1-14-15 Writing Warm-up

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1-14-15 Writing Warm-up

Brought to you by Four Fools Press: “Crazy Good Stories”

“Stone unending” would be a sweet epithet for lands about the Gate. In truth, this was the hells’ bedpan. If one day didn’t bring leagues of fiends, the next brought Clueless Primes running a muck. Everyone and everything had to be handled by the Guard. Today would have been no different had the Gate not ceased and loads of people disappeared. Simply vanished. Still, duty dictates that the Guard remain until the end...which seemed to have come yesterday. But, hey, here we are, so it’s not quite the end we expected.

My squad of three marched through a familiar chasm of rock and ruin. In this wide defile you could lead ten caravans at once--or a horde of tanar’ri. But a squad of three Guardsmen is nothing to shake a pike at. Just a cycle ago one alone had dispatched a particularly uppity Factol and his merry men. Wouldn’t confess to that in court, but the dark of it has gotten ‘round the Wheel. We, the bloods of bashing, stood ready to give any troublesome cutter a scrubbing if he poked his head too far into protected territory. Even after the apocalypse.

A third down the wide road my two mates decide to take a water break. The wells and streams here can’t be trusted. A skipping stream might bring the memory-eating juice of Styx, or gut-burning drip from rivière d’sang (as a silver-tongued Sensate fancied the red river). As such, the lot of us carried flasks at hand. Had large stores of refreshing water in a slip space, but those seemed to vanish with the people. The magnificent holding pouches had become just lousy sacks of fine-mesh. Eh, everything ends. At least our supply of water hadn’t.

As the ol’ glib goes:

Fancy a drink from Baator’s sink?

Better ta ask a Slaad for a salad,

‘Cause nothing greater stinks

Than acid drops that turn you rabid.

We haven’t crossed but halfway through Bloodletters Hollow when the earth opens with a terrible fury. Three fleshy stalks of crimson-red rise to the heights of crags. Ugly, vicious looking things, full of maws and teeth. I’d swear, this piss pot never had worms before. Blades leap from scabbards like trapdoor spiders from their hideouts. Even at the distance between us and the hellspawn, we could still smell the rank aroma of repeated blood baths. Apparently, these things had found a bloody pool big enough to soak their foul hides. We Guardsmen aren’t intimidated by a stinking, over-sized pest. One Guardsman to one rot-wyrm. That’s bad odds. For the wyrm.

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If you enjoyed the poem in today's Writing Warm-up, you'll LOVE our latest AMAZON BESTSELLING release, Sketchbook of Scrivenings! It's chock full of thrilling verses like this one. Check out the link below!

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