The apprentice grabbed his mentor by the shoulders. “Do not entertain this folly! That woman might have given you her heart once — but that love was old history when she put that curse on you, and veritable ancient myth when she supposedly lifted it.”
“Friend, the truths you speak matter little, for I cannot continue living as I am. Do you know how it’s like? To have to pay mind to your every breath — to never sleep, to never rest, to always fear?” He closed his eyes and shook his head, then took a step backwards and stared at his disciple with determination. “I’ll do what she said I must, and if it was all a lie, well then—she gets the last laugh.” The middle aged wizard turned to gaze at the horizon, visible from the height of his stone tower, and crossed his arms. “You’ve been a wonderful apprentice.”
The young man wept.
The wizard held his breath.
— Bastian Espada
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“You mean once the war begins?” The man put his cigar down. “It’ll be the usual.”
The man’s assistant pushed a stack of documents across the table. “The rich will hide, the young will die and the poors will eat their boots. From our dead we’ll raise martyrs and saviors, from theirs, villains and traitors.”
“Eventually we’ll make all combatants into heroes. And, once they’ve finished weeping—” The man picked his cigar back up and leaned forward. “We’ll fuck their widows.”
— Bastian Espada
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“So that’s the schedule for the day. It rained a lot yesterday so we are bound to find plenty of ’em. Those of you that have never been mushroom hunting before, please remember to be extra careful. Do not eat any mushrooms that haven’t been deemed safe to eat by me or any of the other guides and do not engage with the mushrooms on your own. That’s all there is to it, have fun!”
The group cheered as they cocked their shotguns.
A few paces away Princess Peach—huddled behind a fallen log—observed the group. “I’ll distract them,” she said to her companions. “Go get Mario.”
— Bastian Espada
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A group of sentient role-playing video game characters discussed the nature of their universe.
“Absolute rubbish!” the studious orc said. “If we truly lived inside an incomprehensibly large mana crystal, we would be seeing elemental flares annihilating each other at the micro-pixel scale.”
“Any mana crystal dense enough to contain an entire reality within it would have to be green! We should expect everything to be tinted green! And yet…” the wyvern scholar said.
“One requires little else to dismiss the idea than to point to the most obvious hindrance for the emergence of life in such a universe,” the half-elf, half-giantess professor said, “any living thing that managed to come into existence would be immediately afflicted by mana sickness, driving it to proactive self-destruction.”
The stubborn gnome frowned and pouted. “You lot just don’t have any imagination!” he said, pointing a finger at each of his detractors.
The studious orc wiped his glasses on the cuff of his robe, then sighed. “Enough, Romulus. You need to face the fact that there just isn’t any good evide—”
Timmy turned his PC off.
— Bastian Espada
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I snuck upon a sleeping lion and bit the underside of its neck — all so that both it and I could understand how it feels.
It was a bad idea, a bad idea indeed.
— Bastian Espada
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An elder fish once spoke of watery truths to many a young egg that on the eve did hatch:
“A worm whose jiggle does not entice,
That squirms but does not dance,
Whose spirit beckons not,
Steer clear! Clear at any cost,
For plenty a fishes’ life ma—”
A net entrapped all living things in the general vicinity— and swept them up.
— Bastian Espada
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“No one understands me like you do!” The girl wrapped her arms around the thick furry torso, where she then buried her head.
The stuffed gorilla remained motionless.
— Bastian Espada
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“I must confess mine is a marriage of convenience,” the man said.
His dining partner raised her left eyebrow. “Is that so?” she said, then took a sip of her mimosa.
“Indeed, I massage her feet in exchange for belly rubs.”
— Bastian Espada
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The woman surveyed the tables and grimaced. “Sure wish this establishment had some standards. Perhaps you should consider allowing entry only to those with a minimum amount of class?”
“Madam, you wouldn’t recognize class if it were to become enfleshed, produce its member, and with it strike your countenance.”
— Bastian Espada
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“There are some truths that hurt, there are truths that set people free. There are truths that do both, and truths that do all sorts of other things. And then there exist some truths that are just sort of…there.”
“Bruh, true.”
— Bastian Espada
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