SirCrispix
Bio
Stories (13/0)
Shadows in the Valley
There weren't always dragons in the Valley. So, the tales say. Once, ages ago, the Valley was a lush, verdant expanse. It is said that it was the domain of a powerful king. His kingdom was one of the mightiest in the land. One day a wizard came to the king’s court to make a request. The exact details of this request have been lost to time; some say he came to ask for the princess’ hand in marriage. Others claim the wizard came demanding outrageous things from the King. Regardless of what the request was the tale holds that the king denied it and the wizard in his rage rent the veil between this world and a darker one. The portal ripped the castle asunder and poured forth horrors. The king’s forces fought valiantly by all accounts, but they were but mere mortals in the face of evil given form. The darkness seeping from the gaping wound in reality began to transform the king’s men, twisting them into monstrous forms. Those that had fallen in battle against the creatures began to rise to their feet once more, rotting corpses in ruined armor heeding the call of darkness and joining the battle against their former comrades. The skies themselves began to darken over the valley. As his kingdom fell the King had his court wizard send out a desperate call for aid. A great red dragon answered the call, swooping in from beyond the valley and burning the corrupt creatures to ash. As the fight wore on the dragon began to succumb to the corruption spewing forth from the portal.
By SirCrispix2 years ago in Fiction
Battle Cries
Sir Perceval the Bold peered through the visor of his helmet, trying to pierce the veil of darkness that pervaded the ruins. Small shafts of light cut through the gloom here and there, but they were not enough to chase away the darkness. He tightened his grip on the hilt of his trusty sword and hefted his shield. Aless the Wise moved up into his field of view, she nodded to him as she pulled something from the depths of her rich purple robes. She whispered a few words and light flared on the tip of her wand. Perceval blinked the spots from his eyes as his companion’s magic banished the darkness. When his vision cleared, he was able to see the beads of sweat glistening on the dark skin of her forehead. She turned, raising her rune carved staff defensively in the direction of a skittering sound from the darkness deeper in the ruins.
By SirCrispix2 years ago in Fiction
Heart of Ice
“In the winter of 1885 a wagon train was heading West and found themselves in Minnesota, traveling through what would one day be part of the Superior National Forest. The legend states that a blizzard caught them off guard and trapped them in a mountain pass. They had provisions on hand, enough to, in theory last them a month. The Donner Party tragedy having already occurred, many people were wary of falling to the same fate. What the rest of the group didn’t know was that one of their members had made himself some extra cash by selling off what he saw as excess provisions as they journeyed West. The entrepreneur in question was a man that was, at least at the time, going by Doc Smith.” Madeline read the prewritten copy with her usual smooth confidence.
By SirCrispix3 years ago in Horror
House Call
Every night I wake to the sound of knocking at my door. It starts out faint, almost polite, but grows more insistent if I don’t answer the door. It takes me a minute to get out of bed, not because I’m groggy from being woken up, no, I’m wide awake. Fear has that effect on me. The first time I wasn’t sure what had me so unsettled, I wrote it off as an effect of being woken abruptly. I know better now. Eventually I force myself to peel back the covers and step out of bed. The wooden floor of my bedroom is cool on my bare feet. Normally I would hurry off of it onto the rug in the hall, but not now. I can’t risk the floorboards crying out and giving me away. As I approach the door on cat’s paws, hoping to get a glimpse of the visitor without them knowing I am there, a voice calls out.
By SirCrispix3 years ago in Horror
- Top Story - October 2021
An Impossible WaterfallTop Story - October 2021
Claire was six when the end began. She was watching a cartoon in which the humanoid animals in the cast learned valuable lessons about things like sharing and obeying your parents when the cartoon cut out and the newsman came on. She didn’t understand much of what the man was saying. He said the video they were showing was of the skies over New York city. Even at six she knew things weren’t as they were supposed to be. The video showed a crackling mass of purple and green lights. The general shape reminded her of the scab she had gotten on her knee after she fell chasing Shane from down the street, except her scab hadn’t had the strange looking tendrils coming off of it. She called for her mother, more out of annoyance with the interruption than out of concern. Her mother was immediately enraptured with the videos on the screen.
By SirCrispix3 years ago in Fiction
Still Waters
Hank walked his rounds like he did every night. He started in the living areas, kitchen, break rooms, and such. There were a few people in break room C, a pallid man in his mid-fifties with a coffee stain on his lab coat and a stern-looking woman with her salt and pepper hair pulled up into a tight bun, her lab coat was the very picture of tidy. She had been stirring her coffee absentmindedly as she read what he assumed were very important reports on her tablet. Neither had said a word to Hank as he moved through the cavernous break room, though the man had nodded silently to him as he passed. Hank didn’t really fault them; guns made a lot of people nervous and in his time here he had noticed that seemed to go double for the science geeks. The next few floors of his rounds were no more exciting than the first, empty labs and server rooms, followed by the engineering floors. Nothing on them but machine rooms, climate control units, oxygen scrubbers, and massive amounts of plumbing snaking around the place. After that was the part of his rounds Hank dreaded. After that was The Lake.
By SirCrispix3 years ago in Horror
The Party
James got the invite from Phoebe, who if he was being honest, he always thought was a bit of a weirdo. He was pretty sure she was around the same age as him, at least he assumed, she went to Redwood Community college just like him and she looked fairly young. He wouldn’t place her any older than twenty. She was attractive in a mousey sort of way, but he had heard around the school that her whole family were a bunch of religious nuts. So, when she stopped him after biology to invite him to a party he was surprised, to say the least. When she said that it was being held at Camp Firefly, he almost fell over. Camp Firefly had been a summer camp in the eighties, located in the forest outside of town, right on the shores of Lake Browin. It closed down years ago, so she and her friends would be trespassing. Maybe she wasn’t such a wet blanket after all.
By SirCrispix3 years ago in Horror
The Goodest Co-workers
I was sent to work from home very suddenly near the beginning of the pandemic. Like many people in similar situations, I had to make adjustments to become more comfortable with my new work environment. At first my girlfriend was also working from home, but after a while she was sent back to the office. So, there I was sitting in my home office by myself, which for the most part was fine by me. Then we decided we should look into getting a dog. We started looking on the Petfinder app for dogs in our area that we available for adoption. Eventually I stumbled on an adorable little corgi mix that was named Taz. I am not kidding when I say I fell in love with the little guy right away from that single photo. We put in an application immediately. After a brief scare where the shelter took him and the rest of his litter off the app temporarily because they were being treated for ring worm, we got word that we were approved, and he was still available if we wanted him.
By SirCrispix3 years ago in Petlife
Wizard For Hire
About five years ago I found a new series to read. It blended two of my favorite genres, fantasy and detective novels. That series was The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. It centers around a wizard living in Chicago effectively working as a private detective and assisting the Chicago PD with their stranger cases. I devoured the books, burning through the series at what for me was an unprecedented pace. Averaging three to four books a month until I had caught up. Since then whenever a new book in the series is released, I will drop whatever I am currently reading and consume the latest adventure of Harry Dresden. It’s gotten to the point where it’s like checking in with old friends for me, seeing what Harry and the gang are up to now.
By SirCrispix3 years ago in Geeks
Beyond
The door to the store slides open with a barely audible whoosh as I approach. I scan the store with eyes so tired they burn. My chest is tight with the rage smoldering in me. I find what I’m looking for, a short kid with tousled brown hair. He is folding bath towels. His name tag proclaims his name to be Chaz. He looks up as I move towards him, a smile creases his acne riddled face as he says, “Welcome to Bed Bath and Beyond, how can I help you?”
By SirCrispix3 years ago in Fiction
Roll for Damnation
Balthazar had been preparing the ritual all day. He had gathered the reagents. Blood of a hen: fresh. Candles crafted from the fat of a dead man. Graveyard earth: dry. Copper coins: assorted. The diagrams he had memorized and sketched out from the musty old tome. The candles gave off a soft amber glow, forcing odd shadows to dance across the stone floor of the decrepit mausoleum. His hand was sticky from painting the floor with the hen’s blood, the complex design of overlapping geometric shapes nestled into a larger circle. He stood, wiping the sweat from his brow, surveying his handiwork.
By SirCrispix3 years ago in Fiction
Winter's Debt
The winter months were always the hardest. Nothing would grow when snow blanketed their world. If the summer had been kind they would have enough to eat. If it had been too dry or too wet then once winter settled in, they would be in for a rough time. When James was just a boy, they had suffered one such year. The drought that summer had left them without adequate food stores. They had survived, but it had not been easy. They had been forced to eat one of their horses towards the end and by the time the spring thaws came they were subsisting on one meal a day. Those meals were a meager affair of the withered vegetables that had remained in the root cellar boiled into a weak soup. If the winter had dragged out much longer, they would have been going without food altogether.
By SirCrispix3 years ago in Fiction