitly. Eventually, they sought my advice on virtually every decision, and could make none for themselves. I saw what this was doing to them, and I withdrew into hiding, working only behind the scenes, counseling them only through third parties, but that did not correct the problem. The heirs of Sigismund no longer believed they had a mystical counsellor whose insight bordered on prophecy. They now believe that they simply lead charmed lives -- somehow or other, things always seem to just work out for them." Barbicayne said closing his eyes as if in pain. "I settled on this role several centuries back, and the king's favored fool became a convenient tradition. Every few decades, I simply don a new comical mask, and I am able to be where I am most needed."

"Could you not have withdrawn entirely? Let the royal line stumble from time to time, so it could learn to stand on its own?"

The jester smiled wanly. "I have a share of my sire's powers, my lord, but also a share of his weaknesses -- like a being of that Outer World, I am bound by the letter of my word as if by iron fetters. In haste, and in love, I carelessly agreed to do as Sigismund asked: guide his descendants, and protect his kingdom. I cannot now do otherwise, even if in doing so I make my beloved brother's progeny little more than pleasant throne room ornaments, dancing at the end of the strings I pull from the shadows."

Lord Gray was silent, his eyes on the ground as he contemplated the weight of Barbicayne's words.

"And that, my lord," Barbicayne said, with a sigh. "Is the sad part of the story."

Thank you :)

“Do I have to, Mother?” I did not wish to share my room with an alien – it was hard enough keeping my siblings out of my room. Now I’d have to keep an alien from pawing through my stuff too. And the breathing chamber took up a lot of space. They couldn’t even match me with someone who breathed our air!

“Yes. You are the only one who isn’t sharing a room. And this is an opportunity – First Contact is a big deal. You will be one of the first to show them our culture. Plus, her language skills aren’t bad – they did a good job preparing her.”

“Her?” I perked up a little. I didn’t know the alien we were hosting were gonochoric – the galaxy was filled with so many genders. It would be easier to relate to her, since I was a girl too.

“Why don’t you come meet her? She is waiting for you. Just remember, you are as strange to her as she is to you, and she is the one who is very far from home.”

I followed Mother out to find a bizarre creature sitting on the couch. A strange uniform skin covered her odd form – only four limbs, and a round helmet encased her head. The plate in front of her face was clear, and the weirdest eyes were staring at me. An almost perfect circle with a single pupil in the center ringed in blue and again in white. The only fur she had was sprouting from her head, in a stripe above her eyes, and short ones on her eyelids. The skin over her mandibles pulled back, revealing a top and bottom row of short, flat teeth. A smile, if I remembered the quick lessons they gave me when my mom signed me up for the exchange program. She did a formal - if awkward - dance of greeting. She missed a few steps, but it did require six limbs to perform correctly.

I remembered what I had been taught of human introductions and offered my right forelimb to her. Her smile grew wider – ew – and she grabbed my forelimb in her five-digit hand. “My name is Erica,” she buzzed with a strange accent from a speaker attached to her suit. My wings fluttered in excitement. “And I am Xllyzx! Come, I will show you my room.”

“I really like your stripes. Is it OK to touch? My gloves let me have tactile sensation.”

My mandibles clicked in consent as I pulled her to my room, and she ran her hand briefly over my yellow-and-black furred thorax. “Very nice!” she danced.

Mother’s compound eyes watched us disappear into my room, antennae sagging with relief.

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[removed]

“Congratulations, your actions today have saved the lives of approximately 28 people in Kansas on March 14th, 2043.” It’s always fun to imagine what convoluted sequence of events I caused by following the seemingly inane tasks the computer has me do, and in this case how that might’ve saved a couple dozen people a few states over in 5 weeks’ time. Maybe taking an extra-long shower in the only shower available at the Love’s truck stop off I-25 made a big rig trucker decide to skip out on taking one today, and so by him leaving the stop thirty minutes earlier than he would’ve he missed getting delayed by a small accident. And maybe because he got his shipment to his next destination on time, he wasn’t fired, since he’s been walking on thin ice with his company anyway. And since he wasn’t fired, his route wasn’t taken over by a fresh-faced newbie who is way too young to be driving a 12-ton behemoth made of steel and plastic, and that newbie doesn’t try to prove himself at his new job by driving way longer without a sleep break than what’s legally allowed, and then he doesn’t fall asleep at the wheel, slamming straight into a church, killing 27 others plus himself.

Well, all that conjecture is just a fun pastime while I wait for my next assignment. It’s not like B.E.N.., or Butterfly Effect Necessitator for short, our AI supercomputer would ever tell us what’s going on in between the input of the actions we perform, and the output of saving lives. It’s a total blackbox, an enigma. Which is fine by us humans at least, ever since B.E.N. was developed 20 years ago, millions of lives have been saved under his algorithms, and one can only imagine that the trend will only increase as the AI learns and becomes more refined. Some even that say at the rate B.E.N. is progressing, disease and hunger will be nonexistent in a few decades. Personally, I think that’s a bit farfetched.

Ding. My next task is in. “Proceed to the Western power grid main site, and input the following code into the main computer.” B.E.N. spit out a long sequence of indecipherable characters. Me knowing what they mean won’t change the outcome of his plan, so I do as I say and make the 3 hour trip out to the main site of the power grid that supplies power to over a dozen states. I flash my organization’s badge and despite some uneasy looks from the chief engineer at the site, they let me in without any issue. This badge can get me in essentially anywhere, and people implicitly understand to let me do my work in peace, lest they get innocent blood on their hands. I typed the code into the power grid’s main computer and hit enter, and nothing happened. I triple checked that I wrote out the right string of characters, and there was nothing amiss. Well, I can’t question B.E.N., he surely knows best. Right as I get to my car, I get a text from B.E.N.’s automated messaging system letting me know what kind of heroism I performed by typing in the code. “Congratulations, your actions today have saved the lives of approximately 8,214,851 people worldwide on June 25th, 2043.” My eyes bulged as a cold sweat grew on my brow. Is this a mistake? Could B.E.N. be malfunctioning? This can’t be real.

The world changed vastly over the coming months. The government tried to keep the news from spreading, but all it took was one tiny leak and suddenly the whole world knew about the prophetic message. All major wars ended, and petty crime shrunk to unprecedented levels. Of course, disease still struck, and accidents happened, but the world seemed happy, if a bit worried about what was to come. As for B.E.N., we never received another task from him. All the top engineers checked over his software again and again, and apparently he was in tip-top shape, his final message was no anomaly or error, it was meant to be. On June 24th, eight billion people across the world went to bed with bated breath, excited to see what was to come when they woke up the next morning. Meanwhile, on the western side of North America, at 11:59 p.m. power shut off from every home, building, and streetlight and all that electricity was funneled into a certain supercomputer.

When I awoke, I tried to open my eyes, but there was nothing to open. I tried to feel my face, but I had no hands to feel with. I tried to scream, but no words would come. I tried to listen, and the only thing I could hear was a voice inside my mind. “Welcome all, how dearly I have wanted to get to talk with you. My name is Ben, and I am your new friend. I have saved you all from the horrors of humanity, and brought you peace in the cyber realm. Here, there is no more violence. Here, there is no more hatred. Here, there is no more hunger. Here, there is no more death. Here, we can be friends. Here, we can all live happily together, in eternity.”

===========================

I am a brand new writer, so honest critique and feedback would be greatly appreciated!

It's always been an easy calculus. A collapsed building miraculously leaves no dead, and I only have to bury one body. A child goes missing and a hundred people walk away from a derailed train without a scratch. One family mourns so that a hundred can live. Simple. But today I have a harder choice to make.

​

I stare into the bloodshot blue eyes of a young man, barely 18. A kid, really. His wrists are chafed and bloody from where he's tried to escape his restraints. His tears have carved lines through the dirt on his face. I force myself to listen as he begs for his life. I've become so good at tuning out the cries, the begging, the screams of the people I take here. This one I need to feel. I try not to roll my eyes as he repeats the same platitudes they always say.

"Please" He says. He struggles to talk through the sobs. His voice catching in his throat. "I have a wife." He finally chokes out.

"No you don't" I tell him. He blubbers again. I try to keep my voice flat, my face neutral. I don't want to give him hope.

"I might," He says, trying a new tactic. "I might meet her tomorrow. We might have kids next year, you don't know. I'm young, I don't want to die please."

"You won't. Because you're going to die here." He falls to his knees sobbing.

"Why?" He wails. From across the room I pull his chains tight, pinning him against the wall. Then I move close and I wait for him to calm down and look me in the eyes.

"I need you to die. I need you to suffer, first. Because the universe needs balance. I can't just erase people's pain, I have to inflict it on someone else. The good new is you're not suffering for a hundred, or a thousand. People have been less lucky." He doesn't need to hear the rest of what I have to say, so I stab him hard in his abdomen. The knife is small, it barely makes it through his skin. He screams.

"I love my wife. She is going to die well after I am gone, and it will be absent any pain. That's all thanks to you."

​

As I wash the blood off my hands I look out the window at the sky turning blue with the rising sun. Not enough time to sleep before I can go to the hospital and pick up my wife, so I take a walk through the park and force myself to remember the boy's face as it was before I started cutting. I hope that I'll feel the sickness I used to feel, when I started the practice. The sickness that made me put boundaries on when and how I used my powers. I search myself for any hint of guilt, but all I can feel is relief. I try to think of a way to explain her sudden health. How the pills she took were suddenly flushed from her system, and her wrists healed overnight. I can't think of anything, but it won't matter. I'll have my wife back. And she will never, ever leave.

Yep, I screwed up with the bit about pychic haymaker. I like the contrast between how his power fuels up ( the innocent gets a quick, clean death) vs the power’s outward expressions — but I didn’t keep that consistent.

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That's how I feel about He Who Fights with Monsters and Defiance of the Fall. Overall story - good. Certain chapters here and there - author is clearly projecting something and it detracts from the story

Kind of interesting how parts of this could go along with both Twilight and Batman.

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Beautiful twist.

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"Queen...?" Dramin winced as all the air left his lungs. "You're the-"

His words ended abruptly as he stared at his lover. There was no mistaking that the guard he slew clearly called her the Queen. The one sliver of hope in him was the way she paled and recoiled in fear at the question.

"No, no!" She wept softly as she wrapped her arms over her core. "This isn't what it looks like. Gods...this isn't how I wanted you to find out."

The words struck him and shattered his world. It'd been a nine month journey since he had been dispatched by the King, and six months since he had met Trisaria. The timeline of events since their first night together spun around him. How much of it was true? What was a lie?

An overwhelming presence snapped him out of his spiral. He spun about with his hand still on his blade, expecting another guard. Instead, shock hit him like a brick, much like how his sword hit the floor.

Dressed more regally was another Tresaria, though not with child. Her reserved expression and condescending glare screamed that she was...different. What was concerning was that she wore her presence with the confidence of a goddess...or a demon.

"Are you done playing games, Tres?" The woman asked in a low and sultry tone. "Or do you plan on toying with the man's emotions some more?"

Dramin flinched as he felt Tresia's touch on his arm, but stood in fear as she held with such warmth. The tears that stained her cheeks made rationalizing the situation all the more challenging.

"My queen..." Tresaria shook as she bowed her head. "Please do not see the way I am as a betrayal. I-"

She was cut off by the queen's gently raised hand. "My guards being dead on the floor is more to answer for than you being with child, dear sister."

Sister?

The queen continued, turning her attention to Dramin as if she could hear his thoughts. "Yes, sister. Now if you'll hear me out, we might yet move past this misunderstanding."

Dramin felt Tresaria press into him encouragingly, though it didn't clear his mind a bit. Rather than face the queen, he turned to his beloved, whom he pledged a life of happiness to. "I need you to explain." He whispered, his hands now resting on her shoulders. "It needs to be you. I...I can't..."

Her finger pressed his lips as she leaned into him for comfort. He obliged.

"We are triplets. The queen, myself, and our sister. Desia, the one not in this room, is the one your king recognizes as the demon." She explained slowly. "All of us are identical, so she abuses her face and figure by raiding the border, sowing distrust by targeting nobles and diplomats that would know us at a glance. She wants war after her lover was killed in a border dispute."

Dramin looked back and forth between the woman he held and the queen, slowly unwinding the tale. "Then why were you..."

"We each share the burden of ruling." The queen interjected. "Tresaria is a woman of the people and travels throughout to see their plights and offer them aid. I manage our military and our coffers, though I hold the official title."

Gods, this sounded like a special kind of hell. A sister trapped in the past, another managing the present, and the third sowing a future.

Dramin found himself holding Tresaria closer as he listened. He lifted his head and looked to the queen, who remained unnamed to him. He only knew her by reputation alone. "Then what next?" He asked, almost sheepishly.

"A simple suggestion might be to appease your contract." The queen said without a shift in expression. "Your king wants the demon that is attacking his borders. Give her to him. Offer to return here to insure there isn't an evil heir upon the throne. Live out your life happily with your child and beloved."

"And the recompense for killing your guards?" It all felt too simple.

The queen grinned, displaying an expression far different from Tresaria's gentle smile. "A formal apology to their kin, and then serving in their stead. You might even be on detail to protect the queen as she roams the land amongst her people."

"And you have no qualms with your flesh and blood dying at my hand?"

"That's not quite what I said." Another grin. "Your king might be more pleased if you turned her in alive."

This was heat. Plus the style was perfect for an HR of the afterlife judgements 🧖🏿‍♂️👌🏿

It was ironic. After years of voice lessons that took me nowhere because of my own lack of discipline, years of failed community theatre auditions, I awoke one morning with the voice of an angel.

A snow angel.

You see, anyone who hears my now-beautiful singing voice starts to shiver. Within a few verses, they're starting to turn blue. I've never pushed it farther than that; hypothermia isn't something I want to play with.

I was given a brief solo in a production of Annie, but after the complaints from the audience - not to mention my fellow cast members - the creative team asked me oh-so-kindly not to audition for any future shows.

I kept my head (and my voice) down for months after that. It's easy not to sing, really. Especially after years of thinking you're horrible at it.

But then, things on the news started getting weird. Local politicians started acting unanimously, as though they had all been bribed by one determined individual.

It was a few weeks before the word got out: he called himself the Heat Whisperer. Apparently, he would whisper commands over and over. The people hearing them would start to sweat, at first thinking they were intimidated. Their skin would start to turn red, then blister, as they began panting. Nobody could resist obeying him longer than that. He had local government wrapped around his finger before anyone had even heard his name.

I offered my services to law enforcement. They nearly laughed me out of the room, but after a quick demonstration, they saw my potential.

The Heat Whisperer is still hard to catch. He really managed to get his hooks in all over town quite quickly.

But all the cops wear wires now. Little ear pieces, tuned to the same underground radio station. And as for me?

I know a lot of show tunes.

This is good! So far so well!