#i'm gonna reblog this post like 4 times because i rly like this short piece tbh!

[asmolbirb]

for the writing notes: 5 E, pretty please? :)

Prompt:

Anon I’m gonna break into your home and replace all your silverware with sporks

This prompt was SO HARD to fill, because I had, like, NOTHING in the note, literally what you’re seeing in that screenshot is ALL I HAD, and it’s surprisingly difficult to write 1000 words on nothing

Nonetheless! I’m super proud of what I managed to put together! I’m sure literally all of these tropes are overused but I don’t care because I put them together in this order all on my own! Excerpt + further commentary under the cut

Word count: 1105

Excerpt: When the spring rains triggered the first rockfall on the mountain that loomed above the village, sluicing away boulders and shrubbery to reveal a piercing eye twenty times the size of a human’s, the chieftain spared only a moment to sigh in resignation before sending Lana to assemble the Council.

“The bindings are weakening. The curse of the Fallen Ones rears its head once more,” the chieftain said in a low voice that evening. She was hosting the Council in the central courtyard around which the house had been built, but her voice carried easily to where Lana sat in the bedroom, mending a torn tunic. “It is time to begin our own preparations.”

“How long do we have? Do we have any hope of victory?”

“No more than a moon,” replied the chieftain. “And this is not a matter of hope - we must emerge victorious, to secure the safety of our children and our children’s children as our ancestors did for us.” The fire flickered, setting the Council’s shadows dancing across the sliver of floor visible through Lana’s door. She looked away from her mending and fancied she could make out her mother’s figure within the amorphous darkness. “Tomorrow morning, I will ride to seek the help of the Casters. Greta, mobilize the archers. We’ll need to prepare arrows strong enough to puncture stone…”

As the talk devolved into discussion of strategy and inventory, Lana lost interest. She finished with the tunic and clambered into bed, but sleep was a long time coming, her head abuzz with thoughts of giants and battles and arrows streaking across the sky.

She woke the next morning when her mother pressed a kiss to her forehead and swept her hair away from her face. “I’m leaving for some time, sweetheart,” she murmured.

“To fetch the Casters,” Lana replied in the same low tone, her voice scratchy with sleep. “I heard. What is the curse of the Fallen Ones? Are the Fallen Ones the ones in the mountains?”

Briefly, Lana’s mother’s lips stretched into a frown, before settling back into a neutral expression. “The Fallen Ones were cast out from God’s kingdom eons ago,” she said slowly. “They were halflings, not fully divine and not fully human, and so they were deemed impure. They sought refuge with the ones who had cursed them with existence, the mortal mothers and divine fathers, but both turned their backs. Their resentment grew, and they declared war on God’s kingdom. For their insolence, they were punished; they sought war, so war they received. God sent divine forces to fight the Fallen Ones, knowing fully well that the Fallen Ones had no hope of victory. Once the Fallen Ones were teetering on the edge of extinction, God relented, allowing the remaining Fallen Ones to fall back and recover under the guise of mercy. But when the Fallen Ones created their own society and regained their strength and numbers, God sent the divine forces once more to lay waste to them an the children they had birthed. It is a war that has been passed down among the generations, each seeking revenge for the ancestors who were needlessly culled in ages past. Every century, we battle the giants, and bind them again to the mountains, in a cycle of destruction and hatred as old as time.”

“All for wanting a home?” Lana asked, aghast. “Surely there’s a way to end the bloodshed!”

Her mother didn’t reply. Instead, she smiled softly and pressed another kiss to Lana’s forehead. “If all goes well, I’ll return in a week. Let Bridget know if you need anything, and stay out of trouble, you hear?”

One final kiss, and an “I promise” from Lana, and the chieftain was gone.

Over the next few days, their once sleepy town erupted into a gale of activity. Every morning, the archers and swordsmen could be heard running drills in the far fields. Construction began on barricades and simple weaponry. A watch was set to keep the Council informed on the progress of the unearthing of the giants.

By the second day, the eyes of four other creatures had been uncovered. Their gazes remained fixed on the village, never moving, never blinking. On more than one occasion, Lana wondered if the creatures were truly alive, or simply stone carvings. On the third day, the first hand was revealed, with fingers thick as tree trunks; the fifth day brought an avalanche that left in its wake glimpses of still more giants, some standing, some crouched as though preparing to shoot into a dead sprint. When the chieftain returned on the eighth day with a cavalcade of cloaked Casters trailing behind her, a dozen giants were painted in sharp relief across the mountain face.

(Transition)

The cavalry was lined in rows facing the giants, and the archers stood behind them, bows strung and arrows knocked. The Casters gathered in a tent near the command post where the chieftain and Lana were stationed. They had already begun incanting in the language of God. The strange words unsettled Lana, though she didn’t know whether this was because of their unfamiliar sounds or because of the power imbued into the chants by the Casters.

They watched the giants shake off the last of the dirt and unfurl to their full heights. As they rose, the giants spoke to each other in rumbling tones that mimicked the sound of earthquakes and rockfalls, the words as foreign to Lana’s ears as the Casters’.

As the sun reached its zenith, silence swept across the field. Then, as one, the giants attacked.

The frontline of giants swept through half the cavalry in their first rush. Though they carried no weapons, their limbs were powerful as bartering rams, and they simply swing their fists and feet in devastating arcs through the army. The archers rallied then, letting go of volley after volley of arrows, but they were largely ineffectual, simply bouncing off the giants’ sturdy bodies.

The chanting emanating from the Casters swelled in volume and intensity, and finally the giants slowed in their assault. They began to strain as they pushed forward, as though grappling with an immense backwards force. But even as the magic began to take hold, swaths of villagers fell victim to the giants’ sheer brute force.

Lana watched the carnage unfold in horror. “You said we would win,” she couldn’t help but whisper. “You said they would be decimated, left to lick their wounds for another century.”

The chieftain smiled, but it was a grim facsimile of her usual kind expression. “They aren’t the Fallen Ones, Lana. We are.”

Director’s cut commentary: Inspired by the concept of nephilim, more specifically the following line from wikipedia: “The word [nephilim] is loosely translated as giants in some Bibles and left untranslated in others. The "sons of God" have been interpreted as fallen angels in some traditional Jewish explanations.” 

And then, me being me, I had to find a way to subvert the idea of the giants being the nephilim/fallen angels.

I’d originally challenged myself to write a piece of microfiction that didn’t exceed 1k words, and this was my attempt at that. Clearly, I failed (lol), but I think I could a completed version of this down to 1.5k, so it’s not a total disappointment. Still, this is far from my best writing, probably because it’s 4:30 am and I only started writing this 2 hours ago because I couldn’t sleep. I’d like to add more details/descriptions, and I definitely need to flesh out the lore, and I’d like to find a way to eliminate the clunky expository loredump. But for a 2-hour word vomit session, this isn’t half bad imo.

Anyway, I hope this meets your expectations, anon! Thanks for the challenge, and for forcing me to stretch out my creative muscles!