100 Words a Day 1241

The villagers huddled together in the house furthest away from the moor, trying to escape the stinking, chill wind that blew in off their foreboding neighbor’s low, barren hills. The unpredictable wind brought a whiff of the moor’s power howling through the village, tearing at their tightly-shut doors. People caught outside had been known to vanish and the cracks in people’s shutters often revealed strange lights bobbing through the village streets. Anyone who possessed doubts that all things were possible on the moor quickly had them dispelled after a night of weird howls and strange scratchings against their front door.

100 Words a Day 1240

The rain was cascading off my coat in large rivulets moments after I exited of the cab. The dark clouds added a sinister quality to the dirty streets that was normally confined to the alleys. I squinted into the downpour. The block was deserted, except for a lonely sentinel doing his best to huddle under the ragged awning of a corner store. The man blew into his hands and rubbed them, to little effect I assumed. He ducked into the store when he looked up and saw me. I waited several wet minutes in the rain, but he didn’t reemerge.

100 Words a Day 1239

Murg held the ever-burning candle overhead and shouted, her prayers echoing off the steel walls just like the flickering firelight from the great central brazier. The tip of the candle grew white-hot. She began drawing on the shield. The runes flowed easily from her gnarled hand, the pattern burning in her mind. Before she realized, she was finished. She blinked and looked down at the shield. The runes glowed like molten metal on the ashy steel. She lifted the shield. It was lighter than before. A great blaze of light issued from the shield when she shouted the sacred word.

100 Words a Day 1238

When we emerged from the Night Depth, the cause of the earlier lurch was revealed to be one of the enormous leviathans that inhabited the lower known reaches of the Unending Depths. I could see the thing’s flailing lightpods, used to attract prey in the cold, black beneath, through the porthole. The sub groaned as the monster squeezed it with giant, muscular tentacles.

The room was plunged into blackness. The sub rocked again as the creature pushed off of the sub and vanished again. My relief was short-lived. The light didn’t return and I felt the sub being to sink.

100 Words a Day 1237

Jack sighed with relief when the snowmobile finally sputtered to life. The engine took a few minutes to warm up and he used that time to calm himself down. He wouldn’t have survived a march back to the research station across the crusty snowfield.

A headwind picked up as he set off, sucking the heat of the snowmobile engine away before it had a chance to warm him. After only a few minutes, he could feel his fingers beginning to get cold. He turned the heat up on his suit and hoped it would be enough to get him back.