Kobold King

Clearly Wes will strive to get Aldo to face his fear and remove his corruption, so they can live happily ever after together in bliss and kindness. Sorry, I should have foreshadowed that better.

So... a High Woman is a woman whose powers prevent her from being assassinated by conventional means? Good idea. That's an important consideration when picking out a soulmate.

In the whole multiverse, there are two reptiles with rich internal lives. What would happen if they met? The raptor made his way through the forest, mind turning. He stepped over branches and stones and the bones of his fellows, almost thinking and almost wondering. What was he doing? He'd never asked a question before his great sleep. Back when the world was fresh and vibrant, he'd known only to hunt and to lead his fellow raptors to success. He'd been... happy that way. Now he was an omega, low in the pack hierarchy with an evil mammal leading him not to success, but to his own repeated deaths. Evil. What was evil? Again, this was another word he'd never considered. There was no evil back when the world was fresh and vibrant. There was only the freedom of running through the dew-dropped trees, letting out a roar in celebration of the world's beauty and the wild goodness of life. Evil, then, was what prevented him from doing that. Evil was a corruption of the natural way of things, a sort of disease that had sneaked into the world while the raptor had been sleeping. Thinking upon evil and his newfound knowledge of it, the raptor wanted to grieve. "What is the Epic?" The raptor froze, senses on high alert as he attempted to pinpoint the source of the noise. He hopped upon a tree stump and glanced around, looking for whatever being could have spoken to him like this. His keen yellow eyes settled on a log, and dilated in surprise. Sitting upon that log was a small crocodilian, like he'd seen before when the world was fresh and vibrant. But this one was small, its jaws closed but obviously devoid of teeth. Its eyes were enormous, wide and purple. The raptor found himself reflected in them; indeed, it was as if the whole of reality were reflected within the alligator's huge, violet eyeballs. "What is the Epic?" the smaller reptile repeated himself. The raptor had never heard words on this level before, but he found himself hanging on the meaning of the gator's words. "The Epic," the crocodilian went on, "is a mammal, ensnared by a star into a dreamlike world of fear. The Epic has no choice. The Epic is as trapped as you are, Wes." The raptor took a step forward in surprise, marveling at the gator's speech. How was it that he heard these words? How was it that they made such sense to him, when by all rights their meaning should soar over his head? Hesitantly, unsure of himself, the raptor reached out with his mind and asked a question of his own. "How do you know these things?" he projected into the void, surprised to hear his own ethereal voice. The alligator, its face still the same, stuck out a forked tongue that licked the surface of its gargantuan staring eyeball. "Because we are the same, Wes. We are both predators of ancient clades, held apart from our baser instincts by the bud of something new inside of us. Were it not for the Epic that holds you in sway, you would satisfy your predatory urges to your heart's content with no thought and no mercy, like you did in the days of old. Were it not for the condition that stole my fangs and left me a toothless alligator, I would have done the same." The alligator's face continued to stare into infinity, its tail swishing back and forth behind him. "We have both been given a chance to see the universe for what it truly is. Filtered not by our predatory instincts, nor by the fickle morals of a mammalian society, but by the true virtue that was put in our hearts at the second the universe came into being. Do you know what I am speaking of, Wes?" Slowly, still processing the strange words, the raptor projected a word of affirmation. "Yes." And then, the question that was haunting at his mind--"What do I do now?" Though its face was ever unmoving, the alligator almost gave out an air of subtle amusement. "That is up to you. You may continue to serve, hoping for a better lot in your next life. You may turn upon that master and kill him, to eradicate the 'evil' you have come to despise." Another slow eye lick commenced, the alligator continuing its monologue regardless. "Or you could do what I have. Accept that in this world, we are all trapped. The raptor. The alligator. The Epic. They are none free of the evil that binds reality together. I found salvation in a pink equine, who took me in as a starving reptile and nurtured me to health. I came to realize that the evil in this universe doesn't truly matter... all that matters is that we decide not to join it." The alligator turned his head slightly, directly turning those magnificent purple eyes in the raptor's direction. There seemed to be a twinkle in them, like the twinkle in the night sky. "Our bodies are trapped by evil. What matters is that we remain free in our spirits, and seek out what kindness and joy still exist in the world." The raptor gaped in astonishment, unsure of what to say next. Before he could find the words, the voice of his mammalian master boomed across the forest. "Raptors," the voice shouted in shaking fury. "To me! Gather and drive these invaders from my fortress!" The raptor--Wes--started to follow the command, but froze in his path. He cast a hesitant glance at the crocodilian. The toothless alligator was nowhere to be seen. Slowly, hesitantly, Wes made his decision. "I will not be trapped by evil," he spoke internally. "But nor will I destroy it, for it is as trapped as I am. Perhaps someday it will realize that." He turned his head firmly away from the evil mammal, determinedly marching his clawed feet through the forest. "I am free in my spirit, Lightwards. And I go now not to answer your call, but to find kindness." And he marched.

As an MLP fan, this is how I imagine the promised Dragons of the Cosmere. It'll take a lot from the Bandersnatch to convince me that they're anything different.

For those of you who are still concerned about this, here's the new Oregon Annexation message with the spelling corrected: You're welcome.

Best I could do on an empty stomach. No refunds.

Yep. Here it is. Spoilers for the episode:

THAT EPISODE I CAN'T STOP SMILING.

Is there any advice you'd give to novices trying to break into the Hemalurgic abomination industry?

Can you tell us anything cool about the chibified character you have as your profile pic?

I've taken many such tests, and I consistently measure as a Ravenclaw with very strong Hufflepuff leanings. So apparently I'm clever and good-natured. Not as nefarious as those no-good Slytherins and not as foolhardy as those zealot Gryffindors. I am pretty much the perfect Hogwarts student.

Best I could come up with before dinner:

And getting more upvotes than me on it, which is ironic enough to fuel most Lurchers' Allomancy. (I don't really mind, though. Heaven knows I've hijacked enough threads in my day to understand. )

I am a realistic person. Says the person who declared himself the monarch of the kobolds. I'm of the opinion that a universe with people capable of imagining dragons and unicorns is every bit as beautiful as a universe with mythical beasts frolicking in enchanted fields. After all, I don't believe in Mistborn either, but there's a certain humanist beauty in knowing that there's a brilliant writer somewhere in Utah with the ability to dream them up. I'm afraid I'll be one of the people freaking out over the impossible thing, though in a very delighted kind of way.

You know me too well, Delightful.

There were only two ways to answer it--with a curt "No" or with a long and rambling essay. And since I knew I needed to write a rambling eldritch abomination story for Quiver, I opted for the short version. Interesting question. In the strictest sense, no for the first two. I am inclined to doubt there were great winged reptiles that breathed fire within human history, or that there were pure white horned horses that only allowed virgins to approach them. (Though who knows--I might be wrong. ) Faeries are a more interesting question. As a Christian with some animist leanings, I believe that all things have a soul, including trees and stones and flowers and the like. I also believe that there are probably spirits in the universe that directly interact with humans, both in benevolent and malevolent ways. Since faeries were often either the personifications of nature spirits or household guardians, I suppose you could say that I do believe that, at the very least, the people who invented stories about them may have been reflecting some kind of cosmic truth. Or, maybe weird Uncle Sven was eating all the wrong berries when he told the kids there was a hobgoblin living in the hills. I doubt I'll know for sure any time in this life.

Shoop-bee-doo. Shoop-shoop-bee-doo. Tremble before the Sea Ponies, if you're on our list. Lethal as can be ponies, we have all your weak-ness-es! If the Moral Event Horizon is where you have been bound Count upon the Sea Ponies, they'll put you in the ground! Shoop-bee-doo. Shoop-shoop-bee-doo!

The entire ATTD list + Backtrack, because while they wouldn't do him any harm it'd be fun to write about his recurring nightmares about them for years afterward.

But you'd need to flood the entire state to make the ATTD list accessible to them. ... And that's... um... what happened in Oregon?

I once ate a big pan of home-caught grasshoppers.

I can think of a different Epic entirely whom that force would be better used on. Mainly I just want to see the looks on Ray and Red's faces when the sea ponies sing a cheerful 80s tune as they shove Nighthound face-first down a hydrothermal vent.