A miscellany of my fantasy fiction, in fifty words

"It's shrouded in mystery, that tower is!" the peddler insisted, waving arms almost knocking over his latest tankard. "Oh, plenty of folks say they know what's in there, but you push for details and suddenly they're mum as you like!"

Priel snorted. He knew what was there.

Him.

All save one, whistled through the night.

All save one, hissed between the shadows.

All save one, spluttered the torches in their sconces.

Desperately, the Witch-Queen wove more protections around her son, and cast another death-spell. "Are the King's bastards dead?" she croaked.

All save one.

You must keep it wound. Our family's sacred duty. No Lightkeepers, we - no tower to climb and set blazing. A humbler duty, instead, to turn the Great Key and wind the springs tight.

I had a bad feeling the moment that charming failure of a Lightkeeper walked in.

Farratch breathed the incense in deep. Eir every motion was a struggle against the crystal invading eir mind and spirit, sharp certainty that ey was doomed by eir animality.

Ey braced against the alien pressure on eir mind.

And fought.

The strange demigoddess tilted her head thoughtfully. "Cycles, balance... secrets and unclear boundaries... I am not directly of justice nor vengeance. But cycles and balance together make some approximation of the space between the two, and blurred edges very much are my domain."

Her lip curled at the rapist.

Godsforge, they called the volcano, but Puar knew better. This was no forge.

Ey closed eir eyes and strained to look at the chamber again.

Filled with notclay golems.

This was a kiln.

"Only a bit of wear. Is still good!" Doyetsi insisted shakily, the foreign language still strange on her tongue.

"Nah, nah," her mark said, brushing her off easily.

She glared at the scarf with its half-unpicked knotspells. Drawing bad luck to enemies, pah! Useless superstition. It just made it unsellable.

It was an accident. Unintentional.

Hir wand just happened to slip, misenchanting chains to hold the godchosen child meant to end the king's tyranny. Accidentally.

Just like the smith's hammer didn't strike right, and the lock didn't quite catch fast.

Accidents. Unintentional.

"What is the difference between union and unison?" the student asked, tone making clear that he wouldn't listen to any answer that disagreed with his own opinion.

Nineteen other bodies looked at him, all piloted by a single will.

"You'd know if you'd joined us."

Clueless, he walked away.

Creschendra wiped the sweat off her palms as she stared in awe. From this angle, the great clouds of steam formed a deceptively placid lake of mist, eerily tranquil.

Such a shame that pretty mist held the bones of far too many workers boiled alive by the Great Machine.