An Ancient, Graceful God by Evangeline Beggs || Team Otter!! :]
(fun fact: this short story enabled me to finally tie together some worldbuilding ideas i'd had in my head for a while! so yes, there is some background missing from this story due to the word count limit, but i think it turned out fine anyways)
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Taiga slammed through the door, and Rikka came close behind, her breath coming in short gasps. Taiga immediately turned and slammed the door closed, boots scuffing on the floor. He shoved all of his wait against it, groaning.

“Help me hold it closed!” he screamed at Rikka, who was on her hands and knees on the floor already. She nodded, her chest heaving, and leaned against the door beside him, the entirety of her small body aching with the effort.

A force pushed from the outside of the door, and the two children heard heavy claws scratching into the thick wood. Soft hisses of irritation came through muffled.

Rikka pushed her forehead against the door and squeezed her eyes shut. “Why won’t it just leave us alone?” she sobbed, her tears leaving streaks through the dust on her face.

Taiga didn’t respond. “We can’t hold it for long,” he grunted instead. He glanced around the room that they had fled into, and his eyes found what they needed—rows upon rows of benches. “Rikka! Pull one of those benches over here.”

Rikka nodded, sniffling, and quickly scampered to the nearest bench. She grabbed one of its mahogany sides and heaved, pulling it towards the door.

Taiga immediately gasped as the full weight of the door, and the heavy creature behind it, was pushed onto him. “Quickly,” he wheezed out. “Brace it… against the door,” he managed to say.

“It’s so heavy,” she wailed.

“Use all your strength!”

“I am!”

Finally she made it to the door. “I can help you push it against the door,” huffed Taiga. “But we have to be fast.”

Rikka nodded. “Ok.”

Taiga released the door, and immediately it opened slightly. Black claws reached around the edge of the door.

But the bench was already in place. The children pushed it against the door, and with a frustrated screech, the claws disappeared, and the door slammed closed.

Silence.

Taiga and Rikka immediately collapsed onto the bench, chests heaving. Rikka sobbed, but no tears came, only dry huffs of air.

Taiga turned his head weakly to look at his sister. “Good job,” he breathed. “I told you that you were strong.”

Rikka only nodded, her mouth shaping a silent ‘thank you’.

After a few minutes of rest, Taiga sat up, panting still, but the light was slowly returning to his tired golden eyes. He observed their surroundings with an open mouth. “Rikka,” he whispered, nudging her gently. “Look.”

Her eyes cracked open, and she lifted her head. “What… what is this place?”

It was a huge room, aglow with the light of soft, flickering LED lamps, their light refracting on a cracked tile floor. Rows of benches—the same as the one blocking the door now—sat and faced the back of the room, which was taken up by an elevated platform. On that platform sat a lectern, and the wall behind it was dominated by the pipes of a large, gleaming organ.

“It’s a church,” Taiga realized.

“What?”

“A church.” He stood, his legs feeling weak and wobbly from running for the past hour. “Before the Dark Rage, members of some sort of religion… ah, I forget what the religion was. It was very persecuted, though. They must’ve met here in secret and worship their deity.”

“What deity?”

“I’m not sure. A very old one.” He unbuckled the strap holding the greatsword to his back and set the giant weapon down on the bench. “Either way, I’m sure having weapons on us in here wouldn’t be very respectful to the religion. Let’s take them off.”

Rikka nodded and set down her bow, then unclipped the quiver from her belt. “So, not a deity like Consuming Shadow or Golden Sun?”

“No.” He looked up at the weak LED lights, his eyes shining. Their light made his golden hair seem to glow as well. Rikka stared. His hair hadn’t been that beautiful in a long time. “He was a deity full of grace and forgiveness. He didn’t ask for offerings, nor did He kill without a purpose.” He blinked. “Very different from the Stellar Gods of today, who we worship only out of fear and a desperate hope for mercy.”

“He sounds a lot nicer. Do you think He still exists?” Rikka’s energy seemed to be returning.

Taiga smiled and ruffled her hair—soft and blonde, just like his, but a little bit more dusty and brown-toned. “Of course He does. There’s no such thing as a deity dying, unless everyone forgets Him and loses hope in Him.” He gently held her hand and supported her weak frame as she stood. “And that’s what we’re here to prevent, remember? To stop our people from losing hope.” He began leading her towards the other side of the room.

Rikka clambered onto the platform and stood beside the lectern. “There’s a book here,” she said. Her bony fingers lifted the heavy tome open and began flipping through its dry pages. She sneezed from the dust that wafted from it.

Taiga came to stand beside her. “Ah, now I remember. This religion was ‘Christianity’. This was the book that they studied to learn more about their God. It’s called the ‘Bible’.”

“Funny word.” Rikka studied its words a moment longer, before she gasped and looked up to meet Taiga’s eyes. “Taiga!” she exclaimed. “This is exactly what we need!” She traced her fingers along the words on the page. “These verses—they’re full of hope and faith. If we bring this back to our family…”

“…then we will have the hope we need,” he finished. “And maybe this God will help us, if we pray to Him.” He grinned and picked up his sister, twirling her around. “Oh, Rikka, you’re brilliant.”

She blushed and giggled, and when her brother had set her down, she closed the Bible and picked it up, nearly falling from its weight. “We can go home, Taiga,” she whispered, meeting his eyes.

“That’s right. We’re going home.”

Feedback would be appreciated!

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Crusader

On his suit’s arm was a beeping vitals monitor. Its sounds were nowhere near as regular as they should’ve been, and the display kept flickering. The battery was running low.

He lay on a cot under a blanket and shivered despite the heat. Under the blanket, his flight suit was covered in long strips of foil tape to seal up the rents. It didn’t matter much right now—his helmet had been off for days in this place. He’d run out of oxygen supply long ago.

Thankfully the planet’s air was compatible with his lungs. Its flora and fauna, on the other hand, weren’t terribly amenable to the human digestive system. From somewhere or another, his captors had obtained very old emergency rations. Six wrappers now littered the ground around his cot.

It was so dark in here. The only light came from displays on his flight suit and from the captors themselves. He wasn’t sure if they quite understood his need for light, but regardless, they provided none. Like all the buildings on this world, every surface was deeply and intricately carved as though with patterns of circuitry. He guessed these patterns were a kind of braille, but they meant nothing to him.

There was scraping and slithering in the dark. He held his breath until the fuzzy blue-green glow of a captor appeared at the chamber’s doorway. The shape was incomprehensible, ever-shifting. He thought it was a kind of bioluminescent vapor emanating from the creature’s pores.

“Are you awake?” it asked in the most perfectly understandable language, as though it possessed human phonatory and articulatory systems alike. They didn’t often speak, but when they did, the effect was always chilling.

“Yeah,” he said. Nothing to be gained from pretending otherwise.

“Are you in pain? Do you have unmet needs?”

“Well, my ribs still haven’t healed. And something else is wrong, but I don’t know what. I need actual medical care. I don’t suppose you’re telling me I’m going free?”

“No.” As always, there was no tone of emotion in the creature’s voice. Neither apology nor malice. “But you will be taken from here soon. I believe you wish to return to the surface, correct?”

“Yeah. Why am I going?”

“The place you’re in is… the closest term is ‘church.’ It is a secret place, even among those of my nation. Your stay here has been a temporary measure. We were hoping for a peaceful end to the conflict. We have had traitors till now. There are many among us who desire for conflict with your nation to continue. To escalate, even. If you had been detained in a more public place, you would have been executed quickly.”

He scoffed. “You talk so much about peace. Never occurred to you to just let me go, huh? That sort of gesture of goodwill can go a long way to making peace.”

“You do not understand,” it replied. “Peace is desired, yes. But it is impossible while your nation is still equipped for battle. Your numbers must be reduced as much as possible. We have very confused objectives, my nation. We desire to minimize deaths while also minimizing the severity of conflict.”

“Maybe you should’ve just surrendered, then. That’d have kept the deaths low.”

“No. Language is an inadequate tool for explaining concepts such as these, so I cannot convey the reason, but we will not surrender. The closest I might come is that… Well, because the human nation will not surrender at this time, it is impossible for us to surrender at this time.”

He shook his head, having no idea whether his captor could perceive it in the darkness. “You have any idea how many times we’ve heard ‘Never surrender?’ But you xenos always do. Every single time.”

“I do not endeavor to convince you. All that I know is that our actions are successful. Fewer than one hundred free members of the human nation live now upon the surface of our home. They are outnumbered one hundred thousand to one.”

“We’ll win. We always do.” He coughed. Blood coated his tongue and teeth. “But if you’re not sending me home, why are you taking me out of here?”

“It is not permitted for a member of any nation to die in a church. You will stop being alive in a little less than twelve of your standard hours.”

He waited a long time before responding. He hadn’t been threatened—one of these xenos’s strange traits was their preternatural ability to predict the end of an individual human’s life. They couldn’t do it for themselves, apparently, nor for any of the fauna native to their world. That spoke, in his mind, to the unique destiny of humans, blessed before the creation of the world to conquer the universe, surrounded by created beings who must be forged into useful tools.

Too bad he wouldn’t live long enough to see the subjugation of this subhuman world, to see how its inhabitants could be used to fulfill their created purpose of bettering the lives of humanity. He closed his eyes and lay back. “Enjoy the last few days of your civilization’s existence, monster.”

“We hope that there will be many more to come. In a more perfect world, you might have enjoyed them with us.”

Those were the last words he ever heard spoken aloud. Afterward was nothing but darkness and silence. It seemed his suit had finally run out of juice.

Any suggestions or critique would be helpful!

Sanctuary

By Lucas Helm

The sights and sounds of the once gentle forest rushed by as three figures sprinted through the woods. From behind them, came sounds of pursuit, as if someone or something was chasing them. Lucius, the frontrunner of the trio, shot a quick glance behind, trying desperately to catch a glimpse of that which chased them. Alas, the sparse lighting in the dense canopy leaves masked their pursuers, making it impossible to see who was following.

“We can’t keep running like this!” Eric, the second member of the trio, gasped, “They’ll catch up to us eventually!”

“We’ve seen this before,” Lucius tried to keep his composure steady, “Every time they put us in a new reality, every time our people are forced into another level of their game, we lose someone.”

“Can we stop panicking and figure out a way out of this mess?!” Sasha, the third member of the trio exclaimed.

The other two fell silent as they continued to run, their enemies coming ever closer with every passing second. After another minute or so of tense running, the trio arrived at a clearing in the trees.

“There, that building!” Sasha yelled, pointing to an old wooden church-like structure, “We can hide out in there.”

“And if they find us?” Eric questioned.

“Who knows. Would you rather keep running?”

The trio changed course and ran into the building, throwing open the grand oak doors as they did. The group quickly slammed the door shut and dove behind the first pew that they saw, gasping for breath as they rested. For a few moments, nothing could be heard besides their heavy breathing. Then, there was a change.

“It is customary for one to sit in the pews during the service,” an older man with a long white beard and round spectacles stepped into the aisle between the pews.

The trio gasped, shocked that another person would be hiding out in this seemingly abandoned church.

“Will you be quiet?” Eric hissed, “You’re gonna alert those creatures out there to our presence!”

“They cannot reach you here,” the old man motioned to the window, outside of which could be seen a contingent of soldiers rushing past the church.

“Why didn’t they search the building?” Lucius asked, confused.

“Because,” the old man searched the trio’s expressions, “What lives in the dark has blinded themselves to that which resides in the light. They know nothing of hope, of peace, or of sanctuary. All they know is themselves, and when we look to ourselves all we find is darkness.”

“What are you talking about?” Lucius asked.

“Look around young ones. See the sanctuary that God has provided for you.”

The trio stood up and surveyed the room, astonished by what they saw. The church was bigger than they initially thought, though only boasting about a dozen or so rows of pews on each side of the center aisle. In the walls next to each pew was a stained glass window, each one filtering a calming golden light into the church and onto its residents. In the pews sat people of all races and ethnicities. Many sat together as a family, while others sat alone. A few pews still lay empty, as if waiting for those who would one day join the congregation.

“Where are we?” Sasha looked around, astonished.

“A sanctuary,” the old man smiled peacefully, “This is a place where those who are hunted and weary, such as yourselves, may rest for a time.”

“But we’re still in the emperor’s weird distorted reality game, aren’t we?” Eric asked, “How can a place like this, exist in something as twisted as the emperor’s cruel game?”

“Because God provides a light, even in the darkest of places. One simply needs to know where to look. Now, if you plan to stay, I would advise you to take a seat. The service is about to start.”

Silently, the trio sat in one of the empty pews closer to the front as the old man stepped up behind the pulpit. After adjusting his spectacles and opening an old and well worn Bible, he looked up to the congregation.

“Please rise for a hymn.”

Everyone stood, even those who had come to the church for the first time. The hymn was a beautiful piece, performed by a young man playing the organ behind the pulpit. The voices of the congregation blended together beautifully, making every word of the hymn come alive with the depth of the love of Jesus. Though no one afterwards could precisely remember the hymn itself, they all remembered the peace and joy in their souls that was a result of that beautiful music.

Then, the pastor stepped forward, the very same old man in spectacles that had welcomed the lost trio into the church. He preached a hopeful message, one of Christ’s light even in the darkest of times, a message that powerfully resonated within the trio. Then, the service closed with yet another hymn, this one as beautiful as the first.

“So my friends,” the pastor stepped down from the pulpit towards the trio, “Will you tell other captives held within the emperor’s cruel game about this sanctuary?”

“There are so many of them… How will this place ever have enough space to fit them all?”

“God will provide. Now my friends, you must go. Go preach the love and safety you have found here. Go face the darkness and help them to see the light that is hidden from their eyes. Go and find those lost souls who crave for the truth. Bring them here, to the hidden church, so that they may again have hope.”

The trio nodded silently as they made their way back to the great oak doors. After a deep breath, they stepped out bravely into a world filled with the lost ones who desperately search for the light.

This was a fun prompt to write. I've been wanting to play around with medieval Italy since rereading Lisa T. Bergren's Rivers of Time series--and this was my chance! Definitely not my usual genre, but a great deal of fun nonetheless.

The World's Saints

The crypt was cold, which was to be expected. What I didn’t expect as I stepped towards the Fortinari section was the torch light and the murmured words of a prayer. Nobody visited the Fortinari crypt, nobody mourned the loved ones entombed there…nobody but me, of course.

I grasped my sword and stepped around the corner, into the torch’s glow. “Who goes there?”

A young woman knelt before the stone platform where my father’s body rested, head bent, dark hair nearly touching the chilly stone floor. At my sharp question, she looked up, blinking in the torchlight. “I apologize, milord. I merely came to—”

“It is I who should apologize, milady.” I frowned. Wretched fool! Who disturbs a lady at her prayers? “I’ve never met anyone but myself in my family crypt, so your presence startled me.”

“You’re a Fortinari?” She stood and shook out her skirts. As she rearranged herself, I couldn’t help noticing her fine figure, serviceable dress, and the sword belted to her waist.

“Yes, milady.” I bowed. “My name is Sir Romano Fortinari.”

She curtsied in return. “A pleasure, milord. I am Lady Beatrice Conti.”

“Why do you carry a sword, milady?” Especially among the dead, who will give you no trouble.

Lady Conti sighed. “I feel safer with a sword by my side, milord.”

I clutched my own sword hilt tighter. This woman, with her sword and her unstated connection to my family, had piqued my curiosity, and only the rigorous training of my mother and the stern propriety imposed by my father kept me from asking the barrage of questions bursting for release.

Lady Conti drew her sword. “You’re skeptical, milord.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Nay, milady.”

“Dare you test me, then?” Lady Conti smiled.

I removed my own blade from its sheath. “I don’t question your skill.” I darted forward, bringing my blade up and towards her quickly. “Only your reaction time,” I grunted as I swung at her.

Lady Conti leapt into action like a fox leaping into a hole. She swung, blocked my blade, and instead of merely defending, she launched an offensive attack.

Our blades rang, the sound echoing in the silent crypt like church bells. The torchlight glittered off the swords, revealed the tiny beads of sweat on Lady Conti’s brow, and didn’t shed quite enough light on who this woman was.

Finally, I disarmed her, sending her smaller but sturdy broadsword clattering to the floor. She stood, panting, and watched as I sheathed my sword and retrieved hers. I laid the blade across my hands and extended it to her. “Who are you, milady?”

“I’ll tell you, because your father knew…and took my secret to the grave with him.” She took her sword and slammed it into the sheath. “I’m not Lady Conti. I’m not even a lady.”

I waited, arms crossed over my chest.

“I am Beatrice Rossi,” she whispered, “an escaped nun.”

***

Lord Fortinari stared at me as if his gaze could penetrate through my gown and the chain mail tunic I wore underneath, through my flesh, and into my soul to read what was written there. “An escaped nun.” He shook his head. “Who fights like a warrior maiden.”

“Your father helped me escape the convent. I’ve lived under an assumed name and title ever since, but my true love isn’t the Church, or the title, or the power which an association with the Fortinari family grants.” I smiled. “Would you like to know my true love?”

His brows drew together even as he nodded.

“Follow me, Lord Fortinari.” I lifted a torch from its holder and strode deeper into the crypt. The scent of cold stone and old things was all around us, and even as the torchlight pushed the shadows away, a shiver slid down my spine. The realm of the dead does not easily welcome the living.

“Call me Romano,” he said from behind me.

I held my torch so the light shone on him. “Call me Beatrice. I’ve staggered under titles too long.”

We walked into the darkness and silence, deeper and deeper into the past. The dead surrounding us were no longer recently deceased; they’d lain in the quiet for decades, some for centuries. The crypt was old—but what was behind it was older still.

“Where are we going, Beatrice?”

“Through hell, like Dante, to ascend to Heaven.” Will you, Romano, be the Dante to my Beatrice?

We paused in front of a large carving of Christ, standing triumphantly atop skulls and bones. Underneath, in Latin, was written: Novissima autem inimica destruetur mors.

I reached out and pressed my fingers into the wound on Christ’s right wrist. A tiny click punctuated the silence and the secret door behind the carving sprung open.

“What is this?” Romano stared at me. The torchlight flickered across his face, revealing the disbelief and confusion written there.

I waved him through the tiny door—he had to hunch to fit his broad frame through it—and followed him into my hidden church. “Welcome, Sir Romano Fortinari, to the Chiesa dei Santi del Mondo, the Church of the World’s Saints, my true love.”

The ten or so women who were sitting in the candlelight rose and bowed to him.

“You’re helping other nuns escape?” Romano stared at me. “And hiding them in a burial ground?”

“Others have regretted taking the veil, as I did. Your father helped me, so I help them.” I put my hand on my sword hilt. “We aren’t recanting our vow to love God; we are merely recanting our vow to do so in the seclusion of a convent. The world needs to see Christ, but it cannot see Christ if His people are locked away in a convent.”

Romano smiled. “You are different from any nun I’ve ever met.”

“Nay, I’m not a nun.” I stood tall beneath the weight of my sword, chain mail, and words. “I am a warrior and daughter of the King.”