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Thread: Tale of the Week 299: The Emperor and the Child - SUBMISSIONS THREAD

  1. #1
    Alwyn's Avatar Frothy Goodness
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    Default Tale of the Week 299: The Emperor and the Child - SUBMISSIONS THREAD

    Creative Workshop Competitions - Check out our sister competitions here on TWC! << Picture & Video Competitions | Tale of the Week | Writers' Study General Competitions | Graphics Workshop Competition >>



    The Emperor and the Child


    Source

    Keywords
    Adopted
    Conquest
    Supreme
    Poisoned
    Legacy



    Rules - PLEASE READ


    • The title and picture are there simply for inspiration, you do not have to use them if you don't want to - besides the keywords everything else is up to you!
    • Each theme will have a number of keywords that have to be used in your submission. They can be used in any way, but please place these words in bold so they can easily be seen by the competition organiser(s).
    • When using the keywords you may change singular nouns into plurals and vice versa; and you may change the tenses of verbs. No other changes are permitted.
    • The submission must have a minimum of 200 words. The title counts towards this minimum, but footnotes, explanatory notes, and other supplementary texts do not. The submission must also have a maximum of 500 words INCLUDING all titles, footnotes etc. Please note that different word-counters can give different results. This is the word-counter used by WS Staff to check your entries, and this is the one we will rely on when deciding whether a submission qualifies for the competition.
    • The submission must be placed in a spoiler.
    • The submission period will last at least two weeks. If we have three entries after two weeks, voting will begin. The submission period may be extended at the discretion of the competition organiser(s).
    • If you are a contestant you are honour bound to not read other contestants' writings until you have submitted yours.
    • If your entry is found to be substantially similar to another entry your submission will be disqualified. This is at the discretion of the competition organiser(s).
    • Contestants are not allowed to directly advertise their stories or ask for votes. If this is discovered you will be disqualified. Posting "Please vote for my entry in TotW" is NOT allowed. However, posting "Please vote for your favourite entry in TotW" is not only allowed, it is encouraged!
    • This thread is for submissions only. If you have any comments or questions then please post them in the commentary thread.
    • Please note that all rules including word count and key words will be strictly enforced. Rule breakers will be disqualified from the vote.




    AwardsEach winning story will receive 1 Writers' Study Competition point. This point will be added to the total number of points you have won from TotW and other Writers' Study competitions, and recorded in the Writers' Study Hall of Fame. When you have accumulated enough points, you will be awarded the appropriate Writers' Study Competition Medal.



    • 6 points - bronze medal
    • 12 points - silver medal
    • 24 points - gold medal




  2. #2
    ggggtotalwarrior's Avatar hey it geg
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    Default Re: Tale of the Week 299: The Emperor and the Child - SUBMISSIONS THREAD

    If this is still valid I’m gonna do a write up for it within the next day or so
    Rep me and I'll rep you back.

    UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF THE KING POSTER AKAR

  3. #3
    Alwyn's Avatar Frothy Goodness
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    Default Re: Tale of the Week 299: The Emperor and the Child - SUBMISSIONS THREAD

    Thanks for asking, yes this competition is still open for submissions and it would be great to see entries.

  4. #4
    ggggtotalwarrior's Avatar hey it geg
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    Default Re: Tale of the Week 299: The Emperor and the Child - SUBMISSIONS THREAD

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Twenty years it had been since the conquest of his tribe, the day Arik had been adopted by his enemy. Unlike the others, the southerners had taken pity on him, practically a babe crying over the corpses of his mother and father.


    Every night Arik would again be visited by the memory of that day. He remembered how the massive man adorned in shining gold leapt from his pale steed and offered his hand in friendship, all while his soldiers continued the slaughter. A circle of men just as imposing and adorned in bright purple cloaks flanked Arik as the man approached. He stood supreme above them all. The Emperor.


    From that day forward, the Emperor had taken in Arik as one of his own, a savage boy from the north being fostered in the ways of civilized man. He had been given a good life, the tools to read and write, training in the ways of war from his tutors, foods and wines from all across the Shattered Sea and it’s city-states that the Empire had achieved hegemony over.


    Yet, the palace was not his home; Arik never truly felt like a southerner. From the first day he had set foot within its walls he heard the whispers of even the palace’s servants; which slowly gave way to insults as he began to understand the airy, descriptive language that so differed from the one he had heard all of his life. He was seen by many as less than the bastards prior emperors had allowed to live within the palace, while others only used him as evidence their plans for further conquests could civilize the barbarians.


    The Emperor himself had never uttered interest in such plans in Arik’s presence. Over the recent years that tall, shining figure covered in the tools of war had given way to a more kindly figure. His salted brown stubble had become a flowing white beard while his muscular frame had shrunken considerably into a hunched, gaunt shape. Despite the circumstances of how they met, he had always been good to Arik, his adopted son.


    Yet for all the Emperor’s generosity and for all the gifts he been given over the years, the screams of the women that day in Vesterfield still filled Arik’s skull every moment he still drew breath. The man who had styled himself a father had only been so after killing Arik’s true father. The Emperor, like his sons and heirs before him, deserved to die an unnatural death.


    Like every night of the past year, Arik poisoned the Emperor’s chalice with the vials he had first stolen so long ago. He knew there were those who would suspect him when the old man finally died, but he cared little for how his story would end. That man, once so strong and a harbinger of destruction, for all his efforts to absolve himself, would leave a new legacy as the man whose death dismantled an Empire.


    Sorry took me a few extra days to finish from what I originally said but I got this out
    Last edited by ggggtotalwarrior; December 11, 2021 at 09:56 PM.
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  5. #5
    Akar's Avatar I am not a clever man
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    Default Re: Tale of the Week 299: The Emperor and the Child - SUBMISSIONS THREAD

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    Dmitri Sokolov, Supreme leader of the Hegemony of Man, stands on his office balcony in the Imperial Palace on New Terra, looking down at the vast expanse of city beneath him – land conquered millennia ago by his ancestors. The din of city life rises up to meet the subdued silence of the Imperial Palace. Dmitri looks down at the child in his arms, swaddled tightly against the cold and wind.



    The child, his son’s bastard, looks up blinking and cooing softly – its breath leaving little puffs of condensation in the cold winter air. Dmitri’s eldest son had come to him earlier that day, begging for permission to adopt the bastard. Now, hours later, he stands alone with his son’s bastard; the symbol of his poisoned legacy held tightly in his arms, and considers the child’s fate.


    The Imperial Line, unbroken and pure for generations had now been sullied by the misdeeds of his own son, his own heir. No, not his son anymore. He would have to start anew, with a new heir. Dmitri looks down from the balcony at the city hundreds of meters below, taking in the bright lights and sounds – and then drops the child over the balcony, watching it quickly disappear into the phantasmagoria of lights below. He turns away from the balcony and steps back into his office.


    Dmitri sits down at his desk and leans back in his chair before keying on the intercom and saying, “Natasha, tell my son I’m ready to see him now”.
    Last edited by Akar; December 07, 2021 at 09:33 PM.

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  6. #6
    ggggtotalwarrior's Avatar hey it geg
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    Default Re: Tale of the Week 299: The Emperor and the Child - SUBMISSIONS THREAD

    You are very good Kar
    Rep me and I'll rep you back.

    UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF THE KING POSTER AKAR

  7. #7

    Default Re: Tale of the Week 299: The Emperor and the Child - SUBMISSIONS THREAD

    I am working on something right now, and will do my best to finish it up by later tonight.

    EDIT: I found some time/inspiration while drinking my morning coffee, and managed to smash this out quickly. I hope y'all like it!

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


    Submission (500 words, exactly )


    The walls, before sheets of white marble, were scorched with soot and ash, long seeping trails of crimson running down from their crests. The streets, before smoothest brick, bright and warm, were scuffed with muddy bootprints, weighted with corpses and the oozing runoff of death. The air, before crisp and clean, ringing with song and the hawkers’ cries, was now choked with smoke and rent by a thousand thousand death rattles and the keening wails of a thousand thousand weeping widows and orphans. But there at the top, in the mountain of polished stone that was the Supreme Oracle’s retreat, there was a sense of calm.

    Standing there in the gentle breezes, above the pain and blood and shrieks of the city below, an aging man wearing a winged crown looked out over the smoldering city, the last conquest of his long reign. His mismatched eyes, one green and one blue, raked back and forth over the ruins, taking in his legacy. And then a single tear gathered at the corner of his green right eye.

    Reaching up, he wiped the drop of moisture away, and then stretched his arm over to rest on the shoulder of the younger man standing beside him. With his other hand, he gestured toward the city, toward the fires and screams.

    “I adopted you out of this, Faris,” the man began, halting as a racking cough tore its way through his chest.

    “I know, father,” Faris answered.

    As the man finally regained himself, steadying his breathing, he fixed Faris with a cold look. “Yes, you know, boy. But you know I will say it anyway then, yes?”

    Faris’ eyes narrowed for the merest fraction of a moment, and then he nodded.

    “Good. Now, at the end, it is right to do things properly.” The man nodded to himself, as though he had convinced himself of some necessary truth. “Twenty years ago, I killed my sons and daughters. They were good children, but their ideas were poisoned by a woman who never could bring herself to see the hard truths. Foolish wife. I killed them, and I took you from this place, took your raggedy orphan self and made you my own. Why did I do that?”

    “To continue the work,” Faris answered flatly.

    “Yes! To continue the work! This was the last city. And that means we have done what no king or emperor has ever done before; we have made peace. I am dying, but when I go there will be only you. No brother to tear at your empire. No remaining lineages to challenge your claim. Only you, and there will be eternal peace.”

    Faris looked out on the burning city, and then on his adoptive father. The man was old, frail. Faris made a choice and three seconds later there was a wet crunch on the smooth bright bricks below.

    “Long live Faris,” the emperor said under his breath, staring down on the winged crown skipping its way down the street.
    Last edited by Kilo11; December 08, 2021 at 04:29 AM.
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