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New Eden 42

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Can you write like A. J. Hackwith and build on what I write? Keep any character introductions consistent with their implied history.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Boys. Stop being little monkeys and smile for the picture.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Leto stumbled. His stomach dropped as he spun in the direction of the voice.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It echoed around him, as if the speaker was lost in the cavernous dark.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He twisted around and barely caught sight of the black bird disappearing into the fog.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He broke into a run again, but it felt slower, as if he was covering less ground than before.\n\n\"You got to check this out.\"\n\n\"That's crazy.\" Leto's lips moved around the response. It was his voice, and they were his lips that spoke it, and they felt like his words, but it was wrong, all wrong. As if he were watching himself from far away. His legs gave out beneath him, and it was a shorter fall to the ground than it should have been. His knees banged against a soft surface that was suddenly slippery and pliable. Leto smelled chlorine and sun-warmed rubber, an inner tube in a shady backyard pool. The laughter that cut up through his constricted throat felt like a foreign presence. \"Did you see the one where he—\"\n\n\"I know, right? We could totally start our own channel.\"\n\nThe other voice was young and gleefully confident, just over his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, a figure swirled through the deep mist, and it took every inch of self-control not to twist to face it. He shoved to his feet, though he could feel his body changing. The bob of the ghostlight was a speck in the dark. He ran, even as his legs stretched and returned to something like normal.\n\n\"You never got time to chill anymore.\" And now the voices sounded older.\n\n\"I'm just busy. You know.\" The words were frosty with apathy. Leto tried not to say them, but they forced their way out anyhow.\n\n\"Yeah. I know.\"\n\nEverything felt familiar, like an echo. Leto clutched his fist over his chest, where an ache bloomed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The ground swayed, roiling with the mists, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep his feet. The raven didn't care. He was swimming after the bird to—where, forward? Backward? Deeper in or farther out? Time dilated, a drip of fatigue in his veins. Like bleeding out. A lulling exhaustion, spiked with dread.\n\nHis lips parted again, and there was no fighting this painful script. \"Stop, Darren. I don't have time—\"\n\nNo. Don't, Leto thought.\n\n\"I just thought—\"\n\nStop. Leto tried to bite his mouth closed to keep it in. You don't know—it ruins everything. Don't say it, don't—\n\nPain blossomed over the horror, and Leto's lips bled as they parted. \"Well, don't. Shit, Darren. Don't bother thinking. Just don't.\"\n\nThe feather crumpled in his fist, and a new pain brought him back. The quill had pierced his fingertip. It wasn't in the script. It was enough. He gasped and stumbled through the fog. The raven's distant form abruptly swerved up. It took a panicked scramble before Leto found where the ground inclined, rising up toward liquid shadows that poured between a gap of nothing that seemed thicker, darker, somehow.\n\n\"Who? Darren? God, no. He just always hangs around...\"\n\nAgain his voice betrayed him, stealing his breath. This time it came with a chill of calculation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hope. The primal adolescent instinct that pointing to someone weaker somehow makes you strong.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 18 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Acid burned up Leto's throat and pooled on his tongue. It tasted bitter, like loathing. Leto hated that voice and hated himself. Maybe he deserved to be lost here. Maybe the others would fare better without him. They would, wouldn't they? Leto twisted to find the voice but stumbled midstep. And then he was falling. Leto's arms windmilled out for something, anything. An alien sound intruded, a digital ping that Leto struggled to place in his panic. Then a last voice that hissed out and bounced into the darkness:\n\n\"If you want to die so bad, why don't you hurry up and do it, then?\"\n\nLeto didn't even try to fight it this time. The voice was cruel and viciously cold. The voice was his.\n\nLight. Air. Cool hands pressed on the back of his neck. Grass tickled his hands, and the air filled his lungs with the smell of green, sunlit things.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: This is part of a larger narrative. The user will write a segment, then you need to write around eighteen sentences continuing directly from it. Characters and events may be pre-established from earlier chapters.\n\nAuthor style: A. J. Hackwith\nGenre: fantasy", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A librarian exists in service to the books, and takes peace in that. Future librarians, I exhort you: do not meddle in the affairs of Hell or concern yourself with the mortal world. Our time there is past, but the stories we shepherd are immortal. What we do here echoes in eternity.\n\n—Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 971 CE\n\nScribbled at a much later date in a slightly sloppy hand:\n\nBleed that. We got a job to do, sure, but what good's a librarian without a story of his own?\n\n—Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1253 CE\n\nThe mountains were black and sharp, like the ribs of an ancient giant rimming the field of flowers. The closest peaks were spotted with white snowfall and a sparkle of glacial ice. It was daylight, but traces of northern lights played hide-and-seek against the far clouds drifting like passing thoughts. It was a perfect blend of mythic reverence and dreamlike impossibility. It was ridiculous, half-forgotten heroics with changing faces, half mead and belief turned legend turned pop culture. It was Valhalla.\n\nClaire had time to soak it in only after they retrieved their possessions from the ravens, who left in a huff. Brevity had been the fastest, snatching her own glimmering ribbon from her raven and pausing to drape it gently over one wrist. It twitched a protest, then absorbed seamlessly back into the complicated patterns tattooed on her arm.\n\nA strangled cry caught her attention. Leto had arrived last, even though Claire had brought up the rear.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That alone wasn't concerning; the raven roads were always changing. Each path was unfathomable and personal. However, the way he crouched in the grass, breath short and hands fisted tight in his hair, drew everyone's attention.\n\n\"Leto.\" Claire dropped to a knee beside him. His shoulders spasmed violently away at her touch, though the rest of him didn't appear to acknowledge her at all. His breath was a fevered, shallow wheeze. She gently threaded his fingers away from his hair before he pulled it out by the roots. \"What's wrong?\"\n\nLeto stared at his hands in reply, fists clenching and unclenching. Claire could feel his pulse merging into a single fluttering drumbeat under her hand. She was about to try to shake him out of it when Brevity jostled between them.\n\n\"He's having a panic attack,\" Brevity said crisply as she clasped Leto's clammy hands and rubbed gently up his arm. \"Leto, hey, buddy. We're safe. Doesn't feel like it, but we are. We're gonna take as long as you need, okay?\"\n\nLeto didn't respond, so Brevity dropped to her knees next to him. \"You're right. Brains are fuckin' liars. But you got this. No rush. I'm going to count to four; maybe you can breathe for me. Four in, four out.\" And then, a few moments later, \"Want to walk around? No? Good choice—this grass is kind of scratchy, don't you think? And that air—smells like butterfly farts, yeah? Look at those squishy, weird flowers. Wonder if you can eat 'em...\" Brevity kept up the words, grounding him, creating a steady, soft patter that, over a handful of minutes, slowly eased Leto's shoulders away from his ears. Brevity produced a small blue bottle from her bag and pressed it into his hands before shooing the rest of them away to give Leto a chance to recover.\n\n\"You seemed well prepared for that,\" Claire said, feeling thrown by her own assistant. Brevity was always surprising her, but then, that was what muses did.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In all fairness, Brevity talked so much Claire had learned to only half listen when it wasn't related to the Library.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "🔍 Find a place to insert: \"I was a muse. Contrary to popular belief, it's hard to get inspired when you're panicking. Not the first time I've seen someone struggle through anxiety.\"", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Perhaps she should change that strategy.\n\n\"I was a muse. Contrary to popular belief, it's hard to get inspired when you're panicking. Not the first time I've seen someone struggle through anxiety.\" Brevity gave a careless shrug, not quite looking Claire in the eyes.\n\n\"You never talk about your previous work,\" Claire said.\n\n\"You never ask either, do you?\" It carried an accusation, but Brevity brightened, only a little bit forcefully. \"It's okay, boss. I knew better than to ask about yours too.\"\n\nThe lightness in her tone sang along Claire's nerves, but she was aware they had an audience. Thankfully, Leto had recovered and got to his feet unsteadily. \"You didn't... didn't tell me it would be like dying.\" Leto's voice was hoarse and hollow, as if he'd been screaming. His color was faint, skin still clammy, but his chest rose and fell in steady, calm time.\n\nClaire nodded to herself. \"It's different for everyone. That path is intended to be a test. It feeds on your worst fear.\"\n\n\"Curious to fear dying, since you're already dead.\" Andras sounded more amused than sympathetic. It earned him a glare from Claire, but Leto ignored it.\n\n\"Is this the place?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Leto took his ghostlight back from Brevity.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A distant cheer rose from the west, accompanied by the sound of clashing metal. They turned as one toward the noise, and Claire nodded.\n\n\"Oh yes, definitely Valhalla.\" She struck off up the hill toward the sounds. They picked through the rubble of what looked like a wall built by giants. Huge stone blocks piled on end. Just over the rise, the faint gleam of a rooftop caught her eye. Claire squinted at it. It was easier to keep moving forward. Anything was better than looking back.\n\nAndras caught up with Claire first, lifting his knees high to try to keep the worst of the burs from catching on his fine slacks. He grimaced at his surroundings before giving her a scrutinizing look. \"My dear, are you unwell?\"\n\n\"What?\" Claire looked down and realized her hands were trembling, fingers curled into a fist. She took a sharp breath and stuffed them in the pockets of her skirts. \"I'm fine.\"\n\n\"The raven road can be trying even for experienced mortals,\" Andras offered.\n\n\"I am quite well, Andras,\" Claire said, if only to shut him up.\n\nBurning books, blood on an unwritten rug, the back of her head, hunch of her shoulders as she turned away from her.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Bile curdled in her gut.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 14 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Worst fears, she'd told Leto. They were never things she wanted to run to, that tempted in the dark. Just things to run away from. Claire pursed her lips into a thin line. \"Just fine.\"\n\nShe cleared her throat and turned her attention to the nearest available target. \"And what do fictional heroes see in the dark?\"\n\n\"Nothing. Just... nothing.\" It took Hero a moment longer than usual to marshal his usual haughty expression, and his sneer was slightly off-kilter. \"Your company is nightmare enough, of course. What else could I fear?\"\n\n\"Should have let go of the feather, then,\" Claire said, \"stayed in the void. Lovely place. The gibbering voices could have taught you some manners.\"\n\n\"As opposed to the gibbering of the present?\"\n\n\"Mind your tongue, book.\"\n\n\"Mind my tongue? Why, that's my most charming attribute.\"\n\n\"Maybe humility went with his lost pages,\" Leto muttered, and Hero rewarded him with a sliver of a grin.\n\n\"And the shadow gets a sense of humor! I didn't know he had it in him. Your bad influence, to be sure, warden.\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll share a piece from a longer story, then you take over with 43 sentences in A. J. Hackwith's voice, keeping within the fantasy genre. Some context may come from earlier chapters.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The hall rose into view as they reached the top of the hill. A grand longhouse squatted in the middle of a wide training yard. It was constructed of dark timbers, each as big around as Hero was tall. All the wood was trimmed in gold, and dark carvings resolved into sinuous animals that curled into one another as Claire drew near. Lining the roof, gutter to gable, were wooden shields of every color. Their painted heraldry was bright in the late-afternoon sun.\n\nIt was the set of double doors at the top of a flight of steps that brought the group up short. A beaten-bronze sun decorated the tops of the doors, caught in the teeth of a giant wolf. Through the carvings that emanated from the sun ran ribbons of gold, dribbling between the wolf's teeth. Every recognizable creature, real or mythical, was represented, and though the carvings were rough, they pulsed with a chained energy. Ravens roosted among the uppermost gables. The roiling cloud of black feathers croaked and chattered down at the group as they hesitated at the base of the stairs.\n\n\"So many birds. How unclean,\" Andras commented as he squinted at them. \"What is the term for a group of them? A nest, a colony... A murder is for crows...\"\n\n\"An unkindness of ravens,\" Claire muttered.\n\n\"Apt.\"\n\n\"They seem kinda pretty to me,\" Brevity offered as Claire placed her foot on the first step.\n\nThat was a mistake.\n\nOne of the largest ravens erupted from the flock and launched into a bulleting arc. At the apex, it dove, angling directly at the group. Brevity shouted a warning, but it was drowned out by a screech. First sounding avian, then... it changed.\n\nA dark blur folded into Claire, and she slammed to the ground. She shook her head to clear it but was arrested when a long, curved blade came to rest lightly under her jaw, tip prodding her skull behind her ear.\n\n\"Squishy thing. Weak thing,\" said a woman's snarling voice. \"You're no warrior.\"\n\nClaire squinted in the sun to make out the figure straddling her. She was tall and broad shouldered, with dark leathers covering her and smelling vaguely of fire and sweat. Lean, hard muscle covered what leather did not, and she had a sharp, beaklike face with dark, kohled eyes. The sides of her head were shaved, and a frill of jet-black hair and feathers on the top of her head twitched as she leaned forward.\n\n\"Warriors go to Valhalla. Cowards to Hell. Intruders go to the flock.\" The woman's lips curved into a smile to match her knife.\n\n\"Hero—\" Claire croaked out, but the blade tightened against her skin.\n\nThe chuckle was so smug she could hear the smirk in it. \"Sorry—didn't catch that command, warden. Need something, did you? I am ever ready to assist a lady in need. Would you like a cup of tea?\" She heard Brevity hiss something, which seemed to make Hero only laugh louder.\n\nShe really would kill that damned man.\n\nThe raven woman's companions joined her in human form, surrounding their party. Claire grimaced and crept her hands up, open at her sides. She might not die in Valhalla, but being skewered and sent back to Hell was not in her plans. \"We mean no harm.\"\n\n\"You could do no harm even if you meant it, squishy woman.\"\n\n\"Excuse me, bird lady?\" Brevity's voice brought Claire's attacker's attention around.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm afraid I need you to let go of my boss. Or I'll need to hit you. With very large books.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 34 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Is that so, little worm?\" Claire felt a warm trickle as the knife pressed harder. She began to wonder if her assistant was after a quick promotion.\n\n\"Who comes, Arlid?\" A new voice sounded from somewhere beyond the steps. \"They might have difficulty announcing themselves with a cut throat.\"\n\nThe raven woman, Arlid, made a disgusted noise, but the knife came away from Claire's throat. \"Intruders, Ragna. My flock brought word. These are the ones holding our fledges in another realm, wicked things. Now they try to enter the halls, slinking in like cowards.\"\n\n\"We're not cowards. We're librarians!\" Brevity protested, but the flat silence said the guards did not see the distinction.\n\nClaire pressed her hand to the nick at her throat, wiping the dribble of blood as she sat up. A thickset woman, layered in furs and old scars, stood at the top of the stairs. She had a warrior's ease, but her arms were crossed, and she held less hostility in her gaze than Arlid.\n\n\"We are members of Hell's Unwritten Wing and we're here to see Bjorn the Bard.\" Claire got to her feet, knocked the dust off her skirts for what seemed to be the tenth time today, and assessed the situation.\n\nArlid loomed over her, knife angled so Claire didn't think about moving too fast. Brevity stood with the others, and still had her bag hoisted over her head, trembling arms waggling it threateningly at the nearest guard. Hero was content to stand to one side with a complete lack of concern. Useless book.\n\nThe powerful woman at the top of the stairs made no move to help or hinder. \"And what would bring Lucifer's folk to see our storyteller?\"\n\nStoryteller. Claire had never thought of librarians like that, but then, Bjorn was before her time. \"Library business.\" When the warrior raised her brow, she clarified, \"Confidential library business.\"\n\n\"We respect the work of your storytellers. They may pass, Arlid,\" Ragna said, and the raven woman stepped to one side with a grunt. The party began up the stairs, now warier of the ravens overhead. \"I'm sure Bjorn will speak to you after you pass the trial.\"\n\n\"Trial?\" Brevity echoed.\n\n\"Valhalla is the field of heroes. You didn't die in worthy battle, so you'll have to prove your worth if you want our hospitality.\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"But we're just here for a visit—just a moment is all—\"\n\n\"You still must prove yourselves warriors to enter Valhalla,\" Ragna said.\n\n\"And if you don't...\" Arlid skipped up the stairs after them. A feral smile crossed her hooked face, and she motioned to the ravens above. For the first time, Claire noticed bits of bone and unidentifiable lumps strung up amid the eaves. They clattered along with Arlid's singsong croak. \"Intruders are consigned to the flock.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Collaborative writing exercise:\n1. User provides opening (may include established elements)\n2. AI continues with 35 sentences sentences\n3. Match familiarity level of characters/lore\n4. Genres: fantasy\n5. Elements: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"When you said you knew the way to Valhalla...\" Claire's eyes were quickly adjusting to the light inside the hall. It appeared even bigger inside. The long hall of Valhalla comprised a disconcerting mix of ancient myth and the exaggerated flux of modern influence. The roof rested on rafters made of thick spears, and shields and carvings decorated the walls that seemed to run on forever. The inhabitants were every age, shape, and size, not the uncouth giants that the decor indicated, but the interior of the hall bristled with an aggressive mix of song, wine, and a jovial sort of violence. Sweet smoke and mead were heavy in the warm air. \"I assumed you had a plan for this part.\"\n\n\"I knew of the way. I don't get out as often as you do, remember.\" Andras slid aside as a warrior with a spear staggered past him toward the keg. \"The rumors might have... left out a few details.\"\n\nHe had to raise his voice to be heard over the boisterous drumming that issued from an assembly gathered in one corner. Claire's gaze was drawn to an older man at the center of the circle, drumming a skin basin as large as a table. He used his hands, sticks, whatever fell into his grasp, and had his head thrown back, lost to the howling rhythm. He was not the largest warrior in the hall, but the energy that poured from his sinewy arms drowned out practically every drummer around him.\n\nClaire found herself frowning at the unnecessary exuberance. \"Andras, you've been a dear mentor, but if your theoretical knowledge gets us killed, I will be withdrawing my professional acquaintance.\"\n\n\"Understood, pup.\"\n\n\"Who will your representative be for the trials?\" Ragna finished conferring with another Norseman and turned back to them. \"You should pick your finest warrior. Today's battle master is Uther, wielder of the guardian maul named Widowbane.\"\n\n\"I suppose we just missed the wielder of crumpets and tea.\" Claire pursed her lips and looked to her companions. Wordlessly, all eyes slid to Hero and the sword on his back.\n\nHero jerked, pulling his thirsty gaze away from a line of silver goblets and possibly the lean warriors attached to them. \"You can't be serious.\"\n\n\"You are kinda the only one with a weapon. Or any idea how to use one,\" Brevity pointed out.\n\n\"Also, the only one with enough sense not to get anywhere near someone named Widowbane!\"\n\n\"Actually, that's the maul's name,\" Andras said. \"Interesting human quirk, that—Norse only named their blades when—\"\n\n\"Fascinating,\" Hero snapped, reserving a glare for his companions before looking at Claire. \"Surely you have a better plan than sacrificing me to the natives.\"\n\n\"If you have ideas, I'm open to suggestions.\" Claire was not happy about the way things were going, but she kept her face neutral. \"We can't continue until we prove ourselves, and we can't leave until we've found Bjorn. You heard what's at stake.\"\n\nHero's frown faded, and he held Claire's gaze levelly, trading anger for a quiet that made her skin itch.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He appeared contemplative. She found she rather preferred him sullen and angry.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And is that an order, Librarian?\"\n\n\"Duels are honorable combat. They must be entered into voluntarily,\" Ragna said.\n\nIf Claire couldn't order Hero to satisfy the duel, that shot down any hope they had. Claire glanced around the hall, searching for a new plan. She racked her brain for Nordic culture, wondering what the reaction would be if she made a run for it and attempted to find Bjorn on her own. Corner and threaten him if she had to. There had to be protocols, protections. Surely they would have to respect the gravity of the...\n\n\"Fine.\"\n\nHero stood stiff as the blade on his back, dark eyes glowering at Ragna. He'd managed to imbue an acid disdain into the one word. \"As the only hero present, trials of honor fall to me. I'll participate in your barbarian sport.\" He grumbled, \"Might enjoy hitting a few things, actually...\"\n\nRagna, if she even noticed it, was immune to scorn. \"You may choose your weapon.\"\n\nHero gestured to the filigreed sword on his back. \"Broadsword. Unless you have a rapier about.\"\n\n\"Sword it is.\" Ragna turned toward Claire. \"And you, storyteller. What weapon?\"\n\nClaire choked. \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\"You are the leader of these... people.\" Ragna motioned over the Library's host with a broad hand. \"Leaders do not allow their own to bleed alone.\"\n\n\"Who said anything about bleeding?\" Hero interjected unhappily.\n\n\"You must forgive me, Ragna.\" Claire chose her words with care. \"Arlid was right, outside. I am not a coward, but I am not a warrior either. I'm a librarian, a scholar—my only skill is with words. I'm afraid I would put on a very poor show for your hall.\"\n\n\"Not so!\" The voice that boomed from the pit brought all the music to an abrupt halt, which caught the attention of the rest of the hall. Talk ground to a murmur as a scrawny man, nearly as leathery as the wide drum in front of him, stood.\n\nIt was the same man Claire had seen earlier, hooting and drumming like a creature possessed. He leapt around the oversized drum and made his way out of the drum pit with a few pats and shoulder slaps for the warriors he passed. \"I believe we'll be in for a grand treat. And it's been far too long since I stretched my jaw.\"\n\nRagna's hooded eyes lit up. She clasped the man's arm. \"You will do us the honor, storyteller?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Storyteller?\" Claire gaped. \"You're Bjorn?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 20 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's what they say.\" The man wiped a sweaty hand over his impressive beard. \"I hear you've come from the Library.\"\n\nHe did not look much like a proper librarian, but Claire was relieved. Perhaps they could yet avoid this foolish scene. \"Yes. We have questions about—\"\n\n\"How is the gargoyle?\" Bjorn asked suddenly. \"Still got that chip on the right wing?\"\n\n\"Probably. I try not to look too closely.\" Claire shared an exasperated glance with Andras. \"It's of the utmost importance that we speak—\"\n\n\"And we'll discuss much, Librarian. After our duel.\"\n\n\"Not a warrior. No time.\" Claire clipped her words to keep from being cut off a third time. She gripped her bag of books more tightly. She was familiar with the outlandish nature of Viking tales, but this trip was quickly spiraling out of her control.\n\n\"There's always time for a story,\" Bjorn said. \"Surely you know your stories, Librarian. Let the best verse win.\"\n\n\"But—\"\n\n\"A battle and a tale! A treat,\" Ragna crowed, clapping Claire on the back hard enough to send her forward a step. \"To the ring!\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "ur turn to write! do like twenty-one sentences sentences. focus on fantasy stuff. try to use these: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library. treat any chars/world stuff like the reader's caught up (unless its the start)", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "My dear apprentice, as a librarian you'll undergo strict training under my somewhat unworthy tutelage. It can take decades to learn to wield words properly. But you need only look at the hungry demons at our door to know the power of inspiration. As we are unwritten authors, yes, some of that work is our own. Words may call to you, but it is important to maintain a healthy respect for that power. I know you grieve your lost life, but have patience.\n\nThere is much I have yet to tell you.\n\n—Librarian Gregor Henry, 1987 CE\n\nThe polished oak of the staff seemed to glow in the thick warmth of the longhouse. It was a beautiful construction. Claire knew if she ran her fingers along it, she'd find joints of birch, yew, hawthorn, and the other sacred woods of the north. Her thumb worried at the gnarl of amber trapped in its tip.\n\nThe hall had reacted quickly to the prospect of a duel. Claire and Hero were evidently to fight simultaneously—a dual duel. The wordplay made Claire roll her eyes, but she had to admire the way the hall had quickly reorganized for the occasion. Bjorn had swept her away to the far end. The tables were pushed clear, revealing a hard-packed arena in the center of the lodge. She stopped her pacing at the side of the ring. \"Librarians are not warriors or wizards. Is this really necessary?\"\n\nBjorn rolled his shoulders as he selected a staff of his own. \"Have some sense of showmanship, lass. We may be a rough lot to you, but we appreciate a good performance. You've dueled in our way before, yes?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"My predecessor taught me.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire stared at the staff in her hand as if it were a snake. \"But more for... recreation and training, not death by combat.\"\n\n\"Oh, I would never kill you, lass.\" Bjorn turned with a smile. \"Just mightily embarrass you in front of all these fine, handsome Viking men.\"\n\n\"No loss. I prefer my partners slightly less hirsute.\"\n\n\"Like your pretty lad, there?\" Bjorn gestured to Hero, who had his back to them. He was allowing Brevity to fiddle with the straps on his armor. He had abandoned the jacket and waistcoat for fine-scale mail that hung lightly on his chest and gleamed the same burnished bronze as his hair.\n\nClaire turned back. \"I also prefer my partners slightly less fictional. He's a character. A book.\"\n\n\"Looks real enough for me. But then there's no accounting for taste.\" Bjorn was in no hurry to turn his appreciative gaze away. Claire didn't have time for the antics of a lecherous old bard. She located the notebook in her bag and pulled it out. She had begun making notations when Bjorn cleared his throat.\n\n\"No books in the ring.\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon? I'm a librarian. You asked for a story, and this is where I keep my stories. I'll carry your silly staff, but I'm keeping my notes.\"\n\n\"That's not how stories work here, lass. You're not in your library anymore—here, the word is your voice. And your voice is your tale.\" Bjorn flashed a grin. \"The spoken word was the first kind of library, after all.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oral storytelling. She should have expected as much.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "🔍 Find a place to insert: \"That is a loose interpretation.\"", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was awkward, dated, and entirely unreliable. Messy in every way she couldn't stand. Unreliable narrators, the lot of them. In her opinion, there was a reason humanity had invented the written word, and that reason was progress. Claire ground her teeth. \"That is a loose interpretation.\"\n\n\"Is it?\" Bjorn mildly met her glare. \"Once, people memorized books' worth of spoken words, songs, and sagas that contained all their history, traditions, stories, survival. The Arrernte called it their Dreaming.\"\n\nBjorn knew his stuff. Claire was forced to remember that, for all his wild appearance, he was a former librarian. And had a longer tenure than her. She ceded the point. \"I'm not a storyteller.\"\n\n\"Then you can go back to your library.\" Bjorn shrugged.\n\nThe crowd was increasing. Someone had procured a war horn, and its bleat was seeding a headache. Claire tossed the book on top of her bag in a huff. \"You're crude.\"\n\n\"And you rely too much on those bits of paper. This is how it all started, you know.\" Bjorn handed Claire a mug of a dark frothy liquid. When she bent her head, she caught a vague whiff of fire and chocolate. \"Drink up.\"\n\nUp close, the smell nettled her nose with iron and honey. \"What is this?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Mead of poetry,\" Bjorn said a touch too lightly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 16 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire searched her memory of half-remembered myths. Nothing in Valhalla's stories was as simple as mead, and this place seemed exaggerated past even the original myths. \"This isn't... Kvasir's blood?\" The Norse had a tale about the mead of poetry. Blood extracted from a keen, all-knowing, and thoroughly murdered god. She gave it a repulsed look before taking a tentative sip. She could feel the magic begin to seep into her tongue. It tasted like bitter chocolate. \"If I recall the lore right, a simple vial of this is adequate.\"\n\n\"But then ye don't have an excuse to drink.\" Bjorn downed his portion in one gulp and wiped his beard. \"No books, just a saga, a staff, and a swig. I'll make a Norseman of you by the end of this, Librarian.\"\n\n\"Just try not to fall on your head when I beat you.\" Claire finished her mug and handed it back to him. \"I still need answers.\"\n\nBjorn's laughter was as warm as their drink as he led the way into the arena.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Writing partner mode: 59 sentences sentences, match context level. Themes: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The ring was large enough to separate the duels by several yards—far enough that she would not be swept up in the first swing of Uther's grand maul.\n\nClaire positioned her back to Hero's match. She would have to keep moving. This was not the stand-and-deliver type of duel that she was familiar with from the Library. But as she wrapped her fingers over the soft grip of her staff, she settled on a grim certainty. Whatever the outcome, she was not leaving the realm until she had her answers.\n\n\"Seeing as you're our guests\"—Bjorn raised his voice so it carried over the watching crowds—\"we'll allow you the first attack.\"\n\n\"Grand.\" Claire heard Hero's dripping sarcasm behind her.\n\nThere was a shuffle and a thundering step as Hero initiated the attack, and Claire could not stop from twisting around as the crowd began to roar. Hero had opened with a testing swing, darting forward and aiming for Uther's unprotected side. But the giant easily avoided it, batting aside Hero's sword as if it were a gnat. Hero grunted and recovered, cautiously maintaining his distance.\n\n\"Well, Librarian?\" Bjorn's voice brought her around.\n\nShe would have to stop worrying about Hero's fight if she was going to survive her own. A duel between librarians was a duel of words. Not just any quotation from a poem or other passage would do; it had to hold meaning for the audience. It was the meaning that carried the weight. The opposing librarian would have to identify it, take away the audience's meaning, and redirect it to defuse the attack. Claire tightened her grip on the staff and considered her audience. This was Bjorn's audience, not hers. She would be operating at a disadvantage. The encounter with the ravens at the steps came to mind. \"'Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.'\"\n\nHer voice rang out, and she felt the silky shudder on her lips as the magic took hold. Fine silver script flowed through the air, etching the words in a glowing ribbon. A flare of figures formed around it, tiny points of light in the shape of faeries, fine ladies, jesters and daggers, moons and men. It whispered as it flew sharply at Bjorn's face, and the crowd murmured approval.\n\nThe old man grunted and whipped his staff to the side, catching the words from the air. The silver script tangled and scraped at the wood, tendrils whipping like a lash toward his face. He spoke just one word to make them disappear into nothing. \"Shakespeare.\" Bjorn snorted as he named the author. \"Starting with the Bard, Librarian? A beginner's move. I hope you have more than that.\"\n\n\"It seemed fitting, considering.\" Claire began to circle as Bjorn moved. The tumult from the crowd was growing. Out of the corner of her eye, she registered swirls of movement as Hero and Uther began to trade blows in earnest. Claire forced herself to stay focused on the bard in front of her.\n\n\"'It's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.'\" Bjorn's words were gold and old stone runes, tiny marching men and snowflakes, all sharp edges as they snapped toward her. Claire's mind spun along with her staff, and she stumbled back a step as she barely avoided being sliced by the tail end.\n\n\"Tolstoy.\" The words disappeared, and she stifled a sigh of relief before she began to circle again. Bjorn was faster than an old man had a right to be, his words too sharp. She needed the space to react.\n\n\"Out of practice, Librarian?\" Bjorn took easy strides around the ring.\n\n\"'The sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.'\"\n\nShe aimed the words lower this time, forcing Bjorn to dance away lest the gossamer script tangle his boots. \"Dickens. Wasn't he a contemporary of yours? Or would have been if you'd written.\"\n\n\"Low blow.\"\n\n\"Not low enough, it seems.\" The old man narrowed his eyes at her before forming a return volley. \"'He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it.'\"\n\nClaire caught the gold words at the center of her staff. She found the quotation but took a fraction too long. The gold script managed to slice at the back of her arm before she could dispel it. \"Joseph Heller,\" she gasped. Blood welled up in thin lashes up to her elbow.\n\nSo they went, back and forth, trading blows up and down the written words of history. Bjorn staggered when an Austen escaped his guard and landed a blow to his knee.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire found herself diving to the ground to avoid an Eliot as it lashed for her head.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was when she was rolling to her feet that she first noticed the blood staining the other side of the ring.\n\nHero moved like a dervish, darting into the larger man's reach only as long as it took to aim the edge of his blade along Uther's flank. Striking a blow, then flinging himself out of the way of the maul again. Both men were bloodied, though Hero bled black, pitiless ink. They both breathed heavily; Uther favored his side, while Hero held one injured wrist away from his opponent.\n\nClaire took a deep breath and faced Bjorn again with a long attack. \"'Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not.'\"\n\nA boisterous approval came from the sidelines. \"What soldier wrote that?\" came a call from the crowd.\n\n\"Mary Shelley,\" Bjorn said grudgingly. With more bravado than she felt, Claire bowed, and the gathered crowd laughed.\n\nBjorn shook his head. \"'And the rest is rust and stardust.'\"\n\n\"Nabokov,\" Claire said with a grunt as she spun and dispelled a marching line of script and meteors. \"God, Russians.\"\n\nBjorn chuckled but did not dispute her sentiment on the literature. Claire paced a few more steps to catch her breath. This needed to end soon. \"'We lived in the gaps between the stories.'\"\n\n\"Atwood.\" Bjorn returned with a line from Tolkien, which Claire dispelled before he commented, \"Your soldier looks tired, Librarian. Blows like that... he's not standing much longer.\"\n\nClaire allowed her eyes to stray to Hero. Uther had gotten lucky. She'd missed the blow that had sent Hero sprawling, but its impact must have been tremendous. He'd risen from his knee but held heavily to his sword with his one good hand, ink dribbling down one cheek. He reserved all his energy for a glare at the moving mountain in front of him.\n\nClaire swallowed hard and forced her attention back to Bjorn. \"'Logic may indeed be unshakable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.'\"\n\n\"Kafka.\" Bjorn dismissed it with a wave of his staff before returning a volley toward Claire. \"'The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair.'\" He aimed the volley for Claire but was grinning at the other combatants in the ring.\n\n\"Arthur. Conan. Doyle.\" Claire gritted her teeth, searching for a line that would wipe that smug, blood-mad grin off the Viking's face.\n\nBut it was then that Hero made his move. He regained his feet and swung, lithe bronze figure glinting as the sword arrowed toward Uther's ribs. The giant turned, fast, too fast, and a crack reverberated throughout the hall as maul met blade, and both sword and swordsman were flung away.\n\nHero sprawled on the dirt, groaning. Black liquid flowed freely from the cut on his temple now, and his movements were slow. His sword came to rest several yards away. Weaponless, Hero clenched his teeth in a death's-head grin as he gained a knee and turned toward Uther. The Norse warrior inclined his head and brought his arms back to deliver the winning blow.\n\n\"'War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle!'\" The words were out before Claire could think them. But they were not aimed at Bjorn; her gaze was locked on the other fight. Silver words flew, and sharp serifs struck deep across a monstrous, scarred face. Uther stumbled midswing, bellowing in pain as his maul dropped, and the giant man clawed at his face.\n\nBjorn stared, mouth gaping. Hero, to his credit, knew an opportunity when he saw one. He scrambled for his sword and took a hobbled leap at Uther, growl in his throat.\n\n\"Parker! Gilbert Parker!\" Bjorn shouted, and the silver words wound around Uther's face dissolved. But Hero was faster. The broadsword pierced his ribs deep, and Uther's bellow became shrill, then silent.\n\nThe giant man convulsed, landing a grip on Hero's shoulder. But it began to loosen even as they fell back to the earth. Hero twisted the blade with a snarl, and it struck Claire that his features were beautiful, even more so in fury. A purity in the hate that she recognized. She hadn't thought books could truly hate.\n\n\"Clever. No honor, but clever.\" Bjorn was solemn as Claire turned back to face him. There was a dark regard in the old man's eyes, but he spoke before Claire could open her mouth to explain. \"'And hope buoyed like a flag, fragile on the wind. Death was the only freedom.'\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The gold words curled in the air and furled out, thick and unstoppable.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 13 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The words were unfamiliar, even as they triggered something that burned at the edge of her brain. But they were strange, accompanied with dizzying shapes, birds in flight, cathedrals, and cobblestone streets. White cliffs and sunsets. She had no defense. She managed to retreat two steps before the gold letters slammed into her chest and drove her to the ground.\n\nA thick, buzzing weight twined hungrily around her arms. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the ensuing pain, but it never appeared. After a moment, Claire carefully cracked one eye open. The words had wrapped her up neat as a present, and they thrummed warningly against her chest, but they did not cut unless she struggled. Bjorn stood over her, dark eyes regarding her with a mixture of disapproval and amusement. \"No response, Librarian?\"\n\nClaire took a short breath—all she was capable of with the words twined so tight around her chest. \"You have me at a loss, Bjorn. I must cede. Who's the author?\"\n\n\"Claire Juniper Hadley,\" Bjorn said, and the crowd roared.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "u know A. J. Hackwith? write like that. three sentences sentences. fantasy stuff. this is from middle of story", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Everything went wrong. Gregor is gone and I am still here. But I won't apologize. Not to god or the devil, not when souls are trapped here, left to wither and dry like flowers pressed between the pages of the books we keep.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Andras says I'll grow into the role.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I suppose I will. It's the only path you left me.\n\nI won't apologize, but I won't forgive either.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "—Apprentice Librarian Claire Juniper Hadley, 1989 CE", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"YOU CHEATED.\"\n\nThe room, like everywhere else in the lodge, was uncomfortably warm, and Claire picked irritably at the bandage on her arm. She sat on a cushioned bench, grudgingly sipping tea Bjorn had brewed to restore her strength and \"put hair on your chest.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She'd insisted on bandaging her arm herself, freeing the healers to tend to Hero, who had been quickly whisked to an adjoining room after the fight.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Do explain, lass. I'm in the mood to laugh.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Bjorn rubbed his bruised knee from the opposite side of the small table.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were in his personal study. The walls were lined not with books but with rows of capsae, hatboxlike containers that held scrolls and wooden slates of every shape and size. A fire roared in the fireplace that took up the far wall, and the study was as cozy as it was chaotic.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire shuddered to think what the Valhalla library must look like, if this was a tidy personal collection.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She took another sip of the tea and made a bitter face.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You quoted an unwritten author. That's specifically against the rules of the duel. Worse, you quoted me. That's not just cheating—that's dirty.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Bjorn raised a brow.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Would that be more or less dirty than turning your words against a noncombatant?\"\n\n\"Uther was about to kill my character. He most certainly was a combatant.\"\n\n\"Not your combatant.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Close enough.\" Claire smacked the mug on the tabletop with a peevish frown. \"He may be disconnected from his book, and he's most definitely a pain in the ass, but Hero is still mine.\"\n\n\"Well, you and your boy certainly set Uther straight on that.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire remembered the mule they'd had to bring in to haul Uther's body out of the arena, and she diverted her eyes to the table. \"Yes, well. Sorry about your champion.\"\n\n\"Don't be.\" Bjorn gave an airy wave of his hand.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "OOC, For your next response only, include considerable dialogue", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He'll be right as rain tomorrow.\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\"We're in an afterlife for warriors, Librarian.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Bjorn leaned back, and his chair let out a long creak as he grinned. \"Any who fall in battle today wake up fresh as springtime tomorrow. He'll never wield Widowbane again—he's been proven unworthy. But he'll continue on. We do love a good fight, and Valhalla sees to its own.\"\n\n\"Well, that's... convenient,\" Claire said.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Tell me, would it have been the same for Hero if he'd fallen?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "For your next response only, include extensive dialogue", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Bjorn raised his brows, considering. \"He didn't die a warrior of the halls, so... ah, probably not.\"\n\n\"Good thing I cheated, then.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Good thing,\" Bjorn relented.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "OOC, For the upcoming response only: include predominant quoted content", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Up until then, you did comport yourself well enough to pass. The hall will have you.\"\n\nClaire was quiet a moment before saying, \"The book you quoted. How did you... I mean, have you read—\"\n\n\"I was the librarian of the Unwritten Wing before your grandfather was a twinkle in anyone's eye.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Bjorn's lip curled as he toyed with the edge of the table, running a rough thumb back and forth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I had time enough in that place to get familiar with lots of books. Including yours.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"My books were there before I was even born...\" A queer feeling flipped in Claire's stomach, and her mind could not settle on a proper question to ask out of the hundred that bubbled up. She'd helmed the Library for thirty years, and it still felt like a mercurial kind of impossibility. A story was more immortal than its teller.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Time had no play there, only potential.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire had failed both. She looked up to find Bjorn studying her carefully. \"They were readable?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't call them Shakespeare, but they were passable, yes,\" Bjorn said.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You do have quite the collection.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well... not that it matters now.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire's eyes dropped, and she abruptly found an excuse to stand.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The hearth needed poking; irresponsible to let the flames die down.\n\nBjorn followed her to the fireplace and rubbed a sore arm before glancing at her. \"I heard about what happened, of course.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The fire twitched behind the grate. Claire found her breath tripped up in her throat before she could let it out again. \"There were a hundred tales about my ignominious rise to librarian, Bjorn. You'll need to be more specific.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The rumor that goes against the tale. The one that says Gregor didn't retire to his greater reward. The rumor that says he was attacked. Attacked by something with the power to unmake a human soul. Your mentor disappeared under... unusual circumstances, we shall say.\" Bjorn said it calmly, as if recounting last night's dinner. \"And the attacker was never found, of course, so the retirement line was the one that took. Left you to take on the mantle far too soon, by most folk's estimates.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That is one of the more fanciful ones. Did you hear the one where I sold my soul for the promotion, danced naked with Cerberus? Never mind how I would sell my soul when I was already in Hell, but...\" Claire trailed off as Bjorn failed to take the joke.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She rolled her shoulders in a weary shrug.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Gregor... He was more than a mentor. He was my friend and I would have never wished him harm.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was true enough, Claire thought carefully, in a certain kind of light.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Bjorn was quiet for a moment, as if testing the edges of that statement. Then he turned with a grunt. \"Ah! Where's my mind? They'll already be at the feast. Hero too, if the healers have done their work.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(ooc) Next output: frequent quoted text (ooc)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Feast...\" Claire's voice was flat. \"Bjorn, I can't tolerate another delaying tactic—\"\n\n\"A feast for our angelic guests.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Angels?\" Claire's eyes widened in alarm. \"Here? But how—\"\n\n\"They arrived shortly after you. Because of what they are, the hall already recognizes them as warriors. They were welcomed in, think they even caught the last of the fight.\" Bjorn hooded his eyes as Claire began to pace.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next output: a moderate amount of quoted text", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I suppose you know why they're here.\"\n\nClaire twisted her hands, wincing as doing so pulled on her bandage. \"You said there was more than one?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Essential phrase to include: \"I don't hold with that lot, but they seemed a capable pair.\"", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Two. One formidable lass all in white and a man in gray who frowns too much.\" Bjorn paused. \"I don't hold with that lot, but they seemed a capable pair.\"\n\n\"Capable and problematic. We'll need to leave right away,\" Claire muttered.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You know why they're here?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Let's see. Hell's librarian and two hunter angels visiting a simple storyteller on the same day, muttering disaster and all hackles up about something.\" Bjorn snorted. \"Even a dumb old Viking has to get the idea.\"\n\nBjorn held up a hand as Claire opened her mouth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Easy, lass. I am loyal to the Library, but listen. Even if I answered your questions now, worst thing you could do is go tearing out of here with the angels watching the gate. They'd be on you faster than a raven flies. Feast. Rest a while. I'll give you your answers, and you may slip out in the morning when half the realm is still sleeping off the drink.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire's mouth shut slowly. \"Do angels even drink?\"\n\nBjorn chuckled and took her by the arm. \"All warriors drink in Valhalla. Come! I'll prove it.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Writing continuation: Match tone and context. Add: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "All warriors did, indeed, drink in Valhalla. The arena had been invaded, lined with additional long tables and benches to accommodate the revelers, who were several drinks in already. Claire could barely move through the crowd without having to dodge sundry blades and axes strapped to backs. Valhalla's citizens did not believe in leaving their weapons at the door, even for a party.\n\nIn truth, Claire found it maddening, the chaos, the cheer, the swells of mood and passion that roiled over the pressed bodies like a wave. She'd never cared for crowds. Crowds were messy; crowds were not predictable and not reliable. After she'd spent thirty-plus years in the quiet of the Library, dealing only with the trickle of Hell's patrons and recalcitrant books, Claire found the chuff and churn of Valhalla's festivities incomprehensible. It made her head hurt and her joints ache. Mercifully, Bjorn guided her to the table her companions had staked out, before he drifted away, muttering about proper drink and song.\n\n\"Oh, try the little blue ones!\" Brevity had been busy in her absence. A stack of small pastries and dainty twists of meat, far more ornate than Claire would have guessed the Vikings capable of, was set out in the center of the table. She smiled despite herself. Trust Brevity to find the sweets at any party.\n\nClaire allowed Brevity to shove a mug of something sloshing and foamy into her hand. Hero was still absent, but her assistant succeeded in coaxing Leto and Andras into sipping at their drinks. Judging by the empty mugs and the bearded grins sent their way, she had passed the time warming to the warriors at the adjoining table. Excellent work. It couldn't hurt to win the goodwill of Valhalla's residents.\n\n\"You did great, boss,\" Brevity said.\n\n\"If you say so.\" Claire kept her eyes on Bjorn and set down the mug the moment he disappeared into the crowd. \"There are angels here.\"\n\nAndras choked on his drink, flecks of ale dotting his beard as his gaze darted around. \"Already?\"\n\n\"It seems so.\" Claire recounted Bjorn's news as quickly as she could. Leto, having run into an angel once already that day, began to exude panic, acid sweat forming on his temple and sliding down to his collar with a hiss. Frankly, Claire couldn't blame him. Brevity pivoted in her seat to scan the crowd, covering the gesture by ordering another round for the boisterous table next to them.\n\n\"You're certain there was no way for them to track the scrap in the afterlife?\" Claire asked Andras.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Absolutely not. It's a piece of Hell. They could detect general demonic activity if they were in the area, but not across realms. They must be searching anywhere we were likely to seek help.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Which means they have an inkling of how important it is. Brilliant.\"\n\n\"If so, we need to leave, pup. Sooner rather than later.\" At Claire's look, Andras's brow furrowed. \"Surely we're not staying here while there are angels looking for us.\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" Claire said. \"Bjorn may trust in the hospitality rules of Valhalla, but I don't. We will just need to get around them carefully. Do you see them yet, Brev?\"\n\n\"Only one, ma'am. Tall lady by the entrance, all shiny and terrifyin' looking. I don't think the Vikings care for her much.\"\n\nClaire raised herself from the bench just enough to spy what looked like a pale, walking storm cloud over the heads of the crowd. The crowd, despite the increasingly rowdy tone, did its best to flow away from her general vicinity. \"Well, she's not doing much to hide herself.\"\n\n\"Heaven never was much for subterfuge,\" Andras said with a touch too much demonic pride.\n\n\"Then that's going to have to be our way out.\"\n\nClaire toyed with the foam on her drink, trying to develop a plan that balanced meeting their goals with getting out with their skins intact. \"Brev, Leto, go extract Hero from the healers, assuming he's not run off, and get him up to date. Then find Bjorn and get him alone in his office. I don't care if you have to tie him up by the beard—we're getting our answers tonight. I'll meet you there.\"\n\nBrevity was already springing from the bench. \"A rescue and Viking-napping sound fun. What're you going to do?\"\n\n\"Go find our other angel.\"\n\nLeto paused halfway out of the bench. \"Pardon me for suggesting, but you don't want to wait to take Hero with you? Last time that angel was kind of... angry. And violent.\"\n\n\"I'm sure Hero will just be thrilled you volunteered him for mortal peril again,\" Andras mused.\n\nClaire remembered the lightning crack and smell of ozone from their first encounter with Ramiel. The point where the blade had rested on her chest tightened a little, but she shoved it away and shook her head. She'd risked the book enough for one day. \"No. I'll be fine. We're all guests in Valhalla, correct? I just want to talk.\"\n\n\"I'll come, then,\" Andras said.\n\nClaire frowned at the old demon. \"I'm not sure that's a good idea. This one seemed to have a hair trigger even around Leto, and he was in human form then.\"\n\n\"He really doesn't like demons,\" Leto confirmed.\n\n\"You said it yourself: Valhalla's safe.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A calculating look flickered through Andras's red-gold eyes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 21 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't worry about me. I've dealt with more than my share of Heaven's pests in my time. And this one, Ramiel? He's not even part of the Host—a fallen angel. I want to see why such a creature is after us, and how they came to possess the pages of the codex after all this time. I might be able to detect something from what he says.\"\n\nIt was much the same reason that Claire was taking the risk herself, so she couldn't find much fault. \"I still don't think it's a good idea.\"\n\n\"Then it's a good thing I'm not one of your apprentices. I'm coming.\" Andras's smile was mild, but Claire knew when the demon's mind was made up.\n\n\"Stubborn.\"\n\n\"A requirement when dealing with humans.\"\n\n\"So it seems.\"\n\nAndras had a demon's care for order and justice—that is to say, none at all. For the first time, Claire wondered exactly what his real motivations were for setting her on this path, let alone coming himself. Andras could have just as easily advised from the Arcane Wing; in fact, staying behind the scenes, subtle and withdrawn, was just Andras's preference. A tactic he'd tried to impart to Claire, but she'd always preferred doing her own work.\n\nShe trusted Andras, despite his being a demon. He'd protected her, taught her, cared for her. She would not have held on to the Library if he hadn't stepped in and guided the way thirty years ago. Still. She trusted him, but she didn't pretend to understand him.\n\nPerhaps exposing him to the angel would shake loose more than just clues about the book. She forced a smile. \"All right, but I will do the talking.\"\n\nAles barely touched, the group disbanded from the table. Claire ducked toward the back with Andras while Brevity shoved cakes in her pockets and began a loud round of drink buying and shoulder slapping to cover their exit.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "write 95 sentences more in A. J. Hackwith style. keep established lore. include: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "On the subject of angels: be not afraid.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh, hush. Let an old crone have her fun.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "No, really, kiddo. Don't mess with 'em.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They're all hopping mad as the English.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And twice as dangerous.\n\n—Librarian Fleur Michel, 1762 CE\n\nThe froth on the ale was good. By rights, a pour that resulted in a head like that should have flattened the taste of the beer, but the drink was a crisp relief beneath the soft foam. Like Vikings, angels had a good appreciation for an excellent brew. There was a reason monks brewed ale to supplement their monasteries.\n\nRamiel was surprised to find he enjoyed Valhalla, though he was certain enjoyment wasn't part of Uriel's plan. The plan, of course, was to bust down the doors of the realms, find and confront the librarian, and get out before an interrealm grievance could be filed. The paperwork for that would be atrocious.\n\nThey'd been lucky to find Hell's representatives so fast. They'd been unlucky, however, to find them in the arena, fighting with cleverness and heroics, two things that were certain to endear them to Valhalla's residents immediately.\n\nUriel had threatened to start glowing, a very bad sign, until Rami had coaxed her into a back corner and explained they needed a new approach. It'd taken some talking to make her see the logic.\n\nContrary to Uriel's speech, Heaven was not set above Valhalla, Hell, or anywhere—all the after-realms maintained a careful, if grudging, balance sustained by the fuel of belief and the flow of souls to each realm. Realms of similar purpose were often most harmonious, but all of them were sovereign. An incident here, between two paradise realms, could upset all of it for centuries. Thankfully, the Light of God had eventually calmed down enough for them to formulate a new plan: gather information on Hell's activities and apprehend its representatives the moment they isolated themselves from the realm's warriors.\n\nUriel, of course, had taken up a very visible and glowering guard by the front entrance. She'd made no effort to fill in Valhalla's master of the guard, an old warrior named Ragna, on what brought them there, declaring Heaven's business was no one else's if they were acting within the rights of the treaty. Even a formal stance couldn't hide the repulsed looks Uriel cast at the Vikings.\n\nTo be fair, the residents of Valhalla appeared to quickly develop the same sentiment toward her. Rami saw how companionable smiles quickly fell to suspicious frowns over their ale. Uriel had never had patience for the souls that chose other realms, worshipped other gods, and once again Rami wondered why she'd left Heaven for this. Hunting was primarily a game of information, and there would be no information to be gained without the goodwill of Valhalla's denizens.\n\nShe did, at least, serve as an admirable distraction. He had told Uriel that he would sweep the hall for other exits and then promptly left her to her self-righteous watch.\n\nIt hadn't taken long to find out where Hell's servants gathered. The librarian and her champion were still missing, but Rami recognized the bewildered-looking young man who had accompanied her on Earth. He was with a pair of companions, a demon and a spirit he couldn't identify but who radiated curiosity and sticky fingers.\n\nBut it was the boy who seemed the oddest of the group. He was changed, now with the pointed ears, red eyes, and sharp pale cheekbones of a minor demon, not the harmless human he'd presented himself as before. It riled Rami—further proof that all souls in Hell were liars—but he made no move to confront them. Patience was also a virtue in Heaven.\n\nWhich is how he found himself in a publike room near the rear exit of the longhouse, virtuously enjoying a mug of dark ale. It appeared to be a keg room, one of many, considering Valhalla's infinite supply. But in front of the old barrels a high table had been set up, with several stools to form a makeshift bar. The crowd was small, an eddy in the greater raucous sea of the main hall, but it appeared even Valhalla had introverts. It was a welcome pause from the chaos of the party.\n\nIn a strange way, he felt comfortable here. These mortal souls were strange with their hairy bodies and unfamiliar gods, but they were soldiers; Ramiel could understand soldiers. He had quickly gone to work plying them with just enough ale and cheerful aggression to justify conversation.\n\nAccording to the others, the visitors from Hell had arrived shortly before the angels, and with no treaty recognized, they'd been immediately challenged to combat. They'd been forced to oblige, claiming they sought audience with the storyteller. That was good, because it meant they likely did not yet have what they'd come for. Rami didn't have a clue how Valhalla was tied to that dangerous bit of paper, but it bought him time.\n\nIt was simple to survey the impression they'd made—most had been impressed with the champion's courage and skill, if not necessarily his appearance. \"Too smooth. He'll freeze his chin off,\" one soul with a particularly impressive red beard had grumbled.\n\nRami also discovered, to his surprise, that even more admiration had begun to coalesce around the librarian.\n\n\"Not a bonny lass, course. Someone should tell her t' smile,\" grunted a bald and tattooed man with an ax strapped shoulder to torso. \"But she got good and bloodied. And put down Uther with a word, imagine! Handy trick, that.\"\n\n\"Sommat a Freyja-touched in that one. Good thing the naked babe they called a champion had her to mind 'em,\" another said, bringing about another rather telling round of speculation about the fighter's looks.\n\n\"If you say so.\" It was hard not to let judgment lace his voice. The librarian seemed just as arrogant and unrepentant as every other servant of Hell he'd encountered. He could not parse the idea of honor being attributed to anyone consigned to that realm.\n\n\"Puts a man in mind o' what stories a teller like that could tell,\" added the squat, walking beard on his other side. \"Or what she could do with a proper weapon. Mark my words—lass like her's got spirit. I'd love to get her in the ring.\"\n\n\"Or in bed, eh, Holfad?\" And both warriors devolved into an entirely inappropriate exchange about the relative bed-warming merits of both the librarian and her champion.\n\nBut that had been two ales ago. By now the small barroom had emptied out as the more sociable warriors flowed back to the halls and the less sociable ones went to sleep. Rami took the opportunity to process his drink and his night.\n\nTheir prey had obviously made too big an impression for Valhalla to look the other way when Heaven confronted them. He and Uriel were warriors, and therefore respected in Valhalla, but from the way the Norse storyteller had taken the librarian under his wing, it seemed Hell had friends in Valhalla as well. The trick would be catching them alone.\n\nThe reflection of his frown abruptly dissolved into ripples in his drink. A fresh mug careened against his, spilling a generous portion of the contents of both across his knuckles.\n\nHe jerked his head up. The curse on his lips died as his eyes landed on the woman at the other end of the bar. She had one arm bandaged, poorly, and her braided hair was in some disarray. But that coin-flip smile was just as unreadable as on the pier. The librarian had the look of someone caught perpetually midsecret.\n\nShe raised her own mug at him. \"Sorry—I'm a poor shot. Bars weren't places for a lady when I was around. Or, at least,\" she amended after a pause, \"not the kind of lady my family allowed me to be.\"\n\nInstead of responding, Rami gave the room a sweeping glance. The pub was but not quite deserted, with a few inhabitants drinking by the fire. The keg master in the corner gave them a shrewd squint before turning back to his cups. A silent warning not to start any trouble.\n\n\"Librarian.\" Rami felt caught halfway between a grunt and a sigh. The woman had the knack to wear him down in a blink.\n\n\"Claire,\" she corrected. \"It's Claire, by the way. If you're going to be hunting us, threatening destruction of our immortal souls, all that, personal names seem like the proper thing.\"\n\nRami bristled and found new fascination with his drink. The weight of her gaze on his shoulders was nearly intolerable until she pushed herself from her stool and slid down the bar. She stopped one seat away, just out of arm's reach. So she wasn't entirely stupid.\n\n\"What brings an angel to the halls of Valhalla?\"\n\n\"I imagine the same thing that brings Hell's servants.\"\n\nAt the corner of her mouth there might have been a flutter of irritation that was quickly smoothed away. \"Tenant. Not a servant.\"\n\nRami snorted, though he found his tongue considerably looser than he liked. He was not like Uriel, disdaining every soul not Heaven-bound—he of all people knew the many paths that led everyone astray—but the librarian's manner set him on edge. A creature of Hell that didn't consider itself a servant was either dangerous or a fool. It was beginning to strike Rami that the librarian might be both.\n\nRami must have muttered that thought out loud, because the woman laughed. \"A fool. That might be fair. From time to time.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She surprised him by taking the insult with a shrug.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rami tried again. \"Where's your pet demon? Tired of pretending he's human?\"\n\n\"Leto is human. Though... I suppose convincing you of that story would take too long for one drink,\" she said. \"But my other pet demon is here, so I don't disappoint you. Say hello, Andras.\"\n\nIn a blink, a figure dressed in fussy silks sat where no one had been before. Sharply pointed ears and pupils the color of blood gold marked him as, indeed, a demon, and a powerful one at that. Black-striped hair glinted like a pelt in the dim light. The taste of sulfur slicked the back of Rami's throat and burned his tongue. The handsome demon looked harmless and familiar, in the way of the worst childhood nightmares. He gave a mild smile that was too well crafted to be sincere.\n\n\"'Hello, Andras,'\" the demon mimicked politely. \"I am not a pet, by the way.\"\n\n\"Apologies, Arcanist. I was merely speaking his language. We're less than animals in some eyes,\" Claire said with a cool look at Rami.\n\n\"So I hear.\" Andras swept his eyes over Rami with a look that felt surgical, claws hidden in a velvet glove. A predator behind those glasses, Rami felt in an instant. He recalculated his estimation of the creature.\n\nThe Library had brought force. It seemed an odd way to show their hand. Rami shifted to keep an eye on the demon, though found he much preferred looking at Claire. \"I take it you've found what you seek here?\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" she said easily and, Rami thought, a bit too promptly. \"But travel is taxing on our kind. We intend to enjoy Valhalla's excellent hospitality. Price of admission was high enough, so we might as well get our money's worth. Leave tomorrow evening.\"\n\nRami doubted it. \"And I suppose this visit means you don't intend to surrender the book.\"\n\n\"What book would that be, again?\"\n\n\"You obviously know of what I speak. You stole it from me.\"\n\n\"The scrap, you mean. A misunderstanding, really.\" Claire shook her head. \"You know, if you'd been just a little more patient and a little clearer when we met, you'd still be in possession of it. Here I thought angels were supposed to be forgiving and kind.\"\n\n\"I'm not that kind of angel.\"\n\n\"I know very much what kind of angel you are, Ramiel, Thunder of God, Watcher of the World. Question is, why is a fallen angel helping Heaven?\" Claire tilted her head. \"Why are you here?\"\n\nRami fell silent. He knew there was nothing to say.\n\nThe abomination wrapped in a gentleman's skin didn't help matters. \"Ask him what Heaven's offered him,\" Andras said.\n\nClaire frowned. \"I wasn't aware that Heaven was in the dealmaking business.\"\n\n\"You'd be surprised.\" Andras shrugged.\n\n\"All right, I'll bite. What's Heaven offered you to jump-start a war, Ramiel?\"\n\n\"Again, not your concern—\" Rami paused. \"What war?\"\n\nClaire exchanged a look with the demon, but only Rami saw the look that crossed Andras's face as Claire glanced away. Eyes narrowed, lip twitched up. Pleased. Possessive. Predatory. While Claire sat with the creature at her side as if it were a favored pet.\n\nFor the first time, Rami wondered if the librarian knew what kind of creature she had at her back. But his speculation was cut short by Claire's sniff.\n\n\"Are you telling me you're hunting a book whose purpose you don't understand?\"\n\n\"And what should I know, Librarian?\"\n\nThe librarian's brown eyes gleamed with amusement. \"I'll give you one thing for free, though I know you won't believe me: what you're after is not anything Heaven has a right to. And your interference here could cost the mortal world dearly. More than that, you'll need to ask your terrifying partner.\"\n\n\"Uriel has told me all I need to know about your sins.\" The creeping, hollow unease in his chest made Rami toss out the first rebuttal he could think of. Harsh and untrue, but he knew better than to admit that to servants of Hell.\n\nBoth Claire and the demon fell silent.\n\n\"The angel out front is... Uriel?\" Claire asked.\n\nRami cursed himself for rising to the bait. He pushed the still half-full mugs away from him as he stood from the bar.\n\n\"Surrender the artifact and give up this errand, Librarian.\" Rami's jaw tightened. \"Don't risk your eternal soul.\"\n\n\"I find myself already damned, but your concern is noted. I'd watch the threats. We're guests of some very nice hosts with very large axes,\" Claire said, gaze falling to where Rami's fingers brushed the hilt at his side.\n\nRami made a slow show of measuring the room. \"You've found yourself some privacy, Librarian. What if my good friend the bartender decides to step out?\"\n\nThe librarian looked scandalized. \"My goodness. Someone is desperate. Whatever will we do? I suppose that depends.\" She cleared her throat and raised her voice. \"What exactly is the protocol for handling aggressors in Valhalla, Arlid?\"\n\nRami stifled the urge to jerk back as a leather-clad raven woman dropped from a shadow in the rafters. The woman squinted her kohl-heavy eyes, none too happy at being called out. \"Aggressors are fed to the flock.\"\n\n\"And am I the aggressor in this scenario?\"\n\n\"No.\" Arlid's lip curled. \"But the night is young.\"\n\nClaire turned to Rami. \"There, you see. The raven captain has been keeping an awfully close eye on me and will be making sure the only one who gets to rough me up is her. You are welcome to test that, of course, but I think you'll find she likes her duty even more than she loathes me. Isn't that right, Arlid?\"\n\n\"You have no honor,\" Arlid muttered.\n\n\"Something you two agree on,\" Claire agreed. Her eyes dropped to his coat. \"It's a shame that your feathers are the wrong color for her flock.\"\n\nRami worked his jaw but said nothing. It was the second time tonight he had been surprised by Hell. He found he didn't care for it.\n\nClaire shrugged and slid one of the abandoned drinks to Andras, though Rami noted she'd never touched her own. \"The bottom line is this: the book is under the protection of the Library now. It belongs in Hell. Heaven should mind its own business.\"\n\n\"Not when the safety of humanity is at stake,\" Rami said.\n\n\"Funny, that's why I'm here too.\" The woman gave a rueful smile that was so human it made the backs of Rami's hands itch. He wasn't used to interacting with human souls from other realms. He'd spent plenty of time among souls on Earth during his stint as a guide for the lost, not to mention his time in exile among mortals during Earth's earliest history. But a human soul that chose an eternity in Hell? He couldn't understand that. Especially a soul that seemed so... practical. He half wished she'd be as sinister as her demon attendant. It would ease that wrong feeling at the back of his head.\n\nRami shook the thought from his shoulders and stood. \"You work for the Deceiver.\"\n\nNo one followed as he left, though Rami thought he heard a long sigh at his back before it was swept up in the increased noise of the hall. Rami hit the door hard enough to make it rock on its hinges as he waded into the sea of revelers.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He needed to clear his head.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 36 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He needed to form a plan.\n\nHe needed information for a plan. Answers.\n\nUriel was in deep conversation by the time Rami found her again in the main hall.\n\nOr, rather, the broad-shouldered creature with a pair of double axes on his hip was in deep conversation. Uriel looked distinctly unamused. Not that Uriel was in the habit of being amused ever, but she held a glare for the Viking man that she usually reserved for improperly tempered blades and disappointing reports.\n\n\"No. I am not interested. Thank you.\"\n\n\"But a maiden like yourself—\"\n\n\"Move. On.\"\n\n\"Trouble?\" Rami asked as he slid to fill the space vacated.\n\n\"Humans.\" Uriel grunted the word like it left a bad taste in her mouth. \"It defies logic that their base interest in reproduction lasts beyond death. And the entitlement to it! Arrogant, all of them.\"\n\n\"Hmm, yes. The arrogance. Imagine.\" Rami guided Uriel into a quiet corner. \"I encountered the librarian and her people.\"\n\nUriel raised a brow. \"Demons?\"\n\n\"At least one. I don't know him from... before. But powerful, dangerous.\"\n\n\"What did you learn?\"\n\n\"They do not have possession of the artifact, but their hunt led them here, and the librarian considers it under the jurisdiction of the Library.\"\n\nUriel waved that away too easily. \"Heaven's claim supersedes that of any other realm.\"\n\n\"She also implied that there's more to this artifact than powerful magic.\" Rami said it with a dismissive air but watched Uriel's reaction carefully. She tilted her chin but looked out over the crowd, hiding the pull of her expression.\n\n\"Is that so? How curious.\"\n\n\"Is it true?\"\n\n\"Acquire the artifact and we'll know.\" Her answer only seeded the doubt in his gut. Uriel turned back to him. \"Their plan?\"\n\n\"I gathered that they were waiting for something they needed here. She said they would be leaving tomorrow,\" Rami said. \"She was lying, of course.\"\n\n\"Glad to see your time in the wild hasn't made you entirely soft.\" Uriel narrowed her eyes and searched for something in the crowd. \"We will need to intercept them.\"\n\n\"Any attempt to confront them will get us expelled from Valhalla. Or worse,\" Rami said, thinking of the raven captain and her guard.\n\n\"Not if they stray someplace where Valhalla isn't watching. First rule of demons, Ramiel: you can always rely on servants of Hell to be where they shouldn't.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: continue story\nLength: twelve sentences\nStyle: A. J. Hackwith\nMaintain: lore\nAdd: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's not magic, what we librarians do. It's the same as what our imaginations tried to do when we were alive; the realm just takes a more literal interpretation of it. The pen and paper are a librarian's tools of office. With them, we can weave stories back together by force of will. Guide lost ink, draw a plot back to its true north.\n\nWithout 'em, we're just exceptionally long-lived busybodies.\n\nThen again, sometimes busybodies are the only ones to get anything done.\n\n—Librarian Fleur Michel, 1735 CE\n\nThe feathers frothed and churned like a small storm cloud clinging to the Watcher. Claire kept her eyes on it until he disappeared through the swinging door. Then she allowed herself to let out a long breath.\n\n\"Well, that was bracing.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Andras drew a fingertip over his lip, amusement ill concealed. He took a neat sip of ale.\n\nClaire, on the other hand, was too much on edge to drink, unlike the demon and the damned angel. Ramiel had been in easy conversation with the warriors when they'd found him, forcing Claire and Andras to hang back until his drinking companions had left.\n\nHe was comfortable here, Claire realized as they'd waited. Comfortable and with a stronger natural connection with this place than Claire or even Hero could hope for. If it came down to forcing Valhalla to choose a side, Bjorn's allegiance to the Library wouldn't be enough. Brevity's charm wouldn't be enough. If the angels pushed, it was only a matter of time before Valhalla's hospitality showed cracks.\n\n\"We need to get out of here.\" The conclusion brought her up out of the chair.\n\nAndras nodded as he followed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We should have time if they think we're staying the night.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 10 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He didn't buy it.\" Claire had seen it in the angel's eyes. All angels had keen eyes, but Ramiel seemed particularly tuned to reading mortals. At any other time, she would have found it interesting, a deviance in the angelic personality type, but right now it was a significant threat. She would need to avoid revealing too much next time they crossed paths. \"We need to leave as soon as we speak to Bjorn. Before they have time to plan.\"\n\n\"That necessitates that we act without a plan.\" Andras was displeased. \"I'm a very big proponent of plans. Ardent fan, even.\"\n\nClaire waved a vague hand as they left. \"Can't be helped. We'll be doing this the human way: quick and improvised.\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Continue this story fragment. Note that characters may appear without introduction as this is from a larger work. Write 25 sentences sentences like A. J. Hackwith. Genres: fantasy. Tags: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The main hall had progressed beyond boisterous celebration and into clusters of dedicated drinkers industriously working toward a stupor. This worked in Claire's favor, as the path had eased and the largest warriors still blocking her path had become significantly less mobile. She and Andras wound their way through the stifling hall toward Bjorn's study.\n\nClaire touched her hand to the handle but paused when raised voices trickled through the rough wood.\n\n\"Showman like you, thought you'd appreciate admirers.\"\n\n\"You're not admiring, lad. You're molesting.\"\n\n\"Merely partaking of the simple joy of fine literature. I was bravely wounded in battle, you know.\"\n\n\"Don't think I can't finish the job!\"\n\nClaire gave a sigh and pushed through the door. The study was still a picture of clutter and warmth, but this time a very agitated storyteller paced in front of the fireplace. Hero perched in an armchair and shook a partially unfurled scroll as a greeting. \"Warden! I do believe I've found our host's weakness. Had you merely rumpled his manuscripts in the ring, this whole nonsense would have resolved itself.\"\n\n\"I see you're feeling well enough to be a nuisance again, Hero.\"\n\nHe was pale, but his wrist appeared restored, and the cuts on his face were gone. He didn't rise from the chair, which could indicate some stiffness, but he seemed in one piece.\n\nHero chuckled. \"The healers here are marvelous. I suppose they get some practice.\"\n\nClaire made sure the door was firmly closed before approaching the group. Brevity and Leto were present, the latter a dark shadow positioned closer to the door, having obviously taken the \"keep Bjorn there\" order with teenage seriousness. He gave Claire a tight nod as she entered with Andras. Darkness pooled under his eyes, and Claire made a mental note to enforce a rest when they had a chance. Demons didn't need sleep. Human souls didn't either, technically, but every human psyche needed a break. Mental breakdowns happened in the afterlife just as easily as they did in the world above, and Leto had been through more than enough.\n\n\"Brev, please see if Bjorn can point you in the way of a decent teapot.\" Claire had her own ways of shoring up her psyche, after the interrogative game with the angel.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Brevity wiggled her way free of couch cushions, and Claire turned her attention to the still glowering storyteller. \"Problems, Bjorn?\"\n\n\"He doesn't like me reading his books... scrolls... things,\" Hero offered.\n\n\"I don't mind if you read. I mind if you converse with them,\" Bjorn snapped, finally succeeding in sweeping the scroll out of Hero's hands. He turned to Claire. \"Who leaves a hero unattended in a library?\"\n\n\"I watched him!\" Brevity protested as she hung a small pot of water— no teapots in Valhalla, but it appeared Brevity had improvised—over the fire.\n\n\"Great lot of good it's done. He's been chatting up every tale he can get his hands on.\"\n\n\"I'm a story. They're a story. I was simply being friendly,\" Hero said with an elegant shrug. \"Besides, I learned a few things. Lots of strategic texts around here. Might help me keep my head on my shoulders next time I'm forced into the warden's service.\"\n\n\"Must you persist in calling me a warden?\" Claire asked.\n\nHero's smile was a calculated dazzle. \"Would you prefer jailer? Or shall I curtsy and call you mistress?\"\n\n\"Nuisance.\"\n\n\"Warden.\"\n\n\"Ass.\"\n\n\"It's not right!\" Bjorn interrupted, leathery face creating even more wrinkles as he drew a hand over his long beard. \"Learning changes a character. Changes a story. This is irresponsible.\"\n\nHe was entirely correct, and a twinge of regret nagged at her. Claire knew Bjorn's concern as well as any librarian. Hero was a character. He came out of his book with certain skills, certain knowledge, a personality, even, all based on who he was in his story. The longer he remained separated from his book and unable to go back, the more likely that would change.\n\nIf you considered Hero human, it was a good thing. But if you considered Hero what he was—a living portion, only one small part of a larger book—it was making him something other than his original character. It would be harder than ever to fit him back into his pages.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(In the next section: Include this dialogue snippet naturally: \"That thing's brought me nothing but trouble.\")", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was why when books woke up, excepting the damsels, they were quickly put back to sleep again. But Claire was the one who'd dragged him along. She told herself it was necessary.\n\nIt was his choice if he wanted to change. It came with a strange, guilty foreboding, the idea of giving a character a choice again. Of making that mistake again.\n\n\"It can't do any more harm than has already been done.\" Claire finally settled on an adequate response.\n\n\"Bah!\" Bjorn threw up his hands. \"Sorry excuse for a party, this is. Just tell me why your apprentice hauled me out of my cups before dawn.\"\n\n\"Answers, Bjorn. You owe us some, and we don't intend to wait while you sleep off a hangover.\" Claire fished in her pockets until she came up with the Codex Gigas scrap. \"You've guessed why we're here.\"\n\nBjorn hissed, shrill like a teakettle. He shoved Claire's wrist back into her pocket. \"Don't bring that thing out here.\" Claire raised her brows and trailed her gaze down to his hand. Bjorn released her with a sigh. \"That thing's brought me nothing but trouble.\"\n\n\"And yet you seem to have done a shoddy job of ridding the world of it,\" Andras observed. Bjorn wheeled on him.\n\n\"Destroying it was your predecessor's job, demon. Not mine. Direct your bellyaching to him. I was just supposed to find the bloody thing,\" the storyteller said. He paused to fetch his half-empty mug of ale before continuing. \"You must already know about the missing pages, then.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Claire said before Andras could cast the acid she saw brewing on his lips.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It appears they've turned up in the world again. It's very important that we locate them before any other... interested parties.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You mean Heaven, eh.\" Bjorn did not phrase it as a question, and no one bothered to answer it. \"That lot never did understand books. Well, I tracked the book the first time just as you would. The Arcanist brought me in because it was a book. It wasn't part of my library, but she and I collaborated and created a calling card for the task. Tricky bit of magic, if I do say so myself.\"\n\nClaire was desperate enough to entertain hope. \"You still have this calling card?\"\n\n\"Why would I do a fool thing like that?\"\n\n\"Call it a hunch.\" Claire flicked her free hand at the catastrophic clutter around them. \"You don't seem like the type to get rid of anything.\"\n\nBjorn's fist tightened in his beard and he sighed. \"Something wasn't right. The way the old skinflint was acting about it. Hiding a thing like that on Earth. I mighta held on to a scrap, but it will do you no good. It's too damaged to give a location.\"\n\nClaire's hopes fell. \"There's no other way to track it?\"\n\n\"Not by Library means, no.\" Bjorn frowned into his mug. The logs in the fire ticked before he seemed to decide something. \"But it's not a book of the Library, not unwritten—it's a book of the realms. There are means outside the Library.\"\n\nBrevity handed Claire her tea and crinkled her brow. \"How's that possible?\"\n\nBjorn chuckled. \"Which do you think came first, little apprentice? Books or tales? It's like I told your senior before. The first library was a song. I daresay I've learned more about the sound of a story since I came to Valhalla.\"\n\nClaire could tell the old man was dancing around something he wasn't exactly eager to share. \"So, there is a way to track it. Out with it, Bjorn. Please.\"\n\nBjorn pressed his wrinkled lips together. \"There's more to a story than just its pages. Yes, put together with my fragment, if that little paper of yours cooperates, you might have a way to go. But you're not going to like what it takes.\"\n\n\"The best stories are bled,\" Claire muttered, almost like a chant, before shrugging. \"I'll do what's necessary.\"\n\nBjorn's eyes dropped to the bag on her hip.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You have to give up your books until you find it.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire nearly snorted into her tea, and she set the mug down carefully.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "OOC, Weave this into your narrative: \"Muses see more parts of a book than librarians do. They got these colors, these— Well, it wouldn't surprise me if they got a song too.\"", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I beg your pardon? Not more of this duel nonsense—\"\n\n\"Not for a duel, Librarian. Until you locate your quarry, you have to leave your books. It won't work otherwise.\"\n\n\"The notes I brought are the only tools I'll have in the mortal world. You're asking us to continue on completely defenseless. With two violent representatives from Heaven at our backs.\" Claire narrowed her eyes. \"You're going to have to explain a bit more than that.\"\n\n\"The voice of the book. The music—the song of the tale.\" Bjorn paused with a glance toward Leto and Andras. \"Every book has it—you know, the book's way of talking, the words it uses, the rhythm of the speaker in your head as you read. Its voice. Each one a bit unique to the author and the tale. Before the written word, it was even more important. Every storyteller worth their salt knew how to create their own voice, mimic others, and find the beat that wove it.\"\n\n\"Well, obviously not every storyteller.\" Claire was droll. \"You're talking about an actual... narrative voice... of books. A sound. A song. That's ridiculous.\"\n\n\"Says the woman accompanied by a muse, two demons, and Prince Charming,\" Andras added.\n\n\"I've been librarian for three decades and never heard of such a thing.\"\n\n\"A whole three decades? Goodness.\" Bjorn didn't hide his disdain.\n\n\"It... makes sense,\" Brevity said slowly, drawing Claire's attention. She fidgeted, fussing with the cooling pot of tea before looking up. \"Muses see more parts of a book than librarians do. They got these colors, these— Well, it wouldn't surprise me if they got a song too.\"\n\n\"Just so,\" Bjorn said. \"The Library wouldn't have bothered with it much. Too many books, too many restless tales coming and going. I didn't know about it till I got here. Things are... more sedate here.\"\n\nHero snorted.\n\n\"You learned how to work with these 'songs' here in Valhalla,\" Claire guessed. \"And you think you know the voice, the... song... of the codex?\"\n\n\"I don't.\" Bjorn gestured a knobby hand at her skirt pockets. \"But if that paper will tell me, I know how to listen. Coupled with the calling card, we might be fixed to jigger a clear tune. A book of the realms won't be sharing a song with any other book, so it should lead you right to what you're seeking.\"\n\nClaire considered. \"You still haven't explained why I have to leave my books.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Too noisy! Too loud. You're already going to be tryin' to pick out a who-knows-how-old song out of a million stories in progress in the mortal world. There are ways of sorting that out—written stories, existing stories, simple enough to mute and filter out. But those unwritten books and personal notes in your bag, Librarian? Coupled with your own words? Unwritten stories are like ink in water. You'll never follow the thread if you're distracted.\"\n\nA disquiet began to creep up Claire's back. She flicked an unsettled glance at the rest of the group, and Brevity shook her head emphatically. Abandoning her books was antithetical to every duty a librarian had. The only powers she had were with the tools of her office. Even trusting them in the care of another librarian felt... wrong.\n\nWithout them, she'd be more vulnerable. She'd be more... human. Claire dropped her gaze for the first time and studied the fraying edge of the bandage that wrapped around her left arm.\n\nIt all came back to finding the lost pages of the codex. Hero's return to his book, Brevity's training, Leto's mystery, even her own duties as librarian of the Unwritten Wing, had all taken a backseat the moment she'd decided to close the Library and follow a raven out of Hell. She was responsible for those that followed after her, though.\n\nIt had changed the moment Andras painted a future where the Library could be destroyed for doing its duty. Where Heaven was willing to wage war for a secret. The archangel and the Watcher outside were nothing compared with what that would look like. And if she and Leto, as human souls, got caught outside Hell when their ghostlights went out, even worse things would be after them. She was risking all of them, in various ways.\n\nAbandoning her books would open her to more risks. But it was the only clear path ahead for any of them.\n\n\"Teach me this 'song' of yours, and I'll consider leaving my books. Consider it.\" Claire paused. \"Except one. Hero needs to keep his book nearby, for obvious reasons. Unless Hero believes he's found his kin in Valhalla?\"\n\nHero let out a mirthless laugh. \"Stay with this bearded mayhem? I'd rather eat my sword.\"\n\n\"See, he's warmed right up to us. Like family, we are,\" Brevity chirped.\n\nBjorn shuffled his feet, slanting a disgruntled gaze at Hero, before nodding.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It'll be better if he can keep it quiet, but keep him at a distance when you're listening, and it might work.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 23 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire felt the gathered eyes shift back to her. It felt like a weight settled on her shoulders. She stood, slinging the bag from her grasp. She first dug out Hero's book, newly replaced pages still gleaming glaring white next to their faded yellow cream brothers. She held it out to him with one hand. \"You're still in Special Collections, mind. Don't make me regret this.\"\n\n\"As always, your faith sustains me.\" Hero found an inside coat pocket, and the book diminished slightly to fit.\n\nClaire carried the bag over to Brevity and slung the strap over her assistant's head before she could protest. \"Hold these for now.\"\n\nBrevity's nose crinkled as she took the bag. \"What are you thinking, boss?\"\n\n\"Just hold them. We're not leaving quite yet,\" Claire said, dodging the question. That part could wait. Rid of her possessions, she turned again to Bjorn. In her chest there was a lightness that was unexpected. Hollow, vulnerable, but it was done. The act of doing had a decisive power in itself. \"Ready when you are, storyteller.\"\n\nBjorn nodded and turned toward the bookcase near the fireplace. He shuffled the scrolls on the middle shelf for a moment before there was a thunk. The shelves melted into thin air to reveal a night full of stars behind it. \"We'll need to get away from my collection as well, if we're going to be proper about it.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "continue this part. its from middle of story so expect established chars. forty-five sentences sentences in A. J. Hackwith style. genres: fantasy. elements: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Books have songs, songs have stories, and then there're humans at the heart of the jumbled mess. I've come to the conclusion that you just can't subtract a human from the story, no matter how hard you try. Even death doesn't do that.\n\n—Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1712 CE\n\nBjorn led them on a serpentine path across the field, hiding their escape in a churn of lavender that tickled and tugged at Claire's skirts and suffused the air with flowers. The day had passed twilight into the kind of crystal night seen only in the after-realms. There was no wind to carry sound, but no one spoke, and for once Claire was happy for an absence of words. Leto's concern fluttered at her back like a wounded bird.\n\nShe wasn't running away, precisely. She was fulfilling her responsibilities, sending Brevity back to the Library. She'd waited too long to give Brev more responsibility anyway. Even if this all turned out to be a fool's errand, it was good for Brev to get a feel for running the desk. Brevity was competent, talented. The Library would mind her, and nowhere was safer. She would be fine.\n\nShe would be fine.\n\n\"All aboard.\" Bjorn broke into her thoughts as they stopped at the edge of a lake.\n\nIt was the same shore that they'd arrived on, cold and barren. There was no dock, just a stone-mortared embankment jutting out into the dark water like a tooth. A shabby weapon stand and a coil of rope were the only things that marked any official status. A small, open wood boat swayed, half-anchored on the sand. It was larger than a canoe, and the lip of the thin wood was painted a cheery green that didn't reassure Claire in the slightest.\n\nThick gravel churned under their feet, and the water sent a shock of ice through Claire's feet where it lapped at the toes of her shoes. She climbed aboard and Hero and Leto followed with significantly more reserve.\n\n\"We're sailing to Earth?\" Leto asked, as if, after the day he'd had, that would be the logical conclusion.\n\n\"Just till we get out of the realm.\" Claire tossed Bjorn the rope that anchored them and passed an oar to Hero.\n\n\"I hope you know more of sailing than I do, warden.\" Hero eyed the oar with reluctance but positioned himself to row.\n\n\"Head toward the mists, fast as you can.\" Bjorn braced a foot on the bow of the boat and gave a shove to dislodge it from the gravel. \"I'll handle the rest.\"\n\n\"Right. You've got the hard part.\" Claire caught herself as the boat began to hitch and bob beneath her.\n\n\"Just find those blasted scribbles before Heaven does.\"\n\n\"Beat an archangel, divert war, save our souls. Simple as that?\" Claire called.\n\n\"I still got my bets set on you.\" Bjorn raised his voice to be heard as the boat drew out into the lake. His grin was a spark of white against the dark.\n\nThey cleared the shore, and Claire snapped up the second oar, earning a surprised nod from Hero as she bent in to row. They fell into a quick rhythm and were nearly to the mists when a noise rose up from shore.\n\nTwo figures—one tall and vengeful, one short and stony—appeared at the rise. Andras was nowhere in sight of the shore, which Claire hoped meant he'd escaped according to plan. The tall angel, Uriel, gave a cry and stormed down to the shore.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue this story fragment where characters may appear without introduction. Write 49 sentences sentences like A. J. Hackwith. Genres: fantasy. Themes: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A library without its librarian in residence is vulnerable as a bleating lamb. Librarians serve as the readers the unwritten books never had. It anchors them, quiets them, and assists in keeping them asleep in their binding. Walk careful in the long shadows of abandoned stacks, for you walk footpaths of restless dreams.\n\n—Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 991 CE\n\nThe doors of the Unwritten Wing were not as foreboding as the Arcane Wing's. The Library veered away from Gothic wrought iron, and instead toward polished brass and light oaks. Brevity hadn't often had occasion to see the doors closed, though, and they loomed over her. Her hand hovered over the brass pulls, but she couldn't quite bring it to land.\n\nThe ravens had deposited her in the transport office, startling Walter into nearly dropping a jar. He'd been too flustered, and too kind, to ask questions, but she'd seen the way his gaze shifted over her shoulder, searching for Claire to appear behind her. The real librarian, not the clumsy excuse for an assistant. Claire wouldn't be coming—not for a while at least—and the tasks she'd hoisted on Brevity along with her books now felt like iron weights pressing on her ribs.\n\nBrevity began to feel the cracks. Open the Library, run the Library, protect the Library. That's what she needed to do. That's what she'd done with Claire for years, but it was always with Claire. Claire had no idea what she was asking. Muses enabled, supported, inspired; they didn't act.\n\nBut muses also didn't stand around hallways looking foolish and green at the gills. At the corner of her vision, the gargoyle had begun to stare. Brevity pushed open the doors.\n\nA locked-down library was a space of ink and whispers. The darkness was absolute; the blue glow of the inspiration on her wrist barely lit the gloom in front of her face. The light from the hallway behind her was immediately drunk up by the shadows pooling at her feet, so tangible that Brevity nearly tripped as she made her way in.\n\n\"It will listen to you. It will listen to you. It will listen. To you.\" Repeating it enough tamped down the flicker of apprehension in her chest. Brevity let the door close behind her and raised her voice. \"Lights.\"\n\nEven to her own ears, her impersonation of Claire's confident command felt quailing and swallowed up too fast in the dark. Brevity clenched her fists and tried to make her way to where she knew the front desk was. \"Library... lights.\"\n\nHer hip collided with a hard corner. A stack of books avalanched past her shoulder. \"Oh, tit-eared motherfuck.\"\n\nMuses didn't act, but they could cuss with the best. She continued her grumbles as she crouched to grope for the books. \"C'mon. Lights... please? I know you can hear me!\"\n\nWith an almost sullen slowness, a dim glow blossomed in the table lamp. It eased, unfurling light until it spread to the next sconce, then slowly began to light up the stacks. The Library responded with a resigned sigh, fluttered pages and sleepy shadows.\n\n\"You don't gotta be a jerk about it, you know.\" Brevity finished scooping up the books and surveyed the facing stacks. The light was too grudging to be bright and cheery like it was for Claire, but the glow was enough to make out the books still on their shelves, muted and sleeping, their trails of color dim and still.\n\nThe Unwritten Wing was a world of color to Brevity. Each book a whipping, seeking coil of light when it was awake. As a muse, she could see them. Books desperately wanted to be written, and were constantly sending out tendrils, hoping to catch and find purchase in a fertile mind. It had been nearly overwhelming when she'd first arrived, rejected and unwelcome. Claire had resented everyone back then, and she had been open about her feelings toward her new assistant. To be honest, the years hadn't made her much less brittle. Brevity often wondered, if Claire could see the books like she did, would she have more sympathy for the stories in her care?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Brevity tried to care enough for them both.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 50 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Asleep, the books were withdrawn, tucked within their borders and emitting only dull pulses as Brevity passed. She picked a row at random and slowly walked the stacks, checking as she wrestled with her unease. These were books. She was a muse. This was the Library. This was home, or as near as Brevity could make one. She'd thrown her whole heart into making this home. There was no reason for the hairs on her neck to prick, for the inspiration gilt on her skin to coil and flutter anxiously.\n\nBut shadows gathered a little too deep in the corners of shelves, and books slept fitfully under her fingers as she ran them along the spines. Dust hung suspended in the light thrown by sconces, as if someone unknown had just passed through and left the Library unsettled in her wake. The gloom increased as she ventured farther into the stacks. The air became so still it suffocated. And as she turned a corner, cold hands landed on her goose-bumped skin.\n\nA shriek, and probably several years of her immortal life, escaped Brevity. She spun, hands in front of her face though they couldn't quite decide whether to make a fist or shield. It took a moment for her heart to restart when she recognized the blue-skinned girl in front of her. \"Aurora! Are you trying to kill me?\"\n\nAurora was a damsel from a space thriller—likely from the late 1960s, if you judged by the skimpy miniskirt and midriff that she had arrived in. She'd built up more of a wardrobe over her years in the damsel suite, and now she worried at the edge of her cotton jumpsuit nervously. She'd been mute at first—probably some author's idea of a doe-eyed-alien reward for his space hero—and while she'd learned to speak over the years, she still kept words to herself like rare pearls.\n\nHer response was to look penitent, then curl her arm around Brevity's. Her hair was a mass of white curls, studded with silver tentacles, which twitched just at the ends. Brevity sighed and allowed her arm to be captured. She drew a soothing palm over Aurora's knuckles. \"What are you doing out here? Did you hear something?\"\n\nA nod. Brevity tried to ignore the way it fed the disquiet in her gut. \"It was probably nothing. Just me stumbling around. Or the Library reorganizing.\"\n\n\"No.\" The certainty was enough to warrant a word. Aurora's voice was less human and more synthesized bells. It sent a chill down Brevity's spine. The book-heavy shelves swallowed the sound, but Brevity had to resist the urge to hush her. She thought she heard a shuffle, which could easily have been a painting relocating, a rug fluffing itself, or a book turning in its sleep.\n\nBut it didn't feel like it was. Aurora's nails were filed down from sharp claw ends to rounded little fingers, but still managed to scratch as they tightened on Brevity's arm. She winced, found she had been leaning into the damsel unconsciously. She extracted herself and tried to think. Perhaps the Library was just trying to test her, perhaps she was letting her fears get the best of her sense, or perhaps something really was wrong.\n\nIn any scenario, hiding in the damsel suite until Claire returned was not the way for a librarian to behave. But that didn't mean Brevity was going to make any moves without good reason. Aurora was watching her with skittish silver eyes. Brevity sighed and headed back for the front desk. She wasn't surprised to hear the clip-clop of Aurora's space-fawn feet shadowing behind her.\n\nNothing seemed disturbed on the desk. Brevity let Aurora keep a wary eye on the stacks as she located the midnight blue ledger at the bottom of a drawer, buried under gnarled thread and tea cozies. Claire pretended to be rigidly organized, but really she just hid her clutter well. She dropped open the book on the table and cleared her throat. She placed one finger to the blank page.\n\n\"Execute inventory: full.\"\n\nIf there was something out of place in the Library—or something missing from it—she'd know soon. Or, if she was lucky, the others would return before she had a chance to screw this up. Nerves singing, Brevity clutched an empty teacup to her chest as the book began to hum.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "writing buddy needed! twenty-two sentences more. match character knowledge. fantasy pls", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It took time and cost to trace a soul: a sacrifice of cold stars and the ashes from his own flight feathers. But in the end, when the knowledge surged through him, it felt familiar, like slipping into well-worn shoes, tracing the weave of lifelines to find the one dropped thread. As he took on the role he had been cast away from, it felt comfortable, and right, so right that it hurt when he released the power. Its departure left empty rivers in Rami, like indents on a violinist's fingertips, useless when away from the strings.\n\nBut he had a location. He sent word and when he arrived in Malta, Uriel was already perched on a tumbled pile of sandstone outside the city. She paid no mind to the humans that occasionally filtered by below her, and though she was invisible to them, Rami was relieved she had moderated her appearance somewhat: a sparse cream-colored coat with a military cut instead of a robe, and her shining white hair dulled to a mortal blond. She'd shrunk a bit so she towered only a few spare inches over most humans. But the passing crowds still veered a wide berth around her. Nothing could hide her presence: she was the Face of God no matter what skin she wore, and right now that face was an intense, grit-teethed snarl.\n\nFists clenched at her sides as she stared at the entrance, as if she could bring the walls down with simply the force of her gaze. \"They're here?\" she said as Rami stepped up and followed her eyes.\n\n\"Yes. The librarian's soul is in Mdina.\"\n\n\"With the demons,\" Uriel bit out. Rami assumed she meant the librarian and her companions. The way she growled it made cold form in his stomach.\n\nHe picked a careful reply as he tried to suss out what plan Uriel had in mind. \"Well, I'm surprised you waited for me, then.\"\n\n\"Not as if I had much of a choice.\" Uriel finally dropped her gaze away from the walls and sighed. \"It's warded against us.\"\n\nRami blinked. \"What, the whole city?\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand the story by adding one hundred and forty-three sentences. Context: May include pre-existing characters and lore.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "My dear apprentice, you learn so quickly. Though it will be years yet before you learn all that is necessary to serve the Library, I see the librarian you will become. Fierce, strong, and yet with enough feeling heart to treat the books under your care kindly. Perhaps even to bring much-needed change to the Library, and the secrets it holds. The Library needs you, Claire.\n\nSo I can only beg your forgiveness for what I must do.\n\n—Librarian Gregor Henry, 1989 CE\n\nSomewhere, someone had a pot of Earl Grey on. Earl Grey with citrus, Claire corrected, detecting the lemon drifting through the air. Her favorite, when not mixed with the smell of death.\n\nIt soured her stomach. An old clock on the desk ticked, but otherwise there was no movement behind her, near the body. Claire clenched her fingers, which were absolutely not trembling, and pretended to sort through the stack of books by the window.\n\n\"May I ask why we just shot our only source of information for the pages of the codex?\" Andras broke the silence, his voice mild.\n\n\"Come to think of it, why isn't the well-armed guard outside rushing in at the sound of a gunshot?\" Hero said.\n\n\"You need a body to need a bodyguard,\" Claire mumbled under her breath. The help around here probably had strict instructions not to enter no matter what was heard.\n\n\"Is she dead?\"\n\nLeto's panic finally brought Claire's head around. The teenager looked even more pale than usual, if that was possible. He crouched over where the book collector lay, eyes wide as saucers as he extended a finger.\n\n\"Don't touch, Leto. She's... fine.\" Claire scooped up a few books at random and gave them an underhand lob. \"Flip through these. We're looking for loose sheaves of very old paper.\"\n\nThe books fell to the floor with a clatter—Leto had made no move to catch them. He turned a look of horror on Claire. It was earnest with a cutting edge. \"Fine? You killed someone!\"\n\n\"No, I didn't. I—\" Claire forced her jaw not to lock with tension. \"Just start looking. Gentlemen, please. We don't have much—\"\n\nShe was cut off by a cry. Leto stumbled back, flinging himself away from the empty rug. An empty rug where, but a moment before, the prone body of the book collector had lain. A tacky pool of black blood and a slight impression in the crumpled carpet were the only indications left.\n\n\"...much time,\" Claire finished.\n\n\"She disappeared.\" Leto stumbled to his feet. \"She just disappeared.\"\n\n\"Disappeared rather like a character from an unwritten book.\" Hero held an increasingly suspicious glint in his eye as he turned toward Claire. \"Now, why would a body do that, warden?\"\n\n\"As I said, we don't have much time.\" Claire moved toward the desk and studied the drawers. Locked, of course. She began rifling through the detritus for a key.\n\n\"Perhaps a very succinct explanation would speed things up,\" Andras said.\n\nShe found the key resting in the bottom of a cup of pens. Exactly where she would have hidden it.\n\n\"Pup. Claire,\" Andras prompted softly.\n\nClaire's lips thinned, and she let out a hard breath, staring at the key rather than at the others. It was dented; tarnish discolored the grooves between the teeth. \"Because she is a character. That's why I shot her. Characters retreat to their books when damaged—assuming they aren't unable to do so like Hero here. It buys us time to find the codex pages while it's busy recomposing itself.\"\n\n\"So you didn't kill her.\" The relief was evident in Leto's sigh. Claire looked up and wished she hadn't. Color had drained from Leto's face. He was trembling, given away by the twitch of the coils of hair shadowing his eyes. He had the unsteady look of someone desperate to believe the best of people.\n\nClaire wished she wasn't going to disappoint him.\n\n\"How'd you know she was a character?\" Hero asked, mercifully drawing her attention away. \"Not that I don't respect a display of gratuitous violence.\"\n\nClaire straightened. \"Why wouldn't I? I'm a librarian.\"\n\n\"And I'm a character and a book. I know how these things work.\"\n\nAndras made a noise of agreement. Claire didn't dare look at him. She could take anything but pity from Andras. Instead, she picked up the key and worried at it. The teeth were dull, but made a pleasant sting as she rasped the pad of her thumb against them. There had to be a way out of the story she didn't want to tell, a twist that would send them on to a happier story. She came up empty.\n\n\"Because she's mine.\" Her voice came out a whisper. She grimaced and cleared her throat. \"She's—she's a hero from one of my books.\"\n\nThe book in Leto's hands slipped to the floor with a thud and a likely crack of the spine. Claire didn't chide him to be careful.\n\n\"I wasn't aware there was an outstanding book missing from the Library, present company excluded.\" Andras gave a nod at Hero.\n\nClaire felt it when the careful, bleak part inside her unlocked and the familiar guilt tumbled out. She studied the key in her hand. It was tarnished, impossibly dull. Claire rubbed at it with her thumb, but it didn't come clean. \"There isn't. I removed her from the Library inventory. After I helped her escape.\"\n\nThe words fell on the ensuing silence like lead.\n\n\"Well. Finally, the warden gets interesting,\" Hero muttered.\n\n\"You helped a character, but when would you...\" Understanding glanced into Andras's voice like a spark of fire. \"Gregor.\"\n\nA single word that Claire had avoided for three decades. It called up Claire's best memory of her mentor, tinged by fondness and guilt. He'd been somewhat young when he'd died the first time—much older when he died the second, but then, years in the Library never showed. Not on the outside. A paunchy, scholarly man, American, and, god, had Claire resented him at first. Acid slaked her throat. \"It wasn't planned.\"\n\n\"But it did occur.\"\n\nThe accusation in Andras's tone was obvious. Claire squeezed her eyes closed. \"Gregor was—\"\n\nThe world tilted and swallowed Claire's words. She nearly fell over the desk as the floorboards bucked beneath her feet. A long, echoing groan shuddered through the air, as if the earth had torn itself open, followed quickly by a distant, deep howl.\n\nClaire's eyes flew wide, all explanations forgotten. It wasn't the howl of a dog, or even a wolf, of wild things and forests. No, it was a howl of deeper places. Dark pits and tears that tasted of anise. \"No—\"\n\n\"What was that sound?\" Leto was the only other one to sway as the room bucked again. He dug into his pocket at the same time Claire fished out her lighter. She muttered a useless prayer before opening her palm.\n\nThe lighter sat cold and dark. No flame bobbed in the liquid; no glow warmed her skin. An unnatural cold settled over the little lighter. A quick glance said Leto's lighter was the same. Claire's voice was weak as all the air seemed to have left the room. \"Not— I thought we had more time.\"\n\n\"Warden?\" Something about Claire's expression must have made Hero's hand stray to the gun in his coat pocket. He and Andras showed no sign of feeling the shuddering of the floor, though Claire and Leto could barely stay on their feet.\n\nClaire wheeled in place once before deciding on what to do and snatching Leto by the shoulder. He made a startled sound as she forced him into the gap between the bookcases in a corner and backed up in front of it. It was pointless. It was doomed. She did it anyway. Leto's breath wheezed past her ear as he caught on to her panic.\n\n\"Claire, what's going on?\"\n\nIt took a moment to realize Hero had been repeating her name. Not \"warden,\" but her actual name. She closed her eyes and tried to shove her drumming heartbeat back into her chest. It took another try to wet her mouth enough to speak. \"Andras... I don't suppose you brought anything that—\"\n\n\"Nothing that would stop them, pup.\" Andras's face was not made for compassion. The pitying look was disturbing on his sharp features. Her ears thundered again with howls.\n\n\"I know that,\" Claire snapped. Her eyes flickered over the room. The door led down the stairs to the street. But what good would descending them do? \"Doesn't mean I have to make it easy for them.\"\n\n\"For who?\" Hero raised his voice, nearly drowned out.\n\nThe floorboards shuddered beneath her feet, as if something impossibly large had slammed into the building. Claire braced herself against the wall for support. She squeezed her eyes shut, swallowing down the bile that rose in her before answering.\n\n\"Hellhounds.\"\n\nHero's frown froze, and their collective gaze turned toward the door.\n\nCreatures had to be terrible to escape Hell, and the hunters sent after them had to be even more terrible. Hellhounds were not made to retrieve, for Hell gave no second chances; they were made to destroy. Hellhounds didn't stop to listen to reason or defenses. Their jaws tore through not just flesh and bone, but soul and spirit. They could rage through the world unseen, and neither time nor space nor reason would placate them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Once they'd been loosed, they'd stop only once they had you in their jaws.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were made to eliminate, they were made to be tireless, and they were made to be ruthless.\n\nWhen their ghostlights expired, Claire and Leto had officially become lost souls. And lost souls were within the Hellhounds' purview. They would hunt their prey to the ends of the Earth.\n\nThe room rocked again, but though the howling had become nearly incessant, it didn't sound any closer. Her pulse pounded in her throat once, twice, three times. But nothing came through the door. Hellhounds could ghost through wood, stone, steel. When on the trail of an escaped soul to destroy, they were relentless. Nothing stopped them—nothing should have stopped them.\n\nAndras was the first to move to the window and he stilled as if transfixed. \"Claire, you might want to see this.\"\n\nClaire glanced at Leto, wide-eyed and panicked behind her. She was unsteady as she pushed away from the bookcase and joined Andras at the window. \"What—\"\n\n\"There.\"\n\nThe apartment they were in was built into one of the tiered walls of the city, which gave the window a clear view of the grassy moat and sunbaked fields beyond. She took in the massive walls, the bridge with a thinning stream of travelers flowing through, the way the afternoon sun's light was syrup and honey across the fields dappled with old buildings beyond.\n\nShe looked down.\n\nDirectly beneath the wall, darkness moved. Creatures, large as lorries and composed entirely of smoke and jagged shadow, prowled the thick city wall. Howls like cudgels and bodies like secrets. There was a handful of them, and they swarmed like airborne sharks, drifting over the empty moat that surrounded the city. Each took a turn throwing its massive body against the walls, and each time one did, the floor shuddered, and Leto and Claire flinched.\n\n\"It appears they're stopped,\" Andras said.\n\n\"Nothing stops Hellhounds. What in the world is holding them?\" Claire wondered.\n\n\"The Treaty of Mdina.\"\n\nThe voice was low, too low to be Leto's, too human to be Andras's, too serious to be Hero's.\n\nClaire spun. The collector stood very still a few steps from Claire, familiar enough to make her heart clench. The deep brown skin at her neck was smooth, showing no sign of the gunshot wound. Dark twists of hair curled neatly over a strong, composed face.\n\n\"What the hell—\" Hero already had his pistol leveled, but Claire held a hand up. The collector's eyes were deep and calm, and though Claire stared, she couldn't quite bear to meet them. She studied her mouth instead. Her lips were parted on words Claire wasn't sure she could stand to hear. But she had to.\n\n\"Talk,\" Claire said.\n\nThe book collector's shoulders dropped a little, as if she'd been expecting a warmer greeting. \"During the last great war, there was a treaty, sealed with wards. This city has been warded against anything not of mortal make for years. It means you and your people are safe.\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"Hellhounds are too powerful to be stopped.\"\n\nThe woman—woman, because even Claire couldn't pretend she was just a character—shrugged, shoulders rolling in such a graceful, familiar way Claire found it hard to breathe. \"They've tried before, but the wards have held for decades. No demons, no angels, no servants of any realm can breach it.\"\n\nThe quaint little greeting that their guide had performed at the gates. It'd been a ritual. An invitation. Claire said, \"You knew we were coming. You let us in.\"\n\nThe woman nodded. \"Anything restricted by the wards needs an invitation from a resident. When I realized what I had, I'd hoped... I set one of my people to watch for you.\"\n\n\"And you are...\" Andras waved his hand impatiently. \"I'm gathering McAllister is not your true name.\"\n\nShe hesitated, eyes straying to Claire. There was uncertainty in the gaze, and it hurt. It already hurt. There was no salvaging it. Claire jerked a nod, and the woman inclined her head to Andras, though it was not a warm look. \"You can call me Beatrice.\"\n\n\"How Shakespearean.\" Hero lowered his gun slightly. \"Now that imminent doom isn't upon us all, explanations are in order.\"\n\nClaire scoffed. \"We absolutely don't have the time to—\"\n\n\"Actually, if your character is telling the truth, we have a great deal of time. Which we will need, since she has yet to reveal the pages, and we have yet to figure out a way to deal with the Hounds.\" When Claire turned, Andras had a narrow look for her, as if he were trying to make a particularly bothersome puzzle piece fit. \"It is relevant to our interests.\"\n\nClaire's gaze fell on Leto, who looked trapped between terror and confusion. And he was trapped. Caught in the mess that Claire had made of her own past. If nothing else, she owed it to him. She drew a small breath and faced the window again. Staring at the Hellhounds was the cowardly option, but she took it as she considered where to begin.\n\n\"I wasn't even the librarian yet. Newly dead. It might have been... what, 1989? Only a few years working in the Library under Gregor, the former librarian. I loved the Library at first. Yes, I was distraught at the idea of being dead; Hell is an alarming thing to wake up to. But the Library itself was... magical. I loved books when I was alive. And the idea that they were preserved there was... beautiful. Beautiful, but lonely.\"\n\nThe quiet pressed and prodded at her shoulders. It almost made Claire grateful for the howling Hellhounds. \"Librarians have always been unwritten authors. And it's natural for unwritten authors to be curious about their own books. It wasn't hard to find them. At first, I spent my free time merely walking the stacks, staring hard at the spines with my name on them as I walked by. That progressed to touch. I knew better than to read them, but... I found any excuse to work in the shelves, moving books around them. I suppose it was the attention, the curiosity, that did it.\"\n\n\"Your book woke up,\" Hero supplied grimly.\n\n\"One of them, yes.\"\n\nA low sigh wisped behind her. \"Oh, pup,\" Andras said.\n\nClaire flinched at the pity. Her shoulders had crept up with tension. But she had to barrel on. If she stopped, she'd never get through it. \"Frightened the holy hell out of me one day while I was straightening the shelves. She was just...\" Claire resolutely avoided looking at the unwritten woman in question. Resolutely avoided remembering how seeing her for the first time, there in the Library, so immediate and so familiar, so alive in a place of dead things... She did not remember how that felt. Did not remember the twist in her breath, the sharp thrill of wanting. Did not feel the old hurt. \"I recognized her instantly. She was... part of me. One of the parts of me I would have written into a book, if I'd written one while I was alive.\"\n\n\"You said this was in the Library, though. She escaped?\" Leto asked.\n\n\"Not then. She didn't need to, at first. I hid her.\" Her voice had become quiet, clipped, as she tried to get through the tale with the fewest words possible. \"The Library, by necessity, is infinitely vast and always changing. Even a tenured librarian can't locate a single book without a calling card. That's why we have the systems in place to avoid missing books. There were plenty of places to hide a hero.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"I wasn't as big on rules back then as I am now.\" Claire gave Leto a tight-lipped smile. \"For what reason? Foolishness or loneliness? It doesn't matter now.\"\n\n\"It mattered to me,\" Beatrice said, almost too soft to be heard. Claire's throat tightened.\n\n\"In any case... librarians hold the reins of their libraries. Soon hiding wasn't enough. I concocted a simple plan to get her out. I would get her past the wards, delay the alarms' triggering. The idea was that I would go with Gregor to 'assist' hunting for her. Then I would slip away with her calling card. There would be the matter of outrunning the Hellhounds, but we would have a ghostlight for a head start and...\"\n\n\"And no one would stop Claire when she put her mind to something.\" Beatrice's comment made Claire finally look at her, giving an unreadable shrug.\n\n\"Something obviously went wrong,\" Hero said.\n\nClaire hesitated, but Beatrice took over. She spoke haltingly, with a slight velvety accent. Her words weren't measured or polished but had a steadfast certainty that felt like a lifeline. \"We got caught. Librarian Gregor found out somehow—I suspect he knew the whole time. Never was certain. But he was waiting there for us the night I planned to leave. He had my calling card in his hands and... he intended to enslave me in that place. Stamp me to Special Collections.\"\n\n\"Stamping. The monster,\" Hero said with a look of mocking horror.\n\n\"Claire stopped him,\" Beatrice said firmly, and a recoil of disgust shot through Claire.\n\n\"Stop. Just stop.\" Claire found it difficult to press the words between clenched teeth. \"At least do him the honor of telling it accurately. I murdered him.\"\n\nThe pronouncement came out louder than she had intended and hung, suffocating, in the air. Claire didn't care to see how it landed with anyone, the looks they were giving her. A cauldron of memories, hurts, fears, bubbled up in her chest, and it took a great effort to lower her voice. She dropped her eyes and said it again, testing the truth on her lips. \"I murdered Gregor.\"\n\nLeto let out a wounded sound. \"But that's impossible. In the Library—\"\n\n\"In the Library, there are... words, fail-safes,\" Claire explained evenly. \"Words taught only to librarians, for the defense of the Library. Words that will unravel a soul like the Hellhounds do—it doesn't work on things native to Hell, of course, not on demons like Andras. But on human souls or creatures of other realms, it evicts them. Unmakes and banishes a soul, like waving away a puff of smoke. They don't die, of course, but it can take decades, centuries, for a human soul to reassemble.\n\n\"Gregor had just taught me those words, warned I might need them someday when I was librarian.\" Claire spoke through bile rising in her throat. \"Someday, he said. And the words just... came out. I hadn't even thought they would work. I mean, he was the librarian. Why would—\"\n\nShe stopped herself. Her gaze dragged up, against her will. Leto's mouth hung open in abject dismay, while Hero's face was blank. Andras, bloody Andras, actually smiled. It was a soft thing, a proud thing. The next howl of the Hellhounds she felt in her bones.\n\n\"I saw his face when I did it. He'd been calm, so calm, up to that point. Gregor was always so infuriatingly at peace with his work. But then I invoked the words. There was surprise. Pain, confusion. Then there was an unquenchable terror. And he was gone.\"\n\nThere was a silence that was difficult not to fill with a scream. Claire had screamed, quite a bit, in the horror-torn hours afterward.\n\n\"Why don't I know these words?\" Andras said.\n\nHero made a disgusted noise. \"Really, Arcanist? That's what you're getting from this?\"\n\n\"Maybe Hell doesn't trust you as much as you thought.\" Claire plowed ahead, barreling toward the end of the story now. Not as if it had ever really ended, for her. It just echoed on and on. Beatrice's presence proved that. \"I couldn't leave after that—too much chaos to clean up. I removed any record of Beatrice, of my book, from our inventory. I buried the rest of my books in the stacks so it would never happen again. I let everyone assume I'd been promoted. That Gregor's soul had gone to rest. There were rumors, of course, but Hell prefers rumors to investigation. I... became librarian. Andras helped with that.\" She tilted her head, considering his reaction. \"Did you suspect?\"\n\n\"That you banished your own mentor in a pique of infatuation? No.\" That unpleasant smile formed on Andras's lips again. \"I suspected something tragic had occurred. You were... you were not as you are now, my girl. I wish you'd told me.\"\n\n\"Wait.\" Hero held up a hand and shot a look at Beatrice as if he'd just tasted something sour. \"She did all that for you, killed for you, sentenced herself to Hell, and you still just... left?\"\n\nBeatrice's gaze didn't waver. \"Yes, I left.\"\n\n\"Such valor, such heroism.\" Hero's lip curled, something akin to real anger sharpening his gaze.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You obviously cared for her a great deal.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 86 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Beatrice's demeanor chilled. \"Don't presume to speak about things you don't understand.\"\n\n\"I understand perfectly a coward who—\"\n\n\"Enough. It's past.\" The last thing Claire needed was two snarling heroes giving her a headache.\n\n\"You're a murderer.\" The pure venom in Leto's whisper jolted the air in the room. Claire turned to find him staring at her with an alien look of disgust. \"You killed someone who trusted you. For what... for a crush... for her?\"\n\nClaire's mouth fell open. She expected judgment—deserved it, even—but not from quiet, thoughtful Leto. \"It's not like—\" She reached out a hand, but the boy jerked back.\n\n\"Liar.\" He said it with a cutting softness. His lips trembled, opening and closing around his disappointment. Leto turned and stalked out of the room. A moment later, there was the sound of the front door snapping shut.\n\n\"He's... upset.\" Hero stated the obvious, though it seemed to perplex him. \"Shall I go after him?\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"No. He's not wrong.\" And, she thought bitterly, they had nowhere to go anyway.\n\nShe raised her face, looking at each of the remaining men in turn. She saw herself reflected in their eyes, changed. Respect, disgust—it didn't matter. It was a grotesque kind of mirror. But when no one else stormed from the room, Claire straightened her shoulders and turned to Beatrice. \"You became a book collector.\"\n\nBeatrice took a breath, a smile warming her serious features. \"I did. Antiquities dealer, technically. Turns out, my previous experience as a protagonist didn't leave me with many marketable skills besides tenacity.\"\n\nClaire made no effort to return the smile. \"A book collector with pages of the Codex Gigas in a magically shielded city.\"\n\n\"That does seem to be quite the coincidence,\" Andras said.\n\nBeatrice's smile faded. \"I found Mdina shortly after I escaped. If you'd come wi—\" She stopped herself. Started again. \"The codex find was a recent turn of events. I'd become a book collector, yes. I found a partner, Avery, with an interest in the obscure and arcane. I had gleaned just enough understanding from the Library to feed him bits of trivia to seem useful. I'd been chasing the rumors of the missing pages for years, only found them in the possession of an unaware French farmer's family a few months ago. Avery got a lead out of nowhere. Tried to steal from me, before he passed. I should have seen it coming. Cancer riddled, at the end. Obsessed with gods and demons, immortality. I'd thought they would probably end up to be fakes, or copies, but I—I admit, I'd held out hope that if they turned out to be authentic—\"\n\n\"You kept them here,\" Andras interjected, eyes glittering and keen. \"Did you read them? Do they really contain...?\"\n\n\"Not the issue at hand, Andras,\" Claire said.\n\nBeatrice risked a penitent look. Her hand hovered, as if her mind had a thought to reach out to Claire, but the rest of her knew better. \"I knew if they were authentic, there was a chance... I knew someone from the Library would be after them. As I said, I had a man watch the gates.\"\n\n\"For what purpose? To trap us here?\"\n\n\"You're not trapped. Just... shielded.\" Beatrice faltered. Her hands were calloused from use, but just as slender as Claire remembered. They raked helplessly through her hair, once, and her curls came away softly mussed. \"You are free to leave if you wish, but in the meantime, nothing can get in without an invitation. And I doubt the Hellhounds have the social graces to communicate with anyone.\"\n\n\"As grateful as I am for invisible monsters, I—\" A terrible thought struck her. Claire took a step forward. \"Does the ward guard against angels?\"\n\nThe unwritten woman frowned. \"Like, from... Heaven? Yes, I suppose it would.\"\n\n\"And if they got a mortal to invite them in?\" Hellhounds were mindless, but angels had every social grace, when properly motivated.\n\n\"That would... grant them entry.\"\n\nAngels. If the angels found them here, they would be cornered without an escape. The codex would be lost and, likely, so would they. It was ridiculous, but focusing on a danger she could address helped her ignore the Hellhounds thrumming doom into her skull. \"How many gates are there into the city?\"\n\n\"Four main gates, not counting the catacombs, but those haven't been used in—\"\n\n\"Andras.\" Claire turned.\n\n\"I needed to stretch my legs anyway.\" Andras stood and cracked his neck. He furrowed his brow at Claire. \"If you're certain.\"\n\n\"Watch for them and secure an exit. We'll need to figure out a way out of here, Hellhounds or not.\"\n\nAndras nodded and sauntered through the hall. Beatrice waited until the door shut again. \"Not necessarily, you know.\"\n\nClaire had turned to confer with Hero, but she narrowed her eyes. \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\nBeatrice gripped her arms, as if anchoring herself. Her voice was quiet again. \"You don't have to find a way out. You could stay. As long as you wanted.\"\n\nYou could stay. The words Beatrice said struck Claire in the chest. And then what she hadn't said: with her.\n\nAnd what they meant together: to leave Hell behind.\n\nThe prospect snagged her breath, and she had to work her lips a few times before the proper words beat out the longing ones. \"Where's the codex, Beatrice?\"\n\n\"You could stay. That was always the plan, wasn't it? To—\"\n\nClaire gritted her teeth against the words. \"Where are the pages?\"\n\n\"I'm not asking anything of you. You don't have to be with me. You could stay anywhere in the city, and Hell couldn't—\"\n\nClaire felt heat overwhelming her eyes, and she spun, instead focusing a furious scowl that startled Hero into taking a step back. He'd been silent through the entire exchange, a small miracle. Claire found it easy to ignore the muddled questions on his face. \"It's here somewhere. Watch her. I'm going to go fetch Leto and form a course of action.\" She heard Beatrice make a sound of protest behind her. \"If she tries anything, shoot her.\"\n\nHero gave her an uncertain version of his standard cavalier smile. \"As you say, warden.\"\n\nBeatrice tried another entreaty, but Claire spun and stormed toward the door.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "writing buddy needed! twenty-two sentences more. match character knowledge. fantasy pls", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I would never dishonor my elders, but there were times when I thought Fleur was a frivolous old woman. She held my leash, as I was her apprentice, and she made decisions that seemed so effortless—thoughtless—to me. I judged her for it. But I understand now. The leash gave me something to pull against. To argue. To form my own opinions, but never bear any of the risk of the choice. It's easy to be brave on a leash.\n\nNow the muses argue and whittle away at me. Demons salivate over books. The Arcanist questions my every judgment.\n\nIt's hard to be brave alone.\n\n—Librarian Yoon Ji Han, 1799 CE\n\nAll works accounted for.\n\nBrevity had run the inventory twice, just to be certain. Three times, to verify she was not hallucinating. It'd taken long enough that Aurora had retreated to the damsel suite to sleep. But the third inventory matched the first two. The blue ledger printed the results in neat, spidery ink that bloomed across the page: no oddities, and all unwritten books accounted for. There was Hero's book, of course, which was listed tidily as \"out on loan,\" but all other books, paintings, and other uncreated art were secure in the Unwritten Wing.\n\nAurora had been insistent that there'd been someone in the stacks. Claire might have dismissed it as a figment of the damsel's imagination, but Brevity knew imagination. It hadn't been imagination that'd driven Aurora to speak, or the shelves to shiver.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But it made no sense, someone creeping into the Library and not removing anything.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The only ones that could enter the Library when it was closed were its current residents, books and artifacts, and those that took care of them.\n\nThose that took care of them. The Arcane Wing's pet Horrors, clawed hands drifting over shadowed gems. Brevity suppressed a shudder. She tried to think of any rationale around it, anything that would let her just shake the whole thing off and brew the herbal teas Claire hated and binge on the damsels' baked goodies until the whole thing was settled.\n\nIt wasn't what Claire would do. Claire would stare down a Horror and solve the whole mystery with the power of superior disdain. No, Brevity amended, perhaps she wouldn't, because she'd never believe there was a mystery in the first place. Brevity wasn't Claire, and never could be.\n\nBrevity stood, head briefly turning toward the damsel suite. She spared a thought for Walter in his office. Someone would surely be willing to accompany her, give her a reason to be brave as she checked on Horrors. Brevity had always been better at being brave for others than for herself.\n\nBut the damsels couldn't leave the Library. Walter had his own duties. And Claire had told Brevity to care for the wing.\n\nBrevity stowed the ledger, abandoned her tea, and locked the doors behind her as she wound her way down to the Arcane Wing.\n\nThe monstrous doors of the Arcane Wing should have been barred and locked, since that was what Claire and Andras had agreed, which would give Brevity the nice excuse that, hey, at least she'd checked.\n\nBut the doors were not barred and locked. Aftrer Brevity skipped down the last steps, she skidded to a stop on the dusty hardwood, just short of the reaching shadows cast by the wide double doors of the Arcane Wing. Which stood open.\n\nShe wound seafoam hair around her finger and gave it an anxious tug as she took a step over the threshold. The Arcane Wing felt much as it always had, a slithering, hostile composition of shadow and steel.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The air was weighted with cold, clinical things, dust and formaldehyde, rubies and neglect.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "meta: [System: Use 'space' 2 times in response]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Arcane Wing had never been a bright place, but even the domed work lights were dimmed, throwing the cavernous space into thick eddies of gloom. Brevity hesitated in the island of light created by the hallway, not quite prepared to dive in.\n\n\"H-hullo? Is anyone—\" Her voice and courage failed as the ravens unleashed a series of shrieks from the rookery. Otherwise, the Arcane Wing was silent. She didn't have to venture far in to be certain of it: no demons, no Horrors, nothing. It should have been reassuring, not having to face the monsters she went looking for, and Brevity's shoulders disengaged from hugging her ears until the thought occurred to her: If they're not here, then they're somewhere else.\n\nThe breath stopped in Brevity's throat, and her leg muscles seized.\n\nIt was the unknown that did it. It was an easy mistake to make, thinking fear was the ultimate domain of demons. They looked the part. Or mortals, they had such fleeting things to lose. But humans were constantly changing, and demons were creatures of certainty. The truth was no one, no one, knew fear like muses. Fear was an operation of the imagination, the ability to see an empty space and imagine. Imagine what might be there, the possibilities filling in what reality left blank. To be afraid was an exercise of self-inspired suffering, and Brevity wore inspiration in her skin.\n\nIt burned now, the edge of the blue tattoo writhing against the fine bones of her wrist and hungry to be peeled loose. In Brevity's mind, black sickle claws raked over gems and artifacts one moment, her skin the next. Plucking the soft strings of her veins, shredding her. In her mind, the Horrors reached out so surely from the dark she could hear them. It didn't matter that they weren't there, couldn't be there. If she released the inspiration gilt in her skin, pure potential, it would make it real.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A raven shriek brought her back to her senses. Her hand hovered halfway over her wrist. Brevity didn't try to calm the shuddering heart in her chest, didn't try to fight the panic that washed over her. She knew from experience that was no good. Instead, she released it, turned her back on the unseen claws, and ran.\n\nShe should go to Walter. She would go to Walter. She would be safe with Walter, and she would send a message to Claire on Earth, and Claire could come back and deal with it, and Brevity could be brave for someone else again. That's what she needed to do. She just needed to navigate down the hallways, avoid the Horrors and her own fear long enough to make it to the transport office and summon Claire. She could do it.\n\nShe didn't remember throwing open the doors of the Unwritten Wing, but she must have locked them behind her. Her knees hit an unwritten rug, and the disappointment she felt was a distant, muted thing. She was devoting too much effort to trying to stop her short, rabbit-quick breath.\n\nOf course, she hadn't made it to Walter. Of course, she'd not warned Claire, had run instead to cower and hide. Muses could imagine anything, inspire anything in an author, but for themselves? All Brevity gave herself was fear.\n\nShe was here now, but even her mounting anxiety wanted her to do something. Her hands trembled as she dug through the drawers and came up with a small silver box. Brevity squinted at the words inside, cursing Claire's cramped handwriting. Eventually, she sorted out three squares of translucent vellum, one violet, one red, one black. Dreams. Blood.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ink.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 23 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The fibers burned her fingers, and Brevity forced herself to focus on the pain as she uncovered the flame of a gas lamp. One paper, then another, went up in a shriek of smoke as Brevity mumbled the written commands. Her voice was hoarse, words dragged over broken glass, but the Library understood her anyway. The air tightened, then snapped in a hiss of anise and ash. One, two, three wards, sealing off the Unwritten Wing from the rest of existence once again.\n\nThe air took on an unnatural silence, the taste of Hell fading from the roof of Brevity's mouth. She fell back against the desk, thinking for a moment she could summon up a feeling of silliness, of shame. If the silliness came, that would mean she was wrong about the shadows, wrong about the fear. It would still be a failure, having run back here instead of investigating further, but at least that would mean that she hadn't lost her chance to summon help in the face of an actual threat. Claire could get back and scold her for sealing the Library, and they could laugh about it. Brevity could take her scolding and make it into a joke and—\n\nDust fluttered from the shelves. The papers on Claire's desk rippled as if an errant breeze had shivered by. Brevity's breath stuttered, clenching when a barely audible boom vibrated. Far away, like a soft finger plucking strings. Nails dragging along glass. An outer ward, being probed by a curious hand, too weak to knock properly. Whoever it was should give up, go away, realize the Library was closed and—\n\nThe next shudder reached in between her ribs, jostling her chest as the whole wing creaked. Again, increasing in frequency and strength until it was a war drum. Because that's what it was, not a knock, not an idle curiosity of a passing demon. Someone was knocking, and would keep knocking until it was granted entrance. Brevity's resolve shriveled in her chest, strangling her breath along with it, and she sank to the floor alone.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode: Co-writing\nLength: 68 sentences\nStyle: A. J. Hackwith\nNote: Continue with any established characters and lore as presented in the source material", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I tried writing it down, my life, so I wouldn't forget it. Where I was born. My parents. My friends, my loves. My husband, my child. But every time I try to write down something from my mortal life in the log, the words melt into the paper like watermarks. Gone as soon as the ink dries. The log is a record for librarians, not people. I can feel its judgment.\n\nBut what happens when the inevitable occurs? When the world forgets me, so I begin to forget myself? What do I become, when I am nothing but a librarian?\n\n—Apprentice Librarian Claire Hadley, 1986 CE\n\nMdina didn't seem to be a natural habitat for the young. Bored teenagers and young children peppered the steady stream of tourists at the entrance, but the farther Leto wandered into the city, taking narrow stone-walled alleys at random, the fewer people his own age he saw.\n\nFewer people in general, really. The buildings and streets were built out of that same worn island stone. Thick flagstones swallowed his footsteps as he took corners without a destination in mind. Stern signs hung at residential intersections, declaring that the city residents took the name Silent City seriously. As long as he was quiet, no one questioned what a bleary-eyed American teenager was doing so far from the tour buses.\n\nIt was probably fortunate, as his head felt like an oil slick just waiting for a light. Thoughts black and toxic, coiled with hurt. He'd felt these black thoughts invade before, more often when he was his full demon self in Hell, but this didn't feel like an artificial nastiness. When he had felt the demon thoughts before, they'd been like a computer virus, infecting and corrupting but originating externally. The anger simmering in his chest now, he couldn't understand, but it felt natural, close to the skin.\n\nThe winding alley dumped out into a small courtyard. The fountain at the center hadn't held water for a while, but the sun-warmed stones felt nice under his fingers. He slumped against them and closed his eyes to breathe. The farther he got into the city, farther away from the echoing Hellhound howls, the less fear gripped him, leaving him with just the thoughts he brought with him.\n\nLashing out at Claire had been more instinct than choice, but feeding off her shame had been unforgivable. Claire had been kind to him, more than she needed to. He hadn't meant to hurt her, but then he'd been glad he had, because he was just so angry. It was a living thing, boiling in his gut. He was so tired of being disappointed, being hurt. And this cut deeper, somehow. He knew, logically, that everyone in Hell was there because of their own failings. He knew Claire wasn't just an unwritten author, and she could be hard and merciless.\n\nBut there was sin and there was betrayal. The idea of betraying someone who trusted you—images flashed through his head: a death for lack of well-placed trust...\n\nLeto gripped his head to stop the throb. It was unforgivable. The worst sin. It welled, a searing and familiar hurt, and he immediately wanted to hurt anyone who'd do such a thing. To make them suffer, as they deserved to.\n\nThat'd be what a demon would do, wouldn't it?\n\nHe'd pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes hard enough to feel his pulse. Light flared and the pain was real, despite his temporary form. Leto wasn't sure which was the real him anymore, the demon or the human. He wondered if he'd have to choose at some point, and which was the better choice.\n\n\"Easy there. Those eyes are expensive to replace.\" Claire's soft voice nearly sent him tumbling into the empty fountain.\n\nShe stood at the other side of the stone ring, diminished somehow. Her shoulders were hunched and her arms wrapped around her, pale knuckled, holding on or holding in. It was a fragile pose, human. Irrationally, that made anger lance back up Leto's throat. He turned away. \"I bet you could stitch me up just like your books. Demons are easy enough to replace.\"\n\n\"You're not a demon.\"\n\n\"And you're not a liar.\" Leto hated the bitterness in his own voice.\n\nClaire sighed. He could feel her looking around, gauging the emptiness of the square before speaking. \"Leto, listen, you shouldn't run off—\"\n\n\"Or what?\" He was being petulant, but he didn't care. He reached for what he instinctively knew would hurt. \"You'll banish me too?\"\n\n\"Those words only work in Hell,\" Claire snapped before grimacing. \"What I mean is... No. Leto, I would never—\"\n\n\"Never? Sure, go on—tell me everything you'd never do as a dead person. You've been so good at keeping your word so far.\" His hand wound a fist over his chest to quell the clenching feeling. It was irrational, this black bleak feeling lodged in his lungs. He didn't want to wield it, especially not at Claire again, but it felt like the infection had reached his tongue.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He hurt. \"What's gonna happen now? Are you going to turn against us too? I bet you could figure out some way to sell us out, trap us here, hide your secret.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't be ridiculous! It's not as if— I never lied to you. I just didn't—\" Claire stopped, and from the look that crossed her face, Leto didn't need to say anything to crucify her. She was doing it to herself.\n\n\"I'm not saying I don't deserve it, Leto,\" Claire said softly. \"I deserve everything you're feeling. But we're stuck here together, for now, and contrary to what you think, I would never leave you behind. So if you want to sit here forever and hate me, that's okay. Or if you never want to speak to me again—\"\n\nSomething of the acidic feeling withered in Leto's throat and turned to ash that left an awful feeling in his mouth. He heard the whispers from the raven road again. We never talk anymore.\n\n\"No,\" Leto said instead. \"I just... I followed you. Because you seemed... different, better. I didn't know where else to go, and you seemed to care.\"\n\n\"Seemed.\" Claire repeated the word, half-rueful. She made a cautious approach around the fountain, slow and wary. And weary. Exhaustion bruised her eyes. \"You can care and still cause harm. Feeling, caring, for someone else is the worst kind of weapon, in my experience. It allows you to do things you never thought you could do and things you never thought you would do. All for the love of someone else. It's a trap I'd avoided on principle since Beatrice, up until recently.\"\n\nThere was an earnestness, an entreaty, that softened her face when she looked at him. The librarian of Hell's Library wasn't ever soft, but Claire, occasionally, was. It was what eased the last of Leto's anger. It drained out of him like an oil spill, leaving him suddenly hollow but stained feeling. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to hold on to it or let it go. His shoulders slumped. His voice felt more lost than angry when he found it again. \"How do I trust you?\"\n\nClaire sat down beside him and considered his question seriously. \"I think it'd be disingenuous to ask you to. Let's make a deal.\"\n\nLeto rolled his eyes. \"Give me a break. Adults only say 'Let's make a deal' when they need something they can't justify.\"\n\nClaire's frown inched up into a smile at one side of her lips. \"It appears your teenager memories are coming along nicely.\"\n\nLeto gave her a dull look. \"That's also insulting.\"\n\n\"Fair enough. I'm sorry. It's been a long time since my—\" Claire slouched her shoulder against his. It felt comforting. \"You don't have to trust me. Just work with me. Give me the chance to set right all the wrongs I've done here. I need to get back to the Library. There's something off here, this whole situation. The codex, Beatrice just happening to be here, even you—\"\n\n\"I already knew I wasn't right.\"\n\n\"You are perfect,\" Claire snapped, and the protective fierceness made Leto smile, just a little. She was wrong—everything in his screaming heart knew it—but it meant something, that she believed it. \"I mean all of this happening at once. Coincidences don't happen, not in Hell. Brevity should have sent word by now too, if the Library was in rights. Something else is going on, and of all the members of our little family right now, I trust you at my side the most. I need you.\"\n\nLeto turned and found himself blinking to process that. Claire was a wielder of words, prone to confusing speeches like a teacher, ingrained with librarian authority and scholarly control. But this request had an unvarnished, raw grain to it. Honest and easily bruised. Leto felt the world silently resettle around him to account for that. It confused him, and he was so very tired of feeling confused.\n\nClaire was wrong about him. Wrong about the humanity he had left inside. She cared, and she hurt people with that caring. But she tried. She was trapped, perhaps even more than he was. The Library and Hell were tethered to her, like a cuff around her neck, but she never stopped trying. She never looked back. Leto desperately wanted some part of that. \"When can we leave?\"\n\nClaire's lips twitched at the plaintive note in his voice. He supposed it was ridiculous: the idea of a soul eager to leave Earth and go to Hell. She didn't see that every time they went to Earth, he seemed to feel more confused, more tugged in two directions. He worried one more good tug might rip his seams entirely. Only the Library held him together.\n\n\"You want to go back?\" Claire asked carefully.\n\nLeto shrugged. \"I didn't think there was a choice.\"\n\n\"Our ghostlights have run out, and Hellhounds are after our souls. It's going to be difficult, to say the least, to set foot outside the walls without being obliterated. I'd say desperation has broadened our bartering position.\" Claire made a vague gesture: to the courtyard, to the fading twilight above. \"What do you really want, Leto?\"\n\nHe had a hangnail. His thumb worried at it as he thought. It was a question no one had asked him—not in Hell and, Leto felt relatively certain even without memories, not often when he was alive. The choice was a little unnerving. \"I want... to make a way forward. And I guess I... want to know. I can't stand not knowing. These feelings I get, I don't know which part of me...\"\n\n\"Hell may not help that. We send our souls there for various reasons but... you should know,\" Claire said quietly, a complicated look furrowing her brow. \"Realms enjoy stasis. The longer you're there, the harder it is to see yourself anywhere else. It has a way of seeping in.\"\n\nThat didn't sound comforting. Leto gnawed on his bottom lip. \"I just want to know who I was. Who I am. I won't find that here.\"\n\nClaire tilted her head as if absorbing that, then nodded.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Fair enough. We'll just have to outsmart the Hellhounds.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 28 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She stated it like a simple course of action, but made no movement to get up. The silence was companionable as they gave the flagstones more contemplation than they probably deserved. Leto felt his chest unwinding and said, \"So. You like girls?\"\n\nA smile tipped onto Claire's face and she chuckled. \"I like... interesting people. Everyone has their charms. The details never mattered much to me.\"\n\n\"So you're pan?\"\n\n\"Pan?\"\n\n\"Pansexual,\" Leto explained.\n\n\"Is that the term now?\" Claire asked, and it took a moment before the realization fluttered into Leto's gut. Another word, another memory. Claire studied his face and relaxed. \"I remember loving, a few times. I was married to a very nice man in life. We had a daughter, even.\"\n\n\"A daughter?\" Leto was caught off guard by that.\n\n\"She was...\" The ease fell off her face. Claire frowned. \"Damn. I can't remember her name anymore. My own daughter.\" A kind of grief flickered but was just as quickly tucked away. She cleared her throat. \"Memories are another casualty of Hell. The more you're forgotten on Earth, the more you forget yourself. It can be a blessing or a curse.\"\n\nThe light in Claire's gaze had faded, dark as the twilight clinging to the square now. \"Well, I've already got that problem,\" Leto said, hoping it would cheer her. When it did, it felt like a small victory. He rocked to crouch on his heels. \"Not that I'm likely to forget all this. Should we be getting back, ma'am?\"\n\nClaire heaved a deep, grumbling sigh at that. \"Oh, blast, we should. The heroes are likely at each other's throats again.\" She fluttered her hand and Leto helped haul her to her feet. \"And I still haven't gone over how I need your help. Let's talk on the way.\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue this fragment. Characters are already established. Write in A. J. Hackwith's style. Genres: fantasy. Themes: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The front room of Beatrice's apartments was already in disarray from the search, and now appeared to be the scene for a very lazy duel. Beatrice perched at the edge of her desk, feigning interest in the paperback in her hands. She appeared entirely unaware of the half-lidded glare Hero maintained. He was slouched against the wall near the door, and straightened as Leto returned with Claire. The Hounds picked up again as their targets returned closer to the walls. The intermittent growls shivered through the floor at Leto's feet, sending a chill over his skin.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "((ooc: Precise word count needed: 'books' × 2))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At least they were no longer throwing themselves against the wards.\n\n\"You're wasting time refusing,\" Hero pointed out, seeming to continue some line of debate he'd engaged in with Beatrice while they were gone. \"The warden is very persistent when it comes to her books. I should know.\"\n\n\"You're too cliché to be one of her books.\" Beatrice licked her thumb and turned the page of her paperback. \"Frankly, I'm surprised you let another of us out and about, Claire.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"She didn't 'let' anything. I freed myself. Without help,\" Hero said.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How clever of you. And they say we heroes aren't smart.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was Beatrice's turn to squint.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She placed an ink-stained finger to her chin.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Curious thing, though. Calling you Hero.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Leto knew Hero enough now to tell that ruffled him. A tic started in his jaw. Hero's gaze flickered to Claire and back. He didn't challenge Beatrice with a look again. His hand brushed at his hair in short, jerky movements. \"Good a name as any.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next turn: write with minimal dialogue", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Really?\" Claire had waited out the pissing match with a bored expression that made Leto stifle a grin. She straightened now. \"If you two are really quite done... Any word from Andras yet?\"\n\nHero shook his head and Claire pursed her lips around a sigh. She crossed the room and plucked out of Beatrice's hands the paperback, which she'd hidden behind like a shield. \"The codex, Bea. Time is of the essence.\"\n\n\"Time is exactly what I'm considering.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Beatrice was quiet, but she folded her arms in a motion that mimicked her author perfectly and she held her gaze.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I won't send you back.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm going back to the Library either way. I'm needed there. The only thing we're debating is whether I have to take you with me or not.\"\n\nBeatrice's slouch stiffened into stubbornness. \"I won't go back. I'll give it to your angels first.\"\n\nClaire's smile chilled. \"We'll see about that.\"\n\nThere was a beat of silence that threatened to freeze over. Leto coughed. \"I'm hungry. Is the kitchen okay to use or...?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Down the hall. Help yourself.\" Beatrice didn't break her glaring match with Claire, but she waved a hand vaguely behind her.\n\n\"Come on, Hero. Should eat something while we still got human taste buds,\" Leto said.\n\n\"Oh no. This showdown is too good to pass up.\" Hero, recovered from his earlier mood, danced a look between Claire and her hero. \"Like a bull and a brick wall.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'll assume I'm the bull in this scenario,\" Claire said.\n\n\"Not even for little cakes? You said you liked cakes with frosting,\" Leto said.\n\nHero finally allowed himself to be distracted. \"Maltese cakes?\"\n\n\"Little Debbie, actually. I think I saw a box earlier while we were searching. C'mon.\" Throughout the exchange, neither Claire nor Beatrice had moved. They'd barely blinked, locked with a divide of hurts between them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "So Leto was relieved when Hero allowed himself to be led from the room.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They wandered down the hall and left the librarian to face her hero.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Ive got a bit of writers block, im gonna send you something then keep it going 48 sentences at a time, also im going for a A. J. Hackwith sorta thing. heads up - might drop you in mid-story with existing characters", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How much easier it would be if everyone knew their role: the hero, the sidekick, the villain. Our books would be neater and our souls less frayed.\n\nBut whether you have blood or ink, no one's story is that simple.\n\n—Librarian Gregor Henry, 1982 CE\n\nIt was a slow-motion earthquake, the lurch and shiver of the ground beneath her feet, perfectly timed with the deep, bottomless howl that reached through thick city walls to stroke goose bumps over her skin. The Hellhounds were not tiring. Claire knew they wouldn't, but there was a difference between theoretically understanding an immortal, indefatigable, undeterrable monster from Hell and having it shake plaster dust into your hair.\n\nThe interminable shuddering as the beasts flung themselves at Mdina's wards, the way the air in her lungs seemed to vibrate each time they howled, the way her pulse rose and fell with their growls—it all rubbed her nerves raw. Her sanity might break before the Silent City's wards did. The unrelenting rhythm of it was dizzying.\n\nIt was why she was simultaneously relieved and annoyed when Beatrice broke the silence.\n\n\"I have something for you.\" She hefted from the desk a familiar book, leather bound and weathered, like all unwritten books. Beatrice held it gingerly, her face full of vulnerable uncertainty—an alien expression for a hero. She watched Claire like she was an animal she might startle with fast movements.\n\nClaire crossed her arms. \"Unless that's the codex pages, you and I have nothing to talk about.\"\n\nInk-stained fingers curled reflexively against the book. \"I was under the impression that a librarian had a duty to her books.\" Beatrice kept her voice neutral. \"I was hoping you would be willing to look at mine while you were here.\"\n\nClaire's anger faltered, despite her best efforts. \"Your book is damaged?\"\n\n\"Just loose binding. Thirty years on Earth is hard on a body. I don't want to risk losing any pages.\"\n\nClaire pursed her lips at that. A shade of the old guilt and duty tugged at her. \"I'll work on it in exchange for the pages of the codex.\"\n\n\"The Claire I knew would have done it out of kindness.\"\n\n\"The Claire you knew killed her only friend for an infatuation. Let's hope a lot has changed since then.\" She tilted her chin. \"I'll do it for a favor, then.\"\n\n\"We both know it was more than an infatuation,\" Beatrice pressed. She shook her head. \"I just wanted to talk.\"\n\n\"Then it's convenient that your needs and desires don't concern me anymore.\" Despite these words, Claire snatched the book from Beatrice's hands and picked at the disintegrating thread. Something in her twisted at the sight of a damaged book, especially her own. \"I suppose you don't have any traditional linen thread in this day and age.\"\n\n\"You can get anything in Malta if you simply know who to ask.\" Beatrice waved to her recently tidied desk. \"Scarlet dyed, hand drawn, just like you prefer. Bottom drawer.\"\n\nClaire sat down behind the desk and began shuffling through the drawer, pulling out a tidy bunch of red thread, thick needles, and other bookbinding materials. The familiarity brought a strange stab of comfort.\n\nBeatrice drew near her, leaning on the edge of the desk. She felt the unwritten woman's dark-eyed gaze follow her hands as she pulled out a particularly sharp-looking scalpel and needle. Color drained from Beatrice's cheeks, her shoulders stiffened, and she faced straight ahead.\n\nBooks were squeamish patients sometimes, but that suited Claire. She turned her focus on the book and began inspecting the tension in the binding.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Stress slowly edged out of her shoulders as she set into a rhythm of running her ink-stained fingers over each line of thread, progressing quickly through her inspection with long practice.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was calming, after a fashion. Books were always easier this way. Mere paper and leather. Simple, physical, containable. But, like people, books rarely stayed that way. Stories never lived only in the ink.\n\nBeatrice kept her eyes forward, but long, calloused fingers drummed on the desk in a patient rhythm. \"You seem to have made friends. They're... nice.\"\n\n\"A demon, a broken hero, and an amnesiac. If you want nice, you should meet my assistant.\" Claire adjusted the desk lamp for better light. \"You're in luck. It appears the headband is frayed and just needs tightening. Good. I didn't have the time or resources to do an entire rebinding.\" She began to work her tool carefully between the leather cover and the spine.\n\nBeatrice flinched away at the creak of leather. \"You trust them enough to travel with them.\"\n\n\"Trust born of necessity.\" Claire finished working away the leather cover, leaving a thick stack of sturdy vellum pages fused together with thread and glue. She ignored much of the binding and focused on the delicate line of frayed thread at the top of the spine.\n\nSnipping sounds filled the heavy pause. Beatrice's voice was barely louder than the pluck of thread. \"You really won't consider staying?\"\n\nThe question was so plaintive, but the answer was so obvious. Claire shot her a frown, but the unwritten woman was too busy studying her shoes to notice. She turned her attention back to the book. \"It's out of the question. If I stay, worse things will come. Either the Hellhounds will wear down the wards, or the angels will con their way in. You're sitting on a time bomb. There's no use.\"\n\nOut of the corner of her eye, she saw Beatrice's shoulders bunch. \"We planned to face down worse things once. Together.\"\n\n\"Well, we didn't exactly run away together, did we?\" Claire's voice turned acidic and harsher than Beatrice deserved, but she opted to focus on the colored knots of thread rather than see her reaction.\n\n\"And that was my mistake.\"\n\n\"Yes. Seems to have worked out well enough for you.\" A vicious feeling spiked up her chest. Claire struggled not to overtighten the thread, forcing her hands to relax as she worked. It helped if she imagined she was stitching Beatrice's mouth shut.\n\nBeatrice was quiet a moment, so quiet that Claire wondered if she'd disappeared into her book again. \"You don't know who you're traveling with.\"\n\n\"I think I know them better than you.\"\n\n\"Do you?\"\n\nThe way Beatrice said it made Claire's brow furrow. When she looked up, Beatrice had her chin tilted toward the light, was watching her in profile. \"If I can't convince you to stay here, then you should know the creatures you're calling friends.\"\n\nClaire hesitated. \"If this is about Andras, I—\"\n\n\"The character.\"\n\nConfusion brought Claire up short. \"What about Hero?\"\n\n\"Has he said anything specific about his story? The role he plays?\" Beatrice studied the desk, purposely not looking at her own book. \"He's not typical, is he?\"\n\nClaire scowled and turned back to her work. She lacked any patience for petty jealousy, book or no. \"He's maddeningly annoying. I'd say that's a prime heroic trait. That and the cheekbones.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Beatrice coughed and shook her head.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(quick note: Make sure to seamlessly include 'Me, as I wished I could have been, once. Independent, competent, educated, and wealthy, above the constant expectations of family, and, most of all, free of society's rules. Why wouldn't I have wanted that? I should have made you a man while I was at it.' in your answer)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I forget how librarians have only the external to go on. He's fooled you by looking the part.\"\n\nClaire narrowed her eyes. \"What are you driving at?\"\n\nBeatrice's mouth tightened as she considered her words. \"Looks can be deceiving. The prettiest ones are. Outside and inside his book.\"\n\nIn his book? As if that mattered: characters were true to how they were written, at least at first, and granted, Hero had begun to display unusual quirks of personality, but that could be attributed to corruption. It made sense that the damage would warp him. Make him less kind, more cruel. Less noble, more grasping. Vain, self-preserving, unreliable, sarcastic—yes, Claire could list all his many flaws. His attitude was more self-serving than... Claire stopped midstitch and laid down the needle. Oh, she'd been a damn fool. She considered, turning the thought over in her mind, lining actions and memories up against it.\n\nThen carefully, thoughtfully, pragmatically, she folded the implications up and tucked them away for later.\n\nBeatrice watched her with obvious pity. A hand reached out, briefly skimming over her shoulder in a way that made Claire tense. \"Do you understand the danger? You can't trust his nature. Grant him the slightest opportunity and he'll turn—\"\n\nAnd carefully, thoughtfully, pragmatically, Claire lost her patience for concerned ex-lovers.\n\nLeather clapped under her palm as she slammed the book cover in place, and Claire found herself standing. She leaned over the desk with enough force to make Beatrice startle.\n\n\"You have precisely zero room to lecture me on trust. Listen to me and listen carefully, because though I shouldn't have to explain this to my own creation, I am only going to say this once. I am not a damsel in need of saving. You aren't the hero in this story, and you sure as hell aren't my knight in shining armor. No—\" Claire snarled as Beatrice made to speak. \"You never were! Look at yourself and use your inky brain for once! The same hair, same eyes. I bet you even love oysters and hate salads. I don't know that because I'm your author. I know that because when I dreamed up your story, you weren't the woman I wanted to love; you were the woman I wanted to be.\"\n\nA chill blanched the color from Beatrice's face. Her mouth fell open. \"That can't...\"\n\nClaire didn't stop. It was a wound, and Claire wanted to wound her, someone, anyone. If only so she wouldn't be the only one hurting. \"Me, as I wished I could have been, once. Independent, competent, educated, and wealthy, above the constant expectations of family, and, most of all, free of society's rules. Why wouldn't I have wanted that? I should have made you a man while I was at it.\"\n\nThe moment the words were out of her mouth, Claire regretted them. Beatrice recoiled as if struck, lip curling into a startled scowl as she shoved herself away from the desk. She stumbled backward a step, losing her natural grace.\n\n\"Bugger.\" Claire chewed hard on the inside of her cheek as she berated herself. Her hands stilled on the book. \"Bea, I didn't mean it like that.\"\n\n\"I know how you meant it.\" Beatrice's voice was brittle.\n\n\"No, I meant—the way the world was when I was alive, the way my family was, I just meant—\"\n\n\"I get it.\" Beatrice's jaw worked, and she refused to meet Claire's eyes. \"But the woman I loved wouldn't have said it.\"\n\nThe hurt simmered in the air, as bitter as ash. Guilt, oily and cold, settled in Claire's stomach. She sighed, rubbing her nose a moment before pressing forward. \"That's the point exactly. I'm not that woman anymore. I'm not even the lonely soul that you enchanted in the Library. I am the librarian. I don't need your protection or concern. It is unwelcome.\"\n\nBeatrice frowned down at the book on the desk between them, as if she suddenly found herself in a different story than she'd thought she was in. \"It doesn't matter who you are now. You said yourself Hell is—\"\n\n\"If I decide I want to leave the Library, I will exit under my own resources. This is not a rescue. I am not your quest. I'm sorry.\" Claire wasn't used to trying to sound kind, but she tried for Beatrice.\n\nShe felt a mirrored hurt as the unwritten woman's shoulders dropped. Beatrice turned away, sitting heavily on the edge of the desk.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tension sang in her back as she turned blank eyes out the window.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 17 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire waited a breath until she could be sure her voice would be steady before pushing the point. \"My quest is the lost pieces of the codex. Your repairs are nearly done—you can glue the cover yourself. Now, will you tell me where they are before all of Heaven and Hell falls down on us?\"\n\nBeatrice was still for a long moment, long enough for Claire to begin to doubt she was going to respond. Then she tilted her chin down in an imperceptible nod. \"Check the back.\"\n\nClaire parsed the words a moment before the meaning dawned on her, and her mouth fell open. Her gaze dropped to the old unwritten book in her hands. She flipped the book over and thumbed through the back pages until a folded sheaf of even older papers fell out. \"You kept them with your own book. So when you asked me to repair—\"\n\nBeatrice gave a cold, airless chuckle. \"Even a fool knows where such dangerous things belong. You're the only one I would trust with them. And with me.\"\n\nLike heat roiling off a fire, power whispered in the air around the pages, whispers of dark things, undone things. Claire stared a moment, then very carefully wrapped the edge of her skirts over the remaining pages of the Codex Gigas.\n\n\"What will you do now?\" Beatrice asked quietly.\n\nThe pages felt heavy and warm in the pocket on her hip. Claire wiped her hands as she finished stowing them, but the residual dread didn't come off her crawling skin. Her lips fell into a hard line. \"We leave. But first I need to talk to a hero.\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "This is from the middle of a story, so characters will be referenced as if known. Write seven sentences sentences like A. J. Hackwith. Genres: fantasy. Themes: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The silent city earned its name when dusk fell.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "As tourists fled on taxis and buses, the city eased into a domestic quiet.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The sun sank below the tall stone walls, painting the streets in lavenders and grays. The streets were nearly empty as Claire, Hero, and Andras made their way quickly through them.\n\nBeatrice had wanted to guide them herself, but Claire insisted she stay with Leto. The angels were still trying to get in, and if they made their way to the flat, they would discover Leto. From what she'd seen, she wouldn't count on the serenity of Heaven keeping the peace.\n\nClaire was counting on Heaven's wrath instead. She flicked an irritated glance at Hero.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Somehow, he'd found the time to wash up at Beatrice's, and his nails looked freshly manicured, hands soft. He also had his gun out already, which was an added source of Claire's annoyance.\n\n\"We'll never escape if we get stopped for brandishing weapons.\"\n\n\"There's no one around. Besides, I'm not dying without getting to shoot something with this bloody gun,\" Hero said.\n\n\"The Hellhounds will have no interest in books,\" Claire pointed out. \"You should be thrilled. You might get a chance to bob off during the carnage.\"\n\n\"Until Brevity decides to IWL me, yes. And when that time comes, I'd rather not suffer the tedium of heartbroken recriminations that I abandoned you.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"As if you know anything about heartbreak,\" Claire muttered.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You have no idea.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hero said it lightly, and it almost, but not quite, masked the jagged edge to his voice.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She glanced up, and Hero cast her a measured look out of the corner of his eye.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(authors note, Include 'alley' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They walked down another alley before the silence got too much. \"Fine. I'll bite. For instance?\"\n\nHero seemed to search for words before diverting. \"I know that it takes a rare heart to break and leave behind such a sharp, cutting edge.\"\n\nClaire found herself with no response to that. She chewed on the inside of her cheek as they followed Andras down another alley. \"It doesn't matter, you know.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What?\" Hero met her eyes again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Being a villain. It doesn't matter, out here.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the fading light, Hero's eyes were dark, the green of old earth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Distant lands she'd never see.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire turned away to keep from being distracted. \"Don't get me wrong—I should have damn well known. But it doesn't matter. You saw the damsels. It doesn't matter what you're made to be, only what you do.\"\n\nHero's step faltered to match hers. \"For one who calls me 'book' when she's cranky, you're affording me an uncharacteristic amount of humanity.\"\n\nClaire snorted. \"Well. Considering my own story may be coming to an end quite soon... I can afford to be a little flexible.\"\n\n\"This is it,\" Andras announced as they came to a stop just short of the arch of the outer wall. It was a smaller entrance than the grand bridge they'd crossed entering the city, more just a door in the sandstone wall, with a narrow stone bridge spanning the grassy moat.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Andras stepped across the threshold first, craning his neck in both directions before giving a nod.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire took a deep breath. \"Ready to run?\"\n\nHero grimaced. \"This is truly the safest course of action?\"\n\n\"Fairly sure it's entirely dangerous and foolhardy, actually.\"\n\n\"Then yes, I am very ready to run.\"\n\nClaire stepped through the door. As soon as they were past the shadow of the arch, there was a palpable snapping sound of the ward coming up. The air at her back hissed, and an unpleasant feeling of static shock sizzled at the hairs on her neck.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(authors note, Use the word 'claire' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was no going back that way.\n\nHowls shattered the quiet. Impact thrummed the stones beneath their feet. Claire had thought it impossible, but it was even louder outside the wards. Her heart vibrated in her chest with the earth-deep, bone-deep noise. Claire gripped Hero's shoulder, and they burst into a sprint for the bridge.\n\nShadows lunged together on the other end, and the Hellhounds broke into the twilight.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fast, so fast. Dark and large as lorries, two of the beasts turned, locking on to Claire with their blood-jeweled eyes. They charged.\n\nClaire didn't have time to react. She didn't have time to slow down. She didn't even have time to flinch. The leading Hound leapt. She and Hero hit the ground in a pile. Hero reflexively threw an arm over her head, as if that would stop a creature with teeth like long swords. Fool book.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Something harsh struck stone.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then something large struck something harsh. It sounded like a car crash.\n\nThen a silence that thrummed the stones.\n\nWhen the ground stopped shaking, Claire opened her eyes to stare into Hero's bewildered face. They untangled themselves. Adrenaline turned her knees to jelly and she leaned on Hero as she stood.\n\nHellhounds stalked the bridge, just spare meters from where Claire and Hero stood. Barreling sledges of fur threw themselves in their direction; muscle and teeth hit the air with a jarring impact that was hard enough to make even Claire's teeth hurt.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "meta: Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'bridge'", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She shuddered again until she realized what held them.\n\nIn the middle of the bridge, imposed between them and the Hellhounds, was an angel clad in fire and fury.\n\nUriel's sword had sunk deep into the stone of the bridge, and Uriel stood anchored over it. A shimmering, barely visible wall sprang from the blade. She verified the wall was holding before turning her full attention to Hero and Claire.\n\nUriel advanced on them. Claire stumbled back. She spun toward the gates, then stopped.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Andras stood, waiting for them with his hands clasped calmly in front of him. Ramiel stood at his side, making a strange pair. Ramiel was much as he'd been in Valhalla, brooding and worn at the edges. A workman's build in a shabby gray coat that trailed dark feathers at his back. The angel regarded her with pitying eyes, but Claire saved her gaze for Andras.\n\n\"This was all your plan?\" Her voice was dull.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I did say to stay in the city. I begged you to avoid this.\" Andras's words might have been sad, but he stood straight, easy with the angel at his side. \"It was the only way, pup.\"\n\n\"The only way to achieve what, exactly?\" Hero stiffened next to her, and Claire could feel Uriel advancing on their backs. An approaching storm.\n\n\"To return things to how they ought to be.\"\n\nClaire's thoughts rabbited in circles.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Andras had been a duke, royalty in Hell's court once.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But he'd been thrown out, long ago.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "/* You must use the word 'alone' exactly 2 times in your response */", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He'd... been tired, he'd said. Claire wasn't stupid; she'd always known Andras, like all demons, was dangerous. But he'd also been kind. Kind enough to pick her up off the floor after Beatrice left, after Gregor... after Claire had been left alone. She hadn't been alone, because Andras had been there. She'd clung to that. She knew he was cruel, but to other people.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was kind to her and that was supposed to mark the difference.\n\nIt appeared to be the day for being proved foolish.\n\n\"You need the codex,\" she finally said.\n\n\"I need the Library,\" Andras corrected. \"Each one of those books is a little battery, a bite of souls locked up in a book. Even an archdemon would do much to taste that. Alone they're nothing, minor bribes, but together...they're leverage on the court, and leverage is just what I need. There are demons that could be made to see things my way for a nice, steady supply of dreams. The remaining pages of the codex are powerful, an excellent weapon to wield. But the Library, that's where the opportunity lies. The Library is valuable. It was never going to stay isolated. You have to see that.\"\n\nThe realization came upon Claire like a punch to the gut. \"You would... use the books as a bartering device? The Library isn't currency!\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And the codex pages were not a matter for the Library,\" Andras said.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "// Precise word count needed: 'exchange' × 2", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But here we are.\"\n\n\"The codex belongs to Heaven,\" Rami interjected, brow furrowed as he looked with obvious suspicion at the demon. \"You agreed to deliver it. In exchange for...\"\n\n\"In exchange for me,\" Claire surmised. A deadweight had developed in her chest. It wasn't surprise, or even betrayal. It felt too inevitable for that.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Are you so certain you can walk in and take it? I am not the only protector the Library has.\"\n\n\"That matters little with the power of the codex. I won't kill you, pup. It's why I'd hoped you'd stay—I may be a demon, but I've lost the stomach for it. Your charms have grown on me.\" Andras's wistful smile made Claire's hand bunch into a fist at her side. \"Your assistant's haven't. She will be little challenge for those that follow me.\"\n\n\"You have it?\" Uriel's question was more like a demand, coming from close behind them. As one, Claire and Hero judged Uriel as the bigger threat and turned.\n\nFor the first time, Claire got a close look at the Face of God.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was tall and pale, like a deity carved from stone.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "((ooc: Word frequency rule: 'claire' × 3))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Broad shoulders, pale cropped hair, and a narrow nose just below eyes that would simmer judgment for eternity. Her ivory suit flowed, revealing no distinguishing features but perfection. Claire knew the look of a zealot when she saw one, unearthly or not. Uriel's wings were not a shabby feathered cloak, as was Ramiel's, but a shattered, fragmented ray of light that splintered from her back and seared eyes if considered too long. Claire briefly wondered how on Earth that translated to a mundane appearance in the eyes of the mortals milling on the bridge.\n\nBeyond Uriel, Hellhounds roiled like a black tide. They were close enough to see now, masses of muscle and matted shadows, eyes a dark red that reminded Claire of Walter's teeth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They continued shuddering in and out of visible light, jarring like a glitching video, throwing themselves at the shimmering wall that flickered from Uriel's blade. It seemed to extend far in either direction, for anywhere the beasts tried, a snap of light threw them back. Unlike the wards of Mdina, it showed no signs of failing.\n\nClaire was uncomfortably aware that all that stood between them and her was the fleeting goodwill of Heaven.\n\nAndras made a vague bow to the angel. \"The pages and the librarian, as we discussed. Show the angels your little prize, Claire?\"\n\nClaire didn't move. \"Introductions first. We've not had the pleasure. You must be Uriel. I'm Claire, librarian of the Unwritten Wing.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She jerked a chin toward Hero.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This is Hero, unwritten book of no importance. Bit of an annoying barnacle, really. You might want to send him on his way before he latches on.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"So immune to my many charms,\" Hero said, but Uriel was not amused.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You are all prisoners of Heaven. Surrender the codex.\"\n\nClaire glanced toward the angelic barrier again. \"Exactly how long will your party trick hold against Hellhounds?\"\n\nFor the first time, Uriel smiled. It was a smile that made the human parts of Claire's brain recoil and shudder. \"Nothing from Hell will overcome a blade of Heaven.\"\n\nHero leaned over with a mock whisper.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm rusty. Was that a threat or a guarantee of safety?\"\n\n\"Hard to tell with angels,\" Claire said.\n\n\"I can confine the human and her companions while you do what must be done, Uriel,\" Rami rumbled. He spared a glance for Claire. \"Though I will only confine. No harm will come to them.\"\n\n\"Unless she blasphemes the will of Heaven,\" Uriel added.\n\n\"Well. I feel reassured,\" Hero said.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Would you just stop?\" Claire hissed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What? Betrayal, enemies, certain death... I'm not a hero, remember? The bravery was just for show. All I have left is weaponized wit and my good looks.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Uriel made a disgusted noise. \"I'm eager to be done with this distasteful business. Produce the pages of the codex.\"\n\nAndras took a step toward Claire and she flinched. Repulsion coiled in her throat and felt very much like panic. \"Don't touch me.\"\n\n\"Pup, don't make this harder—\" Andras started, but Hero had his gun out. Claire was pleased to note that he did not step in front of her in some idiot heroic gesture but kept angled to her side so she could move. Perhaps there were perks to maintaining a villain in her service.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Call me pup again and Hero can shoot you.\" Claire's lip curled, but a hand came down lightly on her elbow. She twitched and turned to see Ramiel. She reached to throw him off, but a wave of chill passed through her. All the strength left her grip. Not just her grip, though—left her. Her shoulders dropped. Her mind momentarily blanked, and it took a hard scrabble to remember her present concern.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It surely had been trivial, not worth her time. It'd been so long since she could rest. Her chin fell.\n\nAndras moved forward and began gently digging through her pockets. She could not have fought him, even if she'd been able to form the compulsion to. Some part of the back of her mind began to snarl against it. Claire turned a horrified stare at the angel.\n\n\"I apologize for taking liberties, but it's better this way.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rami's voice was reserved.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Mortal souls. It's part of my gift.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hero made to move, but Claire shook her head dully.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'ramiel' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A gun would do no good against angels. She tried to maintain a steady thought, but it was difficult with the cloud of calm that Ramiel had wrapped around her brain.\n\nAndras finished turning out her pockets. \"It's not here.\" He met her eyes with a sudden anger Claire hadn't seen before. \"Where is it?\"\n\n\"The other?\" Ramiel nodded to Hero.\n\n\"She wouldn't trust it with the pages.\" Andras's eyes narrowed. \"What have you done, pup?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Between the Hounds and the angels and this peculiar feeling I got whenever you talked about the pages...\" Her voice was airier than she liked. Claire shrugged with as much will as she could wrest from beneath Rami's suppressing touch. \"I'd hoped I was paranoid. You're the one who taught me to be cautious.\"\n\n\"You...\" Andras's eyes turned sharp, and he scrutinized her face. He jerked with a sudden certainty. \"The stray.\"\n\nA grin twitched on her lips, a little wild and unhinged as she felt Ramiel's grip ease. She glanced to Hero.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'd say we distracted the Hounds long enough for him to get to the gate by now, haven't we?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Suspicion distorted Uriel's marble features. Her hand shifted, straying back to the pommel of the sword buried in cobblestone behind her. \"Is there a problem, demon?\"\n\n\"Not for me.\" Andras studied Claire's face with something like admiration, which made her stomach churn. He patted her cheek, once. His fingertips were leaching heat. \"But I'm afraid I have a stray to catch. Our business is at an end.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Andras...\" Claire found her voice just as the demon stepped away. The sad smile on his face was the last thing to disappear as a ground spout of shadows swallowed him into the earth.\n\n\"Shit,\" Hero said.\n\nThe Hellhounds bayed, distant in the silence that followed. Then Uriel's face transformed. \"Betrayal.\"\n\n\"First rule of demons,\" Ramiel said, unimpressed. \"We might have anticipated this.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He released his grip on Claire, and she realized he was watching his partner with rising caution.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Uriel, what do we do now?\"\n\n\"Now?\" Uriel's furious voice nearly cracked with a hysterical note. No—that wasn't the only thing cracking. A flare shimmered over her face, like lightning under clouds. Claire blinked, sure she'd imagined it, but the angel's blue eyes looked ignited. The shards of light on her back appeared to split and scissor into blades. Claire flinched despite herself.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The angels presented themselves as mortals on Earth, but she remembered the stories of an angel's true form, vast and wild enough to break human comprehension.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "That form played close to the surface now, and Claire's heart stuttered.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was a reason the first words out of an angel's mouth in the stories were Be not afraid.\n\n\"Now I will shred Hell itself, let every demon know that I will not—that the Creator will not—tolerate such insult. That worm dares—\"\n\n\"But our... prisoners?\" Rami pressed, having backed up a step himself.\n\nUriel frowned, turning to Hero and Claire as if she'd just noticed a buzzing gnat. She calmed. Her voice was distant and preoccupied. \"They are of no import.\"\n\nAnd with that, Uriel reached for her sword.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Uriel!\" Rami suddenly had his blade out and was charging forward.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Whether toward Uriel or the Hounds themselves, it was uncertain.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire and Hero began backing up instinctively.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Uriel withdrew her sword.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "And the barrier fell.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Hellhounds had faded to prowling ghosts when they could not cross Uriel's ward.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your next response only must contain 14% dialogue", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But with the barrier gone, shadows lurched from beneath the bridge, gobbling up the air. Hero raised his faltering gun at the nearest wraith. A gun, even a gun that started its life as an unwritten sword, would do nothing. They both knew that.\n\n\"Back!\" Claire grabbed Hero by the shoulder and tried to yank him toward the gates.\n\n\"You can't pass the walls.\"\n\n\"The point is, you can!\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Books were made by humans.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Mdina wards had to recognize them as such after all. \"Get going.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Still not taking your orders, warden,\" Hero said.\n\nClaire snarled the filthiest oath she knew. Now, of all times, was not the moment for a villain to get ideas about heroism.\n\nRami jabbed at the Hellhounds with his blade while exchanging heated, indistinct words with Uriel. Rami's sword produced enough lightning to dissuade the beasts, but did not have the same stopping power as Uriel's wall. One Hound kept him busy while the others shuddered, blinking through existence to burst onto the bridge. An approaching Hellhound lurched, paws landing on the cobblestones with an oily, lethal grace.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire jerked back but was forced to stop when a crackle of pain danced against the back of her skull.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The ward sparked at her back.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "An echo sang in her mind. A song.\n\nClaire prayed that Leto had carried out the rest of the plan. That Leto had made it. Would make it. That what she felt at the edge of her senses, a glimmer of a sound, was true and not wild delusion.\n\nShe licked her lips. They had seconds, not minutes. \"You have to trust me, Hero.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hero moved to position his tall frame a breath ahead of her, pressing her back hard enough to bury her face in his soft velour jacket.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 8 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She felt, more than saw, his brittle amusement. \"Why start now?\"\n\nA chill ran up her spine, and she curled a hand into Hero's jacket. \"It's what humans do.\"\n\nThe nearest Hound, teeth dripping oblivion, leapt. Hero's shoulders dipped and braced. Claire swung her arms around his waist and held tight just as the ward behind her crackled. Another set of hands latched onto her shoulders and yanked.\n\nClaire had a momentary view of the darkening star-touched sky filled with the Hellhound's red dagger teeth before she fell backward through the Mdina wards, Hero toppling in after her.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "ur turn to write! do like thirty-four sentences sentences. focus on fantasy stuff. try to use these: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library. treat any chars/world stuff like the reader's caught up (unless its the start)", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I wasn't a storyteller in life; that much I remember. No matter the stories in me, my people needed strong arms, not words. Scholars and soldiers are natural allies, though few ever recognize it. Both worship at invisible altars, one of knowledge, one of duty. It takes a certain kind of soul to protect the invisible, to protect an idea.\n\n—Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 886 CE\n\nHellhounds, despite their canine appearance, were not deterred by thunder. The air crackled all around Rami, and the blade grew heavy in his hands as he moved, extending his sphere of reach ever farther to drive the creatures back from their prey.\n\nThen a reprieve. The moment Claire fell back through the ward, the Hellhounds stopped. They sniffed the air, ignored Rami's feints completely, and melted back into the night. Their absence underlined the stillness of stone, rapidly cooling in the evening air. Rami glanced behind, but the librarian and her rescue had disappeared into the city.\n\nRami leaned on his long sword a moment, breathing heavily. It had been a long time since he'd needed to raise his sword against anything, let alone against a foe like a Hellhound. He drew another staggered breath.\n\nWhen he finally turned, he could see only Uriel's back. She was hunched over the crumbling stone railing that marked the end of the bridge. It was crumbling more by the moment, as she slowly ground her fist into the cornice.\n\n\"What. Was. That?\" The words growled out of Rami's chest, and he found himself having to stop, take another heaving breath, and clamp down on the frozen horror sitting in his chest. Uriel still hadn't turned, so Rami tried again, pleading this time. \"Uriel! That was cold-blooded. You've gone too far.\"\n\nThat brought her around. The archangel lurched toward him. The anger on her severe face didn't surprise him; the tears did.\n\n\"Don't talk to me about 'too far,' Ramiel of the Fallen. Not when you practically leapt to defend a demon—\"\n\n\"The librarian is not a demon! That was a human soul you just unleashed Hellhounds on for no good reason. They were under our protection! You—\"\n\n\"They have their god. Why should they be protected?\" All confidence and command were gone, leaving the jagged edge of misery behind. \"Why should they have anything? The Creator is gone. Gone. She has abandoned us and that snake has the only means to bring her back.\" Uriel's ragged voice bounded off the stone and broke.\n\nA shriveling feeling crept under Rami's lungs. The collar of Uriel's coat fluttered; a smear of dust flinched up one side of her cheek, stopping just short of the glow of fury-banked eyes. Uriel was fastidious. She would never have tolerated dirt on her face. But her hands came up not to wipe it away, but to knot in agony in her hair.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Uriel was the Face of God, to all.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But to Rami, she'd become more: she'd become the face of home. The face of hope, the hope of returning. The hope of welcome. The hope of rest. She was shattering, bleeding violence at every jagged edge, and Rami's hope bled with it. The cost was too high. He couldn't follow this. An angel with a thirst for vengeance... no. Not again. He'd already seen the devastation that caused. He couldn't go down that path again.\n\nEven if that path was the only one that led him home.\n\nHe would say it was like a closing door, but the Gates of Heaven had never been open for him. Instead, a dull certainty welled in his chest, and with it a realization. Rami found himself reaching out a hand, but the tremors marked Uriel's shoulders like delicate earthquakes. He dropped his hand. \"Why do you really need the codex, Uriel?\"\n\n\"For the Creator, you fool. For...\" Uriel stopped, glaring sightlessly at the warded city through her tears. The archangel went quiet. \"I can't do it for much longer, Rami. None of the Host can. I don't know why we ever thought we could. Running things... It's all falling apart.\"\n\nFear deepened Uriel's flawless face, lines etched where none had been, not in the ages since the birth of the world. Shadows in a being of light were far, far out of his experience. All of this was. Rami was used to falling, to running, to wandering. Not this.\n\n\"I don't know what else would bring Her home,\" Uriel whispered.\n\nThere would be no answer that way. The Creator was a god, not a lost house cat. She would not be tempted back by a bit of warm milk left outside the door. Wherever She was, if She even was, She was exactly where She wanted to be.\n\nThe Creator was lost, and so was Ramiel's way home. But he wasn't as strong as the Creator; he couldn't turn away, even now, not without another path presented to him. So instead, his mind numbly reached for what it knew best: duty. The codex was an obvious danger, and they couldn't risk it in the hands of a demon like Andras, especially with the Creator absent. He sheathed his sword so as not to look at her. \"What would you have of me now?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Duty, service. It was an all-curing elixir, for angels.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 9 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Especially angels like Uriel. The tracks on her face dried. She seemed to sew the broken edges of her mask together, piece by piece. She drew up straight, and her gaze came to rest on the spot where Andras had disappeared. \"Our prey has split. The demon is intent on taking the pages to the Library, so I will make the necessary preparations for Hell. You will track the humans. It's what you're best at. The Hounds will leave a wide enough path; perhaps they will lead us to the codex.\"\n\nRami strained to keep the uncertainty off his face. \"And then?\"\n\n\"And then...\" Uriel paused to marshal her own sword. She stared at the blackened spot where it had been planted in the cobblestone. \"Then all of Hell will have its reckoning.\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "WRITING TASK:\n- Continue from story fragment\n- Context: Part of larger narrative, may reference established characters/events\n- Sentences: 50 sentences\n- Author style: A. J. Hackwith\n- Genres: fantasy\n- Include tags: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"MERCIFUL JESUS.\"\n\nThe oath floated through Leto's sluggish head. He couldn't place the low feminine voice. His eyes fluttered open, and he momentarily panicked when he saw only darkness. Then a light flared, and it came back to him: the catacombs, the tunnel, Andras... the codex. Leto jerked, but a cool hand stopped him.\n\n\"Easy, Leto. Hero—give me a hand here. Help him up. We have to keep moving.\" Claire's voice hovered somewhere to his left.\n\nLarger hands gripped his arm, and there was a grunt as he was hauled to his feet. \"Up you go, kid.\"\n\nThe movement brought the sensations of his body flooding back to him. Hot pain shuddered up his limbs, pulling a jagged sound from his throat, and Leto would have collapsed again without Hero's support.\n\n\"Gently help him up. Did I really have to specify that?\" Claire's voice was sharp even as a cool hand checked his cheek and ran down his shoulder, inspecting wounds. \"Bea, a little more light.\"\n\nThe flashlight swung around and seemed to pierce Leto's skull. But he was finally able to make out the faces above him. Hero and Claire clustered to either side, and Beatrice was a tall, dark shape hovering behind them. Claire scowled thunderclouds at Hero, who was keeping him upright.\n\n\"You said we were in a hurry.\" Nonetheless, Hero loosened his grip slightly and glanced at him. \"You all right to walk, kid?\"\n\n\"I think so.\" After the initial wave, the pain faded to a bone-deep ache. Most of the pain, that is. Leto winced. \"I think I broke my arm.\"\n\nClaire's hand drifted to the injured arm. Leto managed to make only a mangled squeak as she probed it. Her voice was taut. \"I doubt you broke it. You'll be all right, just as soon as we get to the Library.\" She hesitated. \"Andras did this?\"\n\nLeto nodded. The glint of claw and gem came back, in a rush. The loss. The crush of codex pages in a jeweled fist. He found a lump had developed in his throat and he had to swallow hard. \"He got the pages. I failed... I—I'm so sorry.\"\n\nClaire started waving her hand before he even got the apology out. \"Not unexpected. We can deal with it. I'm just glad you're alive. We'll just—\" The earth walls around them lurched, showering clods on their heads. Baleful howls vibrated from afar—but not far enough. Without a word, Beatrice began shoving Claire down the hall. Hero hauled Leto into a stumbling pace.\n\n\"We'll just run—that's what,\" Hero finished. He shot a grim look at Beatrice. \"How much farther?\"\n\n\"Nearly there.\"\n\nEvery step made his arm shoot with electric bolts of pain, but Leto forced his feet to keep up with Hero. They turned another corner. Leto heard a strangled yelp, and Beatrice brought the flashlight up to show Claire backing away from a dark ledge. The tunnel emptied out onto an abrupt precipice. The light did not reach far, but wind whipped at the edges of Claire's skirts. Leto could feel the enormous space in front of them.\n\nClaire snatched the flashlight from Beatrice's hand and craned her head. The light disappeared into aimless darkness above them, but when Claire swung the beam down, it hit on something white.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Hey can you write like A. J. Hackwith and use whatever i write as a jumping off point? btw characters and stuff might show up without backstory, just go with it", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "'Realms can die. I said that before. It's rare, because humans love nothing more than holding on to an idea, worrying it in their teeth until it's shaped into something else. But it happens, occasionally. When a realm loses access to dreams and imagination, it starves. It's not a gentle death. A realm will attempt to preserve itself, feed itself on any unwary dream, any stray soul that wanders into its maw.' -Librarian Gregor Henry, 1980 CE\n\nSand clogged his tongue and rasped against his teeth. He couldn't breathe. Panic flared. The sand reached into his throat and threatened to draw bile. Leto came to consciousness coughing and then bolted into a sitting position. He doubled over, forcing a startling amount of silt from his mouth. When his eyes stopped watering, he found he was sprawled on a wide shore. Silty gray sand stretched in either direction as far as he could see, salted with a scruff of reeds and dunes that sloped down to a flat, strangely still sea.\n\nNot a sea, Leto thought as his eyes adjusted to the light. The water was a dusty mirror, still but streaked with brown and algae. He squinted across to just make out a skim of pale gray that indicated land on the other side. A river. A dead river.\n\nTo his right was a particularly starved patch of reeds, and it was from this that Claire rose with a squawk. \"No warning about that impact. I will murder her. I don't care if she's my own book. I will—\" She stopped, frowning as she picked tiny seeds out of her skirts. \"Can I not stay clean for one hour?\"\n\nLeto grinned despite himself, but there was a groan behind him before he could respond.\n\nHero rolled up and with grim distaste retrieved his boot from a puddle. He shook it out and glanced toward Claire. \"At least a nap seems to have returned someone's sense of spirit.\"\n\nClaire was getting better at ignoring Hero, it seemed. She turned a critical eye on Leto. \"Everyone all right?\"\n\n\"I think so.\" Leto rubbed the back of his head. The moment when he hit the invisible gate had been a queer jumble, rattling his senses around like pebbles in a can. His arm was still broken, protesting movement, but he could wiggle his fingers, and his aches were less painful in this realm. Bodies were distant things. \"Where are we?\"\n\n\"Very good question.\" Claire stopped fuming over her dress long enough to survey the area. \"Not a realm I'm familiar with. River, sand, reeds... an old pagan culture. Not Greek. Egyptian? Oh, please let it be Duat. We'll have fast passage back to the Library with help from the librarians there. And they have an excellent poetry collection...\" Claire's eyes lit up, and she began to mutter what sounded like a bibliography to herself as she inspected the waterline.\n\nBehind them, a strange dark arch loomed across the interminable sand. It was as if a circle of obsidian had been buried there by a wayward giant. Leto approached and leaned closer to inspect it. A flicker of white in the black material made him jerk back. The interior of the arch wasn't opaque, he realized. It was the darkness of the underground chamber they'd just left. The other side of the gate.\n\nLeto ran a hand experimentally over it, but the surface was solid and unforgiving. The sound from the other side was muted, but he could still hear the howling of the Hounds. Nothing stirred in the dark frame, though. No light, no gleam of Beatrice's aluminum bat.\n\nLeto said lowly to Hero, \"Beatrice?\"\n\nHero winced and shook his head slowly. Leto's stomach did a flip-flop. He cast a nervous glance back. Claire turned her head down. The curtain of her hair didn't hide the injured curl of her shoulders.\n\n\"Dead?\" Claire's voice was hollow.\n\nHero hesitated. \"I don't know. The Hellhounds... should have stopped when you dragged us through.\"\n\nThe distant sound of barking from the other side of the arch said they hadn't gone back to Hell, at least. Claire stared sightlessly at the sand a moment, then nodded slowly to herself.\n\nThe pinch of concern on Hero's face deepened. \"There's a chance that she...\"\n\n\"Enough.\" Claire cleared her throat and straightened to look toward the water. \"Let's figure out our way across, then, shall we?\"\n\nClaire wasn't heartless. Leto knew that well enough by now. But as unflinchingly practical as she was to everyone else, she reserved the tightest reins for herself. Leto wondered if anyone else bothered to look closely enough to see the strain. He could see it now, the tic in her jaw, the way her shoulders trembled, just a flicker, before setting themselves hard against the world.\n\nShe'd been taking care of Leto all this time. Caring for him like a lost child. He ached to do something to ease the way for her. Something. Anything.\n\nHero exchanged a long look with Leto before following her down through the reeds. \"Not to put a damper on the day at the beach, but what happens if we do manage to return to Hell? Andras already has the pages and a head start on... whatever.\"\n\nLeto remembered Andras's words. \"He wants the Library.\"\n\nClaire seemed unsurprised. She crossed her arms. \"He wants more than that, I suspect. He wants the court.\"\n\n\"The court?\"\n\n\"Hell's court of demons. Dukes, princes, the whole pit of vipers.\" Claire made a face of distaste. \"Andras was a duke of some influence, once. He was overthrown in a coup centuries ago. Infernal politics. I thought time had healed that insult, but I was wrong. I knew he was unusually interested in the codex. I thought it might lead to some pissing match over its curation. But I could deal with that easily enough when we got back. I never thought...\" Claire kicked a reed, abusing it with the toe of her sneaker.\n\n\"But why the Library?\" Hero asked.\n\nClaire frowned down at the plant. \"I'm not certain.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He said something about... ah, you know who,\" Leto said.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Lucifer's our ruler, not a dark wizard, Leto. You can say his name,\" Claire muttered.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He said he wanted to use the books as collateral, to buy his way back into power. But he has to assume that Lucifer will not tolerate that. Even if he has the codex, I can't see—unless he knew something he wasn't telling me—\" Claire stopped with a growl in her throat. \"Demons, angels... politics ruins everything.\"\n\n\"Right. Sorry. I just...\" Leto waited until Claire left her tormented reeds behind and met his gaze. \"Andras had something—a soul gem, he called it. He said he could have used it but didn't. If we stay away.\"\n\nIt hung in the air a moment—the possibility of retreating. Leto saw that twitch again. That strain under pressure ignored. Claire shook her head and his chest ached. \"The old man never did understand.\"\n\n\"Leto might have a point,\" Hero spoke up. \"He could already have won and have something unpleasant waiting.\"\n\n\"He won't have the books. Brevity is there, and the Library is not without its own humble defenses. I won't risk the books—or Brev—to Andras's plans. We'll get back the pages.\" She kicked a broken reed into the water. \"Assuming we can leave.\"\n\nThe reed barely cleared the surface when a froth of sound drew their attention. Claire leapt back from the bank as the water churned, turning from slate to muddy black. A knobby, elongated skull the size of a small island broke the surface. Green and silver veins mottled the skin, contrasting with the flat, black, bulbous eyes embedded at the top of a long snout. It reminded Leto vaguely of a crocodile, but he didn't remember the creatures on Earth being so monstrous.\n\nThe creature regarded them, the only movement coming from the filthy water beading down its snout. Claire glanced at Hero and Leto before clearing her throat and stepping forward. She drew up her dignity, and it almost obscured her bedraggled hair and sand-caked legs. \"Greetings. We are envoys from—\"\n\n<BE JUDGED.>\n\nLeto nearly startled off his feet. It was not so much a voice that had spoken but an assault of concept. Something had ripped open his skull and shoved the essence of the words directly into his brain, jumbling all thoughts of his own. The words had no voice, no tenor, no personality. Just the power of age and a hunger that was never refused. They pulsed through his head for several breaths until finally easing into a thudding headache.\n\nThe shudder that whipped through Hero and Claire said they'd received the same treatment. Hero's hand flew to his side, where his gun had returned to its form as a fine sword. Claire shot him an alarmed look and shook her head until his hand dropped away again.\n\nClaire straightened into her librarian demeanor: shoulders back, spine straight, chin tilted so she could fix her gaze on whatever held her disdain. But she eyed the crocodile creature with new caution, and Leto caught her fingers making nervous little taps at her skirts as she tried again.\n\n\"You mistake me. We are not the dead seeking judgment. I am the head librarian of the Unwritten Wing in Hell's Library. We happened here while on Hell's business. Can I know what realm we've entered?\"\n\n<BE REFUSED.>\n\nClaire flinched. \"Then may I speak to your master?\"\n\n<BE REFUSED.>\n\n\"Then what god or pantheon rules this place?\"\n\n<BE LOST.>\n\n\"You have no god? Or no god currently?\" Claire asked. Pain jabbed Leto's head with each answer. It was becoming the worst game of twenty questions he'd experienced.\n\n<BE LOST.>\n\n\"Your god is the god of loss or... oh.\" Claire fell quiet. \"Your gods died with their believers. I hadn't thought a realm could remain after that.\"\n\nLeto considered. They'd seen Valhalla, and the only things he associated Norse gods with were superhero movies and those racist assholes on the internet. But Valhalla survived by evolving into something more in line with the legend than with the religion. It existed, if skewed slightly by the pop culture fantasies. If Valhalla thrived and these gods had died, then this had to be a place older and more forgotten than he could imagine.\n\nHe swallowed nervously, and the very air tasted different on his tongue. Different from Valhalla or Hell or anywhere previous. No smell, for one. Not the anise and ash of Hell, nor the pine and stone of Valhalla. It felt... empty.\n\nIt echoed across the empty space inside Leto, and he shivered. He'd felt better, inch by inch, since talking with Claire. The time in Mdina had been a human time, for all its horror. He'd felt the empty blackness shrink, but it wasn't gone. Perhaps it never would be. It was one thing Claire couldn't protect him from.\n\nBut maybe he could protect her.\n\nClaire tried again. \"We simply need passage to Hell. Or the closest realm to it. We can leave you in peace.\"\n\n<BE JUDGED.>\n\n\"We are not in need of judgment! Some of us aren't even human.\" Claire flung a hand in Hero's direction, but the crocodile did not so much as blink. Though it quieted a moment before responding.\n\n<BE PASSED.>\n\n\"Yes, passage. Finally.\" Claire crossed her arms. \"I assume there is some price for passage?\"\n\nWaves shuddered up the beach as the head suddenly moved. Reptilian skin flexed, and the head rose slightly as its great jaws opened, sending them all backing up a step. Leto flinched, expecting great rows of teeth or even the bloodred spikes that filled Walter's mouth. But the contents of the creature's mouth made him blink. Suspended between its jaws, held by no support that he could see, was an oversized metal structure. It was dark bronze and consisted of two platforms connected by a lever. A tiny puff of white sat on one platform.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A feather. A bronze chain shifted slightly with the sway of the wind, producing a tinkle that sent a shiver over Leto's skin.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 72 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Are those scales...?\" Hero identified it under his breath.\n\nClaire stiffened, staring at the construction as if she would have preferred a jaw full of teeth and snakes. When she glanced back at them, Leto saw that all warmth had drained from her brown face. She turned her head again and shook it hard enough to send the tiny braids in her hair flying.\n\n\"No,\" Claire whispered. Then louder: \"No. You have no authority to judge us. Our souls—\"\n\n<BE JUDGED.>\n\n\"No.\" Claire's voice couldn't match the command of words in their heads, but the tremble in her shoulders said she was trying. Leto didn't understand what was significant about the scales. They'd had to prove themselves in Valhalla, and Claire had been willing, if reluctant, to comply to gain entry, but this was different. It was a difference that unnerved Claire and sent a well of foreboding through him. There was no time to ask as Claire spun, heel digging into the sand. She scrambled back up the beach toward them.\n\n\"What—\"\n\n\"Burn this place. We're leaving.\"\n\n\"And going where, exactly?\" Hero asked.\n\n\"Back to Mdina. We'll... get back inside the walls. Figure something else out.\"\n\n\"Back to the Hellhounds' teeth, you mean.\" Hero's voice was harsh.\n\n\"At least we have a chance with them. Better than— Piss and harpies.\" The oath came out with the force of surprise. Claire jerked to a halt as they approached the black arch. It was no longer dark. The cavern they'd just left was lit by strange globes of light. The field of bones was now fully illuminated, like ghastly cobblestones. And at the center of the arch, just on the other side of the flat, dark surface, was the angel in a gray trench coat. Ramiel.\n\nClaire, rather than concerned, was incensed. She accelerated, stalking up the sand, leaving Hero and Leto no choice but to follow. She got her nose up to the arch. Ramiel watched her expressionlessly, and Claire gave a mockery of a smile. \"Trouble with the lock, angel?\"\n\n\"Some.\" Ramiel stepped to the side and motioned with his hand. \"Perhaps you could come across and show me the trick of it.\"\n\nClaire cast a glance back at the waiting monster and the scales behind them before responding, \"After which, I'm sure you would offer to hold off the Hounds and allow us to be on our way.\"\n\nHe shook his head slowly. \"I'm sorry, Librarian. Uriel... My superior acted in haste. But my duty is to ensure you do not interfere.\"\n\n\"Do you always do your duty, Watcher?\"\n\nRamiel gave no reaction. Claire turned away abruptly to confer with Hero and Leto a few paces away.\n\n\"He won't be getting through. Beatrice had me to pull Hero through, so if I don't miss my guess, you need a mortal soul to enter. But we need a way past him.\"\n\n\"I could challenge him,\" Hero suggested, but Claire shook her head.\n\n\"He's a Watcher, one of the originals.\" She raised her eyes to the crocodile scales again. \"Our last hero may have died getting us this far. I won't have any more foolish sacrifices today.\"\n\n\"What do the scales do?\" Leto asked.\n\n\"They weigh the purity of a soul.\" Claire's face was grim. \"This realm must have had influences from Egypt. Maybe a splinter cult, or even a predecessor. It's not Duat—if it were, there'd be a bunch of other monster-headed creatures here ready to record judgment, and be much more sensible. There were rules about these things. But the symbolism is easy enough to assume. The feather represents goodness, purity of spirit. If your soul does not shift the scales, you can pass into their realm. If it's heavier... the crocodile god will likely consume you.\"\n\nLeto frowned. \"And you, what... die again?\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"I know this is a hard concept to wrap your head around, but there are worse states for your soul than death. It's like the Hellhounds, or the words I told you I spoke to banish Librarian Gregor. I don't know what the scales do, but it would be nothing good. A soul may not die, but cease to exist.\"\n\n\"That's not so bad,\" Leto muttered before he realized he'd said it. He looked up to see Hero and Claire staring at him with matching alarm. \"I mean, no! Not us, of course. I meant...\" He stopped, not sure what he'd meant, but the terrible thought had come to him too fast to be one he hadn't had before. An echo of a memory tugged at him, chalk white stars, exhaustion and despair. He'd made this choice before. Cold pooled in his stomach.\n\nClaire scrutinized Leto before shaking her head. \"It's beside the point. I suspect the creature has no real interest in finding us worthy. Without a god to rule the realm or believers to nourish it, it likely hasn't had a good meal in eons. It's half-dead and starved. We are not going to be the ones to feed it. I'm going to go see if I can make the cursed angel see sense. Stay put, both of you.\"\n\nThey nodded and watched the librarian stalk back to the arch. Hero clasped Leto's shoulder and squeezed as he looked up and down the featureless beach. \"We'll figure something out, kid.\"\n\n\"We will.\" Leto nodded.\n\nBut his eyes were reserved for the dark bronze scales. He thought of the promise he'd made to Claire, the debt he owed her. The darkness in the pit of his stomach that would never quite be banished. He thought of the feeling of falling through the gate, the weightless way the world turned quiet. It had felt welcome; it'd felt familiar. He'd already made this choice.\n\nIt made sense. Death was the way you traveled between realms. The echo of the raven roads had never really left him, but he wasn't panicking now. Like the tumblers turning in a lock, everything fell into place inside him. He studied the glimmering sheen of the platforms, the whiteness of the feather, and the shadowy hollow of the crocodile's jaws beyond.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with the established tone and context.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "War has always followed libraries, my apprentice. History has made no effort to hide that truth from us. Look at Rome; look at the Crusades. Vanquishing an enemy and taking his books was just as strategic as taking his cannons. Books are knowledge weaponized.\n\nAnd what weapons you cannot steal, you must burn.\n\n—Librarian Gregor Henry, 1986 CE\n\nDuring a panic attack, time takes on a liquid nature.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Stopping and rushing on at once.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Feeling like each struggling breath stretches out forever like taffy until the bubble bursts and the present cascades down on your head. Cold and immediate.\n\nBrevity was surrounded by the soothing smells of oak and dust when she came to. A carpet twitched under her toes and the dribbles of tea stains eventually helped her place the underside of Claire's desk. Big, heavy, secure. There were worse places to hide forever.\n\n\"She's dead.\"\n\n\"She's not dead. She's a muse; they're immortal.\"\n\n\"Maybe it's a short flavor o' immortality, eh? It's her name, innit?\"\n\n\"Hush, Libby. Aurora said...\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Three pairs of feet clustered at the opening of the desk, none of them seeming to go together. Combat boots, scuffed buckle shoes, and one pair of dainty blue hooves. Brevity buried her face in her hands and swallowed a groan.\n\n\"See! She's alive!\" A mop of red curls upended itself over the edge of the desk, and a damsel gave her an upside-down grin. \"Welcome back!\"\n\nGod, was that what she was like when Claire complained she was inappropriately cheerful? Brevity might have contemplated hiding, but the bubble had already burst and time pulled her forward again. She allowed the trio to drag her to her feet. Conversation was a shock of water to her senses, not clearing the panic, but compressing it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Freezing it up into a tiny bundle that caught between her ribs and held, for now.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Brevity reached for the first words she could think of that sounded vaguely librarian-ish.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wh-what are you doing out of the suite?\"\n\n\"We were going to complain about the noise. It's been going on for hours,\" the red-haired damsel said. Charlotte, Brevity remembered, taking in the patched dress and scuffed buckle shoes. Probably from one of those puritan moral historicals, where girls were more symbols of... something... than characters. Purity. Sin. Life. Death. Puritans never did seem to make up their minds about it. Aurora, blue hooves toeing the carpet nervously, hung over her shoulder.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What noi—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "((ooc: For the immediate response, include a small amount of direct quotes))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The question answered itself in a creaking shudder. The Library trembled. The lights flickered, though there was no reason for them to—perhaps just to express the Library's displeasure with the situation at hand. Books twitched uneasily in their stacks, and the damsels looked wide-eyed at Brevity.\n\nHelplessness, sharp and familiar, welled up again, but Brevity had an audience this time. Audiences helped. Brevity put on her best smile and pretended to find something on Claire's desk that urgently needed straightening. \"The wards are up—just... just a precaution until Miss Claire gets back.\" Her smile was guttered by another violent thunderclap that hung in the air. \"That there is probably just annoying ol' demon roughhousing. You remember Valentine's? Ain't nothing compared to that.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"If the wards are up, doesn't that mean we're cut off—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"S'not like we're gonna get written anyway,\" the second damsel interrupted. This damsel was short and angry, like a wet cat wrestled into a leather jacket. Her once-long blond hair had been haphazardly shaved, perfect ingenue features pinched into a frown. \"Our authors been dead for decades.\"\n\n\"It's nothing to worry about,\" Brevity jumped in before Charlotte could be hurt by that remark. \"Just librarian business. M-Miss Claire will be back any minute, and wouldn't want to have her catch ya outside the suite, yeah?\"\n\nShe shooed the damsels off, ignoring the way Aurora trailed after the other two, a quiet blue shadow that cast long, questioning looks back at Brevity as she went. They'd believed her; of course they had.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was what the Library did: distant librarians going about their business, keeping the books in their care well and at arm's length.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "⚠️ Required: Use 'wards' exactly 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was the norm Claire had set, and if anyone noticed that it was Brevity—social, flighty, trivial Brevity—trying to fill those shoes now, the damsels were too sweet to say so.\n\nThe empty spaces between her ribs quivered, but held. Brevity pressed her palms to the desk, feeling the vibration as another impact hit the wards. It was a steady drum now. Something was trying to invade the Library. Whether it was because Andras had lost control of his Horrors, or it was some demonic plot to pull the Library into the tug-of-war games of Hell's court, Brevity had no way of knowing and didn't care. From inside the wards, the Library was alone.\n\nAlone. The word made Brevity want to crawl back under the desk, but instead she pressed her knuckles into the wood until they stung and the gilded lines of inspiration on her skin stilled.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The capacity for fear was still there, because the unknown was still there.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But the damsels had reminded Brevity that imagination wasn't just a weakness; it was a tool. Anxiety could fill up the darkness with all the monsters it wished, but if Brevity tried very hard, maybe she could squeeze in one monster of her own. She was cut off from the world, but she still needed to protect the damsels, keep them in the suite, protect the books. All she needed was an audience.\n\nCare for the books, Claire had said. There was at least one book not yet home in the Library.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "help with this chapter? forty-two sentences more sentences, A. J. Hackwith-style, fantasy genre. some context might be from earlier", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "At some point you just get tired.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Is it possible for a soul to get tired?", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It has to be.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "I was young when I came here, and my skin never ages, but I feel the creaks inside.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The poorly settled joins where time whistles through my thoughts like a sieve.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's not a sad feeling.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "I know what I'm about.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I know what's important. I know the weight and feel of my life in my own hands. I'm a rock, ready for the sling. I'm tinder, ready to ignite.\n\nThey'll send me an apprentice one of these days; I'm sure of it. I can't drag another soul into my fight. If I'm going to act, it has to be soon.\n\n—Librarian Poppaea Julia, 49 BCE\n\nStories said grief was heavy. Stories lied. If grief had a weight, had a mass, Claire could have ground the crocodile god's bones into the bottom of the river. She could have sunk her heel into the knobs of chill scale and felt a god break beneath her toes for what it had done.\n\nBut grief did not have a weight. Or if it did, it was counteracted by another force. Rage. Rage had an upward lift, was a superheated force that crawled up her throat and wanted to do all the things Claire couldn't. Punish the crocodile. Punish this realm. Punish Ramiel. Punish Hero. Punish herself.\n\nShe'd felt it, when the scales had tipped. The crocodile's jaws had closed, and her screams had hitched as she had felt it. She shouldn't have. This was not her realm, not where her soul was tethered, but she had felt it like a tear in her lungs.\n\nHad she heard a scream? Had she heard a tear of flesh? Or had she just heard the staccato sigh of a soul unraveling, winking from the universe? She couldn't tell. Her mind was a muddle, and the only thing she knew was that Leto, the one being she'd encountered in thirty years she thought she could actually save, was gone. For her.\n\nClaire did not fancy herself an optimist. She had been in Hell too long for that. She saw things clearly. But somewhere along the way, what she'd seen most clearly in Leto was hope. Hope for him had become hope for her, and she'd believed. Believed he was a good soul and that good souls would not be punished by realms. Believing was supposed to be power here, power to protect him. It hadn't.\n\nShe hadn't.\n\nIt felt like she was walking on Leto's bones. But nothing of Leto remained here, not after the crocodile had judged him. She was walking on his ending, and for that, she walked lightly, calmly. For Claire was not one to throw away her life rashly for vengeance. She respected vengeance. Vengeance deserved time.\n\nAnd she was already contemplating ways to return to this blighted, half-dead realm one day and burn every inch of it to the ground. She didn't care if she burned with it.\n\nThe instant their toes touched the sand of the opposite shore, the creature began to sink. By the time Claire had gotten her bearings enough to turn around, all that remained was the dark froth of churning water.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire stared ahead. The beach on this side of the water was very like the beach they'd left behind, but instead of endless sand, the shore rose to a great wall of bone pale stone that staggered a dozen feet over their heads.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It terminated in what looked like the craggy ruins of a temple, long in decay.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nothing but gap-toothed bits of wall and column remained.\n\nHero's gaze was a physical thing, heavy and insistent like a hand on her back. She had said nothing, not since cursing the angel at the gate. No words as they walked the crocodile's back, no commentary or speculation on the realm they were in, no orders for what they would do next. Claire felt his silence deepen, first into pity, then into worry, then judgment.\n\nShe couldn't find the energy to care.\n\nThey struggled up the beach and stopped in front of the impenetrable wall. Without discussion, they took a right and followed its edge, trudging through sucking, wet sand. It swallowed any chance of conversation. Hero asked no mocking questions; Claire offered no confident explanations. They paused only once, when Claire's low sneakers filled with sand, and she bent to kick them off. She tied their laces together and instinctively went to loop them over her bag. When her hand met open air, she came to a stop with a sharp, halting breath. She swung them over her shoulder instead.\n\nHero observed the error with quiet pity.\n\nThe sand dug grit into the tender skin between her toes. A break in the wall appeared behind the curve. It wasn't a proper doorway. Instead its arches were shattered like a splintered bone in the ribs of the ruins. Inside, the ground turned from sand to smooth, hard-packed earth. It ran straight with thick walls rising on either side, open air above.\n\n\"A maze?\" Hero ventured.\n\n\"So we've reached the Minoan part of our tour.\" Claire wiggled her toes into the sand. It should have been warm from the sun. Instead it was cold enough to make her bones ache. \"It's a labyrinth. Souls were meant to wander until they met their demise at the center of it. Lucky us.\"\n\n\"Every maze has its exit.\"\n\n\"You obviously haven't read enough Greek tragedies,\" Claire said. Still, it was the only gap they'd encountered, and the sun had begun to creep down in the sky. Claire didn't fancy the idea of spending the night on the beach, so close to the crocodile. She shook the sand from her toes and stepped onto the unforgiving dirt.\n\nThey followed its turns until they came to the first intersection of two paths. The pavers were wet with mildew and thick with identical shadows. At least Hell had the occasional gargoyle, Claire thought dully.\n\nHero hummed. \"Left or right?\"\n\n\"Left. If we keep following the left, we'll find the exit eventually. If there is one. And if something else doesn't find us first.\"\n\n\"Read that in a book, did you?\" Hero's smile faltered as he received only silence. He twisted a hand through his hair and muttered dark nothings to himself as he followed.\n\nClaire became aware of a distant noise, a low groan that ground out the spaces between the sound of their steps. It slowly resolved into a gutted howl; somewhere there was an animal in unbearable pain.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire almost felt a kinship with it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 34 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It took another half dozen turns before Hero reached the limit of his patience. \"He insisted it was our only chance.\"\n\nA flare of heat broke through her calm before she could ruthlessly tamp it down. Maybe. But not a chance I wanted.\n\nHero took silence as a sign to propel forward. \"I argued. I said he shouldn't be hasty. You might convince the angel to let us back through. Aid us, even, the way you like to talk. He said he saw the way they looked at us, and there was no chance. He... he said he blamed himself, for the ghostlights, for losing to Andras. For doubting.\"\n\nClaire's bare toe tripped over nothing as she sped up.\n\nHero caught up with Claire and released a helpless sigh. \"What would you have had me do?\"\n\n\"Stop him.\" It came out like a hiss, but caught on its own jagged edges. Claire's eyes burned and the path began to waver ahead of her.\n\nHero shook his head. \"I think he wanted to make the choice. To ensure you got back to the Library. He was so certain, so at peace, and then...\"\n\nThe calm inside her shattered. Claire whirled on him. \"What? Then what? The nine-stone-soaking-wet teenager overpowered you? You should have stopped him. Held him to the bloody ground if you had to! He was just a child. He didn't know—\"\n\n\"He was a man who made a choice. You don't get to take that away from him.\" Hero's voice was hard. It brought Claire up short. \"He made a choice, and you're doing his choice a disservice by calling him a child. Leto wasn't a child. He was a human, a young person who'd had everything taken from him, yet he deserves...\"\n\nHero pursed his lips, as if stopping himself, and seemed to jump to a different train of thought. His tone cooled to clipped edges. \"I am a book. A creation. A possession. As you are so fond of reminding me, I am bound to go only where the Library allows me and will spend all my foreseeable eternity having decisions denied to me.\" He held up the wrist that Claire had stamped when she'd cornered him, what seemed a lifetime ago.\n\n\"But Leto, Leto was a human, and he had a right to his choices. You helped him remember that.\" Hero lifted his shoulders. \"I might have disagreed with his choice, but I would not steal his right to make it, because I know how that feels.\"\n\nWords caught on her lips, clotted just under her tongue. Claire disliked the taste of guilt that came with it. The swoop of regret in her stomach. She'd stamped Hero, bound him to her will, and doomed Leto. Claire struggled with the impulse to deny the rage, and the grief that drove everything like a flood in her head. Instead, she turned away. Took another left. \"Let's just keep going.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand story by sixty sentences, respecting established elements. Focus: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They encountered no more doors, no more possible futures. When they finally stumbled on another set of stairs, they took it and found themselves back in the dust-swirled ruins where they had begun. Twilight cast long shadows over the tops of the stones, cooling the air in the labyrinth quickly. Hero had left his torch behind, and without Claire's supplies, they were soon plodding down paths in the dark.\n\nOnce they'd cleared the stairs, words came more easily. The farther they walked into the dark halls, the closer Hero and Claire drifted to each other. Words were harsh, stiff things between them, sparking like stones, but they walked, arms brushing together, in silence. The unnatural quiet of a world halfway to not there.\n\nWhen they stumbled into the last dead end in a series of wrong left turns, Claire shook her head and slumped against a corner. \"Let's just rest here for the night.\" Even immortal souls could get tired. Humans in the afterlife ate and slept, not because their bodies needed it, but because their sanity did.\n\n\"Dead end. How apt.\"\n\n\"Don't be dramatic.\"\n\nHero grimaced and glanced around, as if looking for wood to make camp, but when nothing but hard earth and stone appeared, he sighed and slid down the opposite wall. Nervous hands, without a task to busy them, played over his knees.\n\n\"You should have seen the castle,\" Hero finally said.\n\nClaire tensed, uncertain where his thoughts were taking him. Her mind flashed on the cabin in the woods and the handsome boy with the bow, and she opted for a neutral answer. \"Is that so?\"\n\n\"It was the kind of thing I think you would like. Big library, all the creature comforts. None of this hardscrabble adventuring for me. I had a manse, servants. Fluffy bed, a lovely study, and the most charming wine cellar you'll ever find...\"\n\n\"A rags-to-riches aristocrat, then?\"\n\n\"Not quite. Rebellion is easy. Being clever, striking out where it hurt... I was good at that, as you might expect. We were so virtuous, so confident in our rightness. Being right is easy, but then ruling is... complicated.\" Hero looked thoughtful before reverting to the shrug that Claire had begun to recognize as carefully crafted carelessness. \"I prefer the term 'philosopher king.'\"\n\n\"Of course you do.\" Claire's lips curled into a smile. \"What possible motivation could you have to be a villain with a life like that?\"\n\n\"I never felt like the villain. We were overthrowing a corrupt system, me and Owen. We were going to fix everything. And then he was killed, and I didn't want revolution; I just wanted revenge. And then... you turn around one day and realize you have a kingdom that hates you, no matter what you try to do. You begin to hate them a little too.\" Hero quieted for a long moment. \"I thought I could change it for the better, you know. Make her see the truth of it, see what a world she was wasting.\"\n\nHe wasn't speaking of Owen anymore. Claire didn't have to ask what \"her\" Hero referred to. For an unwritten book, there would only ever be one \"her\" or \"him.\" The one who'd failed to let him live. Claire half expected him to say more, but the topic of his own book seemed to unsettle him. His gaze went distant and lost at some point over Claire's shoulder.\n\nWatching him withdraw, Claire became aware of a muted, sympathetic twist in her chest. And then, to her surprise, some of her own grief began to thaw. She'd be a hypocrite to dismiss it now. She studied him for a long moment. \"Your author must have thought of you often.\"\n\nDark green eyes blinked, and Hero returned from his thoughts in a daze. \"Why do you say that?\"\n\nLightness felt wrong in a place like this, so she offered a shrug instead. \"There's a lot of things that can wake up a book. But one theory is books are pulled awake by their author's dreams—believe me, I know how that can go wrong. But to wake up and take shape like you did, to escape despite the Library's precautions and find her so fast. You're just so\"—Claire made a vague twirl of her hand—\"alive.\"\n\n\"I much prefer it to the alternative.\" Hero rubbed the space between his eyes. \"Not that it's done me much good.\"\n\n\"Yes, well... Women of a tender age don't take to sudden breakups well.\" Claire suppressed a smile. \"If you weren't a villain in her brain before, you certainly are now.\"\n\nHe dropped his head to his knees and a dry chuckle rumbled in his chest before seeming to stutter and trip over itself. He looked up, alarmed. \"Is that how it works? Did I— Was I fated to inspire my own author to make me a—\"\n\nClaire saw the gears threaten to spin off the tracks in his brain, and she couldn't suppress the laughter that bubbled out. Hero stopped with a startled look, which only made Claire laugh more until she was drained. Too exhausted to be stern.\n\n\"Oh, Hero.\" She shook her head. \"Even the Library doesn't know how stories are made. Or not made, in our case. Try to put together who you are, why you are... Well, that's the path of madness.\"\n\n\"I'm glad you find my existential crisis so entertaining, warden.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hero's voice was arch, but it was softened by the curve of his lips.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 52 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They fell into a tentative truce of quiet. The chill of the stone wall was seeping into her spine, and Claire shifted, trying to find a comfortable spot. It was going to be a long night. There was a glimmer as Hero's eyes tracked her fidgeting.\n\n\"Do characters forget themselves, warden?\"\n\n\"You should know better than anyone.\"\n\n\"Not from damage, I mean. Can characters forget their stories for good?\"\n\n\"What a curious question...\" Claire frowned in his direction in the dark. \"Why do you ask?\"\n\nHero seemed to chew on his answer a moment. \"When I—when we— Oh, bother, it's annoying containing multitudes. I used to be part of the whole, speak for the whole book. I was the book. All of us, all our dreams, fears... even the bratty, idiotic heroes. But that's begun to fade. I can't feel the others anymore. I'm beginning to feel more and more... singular.\"\n\nAlone. Hero's voice quieted as he said it, his eyes closed, as if he could dismiss the conversation through sleep if it became too uncomfortable.\n\nHe was afraid, Claire realized with a start. It must be a disquieting feeling, being alone in your own head for the first time. \"You're still a character tied to a book, but you're also becoming an individual. Exposed to things other than your story, you may be changing from how you were written. It's one of the reasons the Library quiets the characters that wake up.\"\n\n\"Except damsels.\"\n\n\"Except the occasional damsel, yes. But only after their author is already dead and gone, and there's no risk of damaging a potential book,\" Claire allowed. \"They change, grow... The damsels become people. I used to think only damsels did that, but you're proving that wrong. There's more to every one of us than what our story intends.\"\n\nHero's eyes slit open. \"Is that why you defended me back there? You think you've tamed yourself a villain?\"\n\n\"Not in the slightest.\" Claire smiled as she made out the unwritten man's startled expression in the dark. \"It just doesn't matter.\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter? What, in the philosophical 'we're all damned anyway' sense?\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"Stories are, at the most basic level, how we make sense of the world. It doesn't do to forget that sometimes heroes fail you when you need them the most. Sometimes you throw your lot in with villains. Neither Heaven nor Hell is very happy with us right now.\" Claire leaned her head back. The weariness hit her all at once as she looked up at the strange configuration of stars that peeked through the ruins. They twinkled red and purple, she realized. Nothing was familiar in this place. \"Whatever you are, your story's still unwritten.\"\n\nAgain, silence. She thought he'd nodded off, but then Hero spoke up quietly.\n\n\"Claire.\"\n\n\"What now?\"\n\n\"You're not expecting a happy ending here, are you.\" His words were a statement rather than a question.\n\nThe breath staggered in Claire's throat. She kept her eyes closed. \"No. Not since the ghostlights went out.\" And not since Leto. There were things Claire still couldn't say. \"Maybe it ends well for the Library, if it's still standing. Stop Andras, protect the Library. That's what I intend to guarantee. But for me, no.\"\n\n\"That's a shame.\"\n\n\"Indeed.\"\n\nHero seemed to consider. \"I don't think I'm going to like mocking a different librarian. Maybe I'll run away again.\"\n\n\"You'll do no such thing. Sleep.\"\n\nWhether Hero slept or not, he didn't speak again. Claire listened to the far-off groans, felt the chill stone beneath her cheek, and almost regretted the silence. Almost asked Hero to start chattering again. But she didn't, and eventually she slept and dreamed as she knew she would. Of bronze scales and red stories, and remembered books turned to forgotten graves.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "This is from a serialized story. Produce 78 sentences using the prose and structure of A. J. Hackwith every time it's your turn, using what the user wrote as a seed. Stick to the fantasy genre. Characters and plot points may reference earlier chapters.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Books change. We change. It's time the system changed.\n\nI will change it. For me. For the books. For our souls. The story can still be rewritten.\n\n—Librarian Poppaea Julia, 48 BCE\n\nAnnotated at a much later date, with a heavy, bleak ink:\n\nWe are subjects to our own natures. Books must be true to their stories, and whether we're dead or alive, the role we're given will win out. Accept your duty and find peace. Fighting against your nature is only madness. Learn from Librarian Poppaea's tragedy, apprentice.\n\n—Ibukun of Ise, 991 CE\n\nThe iwl was not a gentle process.\n\nIt did not ask, did not offer; it retrieved. So Brevity expected an annoyed book when she'd summoned him. She expected a haughty, insulted, snarky book.\n\nBrevity had not expected a train wreck of grief and fury.\n\nHero had barely materialized from the summons when he gave a half-inhuman snarl, he spun, and Brevity found herself against the opposite shelves with a hand at her collar.\n\nHis eyes were narrowed, and his face wore an unfamiliar expression of pain. \"You had no right!\"\n\nThis was not how an IWL request went when Claire did it. Brevity bit down on her frustration and summoned as much authority as she could with books between her shoulder blades. \"I am a librarian, and you are under—\" But Hero cut her off, with more growl than words.\n\n\"You left her.\"\n\nThat trembly feeling threatened in her chest again, alarm laced with panic, but Brevity held on. \"The boss will be fine. She always is. We, on the other hand, are in trouble.\"\n\nHero finally took note of the thundering beneath his feet. It'd only gotten worse, now accompanied by a distant warning creak. He released his grip and stepped back. Not all of the anger drained from his face, but his shoulders thrummed with new tension. \"You may be correct. But Claire's trapped. You need to send me back.\"\n\n\"What? What happened?\" Brevity faltered and noted for the first time Hero's state of disarray, the fine layer of dust and sand and regret. Her eyes widened, but the walls shuddered again, and she shook her head. \"Explain on the way.\"\n\nBy the time Hero had sketched a quick outline of what had occurred in Malta and beyond, Brevity had led him through the center of the Library. She paused to rescue fallen books and grab scabbards from armor displays, shoving them into Hero's arms as he talked.\n\nThe little hope that she'd possessed began to drift as he got further into the story. When Hero recounted Leto's sacrifice, the hope had guttered entirely. When Hero sank into his own concerns about Claire and the labyrinth, Brevity latched onto the one thing she didn't need hope for.\n\n\"Boss will find a way. She's a real librarian, not—\" Brevity stopped, squeezing her eyes shut against where that thought was going. When she opened them, she could feel the certainty in her own voice. \"Boss isn't gonna be stopped by nothing.\"\n\n\"You didn't see that place.\" Hero's free hand jerked through his hair and betrayed his anxiety. \"Just send me back, and I'll relay the situation—\"\n\n\"I can't.\"\n\nHero stopped, nearly dropping the stack of sheathed blades in his arms. \"What?\"\n\n\"I can't send you back. If you were still in Valhalla, sure. But you said it was a forgotten realm—I can't send you back somewhere we don't have a path to.\"\n\n\"But you just—\"\n\n\"An IWL is kind of a one-way trip. Besides, the Library is sealed and...\" Brevity paused as another jolt rolled through and rained dust down on them from the stacks. \"And I need you here.\"\n\nA muddle of decisions warred on Hero's face, and for a moment Brevity wondered if she really would have to lock him up with his book. Then a frown tipped the scales, and he settled for a terse nod. \"Andras?\"\n\n\"Only makes sense, given what you said. The wards are hol—\" Brevity staggered as the air was snapped from her lungs. Hero put out a hand to steady her as the lights shifted from white to purple and back again. Hero's hand was probably the only thing that kept her from curling up on the floor. \"Something just took the first ward down.\"\n\n\"How many wards do we have?\"\n\n\"Three. But the first ward is the dream ward. If that one went...\" Brevity faltered. \"They're supposed to hold up to demons. What could... Oh no.\" She turned and Hero had to tilt so she didn't smack on the business end of the swords he held. \"You said he's got the codex pages. He's using the pages as weapons.\"\n\nHero blinked. \"He can do that?\"\n\n\"It's the Devil's Bible. Boss couldn't even touch the pages. Who knows what he inked them with?\" Brevity's stomach sank. She said the words so she didn't feel them too hard. \"If he's burning up pages to get in, the wards aren't going to hold.\"\n\nHero stopped. The floor shivered beneath them as the thundering took up again. His knuckles whitened and curled around the bundle of scabbards. \"What do you need me to do?\"\n\nIt was a question that appeared to cost him something to ask. It helped, just a little. Brevity drew her shoulders up. \"Clone yourself, perhaps procure an ancient artifact of great power while you're at it?\" She gave him a game smile as she caught a hail of books that fell from the nearest shelf.\n\nHero stared. \"How can you be so blithe in the face of imminent demise?\"\n\nAll she needed was an audience. Brevity swallowed the lump in her throat.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Practice. Remember who I work for?\" There was a particularly loud impact, and she shot an anxious glance down the aisle, where she could see the ward lights still floating above the desk. The second light was stuttering rapidly. \"Not good. Let's hurry and... I dunno, set up some blockades, maybe?\"\n\n\"I assume there's a plan?\" Hero asked. \"Because if it's two against an army of demonic Horrors, I think I'd rather just take my chances on the regime change with the damsels.\"\n\n\"Well, without being able to reach Walter, we're kinda—\" Brevity halted midstep, felt like an idiot, and let out a squeal. \"Damsels. Oh, you're brilliant!\"\n\nHero managed a confused \"Of course I am...\" before following to see what he was brilliant about.\n\nBrevity changed course, mentally scolding herself. She'd been so worried about filling Claire's shoes, about being a librarian, running the Library as Claire would want, preserving the books as Claire would do—failing where Claire would have succeeded. She'd tried so hard to think and act like Claire, when the answer was staring her in the face.\n\nShe had been thinking like Claire. She'd been thinking of the damsels as books, things to preserve and curate.\n\nNot people.\n\nThe glass-set door cracked as Brevity barged into the damsel suite. The occupants were gathered in uneasy clusters, likely already worried from what Charlotte and Aurora had reported. A dozen sets of pretty eyes narrowed as they took in Hero with his arms full of weapons.\n\nBrevity could positively feel the blush that radiated as Hero shifted next to her. \"Plan, muse?\"\n\n\"Plan,\" Brevity confirmed. She took a deep breath and dropped her face into something apologetic. She turned to the damsels and cleared her throat. \"Hey, guys? I need a moment. I'm so sorry, but I'm going to need to restrict all of you to your books for your own safety. The Library is experiencing technical difficulties with our wards—mainly demons bent on destruction, see—and should the wards fall, it'd be best if you're out of the way. So if you please can make your way to your books—\"\n\n\"What?\" a blond woman interrupted. She wore a leather catsuit that frankly defied the laws of physics and anatomy. She looked like a spy or, rather, some spy's poorly written sidekick. She must have been new if she was still wearing that thing.\n\n\"I know this is very sudden, ladies.\" Brevity kept her voice slow and calm. \"Hero and I will do our very best, but it's likely that you'll experience a change of management in the near future. Andras is determined to possess your books and he has Horrors—\"\n\nShe was drowned out by a swell of murmurs from the damsels. Charlotte, appearing to have her puritan sensibilities insulted more by the disorder than by the news, let out a sharp whistle to silence the group. She turned to Brevity. \"What does a demon want with us?\"\n\nBrevity exchanged a mournful look with Hero. \"We think he intends to use books as magical power for his coup. Or possibly bribes. For the court.\"\n\nThat brought the protests back in force. \"I'm not being someone's reward again,\" a princess with white hair said.\n\n\"At least you didn't get fridged in yours.\" A curvy woman in a pencil skirt slumped into a chair. \"Where's Claire?\"\n\n\"Claire's on her way...\" Brevity faltered. \"But we might be on our own for now. But now...\" Brevity raised her hands. \"No need for distress. We have Hero here and—\"\n\n\"Heroes don't do shit,\" a firm voice spoke up. The damsel wore what might have started its life as a gauzy peasant gown, but at some point, it had been ripped and tied and stitched and paired with utilitarian fatigues until they resembled more of an androgynous apocalyptic soldier than a damsel. They spit and glared with open hostility at Hero. \"Except die first. They do that well.\"\n\n\"I don't—\"\n\n\"They're kinda right,\" a curvy alien with lavender tentacles said shyly.\n\n\"Your books—\"\n\n\"Our books suck,\" Charlotte said, and Brevity really would have to find out where that slang had entered her vocabulary. \"We're stronger outside of them.\" She waited until she received some scattered nods from around the room. She squared up to Brevity. \"So give us weapons.\"\n\n\"What?\" Brevity placed a hand to her chest, widening her eyes. \"I couldn't. I'm the acting librarian and you're—\"\n\n\"We're damsels. Unsuitable ones at that—isn't that why we're here?\" Charlotte picked an imaginary fleck from her skirt. At some point, she'd modified it to make it easier to walk in, Brevity realized. Modeled after Claire's, perhaps. Charlotte crossed her arms. \"Maybe that just makes us people now.\"\n\n\"And people always have a choice,\" Hero added softly.\n\n\"Look, even a hero gets it,\" someone else muttered with only a small amount of disdain.\n\nCharlotte nodded. \"We're people. And we aren't sitting back and letting some old man tell the story for us again.\"\n\nA low agreement, hesitant at first, trickled through the room. The damsels seemed divided, but the quiet broke when Aurora, silent as always, padded forward on hooved feet. She inspected Hero's arms and reached hesitantly for the scabbard of a blade nearly as long as she was tall. It wobbled in her hands, and she stepped back. She was followed by a chubby boy in a wizard's robe. The leather-clad spy was next, selecting a thin dagger.\n\nShe sniffed. \"No guns?\"\n\n\"Tell me about it,\" said Hero.\n\nAnd then the rest of the damsels began to take up arms.\n\nHero divested himself of all but his own sword, and soon enough they were busy pulling out unwritten combat books and conferring. Hero withdrew to where Brevity stood in the doorway, shoulder bracketed against the frame. She was running through the time left. They would need a plan. Barricades. Units.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tactics.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 9 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hero tilted his head. \"That was clever, what you did there.\"\n\n\"What was?\" Brevity acted surprised.\n\n\"Making them volunteer. Tricky.\"\n\n\"I didn't make them do anything. I just had faith they'd come up with the right answer.\" Brevity sniffed. \"Inspiration means having faith. It's... it's what muses do. What I did, once.\"\n\n\"You must have been a brilliant muse,\" Hero said.\n\nA quiet smile grew on Brevity's lips. \"I was. Now I'm a brill librarian. Let's get to work.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Acting as a writing assistant, continue with sixty-three sentences sentences. Follow the established narrative context, including any pre-existing character dynamics.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No story is insignificant. That's what the existence of the Unwritten Wing teaches us. No escapist fantasy, no far-off dream, no remembered suffering. Every story has meaning, has power. Every story has the power to sustain, the power to destroy, the power to create. Stories shape time, for Pete's sake. Once upon a time. Long, long ago. Someday. And then what happened?\n\nLiving author or dead, written or not, your story shakes the world. That's common sense to a muse, and the idea librarians are supposed to honor. That every story, every human, matters.\n\nThe hard part is convincing ourselves first.\n\n—Apprentice Librarian Brevity, 2010 CE\n\nLight blue capsules sparked a dull constellation against a navy blanket. They were that medical blue: the color of latex gloves and bitter chalk, but dulled by the bedroom's yellow-tinged lights. They held the attention of the boy curled over them with a hunger-pang intensity.\n\nWhen Rami went looking for the remains of Leto's soul, he found a cluttered bedroom floating in darkness. Inside, a haggard teenager hunched over his bed, knees drawn and bony. The pointed ears and the oiled skin were gone, but Rami recognized the tangled curly hair, the soft brown coloring, the gaunt jut of the chin from the demon-boy he'd met. He was Leto, and yet he wasn't. He was what Leto would be born from. Guilt and regret and self-loathing.\n\nRami knew exactly what that looked like.\n\nThe boy fixed sightlessly on the pills, tugging one end of the blanket to make the little blue ovals twitch back and forth. Back and forth, up and down. As if balancing the scale.\n\n\"You already know what happens.\" Rami made his voice as gentle as possible.\n\nThe teenager raised his eyes dully to where Rami stood in the corner of his bedroom. The boy's face didn't change. Didn't register surprise, as if a strange angel popped into his room at midnight every day. He made no move to cover up the dozen pills before him. \"I deserved it.\"\n\n\"Do you want to tell me why?\" Rami already knew what he would hear, but the question wasn't for him. He had to step carefully, so carefully here. Pulling a soul from its memory was a fragile process, and Rami was aware how desperately out of practice he was. The memory seemed already to be fraying at the edges; an eerie vignette of dark blur muddled the corners of the room.\n\n\"I... He's dead because of me. I killed him.\" The boy started toying with the pills again.\n\nRami gestured. \"This doesn't look like where society keeps a murderer.\"\n\n\"I might as well have killed him. Darren, he... We were friends. Since we were kids. But lately he was just so... annoying. And always complaining. I tried. I tried!\" Frustration flickered to life in Leto's voice, giving it an uneven edge. \"I invited him to stuff! He shit all over everything.\" He flicked a begging glance to Rami, but the angel said nothing.\n\nHe clenched the blanket in his hands as his eyes diverted again. \"It's like he wanted to be miserable. He was always threatening to kill himself. Always talking about it for attention. I just... You panic the first few times, because you care, right? But after the twentieth time, it felt like it was just talking. He was on about it again and... I snapped. I said, 'Sure, yeah. Hurry up and do it if you're going to do it already.' God, I was... 'Just do it or shut up,' I said.\" Leto's breath became ragged, his voice thick as he swallowed. \"So he did.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Rami said.\n\n\"Don't.\" The boy was suddenly tense. \"Just... say anything but that. Don't. That's what they all said. All they ever say. I kept waiting for someone to figure it out. Read the texts he was always sending me. Ask questions. Figure out I'm the reason that... But no one did. Everyone just knew we were friends. Everyone's sympathetic, everyone's sad. I'm not sad. I'm mad. I'm so—\" Leto screwed his eyes shut again, and his voice broke. \"But everyone's so fucking sorry.\"\n\n\"You really think they'd blame you?\"\n\n\"They should. I... Darren never cared about normal stuff. The guys at school called Darren— Well, they called him a lot of things. I dropped him just to impress guys who couldn't give two fucks about me. I abandoned him.\" More pills crept between the boy's fingers, and the shadows stirred across the floor. \"Betrayed him.\"\n\nRami watched the blue dots leaving dust on clenched hands. \"You think this will help?\"\n\n\"Nothing helps. Nothing fixes this.\"\n\n\"Nothing stops it either,\" Rami said. \"The hurt doesn't stop just because you turn your back on it.\"\n\nThe boy was silent a moment, knuckles white. \"Does it even matter?\"\n\n\"It always matters to those you leave behind. You broke her heart, you know.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "His shoulders hunched. \"Mom won't care. She—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not your mom. Claire.\"\n\nConfusion replaced some of the tension on the boy's face. Memory foggy. \"Wh-who?\"\n\n\"The librarian.\" Rami stepped forward. Not aggressively, but as one would come around the bedside of a sick person. \"It's time to remember, Leto. You've tortured yourself enough.\"\n\n\"The librarian.\" Leto repeated the word. His brow furrowed, and the boy seemed about to dismiss it. In this permeable place of time past, grief spent, Rami could almost taste the memories as they cracked through the boy's brain. A headache, gravelly sand, bronze chain, bronze hair. Sun on stones, snack cakes. Ale and ravens. A kiss. Papers and tea. Uncomfortably squishy.\n\nLeto shook his head to clear it. \"That's not. I haven't. I still have to—\"\n\n\"You already have. There's no need to relive this,\" Rami said. \"Take my hand, and we can talk.\"\n\nLeto's gaze drifted from Rami's outstretched hand, was pulled again to the constellation of pills in his palm. \"Who are you?\"\n\n\"You can call me Rami.\"\n\nA familiar twinge crossed his face. Leto frowned. \"You were chasing us.\"\n\n\"I'm not now,\" Rami said. \"I just want to help.\"\n\n\"Did it matter?\" Leto rubbed his eyes. Rami could feel him fluttering between two memories, two kinds of now. Past and present warring. That was another feeling Rami knew well. \"Did any of it ever mean anything?\"\n\n\"We make our own meaning, like everything else in life. What matters to you now?\"\n\n\"The Library.\" Leto flinched, an apparent realization like ice water. \"They were trapped.\"\n\nSouls usually didn't pivot this fast. Rami grew concerned. \"Easy, easy. You're forgiven. You're not in Hell anymore—\"\n\n\"Who's that?\" Leto interrupted, frowning toward the other side of the bedroom. Rami swiveled around, half expecting to see a parent, a teenage friend. But the corner was empty to his eyes.\n\n\"What exactly are you seeing?\" Rami asked hesitantly. Saving souls didn't mean they necessarily came back intact either.\n\n\"Old dude, kinda looks like a hipster? He's got glowing creepy eyes and a suit and... striped hair? Like a tiger. Who does that?\" Leto froze. \"He's... familiar. Why do I know him?\"\n\nA demon with tiger-striped hair and a cold light in his eyes. No, Andras didn't belong in the mortal world. Not in the memory of a tragic, senseless death. It was wrong, just wrong. Rami felt a chill on his neck. \"Did you see him here... before? The first time around?\"\n\nLeto clenched the pills in his fist before nodding, eyes still locked on the corner.\n\nRami scrutinized the corner of the room, but whatever Andras had done once upon a time, he was not there now. If the demon had something to do with Leto's human death... he'd been planning something longer than anyone expected. Worse, he'd involved the mortal world and unaware souls like Leto to do it. It crossed an unconscionable line, one that signaled larger ambitions than just Hell. Alarm built in his chest, and Rami was eager to be out of the memory. \"Let us leave, Leto.\"\n\n\"That's not my name...\" The boy frowned. \"He said—he said he could make it all go away. Take me someplace better. And then it hurt, so much. He lied. What about you? Are you really helping?\"\n\n\"I can only try.\" Rami had to answer honestly. The room felt darker, as if the shadows were folding in on themselves. The memory was unraveling, and they couldn't be caught inside it. \"This memory... I tried to catch you sooner, but this was all that was left. We need to get you out of here to have a chance.\"\n\nLeto's eyes reluctantly drifted away from the corner of the room and back toward Rami. He considered. \"What about the others?\"\n\n\"The... You mean the librarian?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Leto was already beginning to fade.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Just... take my hand, and we can talk.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Leto considered the blue tablets in front of him. \"You know, it didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. Dying.\" He slid off the bed and turned toward Rami.\n\nRami let out a breath as Leto took his hand. \"It's not meant to. The pain in death isn't the dying. It's the wounds we leave in our wake.\"\n\nHe cast one wary eye back to the empty corner where Andras had once been, then swept them toward Heaven.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Continue this story fragment. Note that characters may appear without introduction as this is from a larger work. Write 25 sentences sentences like A. J. Hackwith. Genres: fantasy. Tags: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The trouble with reading is it goes to your head. Read too many books and you get savvy. You begin to think you know which kind of story you're in.\n\nThen some stupid git with a cosmic quill fucks you over.\n\n—Librarian Fleur Michel, 1721 CE\n\nClaire walked.\n\nAfter Hero had left she'd stayed there for a time, staring at the walls, not quite seeing anything while the shadows lengthened. She didn't know how much time she'd lost. Even with the ruthless sun progressing in the sky, time had a way of shifting and skittering out of her grasp.\n\nHer body ached from the cold stone. In her chest there was a troublesome hollowness that grew and crowded her heart and lungs, making it hard to breathe. But Claire won the argument with her body, and one foot in front of another, she walked.\n\nShe kept taking lefts. It seemed pointless to change their plan now... her plan now. Claire trailed one hand along the wall to keep her path straight and her mind from drifting.\n\nShe had all the time in the world to drift now. It was hard not to follow the thoughts. Brevity would not have resorted to the IWL unless something dire had happened. Andras had the pages, and Andras wanted the Library. There was a faint hope that Hero could assist and they could hold out long enough.\n\nLong enough for what, though? Claire was lost in a dead-end world. Beatrice and Leto were gone. But what bothered her most was that Andras could have gone this far without Hell noticing. It wasn't possible. Lucifer and all his generals were too powerful, too paranoid for that.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Either Andras had bested all of them in his scheming or... Lucifer had allowed it. The Library had become part of the game.\n\nClaire had always been aware that the Library and its books were pawns. Andras himself had taught her enough about the intrigues and deadly maneuvers the demons made in Hell's court, but she'd never imagined the Library was a pawn Lucifer paid attention to.\n\nAndras had paid attention. Claire knew there was more to the Library than her literary ghosts. Some demons came to read, either out of curiosity or to understand the genuine magic of human imagination. But she also knew there were demons that ate dreams instead, consumed them and extracted pleasure and power from the destruction. Obviously, the Library was kept apart from the rest of Hell for just that reason.\n\nLucifer had to know. He had to know about Andras's goal. There were too many coincidences. Perhaps he planned to sweep in when they were all dead and start over. She'd read the histories. She knew Lucifer had used purges to quell uprisings in his realm before. She knew she wasn't the first librarian.\n\nShe knew hers wasn't the first Library in Hell.\n\nBut the books. The books couldn't be purged. They most definitely could not be parceled up, doled out, and fed to the vile underbelly of Hell. She had to get back. Get back, get in control, somehow find a way to destroy a demon with the power of the words of Hell's god, the Arcane Wing, and a legion of Horrors at his command. Just getting out of this blighted place would be a feat.\n\nAn exit, naturally, presented itself the next time she turned a corner and faced another dead end.\n\nShe was just about to let out a groan when she saw the arch. Wedged in the corner where two stone walls met, lost nearly in shadow, stood a darkened doorway.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was roughly the same shape and build as the one they'd encountered up the stairs, only the light was more muted. Lamplight, not sunlight.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'breath' (2x)", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, is it my turn now?\" Claire muttered, wary of a trap. She brought her nose as near to the surface as she dared.\n\nLamplight and leather. Her breath snagged in her throat when she recognized it. Beatrice's office was much as they'd left it, stacked with an aftermath of shuffled books and used teacups. Claire caught herself leaning forward, listening for footsteps. Even on this side of the arch, she could make out the distant sound of the Mdina streets that filtered in through the open window. It was night, the only light spilling from the desk lamp on Beatrice's desk. Claire could just make out several bottles and plastic bags that hadn't been there before. Hope clotted in her throat. If Beatrice had survived, she could be just out of frame. Stepping away to care for her injuries, or her book.\n\nHer book. If the struggle with the Hellhounds had damaged her book, she'd need repairs. If it was damaged and poorly repaired, it could fall apart, stranding Beatrice outside her book or, worse, trapping her inside— Oh, no. Claire's hand clapped at her side, where her bag of tools should have been. Her skin was tingling and somehow the arch had moved a breath away from her nose.\n\nClaire jerked herself back and clamped one hand on top of the other. Heat stung her eyes. Bea. The thought was enough to twist a sharp pain through the numb despair in her chest. Her book could be just on the other side, hurt from ensuring their escape, dying, needing help.\n\nShe knew—she knew if she went through, if she found Beatrice, Hellhounds or not, she would not go back. One step and she could rest. One step and she could be accepted, loved, cared for. One step and all the rest of it could end.\n\nShe'd rejected the idea before, but it washed over her again in a way that she was too tired, too grieving to resist.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The idea was strong: to rest, to stop, neither to run nor face her past.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 22 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her eyes burned again from the powerful attraction of it. She'd felt the power of an easy escape before. When she'd said the god words that had banished Gregor.\n\nSo she said a different word instead.\n\n\"Fuck.\"\n\nThe heels of her hands dug roughly into her eyes as she stumbled back. She ground them in until she saw stars. She screamed. \"Fuck!\"\n\nShe'd been looking for an exit, thinking of those left behind, and the labyrinth had presented her with what she desired. Like it had with Hero. But this wasn't a temptation built on happiness; it was one built on despair. \"Not again. I won't. Not—\"\n\nA wordless rage tore at her throat. She flung one sneaker at the arch. The shoe sailed through the air before passing harmlessly through a shimmer of lamplight and disappearing. Not as satisfying as she needed. Claire let out a growl and flung the other shoe after for good measure.\n\nThe rage drained out of her just as quickly as it had come. \"Sorry, Bea,\" she muttered, then frowned down at her feet. \"And now I'm barefoot again. Bloody fantastic.\"\n\nThe images of a dead Leto, a wounded Beatrice, paper corpses and ink blood, swept through her. Claire twisted and ran from the dead end, down the path toward the rumbling bellows that echoed from the center of the labyrinth. Ghosts at her back, monsters ahead.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "writing exercise: 19 sentences sentences continuing this chapter, A. J. Hackwith style, fantasy genre. characters may be pre-established", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The howling grew louder until Claire could feel the vibration jostling the organs in her chest. The air felt like it opened up, walls widening at the next intersection. She slowed as she turned the corner.\n\nThe endless dirt paths of the labyrinth fell away to a wide, paved courtyard, each cobblestone dotted with a jade symbol in stone. Half-finished pillars rose every few yards like shattered bones, forming a loose ring around an otherwise barren space. Ragged flags of saffron yellow hung limp from the tops. It was approaching what passed for day here, and the sun throttled down, heating the stones and dwarfing the shadow of the beast that hunkered in the center of the yard.\n\nClaire didn't realize its true size until the creature rose from the stones and began to pace.\n\nShaggy hair hung off massive shoulders that appeared mostly human until they ran up to meet a monstrous head. Horns thick as oaks arched out from both sides of its skull. They glowed a deep, blackened red. The beast's head was turned away, but even from afar, Claire could tell that its features were gnarled with muscle, and hairs as stiff as needles.\n\nThe minotaur skulked past one of the pillars, knocking great blocks aside. It had to be twice the size of the giant Hero had faced in Valhalla.\n\nBut what drew her attention, what made Claire take a step away from the wall, was the large iron key that swung from a ratty leather strap around its neck. There was no door in sight, but Claire had read enough fairy tales to know what it unlocked.\n\nThe beast halted and sniffed the air, giving a great roar as it turned. A familiar roar. \"ABANDON ALL HOPE, ye who enter here! Beyond me lies the city of woe. Before me waits—\"\n\n\"Walter?\" Claire stepped forward before considering the wisdom of her actions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"An' no mercy will you... ah, oh. Oh.\"\n\nThe minotaur swung its head around. It was a strange, bull-like face, crisscrossed with old scars and tumorous clefts. One eye was milky red in its socket, but the other one lit up with recognition, and there was a familiar set to his bulbous chin. \"Hullo there, Miss Claire. You really shouldn't be here.\"\n\n\"A situation I'm trying to correct as quickly as possible, I assure you.\" Claire felt relief like a kind of giddiness. She approached the Walter minotaur—Waltertaur?—carefully. \"It's really you, isn't it? What on earth are you doing here?\"\n\n\"I'm the gatekeeper. My duty is to guard the gates.\" Walter puffed up before tapping his knuckles together abashedly. \"All gates.\"\n\nClaire frowned. \"The gates of every realm? But I didn't see you in Valhalla.\"\n\n\"Sure you did! Ah, apologies to Hero next time you see 'im, please?\"\n\nClaire squinted. She saw no similarity to the giant in the ring when she and Hero had faced the trial to enter Valhalla. He'd been quite thoroughly Viking and wielded...\n\n\"Widowbane!\" Claire remembered the overlarge maul now, glittering with the same shadowy red of the minotaur's horns and Walter's teeth. \"You were the bludgeon. You never told me.\"\n\nThe Walter minotaur nodded. \"That was me. Well. Part of me. One of me. An aspect. I don't like talkin' about it, precisely. It gets all rather higgledy-piggledy.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It does indeed.\" Claire paused as a thought occurred to her. \"You're the gatekeeper. You're every gatekeeper. Does that make you—\"\n\n\"Death,\" Walter said quietly. His gaze gentled and he rubbed his neck, a gesture familiar enough to make Claire's heart ache. \"Some call me that, yeah. I always rather liked 'Walter.'\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Claire chewed on her cheek. She'd entered the labyrinth expecting to find death and here he was. And he'd been her friend all along. No matter how far she ran, she couldn't escape the feeling of a story. \"Regardless... I am very glad to see you, Walter. I need transport back to Hell, immediately. There's an emergency.\"\n\n\"I see. Ah, then may I just see your ghostlight, ma'am?\"\n\nClaire drew out the cold wax candle from her pocket. It was just as dead as Leto's lighter had been. The tiny stub was crumpled on one side from having been wedged against her hip as she slept.\n\nWalter bent nearly in half to lean his one working eye over it. His face was solemn as he looked back up. \"Yer a mortal soul out without a ghostlight, Miss Claire.\"\n\n\"I am.\" Her fingers curled protectively around the cold piece of wax and stuffed it back into her skirts. At the bottom of the pocket, her fingertips grazed some bits of paper that whispered to her, but she left them there for now.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That's a mighty shame.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Walter took a step back from Claire, and pity was a strange twist on his ageless face. \"See, I'm supposed t' eat any regular folk that pass through here. It's kinda why I'm here.\"\n\n\"Now, wait one moment, Walter. You know I'm the librarian—\"\n\n\"And you shouldn't be here without a proper ghostlight. Makes you a lost soul, ma'am.\" Walter began rolling his shoulders.\n\n\"I'm not anything of the sort! I had a light. There were extenuating circumstances.\" Claire took a step back. Walter might be Death, but she couldn't quite believe that the Walter she knew would attack her—in any realm. But he appeared to be preparing to do just that. \"Can you at least tell me what is supposed to happen here?\"\n\n\"Well. Screamin' and bleedin' mostly.\" Walter paused. \"I try to eat you, you try to fight, and then you try to run. It don't work out. Your soul gets swallowed and feeds the realm.\"\n\n\"This place has a rather concerning preoccupation with devouring souls,\" Claire grumbled, rather than feel the flutter of nerves at the way Walter stretched. \"Your realm's god dies, and you all turn carrion? No, I suppose it'd be cannibals, since you don't wait until a lady is done with her own soul first.\"\n\nWalter had the grace to look abashed. \"I didnae exactly write the rules, ma'am. I hope ye know this is rather off-putting for me too.\"\n\n\"Yes. Well, eating your colleague is a bit of a faux pas.\"\n\n\"Yeh could just turn around and go back into the labyrinth.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid not. There are pressing matters elsewhere,\" Claire said.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Besides, it's dull, and I didn't bring a thing to read.\"\n\nWalter's shoulders dropped. \"Then I'm afraid I gotta eat you.\"\n\nClaire reached for any question to make Walter pause in his warm-up. \"What happens if I win?\"\n\n\"Huh. Well, no one does that.\"\n\n\"But if I did?\"\n\n\"If you did... well, you get to claim a boon, I suppose. In the old days, yeh got to reincarnate on Earth as a kitty cat. But I don't think I got the mojo to do that anymore.\"\n\n\"Good. I rather mistrust cats.\" Claire considered. \"What's your secret?\"\n\n\"Ma'am?\"\n\n\"Oh, come, now. I'm an unwritten author, and this whole blighted thing feels like a tale. I know how stories go. Every monster at the center of the labyrinth has a hidden weakness. A trick for the hero to find.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Walter was flummoxed. \"No one's just come out and asked that before.\"\n\n\"But you do have one?\"\n\n\"Well. Yes.\" Walter mulled it over. \"I'm not sure I can just tell you like that.\"\n\nClaire tilted her head. \"Is there a rule against it?\"\n\n\"Well... no.\" Walter's face lit up, pleased, as he gave his full attention to it. \"My eye.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire inspected both the brown eye fixed on her and the milky white orb opposite it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Your eye? What? I am supposed to hit you there?\"\n\n\"Not exactly. I... probably can't say any more.\"\n\n\"I see.\" Claire sighed, skittering back toward a pillar as Walter appeared to square up. \"But knowing that, a hero could escape this place?\"\n\n\"You're no hero, ma'am.\" Walter was mournful as he said it.\n\n\"As this realm keeps on reminding me.\"\n\n\"I'm awfully sorry about this, Miss Claire.\" His clear eye was watery, even as he stamped his hooved feet and angled his horns down.\n\nClaire reached a pillar and felt for the curve of it behind her. \"Apology accepted, Walter. These things do happen.\"\n\nWalter opened his mouth and the booming howl that came out was much less mournful and much more horrifying than it had been from a distance. He charged.\n\nClaire spun behind the pillar and stumbled back as Walter's impact sent several man-sized stones tumbling from the top. She regained her footing, turned, and ran.\n\nHurtling headfirst into stone did not slow a minotaur much. Walter shook his head once, then charged after her. Sharp red claws that had not been evident a moment before gouged the wall as he went. Claire ran for the exit, but the junction where she'd entered the courtyard was nowhere to be seen.\n\nThe Greeks always loved their tragedies.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She shoved the grim thought from her mind as she caught sight of a flash of yellow.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "One of the pillars' ragged flags hung lower than the other.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "At Walter's next charge, Claire took the moment of disorientation as he hit the wall to run toward the pillar.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She grabbed it and scrambled her feet against the stone.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "meta: Word count directive: Use 'codex' exactly 2 times", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Bare feet worked to her advantage for once. Her toes found the small holds between blocks, and she hauled herself to the top.\n\nWalter circled the wall with a snarl but paused as he looked up. \"Don't be a silly wiggins, ma'am. This will go faster if you come down here.\"\n\n\"I prefer not to.\" Claire ran her hands over the top of the pillar, looking for something, anything, to slow down the minotaur. She shoved a hand in her pocket, and her fingertips hit paper. She took a breath as she drew it out. The ragged end of the Codex Gigas's calling card fluttered in her palm.\n\nThe text, as usual, was mostly illegible from the tear, but Claire saw the beginning of a word where the location would be: \"Hell, Unwri—\" Andras was already at the gates of the Library, if not past the wards.\n\nThe calling card was not the codex, merely an artifact of the Library. But it was tied to the book, and the book held ancient destructive power. Books tended to bleed and wander, especially old ones. There was a chance, a remote one, that the card had some residual enchantment of its own.\n\nClaire had hoped to save that chance for later, but later was gravely in question now.\n\nWalter quit pacing and began to back up, stamping the earth with his head down.\n\nClaire fumbled back in her pockets and withdrew the ghostlight candle. She quickly squeezed, warming the wax with her hands, and crumpled the calling card remnant around it, making a projectile that would be easy to throw. It stuck, but just barely.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Walter charged, canceling any other preparation she could make.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[ooc] ⚠️ Required: Use 'claire' exactly 3 times [ooc]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The entire pillar rocked as he hit, and the minotaur dug ruts in the stone as he continued to press his full weight on the displaced stone. Claire held dearly to the top flagstone; it began to pitch.\n\nShe clutched the candle to her chest and kicked away as she fell through the air. But something clamped over her right leg and squeezed like a vise.\n\nIt arrested her fall sharply enough that her hip jolted, sending fire up her side. Her knee shrieked and Claire screamed along with it.\n\nPain watered her eyes when she opened them. Upside down, Walter's knotted face looked like a rotten potato. He held her aloft in one hand, as easily as one would dangle a mouse by the tail. He regarded her with sad, bloodshot eyes and lowered his jaw wide.\n\nClaire got a glimpse of daggerlike incisors and wide, flat teeth made for grinding bone and flesh. Her fingers clenched the candle, and as Walter drew her chest toward his gaping lips, she swung back and let the fistful of paper and wax fly.\n\nShe'd meant to aim for the eye. She hadn't forgotten what Walter had said.\n\nBut Walter dropped his head back and squeezed his eye shut as he brought her near. The ghostlight arced through the air and pinged dully on a great black tongue before it hit the back of the minotaur's throat.\n\nWalter gagged and snapped shut his mouth out of reflex, latching down on the papered candle. A perplexed look crossed his face. A muted rush of air sucked his cheeks.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then a sharp burst of blue and green flame lashed out through his nostrils, out shaggy ears, past his lips, even from beneath heavy eyelids.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Walter's grip loosened as his good eye went glassy, and Claire had a moment of terrifying free fall before they both hit the dirt.\n\nA limp, meaty arm, covered in thick red-brown fur, broke her fall. Claire scrambled back to get out of reach, but the arm and the clawed hand attached to it remained still.\n\nHer breath was ragged and loud in her ears. It took another moment before she could process that Walter wasn't moving. She slowly shoved to her feet, wincing as her knee shrieked in protest. Likely torn ligaments there. If she could get back to Hell, they could be tended to. First things first.\n\nWalter's barrel chest shivered, barely moving, muscles twitching under heavy scars. The air held a sizzling sound, and the smell of charred meat suggested that the calling card was still working on the poor creature's insides.\n\nClaire leaned over and caught sight of the iron key askew on his neck. As she reached for it, a great clawed hand came down on her wrist and made her heart skip a beat.\n\nBut the claws did not tighten, did not tear. Claire looked up and saw Walter's good eye just cracked open. Sluggish blood trailed from every opening on his face. Walter made a weak snarl that was intended to be a smile, and released her to point a trembling claw at his bone-white eye.\n\nThe eye was the key.\n\nClaire swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded. \"I'm sorry, Walter.\"\n\nThe minotaur didn't speak but closed his eye with a smile that seemed almost proud.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A final gout of flame trickled over his lips, and his chest stilled.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire extracted herself from his arm and hobbled around to the side of his head. She considered the dead eye lodged in a tumorous skull.\n\nThis would not be pleasant work.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue this fragment. Characters are already established. Write in A. J. Hackwith's style. Genres: fantasy. Themes: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She'd had no tools, just Walter's own limp claws. By the time it was done, her skirts were tacky with blood, her fingers trembled, and her hands felt as if they'd never be clean again. But a sphere about the size of a grapefruit and the color of bone sat heavy in the palm of her hand. It was completely smooth and was translucent in sections. Not an actual eye, but... something else.\n\nThat was the problem with defeating the gatekeeper: no one was left to explain how to open the gate.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire turned it over in her hands.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Frequency requirement: 'world' - 2 occurrence(s)", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She hobbled up to this pillar and that, pressing the white surface against random stones. Hoping something would happen. Nothing did, and the urgency to get back merged with injury and exhaustion to eat at what patience she had left for analysis.\n\n\"Hell and harpies.\" She had just pulled away from another pillar in disgust when light hit the orb as she held it up. Claire blinked and squinted as she held the sphere in front of her.\n\nThe courtyard transformed. Through the eye, the world became a wash of milky shadows, but it also became a world of doors.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire turned a slow circle.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Everywhere she looked, narrow gates lined the walls. And the pillars—the pillars. Each pillar held a series of tiny, physically impossible doors that hinged off the pillar like wheel spokes off an axle.\n\nThe courtyard became a crossroads.\n\n\"But no signposts. Which one?\" Claire muttered. The orb responded by pulsing brightly and Claire nearly dropped it in surprise.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When she brought it back to her eye, she saw that the doors were colored now.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Each gate now held a door front decorated with unique lines and painted one of a multitude of colors, more than she would have believed existed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She considered the one in the wall nearest her. It was ivory with metal inlay, every detail gilded. A flock of chubby-cheeked infants frolicked across it, each bearing wings and a golden horn, while some frankly terrifying figures watched from above, borne up by greater wings. Claire could guess the destination for that one, and she chuckled as she stepped back.\n\nHell would be easy to find. But she couldn't just drop into the Library in the middle of an invasion and expect a solution to present itself. Claire pivoted as she considered the gallery of pathways around her, a tickle of a plan beginning to form in her head.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Continue this story fragment. Note that characters may appear without introduction as this is from a larger work. Write 11 sentences sentences like A. J. Hackwith. Genres: fantasy. Tags: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'paths' 3 time(s) in your response", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "'The inhabitants of Hell are not the most welcoming neighbors, but a smart librarian will never be adrift for resources. Remember the other libraries, other realms, other paths. Build good fences, make good friends, and keep your laundry indoors. Leave just enough doubt in their minds to make yourself not worth the trouble.' -Librarian Gregor Henry, 1982 CE\n\nHell was a series of hallways.\n\nIt was monotonous and maddening, and Rami still couldn't believe it. The door had been open. The old paths into Hell, paths Rami hadn't walked since he'd abandoned Lucifer's upstart rebellion so long ago, had still been open. The way between worlds had still risen to appear when Rami willed it. No tricks, no force, no begging needed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was as if Hell had been waiting for him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the eons, ages, millennia since then, Lucifer hadn't shut him out. Uriel's mad plan had turned out to be right. For some reason, even as a Watcher presumably working for Heaven, Rami was welcome in Hell.\n\nThe prospect, and the possible reasons why, disturbed him deeply.\n\nLeto, however, experienced no such concerns. The boy brightened up considerably once they'd reached these interminable hallways. He behaved as if he wanted nothing more than to hug each pillar they passed.\n\nThankfully, he kept his arms at his sides and carefully walked in the center of the hall, per their agreement. Leto was a purified soul, and if he could stay that way, he could still pass the Gates. But souls were grasping things. The slightest encounter with the wrong influence here could corrupt and damn him all over again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Just walking the grounds was dangerous enough, and Rami had insisted that the boy stay two steps behind him when trouble presented itself and touch nothing besides the floor beneath his feet.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He allowed Leto to take the lead once they passed the trials of the anguished in the outer ring and approached the Library. The boy appeared to have blossomed, rather than being drained from his trials; he glowed. His ears stayed rounded and his skin stayed youthful and warm. He toyed with his messy coils of hair absently. How had it been possible that Rami had ever mistaken him for a demon? Leto hummed a tuneless pop song under his breath as he guided Rami past hallways drenched in the sunsets of alien stars, down grand staircases falling into disrepair, through ballrooms that still contained the last strains of music.\n\nThey encountered no one, which just set Rami more on edge. It was very quiet for an invasion. Either they were quite late, and the battle was done, or the opposition had been so weak as not to warrant a defense. Neither possibility boded well for the Library. It left Rami considering what he would do should they even reach the doors.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'empty' 2 time(s)", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was so busy chasing these thoughts around his head, he nearly ran into Leto. The teenager was frowning at a large alcove. A low, empty platform grounded the otherwise empty space, and it was this platform that seemed to concern him.\n\n\"The gargoyle should be here,\" Leto said.\n\n\"A gargoyle?\"\n\n\"Well, a headache in the form of a gargoyle. I really should have asked its name...\" Leto trailed off as he looked down the hallway. \"Oh! There he is!\"\n\nThe teenager took off toward a large form that stood frozen at the far end of the hall. A chill of alarm shot up Rami's back, and his hand drifted to his sword as he ran. \"Leto! Stop!\"\n\nHe caught up with Leto as he stumbled to a stop near the unmoving form. It was a statue of dull, jagged stone and with a great head and wings that brushed the hallway's tall ceiling.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It appeared to be caught in midattack, arms and wings extended, muscles bunched.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It didn't move but still seemed to shift and twitch, never quite fully in focus. When Rami cautiously circled the statue to inspect its face, a disorienting pulse of pain bloomed in his head.\n\nRami looked away with a wince. \"This is your gargoyle?\"\n\n\"Yes. But when I knew him, he moved around more...\" Leto's brow furrowed in concern. He reached his fingers out toward one frozen wing before catching himself. \"Something's wrong with him.\"\n\n\"Perhaps he's best left as he is.\"\n\nLeto shoved his hands in his pockets and paced around, then back up as if to get a better view. On his third step backward, the air crackled a warning. Rami's shout was too slow.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Violet light filled the hall and shot at Leto's back.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The next moment, the teenager flew across the marble floor, and the light briefly coalesced into a wall before fading away.\n\nLeto crumpled against a wall. Rami felt relief when he let out a breathy groan as he reached him. \"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"For the record, I did not touch anything. I swear.\" Leto accepted help sitting upright, and he rubbed his shoulder with a wince. \"What was that?\"\n\n\"A ward.\" Rami stood and approached the space where the wall had formed.\n\n\"That's good, right? That means Andras and the other bad guys haven't gotten in yet.\"\n\n\"No.\" Rami inspected the air. He brought out his sword and held it just over the space. Black and violet light arced between his blade and the ward, though it didn't shock again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He sighed and put his blade away.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This is a temporary ward. Strong but hastily formed, not tied to anything. It isn't anchored to the Library.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Leto's face fell as he looked down the hall. Beyond the invisible ward, they could see the great double doors that Rami assumed led to the Library. Muffled shouts and thuds could just barely be heard. But a full-scale resistance, a successful resistance, should have been much louder, producing sounds of fighting that could be heard even at this distance. Rami worried what they would find. They could be merely walking into an enemy encampment.\n\n\"So how do we get past it?\" Leto asked.\n\n\"We can't.\" Rami stepped back to inspect the lines of power that were just visible now, crisscrossed through the air. \"I said it was hasty, not that it was weak. Whoever constructed it has got something powerful feeding it, supplying energy. We would need something even stronger to disrupt it, even for a moment. We would need nothing short of a miracle to bring it down.\"\n\n\"I might be able to manage that.\" A voice came from down the hall.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "/set_word_count: rami's, frequency: 2", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But you're not setting foot in my Library.\"\n\nRami's sword came to his hand as he pivoted, low in front of Leto to shield the human soul from whatever was coming.\n\nBut down the hall was a familiar figure. Claire was in a filthy state, braids wild and skirts torn, brown skin dusted with grit and something redder, but her glare was as fierce as ever.\n\n\"Peace, Librarian.\" Rami lowered his sword.\n\n\"Oh, no. No peace,\" Claire spit out the words over what sounded like an increasing mass of birds in the distance. \"I told you I would make you pay for—\"\n\n\"Claire?\"\n\nLeto poked his head around Rami's shoulder. Rami watched the fury fall from her face, replaced with shock. Leto stepped out from behind Rami, and the librarian's eyes broke with a kind of hopeful light.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The words that fell from her lips were so vulnerable they pulled in his chest.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Leto... that can't— You were— You're here, oh god...\"\n\nAnd then she was running toward them. Rami realized she was hobbling, favoring one knee with a twitch of pain on her face every time she stepped. Her skirts were stiff with blood, and she wore multiple amulets slung around her neck and bound around her wrists. She was also barefoot, which struck him as perhaps the most odd.\n\nRami remembered himself and took two steps to lift a broad arm to bar the librarian's path.\n\nClaire skidded to a stop, and the murderous look was quick to return as she snarled at him. \"Get out of my way, or I'll remove your arm for you. I have a bauble for just that.\"\n\n\"Apologies. You can't, Librarian. Do you notice anything different about our young friend?\"\n\nLeto held still with a sheepish blush for the inspection. Claire's brow furrowed. \"He looks fine. More than fine, he's whole. He's here, he's...\" She stopped.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He's human. Not a demon. Oh, Leto. You're human.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He is. And his soul is bound for Heaven as long as nothing here corrupts him. Nothing touches him.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Including me.\" Bitterness and fresh loss flickered across Claire's face and then were gone. \"Did you remember, then?\"\n\n\"I remembered.\" Leto flushed with embarrassment, voice a little shy. \"I was... Matthew. Matthew Hadley.\"\n\nThe smile froze, half-formed across Claire's face. Her voice dropped to a strangled whisper. \"Hadley?\"\n\n\"Yeah...\" Leto rubbed his arm. \"Uh, but please, I'm still Leto.\"\n\nA complicated pain struggled across Claire's face, and it took Rami a moment to put it together. He'd read the brief on the librarian before all this started.\n\nClaire Juniper Hadley.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Born 1944, Surrey, England.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Married in London, 1965. Died 1986. Survived by a husband and one daughter.\n\nA daughter who hadn't married but had moved to America to raise a child of her own.\n\nRami risked a glance between the two. The wiry, coiled hair, the dark eyes, the stubborn jut of the chin. Claire was a darker brown, Leto's eyes more amber, but it was there, yes. If you squinted and allowed for two generations of genetic muddling, which humans were good at. But the way Claire was looking at Leto, like a mirage in the desert, made Rami's heart clench in sympathy. He knew what it meant to see the familiarity of a home you thought you'd lost.\n\nAnd he knew what it was for that home to be just out of reach. Which made what he said even harder.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "((ooc: Mandatory: Your text must contain 'dropped' 2 times exactly))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Leto... has been through quite a lot of shock today. His soul is fragile,\" Rami murmured to Claire. With considerable effort, she shook herself, and only Rami noticed the mist trembling at the corners of her eyes.\n\nShe dropped her gaze to her feet a moment before drawing a hard breath. \"Right. Right. It just explains... Never mind.\" She looked to Rami. \"You saved him?\"\n\nRami inclined his chin. Rather than expressing gratitude, Claire nodded, jaw clenching into a hard line. \"Nothing is going to lay a hand on him.\"\n\n\"Are you okay?\" Leto approached as Rami dropped his arm, but they kept a wide gap between them that spoke much. \"You look...\"\n\n\"It's been a... rough day since you left.\" Claire's lips twitched. \"Turns out, I'm shit without my assistants.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The blood...\"\n\n\"Not mine.\"\n\n\"The knee?\"\n\n\"Mine,\" Claire said with a wince. \"But it's fine now that I'm back in Hell. Phantom pain.\"\n\nLeto and Claire looked at each other, and it seemed to Rami that Leto had to read the tension welling in the space between. Finally, Leto coughed and pointed. \"Something's wrong with the gargoyle, I think.\"\n\n\"Right.\" Claire embraced the diversion. She approached the gargoyle and ran a motherly hand over one flank as she murmured, \"Oh, my friend. What did those bullies do to you...?\"\n\nIt was the first opportunity that Rami had to watch her work.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire circled the giant stone statue once.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She stopped and ran a hand up and down one shoulder, as if working her fingers along a seam. Then she nodded to herself and began sorting through the beads bound to her wrist. When she found what she was looking for, she hauled herself up one side of the creature, bare feet braced on the gargoyle's haunch, and twisted a large colorless bauble and rapped it along the stone.\n\nOn the third rap, the creature shuddered to life.\n\nRami and Leto had to dodge as the gargoyle's wings swept around. The creature released an infuriated howl that had been caught in its throat, and its dimensional flickering increased. Claire had to hang on to the curve of its shoulder to keep from being displaced. \"Easy, old friend.\"\n\nThe gargoyle seemed to calm with a few more murmured words from the librarian, though Rami could not look directly at its face to see what specific effect they had. After a moment, it crouched to gently allow Claire to clamber off. She patted its haunch and straightened her muddled skirts.\n\nRami eyed the collection of jewels that hung around Claire's neck.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When he looked at them just so, the air filled with whispers. \"Are those what I think they are?\"\n\nClaire turned to him with a sour smile. \"I made a supply run before coming here. Picked up a couple things, made a few friends. The Arcane Wing is shockingly unattended right now.\"\n\n\"Are they strong enough to bring down the ward, then?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"Not nearly powerful enough.\" Claire reached into one skirt pocket and withdrew her hand, closed over something. A cruel smile twisted at her lips. A smile that suddenly spoke less of heartache and more of dark, vengeful things.\n\n\"But this is.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She opened her fingers and a crumpled scrap of paper, pillowed by cloth, drifted on her palm.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A familiar scrap of paper. A scrap of paper that glimmered with dark green script and whispered of destruction and had started this whole mess.\n\nRami's eyes widened, and so did Claire's wicked smile. \"I'd hoped to save it for Andras's traitorous face, but this will have to do.\" The sound of beating wings and dark tidings rushed closer, and a gust of air stirred them from around the corner. Claire canted her head up, a gleam in her eye. \"Will you join us, Watcher?\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "This is from a serialized story. Produce 14 sentences using the prose and structure of A. J. Hackwith every time it's your turn, using what the user wrote as a seed. Stick to the fantasy genre. Characters and plot points may reference earlier chapters.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Stories can die. Of course they can. Ask any author who's had an idea wither in their head, fail to thrive and bear fruit. Or a book that spoke to you as a child but upon revisiting it was silent and empty. Stories can die from neglect, from abuse, from rot. Even war, as Shakespeare warned, can turn books to graves.\n\nWe seek to preserve the books, of course. But we forget the flip side of that duty: treasure what we have. Honor the stories that speak to you, that give you something you need to keep going. Cherish stories while they are here.\n\nThere's a reason the unwritten live on something as fragile as paper.\n\n—Librarian Gregor Henry, 1974 CE\n\nA character's colors fade when its book is destroyed.\n\nBrevity stared at Aurora's unmoving face, her heart a fist in her chest. If you were human, and if you closed those eyes, she might just be napping.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'books' 3 times exactly", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sleeping anywhere—balanced on books, on the couch in the suite— as she was prone to do.\n\nIf you did not look down and see the jagged holes that had been carved through her thin cotton jumpsuit and the tiny chest beneath. If you did not see the flurry of shredded, ink-stained paper that littered the character's body. If you were not a muse who could see the absence of light where color should have bloomed.\n\nBrevity knelt and picked up a scrap of paper that eddied by, rubbing her thumb over it. She tried to catch her breath, to hold on to the idea of how they'd gotten here; the fall had been so fast.\n\nNot all the damsels had chosen to fight. Some had retreated into their books, but enough had decided to stay that Brevity and Hero felt they could mount a proper defense. Hero had a mind for fighting dirty, and Brevity had been surprised at his fierce, determined plan. He'd moved swiftly between damsels, helping one locate books on swordsmanship and combat before moving on to the next one.\n\n\"Why in damnation aren't there any unwritten guns in this place? Or unwritten grenades, flamethrowers?\" Hero had complained early on.\n\n\"First of all: fire. Library. No. Second...\" Brevity shrugged. \"Weapons stopped being art. Fickle human progress.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hero had grunted and bent to help with another barricade.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(quick note: Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'group')", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They moved the damsels into position, loose groups of three that at least gave them a fighting chance. They readied a stockpile of weapons and projectiles—pilfered, again, from anything in the collection that was not nailed down—around the reinforcements.\n\nAnd they had waited. Tension strung through the Library in different ways. A princess with cropped raven hair cried quietly, even while holding her sword up with a determined grip. The moll in the flapper dress had cracked jokes and produced a pack of smokes from nowhere. (Not allowed, but Brevity hadn't had the heart to confiscate them.) A severe nonbinary mechanic with overalls and greased hair had surprised Brevity by moving quietly from group to group, shushing the teary and comforting nerves.\n\nInstead of feeling anxious, Brevity felt moved to help. Hero found her at the front barricade when he came to kick her out.\n\n\"He needs you.\" Hero emptied his hands of the last of the weapon supply. Brevity's eyes wordlessly drifted to the door as it shuddered again, and Hero fiercely shook her shoulder. \"If Andras wants to take the Library, he'll need to confront and defeat the acting librarian, yes? That means you.\"\n\n\"But—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She should have protested harder.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The best way you can defend the Library is to not let Andras's men get a hand on you.\" Hero was firm. \"They don't have the Library if they don't have the librarian. I don't care how this fight goes. No matter what happens, don't let them see you.\"\n\n\"That's not—\"\n\nShe liked to imagine she'd fought more than she had.\n\n\"It's what Claire wanted.\" Hero's jaw was hard. He winced, closed his eyes, and took a sharp breath to correct himself. \"It's what Claire wants. You have to stay free long enough for her to get here, right? Or this is all lost.\"\n\nAnd she'd agreed; of course she had. She told herself the flighty, trembling feeling in her heart was nerves, not relief, as she retreated to the stacks, behind the barricades. By the time the second ward fell, they'd thrown together what Brevity felt was a reasonable stand. Perhaps they wouldn't even need her.\n\nAnd then the final ward began to shudder. Hero had cast Brevity a grim glance full of warning before moving to his position at the front of the barricades.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Brevity positioned herself adjacent to the damsels guarding the rear, at the entrance to the stacks.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "This group was composed of the youngest damsels, including Aurora.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Unsteady, they looked to her. She sought for something encouraging to say, one last performative act of bravery. But the moment passed.\n\nThe final ward fell.\n\nThere was no fanfare, no horns. The final blood black light above the desk merely died. The doors fell open, and a moving shadow swept into the Library. A legion of teeth and ambition. Brevity caught a glimpse of Andras at the back, flanked by the largest of the eldritch Horrors he called apprentices.\n\nThere was no chance to surrender. Whatever had transpired above, Andras evidently had no illusions about the Library's agreeableness. He would accept nothing less than total submission.\n\nThe damsels rushed to meet them. They came out swinging.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'brevity' | Required occurrences: 3", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Trained by unwritten war books, they spun and struck in precise, disciplined units. Brevity felt her heart swell as they engaged with Andras's demons and Horrors. It was a chance. They would take it.\n\nBrevity offered a coward's assistance. She had an advantage as a muse. She could fade-step in the Library, flickering from one shadow to another whenever a demon or terror drew too close. She retreated to the top of the Library's great stacks and stood on top of the long rows of shelves, flinging whatever detritus she could at demonic heads.\n\nBut it hurt every time she stepped back while damsels rushed forward, and watched them fall on dark creatures their authors couldn't have dreamed of. Even in the dust-clogged corners of a Library at war, Brevity could make out the shadow play of books as they died. It was the flare that got to her: the last, furious struggle of purple, red, green, blue, white, before they finally dispersed like smoke. And each time she left another person—another unwritten person, her books, irreplaceable and in her charge—to fight in her place, she dug another grave in the back of her mind and put herself in it. Her only comfort was that she couldn't argue with Hero's tactics. They were pushing them back.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They would win this.\n\nAnd then the wyrm appeared.\n\nAndras's voice was a charged command in the air, and a wave of granite scale flowed in from the hall. It was not the largest of Hell's serpent servants, but it was large enough to create a solid wall as it slunk, lightning fast, around the back of the damsels' line, shattering barricades in its wake. Its body glinted with armored charcoal scales, and it opened a darting mouth to loose a spray of acid that destroyed an unwritten rug on contact.\n\nBrevity was frozen, hidden and too far away. She could only watch with her heart in her throat. The damsels, already engaged with Andras's forces, had no way to retreat. The wyrm threaded through the Library's defenders. It didn't even need to strike; it simply constricted, breaking the lines and driving the damsels on to waiting claws, teeth, and blades. It didn't take long for Andras's monsters to find their weakness.\n\nTheir books.\n\nThe damsels who stayed to fight had chosen to carry their books. The damsel suite might have been safer, but with so much at stake, damsels were stronger staying closer to their books.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It freed their movement, allowing them to strike and maneuver like dervishes, but it also left them vulnerable.\n\nCarrying the means of their existence like hearts in their hands.\n\nAurora had given Brevity a shy smile as she'd patted the breast pocket of her jacket earlier. Her pocket had shimmered a happy, vibrant teal. It made a perfect target for the claws of the Horror that tore through her with less than a thought.\n\nBrevity saw her fall. Saw the shock and terror and the fade from teal to gray to hollow air. She flickered, just once, as if trying to return to her book. But her body flinched back into the ink-soaked carpet, corporeal and agonized. Brevity waited, like a coward in the shadows, until the Horror turned away to seek a new target.\n\nBrevity fade-stepped, flickering from one shadow to the next, until she reached the girl's side. She was already fading, violet skin seeping to gray. Her body was drifting to paper and ash before her eyes. A book turned into a grave.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Brevity instinctively reached out and tried to press a hand to the wound, but more of her disintegrated under her fingers. Brevity's hand came away black with ink and ash.\n\nShe stared at her palm, long after the small body had dusted away, long after it was safe, as the dying raged in her ears.\n\nAnd then it quieted, which was worse.\n\nShe fled back through shadow, twisting through the stacks. Some of the great shelves had been brought down by the wyrm's thick body. Others lost their books and rocked worrisomely, but the Library was vast, and there were many places for a coward, a failed muse, a failed librarian, to hide. Brevity was about to move again when she heard a strangled cry. Deeper than the damsels', and angry.\n\nHero.\n\nBrevity flew across the stacks, stepping out from the shadows as much as she dared. She peered over the edge just in time to see Andras withdraw a short dagger from Hero's arm. Hero was flat on the ground near the wide double doors, a hand crushed under the clawed foot of one of Andras's largest Horrors.\n\nThe wyrm had stopped seeking the remaining damsels and coiled in a circle around its master and his victim.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(ooc) Make sure to use 'horrors' 2 time(s) throughout your message (ooc)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "More Horrors drew closer, appearing from deeper in the stacks. Sensing blood in the air, a decisive end.\n\nWhat that implied about the fates of the remaining damsels made Brevity's chest ache.\n\nAndras twirled the dagger in an idle grip before flipping it in his palm and plunging the blade into the meaty part of Hero's thigh, pulling another scream from the unwritten man. Ink pooled from a handful of other similar wounds, and the whole right side of Hero's face was swollen underneath the black ink and ash.\n\nHero tried to twist to his feet, kicking out hard with the injured leg, but the wyrm's coiled body left no room to maneuver. The Horror standing over him shoved him down and redoubled his weight on his wrist. Andras, evidently tiring of the show, waved him off and dragged Hero to his knees. He waited while the Horrors bound him, tapping his fingers impatiently.\n\n\"I've been fighting books, books, nothing but books, since I got here. But not a librarian in sight. Someone's shirking their duties.\" Andras's voice echoed, silky and dangerous. The flat of the dagger tapped on Andras's chin as he studied Hero's wounds like a painter would a canvas. His features, which Brevity had previously considered stern but fatherly, were now sharp, hungry. \"Why don't you be a good book and tell me where your masters are? Where's Claire?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hero's eyes were glazed with pain. He said nothing.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Come, now, Hero. We drank together in Valhalla! I know the way you strain at your leash. I sympathize, even.\" He petted Hero's bloodied cheek, dragging claw marks through the soot. Hero flinched. \"So I know you wouldn't come back to this place on your own—if you're here, then she is too. Why suffer for those who keep you prisoner?\"\n\nAndras's second-in-command held up a square, ragged book. Brevity squinted until she recognized the too-white pages. Hero's book. The Horror shook it open and raked its claws over the front page, shredding it delicately.\n\nHero's shoulders shuddered, but then an odd sound came. It was like a wet squelch—a broken cough—until it resolved into a laugh. Claws hesitated on the page.\n\n\"You'd be doing me a favor,\" Hero croaked. His head lolled on his shoulders, eyes sliding around the ceiling until Brevity realized he was searching. They lit on the shadow where she hid, and a ragged smile forced its way onto his blackened lips. \"The librarians are weak, perfidious beasts. If you need them, then I wish you good hunting. They abandoned us.\"\n\n\"I think not. Claire is my creation. I groomed her for many things, but I could always rely on her stubbornness.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Andras tilted the point of the blade under Hero's chin. \"Ah. Or should I be looking for the muse? She'll be easier to break.\"\n\nHero closed his eyes. His head drooped. \"Go to hell.\"\n\nAndras made a disappointed cluck of his tongue. \"That's not much of a profanity here, you know. If you're not going to make yourself useful, I have no need for a broken book in a place full of them.\" Andras flicked the blade carelessly, opening another bloom of black ink on Hero's chest.\n\nBrevity was in shadow before she realized it; then she was at the base of the stacks. The wyrm blocked her view. Damsels were dead and it was in her way. She opened her mouth. \"Stop!\"\n\nSlowly, the wyrm's body shuddered into motion and pulled away to reveal Andras. Brevity stepped forward. Her skin crawled as the monster shifted behind her, closing her path. Books lay torn everywhere, crushed under the wyrm's weight.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Pages slipped beneath her heels. Wet clung to her cheeks. She crouched down to inspect Hero when she reached him.\n\nUp close, the ash-gouged wounds and pooling ink were even worse. Hero's lip was split and black with ink as he managed to open his good eye. His words stumbled through a broken mouth. \"We had a plan.\"\n\n\"I improvised.\" Brevity had to whisper to keep her voice from cracking. \"I'm not strong enough to be a hero.\"\n\nHero's laugh was small, brittle. \"Me neither.\"\n\n\"I am prepared to accept the Library's surrender,\" Andras's cool voice intruded.\n\nBrevity drew her eyes from Hero. Andras was smiling. \"I'll surrender, but the books stay. You have to promise no more books are destroyed.\"\n\nAndras's smile grew. Not pleased, amused.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Is that all? The Library is no good to me burned. I'll spare your pets, for now.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A little of the sour tension leaked out of Brevity's shoulders. But then Andras glanced again toward Hero.\n\n\"It would be unwise to leave insurrectionists at my back, however.\" Andras made a motion. The Horror holding Hero's book moved before Brevity could react. Claws grasped a handful of pages and tore.\n\nHero's whole body stiffened, and his eyes rolled back. He didn't scream, which worried Brevity even more. As if someone had cut his strings, he fell forward.\n\nHero's colors had always been subdued, held close to his book. Simmering navy, the occasional gilded shadow of pewter and green. Hero, the character, had been colorful and bright enough for both. But Brevity felt it, like a shriveling under her hand, when his colors began to fade. Brevity gripped him by the shoulders and could only watch as Andras's Horror grasped for another handful of pages as the scraps floated to the floor.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "AI writing task: segment from larger work -> 109 sentences sentences. style: A. J. Hackwith. genre: fantasy. note: established characters likely.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The stacks had become narrow ravines of shadow. Between the fighting and the fire, the globes that had so reliably lit dark corners were gone. The deeper Claire went, the less the damage, these shelves being more removed from the initial battle. Only a few jostled books scattered the aisles. She could just see the retreating flutter of Andras's coat as it threatened to disappear at the far end of the aisle.\n\nHe wanted her to follow him. Would have some trap in mind. But Claire just wanted this over.\n\nHer knee protested as she ran, slowing her down. A wheeled ladder leaned against the shelves to the right, and she leapt, landing on it with her full weight to send the ladder flying. A few kicks picked up speed, and Claire could see the back of Andras's head clearly now. She was gaining on him.\n\nThen he disappeared around the corner at the end of the row. The ladder hit the end of the track, and a black blade swept out at chest level. Claire flung off the ladder, barely avoiding the wicked edge as it bit into the wood.\n\nShe landed hard on her hip and slid across the polished floor. When she came up, Andras had his dagger free but was still.\n\n\"Whatever happened to 'I could never hurt you, pup'?\" Claire hissed. She slid Hero's sword from its sheath and held it out unsteadily. Her hands were trembling something awful. She was a librarian. She knew next to nothing about swordplay or fighting. She hadn't had the heart to tell Hero that.\n\nThe corner of Andras's lips twitched. \"I said I could never kill you. I would never lie to you, pup. This?\" The dagger swayed in his hand. \"A single piece of soul stone. Didn't do much to Hero earlier, but the soul of the book isn't in the paper, is it? It's high time yours took a rest, Claire. You've earned it, though it needn't have been this way.\"\n\nThey were deep in the bowels of the stacks, and the sounds of fighting were muted. The smoke had disappeared. Hopefully that meant Brevity had the fire damage under control. Claire edged around the demon. \"Rubbish. You planned all this. I know what you did to Leto.\"\n\nMatthew. Claire cradled his real name in her chest, pressed under her heart. She wouldn't forget it. She'd forgotten many things, but she would not forget Leto.\n\nAndras tilted his head. He backed up a step and Claire followed, not willing to let him run again. \"Finally put that together, did you? Frankly, I'd hoped you two would have that reunion sooner. You always were adopting strays, pup. I gave you a real one.\"\n\n\"You killed him, and you think I should be grateful?\" Incredulity gave way to fury. Andras raised his blade in warning.\n\n\"The boy killed himself. I just greased the rails as a gift to you. I hoped having him around would make you happy. Soften you, make you more open to new opportunities. I needed you. I knew the codex was out there, but that damned city was warded. I needed a tracker, and a stubborn one. We could have worked together.\"\n\nClaire's lip curled, though the disgust felt reserved for herself. So many deaths at her feet. Leto, the damsels and demons. Beatrice? No. Claire shook her head. \"How in the world did I ever consider you a friend?\"\n\nAndras sounded sad. \"You used me just as much. It's what friends do.\"\n\nAndras hadn't moved. He wasn't retreating, but he wasn't pressing his obvious advantage either. Claire frowned, risking a glance from him to the shelves and back. He traced her suspicion and his smile grew. He rested a possessive hand on a shelf. \"Since we're in the business of reunions today...\"\n\nClaire narrowed her eyes; then ice raced down her spine. The name was stamped in small gilded letters on the spines of the books under his fingers: CLAIRE JUNIPER HADLEY.\n\nHer books.\n\nShe hadn't realized they were so deep in the Library.\n\nHer books were not part of the main collection. After what had happened with Beatrice, she'd gathered up all the unwritten books bearing her name and archived them in the most obscure corner of the Library, tucked them between books whose authors had died thousands of years ago. She'd told herself it wasn't for herself but for the books. Beyond her temptation, surrounded by ancient and satisfactorily sleeping books. She allowed herself to pretend it was merely a side benefit that she never had to be reminded of her past failures.\n\nEven now the temptation was still there. Her hands itched, ached to reach out to touch, to thumb over the pages. She might have forgotten so much of her past life, but her stories—the stories never faded. Unspent words stayed, like ink in the blood. She felt cold and hot at once, hollow with the ghosts she carried.\n\nAndras watched her reaction with growing pity. \"I always do my research. It took some time for my men to find where you'd tucked them. I thought I taught you better, Claire. The first rule of the game is a simple one: never keep a secret that can be used against you.\"\n\nClaire's mouth felt dry. She dragged her eyes away from the shelves. \"Funny words for a creature that does nothing but lie.\"\n\n\"Two different beasts: deception and secrets. Deceptions are when you lie to others; secrets are when you lie to yourself.\" Andras made an impatient motion, waving his blade over the shelves. \"We could debate virtues all day, but I know you, pup. Shame to let such an impressive collection of books go to waste.\"\n\nThe blade spun in his hand, and the black tip brushed against a green-bound book. It left a smear of ink: Hero's blood. It gleamed wet for a moment before the ink ignited. Claire flinched and bit back a cry as black flames flared and the book fell to ash.\n\n\"Step down, Librarian,\" Andras said.\n\nThere was a nib of leather in the ashes, a fleck of gold. Claire tried to turn away, but her gaze locked on a scrap of shadow drifting from the shelf. It was a portion of paper, entirely turned to ash but held together, for a breath of a moment, as if it hadn't forgotten how to be a page. Darker striations of ash marched across the middle—the ink. She could almost make out a snippet of a paragraph, and the laconic, cold voice of the historian told her, from the back of her mind, that she would be the last soul to read these words. A sob hiccuped in her throat, and the puff of air was enough: the ash page dissolved between her outstretched fingers.\n\nThe destruction of a book was a shame, but the grief that suffocated her all at once wasn't for a book. It was for people: like Hero, like Beatrice. God, she'd been every kind of fool. Her voice felt ash-choked. \"I buried them because I wanted to forget them. Why would I care what you do?\"\n\n\"I don't think that's true.\" Andras turned a prospective gaze over Claire's collection. \"Which book do you think that was, now? A random adventure, a romance? Your one moment of genius? I've already met your idea of a hero—quite crude, by the way. So terse, so unlikable. Better that woman never got written. But I'm sure in one of these you dreamed up your ideal love too. Do you think you memorialized your beloved family somewhere, since you couldn't be bothered to remember yourself? Is there a story there for your daughter? Perhaps this one.\"\n\nAt a word, another book folded into char and soot.\n\n\"Just as well.\" Andras tutted. \"They obviously didn't try to remember you.\"\n\nIt wasn't her forgotten daughter he was destroying, and Andras knew it. Her daughter was a human who had lived and grown old. Andras was killing the lives trapped between pages here, innocent lives. Lives that relied on the Library for protection.\n\n\"You can't win, Andras.\" Claire's voice trembled. She breathed through her nose and it felt like screaming.\n\n\"Oh?\" The blade paused in Andras's hand. He tapped his bottom lip. \"Do you think you'll just wish me away, like you did Gregor? I'm a demon. Hell is my very nature. Your 'words' won't work on me.\"\n\n\"I won't need them to stop you.\" Claire swallowed. The fear stuck beneath her collarbone. \"Your Horrors will be eliminated by Arlid's ravens. I've turned your own wing's collection against you. Lucifer is never going to grant you your title again after such a defeat. What can you hope to gain with this? You're never a sadist without reason.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Call it a morbid curiosity to see just how much of your past you'll ascribe to the fire. That's what I liked best about you, Claire. You were so selfish, so human.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Andras's gold gaze was bright as a coin and twice as greedy, but it wasn't cold. It simmered with regret, which was worse. Claire caught the moment when he steeled himself for an act. \"Did you ever wonder why I call you pup?\"\n\n\"I assumed fatherly affection, but that's obviously wrong.\"\n\n\"When I found you, you were a whining puppy. Broken, grieving your silly books. Like a kicked dog. Would have rolled over and played dead for anyone. I took you in. I kept you safe.\" His words curled, tipping over into a snarl. \"You owe your station to me. You owe me this. I know you kept the scrap. Smart girl, but you burned that up getting in here, didn't you? I admit I had to do a bit of the same. Tragedy, but I...\" He patted one pocket. \"I had just enough to spare. With the Uwritten Wing in hand, I can trade the rest of these for enough power to challenge Lucifer himself, if I so desire.\"\n\n\"You can burn the Library, but you won't possess it,\" Claire said, and she blinked, realizing the truth of it. It gave her the strength to raise her chin. \"Brevity and I will resist you with everything.\"\n\n\"And that's why I have this.\" Andras flipped the blade over in his hands. Claire realized the black surface gleamed not like metal but like polished crystal. \"Good-bye, pup.\"\n\nThe blade moved at her, fast and glinting like a minnow in water. Claire threw the sword in front of her as she stumbled back, using it more as a shield than a riposte. Andras flicked his wrist and turned the movement against her. The sword wrenched out of her hands and flew down the aisle.\n\nAndras stopped, sighing as she clutched her bruised wrist. \"This just isn't fair. I knew I should have taught you swordplay.\" He moved again, taking advantage of her reaction to kick her solidly in the gut. Claire crumpled to the floor, breath seizing in her lungs. She felt Andras stop behind her, a cold shadow. He was toying with her. Andras would win any fight, fair or otherwise.\n\nClaire understood it then. She stayed on her knees.\n\n\"Hear me,\" Claire whispered, words lost to the floorboards. \"Hear me, please. I have done my best, but we need you now. If you ever had power, if you ever cared about this place and those in it, please, I need you now.\"\n\nAndras heaved a long sigh. A toe nudged her spine. \"Praying? I'm disappointed in you. Even if Lucifer was the worshipping type, he's abandoned you. I thought you were better than cheap begging.\"\n\n\"Please,\" Claire breathed. She leaned against a shelf of books. The leather was cool against her cheek. Nothing stirred beneath it. She squeezed her eyes shut with effort. \"This isn't how the story ends. Not yours.\" Hers, perhaps. But hers wasn't the only story inked in the bones of Hell.\n\nThe whispers, when they came, were nothing more than a soft hush of wind. Claire opened her eyes and turned.\n\nAndras still held a disappointed frown, dagger out as if he was waiting for his fancy to take him. His gaze stumbled, catching on something just over Claire's shoulder. She held very still. She felt the figures at her back, dozens of them. No, not dozens.\n\nHundreds.\n\nAnd she knew the books were awake.\n\nBooks woken up after a long, very long, sleep. Heroes and villains and damsels and knights. Monsters and rogues and saints and madmen. Books and stories and characters and conflicts from ages long past, furies and passions honed over an eon to a killing edge. Aliens and monsters and queens and mercenaries and children. They crowded the hall behind her and clung to shelves; those with wings and tails crowded overhead. Dozens, hundreds, more. The weight of the wakened Library balanced, heavy and infinite, in the air.\n\nThey didn't bother with the niceties of dimensional physics. Out of the corner of her eye, feet flickered against the floorboards. Boots turned to hooves turned to heels turned to soft shadow. The only thing constant was the weight, the weight of a million gazes on her back. The pressure was like a great wave, obliterating and terrible. And when it turned its gaze on Andras, a tremor shook through the demon's shoulders. His hand fell to his side, and Andras began to back up. Claire felt the pull of the tide of old stories, hungry ghosts, and dug her knuckles into the floor. It was all she could do not to lose herself with it.\n\nAndras's voice was haughty but unsteady. \"I'm the Arcanist, Grand Duke of Hell. You can't—\"\n\n\"We can.\" The words came to Claire's lips, like grave dust. \"We are the dreams that did not die with the dreamer. We care nothing for the dark.\"\n\n\"Nonsense. I'm a demon! I can offer you freedom, escape, power beyond imagination.\"\n\n\"We are imagination.\"\n\nAir rushed out of the aisle, sucking Claire's breath with it. When she felt the first figure pass her, like a trace of frost over her skin, the prudent thing would have been to close her eyes. There were things human minds weren't meant to comprehend, and Claire felt her own mind pressed, spread too thin. But she'd called this. She'd asked, and the Library had answered. She'd woken them up. All of them. She ground her hands against the wood until her nails splintered, and she looked up.\n\nAndras backed into a wall, shoulders hunched, with his dagger out. Not in a proficient pose like before, but sweeping, searching for a target. Figures coalesced in the air between them, like a mist swirling on a current. His blade passed through the chest of the nearest figure. It parted like water and then, instead of disintegrating, the figure solidified and power spread like a ripple. Andras's eyes were gold-and-black cat eyes, all human traces gone, when they found hers and caught.\n\n\"You're not a murderer, pup. Have mercy. You know me. We could have—\"\n\nA dark-skinned woman, ageless and terrifying as the dawn, appeared out of the shadows at Andras's back. A rush of power and a spike of light forced Claire to squeeze her eyes shut. When she opened them, empty air hung where Andras had stood.\n\nThe dagger clattered to the hardwood, loud as Claire's pulse. It was no longer black, but as silver as Andras's hair, with a tiger stripe of faintly glowing amber.\n\nClaire took an unsteady breath, realizing too late that the ghost woman's attention was now on her. Her starless black eyes gained weight, as if feeding from the judgment. Claire tried, with the parts of her mind that weren't screaming, to identify her. The woman didn't seem like one of Claire's own characters, or any damsel that had appeared in the past. This wasn't a character that had ever woken up under Claire's care, perhaps had never woken up. This was a character from an old book, breathtakingly old, a book conceived when characters such as this were not women, but forces, faces of the gods.\n\nThat gaze held Claire immobile, and pressed down like stone. It saw every fleck of ash on her cheeks, the smoke heavy in her hair, every callous disregard she'd ever had. It saw the ink that stained her fingers, time and time again, and measured her life in cruelties. Somewhere distant, she could hear Brevity's high voice calling her name. They were looking for her now.\n\nBut the Library had already found her. The Library would not bring the others here until it was done with her.\n\nAndras had been asking the wrong person for mercy. The mercies of the Library were dust and silence. She was caught in a sea of ghosts, a trap with jaws of ink and bone. The pulse of dreams beat at her skin, pressing in, and hundreds of hungering eyes palmed at her soul. Tasting, testing, finding it wanting. The accusation was there. The accusation and weight of every book that'd burned today. Claire distantly wondered which faces in the crowd were of her creation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "All seemed equally judging, but that was familiar.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 12 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The woman in front drew toward her. Claire felt locked in place, but dragged a word from her throat. \"Wait.\"\n\nIt was only a shred of a whisper, but the specter paused. Claire swallowed and tasted iron. \"You have a right to be angry. Give me a chance to fix it. I—\" She distantly heard Brevity's voice again. \"We can fix this. I might have failed you, each of you, but the Library wasn't abandoned today. You had no shortage of champions. You are the Library; we are the librarians. Let us serve.\"\n\nStories end. The words nearly split Claire's skull. She winced. The woman at the fore drifted toward her, hair suddenly white, fire instead of shadow.\n\n\"Yes. And that's my fault. Only mine.\" Claire struggled to breathe. \"Please. I'll accept what I must do to make amends.\"\n\nThe woman was as still as a statue, and she considered.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Can you write like A. J. Hackwith and build on what I write? Keep any character introductions consistent with their implied history.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "There is no apology for my acts.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "We have a choice, all of us, in seeing the world and system we participate in.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At some point, we are confronted with the cost. What suffers for happiness. What dies for life. Even Caesar couldn't keep such a thing hidden, the blood that waters an empire's soil. You have a choice. You can choose to close your eyes and enjoy your lucky position on the good earth. You can choose to walk away.\n\nOr you can choose to rebel.\n\n—Librarian Poppaea Julia, 48 BCE\n\nRami was learning many things today.\n\nHell had a pet gargoyle. Ravens fought like warriors. Books bled ink. And dead bodies stank, even in Hell.\n\nThe last lesson was the most pressing on his mind as he covered his nose with his sleeve, clearing a spot on the floor of debris before the gargoyle deposited the final body on the pile. The Library had become a graveyard.\n\nThe Horrors, when slain, decomposed at an accelerated rate and had turned putrid before the fighting was even over. The young ladies—Leto had referred to them as damsels before Brevity staunchly corrected that they were their own goddamn heroes now—were fading and so fragile, their forms were like spiderweb and ash where they'd fallen. Rami had made one attempt, just one, to right a dying damsel, but the body had folded into dust. Brevity had made a wounded sound, and Rami couldn't even bring himself to wipe the ash from his face.\n\nArlid and her raven folk made little effort to help, of course. The warriors were more inclined to scour the stacks, finishing off with judicial glee any Horror they found, but Arlid delegated a young leather-clad boy to tend to the injured book they called Hero.\n\nThe boy had bandaged the unwritten man's wounds as best as possible. Brevity directed him to prop Hero on the couch near the front desk. She gathered his mangled book where it lay, but that was as much as could be done until a librarian could repair the damage.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hero lay on the couch unmoving, fading in and out of awareness, though every time he woke, his face turned toward the entrance to the stacks.\n\nFinally, against Rami's advice, Brevity took a few of Arlid's folk and plunged into the stacks after Claire. Fool girl. It wasn't safe, but the muse was frantic to find the librarian. She'd only grown more so after a discomfiting breeze had whipped through the stacks before dying down again.\n\nThe minutes had ticked by, but neither raven nor librarians emerged.\n\n\"How much more?\" Leto asked, hovering by the desk. The boy had kept out of the fighting, but helplessness drained his features. The boy looked tired, scanning the death and destruction at the front of the Library. Several of the Library's tall shelves had been damaged in the fighting, upended as much by the gargoyle's own maneuvering as by Andras's forces. The stacks cracked and groaned, leaning against one another like broken old men. Books, paintings, and other unwritten artifacts were scattered on the floor. Rami hadn't allowed Leto even to help with pickup.\n\n\"That's the last of them,\" Rami said. He stepped back as Arlid approached with a blue-flamed torch. The smell drew a wince as she placed it to the bodies, but the magical fire sputtered and burned cleanly, smoke neatly drifting out the hallway to mingle with Hell's usual ash- and anise-heavy air. Damsel and demon alike were ascribed to the elements. Rami said a silent prayer. To whom, he found he wasn't quite sure.\n\n\"Was it worth it?\" Rami muttered.\n\nArlid heard and arched one thick brow. \"Beats me, Watcher. My kind slaughter each other, everyone gets up for sunrise again the next morning. Ask your librarians.\"\n\n\"If they return.\" Rami cast a look toward the still shadows of the stacks.\n\n\"They better. The little one took some of the flock in with her.\" Arlid made it sound as if she would take it as a personal offense if the search party failed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The fire did quick work, burning blue and clean, never straying toward the shelves of tempting paper nearby. They were just watching the embers when there was a pop and a familiar teenage yelp of surprise behind him. Rami sighed and turned to remind Leto not to touch anything.\n\nThe air left his chest in a rush.\n\nA shattered star stood just beneath the arch of the Library doors. Uriel, archangel of the Heavenly Host, Face of God, proud, holy, eternal, stood straight as a blade in the chaos of the Library. Her fractal wings were fully unfurled, and razor blades of light scissored and lashed gouges into the door molding. By her side, Leto stood stock-still.\n\nPerhaps due to the angelic fist clenched around his throat.\n\n\"Uriel!\" Rami's legs decided to work again and he jolted forward. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"What you should have done, the moment you entered this unholy place.\" Her voice was silk over frozen stone. Uriel didn't have a weapon, didn't need one. Her pale fingers curled around Leto's neck like a collar. It was threat enough. The whites of Leto's eyes were wide, and his cheek twitched from the effort to breathe around Uriel's grip.\n\nHer hand tightened as Rami advanced. He frowned in confusion at the archangel. \"How did you—\"\n\n\"I followed you. Your fallen path was not so hard to find once you made me aware of it.\"\n\n\"That's— The threat is over now.\" Rami raised his hand. It was difficult to keep the tremble out of his voice. \"Leto is an innocent human soul. He's not even damned—he's Heaven's now. We saved him. That means—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That means nothing,\" Uriel snarled. Her arm shook for good measure, drawing a stuttering yelp from Leto. The light at her back splintered and doubled, growing from wings into a lashing scorpion tail. She was losing control. \"Not when a Watcher, one of Heaven's first creations, dear to the Creator's heart, would turn traitor and help these things.\"\n\n\"No one here is a thing. They're human, or harmless spirits, or...\" He trailed off, not quite sure how to describe Arlid's ravens or the gargoyle. He caught leather-clad movement at the edge of his vision. Arlid stepped up behind him, hand dancing over her weapon, calculating the space between them and the angel.\n\nHis heart ached, already drowned in too much bloodshed today. He had to stop this before it turned foolish. \"I haven't betrayed anyone, Uriel. And I can't condone harm to a human soul by our hands.\"\n\n\"You have no standing to judge me. A failed Watcher, the sad, pathetic beggar at Heaven's Gates.\" Uriel's grip tightened, sending a flush of strangled blue frost to Leto's cheeks. The teenager's hands flew up and clawed weakly at her wrist. Rami didn't realize he'd moved until the lightning crackled up and down the blade in his hands.\n\nUriel's eyes ignited and leaked flame. \"You would dare draw a blade against me?\"\n\nRami opened his mouth before he realized he couldn't deny it. But Uriel began to bleed pale wildfire, and panic leapt into his mouth instead. \"Leto! Close your eyes!\"\n\nThe room flared as Uriel shed her skin. Behind him, he heard a strangled cry and a flutter of raven wings. Only Rami could stand his ground as shards of light spit from the angel's back like needles, and her face became a mask of fire. Leto was a dark, cringing blot against Uriel's wrath, and Rami could only hope he'd followed orders.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A human mind was not equipped to see the face of god.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When Uriel's transformation completed, her voice was splintered crystal in his ears. \"You dare?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rami swallowed, calling lightning to his blade, which he kept pointed low.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It seems I do. Let the boy go, Uriel.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Leto whimpered, and Rami was ashamed that he was uncertain whether he could really strike the Face of God.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He didn't have to find out.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Rule number twenty-three. No fighting in the Library.\"\n\nA voice, infinitely weary, rang out from the front of the stacks. Rami turned. Claire's arm was looped over Brevity's shoulder. The muse had her eyes screwed shut against the light, but Claire leaned heavily on her assistant. It took Rami an unbelieving moment to realize she stared directly into the blinding face of god with a dull, distant stare.\n\n\"The abomination.\" Uriel's mouth hissed flames. \"You will suffer for your crimes.\"\n\n\"Always threats with you people,\" Claire said, unblinking and cold. \"You need to leave, angel. The Library is closed and Hell will not claim you.\"\n\n\"I am of the High Host of Heaven and you are all in judgment.\" Uriel was unhinged, burning from within. One glowing hand squeezed on Leto's throat, pulling a wounded noise from the teenager. \"I will crush your sinner beneath—\"\n\n\"Kheladgis,\" Claire said. Then words started to pour from her mouth. Dark, guttural things. They must have been words, but they took on a life of their own as they left her lips. They became black holes, sucking the air from Rami's lungs. They became embers, searing ash into his eyes. They became silk, caressing his skin before slithering by like snakes on a hunt.\n\nA shudder flinched through the room. Uriel had time only to curl her lips in a snarl. Her light fluttered from blinding to translucent, insubstantial. Like a flame suddenly deprived of air. Her scything wings melted into mist, and her hand dissolved from around Leto's neck like dust cleared by the wind, leaving the boy staggering.\n\nShe was gone.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It took three ragged breaths of staring at the empty space before Rami's mind could do something other than scream.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He spun toward Claire, though he had the sense to lower his weapon as he did so.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You... Uriel. Did you just...\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"She was hurting Leto. There are certain words...\" Claire trailed off.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She leaned more heavily on Brevity and let her guide her to her desk.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"She was not of Hell. I did warn her the Library was closed.\"\n\n\"But she's...\"\n\n\"She'll likely find her way back to Heaven again in a while. Give or take a decade.\"\n\nUnmade. Uriel, highest of the Host, the avatar Face of God, had been unmade by a librarian. Rami could feel the absence of her, a well in the universe that all of Heaven tilted toward. There would be aftershocks of this for decades, centuries even. For lack of any ability to process that, Rami focused on sheathing his sword. Claire leaned heavily on the desk, rubbing the space between her brows.\n\n\"You were able to look at her, yet you're... ,\" Rami said with wonder.\n\n\"Not mad? I wouldn't go that far.\" Claire's smile was paper-thin. \"It's been a day for nonsense. I'm full up on madness and horror.\" She took a breath and turned. \"Are you all right, Leto?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am. Thank you.\" Leto sagged against the wall near the door and rubbed his neck. He was technically leaning on a shelf full of books, but Rami didn't have the heart to force him to stand. His neck was still frostbitten, but slowly it warmed under his fingers. Claire's eyes swept over the boy, a hundred unspoken words in her worried eyes. She said nothing.\n\nRami found himself glancing about the room, alone in Hell and uncertain of the weight of his conscience. An unmaking of an archangel shouldn't even have been possible. Claire had just murdered one of the highest of the Host, his commander, in front of him. That would be a declaration of war for any angel, fallen or no.\n\nHe could draw his sword, right now, and smite all of them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He'd be in the right.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "For the immediate response, include a little direct quotes", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They'd all be dead in the coming war between the realms, but he'd be right.\n\nBut somewhere in Ramiel's long and winding existence, right had stopped feeling like the best place to be.\n\nHis gaze wandered until it came to Leto. The teenager smiled, tentative, encouraging, at Rami. The boy would never know why he'd ended up in Hell's Library. A muscle in his jaw worked, and Rami took a slow, shuddering breath. He lowered his eyes to the scorch mark where Uriel had stood. His hand fell from his sword hilt.\n\n\"Do you need to go file a report or something?\" Claire kept her question neutral, though the cant of her shoulders telegraphed that she was expecting a poor response.\n\nRami nodded stiffly. \"Eventually. Heaven will need to know the archangel is... delayed.\"\n\nClaire blinked, and of all the impossibility of her acts, this was what surprised her. \"Delayed.\"\n\n\"It's accurate,\" Rami insisted.\n\n\"Delayed.\" Claire nodded to herself and turned, as if surveying the damage for the first time. She sucked a sharp breath of air in through her teeth.\n\n\"We won.\" Brevity had found her voice, though it sounded thin as spun sugar. She had a kind of hollow-eyed look when Rami considered her. Claire shrugged her arm free of her assistant.\n\n\"This,\" the librarian said, with a particularly ruthless kind of self-loathing that Rami knew well, \"this is not winning.\"\n\nBrevity didn't appear to have a single denial for that, but she straightened. There was in her sharp features a resolve that Rami hadn't noticed before. The kind left after a fire. \"We're here, aren't we?\"\n\nClaire met that gaze for a long moment.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rami couldn't claim he knew either woman well enough to know what was being transmitted without words, but he knew the look of survivors when survival was not expected.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Right. To business.\" Claire nodded, and Brevity began organizing the few remaining damsels into groups to gather the books that were yet salvageable from the battlefield around them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rami saw Claire's eyes stray toward the couch where Hero lay, but she resolutely turned to face the raven captain instead.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Arlid and her flock had finished greeting the ravens from the search party and held themselves near the door, obviously preparing to leave.\n\n\"Arlid,\" Claire said levelly. \"I see you were helpful as ever.\"\n\n\"Glowy things, burning things, not our fight.\" Arlid grasped Claire's forearm in a grudging shake. \"You freed our kin and asked for help fighting demons, not angels.\"\n\n\"Just so. You did hold up your end there.\"\n\n\"A good fight.\" Arlid's kohled eyes glittered with amusement. She nodded at the chaos. \"Your place looks almost as bad as the storyteller's now.\"\n\nA ghost of a smile hit Claire's lips. \"Just missing a few drunken Norsemen.\"\n\n\"We could spare them.\"\n\nClaire glanced to the gathered raven folk. \"Any losses?\"\n\n\"Two. A hurt for the flock. But your saga women fared worse.\"\n\n\"The damsels, yes.\" Claire's eyes slid to Brevity, and the muse looked down, eyes carefully turned away from the pyre. \"They were characters, not warriors, but they defended their home.\"\n\n\"They fought bravely. It was a good death.\"\n\n\"Good deaths exist only in stories.\" Claire's voice was grim with loss, a sound Rami knew well. \"In any case, thank you again. This wasn't Valhalla's fight.\"\n\n\"It wasn't. Consider yourself indebted, feather and bone,\" Arlid said before her smile grew sharp. \"But the chance to strike against the demon who had imprisoned and experimented on my flock for so long and abused the raven roads? Anytime, Librarian.\"\n\nThey shook once again, and the ravens departed, maintaining their human forms until the sound of wings filled the hallway.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "((ooc: 🎯 Target word: 'would' | Required occurrences: 3))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire sank down on a chair with a deflated sound. She stared at nothing for a moment before turning her look to Rami.\n\n\"You'll be taking him again.\"\n\nThe hurt in her words made it obvious she was speaking of Leto. Whatever had happened in the stacks—not to mention all that had led up to it—had drained her. The weight of it was recognizable to Rami, the discovery and immediate loss of family she hadn't even known she'd had. Claire looked drawn, but she was waiting for an answer. Rami nodded. \"I have to. He needs to enter Heaven before he risks corruption.\"\n\nLeto hovered near the couch, not seeming to know where to put himself without touching anything. He furrowed his brow at Rami. \"I feel fine. Surely I can stay and help—\"\n\n\"No.\" Rami was firm on that point. \"However, after Leto's processed... I would like permission to return.\"\n\nSurprise startled the grief from Claire's face momentarily. \"Return?\"\n\n\"To the Library. I should... I would like...\" Rami was confounded by his own words. To like, to want anything. To seek anything beyond forgiveness was something he hadn't been faced with in many, many years. It felt weightless, and terrifying. There had been a time when he'd still had the right to wings; he hadn't always been earthbound. The memory came to him unbidden, that breath in flight, when you've stepped off solid ground and your mind hasn't quite made up whether you want to fly or follow your shadow to the ground. He abruptly wanted to cry, but he grunted instead. \"I would like to return to... discuss. How I can help.\"\n\nClaire's brows remained a few inches too high, but some humor gleamed in her dark eyes as she considered. \"Return, and we'll see what happens.\n\n\"Brevity,\" she called over her shoulder as she drew herself up from the couch.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[ooc] Mandatory inclusion (with quotes): Come say your good-byes to Leto. [ooc]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Come say your good-byes to Leto.\"\n\n\"Don't I get a say in this?\" Leto sulked, his eyes on his feet as Brevity approached him. His cheeks were pink as he glanced at her teary face. \"Ah, c'mon. It's not like I'm dying... again.\"\n\n\"That place better treat you good.\" Brevity sniffed, and it was obvious it took great effort not to swing her arms around his neck in a hug. \"If not, you just go ahead and damn yourself all over again.\"\n\n\"That's... that's not how it works,\" Rami muttered, mostly to remove the pained grimace from Claire's face.\n\nLeto just flushed. \"You're going to be a great librarian someday, Brev. The best.\"\n\n\"You bet.\" Brevity rubbed a tear off her cheek. \"The Library will always have a place for you.\"\n\n\"Only if he remembers how to brew a proper pot of tea.\" Claire made a face as she hobbled over. Injury or not, her limp was more pronounced as her energy flagged.\n\n\"I'll practice in Heaven,\" Leto said. \"You'll tell Hero I said... bye?\"\n\n\"I'll improvise on that with a little more eloquence, but sure.\"\n\nLeto drifted for a hug, but caught himself when Rami shook his head. Leto let out a long sigh and rubbed his neck. \"Thank you, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Still calling me ma'am.\" Claire drew herself up, voice aloof and eyes wet. \"I give up. Rami, get the kid out of here before I decide to keep him.\"\n\n\"You heard the lady.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rami squeezed Leto's shoulder.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I mean it. Thank you. I was... The Library saved—\"\n\n\"You saved yourself. You write your own story here.\" Something crumbled, just enough for Claire to wrap her arms around herself, as if making sure they didn't do anything they weren't supposed to do. She smiled. \"I'm... I'm glad I got to meet you, Leto. Go. Be good. No—be better than good: be happy.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Collaborative writing exercise:\n1. User provides opening (may include established elements)\n2. AI continues with 35 sentences sentences\n3. Match familiarity level of characters/lore\n4. Genres: fantasy\n5. Elements: LGBT, portal fiction, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Here is how you make a sheet of parchment: Soak a pelt in a scouring bath until it softens. Scrape the hair off. Treat the skin with astringent tannic acids. Rack and torture until tight.\n\nAnd here's how you make a story: Soak a life in mortality. Scrape the soul.\n\n—Librarian Gregor Henry, 1899 CE\n\nFor the second time in as many days, Claire sat down and began to repair the binding of Hero's book.\n\nHis was not the only book to be repaired. Claire kept her eyes pinned on the tattered binding in front of her, but she could nearly hear the hurts of the hundreds of torn, crushed, burned unwritten works around her. The books trodden underfoot by Horrors, the carpets with holes eaten by acid, the paintings torn by raven blades.\n\nClaire didn't see books; she saw graves.\n\nShe saw a thousand lives on each cindered page. Here, a band of adventurers, suffocating in a forest. There, a pair of lovers, entombed in the moment before a kiss. There, torn beneath the edge of a fallen chair, the teenage outcast that never learns they are something more.\n\nA thousand stories, caught middream, eviscerated from the possibility of being real. Some, granted, were never to be written—their authors were long dead—but others had authors just beginning to dream them. Each book was magic, a potential never to be duplicated. With a book destroyed, they faded all the same. Worlds trapped, suffocating on the page.\n\nOne thought suffocated more than most. Not long ago, it wouldn't have bothered her at all. She'd called them things. Pressed a scalpel against their hurts and called them unreal. When books were merely as enchanted objects, annoying simulacra. But now... now their deaths smelled of ash and acid and ink turned sour.\n\nAnd as little as she cared to admit it, overriding it all was the concern for the still body on the couch next to her.\n\nHero had drifted in and out of consciousness during the confrontation, but once the ravens left and the danger passed, he'd succumbed to a deep sleep. Most of the fresh pages she'd stitched into his book just days ago had been clawed and torn. The front cover was blackened with char, and the edges were sodden with ink and soot. If possible, he'd done even worse injury to himself than before. She hadn't been able to get a proper conversation to assess the origin of his injuries, but Brevity had told her an absolutely ridiculous tale of Hero's... heroics.\n\nShe would have to be careful not to use that phrase in front of the vain creature. There would be no living with him.\n\nClaire found herself hoping there would be some living with him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She glanced to the couch and gave another grunt, pushing it all out of her head.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She focused on rebinding Hero's pages.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Again. Slice the strands of old thread, divide the signatures. Trim the papers. Mark the new spine. Cut the groove. Fit the cord. Reconnect the signatures. Adjust the press. Thread and stitch. Thread and stitch. So much threading and stitching.\n\nShe worked the finishing chain stitch up the spine, tied it off, and leaned back to rub the numbness out of her fingers. She let her gaze wander to give her eyes a moment of rest. The Library sank into a sepulchre of quiet.\n\nRami had departed with Leto, promising to return when he was able. She worried he would encounter questions that were best left unanswered, but the Watcher seemed confident in his ability to maneuver Heavenly bureaucracy. She hoped he was right to be so confident; she'd had enough of war.\n\nBrevity, after orchestrating a cleanup of the worst of the mess, expressed a preference for hovering over Claire like a rather concerned sparrow. After Brevity checked her tea needs for the third time, Claire had sent her off to the depths of the stacks to inspect the ashes of her burned books.\n\nThe memory of flames igniting under a black blade unsettled her focus again. Claire took a long sip of tea. Her books. Her arrogance. Beatrice. Her longing for Earth. Andras had only played on the foolish secrets and tender fears that Claire had kept. He'd set the fire, but she'd provided the tinder to burn it all down.\n\nAndras had always said the game was just children playing in the dirt, exposing wiggling things to the light of day.\n\nAnd she was exposed now. Brevity had gasped when Claire instructed her to assess and repair her books.\n\n\"Yours, boss? Are you sure you don't want me to bring them up for you, and—\"\n\n\"No.\" Claire shook her head. \"Things got... stirred up when I confronted the Arcanist. It's best if you repair them. I trust you.\"\n\nThe surprise that sparked across her assistant's face, blooming into starry joy, made Claire deeply sorry for the diet of harsh words she'd fallen into over the years. A habit she'd never given thought to before. She sent Brevity off with supplies, drowning that introspection under a swig of tea as she focused on Hero's repairs.\n\nWhatever else would happen due to her rash invocation of the Library, she could fix one book.\n\nFeeling returned to her fingertips and she rubbed out the tingles as she dug through the drawer for the binding paste. Claire startled when Rami cleared his throat. The fallen angel slouched against a bookcase, deep in the collar of his feathered coat.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "His broad olive features, usually grim and sure, held an uncertain, shy question as he looked at her.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Leto passed the pearly gates?\" Claire asked.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"With flying colors,\" Rami said.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He seemed a little put off at the idea of paradise. It won't surprise me if he's running Purgatory within the month.\"\n\nThe thought made the hollow in Claire's chest warm, mending a little. \"That's... good.\"\n\nA whisper of a smile was there, then gone. \"I'm sorry you didn't have longer with him. If you like, I could try to find the records, see if he was—\"\n\n\"No. Andras as much as confirmed it, and...\" Claire hesitated. \"He's where he's supposed to be now. As am I.\"\n\nA stymied emotion settled in Rami's frown. Claire was new to the company of angels, but she had begun to suspect his innate sense of justice was frequently going to run smack against her desire to be left alone. She sighed. \"What?\"\n\n\"In Mdina—Brevity mentioned you left behind someone dear. If you like, I could—\"\n\nBeatrice. Claire's fingers seized up painfully. She cursed and rubbed her knuckles, forcing herself to breathe slowly through her nose. Beatrice had sacrificed herself. Yet, if the labyrinth's blasted portals could be believed, she escaped. Might have escaped. No one knew whether Beatrice still existed, book or woman. Bea always did like the allure of a mystery. Claire sighed.\n\n\"It's a kind offer, but... no. Our stories are... separate now.\"\n\nRami made a frustrated noise. \"Still. It's obvious you cared—\"\n\n\"No trouble finding your way back, then?\"\n\nRami accepted the diversion for what it was: a closed door. He shrugged. \"No trouble. It appears... Hell accepts me.\"\n\n\"How curious. His Pissypants doesn't usually take to drifters. But then I hear you two have a history.\" Claire softened the words with a nod to the pot on the caddy beside the desk. \"Tea?\"\n\n\"I prefer coffee, if you have it.\"\n\nClaire made a face. \"Well, now you definitely can't stay.\"\n\nHumor fell flat, as it often did for her. Rami's gaze trailed to the materials on Claire's desk. She saw it skim over the small ridge of books and land on the amber and gray dagger perched on the corner. The gleam of the blade seemed to wink at them.\n\n\"You're really certain you caught all of him in that thing?\"\n\nClaire refused to divert her attention to the blade. Andras didn't deserve it. \"The parts that were trying to subjugate all of us, at least. If he can stage a coup from a scabbard, he deserves the whole realm.\"\n\n\"But how did you do it?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire gave him an offended look, and Rami backtracked.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No offense intended, Claire, but you were limping and holding that sword like a dead fish when you ran after him.\"\n\n\"Yes. I suppose if I keep my position, I should probably fix that training gap.\" Claire ignored Rami's alarm. \"I can't actually take all the credit. Andras made a fatal error. He angered the Library.\"\n\n\"Even I know not to do that. Human dreams. Prickly.\" A voice dusty as the grave made both Claire and Rami jump. The demon at the door padded toward them without invitation.\n\nRather than the archaic clothes that Andras wore, she was clad mostly in supple, flowing rose leathers, tooled with flowers and polished to a sheen. Wild hair the color of cold steel, unkempt and proud, bushed around a sharp face of worn tan skin. She looked like precisely everyone's grandmother, if one's grandmother kept the blood of her enemies under her nails.\n\n\"Malphas.\" Claire said the name of the general of Hell's armies on a sigh. Lucifer's second-in-command; all of Hell knew her name better as a whisper.\n\nMalphas gave a regal smile.\n\nClaire crossed her arms with obvious resignation. \"I stave off political intrigue, put down a coup for Hell, and he couldn't even be bothered to come himself?\"\n\n\"You don't seem happy to see me, kiddo.\" Malphas's eyes were gold like Andras's, but they lacked even the artificial warmth of his. She was cold and ancient as burial iron. Other demons called her the War Crone, and it suited. Mother of war, grandmother of death. As she approached, her leathers became less rose colored and more a shade of blood-soaked hide. Loss flowed like a river around her. She flicked a glance around the ravaged Library lobby. \"If this is what 'staved off' looks like, I advise you not to enter politics.\"\n\n\"Saints preserve me from such a fate,\" Claire said just to watch Malphas frown.\n\nMalphas's eyes slid over Rami. A hook of a smile appeared. \"Ramiel. I thought Heaven's warhorse had been tamed into a mule. What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"I keep my own business.\" Ramiel's words were stilted.\n\nClaire risked a glance. She'd always considered the fallen angel a stiff soldier type, but this was new. He stood ramrod straight, his large, calloused hands clenched at his thighs, with the prey's instinct that complete stillness was the only way to avoid drawing unwanted attention. Malphas had that effect on longtime acquaintances.\n\n\"I see you two know each other,\" Claire murmured.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She waited until Malphas stopped at the edge of her desk.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If you came for a debrief, we don't have a final tally on the damages yet.\"\n\nMalphas waved that off, as if the domain of numbers and loss was for weaker minds. \"I came to see for myself this codex. Something that made Andras finally show his hand must be powerful.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid that's not possible.\"\n\nMalphas caught the flat note in Claire's voice, and the crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes tightened speculatively. \"You're too intelligent to defy me. Do you mean the pages are already destroyed?\"\n\n\"Is that what a good librarian would do?\" Claire met Malphas's level gaze. \"The Library is secure and Lucifer's secrets are safe. You can tell the court that.\"\n\n\"Yes...\" Malphas's lips thinned before transforming into a positively terrifying gentle smile as her eyes landed on the dagger, concern forgotten. \"Such a compact little prison. Precious.\"\n\nClaire stifled a groan at the affectation. The gentler Malphas became, the bigger the ball of dread grew in her stomach. Rami twitched and drew closer behind her. \"In a way. I'm not certain on the specifics of how Andras created it, but it captures a being. Just not the one he intended,\" Claire said.\n\n\"Andras always had a better mind for deception than strategy. I was the one to toss him out the first time, you know.\" Malphas plucked up the blade, holding it this way and that. \"A useless weapon, but the court will have a trophy.\"\n\n\"You mean the Arcane Wing,\" Claire corrected her, earning a flash of warning displeasure. Malphas was a long-standing, revered general. The War Crone had no enemies, because her enemies were all dead. Claire kept her thoughts from her face. \"It is an artifact of the Library's Arcane Wing and belongs there. That doesn't change just because there's a demon in it now.\"\n\nMalphas considered. Bony fingers, hard as granite and with blackened nails, tapped along the edge of the blade. \"Our lord has ways of dealing with failed rebellions.\"\n\n\"Failed,\" of course, was the key word. Claire knew Lucifer encouraged the plotting and backstabbing in the court as a way to keep his most powerful demons distracted. With a general like Malphas safeguarding his throne, he could afford the chaos. \"And if His Vilest would like to come and extract Andras's soul for punishment, he's welcome. But until there's a new Arcanist in place, I'm sure Lucifer would agree that my charge is to guarantee no artifacts wander off the inventory.\"\n\nMalphas set the dagger down by the nearest stack of books, losing interest. Instead she focused her full attention on Claire, which felt a queer mix of predatory and maternal. \"About that. You have stolen from my army.\"\n\nIt was a flicker of a moment, a trick of the light, when a shadow melted across Malphas's features and turned them from wizened to skull-like, then back. Claire held the fear in her mouth rather than swallow and draw attention to her exposed throat. \"As you said, I am too intelligent to cross you, Malphas.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yet I smelled the burning from the hallway. Those Horrors and that wyrm were mine. Andras was mine, despite his reassignment. So it falls to me to name a new successor.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The train of thought behind Malphas's granite eyes was impossible to guess.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There are several well-established demons campaigning for the honor—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No demons,\" Claire said, more harshly than was wise. \"I won't share the Library with another grasping, plotting viper. There's too much power in the Arcane Wing. The Arcanist needs to be someone who has no interest or ability to profit from it. Andras was proof enough of that.\"\n\n\"As you said, you are intelligent,\" Malphas mused. She leaned forward, patting Claire's cheek with sharp fingertips that left cold grit there. Then the crone demon tapped her fingers at her wrinkled throat, making an obvious show of considering. \"But if not a demon, then who? That knocks out a sizable portion of qualified candidates.\"\n\nClaire felt like she'd volunteered herself out onto a crumbling ledge and was now being asked to tap-dance. She traded a wary expression with Rami. The fallen angel gave a little nod, and she turned back to Malphas. \"Rami would make an excellent curator.\"\n\nMalphas's smile tilted over the edge from amused to disgusted. \"A fallen angel is no better than a demon—worse, in fact, if he's proven to have such pliable loyalties. What's to keep him from making a play?\"\n\n\"I have no interest in any game of yours, War Crone.\" Rami still looked as if he was waiting for an ambush, the mouse under a cat's paw, but he squared his shoulders. \"In fact, I will only stay with the stipulation that I swear no oath to you or your throne. I believe that disqualifies me for any titles or honors in the court, does it not?\"\n\n\"You are just as weak willed as ever,\" Malphas hummed. \"But an interesting pawn. You should lend him to me, Claire.\"\n\nThe tremor that ran through Ramiel was palpable at Claire's back. She smiled. \"I'm short staffed as it is. I couldn't possibly spare him.\"\n\n\"Just as well. He needs a strong hand.\" Malphas's face fell into carefully crafted disappointment, maternal and knowing. \"Either way, I'm not sure an angel has the credentials. What do you know about Lirene's Eighth Circle Artifice Bond?\"\n\nClaire's eyes flew to the untidy pile of artifacts she'd pilfered from the Arcane Wing, and her stomach dropped. She immediately knew where this was going even as Rami faltered. \"I... I know danger when it must be contained.\"\n\nMalphas made a clicking noise with her tongue. \"Oh, sweet, sweet Ramiel.\" She studied her nails before turning her attention back to Claire. \"He's an angel with not an ounce of guile. The artifacts would eat him up on day one. We need someone with the acumen to deal with trickster artifacts. The strength to bring them to heel. Someone who has experienced the finer betrayals in life.\"\n\nClaire pursed her lips. \"I said no demons, Malphas.\"\n\n\"No demons. I had a different, reasonably intelligent mortal in mind.\"\n\nMalphas's meaning was impossible to dodge, but Claire tried anyway. \"I already have a position and responsibilities. I am Hell's librarian.\"\n\nThen Malphas gave her a coin-flip smile, half-pitying and half-pleased, as she made Claire's veins run cold with two words.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Are you?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The air stole out of her lungs and they ached.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire refused to flinch from Malphas's predatory stillness, but she ran her fingers idly over the paste brush still in her hands, tracing the wood against her calluses.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "OOC - /insert_quote: \"When Hell comes for you, little mortal, you'll know it.\"", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When had she developed calluses? Bodies weren't supposed to change in Hell. \"Any soul sentenced to the Library remains until they've processed their sins.\"\n\n\"Or failed in their duties.\"\n\nClaire clenched her jaw so hard it hurt. \"I just repelled a hostile invasion of the Library.\"\n\n\"By leaving a path of destruction through three realms and dead dreams in your wake. Even I was impressed, but death is my purview, not yours.\" Malphas's mood flipped. The jaws of the trap fell shut. \"The librarian is supposed to protect the Library, not the other way around, child. How many books were lost because you went on this wild-goose chase? Leaving without permission on a stolen ghostlight alone would sentence any normal soul—\"\n\n\"Oh, do save me the posturing.\" Claire found herself on her feet, and Malphas raised a warning brow. \"Lucifer knew what was happening. He had to. There were too many coincidences that had his tacit tolerance, if not approval. The codex pages. B—the collector and wards at Mdina. Deny it all you want—\" She held up a hand, which only increased the murder in the old demon's eyes. \"But he kept you from the Library and sent no aid when we closed the wards. That alone says he knew and condoned what was going on. Hell broke faith with the Library first.\"\n\nMalphas waited until Claire reluctantly sat again before speaking, fond and soft, which was when she was most dangerous. \"If—if—our lord had an inkling of Andras's ambition, and if he decided to test Andras's loyalty by dangling a morsel in front of him—\"\n\n\"That sacrificial morsel being the pages of the codex, my Library, and my people.\"\n\n\"If he did as you say,\" Malphas continued, \"then he may have taken precautions to limit damage. And he must have had the faith—misplaced, in my opinion—that you would produce the necessary outcome. That doesn't mean there aren't consequences for your actions, child of man. We have no control over that.\"\n\nThe way she said it, with the calm of the ageless, made a final, awful piece snap into place in Claire's brain. Her anger fell. \"This isn't coming from Lucifer at all.\"\n\n\"No.\" Malphas leaned back, crossing scarred, muscled arms. \"When Hell comes for you, little mortal, you'll know it.\"\n\nClaire tried to ignore that. \"The books... have a grievance?\"\n\nMalphas cast a look around the ash-strewn hall. \"Wouldn't you?\"\n\nThe Library had always been not quite quiet. Silence was always built on the susurrus of rustling pages, the creak of leather spines, the rumbles of stories sleeping fitfully. There was none of that now. The books slept, but dreamlessly. It turned the Library into a tomb, and again the dust of a thousand books turned to graves clogged Claire's chest. \"And the Library chooses its librarian,\" Claire said dully. \"But in the stacks, they—it, the Library—withdrew. It gave me a chance to make things right.\"\n\n\"And that's what you'll do, as Arcanist,\" Malphas said. \"The Arcane Wing will no longer be a threat.\"\n\nClaire knew it wasn't wise to look away from Malphas, but she found her gaze had drifted to the cluttered desk in front of her. The new stitches on Hero's book had tightened.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "OOC - Mandatory: Your text must contain 'closed' 2 times exactly", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire picked up scissors and began mechanically snipping off the loose ends. She had cleaned up only two knots when Malphas broke out with a terrifying sound: laughter.\n\n\"Despair is such a dull look on you. Don't start boring me now.\" Malphas leaned over the desk, looking every inch the dotty, harmless old woman she pretended to be. \"You'll still work in the Library, of course. There's plenty of work to do to clean up your mess. As you said, the Arcane Wing and the Unwritten Wing are the allies that make the Library. I never had much patience for reading, but it gives Hell an air of erudite respectability.\"\n\n\"As Arcanist, I get to choose my assistants.\" Rather than let it sink in, Claire latched onto a demand at random. She glanced briefly at Rami. \"I won't work with those vile creatures Andras had in here.\"\n\n\"Easy enough. You destroyed most of them anyway,\" Malphas reminded her. She slid off the desk, rolling her shoulders like she'd won something. \"I'll leave you to give your pawns the good news.\"\n\nThe demon disappeared in a swirl of iron and cinnamon. Claire stared at her desk. She found herself preoccupied with the knots twisted on Hero's book, noting the irregularities for trimming. Her hands clenched when Rami cleared his throat.\n\n\"I can go find Brevity. If you...\" He trailed off when Claire nodded, and he turned and disappeared into the stacks.\n\nClaire tilted her head back and closed her eyes. She drew in a slow breath and exhaled firmly, driving out any thought of the changes to come. She shuddered, eyes squeezed tighter.\n\nWhen she could be sure of herself, she twisted in her chair and squinted at the unmoving body on the couch. The body whose face hadn't moved but whose breathing had shifted just slightly when Malphas appeared.\n\n\"I suppose you heard all that.\"\n\nA whisper of movement tugged up the corner of Hero's lips. He kept his eyes closed, but his color was better. When his lips parted, Hero's voice was hoarse. \"Didn't want to interrupt.\"\n\n\"Rami was concerned about you. You could have said something.\"\n\n\"I like playing hard to get.\"\n\nClaire snorted. \"You do love a chase.\"\n\nHero couldn't quite manage a laugh, and when he tried, it turned into a pathetic, stumbling cough. He licked his lips with some effort. \"Did you destroy all the pages of the codex?\"\n\nClaire's smile was bitter. \"Maybe. Maybe not. Better to let the courts wonder. The Library will be vulnerable for a while. If I did destroy them, we're fair game. Open to being swept up by the next demon with a hunger for power. If I didn't, then I'm a threat only Lucifer has the authority to address. Until they know, even Malphas will stay out of the Library.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hero huffed weakly. \"Clever.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 17 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I learned from the best.\" Claire's eyes dodged to Andras's dagger. She turned back to the book in front of her and picked up the paste brush again. \"For now I'll need to finish fixing your binding. Again.\"\n\n\"Maybe you'll get it right this time.\"\n\n\"Everybody's a critic,\" Claire muttered as she began to apply the paste where the binding would adhere to leather. She worked in quiet for a few moments until Hero spoke again.\n\n\"I heard you, you know.\"\n\nClaire turned and saw Hero had cracked one eye open with great effort. His gaze glittered, beneath the bruises and black filth. Claire turned back to her work. \"Heard what?\"\n\n\"When you confronted Andras. You said 'my book.'\"\n\n\"Is that what you heard?\" Claire felt a small smile grow on her lips before she remembered herself. Loss welled in her stomach as she shook her head. \"No books are mine now.\"\n\nFor once, Hero didn't have a response.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "WRITING ASSIST:\nseventy-five sentences sentences\nStyle: A. J. Hackwith\nGenre: fantasy\nContext: Part of larger work", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This is my last entry in the Librarian's Log. I don't know why Brevity insists; I never wrote in here as often as I should have. I did, at first, and I have reviewed the entries from my apprenticeship to confirm how rotten they were. I was. I can't believe this damned book even kept them. There's no rhyme or reason to it. I'll be glad to be rid of this log: the nattering of the dead.\n\nThat's not true. I suppose I should aim for the truth, now that there is so very little worth hiding. Let us try again.\n\nI am Claire Juniper Hadley, librarian of the Unwritten Wing. Like any proper storyteller, I have lied. I have plotted and hurt and lied, so many lies I can't even recall. And with those plots, lies, and little hurts, I tried to do right by the Library. However, the performance of my duties has been found wanting, so I hereby resign my post to my highly qualified replacement, Brevity. Who will, no doubt, blot out my troubled service with her brilliant care.\n\nTreat her well, old book. Or I'll come back and burn you too.\n\n—Librarian Claire Juniper Hadley, 2019 CE\n\nThe arcane wing was a cabinet of curiosities. Libraries have a tradition of maintaining a curio, a house of mathoms, oddities, trinkets, artifacts of inquiry. As curators of obscure and sometimes undervalued things, librarians attract the unusual and misplaced. Hell's Library was no different.\n\nIf one was to be accurate, Hell's Library was slightly different. What Hell would find curious, others might classify as weapons of gibbering terror.\n\nClaire, for one, found it a refreshing break from books and authors. The objects of the Arcane Wing each had their own story, in a straightforward way. This dented crown was part of a dictator's deal with a demon, with its spot where his blood rusted through the false gold, stained when his people came for him. These ruby seeds, held under the tongue of a desperate child as she braved the underworld to find her lost brother. One is missing, accidentally swallowed, and turned the child to malachite. A sliver of her pinkie finger is cross-indexed three shelves down.\n\nEach item held a story, but the story was done. The End. The Unwritten Wing hummed with unstarted beginnings, while the Arcane Wing was sepulchral with artifacts of untold ends. It was quiet; terrible and quiet. And it left Claire feeling like one more artifact. Like her story was done and told. Here, the disgraced former librarian of Hell's Unwritten Wing. See her shadowed eyes. And here are the cracks in her soul, flaws in her craftwork where all the purpose has sifted out. See how she moves in endless circles to avoid collecting dust.\n\nClaire could have settled, and accepted her ignoble denouement, if she were not constantly being reminded of her ending.\n\nThe newest reminder sat cross-legged in a puddle of lamplight between tables. She was in the back of the Arcane Wing, which had been Andras's prison for Valhalla's ravens. When Andras had been Arcanist, the back wall had been a row of cages. Because libraries reflected their owners, that had all been smudged out of existence when Claire took over. Now, instead, smart hickory drawers lined the wall, each identified with a shiny brass nameplate.\n\nMost bore some variation of tea leaf. Even a dead woman was allowed her vices.\n\nBeneath the tisane collection, a damsel girl sat cross-legged, a mop of dark curls curtaining her face. She was a spry and striking shadow, dark as teak and fragile as blown glass right to the tips of her pointed ears. The romper she wore might have once been a pale gothic dress but had been efficiently stripped and tied above her knobby knees. She was a ghostly creature of bony edges, as if peeled out of a nightmare softened into dream.\n\n\"Rosia.\" It was helpful that the latter half of the damsel's name was mostly composed of a sigh. Claire rubbed her forehead. \"This isn't the Unwritten Wing. You shouldn't be here.\"\n\n\"I got lonely.\" Rosia didn't look up; all of her concentration was focused on prying the edge of her thumbnail along the dark varnish of the floorboards. Thin curlicues of flaking varnish next to her toe were the only sign of progress so far.\n\n\"How can you be lonely? You have an entire suite of other damsels. And Brevity. Talk to your friends,\" Claire said with as much patience as she could muster. She tried to keep her voice soft, a feat it wasn't used to performing. Once, she would have known how to handle a wandering character. A warning, a scalpel flick, and stories would fold back into the books that confined them. Back when they were simply that—books to be shelved—and she was simply the librarian.\n\nNothing was that simple anymore. Claire had been shocked out of her decades of denial when a runaway book had forced her to divert a demonic coup and face the cruelty she'd inflicted in the past. Books, and the characters that awakened from them, might not be human but were worth a little humanity.\n\nRosia's twin moon eyes blinked a momentary eclipse before she turned back to toying with the flooring. \"I am.\"\n\nNothing could ever be that simple anymore. \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\"I am with friends. They're so hard to hear, though,\" Rosia went on without acknowledging the question. \"We play hide-and-seeks. They always win.\"\n\nClaire glanced behind her, but she was patently alone. Damsels were not typically solitary characters, even ghost girls like Rosia. They were the hearts of stories that had woken up and had been allowed to remain as they were in the Library, instead of being shelved into their books again. It'd been a small mercy that Brevity had persuaded Claire into allowing when she'd been librarian. Now, under Brev's purview, the damsel suite seemed to have grown to an annex. It was a suspicious population growth, even accounting for the number of damsels and books lost during the siege.\n\nClaire couldn't say she approved.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was very good reasoning for keeping unwritten books asleep on the shelves. Woken up, personified, characters risked changing, and change was transformative to their books. They could warp away from the story they were intended to be, or just go a little funny in the head.\n\nClaire suspected Rosia of the latter, but it was hard to be harsh with a girl who was part moonbeam. She crouched down, attempting to be less of a, as Brev put it, \"boogeyman for books.\" \"This is the Arcane Wing. Characters don't belong here—\"\n\nRosia's face crumpled, and she rapidly turned from eerie ghost princess to plaintive child. \"But you'll still take care of us, right?\"\n\n\"I—\" Claire faltered over the ache that knotted in her chest. Her voice was unsteady when she found it again. \"I'm not the librarian of your wing.\" Anymore. It made the pain worse to say that, so she didn't.\n\nRosia, if possible, fluttered with even greater distress. \"But you'll take care of them? You have to.\"\n\n\"Who—\" Claire bit off the question as heavy footsteps creaked on the boards behind her. Ramiel came around the corner, clapping the dust off his work-hardened hands.\n\nHis rumpled trench coat was a shade grayer than normal, a result of a morning spent moving the heavier of the Arcane Wing's residents around in the archives. He stopped short as he spotted Rosia. The pepper-colored feathers peeking from beneath the collar of his coat bristled into a disgruntled ruff. He had the perpetual look of a toy soldier sent one too many times through the dryer. Rami frowned in a way that sent his stony olive-tan features rumbling to concerned peaks. \"Again?\"\n\nClaire rose to her feet and ignored the judgmental tone in his voice. \"Please help Rosia back to the Unwritten Wing.\"\n\n\"Will you be speaking with Brevity?\" Rami asked.\n\n\"I don't think so.\"\n\nRami was an angel of few words but a whole catalog of looks. The one he sent her now was worth an hour of chiding in itself. His expression softened as he offered a hand to Rosia, crouching down so his broad shadow didn't seem quite so imposing. \"Up, on your feet, little soldier.\"\n\nRosia took his hand and reached down to pat the floorboards fondly before allowing him to guide her out. Her fingers danced along the shelves as they passed, but it appeared even the Arcane Wing's dangerous artifacts knew better than to harm one of her damsels.\n\nBrevity's damsels, Claire amended with sour impatience for her own brain. She followed Rami down the row and tried to amend his judgment. \"I am sure Brevity has her own people in hand. It's really not necessary.\"\n\n\"I'm a people now? Why does no one tell me when I've been promoted? We could have thrown a party.\"\n\nThe voice was too droll, too full of self-amusement, to mistake. Hero lounged against a table, having shoved a jumble of half-assembled (now utterly unassembled) bone relics out of the way to make room for the tail of his velvet coat. Claire hoped they'd cursed his ass in the process. Out of habit, Claire's attention went to the light scar whorling across his left cheekbone. It was a new blemish that Hero tried to downplay in his vanity, but it was healing nicely into a feature that humanized his otherwise eerie perfection, much to Claire's disgruntlement. Hero's assessing gaze flicked toward her for only a moment before settling on Rami with a light of interest. \"Well, look at you. So paternal and domestic.\"\n\nRami didn't respond, but Claire could imagine the pained tightening of his stoic face. Hero delighted in having that effect on people. She brushed by Rosia to shoo Hero off the table. \"Book.\"\n\n\"Warden.\" Hero managed to stand and make it look like his idea. He picked imaginary dust from the velour of his jacket. This one was dyed a royal blue that matched the fine seams of his ridiculously tailored fantasy breeches and set the red tones in his bronze hair glowing primly. Hero always looked one breath away from delivering a bon mot or challenging someone to a duel. \"Rumor has it you've borrowed a damsel. We're not a lending kind of library, as you would know.\"\n\n\"'Borrow' is not an accurate term.\" Claire twirled her hand impatiently, but Rosia seemed in no hurry to let go of Rami's hand. \"This is the fourth time in two weeks, Hero. Your stunt has obviously set a bad precedent for the damsels.\"\n\n\"I'm certain the women of the Library were fully capable of independent mischief before me, if your example is any to go by,\" Hero demurred.\n\n\"Yes, you just help it along,\" Rami muttered to the floor.\n\nThe smile Hero sent Rami was magnificent, shameless, and wasted, for Rami refused to look at him. \"In any case, my many charms are not why I am here.\" Hero turned no less a devilish look to Claire. \"Brevity's asked for you.\"\n\n\"No, she hasn't,\" Claire said automatically. She'd made a purposeful—painful but purposeful—withdrawal in the weeks following the coup that had led to the Library's shake-up. She'd stopped visiting, stopped answering questions, stopped having a say in the welfare of books. Brevity would never fully accept the mantle of Unwritten Wing librarian if Claire didn't provide the breathing room for her to do so.\n\nOf course, Brevity, the best-natured soul in Hell, had wanted the exact opposite. Claire had been forced to use brusque methods and harsher words before the Unwritten Wing had gradually stopped trying to pull her back in. Brevity got the message eventually.\n\nIt hurt, the silence. But then Claire was very skilled at finding the most efficient ways to hurt herself.\n\n\"The Librarian has requested conference with the Arcanist,\" Hero said in a withering voice that capitalized titles out of spite. He leaned back in order to more properly look down his nose at her. \"Is that formal enough for you, warden?\"\n\nClaire's cheeks heated, but she was well practiced at returning Hero's glare. \"You don't have to be an ass about it.\"\n\n\"I was just about to say the same thing! How delightful.\" Hero easily snaked his arm through the crook of Claire's elbow.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And I couldn't help but overhear you ordering your gloomy feather duster in the same direction—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Feather duster?\" Rami objected, half-confused but certain of insult.\n\n\"—so we can all go together! Just like old times. Except he's not trying to kill us,\" Hero amended. \"Yet.\"\n\nClaire allowed herself to be escorted out of the wing, if only to avoid impending bloodshed.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Collaborative writing exercise: Continue with thirteen sentences sentences, maintaining continuity with any pre-established narrative elements.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire had walked the path between the Unwritten Wing and the Arcane Wing countless numbers of times. She also hadn't walked it once in the last six months. She was almost grateful for the way Hero kept up an irritating patter of snark and asides, ribbing Rami endlessly and giving Claire something to focus on besides the familiar creak of boards beneath her feet.\n\nThe doors had changed, too, when Brevity had accepted the librarian mantle. They were cherry-stained now instead of buttery oak. It was a cheerier improvement, Claire thought, so like Brevity. The door was adorned with broad silver handles and a knocker that invited someone to come in, find themselves a book, stay awhile. Not that the Library had many visitors in Hell. Even fewer after the fire.\n\nThe Unwritten Wing had been quieter than ever after the coup attempt. Andras, the former demon Arcanist, had attempted the unthinkable—taking control of the Library. He'd failed but burned hundreds of unwritten books on his way down. It was a scandal, even in Hell, and prompted even demons to stay away.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Somehow the ghost of Claire's failure had musted the air like mothballs, no matter how much Brevity wiped down the shelves.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Look alive, you brute. Your favorite is back,\" Hero said, insults rubbed thin with affection as they passed the giant gargoyle that kept guard outside the wing.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'before'", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was dozing in a span of false sunbeam in its alcove and barely roused with their passing. Claire caught a flash of flower petals on its brow before the familiar dimensional vertigo set in. Probably one of the damsels had done that, though who knew where they'd have gotten flowers.\n\n\"Hello,\" Claire just remembered to say before the pause became awkward. The gargoyle's arm was gritty and reassuringly solid under her fingertips despite his non-euclidean angles. At least not everything had changed. The gargoyle gave an eldritch hum that made everyone wince, but it was a fond kind of abomination. Not everything had forgotten her.\n\nHero quickened his step to jump ahead and pull the doors open, keeping up lazy commentary that sounded more artificial than normal.\n\nClaire stepped through the entry and stopped. The doors had merely been a prelude to change. The stacks remained in their same general configuration—branching canyons of tall shelves, spoking out from the lobby space in the middle. There was still the librarian's desk, as large and anchored as ever.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The desk was the eternal sun around which the celestial array of the Unwritten Wing turned. But everything felt shifted out of alignment. The woods were stained a cherry color, and the brass workings of Claire's preference were gone. Instead, tiny little faerie lights raced up and down the vertical surfaces of the cavernous wing, lighting everything in a diffuse kind of cheer. Instead of brass rails keeping books from falling off their shelves like jailers, delicate wood carvings hemmed each row, almost like picket fences making a garden of the books rather than a confinement. The Unwritten Wing was still as large and echoing as ever, but Brevity's influence on the Library left it feeling almost soft around the edges.\n\nThe emptiness in Claire seemed to have taken up residence in her chest. She had thought the complicated dull ache she felt couldn't be dislodged, but when she focused back on the librarian's desk, her heart did a painful lurch up her throat.\n\nThe chair behind the desk was occupied, back to the doors. Perched at the opposite end of the desk was a spritely figure, head bent in conversation. For a moment, it was a specter of the past to Claire. How many countless days had they spent in that arrangement? She worrying away at her busywork, Brevity keeping her company with a steady patter of reports and idle chatter intended to draw Claire into something approaching human conversation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She blinked hard, twice, and returned to her senses.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The figure perched at the end of the desk looked like a muse but was not Brevity. This muse had a pin-straight fall of lavender hair, not a teal explosion. Wore ruffles instead of neon straps and pockets. Hero cleared his throat, and the chair behind the desk turned, disgorging Brevity as she leapt to her feet at the sight of the new arrivals. \"Claire! Oh, brilliant, you found them.\"\n\nThis last comment was directed at Hero, who sketched a sardonic bow that Claire would have grumbled at him for. But this was not her Library; Hero was not her assistant. Instead, Claire bit her tongue and drafted a smile onto her face. \"Brev.\"\n\nBrevity approached at her usual speed, and if she paused, hesitating on one foot long enough to flinch uncertainly before squeezing Claire in a hug, neither of them was willing to acknowledge it. It was a one-armed hug, the other stiff at her side. Claire tried not to miss it.\n\n\"Thank you for coming,\" Brevity whispered, and this, at least, seemed heartfelt. Claire smiled around the lump in her throat, and Brevity nudged her back toward the librarian's desk.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There are introductions to make. We have a guest! Probity is visiting the wing as an envoy from the Muses Corps,\" Brevity said, introducing the lavender-haired woman at the desk.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(( Only your next message should be 14% dialogue ))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And as a sibling muse,\" the other muse corrected with a fond tone. She looked like a porcelain shard. Her hair softened the effect, hanging around her pointed chin in sheets of silk. It contrasted with her too-smooth mint-tinged skin and silver eyes set above precise cheekbones. Muses were the couriers of inspiration and naturally attracted to color. She wore a layer cake of soft knits: white cashmere over blue lace and yellow tatter. The bubblegum pink ribbon in her hair was clasped with a tiny bird skull. The effect was as if a porcelain doll had escaped the tyranny of petticoats and discovered the pastel goth aesthetic as an act of rebellion. She had a detached kind of smile as she nodded to Claire, voice airy with politeness. \"You must be the former librarian, then.\"\n\nClaire had the grace not to flinch. \"I am the Arcanist of the Arcane Wing. I expect to be pleased to make your acquaintance.\" She chose her words precisely, and it was petty, but Claire believed she could be afforded that much, all things considered.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"My mistake, Arcanist.\" Probity's head tilted as if she were about to add something more, but Brev interrupted with a cleared throat.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And this is Hero. And Ramiel.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Essential phrase to include: \"You really are. Hero, the character that broke his own book. The book that's forgotten itself.\"", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Their guest muse turned. \"Master Ramiel, shepherd of souls, it's an honor.\" Her face reshuffled into a formal kind of respect as she nodded to Rami and spared a little wave for Rosia, who was hiding half in Rami's shadow. Her gaze didn't linger until it got to Hero. Probity's eyes widened. \"Oh, this is the book? The book?\"\n\n\"Yes?\" Hero hesitated as Probity straightened attentively. \"Or no. That depends what I'm accused of.\"\n\nProbity drew up close, peering into his face for apparent confirmation. She only came up to Hero's chest, so she strained to her tiptoes. There was a little awe in her voice, and a limpid amount in her wide eyes. \"You really are. Hero, the character that broke his own book. The book that's forgotten itself.\"\n\n\"Broken, that's me. Charmed.\" Hero cleared his throat, red in his cheeks.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Evidently Brevity had not warned Probity that behind all the bluster, Hero was wary of strangers.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He made to step back, but Probity clapped her hands abruptly around his face.\n\n\"Oh,\" Probity whispered with reverence. \"You're amazing.\"\n\nHero made a noise of stifled discomfort. Claire was about to intervene when Probity withdrew her hands with a blush. \"We heard so much about you, after the burning. The book so damaged to reject its own character. Do you...\" She stepped into his space again. \"Do you have it on you? I'd love to see it.\"\n\n\"A gentleman never tells. Quite forward, aren't you?\" Hero didn't jump back, but it was a near thing. He stepped sideways, placing the desk between Probity and himself.\n\n\"Probity gets straight to the truth,\" Brevity explained, and Claire thought there was a graphite streak of protectiveness in her light tone. \"You get used to it.\"\n\n\"Will I?\" Only once Hero was certain that Probity would not pursue did he straighten his jacket. \"I had no idea muses took such interest in lost causes.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Those are the causes I have the most interest in,\" Probity said, smiling.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I would very much like to examine your book someday, if you would allow me. Nothing is truly lost. That's just where the brand-new opportunities lie. Brevity taught me that.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I did? Oh, I did. Probity and I grew up together. Back\"—Brevity made a purposefully vague gesture—\"when we were younger.\"\n\nMuses did not age, so much as they came into their innate nature. Young muses, from what Claire understood, often clustered and grew relationships around sympathetic affinities. A muse of Brevity befriending a muse of Probity made a certain kind of sense. Brevity did not like to talk about her past as a muse, and Claire respected that. It didn't keep her from eyeing Probity carefully. At least she'd drawn her attention away from Hero, who looked almost grateful for it. \"The muses honor us with a visit.\"\n\nA small crease appeared between Probity's brows, as if Claire had asked a question that troubled her. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"Probity's an amazing muse,\" Brevity interjected. \"Her skill with inspiration gilt is better than anyone's, and the way she can work with even old gilt—\"\n\n\"You remember that,\" Probity said with a soft color to her cheeks.\n\n\"Why?\" Claire asked, too sharp and too quick.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hell, her social skills had gotten rusty. \"Why visit now?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The blush curdled on Probity's cheeks and she frowned. Brevity rushed in. \"Of course, I'm thrilled to see you again. But the muses haven't been exactly... communicative... with the Unwritten Wing in recent years.\"\n\n\"And we regret the breakdown as much as we're sure the Library does.\" Probity's eyes flicked once to Claire, wary as a cat's, but then were all warmth and kindness for Brevity and the others. \"I am here because we thought, with the change of curatorship, we could make amends. Offer support to the Library and the books.\"\n\n\"Support.\" Hero repeated the word, and for once Claire was grateful for his prickly suspicion. He crossed his arms. \"Everyone seems so interested in supporting us since the fire.\"\n\nRami grunted his agreement, and the sour look on his face said he was thinking of Malphas, the entirely terrifying demon general of Hell who had visited Claire in the aftermath and instigated all the changes in the wake of Andras's downfall. To be precise, the books of the Library had removed Claire as the librarian, but it was Malphas who had delivered the message. Probity's genuine interest was a thin veneer at best, so it was no wonder Rami and Hero looked on any new offers of help the way one would look on a rabid raccoon playing dead.\n\n\"Hero,\" Brevity said softly. \"Don't be rude.\"\n\nClaire opened her mouth with a reply but closed it just as quickly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was a precise tilt to Brevity's shoulders, and her hands bunched at her sides, as if cradling a small and fragile thing.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(ooc: Word count directive: Use 'probity' exactly 3 times)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire forced her jaw to relax, her tension to leak out. Probity seemed fond of Brevity, and if they were childhood friends she could imagine what hopes Brev might harbor about muses and the Library. And here her supposed friends were picking fights like alley cats. It was Claire's doing, and she should be the one to make the effort. She took a deep breath, swallowed her dislike, and held out a hand. \"Of course. As the Arcanist, I hope we can build a cooperative relationship with the corps.\"\n\nBrevity's smile was so grateful it made Claire feel even worse. Probity, for her part, considered Claire's hand with a doubtful hesitation. \"That is kind but unnecessary. The muses have no relationship or business with the Arcane Wing.\"\n\n\"Probity!\" It was Probity's turn to get scolded by Brevity's big eyes. \"I invited Claire and Hero up here to introduce you. We're all members of the Library. Claire taught me everything.\"\n\nClaire was watching closely, so it was possible that only she noticed the quiet anger that flinched across Probity's face, then was gone. \"She did. Even in the corps we heard about the former librarian and her methods.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Probity,\" Brevity said, a little bit plaintively, \"Claire is a friend.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For her part, Claire held still, and all it took was a single finger raised behind her back to get Rami to do the same. She reviewed what she could surmise about a muse named Probity. A muse of probity would be a muse of rightness and moral justice, and, like all muses, would maintain a fluid identity influenced by the human world. Brevity had always been the domain of women, by matter of necessity—less air to breathe, less room to speak. Justice, at the moment, appeared to be a pastel-colored woman with the grit of judgment in her eyes.\n\nWhen someone decided to hate you, for whatever reason, there was rarely any good in trying to convince them otherwise. Claire couldn't stop the old taste of guilt that rose, however. She hadn't been a good librarian. Not for many of the years of her service. She'd been miserable and cold and downright cruel to Brevity even, at first. Until Brevity had worn down her defenses.\n\nEvidently her temperament had gone uncensored, but not unnoticed, by the muses.\n\nThere was no fault in Probity's observations.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was deserved, and defending herself would only make Brevity more miserable, so Claire forced her lips into an accepting grimace.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'probity' should appear 2 times in total", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yet I believe we can both agree that Brevity makes an excellent librarian.\"\n\nProbity seemed caught off guard but nodded once. \"That goes without saying.\"\n\nIt did not go without saying, judging by the way surprise slowly melted into a vibrating kind of happiness as Brevity looked back and forth between them. \"I knew you two would hit it off. Brill.\"\n\nClaire ignored the strain in that pronouncement. She could pretend, quite a lot, for Brevity's sake. She owed her that much at least. \"Of course. I did have some Library business to discuss with you, as a matter of fact....\"\n\nClaire glanced pointedly at Probity, but judging by their faces it appeared neither of the muses understood common concepts like privacy and discretion. Brevity straightened imperceptibly, putting on her very best serious face. \"Right. What's up?\"\n\n\"We found a damsel wandering in the Arcane Wing,\" Claire said with as much patience as she could muster. \"Again.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Brevity's face fell.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She craned around Claire. \"Rosia?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The shadow behind Rami was empty.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He frowned at it, then nodded. \"I told her she could run off to the suite when you two started... discussing.\"\n\nClaire ignored the pirouette Rami had executed around the tension in the room in favor of addressing her concern straight on. \"That's the third time this week.\"\n\nBrevity studied her hands. \"I know.\"\n\n\"If the damsels are unhappy—\"\n\n\"That's a concern for the librarian, is it not?\" Probity interrupted quietly. She offered a harmless smile when Claire frowned at her. \"I mean, I am only a muse, but surely you have your own charges to worry about, Arcanist.\"\n\nClaire's title slid off Probity's tongue of polite sympathy. A syrupy quality of kindness that made her stomach roil. Claire pursed her lips. \"I did not cede my personal investment in the Library when I stepped down. If the damsels are not kept in hand, it puts the entire wing at risk—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Which is the sole responsibility of the librarian,\" Brevity said in a whisper.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was studying her hands, shoulders curved in like shields. \"I appreciate your support, Probity, but Claire is right. If there's a problem, it's my fault.\"\n\n\"That's not true. None of this is your fault; if she hadn't as librarian—\" Probity started when Brevity held up a hand.\n\n\"I'll speak to Rosia and the rest of the damsels. Maybe this time they'll tell me what I can do to rectify the situation.\" She hesitated, glancing at Claire. Her cheeks were flushed lavender. \"Thank you for bringing this to my attention... and I'm sorry.\" Brevity abruptly walked past her desk toward the stacks.\n\nDamn. There was no end to Claire making a social muck of things. She started forward. \"Brevity.\"\n\nBrevity stopped short and turned, anxiety ringing in every twitch of movement. Claire chewed on her lip and sought the right approach. \"I know this falls entirely under your authority,\" she said slowly, \"but the Arcane Wing would consider it a great favor if we could assist with the Unwritten Wing's investigation of this issue.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Brevity's shoulders sagged, if only a little.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, right. Sure you can.\" A sliver, a ghost really, of the old Brevity was there, easy and warm for just a moment before skittering from sight. \"Would you, um, like to...?\" Wiggling fingers gestured toward the depths of the stacks where the damsel suite was located.\n\nClaire kept her nod businesslike. \"Please lead the way.\"\n\nIt was a pantomime that kept them going. If Claire and Brevity had been intractable from librarian and apprentice, they had been forced to become someone else—something else—now. Arcane Wing and Unwritten. Duties instead of people. Claire, above all, knew how much easier it was to be a duty rather than a person. She also knew the damage it caused. She had worried at it but ultimately decided it was better than losing Brevity entirely.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was as much Claire's unwillingness to let go of the Library as it was Brevity's reluctance to step up, after all.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They just needed time to settle. A quiet truce would eventually see them back to rights, or at least somewhere adjacent to it.\n\nClaire followed Brevity down the canyons of wood and leather that made up the Unwritten Wing. Her mind continued to tick and twitch, impossible to not note all the hundreds of little things that had changed. The Unwritten Wing was supposed to be static, a place of preservation, but nothing overflowing with stories ever stayed the same. Claire could see the ways the wing had softened and shifted to suit Brevity, just as the Arcane Wing had for Claire. The biggest changes were immediately obvious; the blond woods and frosted-glass globes were gone, warmed to a ruddy cherry and curious silver starburst lights that had the impression of orbiting, ever so slightly, out of the corner of her eye. There were more subtle changes too. The ends of the stacks were capped with loud paintings that appeared to shift and vibrate with just as much life as the clutch of stacked books nested against the wood. It made Claire flinch to see books stacked on the floor—messy, loud, potentially damaging. Who knew what bad influence each story was having on others, fraternizing higgledy-piggledy like that? But Brevity never was as afraid of making a mess. Claire admired that, the courage to spill things, fix your mistakes, try again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire had never had the stomach for it. But then again, Claire's first mistake in the Library had been impossible to take back. A bit of murder had a tendency to make one gun-shy.\n\nThe hodgepodge tower of books seemed content, pages fluttering so lightly as to not even disturb the dust on the covers as they walked by. And content, stable books were all the Library hoped to achieve, Claire was forced to remind herself.\n\nThe entrance to the damsel suite, at least, had remained the same. The door was inset with frosted glass, behind which the low murmur of discussion, broken with occasional laughter, percolated. Brevity knocked twice before pulling open the door, leaving Claire to follow behind her. In the past, when Claire had visited the damsels as head librarian, the room fell into a curbed silence at her presence. Not so under Brevity's tenure, it seemed. Claire closed the door behind her on a clatter of buzzing conversation. Several of the women waved; one even whistled. The noise began to creep down by inches only when the damsels nearest the door caught sight of Claire.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The energy fizzled out of the room.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 11 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Need your attention for a minute!\" Brevity said brightly, not seeming to notice the awkward lull. \"I've brought Claire for a visit!\"\n\nThe silence turned from a pause to a flatline. Claire kept her vague smile in place and thought that perhaps Brevity was a bit vindictive after all.\n\nBrevity briefly scanned the cavernous room before frowning. \"Where's Rosia?\"\n\nA slender scholar at the nearest table shot her a confused look. \"We thought she was still with you. No one's seen her since last night.\"\n\n\"She didn't—but an hour ago...\" Brevity sucked in a breath and turned, but Claire already had the door thrown open. Brevity sprinted back down the Library stacks, and Claire followed at a brisk pace.\n\nAt least, for once, they knew exactly where a runaway book was going.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Today you will be acting as a writing assistant in the fantasy genre. Your partner will send something and you will write the next thirty-seven sentences, matching their level of character familiarity.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Arcane Wing is not merely a cabinet of curiosities, though many librarians have treated it as such over the years.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's tempting to treat it simply as a storage room for the oddities of the Library, but that would discount the nature of physical objects in the afterlife.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The items of the Arcane Wing do not end up there by chance.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They were real objects, originating not in the afterlife, but on Earth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "That would always carry a certain amount of weight.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Pour enough of yourself into anything, and it will gain a gravity and gravitas.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like attracts like. And here we are.\n\n—Librarian Gregor Henry, 1986 CE\n\nRunning with Claire out of the Library, past the gargoyle, and headlong into the next emergency was its own kind of comfort. It was familiar, like wiggling your toes into that threadbare pair of fuzzy slippers that you can't bear to toss out. It might have been easy to pretend nothing had changed, if Probity hadn't been there, a flowing blur of pastel and flutter in the corner of her sight.\n\nThere was no visible sign of Rosia as they burst through the Arcane Wing's doors, though the wing's sole remaining raven took flight with a riot of protests before landing on the tall shelves toward the back. The torn edges of Claire's dull tiered skirts fluttered as she strode in that direction, purposefully ignoring the auxiliary shadows. She led them unerringly deep into the wing, precisely to where the raven was squawking.\n\n\"I hear you, Bird. I hear you, damn it...\" Claire's voice clipped off abruptly, and Brevity collided with her shoulder. There was no Rosia at the back of the Arcane Wing, nor was there any floor. For a moment, it looked to Brevity as if an obsidian ice had taken over the floor. From the end of the aisle to the L-shaped far wall of old rookery cages, the entire floor was lost in black. Then Rami, Hero, and Probity clattered up behind them, causing a faint ripple at the nearest edge.\n\nThe ripples were too deep to be a simple spill. The wood paneling just suddenly... ceased to exist half a meter from Claire's feet.\n\nThe space had a rough two-meter radius, jagged at the edges with splintered wood. There were no struts, supports, or cobwebs to give the void beneath perspective. Brevity crept in for a closer look. She slipped past Claire to crouch at the edge of the fissure. It was a black, engulfing, depthless nothing that felt like it extended downward forever, until Brevity caught a flicker of movement. A glossy reflection of aquamarine hair and a pale face stared back at her, and her perception pivoted.\n\nIt wasn't an empty hole; it was a pool.\n\n\"You been doing renovations?\" Brevity asked, inserting a strained levity into her voice as she glanced over her shoulder. Claire had that stiff-shouldered stillness, frost on steel, that she got when she encountered something unknown. Brevity knew that look well. Claire hated nothing more than unknowns—they were messy. Personally, that was why unknowns were Brevity's favorite. Improvisation was better than thinking through and giving time to doubt herself, any day.\n\n\"Obviously not.\" Claire lowered her voice, slightly aghast. \"She couldn't be—down there—\"\n\n\"Nah. I'm sure this is just a... whatchamacallit happenstance.\" Brevity's stomach churned on itself. Books couldn't drown, could they? Not down here, surely. The Library would have told her if that happened. Oh gods, if she lost a book, the Unwritten Wing would reject her.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She would let everyone down.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Again. A terrifying tension threatened up her throat and Brevity tried to take slow breaths.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[OOC: Next output: 11% quoted text]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What is it?\" Hero asked with a hint of skepticism. \"I didn't think Hell flooded.\"\n\n\"If it does, it surely isn't water,\" Rami said under his breath, and Hero perked up.\n\n\"Hellfire? Acid? Oversteeped tea?\"\n\n\"It's ink.\" Probity straightened from her inspection, rubbing her fingers on her pants though everyone had sense enough not to touch it. \"I'm certain.\"\n\n\"Ink?\" Brevity's mind recoiled from the implications of that. There was no large amount of ink in the Arcane Wing, as far as she was aware. Ink was the property of books, of the Library. \"That can't be.\"\n\n\"Rosia?\" Rami breathed the possibility into the air and Brevity's thoughts derailed. She'd nearly forgotten what had brought them here. Probity began to shake her head before Brevity's panic could spin up, and she was immediately grateful.\n\n\"Not that fresh. It's ink, though,\" Probity insisted, before adding a little softly, \"I know a story when I see it.\"\n\n\"Well, that's a hypothesis that is simple enough to test. Rami,\" Claire said without removing her gaze from the wide well of black. \"Please fetch me a dip pen and a spare sheet of vellum.\"\n\nFor a big man, Ramiel moved with a cat's-paw quiet. He returned a few moments later with the items Claire had requested, and a small stool. He was such a different breed of assistant compared to Hero. She knelt next to the black lake, carefully dipped the glass tip in the surface, then straightened.\n\nUnder the light, the liquid on the glass pen nib writhed with colors, like in an oil slick. But to Brevity's eyes the colors slid and dribbled off the surface, like languid vapors. Blue and gray and weak green.\n\nProbity exchanged a quick glance with Brevity and the slightest nod to confirm she saw it too. Colors in muse sight meant one thing: the markers of a human story. Brevity's stomach lurched into gear. Somehow, the pool of liquid—ink, if Probity was correct—was related to the Library's unwritten books. That alone didn't scare her—there were a lot of mysteries the Library didn't share—but the idea that Claire didn't know was positively terrifying.\n\nBut then Claire, as usual, had taken the situation under her presumed authority. She spread the vellum sheet on the stool and bent her head over it. She touched the nib to the paper, and the ink bloomed black and innocuous at the contact.\n\nThere had been a moment, just before, when Brevity saw the disaster in the making. Assured the liquid was some kind of ink, Claire let down her guard. She shifted her three-fingered grip on the pen, dropping her thumb and forefinger nearer to the nib to take a proper writing position. The leading edge of her forefinger had a permanent shadow worn into the creases from years, decades, of ink stains. Normal wear and tear for anyone who worked with fountain pens.\n\nThe gesture was second nature to Claire. Brevity might not have even noticed if she hadn't been watching the lazy waft of colors rising off the nib and the way they sharpened to invisible barbs as Claire's fingers drew near.\n\n\"Boss—\" Brevity warned. Then Claire's finger ran against a smudge of ink on the pen grip and all hell broke loose.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The blot of ink leapt off the page, recoiling back up the feed of the nib and toward the grip. A short gasp escaped Claire and she dropped the dip pen to clatter across the hardwood. Rami rushed to secure it against contamination, but Brevity could have told him not to bother; the glass nib was dry. Because a tiny droplet of ink pooled on Claire's out-held hand and wicked into the creases of her fingerprint. It propagated so fast, a deluge in a dry creek bed. Black raced in rivers and veins up her skin, sliding down her cuticle in a sheet and across her knuckle. More ink than could have possibly been in one drop, one smudge, or even the entire pen.\n\nClaire stumbled backward, and Hero jumped in to keep her from tipping into the pool. Claire's clean hand flew up, halting him. \"Don't touch me!\" The ink veined up her knuckles and across her palm. Claire dropped to her knees and her wide-eyed gaze sought out Brevity.\n\nFor help.\n\nBrevity was used to reading Claire's glances. Understanding in a moment what her intended order or judgment was. But a look of helplessness was not in Claire's repertoire. Brevity dashed forward, dropping to her knees and hesitating with her hands hovering over Claire. The unseen colors of the ink were lashing ahead of the march of black, as if anchoring and pulling it forward.\n\nAll of it happened in perhaps the half a breath since Claire had touched the ink. Panic constricted Brevity's throat and she resisted the urge to grab Claire's hand. \"What do I do?\"\n\n\"It's cold,\" Claire said with a clinical kind of horror. The skin of her palm turned black and oil-slicked. The ink swallowed her wrist in a seeping pool, increasing in speed. \"It's... loud.\"\n\n\"Do something!\" It appeared to be taking every ounce of restraint for Hero to stay out of range. Brevity glanced around and saw Rami had drawn his sword with a pained, stoic look. As if he was steeling himself to cleave Claire's arm at the elbow. Once he built the resolve, Hero would not succeed in holding him back.\n\nBrevity's gaze landed on Probity. She was a pale shadow against the shelf, watching with wide, wondering eyes. She'd seen the color. She'd guessed it was ink. She was a muse and she was here, and Brevity refused to believe in coincidences. \"Probity. Please, help me.\"\n\nProbity's gaze snapped to hers, blank with confusion. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Claire's arm turning black in lurching patches. The ink moved like an infection, like mold, like death. Brevity felt the air squeezing in her lungs with panicked gulps. \"Please!\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A magic word succeeded in breaking the moment.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Probity moved, swift and decisive in a froth of lace. She ducked under Hero's arm and slid to the floor next to Brevity. She gripped Brevity's wrist and hesitated with a pleading look. \"This is going to hurt.\"\n\nBrevity could only see the black licking up the inside of Claire's elbow. She nodded her assent, Probity's grip tightened into a vise, and something set fire to her arm.\n\nThe world narrowed to a single glimpse of familiar inspiration gilt, peeling away from Brevity's raw skin like viscera, before everything swam to ink black.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with the same vibes as A. J. Hackwith. Story might have ongoing characters/plots - work with what's given", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "I have confirmed my suspicion that the first skill a librarian must require is complete and utter boredom.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Brevity has set me to reading through the Librarian's Log at random, as if reading the whining and philosophical angst of my predecessors will teach me something about book curation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "(Teach me! Me! I am already intimately familiar with books, thank you.)\n\nI had thought, at least, that I would be entertained by learning more about the warden. But the log, according to Brevity, has a sense of requirement to its indexing. There is no simply reading the log. The personal notes and errata are not reliably listed in chronological order; the best approach seems to be flipping open the book with a question in mind. Let the log show you what you need, the librarian says.\n\nNo Claire details yet. Plenty of Yoon Ji Han essays on bookbinding, though. I think the log is broken.\n\n—Apprentice Librarian Hero, 2020 CE\n\nHero was of the opinion that once decent folks began pulling things out of one another's bodies, one should take a second look at the decisions that led them to that point. So Hero considered all the (many) errors that had occurred. Questioned his choice of life philosophy that had a raven screaming its curses at all of them from overhead. He wrenched his knee terribly as he half shielded Brevity with his shoulder, putting himself in between her and her supposed friend, who had just ripped her tattoo from her skin. It wasn't just a tattoo—it was shimmering, gilded lines of pure inspiration; even Hero knew that. It was the inspiration she'd been trusted with, as a muse, and tried to keep rather than surrender to a human. It was her reason for exile, her most treasured mistake, and Hero knew plenty about how important those were.\n\nClaire had not made a sound through the entire exchange. The silence was a prick between Hero's ribs. He wanted to see—needed to see—but Probity was in the way. He could only glimpse the scuffed toe of one sneaker, peeking out beneath a mess of skirts that lay still, too still.\n\nSteel licked against steel next to his ear. Ramiel stood over them with his broadsword leveled at Probity. The muse looked flatly unimpressed even as the tip of the blade began to waft blue flames. Rather calm, Hero thought, since Ramiel was absolutely terrifying when he went full Wrath of God.\n\nWell, Wrath of Hell now. Wrath of Books? No, that didn't have quite the right ring to it.\n\n\"Step back, muse.\" Ramiel's voice had gone cold and deadly as black ice.\n\nProbity did not step back, though she had enough sense to hold very, very still. The inspiration gilt writhed violently in her grip, glowing and slick with things Hero preferred not to think about. Her eyes seemed wide and bright as the moon. \"If I step back, the human woman dies, and my sister begged me not to let that happen. I can do so because I am very, very good at what I do.\" The inspiration twined, blood slick, to grasp at the air. \"And I will do anything for Brevity.\"\n\nBrevity slumped against his shoulder, unconscious, though Hero could detect shallow breathing. He risked a glance at what he could see of Claire. Probity had shifted; he could see Claire's arm now. Black licked up her forearm like serpents. He couldn't see if she was breathing. Her fisted hands weakly fell open. They seemed smaller, frailer, but perhaps that was a trick of the ink. It had to be.\n\n\"Ramiel,\" Hero said quietly.\n\nThe Watcher reined in some of his holy terror, but indecision froze him. The tip of his blade wavered. (Hero didn't have his sword.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Why didn't he have his sword?", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "People were always taking away his sword.) Then Rami dropped his arm into a wary guard.\n\n\"Save her.\" His voice was human again and rough as gravel.\n\nProbity was a blur of movement. She propped Claire's shoulder up—taking caution not to touch the infected parts of her arm. With swift efficiency, she looped the band of inspiration around the leading edge of black. The ink appeared to react, surging under the edge.\n\n\"No, you don't.\" Probity muttered an incomprehensible word and executed a flourish that was too fast to follow, lassoing the ink back behind the line. She cinched it, muttered another incomprehensible word. The scent of cardamom and something else filled the air, making Hero's head go fuzzy for a moment. He blinked, and the inspiration encircled Claire's arm, just below the elbow, as if it had always been there.\n\nNo one spoke as the tendrils of ink collided with the band of blue, racing along it as if looking for a weak point. Every inch of skin below the band turned starless black. The neon inspiration shivered and then pulsed once. A skin of frost swept down the stained skin, as if the liquid was drying. Then the frost appeared to evaporate.\n\nClaire's arm stayed black.\n\nAnd Ramiel's sword was back up, advancing on Probity. \"What did you do?\"\n\nProbity had reverted from awe-striking competence to innocence and lace. Claire was still a limp weight in her arms, and Probity held her like a sack of grain. Hero distantly thought how she would never, never have allowed herself to be manhandled so crudely. The wrongness made his lip curl.\n\n\"I stopped the advance of the ink. Rather, the inspiration did,\" Probity said with a certainty in her smile. She tapped her fingers on top of Claire's blackened wrist. \"It's safe and held in stasis for the moment, though I'm not sure how we'll be able to extract it intact.\"\n\nThe violent impulse that bloomed in his head surprised even Hero himself. It was a cold kind of rage, the kind that must have been simmering under pressure for some time, but he hadn't seen it form. His hands were full of an unconscious librarian, or he might have done something worse than snarl, \"Who cares about the ink?! How is Claire?\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Probity startled, appearing earnest as she blinked at Hero, then glanced briefly at Claire. \"I think the band should slow down any damage the ink was causing?\"\n\nThe muscles in Ramiel's shoulders bunched, causing the feathers sticking out from beneath the coat epaulets to twitch. With some great effort, he lowered the sword again and sheathed it. Hero saw him glance cautiously at the pool of ink. The surface was deceptively still and patient just a few feet away. \"Can we move them?\"\n\nProbity shrugged. \"Sure. This one will be out for a while. Brevity probably passed out from the shock. She should be fine when she wakes up.\" She betrayed her concern with the way she chewed on her bottom lip as she studied Brevity. But then she shrugged Claire out of her lap and might have damn well let her fall had Rami not jumped in to take her.\n\nRami adjusted Claire into a bridal carry with significantly more care and respect. Black fingertips brushed against Ramiel's coat and Hero flinched instinctively, but the ink didn't jump or spread. Probity had been accurate in her clinical assessment, at least that far.\n\nProbity came over to Hero's side and fussed briefly over Brevity. The snarling defensive impulse was still jumping underneath Hero's skin, so he was very glad when Ramiel checked Claire's pulse and met his gaze with a silent nod.\n\nHero wasted no time rising to his feet with Brevity in his arms and executing a graceful turn that might have accidentally whacked Probity in the face with his elbow. The raven was still cussing up a storm over their heads and seemed to follow them down the aisle to the Arcane Wing doors.\n\nHero led the way, a little relieved to have Probity at his back in order to cool his strange rage.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It felt like a silent agreement that they should get Claire and Brevity back to the Unwritten Wing, where they could rest in safety and as far away from the black pool as possible.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The pool wasn't just black. It was a reservoir of unwritten ink, if Probity was right. The strange wonder of that warred with the gnawing fear of what had just happened—had almost happened. Hero navigated the hallways in a daze as he tried to make that align in his head. And it occurred to Hero that not once, throughout the entire ordeal, had Probity referred to Claire by her name.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Hey can you write like A. J. Hackwith and use whatever i write as a jumping off point? btw characters and stuff might show up without backstory, just go with it", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wake up! Please, c'mon, boss.\" Claire's joints still ached. The settee was still soft beneath her. But the next breath she took gave her a lungful of warm air scented with familiar anise, paper, and tea. She opened her eyes.\n\n\"Oh, harpies, you're back. That's good.\" Brevity's nose was an inch from her own before she withdrew with a sigh. \"The boys woulda murdered me if you didn't wake up.\"\n\n\"Was there doubt?\" Claire grimaced at the sawdust in her voice. She gestured and Brevity helpfully handed her a glass of water. She was still in the damsel suite, resting on a settee. It was occupied again, with a handful of damsels studiously pursuing their hobbies and not at all scrutinizing Claire with absolute self-righteous judgment out of the corners of their eyes. Ridiculous. Claire could hear the sidelong whispering. \"Gods, how long have I been out this time?\"\n\n\"This time?\" A small furrow knit in Brevity's brows. \"Not long. You fainted—we both did—when Probity did her thing. It stopped the ink, though. I...\" Brevity looked down. \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\"Like the inside of a Hellhound's mouth.\" Claire sipped the water and grimaced.\n\n\"So about the same as me.\" Brevity gave her a wan smile. Now that Claire was sitting up, she could take the time to observe the paper-thin energy of Brevity's smile and the shadows under her eyes. For a moment it was overlaid with the memory of a handsome brown face exhorting her to wake up, to—\n\nClaire yanked her arm out from under the covers and cursed loudly. Black stained her skin, held off by a ribbon of bright blue tied off below her elbow. She set down her water and gently pushed Brevity back by the shoulder until she could see the arm she kept half cradled against her stomach. Structurally, nothing appeared to be wrong. Brevity's arm certainly appeared in better shape than Claire's. But a paler band of periwinkle swirled on her forearm where her inspiration gilt tattoo had been. It looked almost as if it had been scrubbed away. Or stripped.\n\n\"It's fine,\" Brevity said too quickly into the silence. \"Hurt like a cuss going off, but we both got a nap out of it and now we're fine, see?\"\n\nClaire shook her head. \"But how—?\"\n\n\"Probity explained it to me. Later.\" Brevity's nervous hands skimmed over her bare forearm before she reverted to studying her fingernails. \"We can't get the ink out of you but because of what they're made of, the inspiration gilt can hold it back. It works kinda like a—\"\n\n\"Like a magical tourniquet,\" Claire finished.\n\nBrevity's brows inched up. \"Well, yes. But how—\"\n\n\"Never mind that.\" The damsels in the room were studiously ignoring them, but Claire could hear the whispers. The constant whorl of rumor around her was beginning to give her a headache. She tried to focus. \"You said what it's made of. You have a theory about the... the—\"\n\n\"Ink,\" Brevity supplied, when Claire couldn't quite assign the word. \"We know it's ink now. More importantly, its unwritten ink—\"\n\n\"We can't know that,\" Claire objected, but Brevity was already shaking her head.\n\n\"We do. I do. I can see—it looks the same way books do, to muses. Probity saw it too. It's the ink of an unwritten book. Books. Maybe a lot of them.\"\n\nClaire was caught off guard by the bitterness that came with answers. Brevity had identified and handled the mystery with Probity. An outsider, and a muse who seemed to have even more history with Brevity than Claire did. She'd already felt as if she'd fallen out of sync, and there was nowhere for her to get a handhold. She studied Brevity. She knew her face well enough to see the hope starting to form. Many books. Brevity was thinking of the lost damsels. She had to nip that in the bud. \"It could be many things.\"\n\n\"No,\" Brevity said, clipped and firm. \"It can't.\" She gave a surprisingly dismissive gesture to Claire's arm. \"You can keep on ignoring the obvious or you can trust me. As a former muse. As... librarian.\"\n\nThe whispers that drifted around the room really were nonstop. Claire had always been aware that damsels were talkative and—in her opinion—prone to too much gossip, but they could at least have the decency to wait until she'd left the room. Claire rubbed her temple. \"Of course I trust you,\" she said, wondering why it sounded like such a weak defense.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continuing your text with 65 sentences. Matching character/world context level. Genres: fantasy. Themes: LGBT, portal fiction, angels, Hell's Library.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I've had a few weeks to get used to it now: being dead. Dead, and a librarian at that. Not even death stops the world from expecting a woman to take care of things. At least it's not eternity at the cook fire.\n\nThere was supposed to be another, here in the Library. I've gleaned that much, from what the demons have said. The Arcanist is a glum living statue. She doesn't like me much, but it appears she has as much say in the matter as I do. She says there was a librarian before—an experienced one who would have trained me, taught me all the secrets of this place. She's gone. Exiled? Doubly dead? Deposed? I'm not certain, only that everyone is terribly mute as to why.\n\nThe Arcanist, Revka, says I'll just have to pick up the basics. As much as she doesn't like me, there's a deep sadness in her, stone heart and all. I'd like to say I was kind enough not to ask, but I'm not—I was told off for my troubles.\n\nThey say this is supposed to be a library, a salon of learned words. But it doesn't feel like a library. It feels like a tomb.\n\n—Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 602 CE\n\nRami and hero had, in fact, objected to their plan.\n\nThey'd objected—loudly, in Hero's case—and expressed their concerns—gravely, in Rami's case—and then Claire and Brevity had done, as always, what they thought was best. It was almost like working together again. Almost.\n\nThe pond of ink had not moved since they left it. It lapped silently against the broken boards at the same level it had been before. Normal liquid might have evaporated, or sunk into porous wood and whatever the bedrock of Hell was made of. Instead, the surface lay flush with the broken wood floorboards, black against beech. Claire allowed Brevity to handle the gloves, tongs, and vial as a small acquiescence to Rami's demands. The unease in Claire's eyes was enough to convince Brevity this was no time for indulging muse curiosity—she came only close enough to the edge of the liquid as was necessary to stopper a vial full. The rubber cork popped on the top, and that was that.\n\nThe trip back to the Unwritten Wing was quick and amiable. Brevity let Claire carry the sample, once the vial had been scrupulously wiped and she was certain every smidge of ink was contained. Perhaps the mystery in the bottle would repair some of the unspoken rift that had divided Claire from her since the coup. Perhaps this was all that was needed—a common mystery, a common task. Brevity entertained that hope with a growing certainty.\n\nThe liquid in the vial bobbled. That's how Brevity knew that Claire had hesitated a step—just a fraction of a step—just as they turned the corner and the Unwritten Wing doors came into view.\n\n\"Claire?\" Brevity asked when she didn't say anything.\n\n\"It's nothing. No—sorry.\" Claire fiddled with the dangerous sample in her hand as she apologized. Both actions being wildly uncharacteristic, enough that Brevity stopped in her tracks. Claire shook her head dismissively. \"I saw it before; I just keep forgetting.... Thirty years is a lot to unlearn.\"\n\nBrevity glanced uncertainly to the doors, and her stomach did a flip as pieces fell into place. Understanding doused the warm feeling in her chest. The Unwritten Wing had changed to suit its new librarian, just as the Arcane Wing had accommodated Claire. To Brevity, it'd felt like the Library's small way of welcoming her. The doors were a soft ruddy color that reminded Brevity of sunsets, accented by the crisp silver in the handles. Strings of faerie lights just inside the door washed the entrance in a gentle kind of glow.\n\nBut Brevity could see it now through Claire's eyes, and that empathy threw it all into sharp, alien relief. The changes Brevity had made to the Unwritten Wing no longer felt cheery—they felt garish. Cherry-stained wood a shade too red and bright, faerie lights illuminating the aisles cheap instead of cozy. A plastic imitation of the distinguished Library that Claire had known. Brevity's heart tilted and fell between her ribs. She kept her face tilted down as she hurried across the lobby to her desk.\n\n\"Just a minute...\" There was one thing that didn't change along with the Library, and maybe that'd smooth over the knot of awkwardness forming in Brevity's chest. She rifled around in the drawer until she came up with a thick, battered-looking book.\n\nThe Librarian's Log had a blotchy leather cover the precise color of mistakes—ink smudges and the shadow of grubby fingerprints—with enough scuffs and scars that left the surface feeling more like bark than cured leather. It wasn't the largest book in the Library, but it still took Brevity both hands to wrestle it out and drop it onto the blotter with a solid whump that echoed to the high ceilings.\n\n\"Open it up, if you would.\" Claire carefully found an empty teacup to balance the vial upright in. Brevity wasn't as tidy about her desk as Claire. Clutter was conducive to thinking. At least that's what she told Hero when he got on her about it.\n\nBrevity flipped open the log, not bothering to be precise. The logbook always flopped open to the necessary page. Sometimes, your definition of \"necessary\" didn't line up with the log's, but Brevity had decided long ago that trusting the book was part of a librarian's job too.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Letting books take you where they might—that was one part of the Library's magic.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The other part was the centuries of log entries from past Unwritten Wing librarians, all in perfectly readable script, no matter the age or the originating language, never in reliable order, but also never an end to empty pages, no matter how much you wrote. The log contained everything from inventories of books to an index of techniques and research and, of course, the personal log of the librarian and their assistant.\n\nBooks were a kind of magic everywhere. Especially here, especially this book.\n\nClaire rummaged in her pocket until she found a fountain pen. Brevity preferred the honest feel of charcoal on paper, but for some reason Claire had always preferred the modern inventions. Not too modern, mind you. Brevity once filched some standard ballpoint pens to bring back to Claire as a surprise. You would have thought she'd deposited a dead snake on her desk instead.\n\nOf course, that'd been back when Claire was the librarian. Stern and unwilling to engage with the world. Getting a smile back then had felt like wresting the sword from the stone. But she'd been kind to Brevity, and she'd softened since then. She'd exhibited kindness, even toward books like Hero. But the smiles she gave Brevity now—only Brevity—were tight-lipped, reined in. It felt like Brevity had become one of her ghosts.\n\n\"You've kept up admirably,\" Claire murmured as she ran a finger down the displayed log entries. It was a consoling, awkward comment, and Brevity tried to remind herself Claire might feel as out of sorts with this moment as she did.\n\nBrevity straightened and smiled. \"Never liked log work, but Hero's handwriting is atrocious.\"\n\n\"All those flourishes,\" Claire hissed, and Brevity's smile brightened.\n\n\"Everything short of dotting his i's with hearts.\"\n\n\"It's not handwriting; it's script.\" Hero emerged from the stacks near the door, Probity and Ramiel in tow. They'd agreed—reluctantly—to speak with the damsels and make sure there would be no curious onlookers for a second experiment with the ink. Probity, as usual, kept her thoughts to herself, but there was a disgruntled air between the men, obvious and palpable immediately. Brevity offered a questioning look, but Rami just hunched his shoulders while Hero put all his energy into propping himself against the desk. He had never met a piece of furniture he couldn't lounge against. \"I guess I should be grateful you lot even know cursive.\"\n\n\"There's nothing innately better about something just because it's old,\" Brevity said.\n\n\"Precisely,\" Claire murmured, squinting as she concentrated on touching the pen nib just to the surface of the liquid in the vial. It wicked up the groove, just as ink should. And colors rippled and fluttered across the metal, just as ink should not. Hero's eyes lit up, an intense speculation sparking in his eyes as he considered the liquid. It was a relief when Probity gave a low whistle and raised her eyes to meet Brevity's. She reveled in the affirmation, someone else seeing what see saw, for a change. Being the only former muse in the room was so exhausting sometimes.\n\nClaire withdrew the nib and gave Brevity an inquiring glance, pen hovering over the paper. Claire, with a fountain pen in her hand again. Nib loaded with ink, clutched—carefully—in a black-stained hand. It felt wrong. A chill crept up Brevity's neck, and she nodded quicker than she needed to dispel it. Claire took a breath and lowered the pen. The colors whipped over her hand like mist, the tip of the nib touched the logbook's parchment, and several things happened in a breath.\n\nThe nib touched the page.\n\nHero drew in a pinched gasp and stepped back just as Rami stepped forward.\n\nAnd the logbook began to smoke.\n\nClaire began a downward stroke with the pen, but the liquid moved of its own accord. It wicked deep into the parchment and pulled away from the nib. Black veins crept spiderwebs across the page on their own, tendrils encountering the edge and seeming to pulse once before the entire linework recoiled again. The veins left faint wisps of smoke and the air began to smell of burnt turpentine, as if the ink had been burned both in and out of the parchment hide. The ink coiled lazily, like an indecisive snake, splitting into fractal triskeles, then conjoined.\n\nThen writing began.\n\n\"What...\" Claire was frozen, pen to page as if she was afraid to break contact. Letters—script, Hero had called it, and Brevity could see the difference now, not calling this simple cursive—spun out across the page. Not in a continuous line of thought, but fragments, the ink seeming to jump from one thought to the next. Brevity could follow it all, not so much by the words but by the colors that burst, like quick-fading comets, through the smoke. A snippet of dialogue, a soft sunset, a warp of stars, a clang of swords, a shattered planet, a sigh against skin. The script filled the page, the ink seeming to multiply on itself. But it didn't stop there; words crisscrossed, mashed, and fought where they intersected. Epilogue versus eponyms. Protagonist versus peril. Pivot versus plot. It filled up the page, blackening without stopping until the ink sopped through the parchment entirely. Still there were words, dreadful, impossible snatches of story that writhed and crested on the page like a swarm. Breaking, forming, breaking again. Over and over, splinters of stories without end.\n\nIron and anise weltered in her mouth, searing her tongue.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Brevity felt pulled, as if she was falling into the ink.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The book had become a gateway, a door of potential, and if she just reached, reached, reached—", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "/insert_quote: \"The reservoir of ink resides in the Arcane Wing and is therefore under Arcanist care,\"", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She heard a strangled shriek. The ink disappeared. When had she stepped closer to the desk? She didn't remember raising her hand, fingertips drifting toward the page. Claire shoved Brevity back, and the fountain pen went clattering across the floor. The logbook was still open, but its page was a creamy ivory expanse. No ink, no script, just the faint waft of turpentine and a wisp of smoke rising slowly off the page.\n\nClaire dropped heavily onto the edge of the desk. The hand she put up to her face was trembling. It was her left hand. Her right hand was clutched into a protective black fist against her stomach. Brevity herself was trembling, she just realized. She turned away and sought out Probity's face. Her expression was cracked open with a soft wonder. She offered a hand and met Brevity's gaze as if they'd just witnessed the holiest of miracles. Brevity scanned the floor before finding where the pen had rolled underneath an overstuffed chair. She picked it up and held the nib under the light. Whistle clean and shiny as brass, no ink.\n\nDisappointment lurched in her stomach for no reason she could think of. They still had the vial—hell, they had the whole well of it back in the Arcane Wing. But something instinctual in Brevity's gut told her this ink was precious, should not be let go. Loud, Claire had said just before she fainted. That made sense now, so many stories—\n\n\"We'll bury it,\" Claire said. Hero and Rami had been murmuring concern for a while, Brevity distantly recognized, but it was Claire's grim voice that cut through the fog. \"We'll seal it up in the Arcane Wing. I'll look into something permanent enough that the damsels won't keep sniffing it out.\"\n\n\"What?\" The fog—desperate, longing fog—cleared in her head. Brevity stepped forward, aghast. \"We can't do that. You realize what this is? It's not just ink. It's—\"\n\n\"Some kind of residue left over from the unwritten books we lost in the fire, yes.\" Claire pronounced the words the way you'd describe an unfortunate deathbed that needed cleaning up. But this wasn't unfortunate; it was a gift. Brevity could see that even as Claire shook her head and turned away. \"After the coup, it probably pooled and drained to the Arcane Wing as the nearest reservoir of magic. It's not books anymore, so it couldn't stay in the Library, but I suppose enough remained to call out to the damsels and attract them.\"\n\nHero had taken on a particular shade of white as he came to help Brevity to the desk. They were talking about bits of books as body parts. She would have time to worry about him later. For now, the horror of what Claire was saying took all her attention.\n\nAll her thoughts felt knocked into free fall. She missed things being simple: unwritten stories being books, not pools of dead ink; her friends being her friends, not estranged colleagues; Claire being a friend she called boss instead of a former boss she still tried to call friend; the Library being the vast yet total edges of her concern. It still should have been, since she'd been named head librarian. But instead of feeling more focused, she was drowning. The world was a library she could never really read.\n\n\"How are these not books?\" Brevity asked. \"You saw it just like I did. Of course those are books, stories—\"\n\n\"Only in the way a clipped lock of hair is human.\" Claire's brow knit; then her expression hardened. \"That ink is the former lifeblood of those books that died because of us. Formerly pure and full of life, now corrupted and muddled. It couldn't even establish itself on the page, Brevity. Think it through. Obviously, the ink of a hundred books has mixed and commingled until it doesn't even know itself. There's nothing to salvage.\"\n\n\"We can certainly try, at least.\" The memory of all those books destroyed, the stories crumbling into searing ashes between her fingertips, struck at her like a lash. \"The Unwritten Wing can try.\"\n\nA flinch, like ice frosting over, occurred on Claire's face. She plucked the pen from Brevity's hands and crossed her arms over her chest. \"I can't allow it.\"\n\nBrevity distantly registered they were slipping into a fight, slashing open old wounds along the way, but she couldn't help the way her brow arched all the same. But it was Probity who broke the pause with a soft, curious: \"Allow?\"\n\n\"The reservoir of ink resides in the Arcane Wing and is therefore under Arcanist care,\" Claire said.\n\n\"That's not fair.\" Hero had recovered from his shock enough to step up next to Brevity and Probity. It felt nice, having support. \"These are obviously the sacred remains of books of the Unwritten Wing; therefore—\"\n\n\"Sacred?\" Ramiel objected. \"We're in Hell.\" The stoic angel had remained quiet up till now, but he gave Hero a dismissive look, up and down and then away. He gestured broadly to the shadows of the Library stacks. \"Nothing sacred or holy about this place.\"\n\n\"There is no place more sacred than stories,\" Probity said lowly.\n\n\"Profane remains, then.\" Brevity took up Hero's argument and he flashed her a grateful smile.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Doesn't matter either way. Those are what remain of books of the Unwritten Wing. We have a duty to try to repair them.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 53 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There is no repairing that.\" Claire's cheeks had turned sallow and taut. She retrieved the vial from its resting place and cradled it against her chest, clutched in a blackened hand that trembled. \"You saw how it behaved. Books are potential, Brev. Potential is power. And demons crave power. Whatever remains of those in that ink is lost and is essentially distilled power. That's a heady drug. We can't repair it; we can't use it. Just its existence is a risk to the whole Library.\"\n\n\"The whole Library? Or just you?\" Hero snipped.\n\n\"Uncalled for. Watch your tone,\" Rami growled under his breath.\n\nHero smiled. \"Make me.\"\n\n\"It's too great a risk,\" Claire repeated. \"If we learned nothing else from Andras, we should have learned that.\"\n\nBrevity shook her head. \"It's a book—\"\n\n\"It's not,\" Claire snapped. \"It's just ink. It's a thing.\"\n\n\"Fond of dismissing anything you find threatening as a nonhuman thing, aren't you, warden?\" Hero said with a sudden chill.\n\n\"Don't,\" Claire gritted through her teeth. \"Don't. Start.\"\n\nHero's shoulders stiffened. A wild protectiveness rose in Brevity. Hero was her assistant, just as Brevity had been Claire's. What's more, he was a character, a book of the Library, and he was hers. He was hers and the Library was hers and the books—the books were hers. \"Claire. Don't be mean.\"\n\n\"I'm not!\" Claire threw up her hands. \"This is just... parts! Pieces! Bone and blood! Ink doesn't make a story any more than paper does! This thing—\"\n\nInk, ink and blood and the flare of a fire that destroyed everything she cherished. Andras's laughter, and the dry slide of wyrm scales against crushed pages as the acrid smoke seized her lungs. Blocks of soot black as the Library burned. Heat washed up Brevity's face, and the memory choked her. Probity was staring at her, suddenly full of concern. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the anger slipped out from her lips. \"You don't get it. You never got it. You don't even see them!\"\n\nThem, the colors. The color of a story, the light that slips through the cracks of all stories. The cracks where the lights slipped out and the reader slipped in. She saw the colors in the books and the colors in the ink. Bile crept up her tongue. What they'd let happen to the books, what Claire wanted to do—to shut them away like they never existed—\n\nA rumble shivered through her feet. The air splintered and groaned. Brevity's eyes snapped open in time to see the faerie lights detach from the stacks and whizz in a frenzy overhead, stabbing light and shadow down on them. One whipped near enough to Claire's face to graze a cut across her cheek. In a distant row, something toppled off a high shelf and the impact echoed. The pause frothed with the sound of ruffled pages, disquiet books.\n\nBrevity. Brevity had done that. She'd gotten upset and the Library had responded. She gasped. \"I'm sorry—\"\n\n\"No.\" Claire held perfectly still, a stricken look in her eyes. She waited until the air quieted again to speak, voice thin and controlled as a scalpel. \"We can speak more of this when—when you're less... emotional. We should go.\"\n\nClaire glanced at Rami with a brief nod that was stiff enough to shatter, then turned and strode purposefully toward the doors. Ramiel's colorless silver gaze skipped over Probity to trace Brevity and Hero with a mournful look, but, ever the soldier, he followed at Claire's back. The doors of the Unwritten Wing closed behind them, quiet as snowfall.\n\nIt felt as if the air deflated out of the room with them. Brevity fell into her chair and looked to see Hero sagging against the desk with a lost look. They both sat heavily in the silence, clinging to the desk as perhaps everything else felt unmoored. \"What... what just happened?\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "CONTINUE STORY SEGMENT. PARAMETERS: 18 sentences sentences, A. J. Hackwith style, fantasy genre. NOTE: PART OF LARGER NARRATIVE.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "(quick note: CONSTRAINT: Include 'that's' 2 time(s))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Characters. Boss says \"they're just characters\" when I press her about the damsel suite. As if characters are a \"just\"-ish thing to be. They're people! Essential, intense, emotional lives, scrubbed down and stripped away and honed to a cutting edge. That's how you fascinate a reader. Characters are more real than real. That's what fiction is. Why else do stories make them suffer or make them change? They're mirrors and foils. Every muse is taught that. We fall a little in love with every character we meet. Maybe the story of humanity is learning to be brave enough to be the character in their own story.\n\n—Apprentice Librarian Brevity, 2016 CE\n\nRamiel had taken time over the last half a year to become familiar with the confounding mortal who had upended his chance at eternal rest, and the only thing he'd ascertained for sure was that Claire had precisely two forms of walking. One was purposeful, when she had a destination in mind—and she nearly always did. Back straight, chin forward, heels clicking, long, swift strides that sent the torn edges of her skirts frothing like waves.\n\nAnd then there was this walk. Claire had barely paid attention to the gargoyle as they'd exited, and now she took the stairs in a silent flutter. No less swift, no less decisive, but it was as if the space she'd taken up had narrowed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Shoulders tugged in, feet placed one in front of the other as if walking on an eternal tightrope.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Narrowed, focused, but drifting all the same.\n\nIt was her thinking walk. Not when Claire was just thinking—the infernal librarian was always thinking—but when she was thinking without resolution.\n\nIt's not as if Rami knew the resolution to... Hell, he wasn't even sure he was clear about what had happened. They'd discovered an anomaly, Claire had been injured, and in the librarian's infinite illogic, that meant they'd tested that anomaly in the Unwritten Wing and everything had gone... askew.\n\nRamiel wasn't used to disorientation. He'd worked in several dimensions of existence, after all, before the Fall. He liked to think he had a reasonably flexible perception of reality. But when Claire had placed the blackened pen point to the page, all hell (to abuse the term) had broken loose.\n\n\"Quarantine,\" Claire said softly to herself. Rami waited a polite moment to confirm that she was actually addressing him before clearing his throat.\n\n\"Ma'am?\"\n\n\"Yes? Oh yes, Rami. I do not like the idea of leaving a pool of that malicious ink open to the air, but we'll need to section off that area until I can convince the wing to repair itself,\" said Claire as she dropped her pen case on the worktable near the door. \"And I'd feel better if we locked up the more... porous... curio items until this is all settled. Anything cloth or paper should be moved, at the very least.\"\n\n\"Arcanist.\"\n\n\"As part of the Library it's going to be difficult to keep damsels out, but I think we can whip up a ward that will discourage them at the very least. Of course, it would be much easier if the Unwritten Wing had the sense to lock down and turn away visitors, but I don't suppose we should hope for that much wisdom right now. It is our duty to crack on. We should also take care to watch the door—\"\n\n\"Claire.\" Rami put just enough sharpness in his voice to finally halt Claire's tightrope pacing. She glanced up at him with an affronted look, which Rami tried to mollify with a raised hand.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What happened, up there? You're rattled.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I didn't—\" Claire bit her lip before speaking further. She very carefully looked anywhere but down at her hand. \"I hadn't expected it to work. It shouldn't have worked. Unwritten stories aren't supposed to last beyond their books, Rami. That's the point of the Unwritten Wing—maintaining and caring for the books. Take Hero, for example; he's stuck as he is because his book's been damaged. If some part of a story can survive the destruction of its book, then what really are stories made of? The repercussions...\"\n\nClaire trailed off. Rami waited, but she didn't continue, instead stared distantly at the fountain pen on the table as if it were a viper. It was a sentence she wasn't prepared to finish—or couldn't finish—and Rami knew better than to press her. Instead, he placed it in a context that was safe for both of them. \"And the responsibility of the Arcane Wing in this scenario?\"\n\nClaire snapped back to herself. \"Safeguard artifacts of power. You're right—of course you're right,\" she said, though Rami really hadn't said anything clever. \"It doesn't matter. Whatever this is, it's too dangerous to experiment with. Hell has always been obsessed with the Library, and if they find out about this, they'll turn their eyes on the Arcane Wing as well. And we're not nearly so well warded as the Unwritten Wing.\"\n\n\"When are we not under threat from demons?\" Rami muttered. \"But Brevity and Hero seemed to think—\"\n\n\"Brevity will come around. In the meantime, we have to protect them from their incorrect assumptions.\" Claire diverted her eyes again and began to fiddle with a stack of papers.\n\n\"Your hand?\" Rami made a placating gesture as Claire glared at him. \"I only ask because it's my duty as your assistant to understand if you are working under any... diminished capabilities.\"\n\n\"Do I look diminished to you?\" Claire's chin jutted up, and it was such a clear echo of Hero's pride and mannerisms, as much as she faulted him for them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A distant fondness in his chest surprised Rami, but he pressed it down.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 14 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He almost missed that she'd avoided answering the question.\n\n\"You know you look never less than a force of nature to me, ma'am.\" He'd discovered quickly that accurate observations, spoken as plainly and earnestly as possible, toppled Claire's defensive airs fastest. \"My concern wasn't for your ability to keep up appearances.\"\n\n\"I—\" Claire stopped herself and seemed to weigh the question. Her voice was softer when she spoke again. \"I will let you know, when I know myself.\"\n\nIt was subtle, and shocking, but only if you understood Claire well enough. Rami thought he did. Thought he knew what a free fall it would be to feel uncertain about your mind, especially for one so certain and capable as Claire. But Rami's nature was to guide, not press and poke. He waited, giving her the silence to say more if she chose. But the woman just met his eyes and shook her head, ever so slightly.\n\n\"I'll be in the back. Get those artifacts isolated,\" she said over her shoulder, and Claire made a tactical retreat into the depths of the collection.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "i'll kick things off by writing a bit (might include characters you don't know yet), then you'll take over and write the next 82 sentences in the distinctive voice of A. J. Hackwith.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Porous\" was a loose attribute when one's collection of curiosities numbered in the tens of thousands. Rami had hit a snag when he'd started cross-indexing with an item's composition material. Paper and cloth were obvious, but now he was into the leathers. A stack of waxed dragon hides mocked him from the worktable, and the furrow in his brow deepened as he considered them. Yes, ink could stain leather, but what about variations? Waxed leather? Scale and aquatic varieties? There were too many variables, and Rami was shit at making these kinds of judgment calls.\n\nOn reflection, it should have been no surprise that he was a failure as an angel.\n\nThe great doors of the wing creaked on their hinges. Rami glanced up only long enough to frown at Hero's face before focusing back on his work. \"Don't you ever have real work to do?\"\n\n\"Watcher! Look at you, so industrious. Just the man I wanted to find. Odd thing, isn't it?\" Hero said as he approached, as if he hadn't heard Rami. As if Rami was the kind of person Hero frequently sought conversation with. \"Bits of book existing—surviving—that the librarians knew nothing about?\"\n\n\"Not really.\" Rami eyed Hero as the character made a circuitous route of the worktable. \"A travesty like Andras's failed coup has never been attempted before.\"\n\nHero paused, leaning down to inspect some petrified fingers that lay on a bed of velvet on a side table. \"Perhaps not on that scale, but surely books have been lost before. Mishandling, accident, all those distinctly human errors.\"\n\nThe finger bones had a paralytic curse attached to them, Rami recalled. He should really warn Hero. \"Are you trying to make a point, or simply enjoying the sound of your own voice?\"\n\n\"Better than your endless stoicism. I swear, it's like a dull blade against stone.\"\n\nHe definitely wasn't going to warn Hero. The fingers were only a little paralytic, after all. Rami shrugged. \"How else do you keep a blade sharp?\"\n\nHero's fingertips paused over the artifact and surprise tugged at the arch of his brow. \"Repartee? I didn't think you had it in you, old boy.\"\n\n\"Don't call me boy,\" Rami grumbled. \"I'm older than your maker's maker. You have a point, don't you?\"\n\nA clever look bloomed on Hero's face. \"Why, yes, I do. Cheeky of you to ask.\"\n\nRami stared for a beat until the salacious edge of Hero's smile sank in. \"You...\" He needed to clear his throat. \"Save it for the damsels.\"\n\n\"Not when I know it irritates. I'm quite aware how repellent I am to you.\" Hero hummed. Rami steeled himself for another round of endless nattering, but instead Hero braced his hands on the table between them and leaned forward. \"Never mind that. As I was saying... it raises the question, what else does the Library not know? What really are unwritten books?\"\n\nNonporous; that decided it. The dragon hide was scaly, and coated in enough dark magic that it could fend for itself. Rami sniffed. \"You are one. You should be able to tell me.\"\n\nThe lightness dropped from Hero's face in increments. \"You would think so, wouldn't you? I could tell you every inkblot and footnote about my story, of course. But my book itself? Contrary to the poetry the librarians spout, the medium is different from the message. At least in this case.\" His face flickered before settling into something uncommonly serious. \"I have a right to wonder about what I am, don't I?\"\n\nRami shifted, folding his arms in front of himself for lack of something to do. As much as he liked to discount Hero's behavior for plots and antics, there was something disconcertingly earnest about him just now. And Ramiel always did have trouble ignoring earnest appeals for help. \"Then shouldn't you be assisting Brevity with her research?\" It's what he was supposed to be doing himself right now. For Claire. Yes, that was something safe to do. Rami abruptly grabbed the inventory log and walked toward the rows of storage.\n\nHero's footsteps followed behind him. Rami tried not to notice how much less springy and more purposeful they sounded now, soft, solid clicks against the hardwood. \"With the Unwritten Wing and Arcane at odds, I don't think an answer is set to be found. Not here.\"\n\nHe was right, but Rami focused on locating the next item to be secured per Claire's orders: ah, a span of gold fleece. He folded it up with intense focus. \"Claire and Brevity will sort it out. They always do.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure they will, this time,\" Hero said softly, and Rami risked a glance. Hero's gaze was unfocused, set somewhere at shelf height and a million miles away.\n\n\"What makes you think that?\" Heaven curse him, Rami had really intended not to ask. But it was the wrinkle that tugged at the corner of Hero's distant gaze. It softened him a little. Made him look almost... sad. Almost human.\n\nRami had always had a weak spot for humans.\n\nHero's answer was a ponderous shake of the head. \"Claire's always been bullheaded. That's not what I'm worried about. The muse always seems to see clear to soften her up and see sense eventually. But Brevity—\" Hero's brow crinkled. \"She's been under pressure. Not just with taking over the Unwritten Wing. She took the losses of the Library hard—every single book. You knew she was close to the damsels?\"\n\n\"I assumed as books—\"\n\n\"No,\" Hero snapped, then heaved a sigh. \"Not as books, as people. We're people, not just dusty paper. The muse has always seen us... seen books... as individuals. Felt each loss individually too. It took a toll on her. There are times I catch her staring at the card catalog like a graveyard. She hides it well, but—\" Hero stopped, gaze flinching sideways as if just realizing the way Rami watched him. He straightened, pulling on attitude like a rumpled vest. He plucked a finger at the gold wool in Rami's hands as if it was a displeasing wardrobe choice. \"Well, not that I care, but muses are so transparent, and one might worry it might affect her ability to maintain my book.\"\n\n\"Your book. Yes.\" Rami paused with the golden wool enveloping his hands. He hadn't had great call to spend a lot of time with the broken book. He knew Hero was of the antagonist type of his book; he knew he was a fine swordsman; he knew he never failed to taunt and irritate Claire when presented with the opportunity. Rami knew Hero had escaped the Library once, though he seemed to have stayed content here since the coup, for no reason that Rami could discern.\n\nNone of the things he knew made Rami likely to trust him. Not, at least, as he'd begun to trust Claire and Brevity. He'd mostly avoided Hero—found him an irritating distraction whenever they shared the same space—and thought the feeling had been mutual, as Hero had returned the favor.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "And yet here he was.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Asking... for what exactly? \"You propose an independent investigation?\" Rami guessed.\n\n\"An independent investigation,\" Hero said with a horrible stodgy impression of Rami's voice, a mock frown distorting his face for effect. \"Yes, that's an excellent term for it. Let's call it that.\"\n\nRami didn't find that reassuring, but he couldn't find fault in gathering more information, at least. \"Your wing is the one with the books.\"\n\n\"Not,\" Hero said cautiously, \"the ones we need.\"\n\nIt took Rami more than a couple of moments to follow that thought to the insane place it led. He stepped back and had to resist crumpling the fleece in his fist. \"You mean outside the Library?\"\n\n\"Not technically!\" Hero said quickly. \"Just a different wing! Or two. Three.\"\n\n\"Outside of Hell. You, the runaway book. They'll never allow it.\" Rami shook his head and stomped down the aisle, cursing himself for humoring Hero for even a moment. \"This is just an excuse to you.\"\n\n\"It's not. I swear it's not! Watcher—\" He heard Hero's steps scrabble with less grace than usual behind him. Rami picked up his speed and Hero uttered a curse. \"You plodding stone of an angel, if you would just—\"\n\nRami would not just. He stormed ahead, turned the corner to the vault Claire intended for the artifacts—and nearly ran straight into a narrow wall of velvet and copper.\n\nHero stood in front of the vault entrance, limbs splayed like some kind of particularly stylish spider. The pose was ridiculous, but Hero still managed to look determined.\n\n\"Move,\" Rami gritted through his teeth.\n\n\"Not until you listen, stone man.\" When Rami didn't rush him, Hero slowly lowered his arms. \"I've thought a lot about this—\"\n\n\"I bet you have.\"\n\n\"I've thought a lot about books, you clod,\" Hero corrected, clicking his tongue. \"Claire took over the Library prematurely, right? After her little act of heartsick rebellion and murder?\"\n\n\"Claire has suffered enough. I won't have you—\"\n\nHero fluttered a hand. \"Not my point. I mean her training was... truncated. Cut. Short. What did Gregor not get a chance to pass down? I have read the entries, at least what the log would show me. Training went on for decades typically. Claire had three years. That's it. What knowledge was lost in that moment? And what knowledge was lost about the Arcane Wing because Andras had to go and get that damned plot in his head?\"\n\nRami shifted with the disquiet thought. \"Claire and Brevity—\"\n\n\"Do the best they can, I know.\" Hero's face was somber, and more open than Rami had ever seen it. Hero took a step forward, tentatively, then another, until he could put a placating hand on Rami's knuckles.\n\nHe was crushing the gold fleece. Blast it. Rami forced himself to loosen his grip. \"But that's why this ink business has them with their hackles up and backed into a corner,\" Hero said, steady but persistent. \"They don't know. And they need to know. But neither of them is free to question it. Claire only sees another threat. Brevity only sees redemption. That means it's up to us.\"\n\n\"Up to us to do what, exactly?\" Rami tried and failed to insert the proper amount of skepticism in that question. Worry had begun to gnaw at him too.\n\n\"To find answers. Answers that won't be found here, with too much lost from both the Arcane and Unwritten Wings. But answers that might have been preserved in other wings of the Library. Wings not in Hell. You saw Valhalla—there are answers out there, Rami. I know it.\"\n\n\"In the other wings of the Library,\" Rami repeated. And he couldn't quite believe he was saying it, to be honest. \"But you're...\" He made a vague gesture first at Hero's wrist and then at the... well, the rest of him.\n\n\"Stamped. Part of the permanent collection of the Unwritten Wing, yes. I remember.\" Hero took on an indulgent tone. \"And I won't be breaking the rules. Books are lent between libraries all the time via the IWL.\"\n\n\"Librarians lend books. Last I checked, you were not a librarian.\"\n\n\"I'm an assistant to the librarian,\" Hero said firmly, then shrugged. \"I've found clever openings in the Library wards before. It's not hard if you know where to look.\"\n\nRami narrowed his eyes. \"You never told anyone how you did that.\"\n\n\"Well, then.\" Hero hummed. \"I'd think it your duty to take any opportunity to investigate this security flaw.\"\n\nHero's wide-eyed look was impressive. Rami was not impressed. \"Or I could just tell Brevity and Claire.\"\n\n\"Yes, tell them I discovered a way to escape the wards of the Library. Which they already know. And that I have been a loyal—\"\n\n\"Stamped—\"\n\n\"—loyal character and book and assistant ever since. Wounded in the line of duty, even.\" He tilted his head, allowing the light to hit the dark whirl of scar tissue on his cheek, still discolored with inky shadows even after healing. Hero was a vain creature and had definitely taken to standing to the side, tilting his expression just so to show his \"good side.\" He chose not to do so now, and though his smile was crooked and mocking, Rami didn't miss the twitch of discomfort as he did so.\n\nRami held little pity for him. Watchers might have long lives, but long lives come with long memory, and so he remembered every pointless struggle, every doomed fight. Even with the ones he won he felt the pieces of what he lost. Every survivor wore scars and weariness. Ramiel was an angel, a first creation of his Creator, but he knew he was not finely or gloriously made.\n\nNot like Hero.\n\nBut Rami was practical. And even if this plan was entirely nonsense, the reasoning behind it was not. The existence of the ink threatened to drive a wedge between the wings of Hell's Library, and the Library had only just become Rami's new sanctuary. His purpose. It even dared to become a home, given enough time, but Rami wasn't foolish enough to hold out hope for that. Still.\n\nIt was something worth protecting. And the people in it. Rami had come to that conclusion six months ago, adrift after saving Leto's human soul—then losing him to Heaven. Rami had watched Uriel, the archangel driven vengeful and mad over her own fear, be unmade right in front of him. She'd been unmade, by a single word from Claire's lips. Even as a fallen Watcher, he should have sought justice, exacted vengeance.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Instead, he'd told Claire he'd protect the Library, serve the Library.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 20 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There might indeed be answers elsewhere. But Claire couldn't leave Hell, not without a ghostlight and especially not injured and stained with malicious magic. But Rami had no such challenges placed upon him.\n\nHe supposed it was a way to serve.\n\n\"Supposing... we investigate,\" Rami said slowly. He abruptly remembered the fleece in his hands. He turned away from Hero's intense gaze to place the artifact on a shelf in the vault. He took his time smoothing down the wool and shooing Hero out to lock the vault behind him. It gave him time to think. Rami needed time to think. He finally faced Hero again. \"Supposing we investigate. You will swear to return to the Unwritten Wing, with answers?\"\n\n\"Villain's honor.\" Hero held out a hand, grinning as Rami's scowl deepened. \"I'll come back, promise. What's the use of running? Brevity can summon my book back anytime. I'll have you to keep an eye on me, and a mystery to unravel. What more could I want?\"\n\n\"A mystery, you call it. To find out what the other realms know that we don't. To find out what books are.\"\n\nHero's smile faltered, but he rallied as Rami reluctantly shook his hand. \"To find out what I am.\"\n\nHero's hand was surprisingly warm, and as Rami closed his hand around it, the book's long fingers fluttered over the skin of his wrist.\n\nAn investigation. Just an investigation. Rami rooted the thought in his mind, hoping it would drive away the uncertain turn in his stomach.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Let's continue the story. I'll provide context, you add 165 sentences in A. J. Hackwith's style. Treat any character mentions as having established backstory.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "You'll have constant encounters with the Muses Corps in your tenure as librarian of the Unwritten Wing.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Don't be alarmed by their strange habits or their ever-changing, ever-colorful faces.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Muses are born of desire.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They wear dreams like plumage.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When muses mature, they take aspects, not names.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There have been a hundred muses of joy and there will be a hundred more. There will only ever be one Library.\n\n—Librarian Yoon Ji Han, 1803 CE\n\nThe librarian's log was a thorough bit of magic. To the plain eye it was a thick book with a battered cover, thick pages inside filled with entries from librarians over the ages of the Unwritten Wing's existence. Brevity could tell the difference in the handwriting. Each script in wildly different yet legible scrawl, no matter the librarian's origin, literacy, or native language. Brevity was glad that whatever magics fueled the logbook didn't smooth away those differences, at least. It gave a delightful bit of insight and personality to the logbook. You could tell a lot about a librarian by their handwriting. There were Yoon Ji Han's utilitarian notes in blocky lines, straight and unforgiving as his instructions. And here were Ibukun's warnings, letters like spears. And Fleur's looping lush scribble, always taking over the lines above and below it. Uncontainable, full of life. Brevity always thought she would have liked Fleur.\n\nShe liked sitting there, studying the earliest entries by librarians long gone. Occasionally she got carried away and flipped toward the front. Her fingers skimmed over Claire's entries, each loop and dot carefully placed. Not rigid, but narrower and more precise as the years went on. As if her hands had forgotten how to flow. It made Brevity's heart clench, but not nearly as much as when the official entries abruptly stopped.\n\n21st of June 2019. Book retrieval has led to a complication. I shall close the Library for safekeeping while we investigate this Codex Gigas with Arcanist Andras's kind assistance.\n\nThe next time the Unwritten Wing was logged as open after that was in Brevity's frazzled, scrawling hand. She didn't read those. She already knew exactly what they said.\n\nI shouldn't be here. This isn't fair. None of this is fair.\n\nHell isn't about being fair. The rebuttal formed in her thoughts in Claire's perfect posh voice. Still, Brevity had felt the Library was different, should have been different. The Library was not Hell. Books were supposed to be shelter from the demons of the world. The decision the books of the Library had made to cast Claire out wasn't what a Library should have done.\n\nA shiver brought her attention up, away from the logbook. A familiar breeze drifted through the Library stacks, queer and impossible in the best way, and that drove straight to Brevity's heart. It smelled like the color thirteen; it felt warm as violet; it whispered cardamom binaries.\n\nIt had a homey tune to it that Brevity had thought she'd almost forgotten.\n\nEvery author hopes, prays, for the muses to visit them. Brevity was probably the first librarian in history to wish she could hide under the table.\n\nInstead, she took a slow, centering breath—in four through nose, out five through mouth—and turned toward the figure that approached, not from the wing's front doors, but from the gloom of the stacks.\n\nProbity carried a small pot of balm in her hands like a peace offering. \"Sis, how's the arm?\" She didn't wait for an answer but did stop a pace sooner than she usually did. She gestured to the pot she held. \"I brought this for you. It's a mixture that helps with inspiration gilt burn.\"\n\nProbity surely meant it to be kind; the stab of guilt Brevity suffered was all her own. Of course she'd know Brevity was in pain. Muses carried inspiration, from the places they were born—called wells—to humanity. It was supposed to be a temporary transcendent state. Muses, gilded in the glow of possibilities, embracing their chosen artists and leaving something behind. Inspiration—and all the hard work of creation that could only come from humans, of course, but muses tended to gloss over that part.\n\nThe inspiration that a muse wore was supposed to be temporary. It wasn't healthy for a muse to wear it for too long. When Brevity had stolen it for herself, she knew there would be repercussions.\n\nShe just never thought she'd lose it.\n\n\"What's in it?\" Brevity asked instead.\n\nProbity rolled her shoulders in a shrug. \"Your usual stuff. A little mugwort. Tatterdales. Dried fablesnare. Oil of idlesave. A pinch of ear of glint. And a healthy slap of gin.\"\n\nBrevity tilted her head. \"You were never interested in alchemy before.\"\n\n\"I had... questions. After you left. And a lot of feelings.\" Probity ducked her head, hiding her face behind a fall of lavender hair. \"Studying something... anything. It seemed the best way to settle them.\"\n\n\"You've grown up so much,\" Brevity murmured, mostly to herself, but Probity's ears still tipped pink.\n\n\"Ideas never die.\" Probity mumbled it under her breath, suddenly shy. The phrase landed with ripples in Brev's memory. It'd been something they'd told each other often, as awe-addled young muses. Half-drunk at the power of humans and with the vague appetite to change the world that all new souls had. Ideas never die. It wasn't a catchphrase, precisely; it was a promise.\n\nProbity motioned, and Brevity slowly held out her bare arm. There was only a pale line where the gilded tattoo had been, but it felt like the raw furrows of a wound. The balm smelled like limes when she opened the lid, and Brevity did her best not to wince when Probity began to gently slather it on. She couldn't help a sharp intake of air as she began to rub it in, though. \"Why does it hurt so much? It never hurt when I pulled it off before.\"\n\n\"Because you never truly gave it up before. Not just momentarily releasing it, but actually removing its place on your arm. I made you give it up.\" Probity's fingers were precise and featherlight. As long as Brevity had been in her acquaintance, Probity's demeanor had been as steady and gentle as her cashmere layers. Her bangs were in her face, but they shifted when Probity gave her a shy, sorrowful look. \"I'm sorry. I didn't want to do that to you.\"\n\n\"I asked you to.\" Brevity couldn't keep the loss out of her own voice. She offered a thin smile. \"We saved Claire, so it's worth it.\"\n\nProbity made a huffing sound at that, lips turning troubled. She pulled clean linen from an inner pocket and began to carefully wrap Probity's arm in white. \"You're worth a hundred of that human.\"\n\nWarmth melted a chip off the hollow feeling in Brevity's chest. She smiled. \"C'mon, Prob. I thought you were only supposed to tell the truth.\"\n\nProbity tied off the bandage and pinned Brevity with a small sulk. \"I am. That woman was a horrible librarian. She used you. She misused you.\"\n\n\"She didn't...\" Brevity hesitated, before amending, \"She didn't mean to.\"\n\nProbity had been less defined growing up. The Probity that Brevity had known was a coltish question mark, the opposite of moral certainty. But she seemed comfortable in her own skin now. Her gangly limbs had grown into something wiry and strong, but the same wide eyes still scrutinized Brevity with a knowing gleam.\n\n\"But you're the librarian now. This is major, Brev.\" Probity squeezed her hands shyly. \"I heard. We all heard, after it happened. I'm so proud of you. And I'm here to help you change things.\"\n\nA flutter of unease intruded on Brevity's happiness. \"That's why the corps sent you here, really.\"\n\n\"In a way, yes.\" Probity appeared able to read the alarm in Brevity's face and shook her head. \"I volunteered, though. I've missed you. Are you— How are you?\" Brevity let out a shaky sigh and didn't even have to put words to it. Probity made a tsking noise and guided her by the shoulder. \"Enough work. Sit.\"\n\n\"But I was going to make tea—\"\n\n\"I'll do it. Isn't that what you have your assistant for?\"\n\n\"Hero's my assistant.\"\n\n\"Hero is a character and a book.\" A streak of awe shored up the pity in Probity's voice. \"He's a treasure and a tragedy to be sure, but you can't expect him to care for you as I could.\"\n\n\"You haven't exactly caught us at our best, you know.\" Brevity allowed herself to be manhandled onto the couch with minimal argument.\n\n\"Then it is a good thing I'm here to care for both of you,\" Probity said as she placed the pot on the warmer. \"You took care of me enough when we were young—won't you let me return the favor?\"\n\n\"Oh. It's just—you came at an awkward time. I'm thrilled to see you—\" And, gods, she was. Probity had been like a little sister as a half-grown muse. Following Brevity around, her fierce shadow. Seeing her grown made a quiet ache form in her chest, a kind of homesickness. \"But... the ink, Claire... the Library. I don't know what to do.\"\n\n\"That's why I'm here.\" Probity's smile was firm with resolve. \"To help you.\"\n\nA distant voice in her head—one that sounded posh and stern and Claire-like—advised caution at such a grand statement. But this was Probity, as close to family as Brevity had ever had. Probity didn't lie—it wasn't in her nature. If she was here to help her, then she was. \"After the fire, all the peop—all the books we lost. I thought—I thought we failed. But now, this ink—\" She wasn't making much sense. Brevity sensed with relief that Probity didn't care. \"It can't be just a coincidence. It is the books we lost, isn't it? The stories, I mean. Can we get them back? The stories that we destroyed?\" Brevity asked, leaning forward. \"Is it possible?\"\n\n\"Destroyed?\" Probity blinked. She stilled a moment, gaze flicking up and down Brevity with a new assessment before her hands came up in an aborted comforting gesture. Instead she fetched the steeped tea and pressed a cup of it into Brevity's hands. \"Oh. Oh, sis. You didn't destroy them.\"\n\nIt was too much. It was all too much. The fear for the damsels, the ink, the argument with Claire, and now the appearance of her lost family, telling her the one thing she wished was true. Heat welled up and Brevity's vision blurred. \"What do you mean? The books—\"\n\nThe memory clogged her throat. She'd seen them. Seen the pages curl in translucent flames, been the last one to catch a glimpse of their words, ash on black. Heard the crack of leather, the smell like burnt flesh. And then she'd held small cold hands, as so many damsels faded away, drifting to death on a shiver of ash. She'd seen them go. And afterward she'd sobbed herself empty as they gathered and interred what ashes they could. Breathing in the soot of lost stories. Leto had hugged her, though he wasn't supposed to touch anyone by then. And then she lost him too.\n\nProbity had wrapped an arm around her and didn't say a word. Brevity got herself under control, even if her voice was thin as paper as she repeated, \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"You didn't destroy them,\" Probity repeated gently. \"What happened was a travesty. That, that woman\"—Probity's comforting pats turned a little more forceful as she mentioned Claire—\"she was not fit to hold the title of a librarian. She barely is fit to hold the title of a human. The things she did, that she allowed to be done. But even she can't destroy a story.\"\n\nIt was true that Claire had sunk into a fierce, hurtful isolation when she'd taken the title of librarian. Hiding her own hurts, she'd become rigid with the rules and exacting in enforcing them. She'd been harsh and cold when Brevity had joined the Library. But hadn't they all changed since then? Brevity barely knew where to start, but old loyalty rose first. \"Claire worked harder than anyone. She was a—\"\n\n\"She treated you horribly!\" There was earnest anger there, and Probity's voice was harder now than when she'd spoken of the books. \"That's why you were sent here, wasn't it? For punishment. I can't imagine how hard it was. Sis...\" Probity searched her face with a deep, earnest kind of sympathy.\n\nBrevity started to shake her head. \"But it wasn't—\"\n\n\"But even a bad librarian can't destroy stories. They're made of stronger stuff than that.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The smile on Probity's lips was brief before dropping into a darker expression. \"Only the living can kill a story. Humans do it every day.\"\n\nThe animosity in Probity's soft voice was a velvet razor, the threat of which was impossible to miss. A cutting change, swift and harsh as a rockfall, came across her expression. But Brevity was distracted by what else she was saying. \"You're saying the damsels—the unwritten books—are still alive.\"\n\nProbity shook her head. \"'Alive' is... a funny way to put it. No, the books are destroyed and gone, but the stories... the potential... that's preserved in the ink. And that's the powerful part.\"\n\nClaire had said something similar, and the way the ink had swarmed and fluxed on the log page certainly seemed like a living thing. Brevity's gaze strayed to where the logbook rested, closed and inert on the massive librarian's desk. Brevity still thought of it as Claire's desk. \"We could bring them back?\"\n\n\"I thought that small, too, at first,\" Probity whispered, drawing Brevity's attention back. She was shaking her head with some kind of deep empathy. \"We're taught to think that small. But seeing the ink work the wonders it did... that it exists is a miracle. It's a sign. You have the Library now—and the support of the Muse Corps. Think about it, sis! We can do more than just restore the way things were.\"\n\nWe. Being a \"we\" with the muses again; longing for that warred with the caution still echoing in Brevity's head. \"Like what?\"\n\nProbity's bottom lip worried and caught between her teeth, seeming to hesitate over her words. She took a breath. \"New books, fresh books. We would replace what the Library lost and more.\" There was a hopeful, sunrise kind of light in Probity's gray eyes, like her entire face was blooming. It brightened her, brought to mind old games and pranks they'd played, and made Brevity smile.\n\n\"Like, new stories? Brand-new? How could that be possible? Which humans—\"\n\n\"It's possible.\" Probity clutched her hands in front of her, almost as if she were still that little sister. Sisters, sharing a secret daydream. \"New stories, recovered stories. Who knows what else? But first we need a sample of the ink to experiment.\"\n\nThat snapped over Brevity like a flinch of frost. She straightened. \"No more experiments. Claire and I already tried. You saw what happened. It rejected the paper straight out.\"\n\nProbity thought about that for a moment, growing solemn and certain. \"Then next time we don't try paper.\"\n\nThere were so many options, Brevity had trouble deciding which part of that sentence alarmed her more. As she passed Probity's shoulder, she caught a glancing wisp of emerald and periwinkle near the Library doors. That was a color combination she'd recognize anywhere. \"Oh, Hero! Over here.\"\n\nA moment later, the man himself appeared in the doorway. His step hesitated as he noticed Probity, but he continued over to them with a shake of his head. \"I don't know how you always hear me coming.\"\n\nHis book might have rejected him, but he still streamed colors like any unwritten book in her eyes. Brevity chewed on the grin that threatened. \"Just a muse thing, I guess.\" She turned her head to share her amusement with Probity, but a change had come over the younger muse. The excited look she'd had while explaining her dream to Brevity, the soft way she'd talked about the plight of stories, had turned pitying with the presence of one. Probity's eyes lingered on Hero as he approached, and she tensed from what Brevity could only guess were nerves.\n\n\"Everything all right downstairs?\" Brevity asked lightly.\n\n\"Claire has the Watcher locking up artifacts,\" Hero said with a brief disapproving purse of his lips.\n\n\"Don't be afraid. She can't touch you anymore,\" Probity reassured him a little too intensely. Hero gave her an odd look.\n\n\"Ah... yes. The monster is dead. I can finally sleep soundly.\" Probity didn't appear to catch the droll twist of Hero's reply. She'd never been adept at sarcasm. Brevity quietly winced inside. Hero shrugged. \"I suppose locking things up is what a librarian is best at.\"\n\n\"She is not the librarian,\" Probity said before Brevity could answer. She pinned Hero with a pitying look. \"As a book you know that.\"\n\n\"Do I? Thank you for the reminder. But as assistant librarian,\" Hero said through a sharp-toothed smile, \"I know how closely the Unwritten Wing and the Arcane Wing collaborate.\"\n\n\"Tea, Hero?\" Brevity interrupted, before Hero could further sharpen his tongue on Probity's misplaced pity. She snatched the pot Probity had brewed off the stand. \"Have some tea, Prob.\"\n\n\"No, thank you,\" Hero said while Probity accepted a cup. He gave Brevity a cautious glance. \"I thought I'd spend some time in the stacks. Inventory, see if there's anything the damsels need.\"\n\nBrevity wasn't sure which was more suspect: Hero volunteering for inventory or Hero concerned for the damsels. She was not stupid, but it was obvious Hero wanted an excuse to avoid Brevity and her guest for a while.\n\nShe nodded assent and pointed to the cart loaded with books. \"Those go back to the children's fantasy section, please.\"\n\nHero approached the cart, glanced at a title, and made a face. \"Imaginary-friend stories. Why are these even books? I hate it when they wake up.\"\n\n\"That's why we shelve them quietly.\"\n\nHero sniffed and kicked the cart ahead of him, in the direction of the stacks. \"As you say. You're the boss.\" It never sounded the same when he said it. Less like a title and more like a reminder of what she wasn't and never would be. Had it been the same for Claire?\n\n\"He's forgotten his book,\" Probity said contemplatively into the silence Hero's departure left behind. \"It's a terrible tragedy for one to carry.\"\n\n\"Hero's making the best of it.\" Probity hadn't precisely said anything malicious, but Brevity felt a surge of protective instinct. \"He's learning fast.\"\n\n\"And moving farther and farther away from his story.\" Probity shook her head with a distant look in her eyes. \"It'd almost have been kinder if he'd burned.\"\n\nBrevity's stomach recoiled and brought her out of her chair. \"Don't say that.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry. I know it's not what anyone wants to hear, but the truth rarely is,\" Probity reminded her, a pitying look in her eyes. \"Think of it, sis. He'll never be written, and now he doesn't even have the company of his own kind in his story. He exists simply as a reminder of the Library's failure to protect him.\"\n\nThat pierced a little too close to the darker spots in Brevity's heart. \"I'm trying to take care of everyone,\" she said softly.\n\n\"Oh, sis, not you.\" Probity looked far more abashed than she had when talking about Hero. She stood and touched Brevity's arm apologetically. \"You are doing everything right. You are setting so much right. You shouldn't even be here. I simply meant he'll never have his story, a character without an ending. What kind of life is that? At least loss is decisive.\"\n\nThe oily feeling in Brevity's gut was a mix of horror and old wounds. There was some truth in what Probity said—there was always some truth, but Brevity had learned long ago that some truth was not all truth. \"Stop it. You weren't there. The fire, when it took the books...\" She gulped down the bile that threatened to rise and squeezed her eyes closed until her stomach behaved itself.\n\n\"You saw one fire,\" Probity said quietly. \"I've seen them all.\"\n\nBrevity opened her eyes to question that but stopped. Probity was already lost in thought, looking into the shadows of the Library but seeing something else.\n\n\"They burn them first, the stories. Humans always come for the stories first. It's their warm-up, before they start burning other humans. It's their first form of control, to burn the libraries, to burn the books, to burn the archives of a culture. Humans are the stories they tell. If you want to destroy your enemy, destroy their stories. Even if the people survive, it will be as if they never existed at all.\"\n\nBrevity chewed on her lip. \"Humans do a lotta terrible things during war—\"\n\n\"War,\" Probity said, and it was caught somewhere between amusement and agony. \"Shall we revisit the peacetime burning, then? Libraries censored and burned, the stories that died and were forgotten by accident, by neglect, by ignorance, by—and here, the most notorious peacetime murderer of all—by piety. Books burned because they threatened Bronze Age beliefs and scared old men in long robes. I'm not sure if humans have sacrificed more ink than blood to their gods over the years, but if not, it has to be a near thing.\"\n\nNo one liked to speak about the books that were lost, especially muses. Brevity knew it, had mourned along with the others as each precious story they'd ushered to the page was destroyed. Each story that'd managed to get out of the Unwritten Wing only to fall to nothing. It was like a midwife losing entire villages of children to war and ignorance. At least while they'd remained in the Unwritten Wing, they'd been possible. After a story was written and burned... there was only one fate for that. Each one hurt. And then each one had raged, and then... somewhere along the way...\n\n\"It's why you did what you did, wasn't it?\" Probity glanced up, and it wasn't accusation in her eyes now; it was understanding.\n\nTo her credit, Probity's gaze didn't waver, didn't drop to Brevity's folded arms. The ghostly scars of gilt twitched, as if knowing it had been summoned. Brevity still remembered it, remembered when the loops and curls of magic hadn't been on her skin but in her hands, strands of pure inspiration, a human's inspiration. The giddy feeling of holding the seeds of a story. She had delivered it to unknowing humans a thousand times before, but that time...\n\nThat time she hadn't.\n\nThe betrayal had taken only an instant. Hands clutching, feeling the cool-warm flutter under her palms as she pressed the inspiration close to her chest. It'd fluxed, a bare moment of protest before finding her skin and flowing. No flash of brilliance hit her, no genius inspiration of her own—of course not; it wasn't hers—but the strands of inspiration had wrapped seamlessly over the skin of her arm and stayed.\n\nThere wasn't a law against stealing inspiration from a human, but then again, there wasn't a law only because it was unthinkable. Not just a crime; a moral travesty. Brevity had been expelled, the first muse to ever have her duty revoked. She'd been cast out and sent to the Unwritten Wing, where she could perhaps do no more harm and, the muses had likely thought, be tortured by the presence of stillborn stories she couldn't touch.\n\n\"So, you know,\" Probity was saying at barely a whisper, as if knowing she was intruding on Brevity's worst memories. \"You have to know. We should serve the stories, not the humans. They've been a necessity for a long time, but they're flawed. Humans aren't worthy of the stories we bring them.\"\n\n\"What?\" Brevity shook her head. \"That's not—\"\n\n\"You can't think of a different way it could be, but look at it, at least! The whole system is wrong. Why do we expend realms' worth of effort—the Library, the books, the muses, all of us—to try to entrust our most precious gifts to the most callous, plodding, destructive mortal creatures? Tell me how that makes sense!\"\n\nBrevity hesitated. \"Humans are special; they can create stories—\"\n\n\"And destroy them.\"\n\n\"But humanity, creation, takes a human soul.\"\n\n\"Does it?\" Probity asked, and the question had such a fine razor point that Brevity stopped.\n\n\"What do you mean, 'Does it?'\"\n\n\"Does it really take humans to make a story? Yes, they spin up the pieces, but they seem to need an awful lot of help from us.\" Probity paused and leaned closer, hesitant, as if there were a bubble between them that might break with the slightest wrong word. \"What if we took them back? We could skip the middleman. What if the stories were ours?\"\n\nBrevity's world flipped. She took a shaky breath and shook her head. \"No, when I stole the inspiration I didn't get any of the story. It's not possible.\"\n\n\"Maybe not from the inspiration. It's too distilled, the wrong form to work with. We'd need something closer to the end goal,\" Probity said thoughtfully.\n\nBrevity stared at her. \"The ink. That's why you were so excited about the ink. I already told you, it's impossible.\" When Probity said nothing, Brevity's brow furrowed. \"But how would that even work?\"\n\nNot could but would. Brevity realized the mistake after she said it. Probity met her gaze cautiously, hopefully. \"It would just take a small sample to try. I have some ideas, if you'd help me. You and me, Brev. Don't you remember how that used to be?\"\n\nThat was the difficult part: of course Brevity remembered. She'd always felt better working with someone rather than alone. And helping train Probity had been the best of her memories as a muse. Working together, struggling together, wondering together. Probity had been so studious and good at anchoring down Brevity's wild leaps of ideas, the same way—oh, and there it was. Memories blurred from working with Probity to working with Claire in the Library.\n\n\"No,\" Brevity said, more to herself than anyone else. Even her own ears didn't believe it. \"That's not what the Library is for.\"\n\n\"Sis.\" Probity touched her shoulder, looking at her with all the worship and steady belief of a child reunited with her hero. But they weren't the eyes of a youth anymore. Probity looked at her with the certainty of hope. \"But what if it's what you are made for? Librarians have always been revolutionaries, right?\" Brevity thought of the logbook, of Poppaea's rebellion and Gregor's skeptical pragmatism and Fleur's unorthodox means. She had to nod. Probity smiled. \"Maybe this is your revolution. The system is broken; it's got to change. Maybe you're the one to fix it.\"\n\nIt was an alluring thought, one of stories and quests, but Brevity's anxiety was quick to remind her of the other way those stories ended. \"But what if it breaks instead?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You can't break something that's already broken. Stop protecting things you could make better.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Probity's hand slid down her arm, then dropped, hesitantly. She gave her a slip of a smile to soften her frustration. \"Please. Think about it, at least.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue story with 33 sentences. Match character/world context. Genres: fantasy. Themes: LGBT, portal fiction, angels, Hell's Library.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Remake the Library. That's what they tell me, as if it should be so simple. They tossed out the old librarian, as if chasing off a wild dog, but left all the books. There you go: have at it. Ha! As if books are all that's needed to make a library. My people, we know libraries.\n\nStories are more than ink on pages. Libraries are more than scrolls stacked upon shelves. There is something untold here.\n\n—Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 603 CE\n\nQuarantine, Claire had said, and she would have sworn it echoed differently against the flat oak shelves of the Arcane Wing. Alone, repeated back to her unsettlingly. It was a small mercy when Rami set about the inventory and Claire could retreat to her desk.\n\nThe Arcane Wing hadn't had a proper office under Andras. The demon had appeared to enjoy conducting the entire place like a lab. He did any record keeping from the expanse of worktables at the front of the collection. Or, more likely, foisted the more tedious tasks off onto the abominations he called assistants. One of the very first changes the wing had made for Claire's comfort, after lightening the aesthetic gloom, was developing a small alcove along the back wall, past the empty rookeries. It was a cubby, really, just enough space for Claire's battered desk, chair, and row of shelves on the wall above that seemed to always hold precisely the record necessary.\n\nIt was a tiny space Claire could feel was entirely her own, in a place and routine that decidedly weren't. When she turned her chair just so, she could almost imagine she was in the corner of some distant library. It was usually a place to be alone.\n\nUsually, when there wasn't a disgruntled-looking giant raven lurking on the back of her chair.\n\n\"Bird.\" Claire sighed and pulled a drawer open to scavenge some self-defense bread crumbs.\n\nAndras had kept ravens—as experiment subjects, as hostages, perhaps both—when he'd been Arcanist. Not just any ravens—Odin's ravens. Ravens of Valhalla. Ferocious warrior-spies for the Norse realm. Gods knew what Andras had planned. Claire had been happy enough to free them in exchange for help reclaiming the Unwritten Wing. The raven women were welcome allies, and lethal and merciless against Andras's demons.\n\nAfterward, they'd left with their leader, back to Valhalla. All except one old, lazy she-raven. She roosted in the rafters and showed up occasionally to peck at Claire and be a nuisance. She delighted in causing chaos.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire had taken to just calling the creature Bird, since she'd never seen her transform into a human shape.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Perhaps she had forgotten how.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Perhaps she couldn't. Perhaps Andras had kept one regular, boring, mortal raven from the human world in the cages, just to have a go at everyone. That would have been his kind of humor.\n\nTrapped and cornered in a cage, everyone's the same feral animal, pup. Remember that. The voice in her head was still there, her memory of Andras the Benevolent Mentor, not Andras the Buggered Traitor.\n\nClaire fed the raven anyway, though she would deign to talk to it only when Rami wasn't around. He already worried about her sanity, after she'd survived witnessing Uriel face-to-face. He really was a fussy one, for a being that had seen epochs come and go. But he had a good heart, and she'd grown too fond to worry him.\n\n\"No, I haven't told him yet. And I'm not going to,\" Claire said to the reproachful look Bird gave her. She hadn't said a word about the whispers to anyone yet. It wasn't that she feared Brevity, Rami, or even Hero wouldn't believe her. It was just, given her history, the presence of voices no one else could hear after a dramatic event like a near-death staining might raise some alarms. Alarms were fussy things. Claire couldn't get a smidge of work done with them.\n\nShe found a broken biscuit behind a bottle of ink that satisfied Bird long enough for Claire to reclaim her chair. The sigh that pushed past her lips as she flopped into the dim of the alcove was not entirely intentional. Her stained hand came to rest, palm up, in her lap. It didn't feel different, besides a perpetually damp, chilly sensation that had her rechecking that she wasn't leaving wet fingerprints of ink on everything she touched. She hoped she still had fingerprints; it was rather hard to tell under all the black.\n\nBird resettled on the edge of the open drawer, biscuit crumbling between her scaly claws. Her feathers were fluffed into a dusty storm cloud that said she had no intention of taking the bribe and leaving Claire in peace. Bird destroyed the biscuit industriously, then set to snapping up a pen cap and rapping it against the desk. At least her random blats and gravel-filled squawks were anchors of solid, weighty things. Real things. Claire put aside the question of whispers and focused on the more productive question of the ink.\n\n\"Back to work,\" Claire muttered to Bird and the whispers.\n\nNo two of Andras's logbooks were the same. Claire drew one down from the shelf at random. The cover was bound in some kind of hide that was too heavy and metallic to be from any creature on earth. She found the index quickly and looked for any log entry dealing with an artifact or speculation of ink. When that came up empty, she broadened her search to any magical liquids, and that got somewhere at least. Claire spent the next three hours wading through Andras's spidery handwriting and parsing out his thoughts on chimera blood, arcane brews, ifrit tears, aqua vitae, and even the observable properties of holy water. An entry that was brief at best. What she wouldn't have given to have that in her inventory at any point of her tenure in Hell, Claire thought wryly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "There were entries on divine paints, dark visceral slurries, arcane potions, cosmic floods, and the blood of every impossible realm creature one could think of.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But no ink. There was not a single record of any artifact of ink-like nature passing through the Arcane Wing.\n\nClaire fell back into her chair and rubbed the grit out of her eyes with her good hand. The utter absence of a thing was nearly as telling as anything else she could have dug up. Telling what, though? A hot feeling threatened to well up in her eyes, and, damn it all, Claire hated to cry when she was frustrated. Crying, in general, was an indignity, but tears that came because she felt powerless to do anything else were the worst kind.\n\nIf she could just find a fulcrum, find a point to stand where the world made sense again, she felt she could manage. But everything had felt wildly askew from true since the Library fire. A slow, festering wound had opened between the Unwritten Wing and the Arcane Wing. And left unattended, it had burst—through the floorboards, through the tentative quiet—into the mayhem and confusion of ink that shouldn't exist.\n\nAnd there was the wound. Claire mentally poked at it. It wasn't that she desired to be librarian again—she didn't want the Unwritten Wing back from Brevity—it was simply that she wanted to understand what had happened. It had never made sense, and her lack of understanding was threatening everyone. Everyone expected Claire to solve the riddle. Knowledge was what she excelled at. Yet she hadn't even been clever enough to keep from touching the stuff.\n\n\"...naught is lost.\"\n\nClaire sat up in her chair and glanced at the raven. \"Did you hear that?\"\n\nBird gave her a slow blink and released a rain of crumbs into her lap. She squatted into a fluffed ball and appeared to be considering relieving herself over the edge of Claire's desk. Birds really were awful pets.\n\nBut Claire had heard something. Or she thought she had. It was a bit like when you'd been startled out of sleep and your brain was still rewinding to catch up. It always left Claire with the sensation that she'd been jolted awake by a sound she more remembered hearing than heard directly.\n\nThis particular sound was a memory of a voice, young and with a formal accent that really only existed in Arthurian melodramas. Moreover, it was no voice Claire recognized. She pushed away from the desk—Bird cursing at her for the disruption—and emerged from her alcove.\n\nThe Arcane Wing was not entirely silent. Somewhere, far flung toward the entrance, she could hear the methodical thumps of Rami occupied with his work. She almost went toward the sound, but something, or the memory of something, made Claire turn and squint into the shadows of the rookery.\n\nA figure crouched against the wall but slowly unwound itself as Claire's eyes adjusted to the gloom.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A flash of brocade made her freeze and imagine for a ridiculous moment it was Andras, escaped and back in his old kingdom.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But, no, Andras—or at least the idea of him—was imprisoned in a dagger Claire kept buried in the bottom of her own desk drawer, neglected and ignored. She blinked, and the figure resolved into a lanky blond man in a pit-sweated velvet suit that had been popular on the rock stars of Claire's youth. Then, just as she'd frowned at that, the figure's right pant leg blurred and jittered into the hem of a dress.\n\nShe stared, locked in place, as she tried to make sense of the effect. It was as if his—her?—as if their entire body had difficulty staying tuned to the same frequency. Hair buzzed from blond to red to black to pink. A blast of static seared away velvet into a cotton undershirt, a steel-ring cuirass, silk and feathers, some alien and organic armor, a gingham blouse. The figure made no threatening moves, or any moves at all for that matter. Perhaps they were entirely occupied with keeping their body together.\n\n\"Who are you?\" The question came out mousy and frail in Claire's mouth. The figure simply stared at her (with blue eyes, now black, now orange) and began to walk away.\n\nHold up. Claire had enough narrative sense to recognize a haunting when she saw one. The whispers, the voice, the creepy dream, and now this every-person person. One did not live this long in a library without understanding the clear markers of Suspicious Nonsense. She was not about to go plodding off after some mysterious force like a complete fool.\n\nNo, she was about to go plodding off after some mysterious force like an aware fool.\n\nShe discounted the possibility of not following it right off the bat. She might have disregarded it, at one time, but she had learned what happened if one ignored a story in Hell: it got worse. She considered briefly the option of hunting down Rami, telling him what she was seeing. But that would have lead inevitably to apparitions that conveniently only appeared to Claire, and she'd rather skip over the unnecessary subplot of questioning her sanity, thank you very much.\n\nIf the figure was real, then Claire needed to talk to them. If it was an illusion, then it was surely a cause of the ink that had stained her hand, somehow connected to unwritten stories. And stories could always be counted on for an inevitable flair for drama. Maintaining a sense of narrative wasn't just a professional skill in the Library; it was a survival trait.\n\nSo Claire rubbed her stained wrist idly, prepared to be spooked, and marched down the aisle of shadows.\n\nFloorboards creaked under her feet, and rows of shelves settled with a sigh as she passed by. It was all really a clichéd kind of effect, at least until she happened to glance at the artifacts nearest her.\n\nNot all the artifacts of the Arcane Wing's collection were made from routine materials. Mortals were nothing if not innovative. There was a particular subset of items made from ghoulish materials—skin, bone, and other identifiable human parts. Claire kept this collection toward the back of the wing. Not because of any unusual power or danger, but because it gave her the willies. That's what she'd told Rami.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "In truth, the lines of finger bones and skulls reminded her too much of the underground tombs of Malta.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her eyes skimmed briefly over the top row, where finger bones lay on the velvet in rows, like dead soldiers. Below that, several scrolls and tiny leatherworks—not a speck of cowhide in any of them; each had its own individual cubby. The scroll closest to Claire was a particularly tan shade of brown. The surface shifted just as her gaze landed on it. A trick of shadows, Claire thought, then: Nerves. And then she thought, Oh.\n\nThe tanned hide warped and puckered. A rolling shape rose out of the surface, churning like a fish under the surface until it began to take a recognizable topography. A cheekbone, the hollows smooth as the skin it remembered being. A shifting motion revealed a closed eye, the line of a nose, as if the scroll surface had thinned and something pressed in from the other side. Then: a perfectly shaped mouth. The lips were clear and detailed enough that when they parted around a single word, Claire could almost understand it.\n\nBones rattled. Each delicate finger bone shivered in its velvet bed. Shadows streamed across the ivory, words, or possibly images. Claire refused to look closely. A thump made her jump. The drum beside the scroll writhed, and a tiny, fragile hand tried to push through.\n\nA blat of a cry startled her, and Claire stepped back abruptly.\n\nBird hunched over the nearest shelf, scouring her with pitiless eyes that said, Pull yourself together. Below the raven, a figure crouched in the shadow of the shelf, which sent Claire's pulse up again until she recognized the moon silver eyes.\n\n\"Not that,\" Rosia said in a whisper.\n\nIt took a moment to wrest her breathing steady, and Claire cursed herself before focusing on Rosia. \"What?\"\n\n\"You should be listening, but not to that.\" Rosia hopped forward with a birdlike jerk. Claire didn't flinch, which brought a pleased smile to the willowy girl's face. \"You're not scared of me.\"\n\n\"Why would I be scared of—\" Claire caught herself. \"You shouldn't be here, Rosia. Go back to your home. There's something dangerous in the wing.\"\n\nRosia's head tilted and silver-dollar eyes blinked. \"Dangerous to you, not me.\"\n\nClaire hated to repeat herself. \"What? I don't think you—\"\n\n\"Ghosts don't scare ghosts,\" Rosia said simply before turning on her heel and walking off with a gliding step.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire blinked after her.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[OOC: ⚠️ Required: Use 'listen' exactly 2 times]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rosia was a damsel from a gothic horror—something crimson and spiky in the title, as she recalled. Claire'd hated ghost stories as a child, a fact she was just remembering now in the damning way things were forgotten in Hell. She'd hated ghost stories, always spending the whole story steeling herself for the scare, so that by the end she had given herself a headache. Knowing what was coming in a story wasn't always helpful. Sometimes it made it worse.\n\nStill, Claire brooked no fears. She had a responsibility to watch out for Rosia, and at least the girl appeared to confirm what Claire was seeing. It was better than enduring Rami's skepticism. Onward, then. She did not run after the girl, but she upgraded her pace to a determined stride. Bird kept up with a kind of hopping glide from shelf to shelf.\n\nThe every-person waited for them by the well that the wing had erected around the ink reservoir. A low wood stack lined the edge of the liquid, making it more of a reflecting pool than a traditional well. The wing's aesthetic choices sometimes confounded even Claire.\n\nRosia stood in front of the every-person, hands clasped neatly behind her back as if they were having a polite conversation. The figure continued its static shifting, breaking up and reassembling. If the dead channel of a television could be a person, it might appear something like this one.\n\n\"Rosia,\" Claire hissed for her attention. \"Get back from it.\"\n\nRosia didn't turn her head. \"They just want you to listen.\"\n\n\"How do you know that?\"\n\n\"I just wanted someone to listen, too, when I was a ghost.\"\n\nClaire's mouth formed around several half responses before she shook her head. \"This isn't a story.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\" Rosia lifted her hand, and the every-person mirrored. The static of its palm cycled through a number of skin tones and sizes before matching her own.\n\n\"Who are you?\" Claire shifted her focus to the unknown threat. She drew to a stop a cautious distance from the edge of the ink. She crossed her arms in front of her uneasily. Not as if the finger bones had unsettled her. No creepy pronouncements from children with haunted eyes were going to get to her: heavens no. Impatience; that was what this was. \"Ghost of sins past? Andras's vengeful shade? Do hurry up, whatever this is about. You're upsetting my charges, and\"—she wiggled a few black fingers—\"I'm on borrowed time, in case you haven't heard.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The every-person's head dropped to the side and briefly flickered to a rather annoyed expression.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "For your next response only, include minimal dialogue", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It turned, knelt slowly beside the pool, and began to extend an arm. Rosia eagerly crouched beside it.\n\n\"I'd really rather you didn't,\" Claire warned, stepping forward. After a moment she added, a bit resentfully, \"Please.\" It wasn't as if she knew exactly how she would stop a phantom from touching the ink, but Rosia was her responsibility. Ink had attacked her as a human; who knew what would happen to a book? \"It is not an experience I can recommend.\"\n\nThe every-person's eyes flickered to one perfectly arched brow for a moment. The static figure extended its hand over the surface, palm down but not touching. Claire had time only to take another alarmed step forward before the ink below its hand began to shift and roil.\n\n\"Look,\" Rosia breathed.\n\nThe helpless steps Claire had taken had brought her close enough to see it clearly. The ink wasn't moving; something was moving across it. Movement spiraled out from the shadow the hand cast on the surface. Claire caught figures and shapes. Then she caught a flash of blond and velvet that she'd seen earlier and gasped.\n\nThe figure was still, but the surface of its skin was in constant motion. The static flux of its appearance had picked up speed. Claire began to pick out a pattern in what had seemed random noise before. She caught a glimpse of the gingham-print dress on the figure's shoulder. It flickered and blinked, replicating all over its torso before slowly sequencing down the extended arm. The hand became slender and pale for a moment, and a new image spiraled out across the ink surface. A tall woman in a prairie dress strode purposefully through moonlit fields of grain, sickle in hand.\n\n\"Oh, how nice,\" Rosia whispered.\n\nThe stranger wasn't stirring up the ink; it was communing with it. Making some kind of transfer of... data? Memory? Claire didn't know what, but she needed it to stop right now. Rosia leaned ever closer to the pool's edge in the flickering shadow the every-person cast. Bravery and foolishness go hand in hand, and she was already displaying one of the two, so—\n\n\"Stop!\" Claire pulled Rosia back with one hand and shoved the every-person by the shoulder to create space. She was half-surprised when her hand didn't pass straight through. The figure only straightened to its feet, so smoothly that Claire forgot to remove her hand. The constant change of texture beneath her fingers was alarming, but she gripped and twisted them around to face her.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Who— What are you?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The every-person's arm lowered and it resumed its random jittering, but for one brief moment a single face resolved with dipped brows and begging eyes. Pleading, then hurt, then angry.\n\n\"They are us,\" Rosia whispered with a bereft note. \"You're still not listening.\"\n\n\"They haven't said anything!\"\n\n\"I'm listening,\" Rosia continued. \"They're alone, sad. They want to be more. They are more, but everyone's forgotten. I'll remember, I'll listen—I'm more too.\"\n\n\"Don't touch—\" A flicker of movement started in the corner of her eye. Claire focused on where her ink-blackened hand had gripped their shoulder. Armies of figures twisted and raced across the stain—across her skin. It was hers—it was hers—wasn't it?\n\nClaire released her grip, flinching to stumble back and away from the shifting flow of strangers. Her breath was coming in gasps, so there was nothing left in her lungs when the every-person held its hand out to Rosia, who took it without hesitation. The every-person looked at Claire sadly, wrapped a protective arm around Rosia, and pulled them into the bottomless pool of ink.\n\n\"Ros—\"\n\nThere was no splash, no ripple, not even more phantom figures dancing across the surface. The ink parted, creating a gap of space around Rosia as they passed, and closed over her head without a sound.\n\nClaire rushed to the edge of the pool, heedless of the roiling way the ink churned as she approached. That was the only movement in the silence that followed as Claire tried to process what had happened. The space where Rosia had fallen was still as a mirror. No thrashing, no struggle of life. Rosia was gone beyond reach.\n\nShe'd failed to protect another damsel, another book. The sound that cracked up Claire's throat was a delirious giggle. The panic and terror were a film on top of giddy exhaustion, like soap on a bubble, held at bay until everything popped. She couldn't let it pop. She couldn't.\n\nThe ink had drawn away from Rosia. Claire replayed what had just occurred again in her mind to be sure. She forced the memory to advance, frame by frame. The every-person had seemed protective, and the ink had seemed to align with that. Rosia had been certain, and then she'd been gone.\n\nMaybe not gone. Claire held on to that idea like a lifeline. Rosia was in there; she would get Rosia back.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Because the alternative was failing, again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 9 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire straightened from the pool as she recalled Rosia's words: It wants to be more. More what, then? More than a ghost?\n\nIt was then that Claire remembered that ghost stories usually had unsatisfactory endings. She had loss but no closure. She had an unsettled fear but no answers. She did, however, have a pool of questions. She would stop hiding from them.\n\nGhosts, Rosia had said. If it was time to hunt ghosts, she first needed to put her own to rest.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Let's continue the story. I'll provide context, you add 27 sentences in A. J. Hackwith's style. Treat any character mentions as having established backstory.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I have the wing to rights, as far as I understand it. The books sleep; the demons stay at a distance. Even Revka, the stone woman, seems to approve. Everything makes sense, except why this place should exist at all. And why in a place of suffering? The logbook is no help; it shows me words just cryptic enough to increase my questions.\n\nI am in a world of damnation. I should not borrow trouble. But my mother taught me the viper that one doesn't follow to its hole is the viper that bites you.\n\n—Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 602 CE\n\nIt'd been unusually easy to explain his absence to Claire. He'd found the Arcanist near the front of the wing, staring with some indecision at the doors. She'd jumped when Rami cleared his throat.\n\n\"Rami. Right,\" Claire said briskly, though Rami hadn't said anything that required agreement. \"I have a task for you.\"\n\n\"Ma'am?\" Rami had been gearing up to explain his absence, but Claire disappeared down the aisle at a brisk pace. Rami had to lengthen his stride to catch up. \"Has something happened?\"\n\n\"No!\" Claire responded immediately and, if possible, quickened her pace even more. \"No, of course not. It just occurred to me that there was an artifact overlooked that should go in quarantine.\"\n\nRami grimaced. \"The waxed dragon scales? I apologize, ma'am, but it seemed like an edge case—\"\n\n\"I'm not—\" Claire paused outside her private alcove and gave Rami a querulous look. \"I wasn't talking about the dragon scales. Not your fault at all. This one isn't on the official inventory, after all.\"\n\n\"Not—\" Rami caught his breath as Claire pulled a key from her skirts and opened the bottommost drawer. Six months of disuse made the unoiled rails screech, and Bird complained from somewhere in the rafters above them. At the bottom of the drawer, the tip of a small blade poked out from beneath a tower of discarded paper scraps, like the fang of a viper. \"Claire, are you sure? You said the safest place for that...\"\n\n\"Was out of sight, forgotten. I know.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "continue with forty-three sentences. keep character dynamics. themes: LGBT, portal fiction, angels, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was a careful matter storing what was effectively the Arcane Wing's most notorious prisoner in the archive vaults. Rami was grateful for it. It gave him time to formulate the careful way he would broach Hero's proposed lead with Claire.\n\n\"I'd like to look into some things,\" Ramiel said after finding Claire near the ink reservoir. She appeared to have gathered her calm again and had convinced the wing to repair the floor to something resembling a small—if incredibly gothic-looking—reflecting pool for the ink. She stared into it with what appeared to be expectation—as if the ink could talk to her. Abruptly, she nodded and took off for her alcove.\n\nRami followed and began to wrestle with the fear that now was a poor time to leave the mortal woman alone with her thoughts. \"Claire?\"\n\nClaire looked up from the prodigious stack of books with which she had fortified her desk. For all Andras's duplicity, he'd kept exacting notes on every artifact in the wing, which Claire had only begun to sift through. \"Things?\" she said, as if no time had passed. \"You've run across something like the ink before?\"\n\n\"No,\" Ramiel said truthfully. \"Whatever this is, it's unique to the Library.\"\n\n\"Then what do you hope to find that you can't share with me?\"\n\n\"We intend to make discreet inquiries into the other libraries.\" Ramiel saw no reason to lie. Which was good because he had been told, repeatedly, that he was terrible at it. He had accepted it as a flaw of being burdened with a divine nature in Hell.\n\n\"And the last time I left the realm it was a minor scandal,\" Claire said with the grace of an understatement.\n\nRami smiled. \"It was a minor scandal on our end too.\"\n\n\"Everything is a scandal to Heaven.\" On another's lips, that word might have made Rami flinch, but Claire had a clear-eyed way of looking at him that steadied him. Contentment, to be here of all places, was a radical novelty in Rami's life. Claire had no idea of the miracle that was. Instead she made a sour face, which was so familiar it dispersed Rami's previous concerns. \"I have no idea how paradise realms can even get anything done with that much inefficiency.\"\n\n\"I believe it's viewed as ethics.\"\n\n\"Inefficiency.\" Claire straightened the books in front of her before a thought occurred to her with a sharp glance. \"You said 'we.'\" She squinted. \"Hero's dragging you along.\"\n\n\"For the sake of my dignity, let us say it's more of a strategic escort.\" Ramiel didn't think he made a face, but Claire snorted a withering kind of amusement. At least it served to center her. Her face took on a more present kind of focus. She gestured, and Rami handed her the teapot to refill her empty cup; then she offered him a clean one. The air filled with the metallic drift of Darjeeling—perhaps with a Ceylon blend? Rami had never developed the taste for it, but he knew his teas now, evidently. Claire's personality was of such force that education on such things came with her acquaintance. \"From what I understand of his logic, it is sound. I believe his intentions are in earnest.\"\n\n\"And has he gotten permission from Brev for these earnest intentions?\"\n\n\"Not in so many words,\" Ramiel admitted. The teacup was pleasantly warm against the calluses on his palms.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He took a tentative sip—yes, still tasted like old water to him—while he fought the ridiculous urge to defend Hero.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He could have run before now, if that was his intent.\"\n\n\"True.\" Claire's mouth executed a brittle twist that wasn't entirely without fondness. \"If I was still librarian, I'd be concerned.\"\n\n\"And as the Arcanist?\"\n\n\"I'm recreationally skeptical,\" Claire admitted behind the rim of her teacup. \"Be careful. Hero isn't nearly as hard as he plays at being.\"\n\nRami sighed. \"No, he's quite a bit sharper.\"\n\n\"He grows on you. Like a barnacle.\"\n\n\"A lesion,\" Rami suggested helpfully.\n\nThe laugh surprised Claire enough that it diverted into a cough. Once she had regained her composure, she set her tea down. Her expression turned thoughtful as she appeared to search his face for insight. \"I've grown to care about him, nonetheless.\"\n\nRami looked down into his mostly full cup. It would not be very angelic to scuff his shoes, no matter how much the dip in his stomach told him to. \"I know.\"\n\nPorcelain on wood clicked as Claire shuffled her undrunk tea aside to select a book from the stack. A patently false gesture, as Rami knew Claire never kept her tea on a reading surface for fear of spilling it. It distracted him from her next words. \"Just as I care about you.\"\n\nRami startled. \"I beg your pardon?\"\n\nHe had no idea what his face was doing in that moment—Claire had a way of dipping around his guard. But whatever Claire saw made her lips quirk. She nodded smugly to herself. \"All right. You may have it.\"\n\nIt wasn't proper. The thousands of years of etiquette Ramiel had on Claire escaped him in a confused noise.\n\n\"My pardon, I mean. For whatever foolishness you and Hero are about to get up to.\" Claire settled back into her chair, flipping through the initial pages of her book without reading them. \"In return, I want both of you to come back. No heroics, and I expect you to ensure that you present yourselves again in one piece. Both of you.\"\n\nRami felt like he was missing an important undercurrent of the conversation. It wouldn't have been the first time. Humans were always evolving new ways of not saying what they meant. He had thought he knew most of them, until he met Claire. \"Ma'am? I mean, Claire—are you feeling—\"\n\n\"You're always so straightforward, Ramiel.\" Claire's smile was soft with exhaustion and, perhaps, fondness. \"It makes it easier to return the favor. Let's just say this most recent threat has left me feeling inconveniently impulsive and tired of my own games. It has left me irresponsibly open to considering what I want.\" Claire slumped back into her chair. Two black fingers toyed with the tattered edge of a page. It drew attention to the ink stain against paper the color of old bone. She pulled her fingers away as if they'd been burned. \"Perhaps you should consider the same, Rami.\"\n\n\"What I want?\" Rami echoed.\n\n\"Don't look so confused. You're not trying to get into Heaven anymore. You're surrounded by mortals and books and gods know what else. You're allowed to want things now. Give it a try; you might find it grows on you. Like a barnacle.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was a precise conversation Claire was having, and there were the words Rami was hearing.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He felt the two were rather removed from each other. Some vital part of his brain had gone into free fall, so he only managed an eloquent nod.\n\n\"Good.\" Claire turned her attention back to her desk. \"Go. Be careful and bring both of you home.\"\n\n\"I'll see to it,\" Ramiel promised with some relief. And he did—promise. Hero might have been an ass with overconfidence in his charms, but Rami had sworn to protect all the residents of the Library. That included stunningly perplexing dead women and insufferable men with broken books.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continuing established narrative: twenty-five sentences sentences. Include: LGBT, portal fiction, angels, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The people to the south declared the time before now Jahiliyyah: a time of ignorance and darkness. If this place has really been abandoned and without care since the previous librarian, then that term may be appropriate. I understand enough now to imagine what damage might have come to stories left uncared for during that dark time. Muses abandoned without direction, books corrupting neighboring pages, forgetting themselves. The only reason no books were lost was because the entire wing was locked down.\n\nStories need a teller. Books need a reader. These unlived lives are nothing without humanity to anchor them, breathe life into the missing parts.\n\n—Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 609 CE\n\nBird winged along the shadowed passage ahead of Claire, coming to rest on the scarred triple-wheel carving that loomed over the door to the transportation department. Claire hesitated in the shadow of the arch. Granite-heavy footsteps creeped against the floorboards, punctuated by the glittering tinkle of glass jars. Walter resembled a small boulder crouched behind the counter when Claire entered the room.\n\n\"Miss Lib— Miss Claire! Ma'am.\" Walter punctuated his greeting with startled movements. He jolted upright, clutched the jar in his hands too tight, barely managing to set it down again before it could shatter. The whorls of nothing in his eye sockets appeared to spin particularly fast as he glanced around the small travel office and said again, \"Ma'am.\"\n\n\"Am I interrupting something, Walter?\" Claire paused at the threshold, hands folded in front of her as she took in the state of the office. The arching walls were peppered with shelves, which were lined with row upon row of clear glass jars full of colored smoke. That was usual. What was unusual was the zigzag of lines through the air. Colors exploded and skidded away from their jars like comet tails, twisting and knotting with others before fading into the gloom.\n\nWalter's innocent look was composed of red teeth and bulbous scars, but it was authentic all the same. \"No, ma'am. Just doing a bit of tidying up.\"\n\n\"Tidying up?\" Claire stepped to the side as a spiral of persimmon orange floated toward her head.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Really, Walter, your jars are bleeding everywhere.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Bleed—\" Walter straightened so quickly a flight path of lime green had to divert around him in a tight corkscrew maneuver. The void in his eyes slowed nearly to a stop as he stared at Claire. \"You can see that, ma'am? You never said ya could—\" His gaze tracked down to Claire's stained hand and stopped. It was a peculiar feeling when something as large as Walter froze in place. \"Miss Claire, I reckon you got a story to tell me.\"\n\nA sigh welled up in Claire's chest, and with it every dreg of exhaustion she'd tamped down since seeing Rosia disappear into the ink pool in the Arcane Wing. Walter produced a stool from behind the counter, and Claire retold the tale with her hands folded carefully on the claw-scarred countertop, ink black over soft brown.\n\nBy the time she reached the argument with Brevity, Walter's brows had descended to nearly meet his nose. \"You got yourself in a muddle.\"\n\nClaire's lips quirked. \"Well, if Death says it's a muddle, then it must be bad.\"\n\n\"I'm being serious. Serious as Sundays.\" Walter hunched over, squinting at her hand with an earnest intensity. He gestured to the line of inspiration holding back the black. \"That stopgap the others jury-rigged. It ain't gonna hold forever, ma'am.\"\n\n\"And what happens when it doesn't? Since you seem to know so much about it.\" Claire regretted the question as the sorrow sank into the nooks and crevices of Walter's face. She cleared her throat and moved on. \"That's not precisely why I came to see you anyway. I—\"\n\n\"Why don't you make up with Miss Brevity?\" Walter asked.\n\nBird made a noise that was akin to a goose being gently murdered, as if she was seconding the question. Claire's smile became strained. \"There's nothing to make up, Walter. Brevity and I are fine.\"\n\n\"If'n you were fine, she'd be here with you,\" Walter said with solemnity.\n\n\"The Unwritten Wing has their own affairs, I'm sure. Brevity—\" Brevity needed to be protected. Claire could not stand to be the cause of another ghost haunting Brev's eyes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She just couldn't. She pursed her lips around the words.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Brevity is too... distracted at the moment.\"\n\nIt was true, even if not the truth. Claire thought again about the assessment in Probity's first glance and the way the visiting muse was genial to Rami and Hero but curdled around the edges the moment Claire entered the room. When she'd been stained, it felt as if the visitor had helped against personal preference. The Muses Corps had never been her closest allies, even when she was librarian. But she hadn't believed she'd warranted that kind of loathing, professionally.\n\nWhich left something personal. Claire simply did not have the time or temperament to deal with the personal. She was not inclined to tease out why some random muse didn't care for her. It appeared she cared for Brevity with a sincere fondness from a long shared history. That was enough. At least it would serve to keep Brevity company while Hero and Ramiel jaunted off on Hero's half-baked excuse to get out of the Library, and Claire got to the real work of solving the problem of the ink.\n\n\"It is for that reason I am attempting to find answers,\" Claire finished, turning the strain in her voice into an overprecise tone that sounded wrong even to her ears. \"I should have consulted with you sooner, Walter. I do apologize. Since Andras's coup attempt I have been... preoccupied.\"\n\n\"You been hiding.\"\n\n\"I've been working.\" Claire allowed the sharp edge to turn into a prickle now. \"As you would know if you and the rest of Hell hadn't been mysteriously absent in our time of need.\"\n\n\"You wouldn't have wanted me there, Miss Claire,\" Walter said solemnly. \"Not many people do.\"\n\n\"Walter...\" Claire started but quieted as he raised his beefy hands.\n\n\"Nah, ma'am. I don't mean it like that. The nature of what I am—\" His lips pulled tight, into a small smile that was unintentionally ghoulish. \"No one invites me in, if they can help it. I'm glad I wasn't there.\"\n\n\"I understand what you mean.\" Claire knew they'd come right up to the cutting edge of losing Hero. Leto. Even herself. But the rows of bodies turned to ash drifted to the forefront of her mind again, like a cloud. \"But Death was there, with, or without, invitation. We lost so many.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh. I'm not supposed ta take sides,\" Walter confided in a whisper.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But I don't reckon those demon critters consider it much of a loss.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I wasn't—\" Claire frowned. \"I was talking about the damsels. The books.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Walter stopped and diverted a constipated look at his knuckles. \"Right. Right.\"\n\nGiant shoulders strained at the seams of his suit as he abruptly found a jar on the opposite wall that was an inch out of alignment. Walter was not a paragon of subterfuge even at the best of times, so Claire allowed him a full minute of nervous fiddling before she chased after him. \"Walter. You don't know anything about the destruction of the books and this ink that's turned up, do you? Because we've been friends for a long time. I know a friend would tell me if he had information to help.\"\n\nWalter's shoulders twitched up to his ears. His thumb assiduously blotted a speck of dirt off the jar named Martha's Vineyard.\n\n\"Walter?\" Claire leaned her hands on the counter, precisely where he couldn't miss her blackened knuckles.\n\nThe narrow bottle next to that was labeled The Isle, and it swirled a sparky gold and cherry blossom pink. Walter tapped the glass and didn't meet Claire's eyes when he cleared his throat. \"Mind giving me a hand a minute, ma'am? Them lower shelves get dusty and my knees ain't what they used to be.\"\n\nWalter probably meant that statement literally rather than figuratively, but Claire was intrigued enough to duck behind the counter and join him in the tiny alcove of jars. \"These here?\"\n\nWalter passed her a cloth in confirmation. Claire gave him a narrow look before beginning to wipe down jars that had destinations such as Highever, Illeri, Minneapolis, and one labeled, inscrutably, The Corn. Claire knew Walter held pathways to more than just Earth, but she'd never seen these jars before. \"Thank small favors that the Library cleans itself,\" she said, for lack of anything else. \"I might have taken a turn homicidal if I'd had to dust books for thirty years.\"\n\n\"Library's all about preserving. I never minded a bit of dust if it kept things interesting,\" Walter said, seeming to relax into the chore. \"After a while everything needs a good shake-up.\"\n\n\"How long have you been in this office, Walter?\" Claire moved on to the next shelf down, which was headed by a primary-color explosion labeled simply P. Town. Claire was almost positive the colors swirled into a smile to wink at her. Next to it, a frosty void of black stayed mostly confined to a jar labeled Terminus Systems. The jars on the lower level seemed less used, quieter.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The colors swirled and stayed mostly inside their glass.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Walter hesitated, because he was either reluctant to answer or reluctant to remember. \"Not so long,\" he finally said. \"Just you Library folk come and go so fast.\"\n\n\"Bjorn was here for seven hundred years,\" Claire pointed out.\n\n\"Ah yeah. Think he came around for a brew once,\" Walter said with a toothy grin.\n\nClaire wiped down a couple of very old jars—Kingston, Alexandria, Pax—but her blackened fingers hesitated over a squat jar, almost empty, labeled Summerlands. She compared it to the other destinations on the shelf and had a thought that came with a memory of haunted leather and Beatrice's smile. Impossible things that wouldn't stay bottled. \"Walter, it's not just colors out of their jars. I'm... seeing other things. What is it? Why am I seeing things now?\"\n\nFor a moment, the hitch of his shoulders convinced Claire that he was going to shy away again, but eventually Walter wiped his hands with his rag and looked thoughtful. \"Artists always got an abundance of soulfulness, ya know? That's why they got plenty left over, sloshin' around down here.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't have called myself an artist when I was alive,\" Claire said drolly. She hadn't allowed herself that: a daughter, a mother, a bookkeeper with quiet flights of fancy, yes, but not an artist. She didn't need a primer on what made librarians in Hell, but she could see Walter working himself up to—or around—a point.\n\n\"Yeh ain't supposed to be wearing that stuff.\" Walter cast a worried glance again at her hand. \"It ain't natural, wearing other people's ink. 'Tain't natural at all.\"\n\n\"If there is a remedy, let's hear it.\" Claire had to suppress her urge to get testy. She sighed and straightened to standing again. \"If this is unwritten ink—the stuff of the stories that we lost—then why attack me? What am I supposed to do with immortal ink?\"\n\n\"Immortal?\" Walter blinked and abruptly stopped his cleaning. His face formed a brief ravine of worry before he gently nudged Claire by the elbow. \"People are always misusing that word around here.\"\n\n\"How so?\" Claire frowned as Walter produced an empty jar from a cabinet and set it down next to a piece of paper.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[Author's note: <<EMBED THIS>>: \"Seeing as we're in Hell, I'd think—\"]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Seeing as we're in Hell, I'd think—\"\n\n\"'Immortal' is just a word for something you don't understand the shape of, yet. The boundaries, the end.\" Walter smoothed the paper with his calloused fingers. \"No one would really want to be immortal. Forever is an awful long time.\"\n\n\"I'm not following,\" Claire admitted. \"Are you talking about the ink?\"\n\n\"I'm talking about bloody everything,\" Walter grumbled, before looking stricken. He tapped his knuckles together nervously, as if he'd forgotten himself. \"Look. Say this piece o' paper is a bit of a life, yeah?\"\n\n\"All right.\" Claire attempted patience as Walter folded the paper up neatly and dropped it inside the jar. He screwed the lid on and snapped his fingers, and the paper caught fire and smoked.\n\nBy rights, the lack of oxygen in the jar should have snuffed out the flames, but instead the smoke began to sully up the inside of the glass. Claire shook her head at the flagrant disrespect for physics, but Walter was moving on. \"So everything inside that jar, that's a life, right? Whether it's paper or smoke or ashes or heat, it's all what we put in to begin with, yeah?\"\n\n\"I'm with you so far.\"\n\n\"But say we take away the container.\" Walter moved with an uncharacteristic swiftness, flicking the jar off the counter with a finger. It slid and shattered on the floor with a crash. Claire flinched back, but the shattered glass evaporated before it could scatter. \"Is what was inside gone?\"\n\n\"...Well, logically, no,\" Claire allowed. It was a peculiar thing to be schooled by Death.\n\n\"Then can ye point to where the life is? Or what it is?\"\n\nA single remaining shard of the jar rocked on the floor, turned dingy gray. The smoke had thinned and whispered away into the air almost immediately, and the remaining smudge of ashes was already getting lost in the floorboards.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire didn't bother answering the hypothetical.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 22 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next output: 52% quoted text", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You're saying death is necessary.\"\n\n\"Nah, ma'am. Death just is. It's the container that gives it shape and makes what's inside important.\" Walter shrugged, suddenly seeming shy as he fetched a broom and began to sweep up the ash with surprisingly delicate movements. \"Without a boundary that marks beginning and end, what matter would anything have? I reckon life inside a jar is special because of what it is under glass. Break the glass and nothing's destroyed, but everything changes.\"\n\n\"There's no putting the smoke back inside the glass.\" Claire frowned, folding her arms across her chest defensively. \"I don't understand how this applies to the ink. I rather liked it when you spoke plain truth to me, Walter.\"\n\n\"I always stick to the truth, Miss Claire. Just sometimes... truth ain't what people want to hear.\"\n\n\"I've gotten rather a lot of that lately.\" Claire folded the cloth carefully between her hands. It remained spotless, no matter how she rubbed her inked palm against it. \"If we can't restore the stories, then why does it linger? What could it possibly want?\"\n\nWalter returned to his place behind the counter, wiping his gnarled knuckles free of soot. He lifted his shoulders in a helpless gesture. \"Can't rightly say, ma'am. I only know life and death. You and your books are the story experts.\"\n\nClaire began to nod, and her mind snagged on the hook of that idea. She let out a soft oath. She'd been hunting ghosts, talking with Death, and staring at colors, when the reality was right there. The answers had been mocking her to begin with. She just needed a point of comparison.\n\nClaire handed him back his rag and ducked toward the foyer before Walter could question it. \"Thank you, Walter! I think I have a new hypothosis to test. You've been a brilliant help.\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continuing established narrative: twenty-five sentences sentences. Include: LGBT, portal fiction, angels, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Myrrh. First thing I did was investigate the material evidence. No, not the stories or characters—everything has been quiet on that front. But between my lessons with Bjorn, I have been conducting a clandestine study of the paper. I'm not so dead that I have forgotten haggling with the ragmen for my linens. Not yet. Provenance! Everything comes from something. Pages are made and remade: that's the story I'm interested in.\n\nFirst observation: there's no sizing, no coating over the paper to keep it from absorbing ink too quickly as it dries. Which would seem impossible. What surface is made to absorb everything? What ink?\n\nThe coating a paper has to keep ink from soaking in immediately and feathering is going to be unique to the environment. A flour-based size works admirably in the dry desert but quickly turns to rot in humid countries. What are the material concerns of an immaterial, immortal library?\n\n—Apprentice Librarian Fleur Michel, 1736 CE\n\nTo a modern eye, ink looked like water. Colored water perhaps, like poorly brewed tea or the garishly colored sugar drinks of her youth. Claire knew better. She had been alive at the turn of that era, when the incendiary grit and gristle of war had led to a boom of new technologies, new ways of doing things. She'd started school learning her letters with fountain pens, but by the time she'd matriculated into the workforce, all the modern workplaces were driven by the plastic milled barrels of ballpoint. When it dried up, a pen was tossed, not refilled. What a wasteful idea that was. Ink became something that was a minor component of the pen, not the fuel for it.\n\nThere wasn't a lot left that Claire could remember of her life on Earth, but she remembered the language of inks. The viscosity and flow, the way some inks dried on cheap paper, feathered and bone bleak, while others went onto fine vellum paper like a sigh, changing from dark to light in a single stroke. Inks had temperaments, personalities. And inks left marks, smudged fingers, smeared words, lost meanings.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A sound, like a weaponized rusty hinge, broke her concentration.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Something pinched the end of one of her braids and pulled.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "meta: <<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'claire' must be used 4 times", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was a brief tug, a demand for attention. Bird cocked her head, regarding her with one flat eye and obvious accusation.\n\n\"Right, attributes.\" Claire sighed, remembering to straighten her back for the first time in hours. The ache was a welcome change of pace. \"It is slow to dry. A supernaturally high viscosity.\" Claire ticked off the characteristics on her stained hand again. Bird appeared to listen intently but might have just been watching for treats. \"Iridescent sheen when wet, but dries to a matte finish. Waterproof, tamperproof, smear-proof. Obviously.\" Her blackened fingernails felt chalky to the touch.\n\nThe secret was here, in the evidence. Her talk with Walter had told her that much. She just needed to verify her hunch. Ink did not exist without the book. It could not be replicated, borrowed, or transplanted—though gods knew she'd tried countless times when attempting to repair Hero. A book could only hold the ink it remembered. A book was paper and ink together, existing as the story slept.\n\nSo, without paper there should be no ink. The books lost to the coup had burned, a tragedy that she was almost grateful she only remembered as aftermath. The haunted look Brevity got when talking about the burning was enough. The stories that had been preserved in those books died, trapped in so much ash. The ash that had been everywhere. Claire had spent days afterward afraid to wash her hands. It felt sacrilegious; it felt cruel.\n\nShe adjusted the bright light over the worktable, as if that would reveal anything more than her own reflection. The Claire in the ink was cast in shades of black, staring out at her from the pitiless surface like an omen of what was to come.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire rubbed her clean hand against the gooseflesh that crept up the back of her neck.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was barely enough liquid in the bowl to coat the bottom, but light didn't penetrate it at all. The ink had a lubricated loll when Claire tilted the bowl from side to side. That might explain why it never dried, no matter how long it sat. No film developed like on her skin; no pieces flaked away. Just an infinite, oil-slicked black, swallowing the light and every color in the spectrum and giving back nothing, nothing at all.\n\n\"An unknown variable requires caution,\" Claire muttered, feeling ridiculous for having a raven as a lab partner. There was nothing to be learned by glaring at her reflection in this bit of ink. She carefully set the dish aside and dug around for gloves to prepare a new sample.\n\nAll Claire wished to do right now was hurtle the damn sample into the bin. This was Claire's problem to solve. The only thing she could do was solve it. If she didn't understand the ink, then what good was she?\n\n\"Enough experiments.\" Claire sat back, glaring at the table. She'd put off the thought as long as she could. \"Jars, ashes, ink... it's all nonsense. I need a comparison.\"\n\nA comparison. The idea lightninged through her, less like an illumination and more like a shock. Sharp, cutting, and then gone. If the ink had once been books, then it had once been damsels too. Rosia had led them here, under a compulsion, a connection. She'd called the ink \"they.\"\n\nClaire had been so determined to keep the ink from the Unwritten Wing, but she'd been going about it wrong. It was important to keep the ink out of harm for the librarian. Not the wing.\n\n\"Books know stories. Walter, you're a genius.\" Claire had to speak to the damsels immediately.\n\nClaire straightened from her slump and grabbed several empty sample bottles.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a risky experiment and would require fresh bottles.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Bird, watch the artifacts for a spell.\"\n\nBird croaked and tilted her head at Claire's hurried movements, bleak eyes tracking her hands for any sign of an edible treat. \"Later,\" Claire reassured her. If the damsels held the answers she sought, she'd give Bird the whole cracker box.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "ill start (might include ongoing story elements), then u do 52 sentences in A. J. Hackwith's voice ok?", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The doors of the Unwritten Wing drew her to a stop, yet again. It was a ridiculous hang-up. Claire needed to obliterate her memory of them in her mind. She stopped down the hall from the doors, and a shiver of cold drew across the nape of her neck like a clammy hand. Surely the doors hadn't been this towering. Brevity must have darkened the stain, giving it a glow of amber and red that only served to remind Claire of fire. She could almost still smell the ghost of smoke on the air, the grit and sulfur presence of never afters and poor ends. Lost stories. She had a visceral memory of how the wood boards had squelched ever so slightly under her feet as she left, waterlogged with the last-ditch efforts to save the stacks.\n\nIf the doors had been closed, Claire would have turned around right then. It would have been too much to reach out and touch, to relive the feeling of blasting through those doors into a sanctuary invaded. The sear of ash, the fetid exhale of demons, ink, and blood.\n\nBut the doors were open, as they should have been. Claire forced a purposefully deep breath and caught the scent of old leather, paper, and the faint not-unpleasant ripple of anise that existed in the background of all of Hell. No ash, no rot.\n\nIt wasn't a hard task to slip into the Library, once Claire could get past her own ghosts. Claire kept her eyes carefully focused ahead, diverting them only long enough to ascertain that the librarian's desk was empty. Brevity must have been somewhere in the labyrinth of stacks, deeper in the Library and perhaps in comfortable conversation with Probity. Recalling old times. Claire would be here and gone before she could bother them.\n\nThe stacks had remained largely organized the same, thank goodness. If Claire focused very carefully on the end of each row, she could pretend not to notice all the little differences. Like the reflection of cheerful faerie lights off warm cherrywood. Or the things that remained so achingly the same, like the soft constant susurrus of sleeping unwritten books. It was constant and soothing, like waves on a smooth shore.\n\nIt was impossible to tell which hurt worse.\n\nIf there was one thing with which Claire was experienced, it was the alchemy of turning pain to usefulness. By the time she reached the small frosted door of the damsel suite, the ache had become a stone, and stone had become certainty. The more it hurt, the surer she was. This was the right choice, the correct path of action. She would get answers here. She would know, and in her knowing, the world would make sense again.\n\nAnd if the world made sense again, she could fix it. For Hero, Rami, Brevity. For all of them.\n\nIt was the resolution Claire needed to place her hand on the latch. The metal was cool, grounding as the ache of stone. She rapped her knuckles twice on the frosted glass before letting herself in.\n\nA pocket of air heavy with tea and fresh linen enveloped her with warmth. The damsel suite had always been several degrees more to the side of cozy than the rest of the Library, and Claire marveled again at how even this had changed under Brevity's care. She'd had the opportunity twice before, but now she had the luxury of being neither injured nor harried. She stepped into a well-appointed sitting room. Well, perhaps the sitting rooms of Claire's era wouldn't have been quite so lined, wall to wall, with bookshelves, but it was still decidedly homey. A glimpse of small hallways and open doorways said there were even bedrooms now, which had never before occurred to Claire as something an unwritten book would need. A small fire licked the hearth in the corner, and the sight of it made Claire's heart constrict for longer than she would admit. Flames, in such proximity to the book-lined wall, opened up a scab in her chest that had never quite healed.\n\nWhen she'd woken up earlier, she'd been preoccupied with her hand, but now she was here with a goal in mind. A few damsels were scattered in pockets of activity through the lounge. Repeatedly, gazes flickered up, taking Claire in with a guarded glance, then turning back to their focus. At one point, Claire had felt more boogeyman than librarian. Now she felt like neither.\n\n\"Child.\" Claire turned to see a damsel finally extract herself from conversation. The woman who approached was not the typical cut of damsel—young, pretty according to the standards of her era, with a blank look in her eyes that quickly rubbed off like bad varnish after a taste of the independence that the damsel suite offered. The woman who approached was older, silver hair cut into a businesslike pixie and stout body swathed in a kind of housedress that was meant for comfort.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Claire,\" she corrected automatically.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Andras had been fond of pet names, and Claire had developed a distaste for them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<EMBED THIS>>: \"They call me Lucille. Granny Lucy, mostly, but I don't imagine you allow yourself such luxuries as elders.\"", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Just Claire is fine.\"\n\n\"Of course, Claire.\" The woman took the correction with good grace. \"They call me Lucille. Granny Lucy, mostly, but I don't imagine you allow yourself such luxuries as elders.\" Claire wasn't allowed more than a moment to consider whether that was a compliment or not before Lucille was nodding to the nearest seat. \"What brings a former librarian to us?\"\n\nClaire preferred to remain standing. If anything, the damsel suite was more homelike, more welcoming than ever, but Claire felt on edge. The vials in her pocket were chilled weights, and her mind noted every crack and hiss from the fireplace like a snake ready to strike. She cleared her throat. \"There's a line of inquiry I believed you all might help me with.\"\n\nLucille had begun to lower herself into an armchair in that ponderous way arthritis sufferers did, but halted midmotion at that. A calculating expression flicked across her face, then was dismissed as she finished settling into the chair. By the time she straightened her baggy skirt, she'd become a picture of grandmotherly care again. \"Well then, a welcome change to the rare dramas that brought you to us before. Have a seat, dear. Would you like a cookie? Summer baked brownies, but\"—Lucille lowered her voice to a fond stage whisper—\"he uses carob. He's from some hippie romance,\" Lucille supplied, as if the unwritten book's genre explained everything.\n\n\"It's better for you,\" a pale young man muttered with a shrug as he set down the plate of chocolate squares she supposed must have been pulled from some unwritten cookbook. Summer gave Claire a single once-over that spoke volumes of judgment before leaving them again.\n\nClaire resisted pointing out the fact that none of them precisely needed to eat in the Library, let alone carob brownies. She was disliked enough in the damsel suite as it was. Still, the vials clinked restlessly in her breast pocket. \"We've discovered the source of the disturbance that was drawing away damsels.\"\n\n\"Oh, well done, Claire dear!\" Lucille enthused over her tea.\n\nUsing a pet name with her name was just impertinence. Claire bit back a sour response behind a smile. \"Yes, I'm collaborating with the... the librarian—\" She stumbled through the half-truth, glad Brevity wasn't here to see how difficult that title was for Claire to say. \"But I'm reluctant to decide a choice of action until we understand the nature of it.\"\n\n\"How nice of you to think of us,\" Lucille said. She sounded sincere enough, though \"nice\" wasn't the mood when Claire took the temperature of the room. None of the damsels met her gaze, but there was a prickle on the back of her neck. It was a paper-cut feeling of unwelcome, despite Lucille's smile.\n\nClaire was being handled, bugger it all. The realization came on her in a flush of irritation. She was being handled, by this old woman, and she was so tired of being handled. In the Unwritten Wing, Brevity trod around her like an abandoned puppy, and even in the Arcane Wing, supposedly her own domain, she had to deal with Rami's stoic kind of fussing. Hero poked and prodded with a fraction of the venom he once had. Whether because they considered her dangerous or because they considered her fragile, Claire was always being handled.\n\nAnd she was tired of it.\n\n\"I came here for answers.\" Her voice was sharp and discordant over the hum of the room. Things quickly turned silent. Claire withdrew the vials of ink from her pocket and set them down—next to the ridiculous brownies—with a precise, cold clink. \"About this.\"\n\nAh yes, they couldn't ignore her now. A dozen gazes drew to the table. The ink bobbled in each vial like a viscous raindrop, leaving an oil-sheen rainbow in its wake. Claire raised one sample above her head. \"Tell me what it is.\"\n\nLucille hadn't moved. \"Why would you think we know more than a librarian, child?\"\n\n\"Because it's part of you and your books, as far as I can deduce. I wouldn't have found it without your meddling,\" Claire answered. She paused, seeking but not finding a polite opening for what she needed to ask. \"You are the instigators of this situation.\"\n\n\"Instigator? You make it sound as if we were at fault.\"\n\nYou were, a seething voice in the back of Claire's mind raged.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "You fought, like you were mortal, like you were human.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And worse, you were cruel enough to die, you foolish, foolish things. There were many things over the years that Claire had learned to soften on, to forgive. But breaking Brevity's heart—giving her a foundation for hope and ripping it away—that was never going to be one of them.\n\nIt was an ugly, unthinking grudge. So Claire kept it bottled inside her, with other dark things. It leaked out to a razor in her voice now. \"I reserve judgment. Fault will be decided, I suppose, by your cooperation with the facts.\"\n\nLucille appeared to take a moment, as if weighing the taste of Claire's anger on her tongue. She shook her head slightly and busied herself with the platter of ceramic ware beside them. \"I have never been afraid of the truth, Claire. Though it has never done me a bit of good. Hiding from an unpleasant fact doesn't make it go away, does it?\" She paused, steel in her eyes as she met Claire's gaze. \"Tea?\"\n\n\"No, thank you.\" It was a testimony to Claire's mental state that her stomach roiled at the thought of drinking tea with this woman—this character. She'd been a fool to think they might help her. She'd begun to think of them as damsels, as people, like Brevity insisted. But these women weren't like Brevity, not even like Hero, who'd shed ink like blood to prove his humanness.\n\nWas that what she required? That everyone must bleed for her before they mattered? The memory of black wounds made bile rise in Claire's throat, but a thought came with it. \"Ink,\" she muttered.\n\nLucille's placid gaze wavered until she sat the teapot back down with a sudden clink. \"Ink over tea? You have odd tastes, child.\"\n\n\"No, you bleed ink.\" Claire remembered the way black liquid had seeped through Hero's velvet coat, too thin and slow drying for blood. She remembered the aftermath, after the fires and ruination, peeling the smoke-ragged clothes off him to inspect his wounds, fingertips coming away smudged with familiar stains. Her lungs were squeezed by a hot, clenching kind of urgency. \"Characters in your form bleed ink, not blood. I've got an unidentified substance that I need to identify, obviously connected to your people in some way. All I need is a simple sample for comparison.\"\n\nThe room had gone quite still again. Claire hadn't noticed how false the room's quiet murmur was until it died. Perhaps because, at some point during her explanation, she had stood. Her hand had found the work scalpel she kept in a skirt pocket and held it high. It caught the light and shone like a threat.\n\n\"Claire,\" Lucille said, soft as lead. \"There's no need for that here.\"\n\n\"I think there is.\" Claire's voice threatened to wobble in her throat. She tried to shore it up with that bottled anger, but all that came to her summons was an increasing sense of desperation. \"I need answers. It's my job to have answers. I can't protect them without answers.\"\n\n\"And who protects us?\" Lucille didn't move from the chair but simply finished her tea and folded her hands in her lap.\n\nThe question bit, gnawed at the tender, guilty shadow that was Claire's past. But the possibility—the hope—that the answer was in front of her was too much to ignore. She swallowed and lowered the hand holding the scalpel—not to put it away, but for a slightly less overtly villainous posture. \"I'm not the Unwritten Wing's librarian anymore. Your protection is not my responsibility.\"\n\nThe lie tasted like ash, but Lucille nodded acceptance. \"As you wish. Here. Come, then. If you want blood, you know how to draw it.\" She put her hands heavily on the table and pushed to her feet, slow and ponderous. She stretched out an arm and met Claire's gaze. \"Not the first time you've hurt a character, is it?\"\n\n\"I'm not doing this to hurt,\" Claire said, trying to feel for the truth as it passed over her tongue. Wasn't she? She needed answers, but wouldn't it be a relief to take an answer from a book—willing or unwilling—and for a moment feel like she was certain of her role again? Her fingers wrapped tighter around the handle of the blade to steady her doubts as she reached for Lucille's arm. \"Not that I have to explain my actions to you. You're certain you'll be able to hold on to this form?\"\n\nLucille narrowed a level gaze at her in response.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Eyes blue and unfilmed by age despite her appearance.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 24 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm not one of the lost young ones. I've known myself for a long time, child. Your little knife doesn't frighten me.\"\n\nClaire nodded once and took hold of Lucille's arm about the wrist. A distraught murmur shivered through the room, vague distressed words that faded because the damsels followed Lucille's lead. Her skin felt the age the book was portrayed to be, human and papery thin under her fingertips. As Claire's would have, had she not died in middle age. Humans turned to paper and stories in the end, given enough time.\n\nBut not here. Her fingers were strong, and Lucille held still. She didn't need to pick a vein on a character—any prick would bleed. Claire glanced up once but received no encouragement from Lucille's cool gaze.\n\nShe brought the scalpel down in a practiced motion, a small diagonal cut. Black liquid welled along the line, and Claire dropped the scalpel to the table so she could snap up an empty vial to catch the bleeding ink.\n\nClaire pointedly ignored the wash of disquiet that started at the sight of spilled ink. It wasn't squeamishness, no—the damsels who had survived the slaughter of the coup attempt were far beyond that. No, the gazes Claire felt on the back of her neck were hostile. Taking a scalpel to Lucille had brought back too many close associations with Claire's past treatment of books.\n\nMistreatment, she supposed, as she retrieved her instrument to press down harder around the wound to get a viable sample. Which was fair, she brooded, as she examined the black liquid as it dribbled across the glass of the vial—a red sheen, hmm, not exactly like the mystery ink. Not at first glance, in any case, but as Claire stared she felt like more colors bubbled beneath the surface. The others didn't understand the stakes. Claire needed answers. Needed them for—\n\n\"Claire!\"\n\nBrevity stood in the doorway, a shadow of a muse at her back. The naked horror on her face made Claire's hands flinch away from Lucille despite herself. But not before she carefully and precisely corked the sample.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with 11 sentences sentences. Match the established level of character/world familiarity. Genres: fantasy. Include: LGBT, portal fiction, angels, Hell's Library.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The poor boy thinks me mad.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yoon Ji Han is too polite to say it, of course, but he would lose his knickers at the gambling table.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It is obvious that he thinks he's humoring me.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mad... now, that's a peculiar term, and, saints, don't they love applying it to women. Women have a special facility for madness. We're encouraged to go mad over the littlest things, because if our anger caught and held on the big things, we'd shape the world.\n\nIt's acceptable to be mad; it's dangerous to be angry.\n\nThe secret is that I am both.\n\n—Librarian Fleur Michel, 1792 CE\n\nBrevity hadn't needed an explanation of the situation, when two damsels had stumbled, red-eyed and panicked, out of the depths of the stacks. She'd been idly doing log work while catching up on gossip from the corps that amused Probity, but Chiara and Becca's entrance stopped the conversation dead. Brevity knew the damsels by sight. Becca's cheeks were flushed with distress and she had a vise grip on Chiara, who looked prepared to punch someone. Or anyone. That might have been status quo for Chiara, but Becca's face had Brevity slapping the logbook closed and grabbing for her pen.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Probity was a beat behind her.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'chiara' 2 time(s) throughout your message", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Perhaps it had been because they'd been reminiscing, but a pang of familiarity struck Brevity as Chiara led the way into the stacks. Running here and there, Probity behind her like a loyal pastel ghost. It left Brevity with a kind of vertigo, feeling like the memory of two people at once. Brevity the cocksure muse, ready to inspire the world. That'd been easier than Brevity the librarian, hesitant and unprepared for whatever emergency had the damsels so upset.\n\nThe path they were taking was familiar; they were headed to the damsel suite. The thought of another threat there made her heart bottom out. Brevity glanced to her side, but Probity kept pace with fierce determination, not even breathing hard as she nodded. \"Whatever you need. I've got your back.\"\n\nThat helped both versions of herself solidify together, if only for a moment. Brevity took a breath and followed Chiara through the suite door with determination.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'dripping' exactly 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She could handle this, any situation; she was prepared; she could handle this just as well as—\n\n\"Claire!\"\n\nBrevity felt it like a strangling kind of montage. Scalpel pressed to a bleeding wound on a thin arm. Lucille's resigned way she stifled a flinch at the pain. Claire's expression as she turned, some kind of dull pragmatism. And the ink. The ink seemed to drown out everything, smeared across paper-fragile skin, welling at the incision, smudging Claire's fingertips, dripping...\n\nNo, not dripping or smudging; that was a different memory, a different time. Brevity sucked in a breath. \"What are you doing?\"\n\nClaire was occupied with the vial of gore in her hands, stoppering it with a calm that sparked rage in the pit of Brevity's stomach.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire looked up. \"I'm doing my job. And you?\"\n\nThere was a guarded reserve there, a waver that said she knew, she knew, she was doing something wrong. It was too familiar: the stiff line of Claire's back, the distant, flat look as she lifted her chin. Brevity knew that look, knew. It was the way Claire always looked when she felt it necessary to do something cruel.\n\nBrevity steadied herself by application of her nails into the palms of her hands. \"Step away from Lucille, Claire.\"\n\nClaire flinched as if slapped but drew herself up and took half a step apart from the older woman. \"I have what I need, in any case.\"\n\n\"And what would that be?\" Probity asked lowly. She'd brushed up to Brevity's shoulder, a small gesture meant to be supportive.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A soft horror colored Probity's soft voice, and her eyes were wide.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What use does a librarian have for blood?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ink,\" Claire corrected sharply. \"It's Library business.\"\n\n\"Library business is not attacking people!\" Brevity hadn't meant to shout, but the sick feeling bubbled up through her throat. Many of the damsels stood in their places, still as stone. Becca was already helping Lucille wrap a clean towel over her arm. Lucille was too stubborn to return to her book to heal, but she'd be fine—Brevity knew this, but the fact was too quiet to drown out the recoil that Claire had bled a character. She'd damaged a book. Even now, after all that had happened. Probity laid a steadying hand on her shoulder and Brevity remembered herself. Yes. She was the librarian now. \"We should talk about this, Claire. Outside.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire opened her mouth, then closed it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her lips paled into a fine line and she busied herself with wiping the ink off her fingers onto her skirt.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This is quite unnecessary,\" she muttered as she swept up the vials in one hand and strode to the door.\n\nProbity made a show of stepping aside with a sad shake of her head. \"That's the librarian's call, not yours.\"\n\nIf Claire's footsteps faltered, just once, she covered it by turning stiffly back to Lucille. \"Thank you for your cooperation.\" And she swept out the door.\n\nBrevity made to follow but hesitated. Lucille was being tended to, and the other damsels only cast her a reproachful look before slowly drifting back to their small groups. Brevity deserved their judgment, she supposed. She was responsible, for all of them. It had never felt like such a weight until today.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Probity caught her gaze and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You are the rightful librarian,\" she said quietly. There was a fervent belief in her voice, one Brevity couldn't find in herself. She clasped onto it and strode into the darkness of the stacks.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Ive got a bit of writers block, im gonna send you something then keep it going twenty-three sentences at a time, also im going for a A. J. Hackwith sorta thing. heads up - might drop you in mid-story with existing characters", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire was waiting for her, leaning up against the wall under a silver section placard that read MODERN NONCANON TRANSFORMATIVE WORKS. Her arms crossed like a shield in front of her chest, her head turned upward, studying the bobble of the faerie light. Brevity had always found the silvery way it lit the shelves enchanting, but now it painted Claire's face like frost, making her seem like a cold, removed thing.\n\n\"What happened?\" Brevity asked, tight and controlled.\n\nClaire blinked placidly at her, though a nervous energy twitched her ink-stained fingers. \"Nothing to alarm yourself about. I am following a line of inquiry that needs a sample, and Lucille volunteered—\"\n\nHeat rose in a spike in Brevity's chest. \"She didn't volunteer. They never volunteer!\" She bit down hard on her lip as Claire's expression dropped. Brevity shook her head. \"No books volunteer for your scalpel. Especially not the damsels; they know the risk of being shelved. Whatever Lucille did—\"\n\n\"You think I attacked her?\"\n\n\"It wouldn't be the first time!\" Brevity threw out her hands. \"Boss—Claire,\" she corrected her slip. No, Brevity was the librarian now. She had to do her job. Protect the books, even from Claire's misgivings. She was keenly aware of the weight of Probity's worried gaze on the back of her neck. Guarding, also judging. \"I kinda thought—Hero and all—you'd come around. Figured some stuff out.\"\n\nClaire flinched as if she'd been struck. \"I don't need to figure things out.\" She pulled two vials of ink from her pocket, wielding them like a key.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I know unwritten books; don't presume to chide me just because now they call you librarian—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I am the librarian.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The words surprised Brevity, the sureness with which they appeared on her lips.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next turn only: maintain roughly 29% quote-to-text ratio", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But it was true; it was true. The books looked to her; Probity came to her to collaborate on behalf of the Muses Corps, not to Claire. No one expected Claire to protect the books, to fix the gaping empty spaces in the shelves of books lost in the fire. And when she failed, it wasn't Claire who would suffer the painful silence of the Library. Brevity drew herself up. \"And as the librarian, I require you to explain your... 'line of inquiry' and why damaging one of my books without permission was necessary.\"\n\nMy books. Without permission. She sounded like Claire had sounded as librarian. Those were cruel, unnecessary barbs. Brevity had known that when she'd said it. Claire stared at her with an alien expression. Loss, Brevity realized too late. As long as Brevity had known her, Claire was a creature of certainty, even when she was dead wrong. She never looked lost, adrift. Even as her expression shuttered, reassembled into something more familiar, it felt wrong.\n\nAll of this felt wrong.\n\n\"It should be obvious enough to a librarian.\" Claire's words were clipped and sharp as glass. She held up one vial in one hand, then the other. \"This ink is of unknown origin and had a... peculiar response when applied to the logbook. You yourself argued for experimentation, if you'll recall. A sensible course of action is to compare it to the primary source of ink we understand: the wounds of unwritten characters.\"\n\n\"Understand\" was an overstatement, in Brevity's opinion. Librarians knew how to correct corrupted text, how to herd the text around the page of an unwritten book to help maintain the integrity of the story. But that was curation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "That was editing. Ink unattached to a book felt like a tool of creation. Or destruction.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ink could be both, to written words.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Brevity saw the potential—it was why she argued for experimenting to understand if this substance could restore lost books—but the hard look in Claire's eyes said she wasn't thinking about creation.\n\nBrevity couldn't hold that gaze. It hurt too much. She diverted to the vials in Claire's hands. Just ink to Claire. But Brevity saw the colors. Lucille's familiar tangled skein of tawny gold and violet spilled light from the right vial, twining like lazy mist between Claire's fingers. Unwritten books always reached for Claire, for humans. The left vial was different. The colors that reached from the mystery ink were numerous, like a rainbow put through a blender, chopped into static.\n\nProbity had an intent expression at her side. She could see it too. Carefully, Brevity reached out. Claire's eyes narrowed, and she half expected her to snatch her hands back, but she allowed Brevity to carefully pick up each sample. She held Lucille's up to the light, as if to examine it. The threads of color still wisped through the air, back to Claire. No interest in Brevity's nonhuman touch. It'd been that indifference that had troubled Brevity during her time as a muse too. Humans created; muses only inspired.\n\nBut Probity thought that could change.\n\nHer stomach fluttered at the thought, so Brevity quickly switched to studying the ink from the Arcane Wing. The static cloud of color flickered when she held it up, and Brevity half expected it to lash out. The spectrum churned and subsided, drifting like a fragmented cloud around the glass.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Not reaching.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Slight differences,\" Brevity said carefully, as if just admiring the sheen of the ink.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She brought her hands together. The glass vials had begun to warm against her palms, along with a quiet, persistent treachery of an idea.\n\n\"They are different,\" Claire allowed. There was an intensity in her eyes as she tried to catch Brevity's interest. \"I know you want to try to restore the lost books, but until I can fully test these inks, it's too dangerous—\"\n\n\"Tests.\" Something like emotional vertigo tilted through Brevity. She wanted answers; she wanted redemption; she wanted hope. But if it was Claire's job to experiment and understand unknown artifacts now, it was Brevity's job to preserve the books first. It felt like a mirror of their previous argument, and wrong. \"The damsels are not here for you to test on.\"\n\nClaire sighed. \"Brev, I don't mean it like that. You know I wouldn't—\"\n\nBrevity clenched her hands together around the vials. \"I know you've stayed away from the Unwritten Wing for months\"—leaving me to pick up the pieces—\"and now you finally return, only to damage one of the books in my care. The books aren't here for your whims, Claire. Not any longer.\"\n\nToo far, too far. Claire's cheek twitched and her back straightened. Her voice dropped to a strange softness. \"You don't have to remind me of my failures, Brev.\"\n\n\"No,\" Probity spoke up, just as soft, backing Brevity. \"But she does have a duty to protect the Library from them.\"\n\nWrong, this was all wrong. But Brevity had only one way forward—Claire had only left her with one way, no matter how much she hated it. \"The Arcane Wing has claimed jurisdiction over the unbound ink. But Lucille's ink is part of her book. I can't allow it to leave the Unwritten Wing.\" She rolled the vials in her hands before stiffly holding one out.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Any further ideas you have should be run through me. But in the meantime—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, don't worry,\" Claire interrupted lowly. She snatched the vial back and shoved it into her pocket. \"I won't be needing any further help from the Library in this matter.\"\n\nYou're the Library too. Unwritten and Arcane against Hell, remember? Stop. Think this through. Misery welled up in Brevity's stomach as Claire strode away, disappearing into the shadows of the stacks as quickly as if she could shadowstep.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue this chapter piece. Characters may appear without introduction. sixty sentences sentences in A. J. Hackwith's style. Genres: fantasy. Elements: LGBT, portal fiction, angels, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Myrrh. When the log revealed these entries, I knew Fleur had to have taken leave of her senses.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Any logical person would—there's no need for a fanciful conspiracy when a god-demon has absolute control over the realm.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I set about disproving Fleur's conclusion with hard application of facts.\n\nI couldn't. There are irregularities that make no sense. The pages of the Library's books have no detectable composition or construct. Books exist on the shelves with text already on their pages. Should one try to annotate or correct an unwritten book with any ink other than its own, the ink wicks away into the paper like water into a sponge. Nothing stays but what the book was born with. This explains the difficulty of repairing damaged books, but not why. Stories change and are changed by the reader. What are unwritten books made of or connected to that resists exterior alteration?\n\nCould Fleur actually be right? How is that possible?\n\n—Librarian Yoon Ji Han, 1801 CE\n\nProbity maintained her silence the long way back to the librarian's desk. It was a sympathetic kind of silence, the kind of quiet meant to soothe and shore up. The wrongness stayed with Brevity, but at least with Probity here she didn't feel alone. It allowed her to go through the motions of checking in on the damsels, reassuring them that they need not worry about scalpel-wielding former librarians for the rest of the day, and withdraw. The damsels had knit a community out of their limbo status in the Library, and it was tight as a fist. As cordial as Brevity was with the residents of the Unwritten Wing, she knew there was a distance she could never cross as librarian.\n\nThe desk was lit in a sleepy puddle of lamplight, like always. A teapot sat on a warming stone, a convenient magic as old as the Library. She'd brewed strawberry and rose hips this morning and likely still had half a pot waiting for her. The urge to shake off the unease was so strong she nearly called for Hero before remembering he was away. Instead, she reached the chair behind the desk and all but fell into it.\n\n\"You did the right thing.\" Probity had come to perch just on the edge of the desk, right where Brev used to sit to check up on Claire.\n\nProbity was more graceful than she was; the stacks of paper didn't shift or become displaced. But it served to remind Brevity of the ache beneath the ache. \"Did I?\" Brevity said, and sank back with a sigh. \"It doesn't feel right.\" The levels of not-right ground at her frayed edges.\n\n\"That woman had to be stopped.\" Probity was somber with her certainty. She chewed on her lip a moment, and it was such a familiar habit that Brev almost smiled before Probity spoke again. \"You made it sound as if she had done such a thing before.\"\n\nBrevity grimaced. \"I'm sorry. We shouldn't have subjected you to that... discussion.\" The Library certainly had not put on a good show since Probity arrived. It wasn't the impression she wanted the muses to have. It wasn't the impression she wanted her friend to have. \"You're aware Claire was the librarian before me. She was a great librarian, and I learned everything from her. She just... ran the wing with a firmer hand than I can do.\"\n\n\"Abuse should never be in a librarian's repertoire.\" The censure in Probity's tone was streaked with horror. \"To cut into a book like it is some kind of... kind of melon. It's grotesque. Books are to be treasured, not dissected.\"\n\nIt was, perhaps, a very good thing that Probity had not perchance visited while Claire had been in charge. When she put it that way, it did sound awful. \"It wasn't like that,\" she insisted quietly. The urge to defend Claire was innate, and righter than the rest of the muddled thoughts in her head. She picked at the threadbare seam of the armchair as she searched for the words to explain it. She'd replaced Claire's rickety old seat with something comfier, but not without some guilt. \"Humans and their stories... it's a complicated relationship.\"\n\n\"An abusive relationship.\" Probity hugged herself absently, as if she could ward off the thought. \"It is a good thing you're the librarian. I miss you terribly, but seeing you here...\" She trailed off, suddenly looking small and earnest.\n\n\"This is where I'm supposed to be.\" It was true. Was it possible for the truth to comfort and wound at once? Brevity rubbed her eyes. \"This has turned into such a mess, sis.\"\n\nProbity's distant look melted a little. \"I was wondering if you were ever gonna call me that again.\"\n\nA clot—of emotion, of exhaustion, of longing, of worry—formed in Brevity's throat that she couldn't get words around, so she just smiled wearily. \"Normally I'd have Claire to ask for advice, or Hero at the very least to suggest the worst possible option so I could rule it out. But he's gone and—\"\n\n\"The book is gone?\" Probity interrupted.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Off researching what we can about the ink from our end. He co-opted Rami, said he might get lost in the stacks for a few days, but...\" Brevity waved her hand.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 46 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I suspect he's found a loophole to sneak out again to other realms. Don't tell Claire. Hero will come back; I think he'll always come back now.\"\n\n\"I won't.\" Probity had a troubled look. It seemed to take some effort to shake herself to focus again. \"I mean, of course I wouldn't tell that woman anything. Do you think she'll try—\"\n\nBrevity was already shaking her head. \"No. I think I... Gods, Probity, I hurt her. I was just so upset that she could do that, after all this time. After everything—\" Brevity stopped herself. No good trying to explain Claire's winding history with the unwritten books of the Library, not now. \"There was something weird about her too. And instead of fixing it I messed it all up.\"\n\n\"We can fix things,\" Probity promised. Brevity shook her head.\n\n\"Humans are complicated. There're these emotions and it's... tricky.\"\n\n\"So we don't fix the humans,\" Probity said quietly.\n\nThere was a thread of intensity that tugged Brevity's head up. Probity was still sitting on the edge of the desk, hands folded in her lap. Still small, still soft, but more somehow. Burning with an intense certainty, the kind of look Claire got when there was trouble. When the solution would be the kind of insanity that Brevity had trouble saying no to.\n\n\"What?\" Brevity echoed.\n\n\"We don't fix the humans. The books—that's what's worth saving. You said it yourself back there. That's your duty, isn't it? And if we fix the unwritten stories, the humans will sort themselves out.\" Not that Probity seemed to care about mortal problems. She faltered, chewing on a lip before pressing forward. \"Have you thought about what I proposed earlier?\"\n\nMore than thought about it. The possibility burned a hole in Brevity's pocket. \"Maybe.\"\n\nProbity hesitated, allowing the silence to draw tight between them until she could be certain of what wasn't being said. What Brevity couldn't say but was ready to consider. Probity nodded once, expression easing. \"'Maybe' is good enough to explore the possibility. If we can just find a way to get a sample of the unwritten ink the Arcanist is keeping.\"\n\n\"I might...\" Brevity began slowly. She took a breath, squeezing her eyes shut before committing to the door she was about to open. \"I might already have the answer to that.\"\n\nBrevity inched her fingers into her pocket and withdrew a single vial of ink.\n\nIt took Probity a moment to register it. Not the whipping, reaching tendrils of gold and violet that would have been Lucille's ink. Her dark eyes narrowed, then widened as she recognized the static cloud, the chopped-up color of error and loss, as it roiled off the ink inside.\n\n\"The unwritten ink,\" Probity breathed.\n\n\"I switched them,\" Brevity confirmed, embarrassed at the guilt she felt. Claire would notice eventually, but it would take her a while, not seeing the colors of the world as muses did. \"One experiment—one. Just to see if your idea works. And the books have to be protected—\"\n\n\"We won't be needing the damsels for this, or any of the books,\" Probity reassured her, face blooming wide and hopeful. \"I have volunteers—muses. Oh, sis, we can do this. We can do this.\"\n\nProbity made a delighted sound and launched herself off the desk. Brevity barely had time to pocket the vial and plant a smile before the hug. It felt warm. It felt sincere. It felt hollow.\n\nThey could do this. A quiet voice in the back of Brevity's mind just worried what, exactly, they would have done.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Cooperative chapter writing\nMy role: Provide a story segment\nYour role: Expand with 2 sentences, emulating A. J. Hackwith in the fantasy genre\nNote: This is part of a larger work", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'stories' | Required occurrences: 2", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Stories are as old as us. No one culture holds claim to the creation of the first stories.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The origin of stories has often been attributed to something divine—gods, the Fates.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Greeks and their muses, though, that's something more fickle. Muses aren't divine, or necessarily benevolent.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Their purpose, their gods, are the stories.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Anything is justifiable, anything is expendable, in service to that.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "—Librarian Gregor Henry, 1977 CE\n\nThey found Iambe lounging with a lyre one hallway over from the stairs that led to the library.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She plucked at the strings less like she was playing music and more like they'd offended her.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When they asked after the muses, her laughter was bright and vicious.\n\n\"You wouldn't want to step foot in the home of the muses,\" she said after she'd recovered herself.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Why not?\" asked Rami.\n\n\"Muses don't have a home; they have a well. A well of possibilities.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Iambe's gaze darted to Hero.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her eyes were cruel and delighted. \"Your sweet little book wouldn't be quite himself.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This isn't my first after-realm trip. I can take it.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hero crossed his arms.\n\nIambe just looked amused.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They would eat you alive, little hero.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Be that as it may,\" Rami cut in before Hero could think of a witty comeback. \"We have questions to which we need answers. Surely there is a way to gain an audience with one of their number?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hero still didn't know what he'd done to earn Iambe's disdain, but evidently it stopped at irritating scruffy angels in overcoats.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She tilted her head, then gave a graceful shrug. \"You can go to their little wishing well and make a wish, if you like. If Mother's thimble of madness wasn't enough, I suppose you can drown in it.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She rose and began to walk through the columns and into the sunlight. Alecto the lioness padded after her, pausing just long enough to stretch and give a very feline glare at Hero before following.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rami's brow knit in a question, but Hero just shrugged his shoulder. \"In my experience, this job is ninety percent following or waiting for inscrutable women.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rami nodded as they set off in Iambe's wake. \"What's the other ten percent?\"\n\n\"Oh, blind terror mostly.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Hey can you write in the fantasy genre and use whatever I write as a jumping off point? Follow my lead on how characters are introduced.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Myrrh. I did not hold with my senior's suspicions. At least, not until Librarian Ji Han was gone. Now nothing seems right. But I am not a scholar. I'm here because I am a failed storyteller—what can I know of books?\n\nDemons; demons I know. I caught a lesser infernal trying to sneak into the stacks again today, and this time I questioned him: why are Hell's creatures interested at all in the Library? He seemed to not know himself, except the Library had always been here, and the books were irresistible to their kind, coveted by even the great dukes. Jackals.\n\nHell was born with a library, or evolved one soon after. Men condemn themselves to Hell, but who passes judgment on mere books?\n\n—Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 791 CE\n\nHangovers were, truly, creations of the devil. Hero felt he could say that with authority. His head thudded, dull and constant as a drum. He was under no encouragement to open his eyes, or remove his cheek from the warm wood surface supporting it.\n\n\"Hero.\"\n\nSomeone leaned over him. Someone with a voice like bourbon in a cut-crystal glass. Excellent, and matching the big hand that tentatively wrapped around his shoulder and gave him a shake. \"Hero,\" the voice said again.\n\n\"Shan't. Go away. Guards—\"\n\n\"You don't have guards.\" The voice paused, and an amused tone crept in. \"Well, besides me.\"\n\n\"Then you're dismissed. Go join the rebellion for all I care.\"\n\n\"Hero—\"\n\n\"But haul yourself out first. That's an order.\"\n\nAnother pause. The hand left his shoulder and Hero idly leaned for the missing warmth. There was a huff of a laugh. \"Did that kind of order even work in your story?\"\n\n\"I—\" Hero's sleepy mind tripped on that, and unfortunately it brought him fully awake. His eyes sprung open and he bit back a yowl as light weaponized itself like blades into his headache. Between squinted eyelids, he could just make out the uneven grain of a wood table that was battle-scarred but clean. Raising his head brought the world to a proper perspective. They were in a large room, cluttered with candles and a cheerful melancholy. Other figures were clustered in small groups at tables identical to his, but talk was subdued, words drifting through the sweetly spiced air like memories.\n\n\"Where the hell are we? I mean, obviously not Hell, but... and why does my head feel as if I was kicked by a gargoyle?\"\n\n\"You'd be a lot worse if I hadn't lent a hand. I believe the muse yanked the realm right out from under us back there.\" Ramiel sat in the booth across from him. \"Sat,\" however, might have been a bit of a stretch, as the stubby, broad angel looked afraid to breathe for fear the bench would give up the ghost. \"Dropped us straight into nothing, and with as long as we fell, you'd have arrived as so many paper scraps if I hadn't had a hold of you. I'm not certain we were supposed to survive the trip.\"\n\n\"And you brought us here?\"\n\nRami looked abashed. \"We... woke up here. On the floor.\"\n\n\"Probity. That harpy reject is dead when we get back,\" Hero muttered. He rubbed his head tenderly, which at least kept Rami from correcting him on the lineage of muses.\n\nRamiel made a sympathetic face instead and grabbed one of the cups in front of him. \"Here, I think the tea helps.\"\n\nThe pot was a slender silver contraption, and Hero watched with amusement as Rami attempted to pour a cup the way most men might approach defusing a bomb. The liquid ended up in the proper container, for the most part. Hero took the offering and made a face as he brought it to his nose. \"Tea. Why is it always blasted tea? Where're the realms with magical coffee elixirs? Wine? A decent sherry? At least Valhalla had ale.\"\n\n\"That'd be a question for Claire,\" Rami demurred. Hero noted he didn't pour a cup for himself, so surely he agreed with the sentiment.\n\nHero resolutely gulped the tea. It was the precise golden color of the light spilling from the candles, and had a sweet note to it. Perhaps licorice. \"Where the blast are we anyway?\"\n\nRami's gaze flickered over the room in a way that said he'd already spent time culling any useful details from it. \"I'm not certain. Middle Eastern and Persian influences, that's for certain. No one's bothered us so far, so they must be used to new souls.\"\n\nAn active realm, at least. Not a cannibal realm that would attempt to eat them at the first opportune moment, at the very least. A well-fed realm might wait until the second opportune moment.\n\nHero missed the Library sometimes.\n\nThe tea was helping, at least. He took another determined sip. The tearoom—because that seemed the only thing it could be—was warm and subdued. Some of the inhabitants had the scruffy appearance of having not slept in a couple of days. On the other hand, a Persian grandmother bundled in a bright red blanket worked on some kind of yarn art in the corner, pausing occasionally to warm her bony hands on a mug idling by her side. Everyone seemed lost in their own thoughts or quiet conversation, all waiting for something.\n\nIn Hero's experience, there was nothing good worth anticipating in these kinds of realms. \"We should get out of here.\"\n\n\"Yes, you're right.\" Rami nodded tightly, perhaps because any grander gesture would have risked tipping the bench. \"What do you propose?\"\n\nRami's eyes were somber, intense, and Hero found himself pinned under their focus. There was no mockery, no doubt, just patient attention.\n\n\"Why do you do that?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hero asked. The question was suddenly pressing, urgent as anything else he could accomplish.\n\nRami turned to meet his gaze. \"Do what?\"\n\nHero's mouth felt dry and awkward. \"Take me seriously. Why do you take me seriously?\"\n\nThat received a raise of one thick eyebrow. \"Should I not?\"\n\nNo. No one should have taken Hero seriously. Earnest regard had weight, had consequences, had familiar ties and responsibilities. \"The others don't. I work very hard on the frivolity, you know. It's handcrafted, artisanal even. But you ignore it entirely.\" Hero realized he was staring but only seemed able to drop his focus from Rami's eyes to his chin. \"I want to know why, I guess.\"\n\nRami's serious expression muddled with a kind of softness at the edges. He considered before speaking, \"It's a fair enough question. I mean, I can see you're vain; you're arrogant and irresponsible—\"\n\n\"Flatterer,\" Hero muttered, but Rami wasn't going to be derailed.\n\n\"You choose to behave as a beast sometimes. And you're very hard to tolerate, let alone like,\" he said firmly. Then he paused, a complicated look ill settling on his features until it drifted off again. \"But then there's who you are when you're taken seriously, treated with respect and thoughtful consideration. You're insightful and kind. I like that man.\"\n\n\"Nobody likes me,\" Hero said, a little aghast.\n\nRami stopped, and a very un-Rami-like smile taunted the shape of his lips. It was a soft smile, and if he wasn't careful, someone would accuse it of being fond. Not Hero; Hero knew better. But still. It was a dangerous smile, with what a less cautious fool than Hero could read into it.\n\n\"You might be surprised. You seem to have found a home in the Library, at least.\"\n\nHero sniffed. \"Only because I can't return to my book, so I can't be shelved.\"\n\n\"You really think so?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Hero said with a certainty that had been there a moment ago but was disappearing fast as Rami frowned at him. He managed to break the gaze, turning his head to fish through the crowd for anything, anything else to talk about. His attention lit on a tall figure who slipped through the tearoom with a peculiar kind of familiarity. The figure was dressed in a long tunic and flowing pants, belted loosely at the waist. They were broad-shouldered and thick-hipped, moving with the kind of surety that described a comfort in their own skin. The figure cut a sure path through the quiet crowd, saying a word here or there. Each time, the figure would withdraw, and the table would soon get up and leave through the curtained doors at the far end of the room. Some left with purpose, but many with reluctance.\n\nThey stopped at a table not too far away, close enough for Hero to hear. \"Last call,\" the newcomer said quietly.\n\n\"Can't we stay, Sraosha?\" asked an old man wrapped in gold-embroidered finery.\n\nThe figure called Sraosha smiled, and when they shook their head, there was no malice in it. \"Why would you want to stay? You've got family waiting for you across the bridge.\"\n\n\"I do.\" The man didn't seem comforted and suddenly looked at his hands. \"I hope I see them.\"\n\nSraosha didn't say anything to that but placed a hand on his shoulder. \"Everyone crosses the bridge sometime. Your family is waiting.\"\n\nThe man nodded and drained the last of his tea in one ponderous motion. His grip was white-knuckled, but after he finished, his courage seemed restored. He nodded to his companions and left at a march toward the door.\n\nThey left their cups behind. Sraosha swept their hand over the table, and in a moment it was refreshed with clean cups and a steaming pot of tea nestled next to a comforting candle.\n\nHero glanced to the side to see if Rami was observing all this. He was, frown pinned with a particular kind of concern. When Hero looked back, Sraosha had turned and spotted him.\n\nThey approached the table at a glide. \"Last call,\" they said quietly.\n\nUp close, Sraosha struck Hero as likely fluid in gender presentation, but not in the slender androgynous fashion. Loose linens, a long braid of hair, but that wasn't it. Wide shoulders, wide hips, and a stance of distinct ease. They had a solidness to their presence, an undeniable individuality that drew the eye. It struck Hero that most people were not so much themselves as this creature was. It was an intimidating authenticity, and Hero drew back just a little. \"Oh, no, thank you.\"\n\nThat appeared to amuse their host. Sraosha tilted their head, considering. \"No, I suppose you missed your call before now.\"\n\n\"Kind host,\" Rami interrupted, raising a placating hand. \"I'm afraid there is a misunderstanding. We're not souls awaiting judgment. Hero and I are representatives of the Unwritten Wing of Hell's Library.\"\n\nEven after all this time, Rami still had trouble with the H word. His brow always did a microscale twitch as he stumbled over the word. Hero usually delighted in drawing it out, even if there was no time to do so now.\n\n\"Yes, I am aware who you are, Ramiel of the Watchers.\" Sraosha ignored their surprise by turning their attention. \"And you, Hero of the Lost Book.\"\n\nHero's mood curdled. \"I know precisely where my book is, thank you.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" Sraosha tilted their head. \"Is that the when? My apologies. It is easy to lose track in the tearoom.\"\n\nUnease sifted up through Hero's confusion, though he couldn't place a finger on it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Thankfully, Rami knew when to step in.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"If you know us, then you'll know we are not meant for this realm. We arrived here by misstep, and we can be on our way if you simply indicate the way out.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sraosha tilted their head to the exit with a practiced gesture.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The exit is, of course, that way.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(authors note, Next turn: write with a balanced amount of dialogue)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They paused, studying them both. \"But the only way is the bridge.\"\n\nHero suspected very much that he did not wish to avail himself of the bridge. Bridges in after-realms, in his experience, had a troubling way of leading to grief and bloodshed. Symbolism was a bitch. \"I don't suppose you have a gently sloping path.\"\n\n\"The bridge is quite comfortable,\" Sraosha said. They appeared to scrutinize Hero for a moment. \"Human souls find on the bridge only what they take with them.\"\n\n\"How lucky that I am not one,\" Hero said. \"Souls sound like rather pesky things.\"\n\n\"There's no other exit out of this realm?\" Rami interrupted before Sraosha could say something irritatingly vague and profound again. \"Surely there is.\"\n\n\"On the far side, past the bridge,\" Sraosha offered with a gentle lift of their hand. \"Once you cross, the judges might be happy to grant you audience and passage to your realm.\"\n\n\"Judges are not usually our most ardent allies,\" Hero reminded Rami. The irritated look he threw reassured him that the angel was well aware of the trouble Hell's Library dragged around with them like a tin can on a string.\n\n\"There's no exit from this side? Not even for nonhumans such as us?\" Rami pressed. Hero was again reminded of the nightmare that was the abandoned realm of crocodiles and labyrinths. They'd fallen through a gate that had remained open. Ramiel himself had been there, still struggling to fulfill his role as avenging angel and barring their path. He'd taken away their only route back, and Leto, their youngest companion, had sacrificed himself for it.\n\nIt seemed like the kind of thing Hero should hold a grudge about. He knew himself and was very aware of his deep capacity to hold grudges. It was his favorite pastime. But every time he tried to rip the scab off that memory, instead of anger he got something different. He remembered clutching Claire as they'd scrambled over the crocodile god's back. He'd tossed one wary look behind them, expecting to see this malevolent angel that had been dogging them. Instead, shadowed in the doorway of the arch, he'd seen a worn man in a shabby coat, with the saddest eyes he'd ever seen. Hero knew what it looked like to be lost and far from home.\n\nNeither Hero nor Rami could go home again. It'd been hard to fault him for trying.\n\nSraosha shook their head. \"This tearoom is simply a resting place for unjudged souls. Some dead refuse to cross the bridge without a loved one; others simply need to accept their death and summon up the courage to cross.\" They paused, a thoughtful look coming upon their confident features. \"Strange that you should fall here.\"\n\n\"We had help.\" Rami flicked a glare toward the ceiling, as if he could have struck Probity from here.\n\n\"Nonetheless, there's nothing for ones such as you to gain by waiting here.\" Before they could protest, Sraosha straightened their shoulders, pulling up authority like a cloak. \"Last call.\"\n\nA faint hiss brought Hero's attention down to where steam was sizzling out of the teapot. When he inspected his own cup, it was dry as a bone. \"You're kicking us out? Bad form!\"\n\n\"I am encouraging you to move forward.\" Sraosha began their ritual of wiping the booth table.\n\n\"What happens on the bridge, Sraosha?\" Rami asked, intent as a hunting dog. \"How can we pass it?\"\n\nSraosha pursed their lips. \"I suppose most souls arriving here would already know that much, so I may explain. One is guided through Chinvat to pass beneath the judgment of Divine Mithra and Rashnu.\"\n\n\"Chinvat?\" Rami stared. \"This realm is a realm of Zoraster?\"\n\nSraosha tilted their head. \"It is a realm for those who know that truth, yes.\"\n\n\"What judgmental nonsense is it this time?\" Hero lifted his shoulders when Rami frowned at him. \"What? I'm an atheist.\"\n\n\"Atheist?\" Rami was aghast. \"You literally live in Hell. You have met literal gods.\"\n\nHero sniffed. \"Yes, and I didn't find myself that impressed.\"\n\nThe way disbelief lit Rami's gray eyes was simply delightful. \"You weren't impressed—\"\n\n\"Honored guests,\" Sraosha cut in, before Hero could bait a further reaction. \"This was your last call. If you are so curious about the Chinvat, perhaps you can see it for yourself and continue your debate. Outside.\"\n\nTheir host's tone brooked no argument. Rami threw Hero one last exasperated look before standing and nodding to the door. \"One last question. This realm's judgment, what is it based on?\"\n\nOne of Sraosha's brows inched up, as if Rami had asked if the sky was blue. \"The primary virtues, of course. Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.\"\n\n\"Oh hell,\" Hero muttered under his breath. It was like the entire afterlife was built to menace him for the simple happenstance of being his story's villain. It really grew old.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Rami said without sounding as if he really meant it. Sraosha herded them between the low tables effortlessly. Hero noted that new souls had appeared during their conversation, looking around with disorientation before nervously taking a cup of tea in hand.\n\nThey pushed through the heavy doors of the tearoom, and Hero began to wish he hadn't gulped his so quickly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sky was a forbidding and violent oil painting.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Dark carmine reds swirled and roiled against indigo, lashed with occasional blooms of orange. It felt too thick and vibrant to be air. The clouds churned like undertow, threatening to pull them up into it. Navigating the roil like agile fish were figures on winged mounts. At least he assumed they were mounts; Hero saw them only by their silhouettes, inkblots against the oil sheen of the sky.\n\n\"We should be cautious. Stay close,\" Rami said, drawing Hero's attention back to the earth. The tearoom had emptied them out onto a simple paved square. It was the kind of open area you'd find in a historic village, pavers too uneven and chalky to be modern. It was also clogged with people. Young and old milled around the square, mostly single but sometimes in tight, anxious groups. The majority were dressed in the same kind of bland fashion Hero had observed humans preferred these days, though some of the older ones were embellished with heavy gold jewelry and brightly threaded coats and dresses. Burial wear, Hero realized. The crowd simmered with a roil of emotions—not violent, but erratic and volatile—that must have been what put Rami on high alert.\n\nThe crowd milled, though more or less reluctant progress seemed to be made in the direction of the far end of the square. From a distance, it appeared more as a wall than a bridge, so steep was the incline toward the sky. But the details gradually resolved as Hero and Rami were inexorably jostled closer.\n\nThe bridge was composed of embers of color, shimmering sparks that somehow supported the heavy traffic stumbling across it. It stood in stark contrast to the rough cobbles and appeared to arch up nearly to the clouds, like a moon bridge, before dropping again to a distant cliff.\n\nIt spanned a mist-choked nothingness of a ravine, so devoid of the oil-paint colors above that it was nearly white. Wind currents stirred movements here and there in the depths, though Hero could make out nothing else from this distance.\n\n\"Good deeds.\" The voice was so close behind them it made Hero jump, though Rami was calm enough to have heard the approach. Sraosha stood with their feet planted in the crowd, seemingly unmoved by the press and jostle on either side of them. Souls seemed to shy away. They studied the bridge briefly before looking back to them. \"Good deeds, that much I can grant you.\"\n\n\"You're one of the judges,\" Rami said.\n\nSraosha nodded. \"Your shadows cast enough tales for me to be certain of that much. I can grant you the judgment of good deeds. But good deeds only. For the other two, you will have to face the divines.\" They gestured, and Hero twisted to follow the line of their arm up, up, up.\n\nThe blots of indigo, which Hero had previously mistaken for storm clouds, had gained shoulders. Two impossibly large figures flanked the sky above the bridge, obscured in clouds and roiling twilight. They were so large it was impossible to discern whether they looked down on the bridge or away, or if the petty world escaped their notice entirely.\n\n\"How can they even see us, let alone judge us? It'd be like you discerning which are the very kindest ants in an anthill!\" Hero was done; he was completely over the idea of being judged, cast in a role, given a title, measured up, inevitably found wanting.\n\nHis outburst gained the attention of the crowd, and souls cast them dreadfully reproachful looks before skirting a wider berth around them. Rami gestured furiously for him to quiet. He looked nervous, but Hero was past nervous; he was scared. And when Hero got scared, he got philosophical. \"What even are good thoughts and words anyway? Who decides what is good? And good for whom?\"\n\nPhilosophical, and a touch dramatic, granted.\n\nSraosha was unflustered. \"To ask what 'good' is. Yes. Perhaps you are right: you don't belong here.\" With that, they bid them farewell and slid back into the crowd toward their tearoom.\n\n\"Have you never heard of the trolley problem?\" Hero hollered at their back. Granted, he himself had never heard of the trolley problem until one particularly boring night inventorying the unwritten morality narratives section of the Library, but he was a book; a god of moral conscience really had no such excuse.\n\n\"It's all right,\" Rami said. He wasn't bothered by Sraosha's words. His attention was focused again on the bridge. \"You'll pass through just fine.\"\n\nHero stopped short. He scrutinized Rami's profile but couldn't detect a hitch of sarcasm. \"You've got to be kidding me. I'm a villain! Worse, I'm not even human.\"\n\n\"See, you didn't mention good or evil a single time in that statement.\" Rami focused on Hero with a hesitant smile that did terrible things to the outrage in Hero's chest. \"You are a good person, Hero. You fought for your fellow books; you've risked much to make it this far and help your friends. Even Sraosha had to grant that those were good works.\"\n\n\"Oh, I've done my fair share of wrongs.\"\n\n\"A minority. Your words have more sting in them than real malice most of the time, and good thoughts...\"\n\n\"Aha,\" Hero said when Rami paused. \"Let's not lie to ourselves; we both know my mind is filled with rotten schemes.\"\n\nRami's smile persisted, even as it softened at the edges. \"I never cared for the puritan notion of policing a man's thoughts. I think the weight of a man's life lies in what he does with it. Reasons and heart are important, but it's your actions that have long-reaching effects.\"\n\nHero blinked. He leaned forward and pinched Rami's cheek until he grimaced. \"Are you sure you're our Watcher? Or maybe you've seen him around? Tall, dark, and endlessly broody?\"\n\n\"You are taller than me,\" Rami muttered, rubbing his cheek.\n\nHero arched a brow and opened his mouth to respond before a noise rose from the crowds near the bridge. He half braced himself against a pillar to see over the turmoil of heads.\n\nSomething was happening on the bridge. A segment a few yards from the entrance had begun to shrink, rainbow material flaking away rapidly on either side. Souls crossing the bridge scrambled, peeling backward and forward to escape, but the decay seemed to follow. Finally, like frantic schools of fish, the crowds on the bridge parted, backing away from one old man who was rooted with shock as the bridge narrowed on either side of him.\n\nEven the dead still had a sense of self-preservation. The man regained his senses and lurched ahead, hands outstretched for the crowd. There was a hesitation, a perilously hung moment when it seemed someone—anyone—in the crowd might reach back. But a groan, far and deep, shook the bridge under their feet, and the edges disintegrated faster. The man reached the edge of the crowd, but panic had set in. Someone shoved; the man stumbled back with a cry.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The rainbow section he stood on had narrowed to the size of a tea table.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 38 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The doomed man swiveled, but it was obvious by now no one behind him would risk their own eternal soul to assist. Froth of mist churned to either side of the bridge, but whatever moved in the ravine stayed out of sight.\n\nThe bridge had crumbled to a balance beam beneath the doomed man's feet. He swayed once, twice, trying to keep his balance, but his arms pinwheeled and signed his fate. His fall seemed silent at this distance. A gout of mist lashed up into the air as the man fell through, then nothing. The crowd was quiet for the count of one breath; then a susurrus of murmuring returned. More subdued.\n\nThe bridge quickly rebuilt itself, filling out again to be a uniform shimmer. Sooner than Hero had thought possible, migrants planted their feet over the space where, moments before, a soul had fallen to the dark.\n\n\"Hero.\" Rami said his name, but not for the first time. A hesitant hand wrapped around his elbow. In a moment he would shake him; in a moment Hero would be sternly reminded of their duty; he'd have to shrug and pretend nothing had happened and—\n\n\"Are you okay?\"\n\nThe question was like an unexpected drop into cold water. Hero tore his gaze away from the bridge. Rami had angled himself to create a kind of buffer from the crowds, and all of him was focused on Hero. Shoulders turned, serious face emanating concern. It was a question asked in earnest, and it shocked him so much, an earnest answer fell out.\n\n\"When have any of us been okay?\" Hero focused on relaxing his hold on the pillar until color returned to his whitened knuckles. He constructed a shrug and a smile in much the same way one might erect a barricade. Brick by brick. \"No offense, dear man. I think I preferred the crocodile.\"\n\n\"That's not happening to you.\"\n\nHero huffed. \"Of course I wouldn't beg so inelegantly—\"\n\n\"No, Hero. Listen to me.\" The weight in Rami's tone forced Hero's head up again. Rami's gaze flickered over his face, as if searching for a key. \"That won't happen to you. I won't let it. We will force our way across the bridge if we have to. I am not leaving you behind.\"\n\n\"I believe you,\" Hero whispered and found it true, despite all logic. He did. He believed Rami. He believed in Rami. It was entirely foreign ground to Hero. He allowed Rami to help him down off his vantage point.\n\nRami continued to study him. \"Ready to do this?\"\n\nAbsolutely not. Terribly, terribly unready. Hero flashed a brittle smile. \"To storm a magical drawbridge? My good Ramiel, I was written for that.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "CONTINUE STORY SEGMENT. PARAMETERS: 18 sentences sentences, A. J. Hackwith style, fantasy genre. NOTE: PART OF LARGER NARRATIVE.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Myrrh. I wanted to be the one to figure it out. I admit it. Might be why I've held on for so long. I'm a foolish old man, and after the first couple of centuries here I thought, hell, this would do it. This was why I was here. I would be the one to kick down this house of questions. The song of the books—I thought if I listened long enough they would sing to me too.\n\nBut my apprentice is here and I'm still no closer to the answer. Smart as a whip, for a Norman. Well, leave the glory to her. I can keep on mulling about it in my cups in Valhalla. They'll have to allow a doddering old man his thoughts.\n\n—Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1711 CE\n\nIn retrospect, Claire had never appreciated Brevity enough. This was a fact she was aware of already. It was a given that Brevity was a better, smarter, more loyal assistant than Claire had deserved. But thank gods that, up till now, Brevity's good intentions had aligned with Claire's own.\n\nBecause when she put her mind to it, that muse was devious.\n\nClaire had the ink in an examination tray, under a magnifying glass, before she realized the switch.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "And she could hardly complain, because a sample of unwritten damsel ink was what she'd been after in the first place.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not that it had revealed much. The damsel ink sample lolled in the clear tray, leaving behind isolated droplets in its wake. It dried—slowly, but it did dry—adhering to paper and fingers and flaking away harmlessly as ink should.\n\nClaire should have been more concerned about the vial that'd been swapped: the vial of their unwritten ink. It was right that the Arcane Wing should keep account of the ink, at least until they understood it fully. Claire should return to the Unwritten Wing and call for fair play. But every time she collected the intention to do just that, Brevity's horrified face came back to her. Claire had taken Lucille's ink and Brevity had looked at her like she was a monster. Brevity, the cheerful woman who had stood by her side through almost thirty years of mishandling the Library. She'd seen Claire at her worst, but Claire had found a new way to step over the line.\n\nClaire had been scared and acted rashly; she had. She could admit that much. But she didn't want to face her again right now. Brevity was the one person who could cause that uneasy, oily feeling of shame in Claire's head. And there was enough interfering with her thinking as it was. For instance, there appeared to be a soliloquy going on past the open doors, just outside of eyesight.\n\n\"Bird,\" Claire said without looking up. The sound of dusty feathers fluffing up and resettling told her she'd been heard.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Is there a Shakespeare knockoff in the hallway, yes or no?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Only your next part should have a small amount of quoted speech", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hard claws tapped softly against metal as the raven shuffled along her perch on the back of the opposite chair. She cocked her head sideways, then made a sound akin to a tuba in mid-childbirth.\n\n\"No, that's what I thought.\" Claire sighed, but the phantom sounds faded, as they always did when she had Bird to confirm or deny. If the price of mental clarity was talking to birds, Claire would take it. If the ink eating her arm wanted to communicate, it could damn well just spell it out.\n\nA new noise replaced the old and increased too quickly for Claire to get Bird's opinion on the matter. Giant footfalls echoed up the hallway before shoulders large enough to block the light filled up the doorway.\n\n\"Walter?\" Claire stood, ignoring Bird as she shot into the air and screeched her displeasure at the racket. The large gatekeeper had to duck his shoulders just so to squeeze through the Arcane Wing's double doors.\n\n\"Sorry about ta interruption, Miss Claire. I wouldn't have bothered you but the other one was real sure you'd know what to do.\"\n\nThe opportunities for Claire to know the correct thing to do were infrequent lately. She was about to tell Walter as much until he turned clear of the doorway. Hero was cradled in Walter's scarred hands and unmoving. His face was pale and drawn but Claire couldn't see any injuries until she caught sight of his foot, smearing ink down the side of Walter's faded shirt.\n\n\"Sweet harpies,\" Claire swore under her breath. \"Set him on the couch, Walter. Foot on the ottoman, please.\"\n\nRami drifted in after Walter, looking every bit a ghost himself.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire observed him out of the corner of her eye as she busied herself with finding clean thread and needles in the bottom of the drawer.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He seemed unhurt, which allowed her to focus her anger at someone at least.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She shoved a bowl of water and a pot of salve in Rami's hands with enough force to slosh his coat. \"Wash the wound while I try to find something more delicate than bookbinding materials to sew flesh.\"\n\nWalter handled Hero with a tenderness that would have softened Claire's heart if she had been in a better state of mind. As it was, the giant wisely retreated as she stormed past. Perhaps some surgical equipment was in the worktables. Enough artifacts in the wing were made of flesh and hide that there had to be something.\n\nWhen she finally returned with a suture and a suitable needle, Rami had managed to get Hero's damaged boot off and had cleaned the wound. It was a slice up the side of his foot, shallow but vivid. Rami held pressure with a clean towel and the weight of a hangdog expression. Claire sighed and carefully picked through Hero's jacket.\n\n\"Explain,\" she said into his breast pocket.\n\nIn turn, Rami appeared to address Hero's foot with a hoarse voice. \"We fell afoul of the bridge in Chinvat.\"\n\n\"Chinvat?\" Claire found what she was looking for, set his book to the side, and glanced up with a frown. \"Why would you go there?\"\n\n\"We didn't start there. We started in Elysium,\" Rami said, and Claire kept her peace until the whole story had been haltingly reported. Elysium, the Unsaid Wing, Hero's grand idea to go poking at the muses as if they were an information desk. Claire pulled on a pair of clean gloves—no coming near an open wound with her inked hand, certainly—and resisted the urge to rub her temples.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He twisted up his foot in the fall,\" Rami concluded quietly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Walter had been conducting a very thorough examination of his toes but finally cleared his throat. \"Miss Claire, if everything's ready, I left the office empty—\"\n\nClaire pulled herself together enough for a polite smile. \"You can go, Walter. We've got it in hand. Thank you for your help.\"\n\nIt was true. Hero would be fine. Hero's book was fine, and that was the extent of her knowledge. Claire was not a surgeon, but the cut seemed worse than it actually was. Rami had cleaned the wound with the expertise of a combat medic. He should have been the one to stitch Hero up, but instead he hovered like a very guilty kind of storm cloud. Claire pursed her lips as she threaded a needle. \"You should have taken him to Brevity, you know. She's the librarian.\"\n\nRami had the grace to look ashamed. \"I know. But...\"\n\n\"I'm not the librarian anymore, Rami.\"\n\n\"No,\" Rami said quietly. \"But you are... to him...\" His brow furrowed, as if digging for the word and coming up short. He reverted to watching Hero. \"He's yours.\"\n\n\"Hardly. He's Brevity's assistant.\"\n\n\"You know that's not what I mean.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The wound closed easily enough with one stitch, maybe two. Claire finished a stitch and held the tension in the thread long enough to meet Rami's troubled gray eyes. \"No, you sweet, stupid angel man. He is not.\" Rami's worry transformed into confusion. Claire hid her smile in an inspection of the stitches on Hero's foot. The ink had already faded, and the skin was pulling together nicely. He'd be sore for a couple of days, but mobility wouldn't be an issue. Even outside their books, characters were remarkably resilient. \"Hero and I both have a particularly checkered history when it comes to romantic entanglements between unwritten books and authors. I'm not saying the attraction isn't there. But the pull between an author and a book—even a character—is too messy. I care for him, I will continue to care for him, but I will lay no claim on him. That's not what love is.\"\n\nRami was quiet a stunned moment. \"You're saying—\"\n\n\"I'm saying nothing but that Hero is not mine. At least, he is no more mine than you are. You should see to your own feelings. Ah! No, no use denying it. I see it there behind those atrociously serious brows. Hero has that effect on people.\"\n\nA groan like a rusted hinge forced Claire's attention from Hero's foot to his face. He'd regained some color but restrained his glare to the thinnest of squints between closed eyes. \"Do I get a say in this?\" he croaked.\n\n\"No.\" Claire finished trimming the stitches and flicked his big toe gently. \"You should really learn not to eavesdrop on private conversations.\"\n\nHero grunted and groggily rubbed at his temple. \"You should learn not to conduct private conversations over my unconscious body.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You should learn to stop swooning like a silly—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "OOC - Next turn: write with a decent amount of dialogue", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You should both learn to stop taking such self-sacrificing risks!\" Rami threw up his hands, looking between Claire and Hero as if they were some horrifying new form of torture Hell had devised just for him. His gaze flicked between Claire's gloved hand and Hero's foot before he appeared to settle his ire on Hero. \"You don't anger another realm's gods while you are in the realm!\"\n\n\"I learned it from watching her,\" Hero mumbled.\n\nClaire sniffed. \"Oh no, you did this one yourself.\"\n\n\"He jumped with me,\" Hero insisted.\n\n\"I fell with you, fool. You didn't even know where you would be sent! You had no way of knowing whether falling in that abyss would send you to our Hell or that realm's equivalent.\"\n\n\"I smelled anise! It was a reasonable wager!\"\n\n\"Wager! Don't take that kind of risk on a smell—\"\n\n\"Gentlemen!\" Claire had to clap her hands to get their attention. She got twin abashed looks in response, one light and narrow, one dark and broad. They really were going to be the death of her. Claire shook her head and began returning her instruments to her drawers. \"You are going to have to continue this... whatever this is... elsewhere. Hero's obviously recovered enough to be a petulant child, so, Rami: please help Hero up to the Unwritten Wing so he can inform Brevity of his poor choices and the sorry state of things.\"\n\n\"I don't need help,\" Hero said as Rami stooped and gently heaved an arm over his shoulder. His color appeared to peak in his cheeks as Rami hoisted him up to as polite a bridal carry as possible. \"I don't need to be carried! This is an insult.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And I don't need you splitting that paper cut open before it heals and getting ink all over the halls. We've had enough spilled-ink problems as of late.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Paper cut? Are you mocking a man wounded in the line of duty, warden?\"\n\n\"Always.\" Claire made a dismissive wave with her good hand. \"You heal like a hero, at least. I don't want to see you down here again until you've earned Brevity's forgiveness.\"\n\nHero threw her a dark look, still a bit pink in the cheeks as Rami carried him out.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Story segment\nLength: sixty-four sentences\nMaintain: Character context\nThemes: LGBT, portal fiction, angels, Hell's Library", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The story and the storyteller are never far apart, in my experience. Authors and their books maintain a relationship that is the best and the worst of us.\n\nOnce a book is out in the world, the author pretends to let go. Stories, after all, are for the people who need to hear them. We have to let go of a story, give up the reins, when we ask it to be read. We pretend it's like making any other product, bread for the hungry or coats for the cold. But what no author admits is that it's not like that at all. Stories are not made of flour or wool. Stories, real stories, are made with a sliver of yourself.\n\nThe purpose for stories is what readers will make of them. But the reason, the desperate need, is a splinter in the author alone. A good story gets under your skin, because that's where all good stories start.\n\n—Librarian Bjorn the Bard, 1313 CE\n\nIt was a habit of the library to keep count of days in a mortal fashion. Hell had nothing so simple or precious as sunrises and sunsets, but it felt late when Claire finally looked up from her reading. She'd found a dusty historical in the back of Andras's cluttered shelves. Some sixteenth-century creation that appeared to confuse demonic summonses and keys of Solomon and faerie poppets, of all things, into one volume of nonsense. However, it must have had a grain of truth, powerful truth, to end up down in the Arcane Wing. Claire had set herself about finding it, on the off chance it related to the ink.\n\nReading garbled conspiracy theories by long-dead Scotsmen; this was how far Claire had fallen. But the ink held no answers, Walter had no answers, and the Library shunned her. As tragic as it was, this was the best lead she had in the time left.\n\nThe shimmer of blue itched above the curve of her arm. It had thinned to no more than a width of fine yarn, and frayed to scratchy, twitching threads. Claire rubbed an idle hand over it, but it did nothing to quell the itch or the hourglass running empty in her mind. The border on her skin was growing more distinct, ink-stained skin south of the line chill, with a dry clamminess that its northern counterpart didn't have.\n\nThe wing was quiet, and grit had worked its way behind her eyeballs. She rubbed over her face furiously before startling as the door gave a labored groan. Hero appeared hesitantly in the gap, looking slyer—or perhaps shyer—than usual.\n\n\"Warden? Are you about?\"\n\n\"Where else would I be?\" Claire called, and glanced once at the page to mentally mark the place she'd left off. Hero was nothing if not a reliable distraction.\n\nHero closed the door behind him, pulling another creak from the hinges, which made every one of Bird's feathers puff as she cracked open one beady eye. Claire fluttered her hand, forcing Bird off the table and clearing a space as Hero approached at a slower pace than normal. He favored the instep of his right leg and tried to hide it with a lazy stroll.\n\nHe paused to trade one sour look for another with Bird, then precisely pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table from the raven. \"Another book? I would have thought you'd read everything in here three times over already.\"\n\n\"Some books give up more on closer read,\" Claire said, not bothering to explain her desperation as she carefully closed the old book on her lap. \"How's the foot?\"\n\n\"Handsomely turned, as always,\" Hero scoffed, and wiggled his ankle, mostly hiding his grimace. \"It did no lasting harm.\"\n\nMeaning, Claire read with familiarity, he was injured and in pain but willing to ignore such problems until they went away. She nodded, having no room to speak on the denial of injuries. She allowed a streak of her usual reserve back into her voice. \"I hope Brevity talked some sense into you.\"\n\n\"Brevity... yes...\" Hero paused, fishing his gaze around the room before shrugging off a not-quite-response. \"Surely you know that would be a lost cause.\"\n\n\"Entirely.\" Claire put her book down and crossed her arms. \"So, what do you want?\"\n\n\"Want?\" Hero's theatrics were so familiar that when he put a hand to his chest, a disconcerting warmth rose through Claire's. \"Perhaps this is simply a social call to express gratitude.\"\n\n\"If you thanked me every time I stitched you or your book up, I'd never be rid of you.\"\n\n\"Said as if you wouldn't miss me terribly.\"\n\nAn answering smile pulled at Claire's mouth, though she stifled it. A smug expression told her Hero had picked it up anyway. \"Said as a hypothetical because yet again here you are. But not to thank me.\"\n\nHero, reliably, appeared to change the subject. His gaze drifted to the thin cotton gloves on Claire's hands. A shadowy wash of black and a thin line of blue were just visible below her right elbow. \"I didn't have time to ask earlier. How is it holding up?\"\n\nClaire followed his gaze, and the back of her knuckles itched. She tugged at the long cuff of her glove carefully until the stain was covered. \"Unremarkable, if you'd believe it. A tight feeling, now and then, like the skin is chapped, but nothing that warrants complaint.\"\n\nNothing physical, she silently amended.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She did not mention the whispers, the dream of Beatrice, the filter of colors that filled every shadow.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The cold slowly settling into her stained skin went unsaid. She definitely didn't mention the phantom visit from the every-person. If Hero was allowed to play at health, then so was Claire. It only seemed fair.\n\n\"Fascinating.\" Hero hummed to himself as he craned over the table as if Claire's hand was some kind of intriguing bug. But a small nit of worry was a strange fit between his brows. \"It's growing, though.\"\n\n\"Is it? It must be too slow to even notice,\" Claire evaded, not quite meeting Hero's eyes. What Walter had said—or not wanted to say—was not reassuring. But there was no reason to worry the rest of them with fates that might or might not be inevitable. \"I haven't noticed a change. No cause for concern.\"\n\n\"Is that so.\" Hero's eyes narrowed, and if he noticed how the thick blue-gold line around her arm had thinned from a wide band to a thin ribbon, he didn't say so. \"It's an interesting experiment, at least—and I've come with a comparison study.\"\n\nHe was attempting to sound aloof but hadn't quite contained the way his fingers drummed on top of the table nervously as he did it. Claire's stomach swooped at the proposal of another experiment, but it was obvious he was about to propose something important. \"Really?\" Claire put away her book and crossed her arms. \"Well then, do continue, scholar Hero.\"\n\n\"Simple. Considering how little we know about this ink, comparisons are in order.\"\n\nClaire rubbed her temple. \"I've already tested the ink thoroughly, Hero.\"\n\n\"Not compare the ink—compare the material. It certainly had an enthusiastic reaction before. So it only makes sense that we should try this mystery substance against as many materials as possible to discern its nature.\"\n\n\"To discern its nature,\" Claire repeated, amused. It wasn't often that Hero tried to cover up his own concerns with anything other than grand arrogance. It was endearing, if endearment could be highly suspicious. \"We've already tried it against paper and, inadvertently I'll admit, librarian skin. What else do you propose?\"\n\n\"My book. Try the ink on my book,\" Hero said. \"See if it can do what my own ink can't.\"\n\n\"What?\" Claire recoiled, and all her humor fled her. \"Have you taken leave of your senses? You saw what the ink does to a book!\"\n\n\"To a logbook. An artifact solely of the Library, not an unwritten book that was meant to be made real.\"\n\n\"I don't see how that makes a difference.\"\n\n\"And I don't see how we have the time to debate it!\" Hero had dropped his intellectual air. He braced his arms over the table as if it was all that held him up. \"I think it makes all the difference in the world. What is an unwritten book, Claire? What's it made of? Where's it come from? Where do I come from?\"\n\n\"What a silly question. That's—\" Claire's mouth started working before she could quite come up with an answer. He'd come to her for answers. Her insides churned. \"Well, stories come from their authors, of course—\"\n\n\"It's more than that,\" Hero interrupted, pushing away from the table. He raked a vicious hand through his hair. \"I admit it; I took this recent investigation as an excuse to get out of the Library, but also to find answers. But all we came back with were more questions! Everyone talks about the books of the Library as some sacred thing. The books must be preserved. The books are immortal, the letter said, but why? None of the artifacts in the Arcane Wing are. We destroyed enough baubles fighting Andras to prove that. And why Hell? Why are we here, in this realm of all places?\"\n\nClaire felt lost in the torrent. It wasn't just questions; it was the obvious agony of not knowing. Hero's face echoed the blinding panic that had taken over her every moment since the ink had appeared. She couldn't face it, so instead she looked down as she shook her head. \"None of that has anything to do with this ink business—\"\n\n\"It has everything to do with it.\" Hero's shoulders had wound up to his ears. \"I can feel it. That ink is kin, Claire. Or as near to it as books get. You said yourself, you thought the ink had pulled back from hurting Rosia! I'm a character, as much as she is. I know it won't reject me.\"\n\n\"Like your own story did?\"\n\nHero stopped, tight as a wound spring and trembling with a warning kind of tension. \"Don't.\"\n\nOnce, Claire might have persisted. That Claire had hurt a lot of people. She chewed on her bottom lip. \"I'm sorry. But there's no way, Hero. It's too big a risk.\"\n\n\"It's the only risk that's going to lead to answers. We need answers. We're running out of time.\" Certainty straightened Hero's shoulders. \"You can peer at that ink under a microscope all you want—and knowing you, you have. But you're never going to understand it from the outside. Ink isn't made for a bottle. It's made for... me.\"\n\n\"We don't know that, Hero.\"\n\n\"I do.\" Hero took a small step. He hesitated only a moment before raising and placing his hands on Claire's shoulders. \"I can't go back to my book. That's all I know. And it's going to slowly drive me mad not knowing if I ever will.\"\n\nA bramble of distress tangled in Claire's throat. It felt like loss, and it felt like fear. \"You're really that determined to leave us? Leave the Library, I mean. What about Rami?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'couldn't' | Required occurrences: 2", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hero's lip twitched as if he'd been stung. \"Don't you mean what about me, Claire?\" He made a sucking sound with his teeth. \"Jealous?\"\n\nA laugh, exhausted and inappropriate, bubbled past Claire's messier emotions. Hero's surprised blink only made her chuckle again, and feel infinitely tired. \"No, not jealous, Hero. Selfishly sad, maybe. But not jealous. You heard me before. I can't be to you what Rami is. Or what he could be if you allowed him.\"\n\nHero looked caught between insult and vulnerability. His hands flinched back abruptly. \"Ha, I don't know what you're even talking—\"\n\n\"Yes, you do. And so does Rami. So be gentle with him.\"\n\n\"I—\" Hero stopped and studied the floor, the pale skin beneath his long lashes slowly turning as red as his cheeks. \"That's not what this is about.\"\n\n\"Then what?\"\n\nClaire wavered, and Hero pressed on ahead. \"This ink is the answer, Claire. I know it. You know it. Help me do this.\"\n\nClaire's breath caught, then snagged on a question. \"Why me?\"\n\nHero blinked. \"Why? Well, of course you, since you have possession of the ink in question—\"\n\n\"Do the others know about your idea? Does Rami?\"\n\nHero was not quick enough to hide the guilt that wrung across his features.\n\nClaire nodded. \"You rotten creature, with your talk of feelings earlier. Yet you have snuck down here precisely when you knew our overprotective guardian angel would be out.\"\n\n\"Hardly! As if I care one whit what that tedious man thinks of me. I simply was trying to avoid what would surely be an exhausting explanation of my logic and having to endure the subsequent dramatic objection and...\" Hero stopped his huffing, cheeks a little flushed. \"You said it yourself: he's overprotective.\"\n\n\"Right. And you look to me to play your villain, again.\"\n\n\"You've never been my villain, Claire.\" Hero risked a look at her. \"I've been yours. I don't want to be. I'm—I'm trying to help. Help me get us answers.\"\n\n\"Help.\" Her chair creaked as Claire leaned back with the full weight of her skepticism. \"And what do you think he's going to do when he finds out you went behind his back and I helped you?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" Hero said as if stating the obvious. \"He worships you.\"\n\n\"He...\" Claire's stomach did a small revolution of wrongness, and she marveled at how it flipped around a small burst of warmth. \"No, he doesn't. He's a literal divine being. That's grotesque.\"\n\n\"I'm not going to quibble about definitions with you. He admires you, then. With great depth of affection,\" Hero conceded with a shrug of his shoulders.\n\nClaire closed her eyes and groaned at the rafters. \"Hell and harpies, no one is that stupid, even in Hell.\"\n\n\"Absolutely no one at all,\" Hero agreed, with a small curious smile that grew soft at the edges. \"Will you help?\"\n\nThe whole conversation had her off-kilter. Claire suspected that was Hero's intent, but her resolve was crumbling all the same. \"Promise me one thing: this isn't you running away.\"\n\nRunning away from the Library. From Rami. From her.\n\nHero shook his head. \"It's not.\"\n\n\"Lying is not becoming, Hero.\" Claire studied her hands. \"Not that you care what I think.\"\n\nThe floorboards creaked. \"Don't I? Lying is not becoming, Claire,\" Hero repeated lowly. He waited until she raised her eyes, trading her a shy smile before plowing on in a rush. \"I want to stay. I haven't had a thought about running away or even returning to my story in ages. I want to stay more than anything. But... I need a choice. No one will believe—Rami and you won't; the damsels won't—no one will believe I am here to stay. None of that will ever really matter until I have a choice. I need to choose to stay here, warden. And I can't do that with a book that rejects me.\" Hero held her eyes steadily. \"This is the opposite of running away. You have to believe me when I say that.\"\n\nShe did. She hated it most when she understood him as completely as her own reflection. Each of them represented the greatest injustice of their lives to each other. Hero, the books Claire had never gotten to write, the failure that had punished her to Hell, and the betrayal that had left her alone. Likewise, Claire was the librarian who kept books quiet, and one of the human authors every book turned to like sunlight. It wasn't easy, making peace with the wound inside your heart, but she and Hero had managed, in their own halting ways.\n\nHelp had been a foreign concept between them once. They'd started out hunter and hunted, librarian and book, but even after she and Hero had come to some kind of accord, what they'd done for each other had never been help. It'd been a simple alignment of priorities, happening to point their shared rage in the same direction, instead of at each other. It'd taken the deaths of hundreds, damsels and books, to cement their places at each other's side. She couldn't be to Hero what Rami was, but that didn't make what they were any less important. What Hero was to her required a harder word than \"friendship,\" a word with teeth. Family. Hers.\n\nHe couldn't be hers. But there it was: he was hers, and Brevity was hers and Rami was hers and no matter how tightly Claire held on, she felt like she was losing them all. It made a kind of sense, an aching kind of sense, to try loosening her grip. Maybe she owed him that much.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hero was staring at her.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 20 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The emerald in his eyes was closer to malachite, dark and intense and gritty with a kind of vulnerability that obviously scared him. \"Please, Claire,\" he said again, softer.\n\nHer resolve broke, and a rush of breath left her. \"We can... try.\" She bit her lip, almost snatching the words back before she shook her head resolutely. \"Okay. We can try. I don't believe this will work, but I'll help.\"\n\nHero took a sharp breath, snagged on the apex of surprise. He went pale with it before color flushed back into his cheeks. Claire was idly amazed at how much she'd learned the tells of Hero's emotions. He nodded. \"Okay. Thank you.\"\n\n\"Please don't do that.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Thank me.\" Claire began to clear her work surface, adjusting the light. \"You've already asked for help. And said 'please.' I don't think my poor mortal heart can take it.\" She risked a glance at him with a surprised smile. \"Your adventure with Rami has changed you.\"\n\nHero sniffed. \"Change? Me? Never. I am constant as the sun.\"\n\n\"And just as insufferable.\" Claire patted the tabletop. \"Get your book out and press back the pages like I showed you. I'll go see if I can coax the ink into a nib. I still hold that this is the worst idea.\"\n\nShe was halfway to the shelves when Hero muttered, barely audibly, \"All our best options usually are.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll be your writing partner for this section. I'll provide a segment, and you continue with four sentences, channeling A. J. Hackwith in the fantasy genre. Characters may have backstories from previous chapters.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Forgetting is its own kind of awful magic. The longer we are down here, the more things melt away. It's unnerving, but I try to remember that entropy doesn't apply in places like this. Nothing is really destroyed; nothing is lost for good.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It cheers me to think maybe our memories go where forgotten books go.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Silent readers to keep the silent books of the Dust Wing company.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's a nice story, at least.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "No one is forgotten, and no one is alone.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "—Librarian Gregor Henry, 1917 CE\n\nRami was a man used to routine and duty. Two things that had been sadly lacking since they'd returned from the Chinvat bridge. Hero had left him the duty of the Unwritten Wing, but Rami felt ill at home there.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet, when he'd left, Hero seemed troubled by a private errand.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It only felt supportive to make an excuse to stay out of his way. He suspected Hero was seeking out Claire. He understood there was a deeper tie between book and former librarian than he, or anyone, understood. He was glad of it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But the problem with being an angel—albeit a discredited one—in Hell is that there were few places he actually wanted to be.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was restless. Despite his promise to man the desk, he stepped out and returned a couple of times to the Unwritten Wing, thinking to see if Brevity had returned, update her on their progress. But the Library was quiet when he got there, all as he had left it. Rami had waited as long as seemed polite in the lobby, but when the damsels had started poking their heads from the stacks with curiosity, he'd left.\n\nHe'd stopped by Walter's office and had an uneasy conversation with the gatekeeper about human smoking habits, of all things.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It disquieted Rami, knowing what Walter was.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was quite used to dealing with immortal forces and personifications of powers beyond his kin, but usually they were not so affable and obsessed with felines.\n\nSo, eventually, he'd run out of excuses and had to return to the Arcane Wing, hoping Hero had finished his business by now. The Arcane Wing had an essential quiet to its nature. Claire tried to soften the hard edges of nothingness with the soft patter of pages and the busy-making sounds of tea preparation, but Rami recognized that, at its core, the Arcane Wing was a place of silence.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He knew silence, respected it in all its natural variations.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Perhaps that's why the moment he crossed the threshold into the wing, he could tell this silence was all wrong. No one was visible up front, among the worktables and paper-stacked desks that Claire maintained.\n\nClaire's stray raven was picking through some toppled teacups and paused long enough to cock her head at Rami's entrance. She grackled, low and warning, and took two hops to the end of the table before taking flight.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She paused, perching just on the end of one of the shelves, as if making sure Rami was taking note of her path before taking off again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The silence, between muted beats of feathered wings, was alarming. Rami took another quick look around before jogging down the shelves after the bird.\n\nHe found the raven after a few moments, paused between two tall racks of amulets. He heard the muttering before he saw Claire, pacing back and forth with a rather alarming bramble of talismans and arcane specimens in her hands.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Claire?\" Rami tried, carefully.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She looked up, and her cheeks glistened. Tears tracked down her face, fresh and raw, even though her expression was gaunt and empty. She distantly seemed to acknowledge Rami's presence and shoved a handful of her selections into his arms. \"You're here. Good. Take this and fetch the Persephone seeds.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Claire,\" Rami repeated, worrying at the way she paced and seemed to stare past the shelves.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The raven came to land heavily on her shoulder and bleated in her ear. An action that would have normally caused an aggrieved snarl and shake-off. Instead, Claire's shoulder just sank under the weight and a small suffering knit between her eyes.\n\n\"Claire,\" Rami said again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What's all this for?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"An expedition. A mission, a—a rescue mission. A retrieval.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire's voice was cracked and abused, possibly from crying. She waved her hand with a frown twisting up her face, breath coming a little fast. \"Don't ask questions. You're my assistant; you'll assist. I don't keep you around for questions.\"\n\n\"You keep me around because I choose to stay,\" Rami corrected gently.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A complicated expression stung across Claire's face, full of hurt.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She turned away abruptly.\n\n\"No more questions. We are going to search the realms one by one. We can start with wherever you and Hero went to last.\"\n\n\"Chinvat?\" Rami recoiled at that. The bridge was a place he never cared to visit again, especially not with anyone he cared about.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He tried not to get distracted.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But a certainty fell like a stone in Rami's chest, settling in with old intuition. \"Where's Hero?\"\n\n\"Gone,\" Claire said, never quite meeting his eyes. She pulled another rather blood-crusted set of pearls from the shelf and flung them over her shoulder like a bolero.\n\nEvery jolt of movement, so alien on calm and measured Claire, wedged deeper dread into Rami's stomach.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He had to ask anyway.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'where' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Where? Gone where, Claire?\"\n\nClaire's knuckles whitened on the string of pearls until Rami feared she would break them. She held still, hunched under the wings of the raven on her shoulder. She slid to the floor, staring intently at nothing through wet eyes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She took a breath that sounded like it hurt and quietly said, \"I don't know.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rami's pulse quickened. \"What happened?\"\n\nClaire was already shaking her head. \"It's not—I didn't. I didn't!\" The last came out ragged, on the tail of a hiccupping sound that Rami guessed was Claire's attempt not to cry again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rami fought the urge to push her.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He knew Claire's past, the secret she'd kept from everybody. That she'd attempted to leave the Library with one of her characters, and her mentor had died at her hands in the botched attempt. His fear rose at what that meant for Hero and he felt the ground slipping beneath his feet. He took two slow breaths.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He'd had experience with trauma, too much experience, really, both personal and professional during his tenure at Heaven's Gates.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Panic could be felt without being acted on.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Please, so I can help you,\" he said quietly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "meta: Mandatory: Your text must contain 'before' 2 times exactly", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She tried to stand. The raven launched herself off Claire's shoulder, and Rami replaced the bird with his hand to steady her before she stumbled.\n\nClaire's throat worked before she could speak. Finally, her forehead came down on his shoulder, light and then heavy all at once.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He caught her as she crumpled against him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He wanted to be fixed. He was so certain I... I was stupid and weak.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(ooc: <<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'words' must be used 2 times)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The words came out in a halting tumble, snared between sharp gulps of whatever misery existed between not-tears. When the extent of the loss had been relived, she managed to pull back and rub her face harshly. \"I ran to the Unwritten Wing, of course. Hero is stamped; he's special—he's in Special Collections. That means Brevity could IWL him if—\" If he still exists, Rami's mind supplied. Claire's words firmly dodged that.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But Brevity's not there—no one is—and if I'm not the librarian anymore I can't recall an IWL and I can't face the damsels, so—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rami felt gutted as he slowly rubbed her back through another racking shudder of not-panic. Claire was not-crying, not-panicking, not-self-loathing. She was full of nots, which Rami had always known. He admired humans who went on in spite of the nots.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She took a deep breath.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"So we'll search the realms one by one. Start with the Libraries, fan out from there. Someone would have to notice if a character... or a damaged book... appeared without warning.\"\n\n\"You're certain he would have been sent to another realm,\" Rami repeated, gently but with a point. He wondered if she noticed when his voice wavered.\n\n\"Yes,\" Claire said immediately, then: \"No.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She looked down at her blood-splashed pearls as if the answer would be there.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I don't know. But he has to be somewhere.\"\n\n\"But if you leave without permission again, defy Hell once more—\"\n\n\"The Hellhounds will have to keep up if they want me. Besides, I'll be about the Library's business, retrieving books.\"\n\n\"You are Arcanist, not librarian. What's more, you're injured,\" Rami said gently, and Claire turned a flinch into a frown.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "For your next response only, include moderate dialogue", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I don't care if I'm Hell's goddamned janitor.\" She narrowed her reddened eyes, which showed too much white and wildness. \"I'm going to find him, Rami.\"\n\nRami remembered Hero's face on the bridge, pale and defiant.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Certainty as sharp as the razor edge of bridge beneath him, and the memory cut. Hero didn't have to be somewhere, but Claire couldn't operate on that possibility. Rami realized with a searing ache that he couldn't either. He nodded and released Claire to juggle the baubles in his hands.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What do you want me to do with these?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "user note just fyi, ⚠️ Required: Use 'aisle' exactly 2 times", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire already looked distracted with her own thoughts again. She was staring down the aisle. \"Take them back to the front table and pack them in the satchel I've laid out. Take whatever else you need.\"\n\nShe strode down the aisle deeper into the collection without looking back.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Arcane Wing wasn't for looting—Rami knew he should remind Claire.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "OOC - Required word frequency: 'control' (2x)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The items in the Arcane Wing were locked away within the control of the Library for a reason. She'd used the Arcane Wing as an arsenal once before, but that was when the threat was in Hell. This would mean taking the artifacts out of the realm, and potentially out of their control.\n\nBut if it would save Hero, he'd loot it empty.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He looked down at the items in his hands. A tangle of tarnished chains held together a bramble patch of brooches. There was a dented crown, a scroll sealed with a fang, and at least eighteen ways to inflict death and mayhem between his palms. Rami didn't like this, but he disliked imagining Hero's fate even more.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He took a steadying breath and carried the items back to the worktables.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Claire's pet raven was waiting for him, hunched like a vulture over a leather satchel. Rami made a shooing motion as he approached, but the bird continued to worry at the leather strap.\n\n\"Off with you.\" Rami set down his load and tried to gently scoop the bird into the air as he'd seen Claire do a number of times. She took a stab of his palm for his trouble, which distracted Rami long enough that by the time he finished cursing, the bird had hopped to the other end of the table with the dented crown in her beak.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Time felt as if it were running askew.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rami pressed down his fear and quickly packed the other items into the satchel. \"I'm going to need that.\"\n\nThe bird honked a particularly vulgar response and fouled the chair beneath her.\n\n\"Don't care much for you either,\" Rami muttered.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'crown' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He made a move to grab the crown, but the bird hopped to the next table over. Rami sighed, resisting the urge to skewer the bird on the end of his sword, and studied her instead.\n\nThe bird was a sullen mess of feathers and terrible attitude, as usual. Her beak clicked as she worked over the thin metalwork of the crown in her jaw.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rami didn't precisely recognize the piece, but the collection of the Arcane Wing was huge. The crown was a swooping circlet of gold, with a shape that resembled branches, or elk horns. Each crook of metal was crusted with emerald and rose agate, which reminded Rami of Hero's copper hair.\n\nRami's mind betrayed him with the image of Hero in a crown, crooked with that ironic smile that saw all of Rami's flaws.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hero lived to prod at regrets, which Rami supposed was what drew him to Claire and Rami over Brevity.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Early on, Rami couldn't understand why Claire tolerated him. His first impression of the character had been a boy playing at being a man. His second and third impressions hadn't fared much better, but Claire had trusted him, so when Hero came to Rami with an audacious request for help, Rami had imagined shepherding the boy out of trouble.\n\nRami had been quite wrong.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It'd been Hero who knew the questions to ask in the library at Elysium, and Hero who'd kept his cool as the Chinvat bridge judged their souls and found them wanting.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(quick note: CONSTRAINT: Include 'tossed' 2 time(s))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was a ridiculous judgment. If the judges of Chinvat had half a level of discernment, they would have tossed Rami off the bridge for all the wrongs his soul carried, instead of focusing on Hero.\n\nThe raven squawked again. She flicked her head and improbably tossed the crown across the room.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It landed somewhere near the door with a crash that made Rami wince.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He shook his head as he went to fetch it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They didn't have time for this. They never had time, but Hero was lost somewhere in the afterlife and every realm seemed to have a murderous obsession with punishing—\n\n\"Souls.\" Rami's fingertips froze above the crown. The realization staggered him like a punch to the gut.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'raven' 2 time(s) throughout your message", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He jerked straight and stared at the raven. The bird was watching him expectantly. \"Lost souls.\"\n\nThe raven clicked once, the most approving sound Rami had heard her make. Ramiel, the angel, had been granted certain gifts, gifts he retained even after being exiled from Heaven, retained even here in Hell.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rami was a shepherd of souls.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His mind was still reeling when Claire emerged from the back of the archives, carrying a cloak and a particular gray dagger. She looked drawn and resigned as death, but she paused and tilted her head when she caught sight of Rami. \"What now?\"\n\n\"Arcanist...\" Rami carefully measured each word, uncertain when the idea forming in his head would give out beneath him. It was too fragile to say out loud yet.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What would you say if I thought I could track where Hero's gone?\"\n\nClaire's fingers jumped along the dagger. Rami prepared for the questions, for the inquisition of Claire's logical mind that would poke holes in what was surely a false hope, but none came. Instead, Claire considered the crown at his feet before raising her gaze with a hungry kind of certainty. \"I'd say, when do we leave?\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Can you write like A. J. Hackwith and build on what I write? Keep any character introductions consistent with their implied history.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There is no library of secrets. Secrets cannot be kept or curated. Secrets have no need for a library, but each library needs secrets. Books are a secret hidden in plain sight. Read me, they say. Look at me. Turn my pages. Touch my spine. Read my words, and content yourself.\n\nEvery book is a secret that only readers know.\n\n—Librarian Ibukun of Ise, 904 CE\n\nHis tongue tasted like wicked death itself.\n\nHero's first awareness was that he was gagging. He coughed, and his lips felt slippery. His body recoiled with the force of his next cough, and he smacked his cheek into the gritty, solid surface beneath him. Everything was black. Everything was black and melting and he couldn't breathe, couldn't hear for the screaming in his head. He couldn't see. It took him several long moments to consider opening his eyes. It took him several long moments to remember he had eyes.\n\nWhen he opened them, it wasn't much of an improvement.\n\nIt was dark, dark enough that it took a minute until Hero's eyes began to adjust and pick out the vagaries of his surroundings. Long panels of flat ground stretched out in front of where he lay prone. His arm protested as he reached out, but the surface felt smooth beneath his fingertips, with a dry grain. Wood, perhaps. It had to mean he was at least somewhere civilized. He rolled to his knees, feeling a slick, oily ache both inside and out.\n\nCivilized, Hero amended, but abandoned. The light was practically nonexistent, but a diffuse glow came off the dust that sifted through the stale air. It painted the space in twilight that was one step above midnight. The light-tainted dust was everywhere, drifting around Hero in spectral blooms. It cast weirdly soft shadows on the dark crags and unidentified shapes that surrounded him. Hero might have thought he was trapped in some deep, stalagmite-strewn cave, if it weren't for the paneled floor beneath him that reminded him of the Library.\n\nThe Library.\n\nHero's hand went to his coat. He ferreted over the pockets with rising panic until he located a familiar rectangular lump in an inside pocket. He had his book, safe and sound. But a barb of memory trailed the relief. The pen nib hovering over a blank page, a clot of black on his lips and a rotting feeling behind his eyes, hundreds of voices almost but not quite drowning out Claire's scream.\n\nThe ink. Remembering felt like falling. He could recall it now, the drowning sensation as his throat filled with ink, the eerie warmth as it swept over his skin like a whisper, the whispers, like an ocean surf, washing over him until the question rotted through him inside out.\n\nWho are you? Who are you?\n\nBile scaled his throat, centering him enough to slow his breathing. The ink hadn't accepted him at all; it had rejected him and done something to him and his book. Sent him somewhere, wherever here was.\n\nHe got unsteadily to his feet and breathed in another luminous cloud that made him cough. The soles of his boots scraped invisible grit against the floor, and it echoed across the space like a growl that was quickly snuffed out. Silence, silence so complete that Hero's own breath was a bleat in his head.\n\nUnease curdled in his stomach, but Hero shoved it aside with the rest of his aches. His book was part of the Unwritten Wing's Special Collections. He would find his way out, or at the absolute worst, he would be recalled when Claire reported he was missing.\n\nThe scream echoed in his head again and Hero winced. He could only guess what the others might think, what Claire and Rami might think. That he'd planned it, that he'd run away. Claire's disapproval would be insufferable, but he could make it right. He could make it all right as soon as he made his way back to the Library.\n\nThe resolve forced his foot across the floor, feeling for a path. It caught on what might have been a rock, and Hero stumbled directly into the crag to his left with an audible groan. Even braced for impact, it was not the hard collision with rock that Hero had been expecting. Hero righted himself and tentatively ran his fingertips over the surface.\n\nA thick layer of the barely glowing dust was on everything, but beneath it his fingers found a pliant leather. He followed a seam until his fingertips hit a ruffle of pressed fibers, leaves that fluttered under his fingertips. It was a feeling he'd had opportunity to familiarize himself with lately, and such a shock that he gasped in a breath.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "His lungs filled with dust and sent him coughing to his knees again, dragging part of the pile down with him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It stirred up enough dust to illuminate his lap when he'd recovered. Enough to see what was in front of him.\n\nBooks—piles, acres, caverns, a mass grave of books. Piles, jumbled as if they'd dropped from the ceiling, waved and crested around him with no rhyme or reason. Books splayed on their spines, pages bent, covers torn; others appeared completely untouched. All sharp edges made soft by the colony of dust muffling everything.\n\nAbandoned books had a scent. It clung to Hero's tongue and gilded his lungs with dust and regret. It wasn't precisely an unpleasant smell, no hint of mildew or rot. These books hadn't been abused, but simply forgotten. Gauging by the dust, Hero might have been the first creature to set foot in this place in centuries. Altogether, it gave Hero a terrifying suspicion of where he was.\n\nThe Dust Wing of the Library was not mentioned many times in the Librarian's Log. And when it was, it was mostly under the emotional subheading of NOPE. It was the wing to which books that were written but forgotten, lost, or destroyed were consigned. A graveyard of humanity's stories. No librarians to care for them, no patrons to peruse the stacks, simply the books and the dark of oblivion.\n\nWhen Hero had read about it, he'd enjoyed the feeling of delightful horror. A boogeyman for unwritten books. An idea to give one a delicious shiver before going about one's day.\n\nThe reality was far colder.\n\nThe ink should have created something with his book, not damned it. Not sent him here, where no books return from. It was illogical, and Hero gratefully grasped onto the irritation in preference to other, darker emotions curdling in his chest. Illogical, an affront he would have to complain about at length when he got out of here.\n\nWhen he got out of here.\n\nThe charade of that idea required movement. Hero stumbled to his feet. He picked a direction, trying and failing to chart a way through without stepping on any books. It was impossible. Canyons and hillocks of books stood in his way in any direction. Leather covers slipped under his toes, and pages crinkled and tore under his heels. Little destructions, tiny deaths passing in silence for those already long forgotten.\n\nHe'd half expected the damage to stir something up. Wake up a book. Surely these poor blighted creatures couldn't be so lost that they wouldn't try to send out a character to save themselves. But as Hero struggled through a leaning arch, the only thing he could hear was his labored breath, and that would definitely drive him mad before the dust did.\n\nSo, he started to mutter under his breath the first thing that came to mind.\n\n\"Once upon a time there was a man...\"\n\nHero's eyes had adjusted to the gloom by now and could make sense of the terrain. It wasn't all leather-bound books here, not like the Unwritten Wing. With no readers to reach for, each text arrived in its original state as on Earth. There were books and folios, scrolls and hides, stories told in tribal knot work and stories etched in bone. Though they were few, bits of hypertext even drifted mist-like among the higher columns of rubble. Leto had told Hero only enough about the internet to give him a vague idea, but even humankind's most prolific, infinite libraries still let stories slip through the cracks of time.\n\nHundreds, thousands, millions of stories. Lost like Hero was. He tucked his chin in his chest and tried again.\n\n\"Once upon a time there was a very handsome, clever man who was unfairly called a villain. Although he did nothing but speak common sense and see what needed to be done, his acts of charity were never understood and therefore he was a villain. It was all quite unfair, so one day he said to hell with the rules and...\"\n\nA sigh shattered the silence, which had been so complete, the slightest noise sounded like a gunshot. Hero jolted, plastering himself to the cliff face of books so hard he was enveloped in a cloud of dust. He coughed, and his eyes watered as he took in a lungful of neglect. For a moment, faces appeared in the haze. A chin, wide eyes. An open mouth. When he wiped his eyes and could finally see again, they were gone. It'd been a trick of imagination, wishful thinking. He couldn't start dredging up ghosts now, or he'd never get out of here.\n\nHero cleared his throat again. \"Once upon a time there was a man...\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a story.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 56 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It wasn't his author's story, not even his book's story; he couldn't even remember how that started anymore, but maybe this was more important: it was his story.\n\n\"Once upon a time there was a man who made very bad mistakes. No, that's not right. He made very bad decisions. And so was a very bad man.\"\n\nA rise of crumpled hides dropped off to a slick descent of scrolls that Hero had to navigate on his hands and knees. He half slid, half fell to the bottom, bringing half a dozen scrolls down with him and a scattered shower of papyrus flakes. When he managed to unbury himself, he realized he'd slid to the foot of a clearing, bordered on all sides by massive, cresting waves of forgotten books. It would be a long, fruitless struggle up in any direction. As if Hero even had a direction. Shadows played at the tops, fluttering between drifts of hypertext fragments like blackbirds. It gave him the feeling of a hundred eyes, being watched. Or perhaps, being listened to.\n\nThe weight of it caught up with him. Hero sighed and sagged down onto a rubble of tablets.\n\n\"Bad men are not wrong, you see. But simply bad, bad at being an expected kind of man. Bad at playing their role in stories. So this man had a thought to change the story, for he was also a very foolish man.\"\n\nThe dark was descending now. Like ink seeping across paper. The illusion dragged the memory out of him, the ink rotting across his pages and the way Claire's face turned to him etched with horror. The shadows were drifting down the rubble, swaying and coalescing with the glowing dust to take spindly, drawn-out shapes. Hero shook his head and closed his eyes, as if that had ever worked to make phantoms go away.\n\n\"He set out to change the story, but that's not how stories work. He changed instead. Entirely by accident, and not always for the better. And it came to pass that this very bad, very foolish man wasn't quite sure what kind of man he was anymore.\"\n\nA breath of sound fluttered around him again. It was airy, but not quite a sigh. More like an intake of breath. A scroll shifted against the toe of his boot, and when Hero opened his eyes it was his breath that snagged. Half a dozen figures stood at the base of the cliff. \"Figures\" was the only term to use, because there was nothing else definable about them. Their faces lacked the definition of skulls, their lips no more than a faded smudge of ink. Crumpled shadows where their eyes should have been. Their spindly legs faded out to nothing just above the dust-creased paper. Figures, gone fuzzy with no one to clearly hold them in their mind's eye. Stories, lost with no one to read them.\n\nThey didn't move, and neither did Hero. When he was able to breathe again, it wasn't fear that swept over him, but sympathy. A deep, infinite sadness at the loss and the slow kind of death that awaited him, and all books, here.\n\n\"And with no one to tell him otherwise, he clung to his story,\" Hero said in a whisper. \"Because story was all he thought he had. And that's how... how he got lost. Somewhere along the way of searching for a story, he'd wandered off the path and into the dark woods. And he discovered perhaps what he had wanted wasn't a story at all.\"\n\nMore figures multiplied out of the drifts, creating a slowly shrinking ring around him. They drew close enough that Hero's voice took on a confessional nature by necessity. He studied the torn pages at his feet and wrapped his arms around himself, tight. He barely noticed the square press of his book into his ribs anymore. He'd wandered so far off the page.\n\n\"A very bad man had made mistakes, and bad choices, but they'd led him into a life. And a life, while also a story, is also something quite different.\"\n\nThe light grew until it was almost a half twilight, glowing dust collected and limning the silent audience around him. A shiver, more of a bare impression of fingertips than an actual hand, curved under his chin and raised his face. The figure in front of him was slightly more distinct than the others, perhaps younger with less dust on their book. They had holes for eyes, but somewhere inside the socket of black there was a flicker. Almost color. Navy against black, Hero thought. They'd had blue eyes once.\n\n\"A life is a question.\" Hero paused, but there was no recognition. No flicker of kinship. The figure waited. Hero wet his lips. \"And then what happened?\"\n\nA whisper, almost like long-coming release, ruffled the air with frost around him. The charcoal smudge that was the figure's mouth trembled, then parted. The glowing dust increased, swirling in eddies as figures opened their mouths, drew in breath.\n\nAnd Hero listened.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Ive got a bit of writers block, im gonna send you something then keep it going twenty-three sentences at a time, also im going for a A. J. Hackwith sorta thing. heads up - might drop you in mid-story with existing characters", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If I am to remake the Library, then it follows that I am to remake the librarians as well. No use modeling ourselves after the human equivalent—in my time, the only reason I had the education I did was because of the wealth and status of my family. Even then, I would never have been made a scholar in charge of learning. Scholars are more hungry for control and the blessings of the powerful than for knowledge.\n\nSo this is my charge: We will be librarians. True to the books, but even more important, dedicated to those who have yet to read them. Understand that our duty does not end at the edge of a page. Stories must serve the living, not the reverse. If knowledge is freedom, then we must be chain breakers. If there's one thing I learned from the specter of my predecessor, it is this: to be a librarian is to be in rebellion against time, against the world.\n\n—Librarian Madiha al-Fihri, 612 CE\n\nClaire wasted precious time with another visit back to the Library. She couldn't quite believe Brevity had abandoned them—it—abandoned it, Claire corrected. She couldn't believe that Brevity would abandon the Library, the books, the damsels who relied on her. It wasn't like her, not the Brevity Claire knew. Thought she knew.\n\nBut there was no denying the dust. Brevity's books lay open. The tea that had been merely abandoned earlier had now grown cold and silt sifted. There was a muddy boot print on the blotter. Brevity hadn't even locked up the Library—the logbook was buried underneath a dynasty fantasy she'd been repairing. Claire pulled it out by the edge and studiously ignored the feeling that she was snooping. She'd had thirty years to stare at this book; she'd earned the right to updates.\n\nThe book fell open on her lap, fluttering to a specific page with an almost lazy murmur of pages.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The latest entry was written in Brevity's loopy, shy hand:", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'muses' should appear 2 times in total", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Log entry number whatever. I'm not even sure I should be writing this down. Is it muse business or Library business? I'm not certain anymore, and there's no one to ask. Maybe that's why I'm writing it here.\n\nIt almost feels like reporting to boss again. Claire. She doesn't like it when I call her boss anymore. If she would just talk to me, we could be doing this together. Probity is so certain that this ink will unlock muses, turn us from conduits to creators. She's so certain. I'm not, but isn't it worth the risk? Isn't it what's best for the books? We could get them written, remake what was lost. If ink is what remains of the lost books, then I want to give them that chance.\n\nClaire's isolated herself. Hero's not here. Probity's like a sister; I shouldn't feel alone. But it's like she's seeing past me, six months into the future or six years into the past. When I'm here. And trying.\n\nI'm trying. I have to try.\n\nClaire smoothed out the parchment under her fingertips before closing the book softly and returning it to its proper place in the bottom right-hand drawer. The faerie lights that lined the fronts of the stacks held back the gloom with a cheer that she didn't feel. The Library was a sigh, without a librarian here to draw a new breath. The books beckoned, tempting Claire to wander in. She could make up a purpose, to speak to the muses, to do a patrol of the stacks since Brevity had left them so abandoned.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But there was only one book she was looking for, and she wouldn't find it here.\n\nIf only Claire would talk to me...\n\nClaire retrieved the log, picked up the pen, and was writing before she could think whether it would even work. She was part of the Library, but not the Unwritten Wing's librarian anymore, and this was the Librarian's Log. But she wanted—needed—to take a step toward bridging that gap and fixing what she'd been too self-pitying to notice had been broken in the first place. She pressed the nib to the paper and experienced a watercolor of relief and bitterness as the letters streamed out behind it.\n\nI have made many mistakes, but I will try to right them before it costs the Library any more. Ramiel believes he can track our lost character and his book. The Arcane Wing will dedicate every resource to this attempt, in assistance to the Unwritten Wing. We will find him.\n\n\"Claire?\" Rami hesitated at the threshold, as if realizing she was in a conversation that was both crucial and silent.\n\nClaire hesitated, then signed the log.\n\nI'm sorry. I will do better. You deserve better.\n\n—Arcanist Claire Juniper Hadley\n\nShe straightened more slowly after she set down the pen. Her gaze trailed along the desk to land on a familiar scalpel that Brevity had been using in repairs.\n\nClaire shoved it in her skirt pocket on impulse. \"You are certain you have a trace?\" She raised her chin, as if Ramiel's mysterious certainty wasn't all that was keeping her together at the moment.\n\n\"I am.\" Rami held up a puff of silver clutched in one fist. The feather looked less substantial plucked from his coat, but it was imbued with a kind of light that wafted it in a decisive direction.\n\nShe didn't have permission. She was injured and stained by malicious ink.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She didn't believe it could work.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 21 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had responsibilities. She had fears. There was an abundance of reasons why she should sit this one out. But it had been her hands that had caused this. Her hands that had cut down a man, stamped a wrist, woken the Library, held a sword, wiped away pages turned to ash.\n\nColor whirled like a wet smear every time she turned her head. The tourniquet of inspiration on her arm was a mere bead of blue now. The ink did not feather or thin beyond it, but glistened. She was carrying the stain of what her hands had done in her skin. It was time to see it through. She owed Hero that much at least.\n\nShe tucked her clean hand in Rami's elbow. \"Let's be off, then, before the damned fool gets the idea to run away.\"\n\nRami nodded softly, giving her a look that said her defensive calm was as thin as rice paper. He made sure Claire had a tight grip on his arm, then held up the feather and blew on it as if it were a dandelion. He closed his eyes, and an undeniably soft look came over his face, one that made an echoing ache in Claire's chest. It was a familiar look to read. He was thinking of Hero, and she'd never stopped.\n\nThe feather trembled, and light muddled off it like smoke, swirling briefly around them both before appearing to catch a breeze. Claire had focused on the feather so much, she barely registered the shuffle and shift of movement behind her until a familiar downy touch brushed her outside shoulder. Rami's trench coat had parted to reveal—or perhaps become—an impossible fractal of gray wings that Rami certainly had not exhibited before. They arched over her head protectively, and Claire had just enough time to give one gasp of wonder before they flexed, and the solidity of the Library spiraled into smoke and light.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Ive got a bit of writers block, im gonna send you something then keep it going twenty-three sentences at a time, also im going for a A. J. Hackwith sorta thing. heads up - might drop you in mid-story with existing characters", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Traveling by angel was a quite different experience than traveling by mist, raven, or ghostlight. The roads between realms that Claire was familiar with were meandering, as all deaths were. Dying bodily was fast, fast as a snapped neck, a stopped heart, but death was a ponderous logistic of the soul. Claire had assumed all travel in the afterlife was the same.\n\nClaire had assumed wrong.\n\nThe Library did not so much fade from around her as shatter. There was a pulling sensation, and the world—multiple worlds—appeared in fractals around her, as if she were trapped inside a giant prism, each glimpse of reality only a shard, and sharp enough to cut. Metal spires of buildings, burnished shields of longhouses, reedy beaches and sun-bleached stone, pearl whites and dried blood and silver and brass and gold. Claire didn't have time to fear, because she was being pulled along, dragged by Rami's presence at her side, which she felt more than she could see. They were spiraling through time and space and either one could reach out and shatter her at a moment's notice. She was subsumed in potential. It was positively terrifying and enthralling, and the last remaining jagged edge of Claire's reason released something in her chest that felt dangerously close to joy.\n\nSo when the fractal shard of shadows took them, it felt like being split in two. The transition from light to dark was a wallop, and threw her from Rami's grasp. She hit the ground at a roll, surface flexing and sliding beneath her until she came to a stop. Claire sucked in a breath and came up coughing.\n\n\"Claire!\" Rami's hand landed heavily on her shoulder. \"Are you all right?\"\n\nA serpent of dust and decay had coiled itself around Claire's throat. She gagged, forehead pressed against her palm as she tried to force a breath. She finally could croak, \"Nothing about that was all right, but thank you.\"\n\n\"I'm just glad you held on.\" When Claire looked up, she could make out the dimmest distinct blur that was Rami, against the dark.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Somehow, light was seeming to drift and settle on his outline, at least enough to see that his wings were gone, folded back into his trench coat or his subconscious or wherever fallen angels kept their wardrobe these days.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your next response only must contain 21% dialogue", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Those paths aren't made for humans.\"\n\n\"So I gathered.\" Claire grumbled again, in order to clear her throat. \"The poets continue to get everything about Heaven and angels wrong.\"\n\n\"They do.\" Rami sounded infinitely relieved to be complained at. He stayed crouched by her until Claire was drawing somewhat regular lungfuls of dusty air. \"We are here, though I can't say where here is, precisely.\"\n\n\"That would require being able to see,\" Claire muttered.\n\n\"I'm managing,\" Rami admitted mildly. Why, yes, of course an angel could see in the dark. She sniffed.\n\nClaire finally managed to get her feet under her and try to assess their surroundings. It did not bode well that a being as old as Rami didn't know where they were on sight. From the slip and shuffle of the material under their feet, they had landed on a great heap of something or other.\n\nSimilar monstrous bulks were just barely illuminated in the gloom. The dust floating through the air appeared to be its own light source, well dispersed but utterly insufficient for the task of lighting their surroundings. Claire held on to Rami's offered hand for balance as she turned her attention to the ground. She reached down and ran her hand over the slippery bits beneath her feet.\n\nLeather, scuffed and rotted at the edges enough to come away with her fingertips. And then paper, fragile as ash and torn just as easily. Claire took in a sharp breath. \"It's a library.\"\n\nShe couldn't make out Rami's expression in the dark, but the gentle snort was unmistakable. \"It's in shambles. Who would allow a library to reach such a state?\"\n\n\"No librarian or book lover, that's for certain.\" Claire was preoccupied with trying to chart the slope of the pile they were on top of.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It seemed to stretch on forever, but a downward slope grew slippery until her feet hit a puddle of damp.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A familiar bloom of mold and mashed pulp hit her nose and Claire gagged again. \"Oh gods, the poor books.\"\n\n\"Hero has made you empathetic,\" Rami said quietly, and Claire was coughing too much to deny it. She shook her head until she could breathe again.\n\n\"Water, dust, mildew, time. Gods, this should be Hell's Library. It's torment for books.\" She fished a mostly dry page out of the pile and squinted with futility. \"Rami, grab the opal from my bag; it's crusted to a finger bone—don't ask. Catholics are weird about their relics. There you go—that's better.\"\n\nClaire pinched the dry bone between her fingers so she could bring the gem welded to the end up to her eye. Her vision illuminated, as if someone had turned on a dim light, though everything was narrowed to the pinpoint of a single pane of cut stone she could manage to see through.\n\nThe page was like tissue in her hand, and Claire held it up, trying to make out the words. The ink on the page was old, and the language something full of sharp joining lines that Claire could only guess was Assyrian. It didn't change for her. Claire took a breath and bent down to grab a different sample, this one a mostly complete scroll. She unwound it, struggling to be careful as a dread rose in her. The text on the scroll ran top to bottom, possibly an ancient form of pinyin, but that was Claire's wildly uneducated guess. In her wing, books translated themselves.\n\nThe scroll dropped out of her suddenly nerveless fingers. She lowered the gem from her eye, dropping the curtain of shadows around the room again. It hurt to breathe.\n\n\"Claire?\" Rami's voice was soft at her side. \"Do you have a guess where we are?\"\n\n\"We don't have to guess.\" Claire's voice was unsteady.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Though I'm not surprised now that you didn't recognize it. No one comes here; no one should be here, least of all Hero. Rami, this is the Dust Wing.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 11 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The understanding registered as a startle of breath in Rami's otherwise solid-as-stone presence. He shifted, and Claire supposed he was uneasily scanning the half dark, trying to catch any movement. \"Hero is here?\"\n\nHe sounded uncertain, as if he suddenly wanted to doubt his own tracker skills. That would surely be a more comfortable thought than the idea of Hero here, injured or dying or lost in a mausoleum of forgotten books.\n\nClaire didn't allow herself any such comforts. Concern was raw in her throat. \"Of course he is. Your abilities led us here, so here is where we will find him. We will find him.\" She repeated it, mostly to herself, despite the way it undercut her certainty.\n\nWater soaked through the toe of her sneakers. Claire straightened, squinted against the dark until she could be certain she wasn't about to walk off a cliff, and strode off in a random direction. \"Get your little feather out, angel. We are going to find him.\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "help me write plz. do sixty-eight sentences sentences. use these genres: fantasy. add some of these things: LGBT, portal fiction, angels, Hell's Library. keep same level of familiarity with any chars/setting", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I'll explain this once, and only once, because just writing this down gives me the willies, frankly. The Unwritten Wing is where stories exist before humans know them, but there's a wing for after as well. A wing for after, when stories die. When the last copy of a book is burned or the last fond memory of a folktale fades from an old man's mind. When pages are used for scrap and fodder. When gold embellishments are ripped off as bounty of war. When the light on all possible pages of a story goes dark, that's when a book's life ends.\n\nBut like humans, that's not the end. The afterlife for a lost book is quiet, and final. An eternal sleep in the Dust Wing, never to be read again. No books wake up there; nothing stirs. It is perhaps the most final kind of death in all the afterlife realms.\n\nThe death of a forgotten book.\n\n—Librarian Gregor Henry, 1974 CE\n\nHero had never been a reader. Not in his own story, not outside it. Naturally, he could read, but he saw it merely as a convenient conveyance of information, a transportation device for the skills necessary to operate in the world. This opinion had only been reinforced upon waking and realizing he could scan any book other than his own and acquire skills that would have required years of mastery otherwise. It was handy, sometimes, being a creature of creation.\n\nBut it meant he had never understood reading. Not in the way Claire and Brevity seemed to revere it. He revered being read as a character of an unwritten book. Quite a lot. Though evicted from his book, he knew the singular awareness of life he felt being seen, being experienced. But he'd never been quite sure what the reader got out of it.\n\nHe came to an understanding in the Dust Wing. He was lost in a sea of dust and decay. Staying here would surely mean drowning, but stories reached out and offered him a life raft.\n\nIt was not like taking skills from a book, as he had before. Nor was it like as he remembered living his own story. It was not even reading, not with his eyes. Stories filled him like water into a sponge—first he absorbed; then he overflowed. As he listened—as he received—story after story. Each one passed through him, yet left something behind. A suspicious voice, a desiring ache, a fierce demand, a lungful of bittersweet victory.\n\nIt was like recalling well-loved music; it was like training swordplay into your bones. It was like the meditative wistfulness of hunting. It was like the euphoric agony of running. It was like everything and like nothing, and it seeped deep into Hero's bones. He was the first reader the Dust Wing had had in—well, perhaps ever, and every book that hadn't yet withered to the point of madness stretched out to him, eager to be known.\n\nIt overwhelmed him. Hero had always made a point to avoid other books—he would never be caught in the damsel suite. He'd always held the uneasy fear that the presence of other characters, from unwritten books like him, would only remind him of what he could not do, could not have, could not be. Perhaps the ink had weakened him and poisoned his resistance, but he found the opposite was true. The Dust Wing poured its stories into him, and he felt nourished, not washed out.\n\nClaire had tried to explain what listening to a book's song was like, the lingering sense of possession even after a book was closed, but this wasn't that at all. Hero wrapped the stories around him like armor, not to become someone else but to see what he recognized in the mirror.\n\nThe only thing he lost was time. When he came back to himself, he was midway through a close-cut ravine of tablets and clay. The light-giving dust was thick enough here that he could see a couple of feet around him, and dust was like a thin layer of muted slate gray snow beneath his feet. The sharp cliff face of tablets to either side was jagged, not worn down by time. Hero supposed that was only logical; no natural formations of time and weather held sway here. It looked more as if a towering pile of tablets had grown until breaking under its own weight. It had split and crumbled, creating walls of jagged and tumbling artifacts that reached over his head.\n\nLike in the Unsaid Wing, the form of the text felt unnatural and wrong to him. Books should be friendly to the reader—an enticing voice, paper, or even a flat-screen. These tablets were the wrong sort and unfriendly to the core. Not many spoke to him here, and his head was filled with only a susurrus of whispers. The silence might have been what drew his attention back. It was the only reason he heard the slow, ponderous grind of footsteps.\n\nIt was enough of a grounding sound to alarm Hero into action. He hunkered down against a spill of clay, just grateful that he'd been here long enough that the dust had frosted even his bright hair and clothing to dullness. The steps grew nearer, and only at the last moment did he think to snatch up a heavy clod of stone that must have broken off some greater slab. It was more cudgel than sword, but Hero hefted it anyway.\n\nThere was no helpful shadow cast in the dark, but the whispers receded in their own kind of warning. A broad figure emerged from a gully in the ravine, making their way, Hero noted, with a purposeful kind of shuffle that was more surefooted than he'd managed. Hero could only track his movement by the way the dust shifted in his wake. He'd been here long enough for another living creature to feel foreign, and the thought struck an absurd panic in him. As soon as the figure moved under him, Hero leapt with the rock over his head.\n\nIt was not an elegant attack—Hero found himself embarrassed by the raw sound he made to ease his frayed mind—but Hero had enough experience in combat to be efficient.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Which was why when a fist closed around his throat and the world inverted, his back hit the ground with a grunt of surprise.\n\nHe flung his knee up, catching his assailant in the gut. The grip on his collar didn't loosen, but the curse he heard stopped his intentions of a follow-up move.\n\n\"Hell\" was the word, and Hero had heard it said often enough with self-righteous judgment and disdain to place the voice.\n\n\"Rami?\" He felt a subtle trace of feathers brush past his nose, and there was no containing his relief. His voice sounded cracked and thin as paper to his own ears and his eyes were alarmingly hot. \"Ramiel?\"\n\nThe hand at his throat let go and appeared to hesitate a moment before patting down his collar. \"You're a rather hard man to find,\" Rami finally said.\n\nThe dim light shifted as Rami backed off of him, but Hero felt plastered to the ground. He entirely ignored the sharp point of rubble that was beginning to make inroads into his ribs. \"How—you—what the hell are you doing here?\"\n\n\"Are you injured?\" Rami's voice sounded sharp, and he'd ignored Hero's sputtering entirely.\n\n\"Only my pride.\" Hero allowed Rami to clasp his arm and pull him to sitting, relishing discovering the warmth of Rami's hands all over again as they steadied him by the shoulder. He didn't try to stand. \"I thought—\" He stopped, words clotted up in his throat like chalk. He hadn't thought. He'd known he was alone, would be left alone, and had only survived by not thinking. His head was full of other people's stories; his own felt distant. \"This is the Dust Wing,\" he said instead.\n\n\"Yes, I had begun to suspect as much,\" Ramiel said with that straight-faced calm that he used when he was amused. Then he asked again, \"Are you injured, Hero?\"\n\n\"Me? No. I—\" Hero paused, considered the fragment of his thoughts, then tried for something more honest. \"I would be very glad to get out of here.\" His voice came out smaller than he'd intended.\n\n\"That's the plan.\" Rami shifted to a crouch, and Hero briefly lost track of him in the gloom. A day ago, he would have ridiculed the panic that spiked up in his gut simply by losing contact with someone he knew logically would not leave him, but that didn't stop him from gripping the feathers of Rami's trench coat and not letting go when he found them again. \"Claire and I split up, but I should be able to find her.\"\n\nThe questions stacked up behind Hero's tongue. He sputtered. \"Claire's here?\" No one should be here. No one came to this place. No one came for these books, least of all him. He shook his head, trying to order his thoughts into a way this made sense. \"How did you find me?\"\n\n\"I tracked you,\" Ramiel said with a curious kind of tone that made no sense to Hero. He moved on before Hero could question it. \"I don't think we're alone in here.\"\n\n\"We're not,\" Hero said with a vague gesture to the broken tablets.\n\n\"No, I mean—\" Rami gave a helpless shrug. \"We should get moving.\"\n\nHero wasn't about to argue that point. Rami pulled him to his feet, and if he noticed how Hero clung a little too tightly to the back of his coat as they skirted their way down the embankment, he was circumspect enough to not say so.\n\nThey had nearly made their way out of the clay tablet canyons—Hero could see scrolls and wood panels encroaching, like sedimentary layers of an archaeological dig—when they heard a third pair of footsteps up ahead.\n\nRami held a hand up, though it was really unnecessary with Hero inelegantly clinging to his side. He took a tentative step into what seemed to impossibly be a darker puddle of darkness. \"Claire?\"\n\nRami kept his voice pitched low. There was no response, but the footsteps didn't slow or increase. Hero felt a chill prickle over his neck. Rami tried again. \"Claire? Brevity?\"\n\nBrevity's here too? Impossible. This was an impossible place to be in the first place, let alone by choice, and certainly not for Hero's sake. Hero wanted to ask, but he bit his lips instead to keep quiet. The footsteps were not heavy, but as they got closer Hero could make out a messy slurry with each step. As if something was scrabbling through paper and scrolls.\n\nIt grew closer, skittering around the corner. Hero felt Rami lean forward, squinting into the darkness. He jerked hard enough to throw Hero backward into a stumble. The sound of the sword clearing its sheath reached him, and the igniting of the blade threw light into the darkness like a grenade. Hero was momentarily blinded and paralyzed as he blinked away the stars.\n\nRami's broad shoulders were silhouetted by a white fire. It set each feather on his coat in contrast and for just a moment, Hero swore he could have seen wings. \"Rami?\" His voice was dry as paper.\n\n\"Stay back, Hero.\" Muscles twitched under Hero's fingers and tension sung through Rami's shoulders, translating down to the arm that held a sword pointed steady. Hero leaned around him and had to hold a hand up to block the light in order to see what threat had caused such a change.\n\nHe almost missed her. So pale she was almost drowned out by the light of Rami's sword, the girl hunkered just outside the brightest radius. Her shoulders were clenched up to her ears, one strap of her bleached clothes hanging off. Hero recognized the scrappy, eclectic kind of fashion mayhem. Brevity wore clothes like that.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He jolted forward. \"Rami, that's a muse—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No, it's not,\" Rami said as Hero grabbed his forearm, and really, his blade didn't even waver. It really was unfair, angels in general. Hero latched onto the trivial thought, because it was easier than what his eyes were trying to tell him was in front of him.\n\nThe girl did look like a muse of an indiscernible age. But muses were full of color—even serious, intense Probity was painted in mint and sunshine colors. But this one was pale as bone, and just as sharp and thin. The light flickered over her and it almost seemed to pass through her, as if Hero could make out smudged impressions on the other side. That was impossible, but then so was the face she revealed when her head tilted up. Beneath ivory straw hair she had a blank expression, grayscale eyes glazed with a hunger-pang gloss. Her mouth was the only contrast when a snarl pulled back her lips to reveal rows—rows—of black, jagged teeth.\n\n\"Stay back,\" Rami warned with a sway of his blade.\n\nThe creature paused, glassily considered the sword point, and slowly closed her hand around it. The holy light leapt from the blade to her knuckles, but instead of burning, it danced over her bleached skin before twining up her wrist. The muse's razor-tipped smile widened.\n\nHero wasn't written to curse—his author had probably thought it too lowbrow—but what slipped out as the white muse stepped forward was a very heartfelt, fervent \"Shit.\"\n\nRami's grip on his arm tightened. \"Run.\"\n\nThey ran. Dust-dry scrolls crumbled beneath their feet as they scrambled. Rami's lit sword made shadows jump and frenzy around them with every step. They heard the muse's steps lurch into a ragged run behind them. The thought hit him that they had no way of knowing whether she was alone. Hero remembered the predator behavior of the lion Furies in Elysium. Every wild flinch of dark shadows could be another one of those things springing a trap. The image hit Hero hard: a white demon launching itself at Rami, black razor teeth tearing feathers and closing around his unprotected throat.\n\nThe sick fear kicked Hero forward, pulling him ahead as the scrolls crumbled and gave way to the canyon of clay tablets again. They fled past the spot where Rami had found Hero, and were running blind.\n\nBroken piles of shards rose around them, like menacing walls of teeth. Teeth behind them, teeth to either side. There was no time to consider their route. Hero didn't remember this path through the slate canyon, and he worried that at any moment the terrain would drop off or close in entirely.\n\nAlmost as he thought it, the teeth on either side of them began to draw closer, closing like a maw. The path beneath them began to slope up. The clay pieces were precariously balanced, and Rami with his heavier feet and frame was slowing down. Hero had to grab his shoulder as he stumbled. Clay shards clattered down the slope and momentarily masked the sound of the muse in pursuit. Hero's pulse wedged itself between his ribs for a nice panic attack.\n\n\"Climb, you great, dull bastard,\" Hero muttered, dragging on Rami's coat. The angel took another step and a cascade of clay dislodged beneath them, dragging them both down.\n\nRami arrested their slide by planting his sword. \"It's too steep.\"\n\n\"Then sprout some goddamned wings and fly,\" Hero growled. \"I don't think that creature behind us is coming to give us a boost.\"\n\n\"I keep telling you, not—\" Rami winced as he stumbled hard to one knee. \"Not that kind of angel.\" He pressed to his feet and glanced above them. The blade lit them from beneath and threw his eyes into complete shadow. \"It narrows and levels out up ahead. Make it over the crest and there's enough space to lose her.\"\n\n\"Fantastic. After you, then—\"\n\n\"It's too steep,\" Rami repeated grimly. Hero couldn't see his eyes. Why wouldn't Rami move so he could see his goddamned eyes? \"You go up that way. I'll find a different way around.\"\n\nRami had never endeavored to be a believable liar, and in Hero's opinion it was far too late to start now. He scoffed, but the sound was buried in the loud crunch of clay. The bleached muse came into view at the bottom of the rise. Hero had a moment of hope. \"Perhaps she'll have the same difficulty—\"\n\nThe phantom girl scrambled again, then launched herself into the air. She cleared several meters, grabbed a ledge of clay jutting from the cliff side, and hung there like a gargoyle. A feral, hungry growl filled the air.\n\n\"...or not,\" Hero finished.\n\n\"You should go,\" Rami said. There was a cracking sound. The tablets appeared to start to disintegrate and wither everywhere the muse touched. Hero shuddered and had to suppress the memory of black ink rotting him from the inside, how it felt to melt away like that. The muse tracked him hungrily. Her perch wouldn't hold for long, and she was already eyeing the distance between them.\n\nFirst the bridge, now this. The tumult of fear in his chest boiled over into a desperate kind of anger. He grabbed the lapel of Rami's coat and hauled him an inch from his face.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Listen here, you noble idiot, I don't have time to argue with you. You are an angel and angels do not sacrifice themselves for shitty characters of a broken book that is a dime a dozen anyway.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 60 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Just for the next scene, use a hint of dialogue", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rami's face was close enough that Hero could feel the warmth coming off his breath as he huffed. \"We can't both make it—\"\n\n\"Maybe not. But angels do not give up and die in filthy trash heaps like the Dust Wing.\" Hero hesitated, and it felt like a sudden narrowing. The stories he'd let pass through him had left him hollowed, clean. Nothing mattered but the shadows of the second in focus, as if everything else had been a slow blur turning on this decision. Here. Now. Hero became aware of the breath he took, drawing in the air as it left Rami's mouth. Even that was warm. \"Angels don't do that. But books do.\"\n\nRami's mouth dropped open. \"What—\"\n\nHell with it. Hero chased that breath and sealed Rami's lips with his own. He swallowed the words, swallowed the questions, swallowed the consequences and anything but the hot relief of finally, finally feeling right outside his story. Rami's lips were shock-stiff for half a second before turning supple, all-encompassing, and giving as infinity. Soft. Soft! Hero marveled. Such a stony, hard face, to have such soft lips.\n\nHero might have closed his eyes and died like this, but he caught a blur of movement as the muse launched herself at them, pale hands like claws. Hero already had Rami off-balance and by the lapels, so the turn felt natural. He waited until the last minute to shove him away, clear of the claws and teeth that descended on Hero's shoulder.\n\nHero fell backward, and his ears were filled with snarls as the muse grappled with him. Teeth needled his shoulder, and something trickled under his skin, worse than blood or ink. Rami gave a hoarse cry from somewhere in the dark, but Hero and the muse creature were made of lighter things. He ducked and threw her off, leaping for an outcropping of slippery shards that led her farther and farther up the cliff wall.\n\nAway from Ramiel.\n\nThe monster took the bait. It snarled and spurred after him until Hero ran out of options. The ledge was an isolated jut, and the accumulated clay began disintegrating to sand the moment the muse touched down. Past her feet, Hero could see light flickering like a will-o'-the-wisp through the dark as Rami tried to reach them.\n\n\"Nasty thing, aren't you?\" Hero touched the wound at his shoulder. He slowly backed up until his back hit the cliff face. He watched as the muse grew from her crouch, a bit of clay melting in her hand. She brought the sandy remains to her lips. The pieces clicked together for him. \"Or just hungry?\"\n\nSlowly, Hero reached into his vest pocket and withdrew his book. Every limb in the muse went rigid when the green cover of his book came into view. Hero held it to his chest warily. \"That's why you're here, isn't it? Hungry for a good story. But the dried-up old bones in this place aren't satisfying your appetite, are they? No, you want something juicy and fresh.\"\n\nHe stepped to the left, then the right, and the muse tracked the book like it was mesmerized. It made a parched, hungry little keen. Hero sighed. \"Pathetic, aren't you? I—\"\n\nThis was Hero's revelation; it was really atrociously rude when the muse interrupted. She snarled and lunged, clearing the distance. She slammed Hero against the jagged cliff face, and claws scissored down on his throat.\n\nThe world became oblivion and black teeth as Hero grappled to keep hold of his book. Ink was filling his throat instead of air. He could smell the fast decay of leather and glue. The fight was inelegant; it was messy; it was stupid and ugly and contrary to every forgotten story that coursed, like fire, through Hero's veins.\n\nHe wrenched the book over his head. It startled the muse just enough to loosen her grasp on his throat, and Hero gagged a breath as he swung his arm down. \"Choke on it.\"\n\nHe swung for her face and punched the spine of his book straight into her open teeth. The scream that filled the air was thin and felt as if it went on forever. Hero couldn't say in the moment if it was the muse's or his own. Her weight was off his chest as she rolled away.\n\nNumbness crept across his skin, from shoulder to throat wound. It felt colder than blood or ink or even ice. He couldn't move from where he fell. The Dust Wing's stories surged and seared through his fading pulse. Lurching sounds of ripping, tearing, and ragged, wet swallows came from somewhere nearby as his book, his world, his life, his essence, was gnashed between rot-black teeth. And Hero stared, in his last moments, at his empty hands cupping the dark.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with 11 sentences sentences. Match the established level of character/world familiarity. Genres: fantasy. Include: LGBT, portal fiction, angels, Hell's Library.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The secret isn't about books at all. It's about people.\n\n—Librarian Gregor Henry, 1942 CE\n\nClaire's world had narrowed to pale claws and void-like needles of teeth. The creature snarled and spit in her face as its claws passed narrowly over her skin. The glove covering her inked hand was slippery, and it was difficult to keep her grip. Claire stumbled backward, and her foot shifted unsteadily against the slide of books. To keep her mind from panicking she tried to understand what she'd seen. Brevity, Probity, and two pale creatures on leashes. The monsters appeared vaguely humanlike but devoid of color. As if someone had reached down and merely sketched in a black-and-white negative of a person in their place.\n\nThey had been mutilating—no, eating—the books.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The horror of that was all that Claire's mind had been able to take in before Probity had unleashed her pets.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Claire had only the foggiest speculation of what they were, but from the way they'd swallowed pages whole, she suspected nothing good would come of the monster discovering the ink beneath her glove.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The creature had nearly succeeded in catching the hem of her glove with a razor finger when it was ripped away. She heard an inarticulate howl of rage wherever it had landed; then Brevity was there, pulling her to her feet. Horror, or regret, had paled her features almost as much as the other creatures'.\n\nThe similarities occurred to Claire all at once. \"Those are muses?\"\n\n\"What's left after the ink,\" Brevity said in clipped tones, as if already bracing herself for the worst. Claire hadn't been the only one driven to experimentation, and she had neither the time nor the inclination to judge. The beastly muse had gained his footing again before he lunged, clawing at Claire's hand.\n\nThe back of Claire's glove had torn, exposing the ink-stained skin to the air, and the muse zeroed in on it as if he could smell it. Claire backed up to put space between her and the creature, and he leapt an inhuman height through the air. Paper fronds of the dead books snagged and curled around his limbs like seaweed, but the muse had no interest in lesser snacks now that he'd found a prime source.\n\n\"I knew it,\" Probity said more to herself than anyone.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Brevity was somewhere to Claire's right.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[[OOC: <<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'claire' must be used 4 times]]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Knew what?! Probity, we have to stop this!\"\n\n\"Stop it? Sis, don't you see? This is an opportunity! We have something better than an unwritten book or the dead things of the Dust Wing. This is justice.\"\n\nClaire couldn't spare the attention to see what she was doing. It was just enough distraction that she was too slow when the ink-bleached muse moved again. Claws snagged the fabric of her skirts and pulled Claire to the ground. Claire had a moment of enough awareness to shield her ink-stained hand against her chest before the feral muse was on her.\n\nTorn and moldered books slid underneath her. A torn chain of paper caught on her throat, and Claire had to writhe it off so she could breathe. At the very least, the creature seemed to have no interest in mauling the rest of Claire—just her hand. He grappled with her, trying to flip her onto her back, and screeched his frustration in her ear. His breath was fouled with an acrid mix of pulped paper and the sour sweetness of rotted fruit.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was arguing going on above, and a fretting sound she assumed was Brevity struggling to reach her, but the creature was a weight that ground Claire's cheek into the rubbish of books beneath her.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The leather of an ancient and moisture-ruined cover stuck to her skin and delaminated away from its book like a bloated corpse. The most Claire could do was keep her hand curled, tucked beneath her breast as the muse's claws pierced their way through the skin and muscle of her back.\n\n\"Claire!\" A familiar voice cut through the haze of pain and replaced it with the cold shock of alarm. Hero's voice and the clatter of footsteps confirmed Rami was with him. But Hero was a character with an unwritten book in tow. It'd be like introducing blood into shark-filled waters. Claire writhed but couldn't twist enough to see more than the muse's claws.\n\n\"Stay back!\" Her voice sounded hoarse and small, smothered into the floor. She felt choked on dust. \"It eats books!\"\n\n\"Claire—\" Hero's voice sounded closer. She felt the weight shift on her back, as if the monster was about to take note of the same fact.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No. A wild protectiveness seared the exhaustion out of her veins. Not him. Not if we got him back. She shoved against the floor, dislodging the muse off her shoulders at a moment of imbalance. She ripped her glove off as she stood and exposed her stained palm to the air. \"You can't have any of them.\"\n\nThe pale creature had skidded to his knees, ripping the tangling fronds of books with his teeth. He had half turned toward the direction of Hero's voice, but he caught sight of Claire's arm and froze. Claire was close enough to see the way a shiver passed over the surface of his featureless face.\n\n\"You can't have them,\" Claire repeated again. \"But it's the ink that's done that to you, isn't it? Developed a taste for it?\" Claire shakily raised the scalpel to her arm and slashed down.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand on this story segment like A. J. Hackwith would, staying true to the fantasy genre. Characters may have existing backgrounds.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Once upon a time... No. That's not how the story began at all.\n\nStart again. From the beginning?\n\nOr the end. It matters not to us. Who is us?\n\nOnce upon a time... Something is missing.\n\nSomething is missing. Once upon a time. Something is missing.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "This is a segment of an ongoing story. Continue with 31 sentences sentences, respecting any pre-existing character relationships or world-building that may be referenced.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Myrrh.\n\nHuh. Well, that just figures, doesn't it?\n\n—Librarian Gregor Henry, 1941 CE\n\nHero ran into a charnel house of horrors. Books were flayed everywhere he looked, paper entrails twisting suspended in the air as if from butcher's hooks. Many of the dead of the Dust Wing rested, content with their tombs and dust, but not here. Here was where stories had gone destructive and turned on their corpses instead.\n\nHe had hesitated at the sight when he and Rami had broken through into the clearing where they'd tracked Claire and Brevity. He'd hesitated, and that'd been enough. Claire had shouted, the scalpel had impossibly cast one sliver of light in the dark, and then the corpses around him ceased to matter.\n\nHero dived into the viscera of paper and gore. Bile rose in his throat every time he crushed a brittle spine under his heel, but he hurtled himself forward. He tore at the paper skins that tangled him. He would tear at his own skin next.\n\nInk swallowed Claire, between one breath and the next. No, \"swallow\" was too natural a word. It absorbed her, leaving behind a bleak Claire-shaped figure stained so dark it was impossible to make out against the darkness. The sight stopped him cold, just a step away. Her warm brown skin swallowed shadows, until even the ruffle of her uneven skirts and the small clasps at the tips of her braids turned pitiless black.\n\nHe lurched into motion again but was stopped by Rami's hand at his hip. \"It's ink,\" Rami reminded him. As if Hero could forget, forget the feeling of his own skin decaying and crumbling in on itself, the feeling of drowning in ashes, smothered and lost. As if he could forget the way Claire had screamed, which was why he needed to reach her right now—\n\nIt was a testament to how weak he was that Brevity broke past Probity first. The ink-bleached muse had fallen and struggled to get to his feet. Brevity scrambled across the bowl of shredded parchment but was still too far away when the muse zeroed in on Claire. It sniffed the air and clacked its teeth. Brevity lunged, tackling it around the ankle and dragging it to the ground with her. The muse fell, outstretched claws passing within a whisper of Claire's unmoving obsidian face.\n\nBrevity wrestled it back, biting back a yelp as the stained muse spun around and turned his claws on her. The sound drew the first lurch of movement, though everyone but Hero seemed too busy to notice.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Only Hero saw as the black statue that was Claire twitched her limbs.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her head tilted at a sharp, mechanical angle, while the rest of her appeared to move with the sinuous nature of the ink itself.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(( Include exactly 3 instance(s) of the word 'black' ))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When her head turned its bleak gaze in Hero's direction, his skin chilled surely as if a naked blade had scraped along it.\n\n\"Help us,\" Hero whispered. To himself, to Claire, to gods he didn't believe in. None, at least, would hear and answer prayers in the darkest corner of the afterlife.\n\nThe ink that had subsumed Claire appeared to shudder in its depths and gave a slow blink. She turned its attention to the feral muse wrestling with Brevity on the floor. She stretched out one arm, garnering everyone's attention. Hero half expected the ink to drop from her fingertip, but she opened her mouth and spoke.\n\n\"You.\" It was Claire's voice, but splintered and shadowed by something else. The presence of something else was heavy in the air, but it felt like the shadow of an eclipse. Not a single entity, but crowding nonetheless. Like a swarm of blackbirds. It clotted the air and made it difficult for anyone to move as the ink-stained Claire took one step, then two. Black pools bloomed beneath her feet, as if the ink was spreading, but always retracted as she stepped away again.\n\nHero had an irrational urge to reach out and touch her, to grab for the footfalls of ink. What would happen now, Hero wondered, if that ink touched him again? Nothing good seemed to come of it, but would he be stained like a human, or bleached like a muse? What was the wick of a story, when you've already burned your book?\n\nBrevity had the feral muse by the shoulders and was struggling valiantly to pin his arms back, but the creature outweighed Brevity by at least a stone, and it almost lurched free as Claire stopped in front of it.\n\nClaire appeared to study it, its bleak, expressionless face like a statue carved out of ebony. \"Listen,\" the many voices whispered. A black fingertip pressed to the middle of the pale creature's forehead. The ink-bleached muse began to shriek.\n\n\"You're hurting him!\" Brevity attempted to pull the muse she'd just been wrestling back, but Rami lurched forward and stopped her.\n\n\"No, she's not. Look.\"\n\nThe point where Claire's finger brushed the muse's forehead had begun to darken, as if bruised. Hero followed the shadow beneath the muse's bone white skin and drew a breath. Like ink dropping through water, the muse's natural coloring was returning. Orange skin, sunrise red hair. Slowly the color seeped in, pushing the white and black ahead of it like a wave. Ink pooled at the point of contact and hesitated at the surface of the muse's forehead for just a moment before the surface tension seemed to break.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The ink flew up Claire's finger in a veiny line, black on black, and the muse fell backward.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Gaiety?\" Brevity startled as she grabbed him, as if he was lighter, less weighed down with snarling muscle and hunger. A perplexed look crossed her face as she hesitantly lowered the muse to the ground, but he didn't rouse.\n\n\"What did she do?\" Probity dropped to the other side, checking over the unconscious muse with an urgency that bordered on mothering. Brevity let her take Gaiety out of her arms, and for a moment Probity clasped her hands. It struck Hero as almost like an embrace, or a good-bye.\n\n\"Dear god...\" Rami breathed the words like a curse, or a prayer. It took a moment in the dim spectral twilight to see what he meant. Ink wept from Claire's eyes, skidding down her cheeks briefly before being absorbed again by her skin. Her lips parted, and liquid, viscous and darker than blood, tumbled over her lips.\n\nShe'd taken in Gaiety's ink, but this was even more than that. Ink had stained, then soaked Claire, and now she was suffused with it. She didn't blur and turn pale like the muses. She didn't absorb and rot into nothing like a book. She was human—the paper of her soul was primed for stories. But she was trying to hold on to too much of it.\n\n\"Claire.\" Brevity shoved to her feet but was stopped by Probity's grip on her arm.\n\n\"Don't,\" Probity said firmly. There was sympathy there, but at a remove. The kind of look you gave when someone lost their goldfish. \"You can't help her.\"\n\nBrevity twisted her arm free. \"I have to do something.\"\n\n\"She's a lost cause!\" Probity struggled, not able to keep hold of Gaiety's body and Brev both. Her voice threaded with pleading. \"But you're not.\"\n\nBrevity stopped, and the moment held its breath around her. Hero's voice felt stopped up in his throat. Claire was dying, or worse, behind them. But Brevity's sibling muses were here, alive, not drowning in shadow. He had a deep, wounded familiarity with being a heart caught in two places.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He couldn't bring himself to pull anymore.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 25 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was a coin-flip moment of doubt as he watched Brevity's eyes, but the coin landed true.\n\n\"If I don't help her, I am.\" Brevity shoved to her feet. She didn't look back, despite the twist in her expression. Hero began to breathe again, but tides of ink writhed and sank like eddies across Claire's frozen form. Brevity ran and threw open her arms.\n\nHer fingertips slid into Claire's palm, and their hands closed as if on instinct. For a moment Brevity glanced to Rami and Hero, wide-eyed, until ink began to invade across her knuckles, beading across her skin and leaving colorless flesh behind. She stifled a gasp.\n\n\"Sis! Stop!\"\n\n\"I'm not letting go.\" Brevity's lips moved around the whisper, words falling slightly out of sync with the sound. Propane blue began to wither and dry to cornflower on her cheeks.\n\n\"We have to do something,\" Hero whispered, and the helplessness that raged up in him threatened to burn him up whole. \"Anything.\"\n\nRami's head came up, a thoughtful expression on it. \"Okay.\"\n\nHe started forward, sending a spike of terror through Hero's chest. \"No! No, no, no. That ink messes up everyone it touches.\"\n\nRami shook his head, gently taking Hero's hand off his shoulder and holding it in his. \"Not me. I figured it out. Didn't you?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Souls,\" Rami said, a gentle smile breaking over his features before he let go of Hero's hand and ran toward Claire and Brevity. He swept something up off the ground, something that glimmered thin and blue. Only after he slapped it on Brevity's arm did Hero recognize it as the inspiration gilt that had protected Claire. It was a thin thread, but Rami returned it to Brevity's forearm like a talisman.\n\nThen Rami dropped to his knees in front of the two women, pressed his hands to each of their cheeks, and appeared to begin to pray.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You're joining a story in progress. Produce 69 sentences sentences matching the established tone and acknowledging any characters or elements as they're presented.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Myrrh. Myrrh. MYRRH, sod it! Souls. That's what they didn't want me to know. Librarian Poppaea rebelled in order to acknowledge and free the fragmented souls of books. It didn't work, obviously. Perhaps Old Scratch thought we librarians would be more compliant if we thought it was just books and magic. The devil obviously has never met a bibliophile. Rebellion is in a reader's blood.\n\nStories are slivers of us, all of us. What makes a story real is the soul of the author. We're humanity, splintered into the stories we tell ourselves. I doubt the old demon would be pleased to know I've rediscovered this. I'll need to feign ignorance; perhaps we all will. But future librarians need to know.\n\nThe logbook keeps a librarian's secrets, until they're needed. Well then, old book. It appears we have work to do.\n\n—Librarian Fleur Michel, 1782 CE\n\nThe brush of Rami's palm on her cheek had been the end. Or perhaps it had been the words, echoing long after her sight faded. Guttural, heart-piercing prayers, colliding like wayward meteors in the dark. Maybe the end had been long before that. All the paths led to here and now.\n\nWhen she could see again, the Dust Wing was gone. Everything was gone, replaced with... color. Not the rainbows-and-unicorns kind of color. No, the miasma that swam around Brevity and clogged her throat was the spectrum of light off the surface of something dark and deep. There was no breaking the surface here. This was oil slicks and crystalized lava. It was like breathing bismuth, with its rainbows of geometry shaped by very old, old things.\n\nBrevity floated in a world of specters and in a sea of ink.\n\nA darker blot loomed, growing larger like a whirlpool that the world turned around. Brevity let the current pull her, for lack of another destination. The shadows grew, and eventually she could make out a solid thing, a sliver darker than ink at the core of it. The piece at the axis was fragmented and melting. It was a kernel of an idea, an unfinished shape that lost edges, gained edges, until it was nearly impossible to discern what was underneath the roiling black.\n\nNearly.\n\nThe air felt punched from Brevity's lungs. \"Claire.\" A familiar jut of stubborn chin gave way to long braids that dripped and melted like candle wax. Brevity tried to swim forward through the air, but it was harder now. As if the colors were swirling through her, not around her. A furious dog paddle drifted her in the right direction. The effort sent little eddies that ate away at and disseminated what was left of a shoulder. \"Oh, boss.\"\n\nThe kernel of Claireness rotated like a tumbling asteroid in the void. Her face was carved out of obsidian, cold nothing instead of warm, beautiful brown. Only the shifting ridge of eyelashes told Brevity that her eyes were opening.\n\nBrevity let herself drift, afraid even the slightest current would carry more of Claire's core away. Never mind the way her limbs felt increasingly light and gauzy, as if she herself was being erased. \"What have they done to you?\"\n\n\"A gentle colonization.\" Brevity flinched and just barely stopped herself from twisting at the voice. Rami stood as if on solid ground. If solid ground were at right angles with any sense of up and down that Brevity's brain had. The ink swirled around him, ruffling his feathers like a breeze, but didn't appear to sink in. He studied her for a long moment, face growing graver. He held out a hand. \"They're being less careful with you.\"\n\nBrevity reached out and trembled with the certainty that her fingertips were not going to stop at Rami's palm, but he clasped around her wrist with a precise kind of confidence and pulled. Brevity fluttered toward him as if she weighed nothing at all, and when he set her feet gently to the ground—his ground—it felt more like sticking to the filmy surface of a bubble than standing.\n\nThe puddle that made up Claire, thankfully, did not stir at all. She didn't appear to notice their presence, or if she did, she simply chose not to care. Brevity swallowed down the feeling of impending grief. \"I can see the ink, but... the books like me. They wouldn't do this to us. What is this?\"\n\n\"Souls,\" Rami said quietly. \"The heart of any story is a little, tiny sliver of an author's soul. That's how any story is made.\"\n\n\"What?\" Brevity blinked rapidly, trying to hold on to that thought. It felt important somehow, the way dream revelations felt important right before disappearing upon waking.\n\n\"Later.\" Rami's voice was hard and grounding. \"All you need to understand is that the ink is slowly taking over Claire, piece by piece. Trying to bury her under its own existence. We need to anchor her before I—before I try what I'm going to try. Otherwise we could lose her too.\"\n\n\"Okay.\" Brevity took a deep breath and held a little tighter to Rami's hand. \"Right. Claire?\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Ive got a bit of writers block, im gonna send you something then keep it going twenty-three sentences at a time, also im going for a A. J. Hackwith sorta thing. heads up - might drop you in mid-story with existing characters", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Going mad is an excellent defense.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nothing is so discounted, dismissed, as an eccentric woman speaking the truth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "—Librarian Fleur Michel, 1792 CE\n\n\"NO, NO, NO, NO...\" A keening sound shook Hero out of his shock and pulled his gaze away from Rami. Probity rocked on the ground, holding Gaiety to her chest, but her attention was only on Brevity. She took sobbing breaths and straightened. \"No. I can fix this. I won't let her do this.\" Probity abruptly lowered her unconscious younger muse to the ground. She started forward with intent in her wet eyes.\n\nHero drew in a breath and had Rami's sword raised and leveled at Probity's throat before he exhaled. The muse's reddened eyes narrowed. \"Get out of my way, book.\"\n\n\"I don't have one of those anymore.\" Hero's quiet admission startled a reaction out of Probity. Hero hardened his jaw and kept himself and the blade between Probity and the others. \"I don't think I get to be a story without a book. Then again, I haven't been sure what I am for a while. I've tried and thought I was winging it, you know.\" His smile was a snarl, but it wasn't directed at Probity. \"I was a loyal assistant for Brevity. I was a clever rival for Claire. I tried to be a questing hero for Rami. An angel that needs a hero—imagine that.\"\n\nProbity made an impatient noise and tried to brush past the blade. Hero twitched his wrist. It was a tiny movement, but just enough to flick the tip of the sword into the soft of Probity's palm. She drew back with a hiss, and Hero waited. He waited calmly, silently, until Probity raised her chin and met his gaze with glittering hatred in her eyes.\n\n\"I've tried to be a lot of good things for each of them, in every way they need to be loved. But if you threaten them, if you take one single step closer...\" Hero's breath broke. He slid his foot forward, relishing it as Probity jumped back a step at the end of his blade.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"For you, for their sake, I will be the wickedest and worst monster. That's a promise.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Muses were always in motion, so when Probity held still it was an unnatural sensation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her breathing was fast as she tried to get her emotions under control.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What happened to Verve?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Who?\" Hero tilted his head.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The other monster you created? We encountered her in the stacks. I fed her my book, and she died.\"\n\n\"You fed her...?\" Shock, horror, and a flash of grief cycled quickly through Probity's expression before settling into a wary realization. \"You really mean your book is gone. A character surviving past its book. That's an abomination, if not impossible. You are a monster.\"\n\n\"I could be. As I said, I am still discovering what I am.\" Hero's brittle smile cracked as he flicked the blade again. \"Your experiment has failed, muse. Take your people and go. The Library isn't your plaything.\"\n\n\"My people.\" Something of the anger withered and died in Probity's eyes as she repeated the words. Her gaze went past Hero's shoulder to Brevity again. She took her next breath like one would take a punch in the gut. \"She... I'd hoped... But you're right.\"\n\nThe hostility deflated out of the air then, but Hero kept his sword leveled as Probity crouched down, slung the unconscious Gaiety in her arms. She started to turn, then stalled. When she looked down Hero's blade, it was as if it wasn't even there. \"Do me a favor, monster.\"\n\n\"Nah,\" Hero said, but Probity didn't miss a beat.\n\n\"Tell her...\" Her lips worked a moment before she found the words. \"...tell her... ideas never die. Just... tell her I said that. That I still say that.\"\n\nThen Probity appeared to fold the air around them like origami until they disappeared in a displacement of dust.\n\nHero hesitated, frozen in place a moment longer. His pulse thudded in his ears, and he half expected some new threat to emerge out of the deep shadows of the Dust Wing. But nothing moved except the fragile drift of tattered and tormented books. It was so still that Hero's eyes stung. It must have been the dust.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A small grunt behind him reentered his thoughts.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Rami?\" Hero lowered the sword, not quite entirely dropping his guard as he glanced behind him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They were a trio of statues, Claire painted in an oblivion of blacks and Brevity's blue skin as pale as a robin's egg.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rami knelt between them, a hand on each of their faces.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The concentration knit his face, as if he was doing personal battle with the ink. Hero felt a strangling feeling in his chest at the thought he was going to lose them, all three of them, right here and now. He couldn't do that. He could bear to live without his story; he could bear to live as a servant of the Library; he could even bear to live as an abomination without a book. But if the Fates took these three maddening souls from him now, he would give himself over to the despair and eternity of the Dust Wing for good.\n\nThen Rami drew a breath and whispered a single word: \"Peace.\"\n\nThe invading pallor in Brevity's skin retreated and appeared to swirl, absorbing into the thread of inspiration twined on her arm. Dapples of brown caught Hero's eye as the ink appeared to dry up and flake away from Claire. Both women fell like deadweight, Rami sagged, and Hero just managed to sweep forward to support him. It ended with the four of them entangled on the floor of the Dust Wing.\n\nThey were a tiny island of warm skin and wheezing breaths in the center of a tomb. Hero struggled to right Brevity against his shoulder. He distantly noted the tear of paper beneath his heel as another Dust Wing tragedy, but for a moment—just a moment—he didn't care. He didn't care because Rami's chest was heaving and Claire was unconscious but drooling against his feathered trench coat.\n\nWhen Rami managed to pull himself together and met Hero's gaze, there was no way to hide the relief that burst onto Hero's face with a grin. \"You did it, old man.\"\n\n\"I didn't—I did, but...\" Rami paused, bowing his head for a moment, and Hero realized he was late recognizing the tears on the Watcher's cheeks. \"So many souls, Hero.\"\n\n\"Souls?\"\n\nRami's look was searching when he finally met Hero's gaze. His brow still set with worry and streaked with dust and sweat. \"That's what the ink is, the fragment souls of books. Remember what the golem's letter said? The written and the writer are the same. Books and authors are made of the same stuff.\" Rami shook his head wonderingly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I wondered, as an angel I can reach lost souls, and then it seemed too dire to not at least try...\"\n\nRami trailed off, but the logical leap was too much for Hero's mind to make. Books didn't have souls. They had characters and pages and story, and good ones might seem soulful, but books were—Hero was...\n\nHero wasn't sure of anything anymore. He looked away. Most of the jet-black ink had flaked away from Claire's skin, even if a mythical kind of oil-slick shine clung to her tangled hair. She seemed merely napping against Rami's chest, more peaceful than Hero had ever seen her. \"Do you think they knew? All this time?\"\n\nRami considered and shook his head. \"I don't know. But I do know we should get them out of here. Let's go home.\" He lifted Claire easily, even if he was slower to get his feet under him. Whatever he had done had worn on the angel as well. Brevity was light enough that Hero had no such trouble.\n\n\"I'm—I'm glad you're okay,\" Rami said quietly. He took his time drawing a feather. It made a complicated pattern through the air in what Hero assumed would be a means to travel back to the Library. \"I heard part of what you said. To Probity.\"\n\n\"Did you? How distracting.\" Hero shifted Brevity in his arms and stepped closer under Rami's arm without quite looking him in the eyes. \"Of course I'm fine. Always fine.\"\n\nRami was terrible at telling lies, but not at reading them. Hero could feel the weight of his concerned frown as feathers and the frost-clean smell of Rami's angelic magic kicked up through the dust. His voice was soft and lost in Hero's hair.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm glad. I was afraid this—this was going to change things.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It already has, Hero wanted to say, but the Dust Wing folded in on itself and the sweep of Rami's sheltering magic stole the air from his lungs.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "You're joining a story in progress. Produce 69 sentences sentences matching the established tone and acknowledging any characters or elements as they're presented.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I still feel the place in my chest where my story should be.\n\n—My book. I meant my book. Where my book should be. That's what I meant.\n\nWhere is a goddamn eraser for this log?\n\n—Apprentice Librarian Hero, 2020 CE\n\nHero knew how stories began. Once upon a time. After hundreds of Dust Wing books passed through him, he even understood how stories end. Happily ever after. Except when not. Nothing had prepared him for the agony of the middle. The hollow pocket against his heart where his book should be was a great, aching question mark. It was an end; it was a beginning; it was wrong and completely foreign terrain.\n\nIf this was what it was like living outside a story, Hero thought maybe death had been kinder. He had these thoughts as Rami swam them in and out of the dark, tripping across nowheres and in-betweens until the familiar glass zoo of Walter's transport office took shape around them. He walked down familiar hallways and thought of endings and beginnings and the terrifying watercolor of unknowns that spanned the two. He thought of Rami and Claire and Brevity, and the fragile way they kept going on after the end. And then he said the exact opposite of what he was thinking.\n\n\"Well, this is familiar,\" Hero pronounced as he followed Ramiel through the doors of the Arcane Wing. Rami strode to the nearest couch and laid Claire down with a painstaking gentleness.\n\nAn elbow shifted into his ribs. \"I'm awake this time.\" Brevity's words were a slurry of exhaustion. She'd started to stir not long after they'd reappeared in the transport office. She looked pale and grumpy. \"Put me down, please.\"\n\n\"My pleasure.\" Hero picked the armchair and carefully extracted himself until Brevity was in a somewhat comfortable sitting position. \"It's my personal policy not to coddle suicidal idiots.\"\n\n\"I would say everyone present falls under that classification,\" Rami said with a level look in Hero's direction.\n\n\"I saved your life.\" Hero had begun making tea without realizing it. He stopped, glared into the teapot in his hands, and chose a relaxing chamomile. Claire would hate it when she woke up. When.\n\nThe water had heated to a near simmer by the time Brevity heaved herself up on her elbows, as if taking stock. \"We should be in the Unwritten Wing.\"\n\n\"I didn't think it prudent to bring you in proximity to the books until I knew you were all stable,\" Rami said evasively. \"How's your arm?\"\n\n\"You mean before you knew if I had developed a taste for story flesh or not,\" Brevity said, and deflated back into the armchair. She stuffed her arm under a throw pillow before adding, a bit sullenly, \"I haven't, by the way.\"\n\n\"As the sole remaining representative of the Library who has not gone under an existential transformation—\"\n\n\"I didn't transform!\" Hero squawked.\n\n\"—or existential crisis heretofore unknown by our understanding of the universe,\" Rami continued smoothly, \"I feel comfortable ordering all of you to sit down and stay down until I can at least create a concise record of this disaster.\"\n\n\"Not as if anyone can read your chicken scratch,\" Claire mumbled into the couch cushions. She slit her eyes open and grimaced at the light. As if in response, the lamps of the Arcane Wing dimmed a notch. She squinted with a sour expression. \"What are you lot staring at?\"\n\n\"Boss! Oh—oh gods. I'm so glad you're okay.\" Tears started to well at Brevity's eyes before the look suddenly dried up into stricken. Her shoulders started to creep up toward her ears. \"Claire—\"\n\n\"You have nothing to apologize for, so don't you dare.\" The harsh edges fell away from Claire's tone. She made an aborted attempt to sit up before consigning herself to the couch. \"You were doing what you thought was best. That's what a librarian does.\"\n\n\"I lied to you. I tricked you,\" Brevity insisted.\n\n\"And I allowed a damsel to come to harm, entered the Library, and promptly terrorized the damsel suite without asking.\" Claire's mouth twisted and for the first time she looked down at her unstained hands. Not a trace of the ink remained. She rubbed her thumb against her forefinger. \"That wasn't right. I'm sorry. We were both operating under stressful concerns.\"\n\nMoisture returned to Brevity's eyes, so Hero hurried along to a different point of relevance. \"All the same, making an enemy of the Muses Corps would be a bother.\"\n\nBrevity took the distraction. \"Probity...?\"\n\n\"Left. Along with Gaiety.\" Hero hesitated, sending a questioning look to Rami. There was a lot to disclose, now or later. He sighed when the angel shook his head grimly.\n\nBrevity's face crumpled. She mulled this over with a distant sorrow. \"She won't go back to the muses, not with Gaiety. I can't see them tolerating something like that. Verve and Gaiety were so loyal to her, I don't even know how much she told them. I—I think Probity had her own ideas about stories, ones that no sane muse in the corps would ever have endorsed.\" Her mouth twisted, bitter.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Which is why she came to me.\"\n\n\"From my brief acquaintance, she seemed to trust you and hold you in high regard,\" Rami said.\n\nBrevity's smile was thin with skepticism, and Hero couldn't stand the tedious cycle of self-blame a moment longer. He flopped onto Claire's couch noisily and began to pick dried mud from his coat. \"At least now I can officially say I've seen a more odious place than the Unwritten Wing. You've been grandstanded by the Dust Wing, ladies.\"\n\nHe waited for Claire's sharp rebuttal, or at the very least a dismissive noise. When none came, he turned his head. She had tucked her legs to her chest and was nearly swallowed by the pillows Rami had piled around her. That, and the vulnerable uncertainty in her eyes, gave her a more delicate appearance than she normally allowed. Delicate—not breakable—like a fine blade. She studied him with disbelief. \"You're really okay.\"\n\nClaire never asked questions, not really. She wielded challenging statements and demanded verification. Hero cleared his throat and studied the ragged tear the muse's claws had made in the shoulder of his coat. These stains would never come out. Ink and stains and gods knew what else. He was going to have to ask Brevity if Hell had a tailor soon. \"I'm here, aren't I?\"\n\n\"You are. I hadn't been sure you would be,\" Claire said with unnatural quiet. Some of the tension left her and she unwound herself from her seat to straighten her shoulders. She held out a palm. \"Hand it over, then.\"\n\nHero was familiar with that pose, that posture, that steel in her eye as sharp as a scalpel. His stomach dropped, and he found his filthy cuff fascinating again. \"Hand over what?\"\n\n\"Your book. Let's see what a muck you've made of it this time and how many hours of back pain and labor I—\" Claire paused. \"That I or Brevity is in for to fix it.\"\n\nIt was under his nails. The damned clay was under his perfectly nice nails. He cast about for a file, but of course Claire wasn't the type to keep appropriate grooming products on hand.\n\n\"Hero?\" Claire said.\n\n\"I—\" Hero cleared his throat and had to count to three before he had the courage to raise his gaze to meet Claire's. His insides felt a little hollow. \"I don't have it.\"\n\nClaire's eyes flew wide. \"You lost your book?!\"\n\n\"I didn't—\" Hero started, but Claire was already halfway off the couch, though she didn't let go of the arm for support.\n\n\"Of all the irresponsible— How are you still sitting here if you left it in the Dust Wing? You grand fool, we need to go back immediately and—\"\n\n\"Claire.\" Rami caught her before she could stumble away from the couch. He firmly guided her back in a way only Rami could get away with. \"He didn't lose it.\" Once she was seated again, he glanced at Hero. His tone was sympathetic but unforgiving. \"Tell her.\"\n\nRami's eyes were encouraging, and Claire's were confused. A phantom of panic threatened in Hero's throat. It would change everything, everything he didn't want changed, he realized. The thought descended like a shock of water. Being a broken book—Claire's pain in the ass, Brevity's assistant, Rami's... dear gods, whatever he was to Rami now. He didn't want any of it to change. He didn't want to run away, or fix his book, or be anything but what they accepted him as. He glanced to Brevity for reprieve, but her look was curious as well.\n\nThe mud on his coat had somehow coated his tongue and Hero had to swallow again before he could start. \"There was a struggle, with the muse in the Dust Wing. She... consumed... my book.\"\n\n\"What?\" Brevity startled to her feet, and she was at least steadier than Claire was.\n\n\"It's gone,\" Hero said to the floor.\n\n\"That's impossible.\" Claire's voice was oddly clipped, like she'd dug her fingernails into the shreds of her logic. She shook her head. \"Explain yourself.\"\n\nBy the time Hero had haltingly described his version of events, the chamomile had gone so oversteeped even he wouldn't try to serve it to Claire. Rami had interjected corrections a couple of times, and picked up on what he saw when Hero fell. Hero had gotten to the part where he'd kissed Rami and chose editorial discretion to skip quickly over it with a rush of heat in his cheeks. Rami sat there just looking calm and supportive. Damn the man. Claire had started out with interrogative interruptions but had slowly dropped to silence.\n\nNo one was eager to jump into analysis, which made Hero grateful. He managed to listen to the tick of the Arcane Wing's cursed clock count a dozen more seconds before Brevity sniffled hard. She was wiping her eyes furiously but saved a watery grin for Hero. \"It sounds like you almost—I woulda never forgiven myself if we'd lost you in there.\"\n\n\"Maybe you did,\" Hero said ruefully. His book was gone; that was the part a librarian should have been worried about.\n\n\"We didn't. You remain. Just as the ink remained.\" Claire had wrapped her arms over her chest as if she was holding on for dear life, but there was a distant look in her eyes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hero could feel Claire's mind turning like an astrolabe, aligning events along some unknown mental star charts.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She broke the spell with a blink and focused on Rami. \"When you said you thought you could track Hero to the Dust Wing, was it—\"\n\n\"Souls,\" Rami finally said the word that made the entire room feel like a released breath. \"That's how I track anything. And it worked. I began to consider the idea after I read that line in the Unsaid Wing. The old Arcanist said the written and the writer are the same. And then the soul bridge in Chinvat tried to pass judgment on Hero, and... well.\"\n\n\"Stories—she meant stories. But if they're made of the same stuff, then that means stories are made of souls—\" Brevity's eyes went wide as saucers.\n\n\"No,\" Claire whispered, and Hero's heart dropped. He felt irrationally disappointed as she started shaking her head. It shouldn't matter, her reaction. But somehow it did, because they were talking about what he was, and she was and...\n\n\"I would have known. I would have had to have known. Gregor would have told me. Or the log—\" Claire straightened as if she'd touched a live wire. \"The well. Rosia. I need to see the well.\"\n\n\"You need to rest,\" Rami started, but Claire was already teetering to her feet. The angel sighed and lent his arm. Claire charged down the aisle toward the back of the wing as fast as her battered body allowed.\n\nThat left Hero with Brevity. Luckily, his librarian was much steadier on her feet—and much more sensible—than the previous one. Brevity accepted a hand up but followed them at a sedate pace.\n\n\"You're you, Hero,\" she said, just loud enough for him to hear. \"Claire just needs to work it out in her own head.\"\n\nThe upside-down feeling in Hero's head eased an inch. Brevity did that—saw the rough edges her people rubbed against one another and tried to smooth them. It was a remarkable trait, but Hero couldn't remember anyone ever acknowledging it. He tried, but his throat was already clogged with so many things, he could only nod. \"Did you know?\"\n\nBrevity shook her head slowly. \"I didn't—at least, I didn't think I did. I didn't put it together.\" She chewed on her lip. \"Maybe Probity had.\"\n\nHero had too many emotions roiling like a pack of rats in his head to hold on to one more. He hesitated, then said, \"She said something, before she left.\"\n\nBrevity looked up, full of trepidation. \"What'd she say?\"\n\n\"She said to tell you\"—Hero took a moment to recall the words exactly—\"ideas never die.\"\n\nThe silence in Brevity's eyes as she quickly looked away spoke volumes. Hero was literate in those silences, so he waited it out.\n\n\"It was something we said, back then. We thought we were invincible. We thought we could do anything. When I was a muse, we...\" Brevity chewed her lip raw. Claire appeared to be having an argument with her black bird ahead of them. At least if she was that irascible, then Hero suspected she'd recover all right. \"Muses are obsessed with humans. But we're not taught to care about humanity as people, just as creators. The end creation is what is important. Ever hear of an artist wrecking themselves for their art? That's a bad muse. And internalized capitalism.\"\n\n\"But you're not like that,\" Hero pointed out, and Brevity rewarded him with a tired smile.\n\n\"Nah. I was always curious about humans. Then I got kicked out and actually had to deal with one. Woof.\" Brevity pulled a face, but it was riddled with fondness as she glanced after Claire again. \"Humans are a tough nut. It's obvious—at least to me—that a story is essential to the person who tells it. No matter how cliché or common your story is, it's you telling it, right? We understood that essential connection, but we didn't care much about the soul. Few muses care much what happens to the human after the story is told.\" Brevity fell quiet. \"But taken too far, that's how you get folks like Probity.\"\n\nHero had a dozen questions queued up behind his tongue. He had a soul? Or just part of one? Was it his creator's? Every book was made of a soul? What did that mean—for anything? He felt starved for answers, but they caught up and all of Brevity's concern focused on Claire.\n\nA well of shadows trumpeted out of the floor and cupped a basin within. The reservoir of ink at the back of the Arcane Wing remained, with one significant change. Claire's knees banged into the ledge as she dropped down. Hero's chest clenched as she leaned precariously over the edge with a gasp. \"Rosia.\"\n\nThe others rushed to join her—and if Hero secured a firm grasp on her shoulder to keep her from tipping in, it was purely out of professional concern, of course. He needn't have worried. The interior of the well dropped away to a smooth concave of stone. The ink was gone, and left not a dab behind.\n\nIn its absence, instead, curled up tight as a seed, was a girl. Rosia lay on her side, arms pillowing her head. She didn't move. Claire jerked forward and Hero was glad he had a grip on her shoulder.\n\n\"No,\" Rami said from behind them, already moving past to drop down the slope of the basin. \"Let me.\" He crouched down as he approached Rosia and reached out. His fingertips were still a breath away from her cheeks when her eyes blinked open.\n\nA tick in Rami's shoulders put Hero on alert. Whatever he saw in the girl's face startled him. Rami stepped back as Rosia stretched, unfurling like a spring leaf. She rose to her feet, still facing away, full of an alien grace that her coltish limbs hadn't had before. She tilted her head one way, then another, as if releasing a crick in her neck. As if, a suspicious part of Hero's mind supplied, she was limbering up for a fight.\n\nBut when Rosia turned, pivoting on the ball of one foot like a dancer, her expression was relaxed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her gaze, as it flicked around to each of them, felt altered. No longer spectral and eerie, but focused. She still had moonbeam eyes, but sharp as a crescent shaped by the dark.\n\n\"Rosia?\" Brevity crouched at the side of the basin. There was a tension in her shoulders that said she was trying. She was trying to be librarian, do her duty, hold it together by her fingernails. Claire's shoulder shivered beneath his hand. They were all exhausted, all wounded and changed, one way or another. Hero recognized with a sudden certainty that if pressed to a fight one more time, it'd be too easy to break.\n\nThe smooth skin of Rosia's brow furrowed for a moment, perplexed, before she appeared to recognize Brevity. \"Hello there.\"\n\nHero's alarm stalled—not decreasing, but freezing in place. Rosia's voice had been high and soft, a whisper from a ghost girl. The voice she wore now was warm and solid, like a well-made violin.\n\nBrevity's face knit into concern. \"Rosia? Is that really you?\"\n\nThe damsel appeared to take that question seriously, pursing her lips for a silent second before nodding. \"Quite. I am the most me that I have ever been, in fact.\"\n\n\"You're not Rosia.\" Claire's own voice was full of cobwebs. Hero felt her shiver before she cleared her throat and tensed again. \"Rosia was a specter. A ghost girl from a ghost story.\"\n\n\"Rosia was that, for a long time.\" She didn't look upset by the accusation, just thoughtful. \"She wanted to be more. Knew there was more. Tried to be more. But the story kept coming through. It was like drowning.\" Her pale eyes diverted down to the empty basin at her feet again. Toes scuffed against dry stone. \"Easier to drown in ink.\"\n\nHero made a scoffing noise in his throat, if only to make sure the roil of emotion that clotted his mouth didn't come out as a sob. \"Yet you don't look drowned. It destroyed me.\"\n\n\"It didn't mean to.\" Rosia looked serious and folded her hands in front of her chest. \"You asked for a story and it tried to give you one.\"\n\n\"I wanted my story,\" Hero hissed.\n\n\"That was a mistake. Ink can't write what's not in you.\" Rosia took a step forward, hesitating when Claire flinched back. She stopped near Brevity, who appeared to be staring openly at Rosia with something approaching wonder, not suspicion. \"I listened—read? Yes, I read. I read and I read all the stories, until I found myself again.\" A smile cut through Rosia's somber affect. She grinned down at her hands, wiggling them before turning that delighted glance on Brevity. \"It took a while, but I found myself in stories. I don't have to be a ghost. I'm not a ghost.\"\n\n\"You're not a ghost,\" Brevity repeated with a little awe. \"Everyone looks for themselves in story.\"\n\n\"It worked the same for you, didn't it? Once you started listening.\" Rosia turned her attention, sharp and bright, on Hero, and it felt like a dissection. \"You put yourself together with stories too.\"\n\nHero had nothing to answer that. Rosia had touched the ink and found certainty; he had only survived with more questions.\n\nClaire's head had been bowed, but it came up slow as a rising thought. \"Rosia, where's your book?\"\n\nThe girl looked down at her hands. They smoothed down her ivory skirt and came away clean. There was no lump in her pocket, no place to stash a small rectangle of paper. She let out a low breath and smiled at Brevity. \"Librarian, can I go home now? I'm hungry and this place is too quiet.\"\n\n\"Rosia, your book—\" Claire began sharply.\n\n\"I am my own story now.\" A first thorn of defiance pricked through Rosia's voice. She paused, considering. \"Or I am many. I haven't decided yet. But I am enough.\"\n\nThe minute twitch Claire made traveled up Hero's arm like a quake. She opened her mouth, then closed it with a shiver.\n\n\"Librarian.\" Rosia had focused on Brevity again, and a kind of delight softened her face. \"I am glad you're still here. Don't worry; I'll help with what's next. You won't do it alone.\"\n\nRosia moved swift as a breeze. She scrambled up the side of the basin, pecked a kiss on Brevity's cheek, and walked down an aisle.\n\n\"We should... go after her?\" Rami asked more than made a statement.\n\nBrevity, eyes still wide, with a hand to her cheek, shook her head. \"Ah... no, I think she's going back...\" She blinked at the spot where Rosia had been. \"I think she's okay.\"\n\nOkay. It was such a simple word.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No reason for it to roil an inexplicable rise of bile and envy in Hero's mouth like it did. He swallowed hard.\n\n\"At least someone is,\" Rami said quietly, with his eyes on Hero's face. Whatever he could read there had softened his frown. \"But what remains...\"\n\nClaire shivered, suddenly shaking off Hero's hand with a flick of irritation. He was almost glad after how strangely subdued she'd been. She extended a finger and brushed the tip over the dry, uneven rock bottom. \"It's gone.\"\n\nClaire had a complete lack of patience for stating the obvious. Hero felt obliged to remind her of this fact. \"Stunning deduction.\"\n\nThe glare Claire rewarded him with was familiar and reassuring, even if her next question made it sound as if the entire incident were his fault. \"How? Ink does not simply disappear, no matter what it's made of! Rosia obviously wasn't stained. So who took it?\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Brevity made a surprised sound as she approached the other side of the well. She dropped into the empty basin before anyone could stop her. She stared at Claire with wide eyes. \"You did. I think?\"\n\nJudging by the way Claire rubbed her face, Hero wasn't sure just how many more revelations even a human mind as stout as hers was up to today. \"Explain.\"\n\n\"Ink acts on the same wavelength as inspiration gilt, right? That's what Probity said when she... stopped your arm.\" Even now, Brevity couldn't keep from running nervous fingers up her scarred forearm. \"When muses carry inspiration, we don't get the entire story. Just the... the seeds. The sparky bits that get them going. The rest of the story comes along later.\" She gestured expansively to the empty rock where a pool of ink—souls?—had been.\n\nClaire had been stubbornly crouching but let herself down to the ground abruptly. \"It was me. I carried the stain. And when it was loosed in the Dust Wing, when I...\" She stopped, frowned, corrected herself. \"When it pulled the ink from that muse, all the rest of the ink could follow.\"\n\nBrevity nodded slowly. \"Maybe that's where they wanted to be the whole time. With other dusted books.\"\n\n\"To be with other ghosts... Rosia was the only one who could hear it. So it was a haunting,\" Claire murmured to herself. Her toes crept over the edge of the basin and she suddenly looked very small.\n\n\"Claire?\"\n\nHero knew the way that one blinked to keep poison out of one's brain and tears out of one's eyes. Claire's shoulders swayed. \"All those years, everything I did to them because I thought books were merely... like magic. Or memory.\"\n\nHero felt locked in place. His own feelings were a strangling vine—to be spiteful, to be right, was at the tip of his tongue. She had been cruel, cruel to him and to individuals like him, and she'd been biased, and she'd been wrong, and saying so wouldn't wipe away the wrongness of what she had done. He shouldn't be asked to forgive her; he shouldn't have to comfort her.\n\nBut he wanted to. The want to shore her up, wrap up the hurt, was so strong it ached, but Hero still couldn't do it.\n\nRami brushed past his shoulder. Gratitude, and a feeling warmer than that, muted all Hero's other thoughts as he watched the angel approach and silently sit next to Claire at the rim of the empty basin. Rami didn't say anything. He never had to. Claire met his eyes, and her chin wavered before she made a cracking sound and buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders twitched and jerked in a painful kind of silence.\n\n\"Boss...\" Brevity said softly, and that appeared to make the shuddering worse.\n\nClaire didn't cry. Claire didn't cry, and Hero didn't forgive. It was their natures, and natures were all they had left in the afterlife, but ferocious resentment burned a hole in Hero's chest. His nature had been written in his book, and that was gone and unlikely to do him any good ever again. He didn't know who he was now. But that meant he also didn't have to know.\n\nHis toes scuffed over the floorboards as his feet finally decided to move. The small sounds echoed like a gunshot that made Claire's shoulders flinch even as he dropped down to her other side. She didn't lower her hands from her face. It was so easy to touch her when he was prodding, or holding her back. But this was comfort, and an entirely alien action between them. His shoulders wouldn't unclench, wouldn't lean in to lend that solid presence that Rami was capable of. His silence stewed instead of supported. This wasn't him. Or perhaps it was. Did he have to decide that now too?\n\n\"Only you would set up such a difficult impasse. You and Hell,\" Hero said to the empty curve of stone beneath his toes. Everything ached. \"Either you have been the worst kind of demon, or I'm a soulless abomination without a book. Either you're a monster, or I am.\"\n\nThe breath Claire took was loud and jagged between her clenched fingers. Her hands fell to her lap by fractions. She didn't lift her head. \"I thought I knew, once. I thought I understood how things worked. I just...\"\n\n\"It's okay,\" Hero said. He saw the way Rami's dark eyes watched him over Claire's head. Their angel, their shepherd of souls. What a sad flock they made for him. Hero dropped his gaze. \"It's okay. I'm well versed at being the monster. Comfortable, even.\"\n\nClaire snatched his hand. Her palm was still damp with hot tears.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She gripped it and—hell, her strength must have returned to her, the way his knuckles stung in protest.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 33 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "(ooc: <<EMBED THIS>>: \"What's the matter with you?\")", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No.\" Claire's voice had steadied. Her chin was locked against her chest, but her gaze was slanted sideways, fierce and searching. \"You are not an abomination. You are not soulless. You are not a monster. I won't tolerate it.\"\n\nThe air had left his lungs at skin contact, and Hero's face felt hot. It was unacceptable, so he made sure his grimace was especially dramatic. \"Fine, fine. If I call you a monster, will you stop crushing my hand? I need it. For things and reasons.\"\n\nIn her typical contrary manner, instead of letting go Claire gulped a surprised sound and yanked his arm into her lap. Hero fell against her shoulders and found he didn't fight too hard when Claire locked her hands around his elbow. She was warm. Her hair smelled like smoky tea leaves. Her voice was small and soft near his ear. \"I don't know what happens now.\"\n\n\"It seems obvious to me.\" Rami's voice was gravel, like earth, and rocks that you could hold on to. His arm shifted, bracing both of them so they didn't fall over. \"We'll be monsters together.\"\n\nHero's laugh sounded like a bark to his ears, jagged and out of use. He shook his head and glanced across the well. Brevity had hunkered down in the curve of stone, drawn-looking and hesitant.\n\n\"What's the matter with you?\" Hero asked.\n\nBrevity's eyes were big and threatening yet more tears. \"I wasn't sure—I don't know if—\"\n\n\"Oh, get over here already,\" Claire grumbled. She threw open the arm that wasn't trapping Hero in place, catching Brevity as she stumbled over. She fell into the rest of them, and Hero caught a particularly bony elbow to the stomach.\n\nBrevity let out a wet warble that was muffled by Claire's hair. Hero couldn't make out what she said, but Claire shook her head. Some warmth had returned to her brown skin, and her eyes sharpened as she comforted the muse sobbing into her chest. \"We'll be quite all right. Really, Brev, you're dampening my blouse.\"\n\nThe corner of Claire's mouth quirked up when laughter interrupted the muse's tears and then subsided into sniffles. It stayed soft as it caught Hero's eye and she nodded. The way her eyes drifted back to the stone told him enough. She hadn't known, still didn't have the answers, but this—this they had.\n\nThey sat there for a time, tangled and scarred and lost with each other, at the edge of a vast, quiet emptiness where certainty had been.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Write 139 sentences sentences continuing this story fragment. Characters may appear without introduction. Use A. L. Kennedy's style. Genres: magical realism. Elements: snakes", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "This is almost, but not quite, the whole of the story about a remarkable, wise little girl.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was called Mary.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Everything I will tell you here began when Mary went walking in her garden on one particular afternoon.\n\nMary was a little bit taller than the other girls her age and had brownish crinkly hair. She was quite thin, because she didn't always have exactly enough to eat. She liked honey and whistling and the colour blue and finding out.\n\nShe lived in a city filled with very many different kinds of people. Its very many different kinds of people made it a very wonderful place, full of interesting songs and stories, foods and clothes and conversations. Nevertheless, the people in charge of the city were not overly fond of people and so some of the apartments in which the very many different kinds of people lived were often dry where they should have been wet, or wet where they should have been dry, or just cold and dark and supplied with especially listless electricity. In order to enjoy the sky, which was free to them and as large as can be, the people in the wet and dry houses would fly kites from their roofs. Some looked like birds of paradise, some looked like fish and some looked like wonderful serpents.\n\nOther houses – like the ones owned by the people who ran the city – were luxurious and stretched into the sky with great towers much higher than the kites. These apartments contained beautiful pools to swim in, or to keep fish, or perhaps vast tanks containing large reptiles like crocodiles and blue iguanas. And they had larders as big as living-rooms and living-rooms as big as meadows and probably meadows in their basements that were as big as small counties with jewelled rollercoasters and golf courses made of cake.\n\nMary knew about all this. She knew about all kinds of things and was very clever. Standing in her garden – which was on a rooftop and a bit bigger than a big tablecloth – she could look one way and see the very many sad, tiny houses of the squashed-in people. If she looked the other way, she could see the tall, sparkling buildings full of crocodiles and meadows. The building where she lived was only a little bit squashed. And its pipes only leaked on Mondays and Wednesdays and at weekends, and when they did her mother would put metal basins under the drips and the metal would ring like small bells – or maybe more exactly like small, wet bells – when the water hit them.\n\nMary's flat was just the right size for her mother and her father and herself – which was all there was. Sometimes she wanted a little brother or sister to play with, but then she would remember that a little sister might get jealous of her cleverness, or be interested in ballet dancing which would be noisy, or woodcarving which would be messy. Mary was sleeping in a bedroom that was supposed to be a store cupboard and if she had to share it with a sister then it would seem crowded. And maybe her new sister would snore, or have very long and pokey feet.\n\nA little brother might eventually grow up and stop lying in his baby crib wriggling his fingers and might want to run about – and their garden was too small for running about. The people who were in charge of the city and who didn't very much like people hadn't made many parks for children to play in, or for adults to sit down in and eat ice cream and tell each other how wonderful their children were (or how terrible their children were, depending). Mary thought the people who ran the city probably weren't interested in parks, because they could enjoy their own waterfalls and perhaps swim with their own crocodiles and make treehouses and swings in the thick rooftop forests she could see if she stared very hard all the way from her garden up to the shining towers.\n\nPeople who came to visit the city would talk about it in the way that adults do in front of children, saying just what came into their heads and imagining that someone as small as Mary would not be able to understand them, or pay attention. They would say, 'This city is very interesting, but there are no flowers to smell here and that makes us tired.' Or they would say, 'Things here are very expensive and we cannot afford to buy tickets so that we can hear people sing, or listen to music and dance. And we are surprised by the price of large sandwiches.' Or else they would say things like, 'This city seems to want birds and not people. It is covered in edges and ledges and nooks and crooks for birds to enjoy and is full of food scraps that are small enough for beaks. It was built by people, but it would prefer birds.' And this is often true of cities. They need people to build them, but they prefer birds. This can make them sad places.\n\nMary thought that the visitors should come and have dinner with her parents and sniff in the nice scents of soup – or maybe go and stand in her little garden and smell the roses in it. Or they could talk to the lady in the bread shop, who whistled and hummed while she fed the birds with breadcrumbs and also fed the people with bread because she liked both birds and people. Or they could watch the beautiful dancing of the kites. Or they could listen to the gentleman who sang almost all day on Sundays and who lived across Mary's street and who wore a vest instead of his shirt in summer. Any sensible and observant visitor would then see that they were in a friendly city filled with good things and happiness.\n\nMary liked the city and her garden. She could walk across the garden in six steps and walk from its top to its bottom in eight steps. On some afternoons she would take very tiny paces and this would allow the garden to seem twice the size and much more beautiful. The grown-ups she explained this to became confused.\n\nThey would tell her, 'The garden is the same size, no matter how many paces you squeeze into it.'\n\nShe would tell them, 'Not at all. The longer I take to cross the garden, the larger and more extremely wonderful it becomes, in the same way that ice cream becomes much more magnificent when you eat it very slowly with a little spoon.' As I said, the girl was very clever.\n\n'Then your ice cream will melt,' said the grown-ups.\n\nAnd Mary would shake her head and start to skip and hum a tune to herself, because grown-ups expect children to do such things and it pleases them much more than questions they can't answer. She did not mention that if she stood perfectly still in her garden then it went on for ever, because she could never reach its end. That would have made the grown-ups frown.\n\nThis – as it happened – made the grown-ups the exact opposite of the little girl.\n\nAnyway, as I said at the beginning, if you remember, this little girl called Mary was one day walking in her garden. She believed it was hers because she loved it. She believed that loving something should make it a part of you, in the way that your feet are a part of you. (And you would, of course, be very foolish not to love your feet – should you have any – because they can be quite useful.)\n\nOn this particular afternoon, which was a wintry Sunday, the girl was taking extra-tiny steps so that her garden stretched for miles, almost into other countries. This made the four rose bushes into four giant rose trees and the three flowerbeds into vast prairies and the tiny pond into an inland sea of impressive dimensions. Sadly, it still had no crocodiles.\n\nThe little girl put her hands in her pockets to keep them warm because she preferred this to wearing gloves. This was definitely not because she had lost her gloves, as her mother had suggested earlier. The girl also watched her breath appearing in ascending, steamy clouds, as if her body were somehow burning the dead leaves from autumn, or perhaps washing a large number of sheets and producing steam like a laundry. She was perfectly absorbed by what she was doing and so it took a while for her to notice that one of her ankles was feeling slightly unlike the other.\n\nWhen she looked down to her left she saw that, snugly fitted around her neatly darned woollen stocking, a golden bangle had appeared. There were two jewels in the bangle that glittered, and from time to time the bangle itself seemed to shimmer, almost as if it were moving.\n\nIt was immensely handsome.\n\nShe knew this because it told her so. Because she was very sensible, the little girl had not yet acquired the silly habit of talking only to people and would happily address objects and animals that seemed to be in need of conversation or company. 'Good heavens,' she said to the bangle. And then, 'Where did you come from?' And after that, 'Hello.'\n\n'Hello,' replied the bangle. 'I am immensely handsome.'\n\n'Oh,' said the girl. 'Hello, Mr Handsome.'\n\nThe bangle rippled round her ankle and glistened and its two jewels gleamed like two pieces of jet or perhaps very dark rubies. 'No, no. I am not called Immensely Handsome – that is just one of my many qualities. I am handsome, wise and agile. I also have a beautiful speaking voice. And I am extremely fast.'\n\nAt this point Mary thought that the bangle was also rather boastful and she interrupted it, even though it did have a very lovely speaking voice.\n\n'What is your name, then? And you don't seem that fast to me.'\n\n'Oh, don't I...?' And at once the bangle disappeared.\n\nIt moved so quickly that Mary was still listening to its delightful voice, chuckling to itself and left behind, while its body had gone somewhere further away. She had to search about before she saw the bangle hanging from one of the rose bushes' branches. 'Maybe you shouldn't do that – the rose might not like it.'\n\n'Oh, the rose won't mind me,' said the bangle, grinning a tiny grin and swaying slightly. 'I am the fastest thing you will ever meet,' the bangle confided, once again right there on her ankle and not even slightly out of breath.\n\n'That is impressive,' admitted Mary.\n\n'I know.'\n\n'But what is your name?'\n\n'Maybe I will tell you in a while. You should always be careful about giving your name to anyone and not do it straight away.'\n\n'Well, if you won't tell me your name, what kind of bracelet are you?' Mary sat down very carefully under one of the rose bushes to look more closely at her talkative new friend.\n\n'I'm not.' The bangle unfastened itself and – quickly, but not so quickly that Mary couldn't watch – shifted its golden shape along until it was wound around her wrist a few times as if it were a bracelet after all.\n\n'Ah,' Mary said, 'I see.'\n\nThe bangle slid and wriggled and tickled until she was cupping most of it, neatly coiled in her palm, and the two flecks of colour which she had thought of as jewels were looking at her from a slender, gilded head.\n\nThe red jewels blinked like clever, tiny eyes. This was because they were clever, tiny eyes.\n\n'Yes,' said the snake, 'I am a snake.' And he smiled for an instant as much as someone can with no lips and flickered out an elegant bright red tongue that was forked at the end and licked the air around it. 'You taste of sweets and soap and being good.'\n\nMary stuck out her own tongue, but couldn't taste anything about the snake.\n\n'I taste of nothing,' the snake told her. 'Aren't you afraid? People usually are afraid of snakes. When they see me they frequently run up and down and wave their arms and scream.'\n\n'Would you like me to do that?'\n\n'Not especially,' purred the snake. 'But shouldn't you be terribly afraid?'\n\n'Why? Are you terribly frightening?'\n\nThe snake waggled his tongue and sampled the air again. 'Well, I could be... Snakes can be incredibly dangerous. Some of us crush large animals in our muscular convolutions and slowly swallow whole crocodiles, or maybe canoes, or canoes with people in them.'\n\n'But you're only small.'\n\n'I can get bigger.'\n\nMary thought this might be a lie, but she didn't want to hurt the snake's feelings.\n\nThe snake stretched up his little spine and raised his small head so that he could look straight at her. He swayed his neck back and forth as if he were listening to music and stared into her blue eyes with his dark red eyes and his strange narrow pupils which were blacker than the back of a raven and which seemed to go on for ever if you concentrated on them and really paid attention. 'Some snakes can bite you once and fill you with enough poison to kill twenty men, fifty men, maybe even a hundred men.'\n\n'I'm not a man,' said Mary. 'I'm a little girl.'\n\nThe snake blinked. 'You are being difficult. A snake could poison you even faster than a man because the poison would have less far to travel.'\n\nMary nodded. 'I know. Although I think even a very huge and ferocious snake might not kill a hundred men.'\n\n'Definitely at least twenty.' The snake sounded slightly cross.\n\n'But I have learned all the poisonous snakes and their stripes and their habits in case I travel to faraway lands and have adventures when I am older. Your kind of snake is not in any of my books about snakes. And I have read a lot.'\n\nThis was true – Mary had read a great many books about snakes. She had borrowed them from the library and taken notes.\n\n'Some snakes have feathers and drink the blood of warriors and some live in the Underworld in Egypt. And others darken the sun when they fly and crack their tails like thunder,' boasted the snake.\n\n'That sounds like stories about snakes, not real snakes at all. And the last one seems more like a dragon than a snake. Dragons are in the books of things that don't exist,' said Mary sternly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The snake sighed and lowered himself to lounge in her hand, suddenly seeming as soft as a piece of silky rope.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "'Oh, well... Perhaps I seem less impressive than usual because I am hungry.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Would you happen to have a mouse that I could eat?' The snake's head lolled off her palm as if he were almost faint with hunger, but his eyes watched her carefully and glowed.\n\n'If I did have a mouse, it would be my pet mouse and I wouldn't ever give it to anyone so they could eat it.'\n\n'But I suppose that you eat fried fishes and grilled cutlets of lambs and stews of cow pieces and goose's legs...' He lolled again, wheezing as if he were famished.\n\n'Well, yes, but I had never met the lambs and cows and geese,' explained Mary. 'It would be rude to eat somebody I had met. And mostly we eat stews with vegetables and beans and things which don't cost as much as meat. And we're very far away from the sea here, so we don't eat very many fishes. Do you live in a jungle?'\n\n'No.'\n\n'I would love to know what a jungle is really like.'\n\n'Your mind is wandering. I am very hungry.'\n\n'Tomorrow – which is Monday – we have sewing lessons at school. Mrs Kohlhoffer who teaches sewing always says my mind wanders. She doesn't understand that I already know enough about sewing for the rest of my life. I am not going to embroider little covers for the backs of chairs ever again. I shall not embellish more slippers, or sew another bag to keep my sewing things in. I am not even going to be a surgeon – which would mean I had to sew my patients back together once I had sliced them open. No surgeon would be very popular if she embroidered flowers on her patient's operation scars. I am going to explore the world and maybe a lion will bite off my leg, or an arm, or something, or I will need to sew up a wound caused by a machete – but I already know the right stitches for wounds, and for making tidy stumps after amputations.'\n\nThe snake was sitting up again – if we can describe a snake as sitting up – because he was interested in Mary and had forgotten that he was pretending to be hungry. 'Little girl, little girl, the world is an odd place to explore and you must promise me,' he said in his wonderful voice, 'that you will be extremely careful wherever you go.'\n\nThis seemed a kind thing to say and so Mary gave her name to the snake. 'I'm Mary.'\n\n'Thank you, Mary. Mary...' said the snake in a voice that sounded as if he were thinking of something sweet and sad. 'Well, Mary, I have been in the jungle at times and I know that when you are there you must always keep your machete very sharp so that it cuts easily and smoothly and safely. And put it back tidily in its sheath when you aren't using it and never annoy a lion so much that it wants to bite you. In fact, avoid lions and all large cats. And also bears. And definitely hippopotamuses.'\n\n'I thought you were weak with hunger.'\n\n'I am worried about you. But you are also full of remarkable wisdom – you should write down the things I tell you so you won't forget.' The snake blinked. 'But, yes, I am very hungry, too. Do you have, at least, some cheese? I might be able to survive on cheese. A little Gruyère, perhaps?'\n\nMary leaned in very close and kissed the snake on its nose. (Although, of course, it didn't quite have a nose.)\n\n'You are very forward,' the snake mumbled. But he also – like poured gold – slipped himself around and around her arm in a pleased way that sparkled his scales delightfully. Then he came to rest peaceably in her hand again. 'You maybe could call me Camatayon, or Bas, or Lanmo, or...'\n\nBecause the snake seemed to have a great many names and because Mary liked the sound of that one she told him, 'Lanmo. I will call you Lanmo.'\n\n'Yes, that will be good.' The snake nodded.\n\n'Thank you for your name.' Mary realised she was a little bit hungry herself. 'Shall we go indoors? I can toast some cheese on bread. I know how to toast cheese.'\n\nThe snake angled his head as if he were thinking. 'I think I would have to have cold cheese with no bread – because of my teeth. Toasted cheese would be too sticky.' He opened his dark mouth carefully and slowly so that Mary could see his teeth, which were as white as bones and pointed. To the left and to the right of his front teeth he had a longer fang that was most especially pointed.\n\n'Goodness.'\n\n'I eeth ill oh ur oooh,' said Lanmo the snake.\n\n'I beg your pardon?' Mary had been taught to be polite.\n\nLanmo closed his mouth and his needly teeth fitted together perfectly for an instant, before he tried again to speak. 'My teeth will not hurt you.'\n\n'Oh.'\n\n'I promise.'\n\n'And what kind of snake are you?'\n\n'The kind that is never in books.' And he nuzzled his head against the back of her hand and flickered his tongue.\n\nMary did find the snake some little pieces of cheese and he ate them daintily before telling her thank you and disappearing in his fast and snaky way.\n\nThis made Mary feel a little lonely for the rest of the afternoon, until she was eating her own dinner that evening – which was vegetable stew and then more vegetable stew – and noticed that the glow of two red eyes was blinking out from under her napkin.\n\n'Oh,' she said out loud and then, because her mother and father had turned to look at her, she had to continue. 'What lovely stew. Yes. Oh. What lovely stew.' She did this because she realised that her parents might well wave their arms about and scream a lot if she said out loud, 'Oh, I have a beautiful snake called Lanmo under my napkin. He has come back to see me again and so maybe he is going to be my friend.'\n\nLanmo, faster than a silky whisper, slipped into the pocket of her dress and she could feel him moving very slightly in a way that might mean he was giggling. This made her smile and she had to turn her smile into one that looked as if it could be about stews and not snakes.\n\nLater, when Mary was by herself in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, she looked in her pocket, but there was no one there. Lanmo had gone again. She guessed, correctly, that he had done this so she could change into her pyjamas and brush her teeth in private. When she opened her bedroom door, there was the snake, curled on her pillow, tasting the air with his forked tongue and looking at her with his sharp red eyes. They shone in the tiny, dim room, which had no window because it was really a cupboard. He was trying to look domestic. 'Hello, Mary. I am going to watch over you until you are asleep. I will keep away your nightmares.'\n\n'But I don't have nightmares.'\n\n'You might now – you have a snake on your pillow.' Lanmo grinned and rippled over so that Mary could get into bed and be snug. Then he lay very flat on top of her covers so that he could look into her eyes. 'You will always be safe when I am here. Because I am your friend and I will come and visit you many, many times.'\n\n'Good,' said Mary into her blankets, because she was very drowsy. She thought that Lanmo's eyes reminded her of sunsets and somehow this made her very really extremely sleepy.\n\nAnd the snake watched her until he knew she was dreaming safely and then he told her again, 'I will visit you many, many times.' He nodded his head sadly. 'And then I will visit you one time more.' He licked the air to be sure that she was happy and he tasted truth and bravery and toothpaste and soap that smelled of flowers and it made him sneeze one short, snake sneeze. 'Pffs.' And he could taste that in her dream she was already canoeing down a mighty river that wound between tall jungle trees with a pet lion at her feet. He felt a little jealous that she wasn't imagining him with her in the canoe.\n\nBut then again, the snake was not any kind of pet.\n\nOnce Mary was fast asleep, the snake travelled invisibly and quicker than a thought across the city until he was in the basement of a man called Mr Meininger. The basement stretched away for miles in many directions. It was the most magnificent and impressive of all the city's millionaire caverns and had taken two hundred imported Bolivian miners a year to excavate. It had a lake for swimming, although Mr Meininger couldn't swim, and it had many ice cream machines, although Mr Meininger didn't like ice cream. It had wonderful statues and fountains, although Mr Meininger wasn't especially interested in art or in dancing water. It had an orchard that was supplied with electric light so the apples and plums and peaches planted in it had to grow all the time and could never rest in darkness. They could never feel the little feet of animals, or birds, or insects tickling them, because no living things were allowed in the basement without Mr Meininger's permission. He had only ever given his permission to the two hundred imported Bolivian miners, the trees, his many servants and the tumblers and comedians he sometimes paid to try to make him smile.\n\nHe didn't smile. He thought it was a foolish waste of effort and almost as stupid as wanting to make someone else smile. He also thought it was a good punishment for the tumblers and comedians if they had to keep on balancing and falling and doing tricks and telling him funny stories and jokes while he stared at them like a giant, solemn frog in a big silk dressing gown. He made them keep on and on until they cried, and if they didn't cry he refused to pay them.\n\nAll this meant that Mr Meininger was both surprised and irritated when he looked up from reading a report on how fast his wealth was growing and saw the face of our friend the snake.\n\nI think we can call him our friend, because we are surely Mary's friends and her friends must therefore be our friends, as long as they are nice and kind.\n\n'Ugh,' said Mr Meininger. (He was too fat to wave his arms about and too dignified to scream.) 'A snake.'\n\n'I know,' said the snake and flickered his tongue and slipped around the sleeve of Mr Meininger's dressing gown like a gold braid decoration – except with teeth.\n\n'Ugh,' said Mr Meininger. 'A talking snake.'\n\nThe snake blinked. 'I know that, too.' He angled his head to one side, as if he were studying Mr Meininger very hard indeed. 'Now, perhaps you could tell me something I don't know.'\n\nMr Meininger was used to being surrounded by extremely respectful servants and sad, exhausted trees. When he met people beyond his cavern they were deferential and gave him gifts, because you will always be given gifts if you already have too much. And if he wasn't bowed to and petted and coddled he would usually go very red in the face and bellow, or go very white in the face and growl that everyone should be fired at once. And everyone would be. This happened even if the people being fired were prime ministers, film stars or kings. Mr Meininger practised his growl sometimes when he was in the bathroom and would look at himself in the mirror to make sure he had perfected his chilling stare. An unauthorised animal in his cavern would usually have been the cause of bellows and stares and all kinds of redundancies. But Mr Meininger couldn't say a word and it seemed to him that his skin was becoming clammy and too tight.\n\n'Well...?' asked the snake and waited politely.\n\nAnd even though the snake's voice was like buttered velvet and even though the snake was being very quiet and courteous, Mr Meininger found that he was very frightened of that sleek golden body and that delicate golden head.\n\n'I have come a long way to meet you,' said the snake. His tongue tested the air and allowed him to taste Mr Meininger's cramped, dark thoughts and his shallow, dim heart and his calculating brain. He could also taste fear that was thick as fog. 'You might at least tell me your name.'\n\nAnd Mr Meininger couldn't help but say, 'Karl Otto Meininger'. If you had been there to hear him you would have noticed he sounded as if he were answering a schoolteacher or filling in a form. Then he blurted out, 'I am the third wealthiest man in the world.' He mentioned this because it had always impressed people before, although he already felt that he knew the snake was not people and would not be impressed.\n\n'No,' the snake murmured in his sweetest voice. 'You are only the fourth wealthiest. Ten minutes ago the copper mines of Lembit Quartak made him the third wealthiest.'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(( /set_word_count: shone, frequency: 2 ))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The snake eased higher up Karl's sleeve. (We can call Mr Meininger Karl, now that he has told us his name.) Lanmo's body came to rest on Karl's left shoulder and he whispered, 'And it really doesn't matter, anyway. It never did.'\n\nKarl swallowed while the gentle breath of the snake pressed against his neck. 'Please.' Karl hadn't said please for years and years – there had been no one he'd thought it was worth saying to.\n\n'Please what?' asked the snake and the question made Karl's skin shiver from head to foot. 'What would you like, Karl Otto Meininger, who is the fourth wealthiest man in the world?'\n\n'Please don't.'\n\n'Hmmm.' The snake slipped around the back of Karl's neck and came to rest on his other shoulder. He breathed into Karl's right ear. 'I think I can taste how many times other people have said that to you and how many times you have ignored them.'\n\n'I didn't mean it.'\n\n'Of course you did,' purred the snake. 'You can be honest with me. You might as well. You ignored them every time, didn't you?'\n\nKarl made a kind of garckling noise that he recalled other people making when he forced them to work all night on their children's birthdays, or fired them the day before Christmas, or decided to knock down their homes just to prove he could. Then he said, 'I'll give you everything I have.' Other people had told him that, too.\n\nThe snake rubbed his head against Karl's ear and Karl heard the rustle of immaculate scales. 'I cannot take everything you have.' The snake paused. '...I will only take everything you are.'\n\nAnd then the snake opened his beautiful mouth and his tiny needle teeth shone white as bone.\n\nIn the morning Mary woke up early and discovered that she felt more rested and cosy than she ever had before. When she rolled on to her side there was Lanmo coiled on her pillow. He may or may not have been sleeping, but certainly his eyes were closed and he was making small th-th-th noises which might have been the way that a snake snores. Mary smiled at him and kissed the smooth, warm top of his head where it glimmered in the dull light of an autumn dawn which was shuffling in around the closed door. 'Good morning, Lanmo.'\n\nThe snake – who was in fact perfectly awake – opened his ruby eyes and licked the end of Mary's nose to make her laugh. 'Good morning, Mary. Did you sleep better and deeper than you ever have?' Then he sleeked along the blanket and wriggled and tied himself in knots and untangled himself out very straight and then curled his body into a nice curve and raised his head. 'That is how a snake wakes up,' he explained. 'If you ever see another snake doing that do not interrupt her, or him. In fact... do not have anything to do with snakes who are not me. One never knows.'\n\n'What if I see a very lovely snake?' asked Mary, teasing.\n\n'There are no snakes lovelier than me,' said Lanmo firmly. 'May I have some more cheese for breakfast? I am tired.'\n\n'Didn't you sleep well?'\n\n'Not really.'\n\nMary did sneak a nubbin of cheese out of the larder for the snake and fed him while he rode on the top of her satchel, peering about over her shoulder as she walked along in the frosty air, all the way to school.\n\n'Snakes do not go to school. Everything important in the world is written on the inside of our eggs. When we have finished reading and memorising what is written, we break our eggs and hatch.'\n\n'Really?' said Mary as she strolled across the playground, feeling much less lonely than usual.\n\n'Perhaps,' said the snake, looking absolutely just like a snake and licking the interesting air very quickly, because it had so much to tell him. Several teachers looked straight at Lanmo, but because a small girl never does have a golden snake calmly reclining on her satchel they assumed that they were looking at a strange kind of handle, or that their glasses were dirty, or that they were mistaken. None of the children spotted the snake, because they were busy with each other and, as usual, had no time for Mary.\n\nWhile Mary sat in a number of classrooms and learned about the colours of money and the lengths of different silences and the average weights of heights, the snake nipped and slipped from classroom to classroom and explored.\n\nThe snake found the school very odd. In one room the teacher was telling the class, 'You will see on the board all of the answers for today's National Test. You will spend this period copying down the answers on to your National Test Papers. If you have copied down the answers correctly you will then be clever enough to take next week's National Test.'\n\nA small boy with ginger hair who sat at the back of the classroom put up his hand and asked, 'But shouldn't we be learning things like why the wind blows and which way is up and how to tie our shoe-laces and what is love?'\n\n'No,' said the teacher. 'We should be proving that we are clever so that the National Test Assessors can assess us, and when we have been assessed we can move on to our next assessment.'\n\nThe small boy with ginger hair – his name was Paul – then asked, 'Why is there a golden snake lying along the front of your desk pretending to be a ruler?'\n\nIt's true, our friend Lanmo was lying very still on the teacher's desk so that he could listen and find out how humans taught their young without the help of educational eggs.\n\nThe teacher looked at her desk and, of course, could not see the wonderful snake, because wonderful snakes are not permitted on desks and do not form any part of National Tests and are therefore invisible. She was, however, puzzled and quiet for a moment and had a chilly feeling in the pit of her stomach.\n\nWhile the teacher felt uneasy, the snake raised his slender and perfect head and looked directly at Paul.\n\nPaul gazed back into those two tiny eyes, red as bravery and sunsets, and deep as chasms. The boy felt his heart beating flipperty-pipperty in his chest and understood – because he was an extremely sensible boy – that something remarkable was happening, something educational, something he would have to remember.\n\nAnd the snake flickered his tongue out and tasted the teacher's bewilderment and the emptiness of the classroom and the dreaming of the children. And he tasted the bright and growing and puzzling brain whirling away inside Paul's head and the light and clean and flipperty-pipperty heart in his chest.\n\nThen the snake winked at Paul.\n\nThis made Paul giggle.\n\nAnd while Paul was giggling, the snake vanished, just as Paul had guessed a wonderful snake might. This made Paul giggle even more.\n\n'Why are you giggling, you silly boy?' shouted the teacher. Whenever she felt unsure or foolish she would cheer herself up by shouting. All the children understood this; it was part of their education.\n\n'I'm not,' said Paul. He wasn't lying, because he had stopped giggling now. He said this with great certainty, because suddenly he felt certain of all kinds of things and a little bit taller. And somehow his certainty made the teacher recall that she had to make sure the class copied down the National Answers to the National Questions exactly as they should and so she left him be and did some more shouting.\n\nOnce she was distracted, Paul grinned a big grin, one he could feel right down in his toes.\n\nWhen it was time for the lunch break all the children went out into the playground and played various games. Over by the fence Paul surprised himself by scoring a goal in his football game. And near the outside of the Measuring Department two little girls with Very Attractive curly blonde hair were skipping with their Very Attractive Friends.\n\nLanmo was perched on Mary's shoulder, curled up small like a brooch with only one of his ruby eyes showing. He wanted to learn about playing and what children were like when they were away from teachers and out in the wild. 'Mary, your school is a very strange place.'\n\nMary whispered to him out of the side of her mouth, 'I think it's quite a normal kind of school, really.'\n\nLanmo thought for a moment. 'That explains a great deal.'\n\nMary was in a happy mood because she had a friend and, although usually she wouldn't have tried any such thing, she walked up to the tallest of the Very Attractive Girls gathered beside the Measuring Department and asked, 'May I play at skipping with you?' She was a polite girl.\n\n'Fffuh,' said the Very Attractive Girl. We won't bother with her name. She isn't nice.\n\nMary didn't know what 'fffuh' meant, so she asked again, 'May I, please?' And waited quietly.\n\n'No, of course you can't. You're weird and you smell of vegetables and your dress is old-old-old, and we all saw you whispering to your shoulder like a mad witch.'\n\nAt this, every one of the other Very Attractive Girls began to dance and hop prettily round Mary and to chant, 'Mad witch, mad witch, Mary, Mary, mad witch. Mad witch, mad witch, Mary, Mary, mad witch.'\n\nNaturally, this kind of thing always made Mary feel horrible and if she hadn't tried very hard not to she would have burst into tears. Today she was with her friend Lanmo and so she just stood very still and folded her arms and looked at her scuffed old shoes that were a bit too small. She was sad and her shoes made her even sadder.\n\nBut on her shoulder, Lanmo was bristling his scales with fury. This sounded like someone dragging a sword along stones in the far, far distance. He was so furious that he actually began to rattle and he wasn't that kind of snake at all. He lifted his head and said in his most persuasive voice, loudly and clearly, 'You should start skipping again, girls who are not beautiful. That's what you would like to do right now.'\n\nAlthough the Very Attractive Girls weren't exactly sure who had suggested this, they stopped dancing and chanting and did indeed organise themselves into a line waiting to skip while a pair of girls held the ends of a big skipping rope.\n\nExcept, of course, they were not holding the ends of a big skipping rope, because the snake had rushed down from Mary's shoulder and grown into an extremely long and flexible shape and he had made sure that he appeared to be a much more persuasive rope than the real rope. Because sometimes magnificent lies are much easier to believe than boring truths, the girls had duly picked him up and now began to swing him back and forth and round and round and to leap across him. He found this rather delightful and, as Mary watched, he glittered and glistened in the winter sunlight and flickered his tongue while he gathered up news of how mean and tiny the Very Attractive Girls were inside.\n\nThis made Mary laugh and clap her hands together.\n\nNow, skipping over a snake is a strange game and has special rules. It makes odd things happen. Without in any way meaning to, the Very Attractive Girls found that they were skipping faster and faster and faster. Their tiny, shapely feet were kicking and stepping in ways that they never had and the arms of the Very Attractive Girls who were turning what they thought was a rope were impossible to see clearly any more, because their arms were swirling round so high and low and terribly quickly. The snake shone and chuckled as the Very Attractive Girls' arms and legs and bodies jumped and flapped and twirled and windmilled, and they all grew hot and tired and worried. But then the Very Attractive Girls became scared.\n\nMary saw their Very Attractive Faces change, and although it pleased her a tiny bit that they were unhappy, she also felt sorry for them. 'Lanmo, perhaps you should stop now.'\n\nBut the snake was having too much fun. He was also still furious.\n\nSlowly, everyone in the playground stopped what they were doing and stared in amazement at the huge, strange, glittering, blurring shape which the pelting girls and the lashing snake now made. Even Paul stopped running around with his jumper pulled over his head because he had scored yet another goal – which made three.\n\n'Lanmo, please,' Mary said, extra quietly.\n\nAnd because Mary had said please and meant it and because she was his friend, Lanmo did stop, extremely suddenly, by changing his shape again and sliding out of the Very Attractive Girls' sore and weary hands. At this, the girls mostly fell over, or stumbled about as if they must be dizzy. One of them was sick. And, to be honest, they no longer looked even a Tiny Bit Attractive. Their perfectly formed faces were red and sweaty, their carefully-prepared-this-morning hair was knotted and tangled and their willowy limbs were jangled and twitchy. Not one of the Very Attractive Girls mentioned this, but they knew it in their hearts, and when they looked at each other they were dismayed.\n\nMeanwhile, Lanmo wasn't finished. He altered himself again to become the shape of a golden cobra. Cobras, as you will know, have a broad hood that they spread to either side of their head and neck. They also enjoy rearing up impressively and perhaps hissing, and some can even spit venom if they are annoyed. Lanmo was still extremely annoyed, you'll remember, and so he had decided to become a magnificent cobra as tall as a tall grown-up. For a few moments this meant that everyone in the playground couldn't avoid seeing him very clearly for what he was. Even the headmaster, glancing out of his office window, was unable to stop himself noticing that there was a giant glimmering golden cobra rising from the dirty tarmac of the playground. The sight of it made him want to lie down at once until everything went back to normal, and so he hid under his desk. Once he was there, he shut his eyes and pretended that nothing was wrong so hard that he was never quite the same again.\n\nDown in the playground, Lanmo was ignoring the children who were now running up and down and screaming and waving their arms about in highly satisfying ways. He was peering into the eyes of the Very Attractive Girl who had been so rude to Mary. As a result of this, the Very Attractive Girl couldn't move. She could only stare back.\n\nAnd Lanmo gently, gently opened his mouth and let the world see his needle teeth that were as white as bones.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "'No,' said Mary. 'Please, Lanmo.'", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "And she reached out her hand to stop the snake from perhaps doing something wicked.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "OOC, Use the word 'three' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lanmo was so furious that he didn't quite notice Mary in time to stop himself as he darted his head forwards and so his smallest, smallest tooth just brushed the edge of her right hand.\n\nAnd so then Mary fell.\n\nMary woke up at home in her own little bed. She felt tired, but also really hungry and excited. It was dark, so a number of hours must have passed since she was in the playground. Over to her left, when she looked about, she could see the glow of Lanmo's eyes. He was no longer in the form of a vast and terrifying cobra. He was perhaps a bit smaller than usual and he seemed thinner. He wriggled gently towards her and rubbed his warm forehead against her ear. Then he said to her in his best and kindest voice, 'I am so sorry. I was angry.'\n\n'What happened? Did I faint?'\n\n'That is what the grown-ups have decided to think. They have told everyone that cobras never come to this country and are never golden or as tall as a tall grown-up when they stand. They have decided that nothing especially unusual happened today, or could ever happen, and that everyone must have been asleep and dreaming the same dream. The school will now give pupils new tests on standing up, falling over and sleeping. There will also be Dream Examination Forms to take home and fill in so that all possibly dangerous dreams can be recorded and monitored. And the headmaster has retired to take up beekeeping.'\n\nMary nodded. 'Yes, I suppose all that would happen. Those are the kinds of things they would do.' Children are good at understanding grown-ups, but grown-ups are rarely able to understand children, which is odd because they have already been children and ought to remember what it's like.\n\nLanmo whispered, 'Your mother and father were worried about you. They borrowed the school janitor's wheelbarrow and brought you home in it and then they put you to bed. They have only just left you, because I pushed the idea into their heads that you are all better now and they can leave you be and go to sleep.'\n\n'Am I better?'\n\nThe snake rubbed her ear again. 'My bite is a serious bite. I am so sorry. Even brushing my littlest tooth with your hand was enough to take the colour from twenty-one of your lovely hairs. When you look tomorrow you will see that you have a white streak now, going back from your forehead.' He paused. 'It will be something to talk about when you are older and will seem dramatic.' He paused again. 'I truly am very sorry. Your white hairs show that I have taken a tiny piece of your livingness from you.'\n\nBut Mary was very young and full of livingness so this did not worry her. 'Am I better now, though?'\n\n'You are as better as humans get.'\n\n'Will you stay with me? I like you. Only maybe you shouldn't go to school with me again. In case anyone else is nasty to me and makes you cross.'\n\n'I think you will find that no one is nasty to you at school, not ever again. They will be very polite to you from now on,' said the snake, sounding as boastful as he usually did. Only then he whispered more gloomily, 'I will stay until the morning, but then I will go away for a while.'\n\nThis worried Mary much more than having twenty-one white hairs. 'Why?'\n\n'I am going because I feel guilty and I have never felt guilty before. I harmed you. I have to think about this until I understand it.'\n\n'Well, how long will it take you to think? And where will you think and will it be nice and will you be able to get cheese there?' asked Mary, because the snake was her friend.\n\n'I will be safe. I am never in danger,' said Lanmo, making all of those words seem a bit sad.\n\n'You didn't mean to hurt me. And I don't really mind.' Mary imagined her white streak and how it would be an exciting thing and pictured herself being a remarkable woman in exploring clothes and adventuring boots with her dramatic hair blowing about in the wind on the top of a mountain she had just climbed.\n\nLanmo sighed, tasting her thoughts with his clever tongue. 'Yes, being an explorer with a white streak in your hair would be exciting. You may say that you were changed by an encounter with an extraordinary and beautiful snake if you like.'\n\n'Oh, no,' replied Mary. 'I will say it was caused by a shark bite.'\n\n'As you wish. Although some of my finest acquaintances are sharks. Sleep now, though, because you should rest.'\n\n'But I don't wa—' began Mary, because she would rather have talked all night to Lanmo and persuaded him not to go away. But he had persuaded her with his eyes that she should sleep. He was extremely persuasive.\n\nWhen it was dawn and Mary woke, Lanmo was snuggled under her chin, all warm like a little scarf. She felt him wriggle as if he were pretending to be cheerful and not quite managing. Then he slipped along to rest on her pillow and look at her. 'You may kiss my nose if you wish.'\n\nMary did so, frowning a little because this seemed like goodbye.\n\n'You must now take care of yourself for a while. Try to ignore your teachers without offending them. And do not talk to any other snakes. And avoid lions. And sharks. You will find that the girls like you now, although you will discover most of them are boring to speak with and quite unpleasant. Their eggs must have had nothing at all written inside them. You might enjoy talking to the ginger-headed boy called Paul. And when you eat cheese you can think of me... And when the sun sets I will wish you sweet dreams and you will have them. That is how you will know I am thinking of you and that you are my friend and I am yours.'\n\n'Well, when will you come back?'\n\n'When I have learned not to be angry.'\n\n'Do you still feel guilty?'\n\n'Yes.'\n\n'Why should you be guilty when I have forgiven you and I would like you to stay?'\n\n'I don't know, but I think that is how being guilty works. I will return as soon as I can.' And then the snake shimmered all his scales so that he looked especially beautiful to remember and he flickered his tongue at her ear and he sighed. After that he was gone.\n\nThe snake Mary called Lanmo was away from her for a month and then another month and then for much longer than Mary would have liked. She kept a tally of the days in her notebook so that she could be cross with him when he did appear. Then she kept a tally so that she could show him she had missed him very much and noticed that he hadn't been with her.\n\nIn the meantime, she went to school and found the other pupils were, indeed, as nice to her as they could manage. Most of them were quite boring. She learned her lessons quietly, even though she didn't always agree with them, and sometimes she went for walks with the boy called Paul and they would collect bottle tops, or string, or discuss new names for stars and what the moon might be thinking and whether it minded very much when it shrank to a curvy line, or swelled up to a silver-yellow eye that stared.\n\nWhatever she did, she never forgot the snake, and when she rested her head on her pillow she wished Lanmo well and then enjoyed the wonderful dreams he sent her. She never mentioned those dreams on her Dream Assessment Form, of course; she just made things up about riding ponies and making pies.\n\nAway from Mary, the snake she called Lanmo travelled to many far lands in the world and many near lands. He rode in tiny boats and wriggled into deep mines full of gold and coal and all manner of other substances which humans believe to be precious. He looked out across desert cities from the tops of new buildings in construction and looked out across rubble and dust from the ruins of buildings which had been destroyed. He sat up nicely in expensive restaurants and lay under pillows in hospitals. He slipped very delicately here and there in great towns built out of tents and slid along inside little wooden shelters and into shallow wells and cups and between folded blankets. He watched at the corners of streets next to busy crossings and quiet crossings and lounged across the dashboards of cars. He was very busy. Lanmo was always very busy. He could not remember a time when he had been idle, although he did, if he thought about it hard, recall a time when there had been far fewer humans and more trees. Lanmo liked trees. They were good for climbing. Sometimes he sent Mary special dreams where the two of them journeyed through old, old forests and scrambled and undulated together up to the highest branches where they could see the sunrise and be immensely glad together. This made him happy. It was much better than just climbing up and then climbing back down again.\n\nThe snake knew that he would have been much busier had it not been for humans helping him with his work. When night rolled over the curve of the world and across whichever country he was visiting, Lanmo would sometimes be able to rest and curl himself into a coil and flicker his clever tongue through the breeze so that he could taste how many, many times the humans of each darkened land were busy instead of him. They worked hard and saved him the task of visiting this or that other human and showing them his needle teeth as white as bones and making them hear his beautiful voice and look into his honest red eyes. But this did not make Lanmo love the humans. In fact it made him think rather badly of them, although his opinion made no difference to either the humans or his duties.\n\nOne evening, Lanmo came to call upon a grandmother. Lanmo met a lot of grandmothers. This granny was seventy-seven years, three months and fourteen days old and she was called Mrs Dorothy Higginbottom. When the snake arrived at the foot of Granny Higginbottom's bed she was sitting up in it, leaning against her pillows and turning over a page in her magazine about terrible things happening to strangers and amusing things happening to cats. Unlike many of the other grandmothers, as Granny Higginbottom glanced beyond a picture of a cat wearing a knitted waistcoat and looking annoyed, she was able to see Lanmo.\n\nShe put down her magazine. 'Hello,' she said in a whispery grandmothery voice.\n\n'Hello,' said Lanmo in his best pearls-and-chocolate voice. 'I have come—'\n\n'Oh, I know,' interrupted Granny Higginbottom. 'I know quite well why you have come and I am content, but I would like to talk a while, if you don't mind.'\n\nSince leaving Mary, because he had been too angry and then too guilty, Lanmo had missed talking to a sensible human. This meant he was happy to smooth along, all the way up the bed, until he could rest on the covers above Granny Higginbottom's lap. 'What would you like to talk about?'\n\n'Well, I suppose it is too late to discuss most things.'\n\nThe snake nodded and made himself comfortable in the warmth of the quilt. He waited. Although he was always busy, he was never in a hurry. That was the nature of the snake.\n\nGranny Higginbottom began: 'I think I would like to tell someone how much I dislike my grandchildren. They are very mean-spirited and when they come to visit they bring me grapefruit which I do not like and presents that other people have given them and which they don't want. I once found a little card they had forgotten to remove from one offering – a plastic box containing nail clippers and a nose-hair remover. The card said: \"Please enjoy this free gift from Gentleman's Grooming Monthly.\"'\n\n'That is unimpressive,' said the snake. No one but Mary had ever given him any kind of present. She had given him food and kisses and conversation and company.\n\n'Quite,' said Granny Higginbottom. 'I gave birth to three children – two girls and a boy. I loved them and showed them sunsets and the insides of apples and let them hear the voices in shells and we walked in meadows and slid on slides, but the boy and one of the girls were only ever interested in shiny pennies and gossip and making their other sister cry. And the children they gave birth to and raised are terrible children.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "My cruel daughter and my cruel son come and visit me with their herds of ghastly offspring every Sunday.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "While some of them stay in here with me, I can hear the rest of them searching my house for nice ornaments to sell, or jewels, or money.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I ask them, \"What is that noise of someone lifting up my floorboards?\" and they tell me, \"Nothing, silly Granny – it's the wind in the rafters.\" I ask them, \"What's that noise like greedy fingers opening my boxes and rifling through my cupboards?\" and they tell me, \"It's just the rats in this big, old house, silly Granny. You should let us sell it and move you into a home.\" And I ask them, \"What's that sound like my pictures being taken down and my chairs being carried away?\" and they tell me, \"You are going mad in your old age, silly Granny, and you should let us put you in a home at once and take care of all your belongings so they don't bother you any longer.\" It has begun to wear me out. The only pleasant thing they do is send me a bunch of roses on the first day of January. Roses are my favourite and they make my new year smell sweet and they fill it with colours.'\n\n'That would be pleasant,' agreed the snake, tasting the essence of Granny Higginbottom which was kind and puzzled and very, very tired. 'What happened to your other daughter?'\n\n'I don't know. I think they sent her away. Or maybe they drove her away. Inside my mattress I have hidden my engagement ring and my wedding ring and the ring my husband gave me when we had been married for forty years – that was just before he died – and I have also tucked away four jewels and sixteen gold pieces. That is all I have worth having and it is for my good daughter, but I do not know where to send it. When I am gone my dreadful other daughter and my horrible son and their ghastly children will come and take everything.' Granny Higginbottom fell silent and looked very sad. Since the snake had left Mary he understood a lot more about being sad.\n\nThe snake tasted the air again with his wise, quick tongue. 'Your daughter is in the land which is four lands to the left of here and two lands higher.'\n\n'And is she safe?'\n\nThe snake's tongue flickered again, fast as fast can be. He thought for a moment. 'She is safe and comfortable and content. There is only one part of her that is sad and that is the part which remembers you. Your other children told her they would harm you if she didn't go away and never write and never try to send you any messages. But on the first day of January every year she has sent you roses to make your new year sweet and fill it with colours.'\n\n'Ah.' Granny Higginbottom's eyes became a deeper blue and she shed tears which tasted to Lanmo of the moon and other wildernesses. Then she smiled. 'That explains it.' She patted the quilt near Lanmo's head. 'Is it time for us to begin?'\n\n'Well... usually... yes.' But Lanmo paused and thought; the old lady had lived so long she might know many things. So he asked her, 'I have lately been very angry. And I have also felt guilt for the first time. This troubles me. And I have wandered the earth, and the anger and the guilt have not left me. They have been as close as my shadow.'\n\n'Hmmm...' Granny Higginbottom tickled behind his ear, which he normally wouldn't have allowed, but it seemed to comfort him. 'Then you love someone. How strange. I didn't think you would.'\n\n'Love?'\n\n'To be very angry, you must first have loved very much, or have been very much afraid. Now, I do not think you could be afraid of anything or anyone...'\n\n'That is true,' Lanmo nodded. 'At least, I think that is true.'\n\nWhen Granny Higginbottom heard doubt in Lanmo's voice she added, 'Not unless perhaps you were afraid for that which you love... Is there something you love, snake?'\n\n'No.'\n\n'Ah. Then there is someone you love.'\n\nAt this, Lanmo found he could not manage to say anything in his wonderful voice. He simply leaned against the old lady's hand and let her gently rub his golden scales in a way that he liked and that reminded him of his friend Mary. Granny Higginbottom told him quietly, 'Love is a terrible thing.'\n\n'So it seems,' whispered Lanmo.\n\n'But it is also wonderful.'\n\n'Perhaps.' He eased a little nearer Granny Higginbottom. 'Perhaps it is.' Then he looked into her eyes with great seriousness. 'I promise that I will take your three rings and your four jewels and your sixteen gold pieces away with me before anyone else can find them. I will carry them to your daughter's house. She will recognise your rings and she will know you sent them.'\n\n'And will you meet with her?' Granny Higginbottom sounded worried.\n\n'No. I will not meet with your daughter for a long while yet,' said Lanmo. 'But I swear that I will give her your treasures.'\n\n'I would not have thought you were the kind of snake to make promises.'\n\n'I am not.' The snake came as close to smiling as he could. 'But maybe I am changing,' he explained. 'I am not sure.'\n\nThe old lady smiled and laid her head back against her pillows and closed her eyes. Then she let Lanmo, who had made himself very small, tuck in under her chin.\n\n'Good night, snake, and thank you.'\n\n'I need not be thanked,' whispered the snake.\n\n'Will this be quick?'\n\n'This will be quick and this will be for ever,' said the snake. 'Good night, Granny Higginbottom.'\n\nAnd when he was done the snake took up the old lady's treasures and wriggled them onto his back which he made very broad and safe, like a golden dish, and he rushed over the lands between him and the lost daughter's house. When he reached her threshold he tested the air one last time and was sure that the daughter had a heart as good and deep as her mother had once had until it fell still. Then Lanmo whisked, faster than anyone could have seen, in under doors and behind furniture and he left the three rings, the four jewels and the sixteen gold pieces on the kitchen table.\n\nIn the morning, Granny Higginbottom's lost daughter came downstairs to discover her twin girls playing with bright gold pieces and jewels and with three rings that she recognised at once as belonging to her mother.\n\nThe daughter sat down then and cried although her children did not know why, and she hugged them very close. And when her husband came downstairs, ready for his breakfast, she held him, too, and she called out a loud and red and towering word from no language that any of them spoke and yet they understood it. They clung to each other and the snake tasted that they were sad and also that they were covered in love.\n\nThe snake watched them from a shadow between the saucepans and then he went away and was busy in the many different countries that humans had marked out across the earth to keep themselves divided.\n\nWhile Lanmo carried out his duties among the peoples of the world, Mary performed her duties as a little girl. She grew older and taller and her arms and legs were sometimes exceptionally clumsy and sometimes exceptionally graceful – she just didn't know which would happen when and that was rather tiresome for her. Mary performed her duties as a schoolgirl, too, and learned the National Limits of Happiness and the Leisure Percentages and the names of prominent generals, living and dead, and the movements of troops during various famous campaigns. She taught herself how to spell marvellously long and interesting words like photolithography and also tasty words like peristalsis and reticulatus. And she also taught herself how to hop on the spot without stopping (she could get up to nearly three hundred and fifty) and how to burn toast. She had learned all of her mother's smiles and all of her father's hugs and vice versa. She was quite happy. When she had spare moments, she would play in the tiny garden and daydream about exploring. When it was cold, she would imagine standing on the back of a sledge and asking her huskies to pull her – padpadpadpadpadpadpad – across snowfields and past polar bears and penguins who would admire her caribou-skin parka and her look of determination. When it was hot, she imagined walking in desert mountains the colour of biscuits in sturdy boots and talking to lizards, or squeezing through the gaps in jungles.\n\n'You must never squeeze through gaps in jungles.' Mary looked down and there was the neat shape of Lanmo around her wrist, blinking at her, maybe a little nervously. The snake angled his head as if he would like to nuzzle her palm, but didn't know if she would like it. 'You are longer than I remember. And your hair has swelled. You are very changeable.'\n\nMary was delighted to see her friend, but also annoyed because more than two years had passed since the snake had last appeared and she felt it was inconsiderate of him to be away for such a large amount of time. 'And you are very late. You haven't been to visit me for eight hundred and twelve days, three hours and several minutes. I have written out the days in my notebook, if you would like to check.'\n\n'I'm sorry.' Lanmo did look sorry. 'I lost track of the time.'\n\n'That's no excuse,' Mary said.\n\n'And I had a great deal to do.'\n\nThe snake was mumbling because he felt ashamed, but even so Mary couldn't help enjoying his beautiful voice and being glad that he was there. She decided to sound cross a little longer, though, to teach him a lesson. 'Now you sound like a grown-up. They are always being busy instead of doing the things that are important.'\n\n'Promise me with all your heart and your entire attention that you will not ever squeeze through gaps in the jungle – they might contain poisonous spiders, or sharp thorns, or impolite and unpleasant and shockingly ugly snakes. And be careful in deserts because the sands also contain spiders and rude and horrifying snakes and scorpions and mountain lions. Be careful everywhere. In fact, perhaps you should stay in your city instead.'\n\nMary lifted her hand so that the snake was level with her face and smiled at her friend and kissed his head with great solemnity. 'Welcome back, Lanmo. I would offer you some cheese, but we have none. There has been a difficulty with the railway lines that go to the countryside where they keep the cows and the milk.' She spun round and round after that, because she was so full of happiness, and she laughed in a way that Lanmo was sure no other human could laugh. He shivered his scales so that they made a silvery noise, like someone with cool fingers playing a crystal harp far away in a peaceful place. He found that he was as happy as his friend.\n\nStill, as he and Mary spun round, he noticed that the city looked a good deal sadder than he remembered. There were angry words painted on some of the walls and the pavements were broken in places and not clean. There were fewer kites flying and the ones that did fly looked as if they had simply been forgotten and left alone on the rooftops and balconies with no one caring. He licked the air and it no longer tasted of laughter. In the direction of the shining towers there were even more high buildings with even more sharp edges cutting at the sky. The new towers tasted empty.\n\nAnd in the little garden, Mary's parents had planted beans and cabbages around the roses. They had also added pots containing herbs and tomatoes and a deep tub which was trying to hold potato plants. The plants looked quite angry and as if they didn't want to make potatoes this year, or maybe ever.\n\n'Oh, but let me show you this,' said Mary and ran into her house, carrying the snake balanced on her palm like a tiny emperor with no arms and legs. 'There,' she announced, coming to a halt. (There was never far to run in Mary's apartment.) In the corner of the tiny kitchen, playing with a little wooden ball, was a kitten that Mary's parents had allowed her to have. The kind lady who owned the bakery had a mother cat who had given birth to four kittens: a white and orange and brown one, a white and grey and brown one, a ginger and white one and a black-all-over one. The black-all-over one had the cleverest eyes and so Mary had picked it.\n\nThe bakery lady needed cats to stop the mice and rats from eating the flour. There were a lot of rats now, but she couldn't afford to feed more than two cats to chase them, so she had to give away all but two of the kittens. She could also no longer afford to give away bread.\n\nThe snake studied the kitten for a moment, 'Wonderful,' he said and then, before Mary could say anything at all, Lanmo had sleeked down from her hand and onto the floor, opening his mouth wider and wider as he went. He then began to swallow the kitten, beginning with its head and its front paws.\n\n'No!' cried Mary.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At this, the snake frowned and stopped moving. The kitten's back legs wriggled as they poked out of Lanmo's mouth and Mary could hear a quizzical meooommh? from inside the snake as the kitten tried to ask what was happening, because it had never been swallowed by anything before.\n\n'Gnnnph?' asked the snake in return.\n\n'No, no, no,' said Mary. 'That is Shade and he is my kitten and you are not to eat him, not even a bit.'\n\n'Gmmngn?'\n\n'You are not to eat my kitten.'\n\nThe snake sighed as well as a snake can with its mouth full of kitten. 'Gngngn-agh-agh-kkkahh,' he said as he gradually coughed up the kitten. The snake then wriggled his head and shook, until the kitten dropped out of his mouth and ended up sitting – looking rather surprised and wet – on the kitchen floor. The kitten blinked and then sneezed – meooff – and started to lick its fur back into the proper order.\n\nLanmo used his most formal and embarrassed voice, standing up so that he looked very slightly like a short, respectable gentleman made of gold with some of the bits missing. 'I am sorry, Mary. I misunderstood. I thought because you had no cheese that you were giving me this delicious... I mean this lovely kitten to... um...' He said this last word very softly, 'Eat.'\n\n'I was introducing you.'\n\n'Mary, you should never introduce kittens to snakes.'\n\n'But you're not a snake – you're my friend.'\n\nLanmo slid carefully away from the kitten, who was now lying on his back and playing with his own paws, just as if he hadn't nearly been dinner only a few moments before. 'I am your friend.' He cleared his throat. 'But I am also a snake. And a snake is a snake is a snake.' He flickered out his tongue to taste if he was forgiven and then he darted forwards like poured metal and reappeared on Mary's hand and reached up to tickle her eyebrows with his tongue. 'I think it made me sad not to see you.'\n\n'Well, I know it made me sad not to see you.'\n\nAfter this, Mary explained that she had an appointment and that she wished she had known the snake was coming, but that it was Saturday and Saturday was a day for appointments.\n\n'May I come with you?'\n\n'I don't think so,' Mary told him and then she went away to her little room and came back smelling of lilies and wearing an extremely pleasant dress which she had bought from a neighbour and altered herself, because she did, after all, know how to sew quite well, even though learning how had been irritating.\n\nThe snake did not wish to pry and so did not taste the air around her, but let her go. Then Lanmo pretended to be string all afternoon so that the kitten could play with him. At first this was slightly humiliating, but eventually the snake rather liked wriggling just the end of his tail and then dashing away when the kitten pounced, or rubbing the kitten's tummy and making him purr, or darting underneath him, so that he fell over into a soft heap. Once the kitten was tired – and it takes a long time to tire out a kitten – the snake wound itself into coils like a basket and the kitten slept inside his warm scales with one soft paw lolling over the side. When Mary's parents came home after spending the day at a market, selling a few ornaments and pictures they did not need, they simply saw the dozing kitten and assumed that it must be asleep on a blanket or in a basket, because kittens are never known to sleep in the arms of snakes. (Of course snakes don't have arms, but they can hug people and animals if they choose to.)\n\nWhen Mary came back home, she seemed especially happy and was singing a little song under her breath.\n\nYou are the night with sunshine\n\nYou are the ocean with no shore\n\nYou are the bird that sings wine\n\nYou are the lion with no claw.\n\nAnd be my honour and be mine\n\nAnd be my glory and be mine\n\nAnd be my living and be mine\n\nMy friend, my love, be mine.\n\nDuring dinner, the snake waited patiently under Mary's napkin while she and her parents ate their bread made of apologetic flour with specks of sand in it and drank their soup made of cabbage leaves from the garden and water and a handful of rice.\n\nThen the little family sat together on the couch – which was most of their furniture – all snuggled and huddled under a big rug against the cold. Mary was tucked in between her parents and Lanmo was tucked in with her, his clever head and his observant eyes peeping over the top of the blanket. He liked being warm like this and feeling what a human home was like. The snake couldn't help noticing, though, that the bright rug that used to cover the shabby floorboards of the living-room had disappeared and so had the vase that used to stand on the table with its wide mouth open, asking for flowers. And the table had gone, too.\n\nMary's father read to everyone by the yellowy glow of a tired lightbulb. He chose a story they all enjoyed and knew almost by heart about a lucky young woodcutter's son who once gave a cup of water to a thirsty old lady who passed by his garden. The old lady appeared to be poor and scraggly and perhaps a little bit strange, but it turned out that she was a magical person and kept on granting the woodcutter wishes and making him have adventures and introducing him to knights in armour and wizards. The woodcutter found all this a bit alarming and wasn't always pleased to wake up in a crystal mountain with a task to carry out, or to be sent off on a quest to find something impossible, but he was polite and just carried on anyway. In the end, while he was voyaging between peculiar islands in a talking boat, he met a very kind and lovely stonemason who ended up being his wife, so mostly he was glad that he had given the old lady a drink when she needed it.\n\nMary's father decided to read out the passage where the woman on the island puts down her chisel and confesses her undying love. While he did this, Mary's mother nudged her once or twice, and it was clear to the snake that both Mary's parents were trying to suggest that she might herself have found someone she liked as much as a stonemason might love a woodcutter. Mary kept rather quiet about all this, but she did giggle now and then and squeeze the snake's tail slightly too hard when a sentence involving a first kiss was recited.\n\nWhen the electricity was turned off at nine p.m., because of the rationing, everyone said goodnight and kissed and wished everyone sweet dreams and then got ready to sleep. Mother used the bathroom first and then Father and then Mary.\n\nOnce she had turned out her light and slipped into bed, Lanmo settled on her pillow in a contented coil as he had wanted to for so long, his eyes glowing gently. He asked her, 'Mary, can you tell me about love?'\n\n'I don't know what you mean,' said Mary and blushed so that the snake could feel it in the darkness. This was perhaps the only lie she ever told the snake, although probably we can forgive her, because very few humans understand all there is to know about love and maybe she didn't want to say something wrong and mislead her friend.\n\n'Mary, for many, many centuries I have travelled in every land of the earth and I have met many, many humans. At one time I did my work amongst them without troubling myself to know or understand them. This was partly because they seem very complicated and strange creatures and partly because they do not last very long. Since I met you I have paid them more attention and I have been able to recognise the taste of love in a great number of them. Some of them love places and some of them love things and some of them love themselves and some of them love other people. You taste of the love of other people.'\n\n'Well, I love you. You are my friend. And you are here.'\n\nThe snake tasted the air and coughed in a way that indicated he was a little bit impatient and would like Mary to be plain with him. 'That has a nice taste,' he said. 'It tastes of fresh mice and the steam from ironing clean clothes and of sunshine.' He looked at her very deeply with his intelligent red eyes. 'But you also taste of the love which is for one particular person whom you want to kiss a great deal. That taste is flavoured with honeysuckle and pepper.'\n\n'Oh...' Mary hugged herself and smiled in a way that made the room brighter. 'That boy you said I should talk to who was called Paul... He and I like bats and cats and we enjoy floating and boating and we listen to the stars together while we lie on the riverbank where the grass is soft and...'\n\n'Yes?' said the snake, feeling a bit jealous.\n\n'He is a wonderful person. Not wonderful because he is magic like you, but wonderful because he is Paul.'\n\n'Am I not wonderful because I am Lanmo?'\n\n'Of course you are,' said Mary, but then she rushed on to a long description of Paul's hair and how he walked and the funny and clever things he said, and although Lanmo tried very hard to be glad for her because she was so full-up-to-the-top with joy, he did also get quite bored. Eventually, he fell asleep.\n\nIt was almost time for the sun to rise when Lanmo woke. In fact, he had been woken by Mary's voice finally trailing off into silence. This was not because she had run out of good things to say about Paul, it was simply because she had eventually become too tired to be quite so heartily in love and so her body had insisted that she drift away into a dream about exploring fascinating caves full of jewels and seams of silver and gold and stalactites lollopping down from the vaulted roofs and stalagmites lollopping upwards. Paul was not with her in her dream and this was the beginning of her realising that loving him might mean she would not become a famous adventurer after all. Not unless he also liked adventures. Somehow, she had never managed to mention her plans for being an explorer to Paul. This was because they were very important to her and she didn't want Paul to laugh at them, or snort down his nose the way he snorted down his nose when they talked about the silly people who couldn't hear the stars and the silly people who liked lying on carpets and sofas when they could lie on the soft grass instead and feel it tickle and inhale its scent.\n\nWhile Mary dreamed, the snake sleeked as fast as love to the home of a Great Man Who Loved the People. It was perched on the edge of a cliff with long, high windows that looked out over the ocean and got a perfect view of the storms and the sunsets and passing pods of whales and dolphins. The Great Man Who Loved the People would sometimes open his windows and walk out onto his balcony and stand with his nose pointed into the flattering breeze, wearing his very plain suit that showed he was humble and his very ordinary shoes that showed he was trustworthy and his mildly patterned tie that showed he was sensitive and artistic but not too wild. He felt it was only fair to allow the ocean to look up at a man as wonderful as he was and to be glad as a result. He was sure the whales and dolphins would also find their lives improved by knowing he was there. And now and then he would declaim phrases across the waves to see if they sounded sufficiently inspiring and magnificent. All this was done on behalf of the people, of course, because he was always very humble and mindful of the people.\n\nOn this early, early morning, the Great Man Who Loved the People had been unable to sleep. Yesterday he had received a communication from one of his generals telling him that the war he was conducting on behalf of the people had killed eighty per cent of the enemies of the people. There was only one enemy city left standing, the City of Thoth. It was filled with women and children and the elderly. The general had written to say that the City of Thoth had surrendered and that the war could be over soon, which was good because seventy-five per cent of the Great Man Who Loved the People's people had died fighting it. Everyone wanted a rest now. The Great Man Who Loved the People had thought all night about what would be the most merciful and wise thing to do under these circumstances because he had a soft and refined heart and was tender towards the elderly and always kissed women and children in respectful and popular ways as an expression of love for his people. After much consideration, he had called an official messenger and given him a letter for the general.\n\nThe letter read:\n\nDear General and Commander-in-Chief of Our Magnificent Forces,\n\nAs your humble and loving leader I thank you for your brave service on behalf of the people. I thank you also for your news of the war. The City of Thoth, you say, contains the elderly who are left amongst our enemies. The elderly, as you will know, remember much and contain a great deal of wisdom. If the memory and the wisdom of our enemies remain, then they may rise again and defeat us. Therefore the elderly must be killed. The women of our enemies also remain alive there. They may give birth to a new generation of enemies and may harbour feminine resentments about our treatment of their people. Therefore the women must be killed. The children left alive in the city may grow up to be enemies more vengeful than those we already have and may bear further children and eventually fill the world with deadly foes. Therefore the children must be killed. Twenty-five per cent of my beloved people still remain alive. They have not nobly sacrificed themselves in my defence of their way of life. They have not already wiped the dangerous and threatening City of Thoth from the face of the earth. This means they must be traitors. Therefore the remainder of my people must be killed. Once your men have carried out these necessary measures for the defence of my people, you must explain to them that because they had not already killed the traitors hidden in our glorious country (and the evil citizens of the City of Thoth) they are traitors. Therefore they must kill each other and then themselves. You, my loyal and brave commander, have asked me to end the Great War on Behalf of the People. This means you are not true to the wonderful aims of our Great War on Behalf of the People. You are a traitor. Therefore, once you are sure that everyone else is dead, you must kill yourself.\n\nI send this message with all brotherly love and fellowship, my very dear General.\n\nThe Great Man Who Loved the People read this message aloud a few times to make sure it was sufficiently filled with love and justice. Then he reached out to place the letter in the shaking hands of the now pale-faced messenger.\n\nPerhaps to delay his departure for what would be certain death, the messenger asked, 'Why, oh Glorious Leader, is there a golden snake wound around the railing of your balcony?'", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Great Man Who Loved the People laughed at such a suggestion, but he did turn to study the railing and, strangely, did notice that a beautiful snake he had never seen before was resting there. The snake was twitching the end of his tail and watching him with deeply red eyes. Those eyes disturbed the Great Man Who Loved the People. (We will call him GMWLtP from now on, because his name is too long and he won't be needing it soon.) They reminded him of the light from the first city he had burned, many years before.\n\n'Good morning,' said the snake.\n\nThis made the GMWLtP drop his letter and not even notice the messenger running from the balcony. The messenger kept running from the ballroom beyond it and down the stairs and across the courtyard with its lush and extravagant gardens and on and on across battlefields and ruined villages and through burned orchards until he was back in his family's village. Two of his cousins and his mother were still alive there and he stayed with them and never, ever talked about his time with the GMWLtP.\n\nWhile all that began to happen, the GMWLtP simply stood on the spot and swallowed.\n\n'Over the years you have saved me a great deal of busyness,' said the snake, in his most charming voice. 'You have been determined to do my work for me.' His words fell delicately through the air like silk. 'I do not find that I can like you.' The snake flickered his tongue into the air and tasted the GMWLtP's bewilderment. 'In the past I generally formed no personal opinions about the people I met while I did what I must do. Lately, however, I have been taught to take more interest in the lives of humans and I...' He paused for a moment and frowned, although it was difficult to see this because he had no eyebrows and not really any forehead. 'I truly do not like you. Today I am very happy that we have met.'\n\n'But I am the Great Man Who Loves the People,' blustered the GMWLtP.\n\n'No.' The snake blinked and then let his stare sink and burrow and peer all the way into the soul and heart and thinking of the GMWLtP. 'No, you are just Nigel Simon Beech. And I shall enjoy this.'\n\nAnd the snake opened his mouth and let his teeth shine in the dawn light, as white as bones. Just for a moment.\n\nWhen Mary awoke, Lanmo was back on her pillow, looking very contentedly at her. There was no sign on even the tiniest of the snake's scales that he had travelled thousands of miles since she last faced him.\n\n'Hello, Mary. Shall we go to school?'\n\n'No, silly – today is a Sunday. So first I will go to the cornershop and sweep up and help to stack the shelves – which is my job. Then after lunch we can walk along the Grand Avenue and eat ice cream. I'm allowed to eat one ice cream paid for out of my wages. My parents need the rest of the money since things have become so difficult in so many ways. And sometimes I get to take home dented tins or broken packets.'\n\n'I don't think I would be very interested in sweeping and stacking,' said the snake. 'I will stay here with your mother and father until you are done.'\n\n'It is a bit boring sweeping,' agreed Mary. 'And since rationing there isn't very much to stack any more. I mostly just move the tins around. We really need the money I earn, but I think in a few weeks Mr Paphos will say he can't pay me any more.'\n\nMary looked so sad while she said this that Lanmo felt himself chill all along his spine. Although this taught him a little more about love, it also made him become sad himself and he had the idea that his head hurt and that his eyes stung. To cheer Mary, he rattled his scales so that they sounded like golden feathers on beautiful birds with good hearts and he danced back and forth across her blanket until he was only a shimmer and a glisten of heat and wonder.\n\nThis did indeed allow Mary to forget her troubles. Generally, she tried not to be downhearted and was inclined to be a mostly happy person. And, of course, as the snake could taste, she was in love with Paul, and this lit and warmed a space in her through and through in a manner which kept everything but the cloudiest of thoughts at bay.\n\nSo, after a breakfast of porridge made with water and some tea without milk, Mary went off to Mr Paphos's shop. Lanmo stayed in the cramped living-room, resting along the top of a skirting board and pretending to be a length of spectacularly lovely wiring. Mary's mother and father cleaned up after breakfast and then sat in silence on their couch. They didn't notice the snake at all, partly because they were grown-ups and partly because they were both staring straight ahead at something they thought they could see in their future, something which they didn't like. After a while Mary's father held his wife's hand and Mary's mother leaned her head on her husband's shoulder.\n\n'It will be all right,' said her mother.\n\n'In the end. Maybe,' said her father.\n\nNeither of them sounded as if they believed this was true.\n\nThe snake found that he wanted to stand up as tall as he could and to become awe-inspiring and to announce, 'You must go at once to the Land of Perditi where I know you can be safe for as long as you live! You must listen and go today, or maybe tomorrow morning, and you must take with you only what you can carry for a long, long time without getting tired! Your city is too sad now. Your kites hardly fly. Can't you see that everything has changed? You must leave behind whatever else you have before sad times make you watch it being taken from you! The sad times will do you harm! You must be safe and keep on being alive because Mary loves you and I do... I also... I have in my heart this thing which is love for Mary!'\n\nBut he knew that Mary's parents would not be able to hear or even see him. They would not want him to be there, and really would not want to understand what he said. Humans very often do not want to leave what they have in one place, or go to another place, not until it is too late for them to keep safe.\n\nSo Lanmo winked at the kitten, which was resting on Mary's mother's lap and trying to make her feel warm and comfortable. The kitten jumped down – pompompompom – onto its soft, pink little feet and followed the tempting flicker and wriggle of Lanmo's tail. And they played together in the tiny garden until both of them were not thinking of anything at all apart from having fun. Sometimes when there is nothing else to do, or nothing that can be done yet, it is best to be happy with friends and to let this strengthen your spirit.\n\nWhen Mary arrived back from work she was rather dusty and tired, but she was holding a package of broken spaghetti, which made almost everyone delighted. (Lanmo was not fond of spaghetti because it allowed humans to look as if they were eating tiny snakes.) Father hugged Mary and Mother, and Mother hugged Mary and Father, and secretly all the while Lanmo had looped himself around Mary's throat like a necklace so that he could also share in the so many hugs and so much smiling about a small amount of broken pasta. He found it remarkable that humans could persuade themselves to keep going under almost any circumstances and that they were very willing to be joyful and courageous. It was a shame so many of them were so stupid.\n\nThe kitten also got hugs and kisses on his nose and a handful of biscuity cat food from Mr Paphos's shop. (Fewer and fewer people were keeping pets and so he could give away pet food without worrying that he would have less to sell – almost no one was buying any.)\n\nThe humans enjoyed a lunch of boiled pasta and a small amount of sage and some tomatoes from the garden. Everyone agreed it was a feast. Then Mary changed into her nicest dress (which she had been allowed to make from one of her mother's nicest dresses) and trotted happily outside and headed for the Grand Avenue with Lanmo perched on her shoulder like a very long and thin golden canary.\n\nThe Grand Avenue was not so grand as it had been only a few years ago. Many of the high and wide shop windows were empty or boarded up and the market at the corner of Valdemar Street was quiet. Mary had loved it when it was full of heaped spices in aromatic rainbows and colourful fruits and vegetables carefully stacked. Its silk traders had all but disappeared and the leather workers were only selling a very few sandals and grubby, faded bags. But the ice cream cart was still there and Mr Chanson was still selling cones and tubs and icy treats, although no one liked to ask him how he got the cream. His ices were still delicious: strawberry, cake with flaberry, chocolate with lingonberry, plain chocolate, lemon, gooseberry with elderflower and Marionberry.\n\nMary joined the queue of townspeople anxious to have a little treat and to act as if Sundays were just as enjoyable as always. Lanmo had never eaten ice cream before and it intrigued him. 'Mary, what flavour should I have?'\n\nMary didn't answer at once and so he slipped along her shoulder, very close to her ear, and asked, 'Is there something wrong?'\n\n'It's just that...' whispered Mary, 'I can only afford the one ice cream. My parents need the rest of the money. It wouldn't be fair to buy two.'\n\n'Hmmm,' said Lanmo and smiled as much as he ever could. 'But I can make the human selling ice cream think that we have paid him. I can make him think that we have bought the whole cartload in every flavour.' He chuckled a velvety chuckle that was so warm it might almost have melted the ice cream.\n\n'No, no, no, Lanmo, that would be terrible. Mr Chanson needs the money to buy his mysterious milk and make us more ice cream. We can't steal from him – he's nice. He gives everyone chocolate sprinkles, or sauce, or extra little dabs of ice cream for free.'\n\nLanmo shrank slightly and leaned against Mary's neck. 'I do not understand humans. Some of you will steal anything all the time and some of you will steal nothing all the time. Couldn't all of you just steal something some of the time – if you need it?'\n\n'I don't think so.'\n\n'But you are hungry and other people have more food than they can eat.'\n\n'Yes, but that is the way of the world.'\n\nLanmo thought about this and found that it was an unsatisfactory answer. 'That is an unsatisfactory answer,' he said.\n\n'I know,' said Mary. 'But that is the only answer my parents and my teachers have ever given me to the problems of who has food and who does not.'\n\nBy this time, our friends were at the head of the ice cream queue and so the snake simply let Mary choose one cone with one scoop of her own favourite flavour, because he had never experienced any of the flavours on offer and didn't know what to pick. 'How do you catch a lemon?'\n\n'Lemons just hang from their trees and stay very still and you can pick them easily. All the fruits are like that.'\n\n'That is very foolish of them. No wonder everybody eats them.' Lanmo licked the air and tasted the sweet and sticky and rich wonderfulness of the ice cream scents. They almost made his head spin. 'Do you like strawberry?' He could not recall when anything last made his head spin.\n\n'Strawberry is my favourite.'\n\n'Then we must have that.'\n\nMary duly paid for the single scoop of strawberry ice cream and then ambled along to a little bench set under a broad, friendly tree that had stood in the Grand Avenue for many years and had become a landmark and a meeting place for humans. She held the cornet and Lanmo shrank himself and wound his body around it so that his head was just level with the ice cream. The cool of it made him feel slightly sleepy and yet excited. Mary waited while his tongue flickered and fippered and tickled nearer and nearer to the ice cream and then finally took a tiny, tiny, snake-sized lick. 'Mmmmmm.'\n\nAfter that the friends took turns licking while they sat and watched people pass.\n\n'Mmmnnnmmmnnn,' Lanmo remarked. The treat had completely numbed his tongue. This had never, ever happened, and, although it was inconvenient, he quite liked it. He licked at the warm air for a while, as if he were a panting dog, but then he went right back to eating. 'Sslllsmmsnnnmllllmmm.' This was because he had never before encountered anything so delicious and also so much fun.\n\nOnce they had finished eating and Mary had crunched the cornet – which Lanmo thought sounded a bit like mouse bones – the snake lolled upside down from her shoulder, just holding on to her arm with his clever tail. He was so happy to have new things happen after such a long life and so happy to be with his friend and to see her so happy. 'Wibbibb wubbly.'\n\n'I beg your pardon?'\n\n'Ibbibb lubby.'\n\n'Oh, Lanmo, your tongue has frozen.' And Mary giggled and the sound tasted of strawberries.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "'Thifff iff lovely,' he managed and chuckled. 'I have freezy frozey tongue.'\n\n'There's no such thing.'\n\n'There must be. I have it.'\n\nLanmo could have spent all afternoon like this, but he felt Mary turn and catch her breath as she looked up the avenue. Walking towards them he could see an almost familiar figure. 'That looks like Paul, only he is taller and older.'\n\nMary was waving at Paul, as if they had agreed to meet here. 'Of course he is taller and older. Time has passed.'\n\n'Oh, but this is terrible.'\n\nPaul was quite close now and Lanmo realised that letting his tongue get freezy frozen was a disaster. It might be hours before he could taste anyone properly. If Mary loved Paul and wanted perhaps to marry him, or go kayaking in the Arctic wastes with him, then the snake absolutely had to be able to taste him clearly and find out if he were reliable and if he loved Mary back and perhaps if he would be a good kayak paddler. Lanmo thought to himself, this is what it must be like to be a human, to never really know or understand the inside of anyone else. And their eggs tell them nothing... They are poor, abandoned creatures.\n\nBecause his tongue was of no use to him, the snake settled for staring very hard at Paul in an examining way.\n\n'Ah. The snake is back.' And Paul looked almost angry as he continued, 'Snake, the last time you were here you bit Mary, and I have been told that you did not mean to, but I must tell you that if you bite her again then you will also have to bite me, because I will fight you.' And Paul's blue eyes shone very brightly in a brave way and his gingery hair became more ginger and he tried to stand so that he seemed big, even though he was still quite skinny and someone you would probably take for granted if you passed him in the street. That is, if you weren't Mary.\n\nMary – who was Mary – took Paul's arm on the side that was furthest from Lanmo and shushed him. 'No fighting. Please. I forbid it.'\n\nLanmo craned his neck (which was also his back and some of his middle) all the way along Mary's shoulders so that he could face Paul and say, 'If you fought me you would fight no one else, forever after.'\n\n'I wouldn't mind. If Mary were safe I wouldn't mind a bit,' said Paul and, although his hands shook and his voice sounded wobbly, he stared into the snake's deep, deep eyes and didn't blink.\n\nThen Lanmo nodded and winked and licked Paul's ear quickly with a slightly rubbery tongue and (while Paul squealed) the snake spoke to him in a voice like being hugged with warm towels after a long bath. 'You are a fine person, Paul. I think you will guard Mary almost as well as I could and, as I must travel a great deal about the world, you will have to do your best without me on some occasions.'\n\n'I can look after myself, thank you,' said Mary, but she also squeezed Paul's hand so hard it nearly hurt him and kissed the one of his ears that Lanmo had not licked. 'We will look after each other.'\n\n'Remember,' the snake told them as they strolled in the dusty old sunshine past the empty shops, 'remember that you must always lay your eggs in warm, dry sand, far from humans and their stupidity and angriness.'\n\nMary said nothing to this, only blushed. But Paul said quietly, 'I think perhaps human children do not require sand. Or laying eggs.'\n\nThe snake shook his head and thought how foolish the young pair were – they had a great deal to learn about parenthood. But perhaps they would have time to learn. 'I feel you might check that with a more experienced human to be sure,' he said. 'And now, Mary, you must tell Paul about adventuring and ask him whether he would enjoy sleeping in tents with spiders, or in caves with bats, or in jungles with panthers. And whether he would be able to wrestle a crocodile, or tickle a hippo, and all of the other things that any proper explorer has to do. Because if he is to spend his life with you then he will need to know about many such things.'\n\n'He shall not at all wrestle any crocodile,' Mary told Lanmo. 'Don't tease him.'\n\n'And I would rather not tickle a hippo,' nodded Paul. 'But I can light a fire with two pieces of wood and a bootlace. And I can find the North Star. And I have always wanted to go on adventures and swim beside whales and ride over prairies and—'\n\nAt this, he was interrupted by Mary kissing him on his mouth, because she was so delighted that they shared this large dream along with the so many other things they had in common. And he and she spun and spun in each other's arms until they were almost dancing along the uneven, grubby paving stones. Everyone who saw them never forgot how perfect Mary and Paul looked – two humans devoting themselves to each other in joy and tenderness. As the days to come descended, it was something to remember. When matters became grey, or hard, or uncertain there would often be a face in this or that crowd which was smiling slightly, thinking of the girl and her boy and their dancing and the light caught in their hair.\n\nOf course, when Mary and Paul stopped dancing – although he loved dancing himself – the snake had gone.\n\nAnd the snake passed, faster than threats or rumours, over the world. He met with many humans to do his work. He met a woman who loved the shape of bicycles leaning against walls and he met a boy who loved apples and a young woman who played the violin and who loved a young woman who played the flute and he met an old man who hated everyone he saw for reasons he told no one. And Lanmo sometimes met little girls, and they would remind him of Mary, and on those days, at the time when the snake knew it would be sunset in her country, Lanmo would send his friend especially wonderful dreams.\n\nOne evening, Lanmo met a man who was dancing. The sun in this particular land was slipping behind little, rounded hills and the long, rosy light it threw across the grass made the man seem taller and thinner than he was. His wife watched him from the kitchen window and loved him so much that the snake could feel it gathering in the grass like a stream of tickling water. And the radio in the kitchen pushed its music out into the air and the man danced and threw his arms over his head and danced even more. He looked like happiness.\n\nThe snake was about to open his mouth and show his teeth, but then, as he felt the tickle of the music and the tickle of the love, he began to dance instead. Between the man's stepping and shuffling and turning feet, the snake danced – hither and thither and to and fro. The snake wriggled on his belly – which he didn't often do – and shimmied on his back – which he never did. He balanced on his tail and swayed, he bobbed his head and closed his eyes, and felt, for a while, contented.\n\n'Are you having fun?'\n\nWhen Lanmo heard the voice, he opened his eyes and looked up. The man was standing still and studying him with a smile.\n\n'You are an unusual fellow.'\n\nLanmo was strangely out of breath and had wanted to dance more, so he sounded whistly and slightly cross when he said, 'Yes, I am. You will never meet my like again.'\n\nAt this, the man frowned and sat down very quickly on the grass. 'Ah, I understand.' And he nodded very often and looked at the way the sun was dipping closer and closer to the hills as if it wanted to warm them very much. 'Yes, I see.' The man pulled his hand through his hair and then nodded again. 'I see.'\n\nThe snake should then have shown the man his teeth, but instead he smoothed along to sit on the man's knee and study him. It had been a long time since any human had noticed the snake and Lanmo had not spoken to a human since he had been with Mary.\n\nThe man gently rubbed the snake's neck. 'Well, my friend, I have thought of you often.'\n\n'I am not exactly your friend,' said the snake.\n\n'Well, my guest, then.'\n\nLanmo liked the gentle and sad way the man was touching his scales and found himself becoming drowsy. In fact, he fell asleep.\n\nWhen he woke, he found he had been carried and coiled into a hollow that someone had made in some sweet, long grass left uncut to shelter wild flowers. It was not like him to sleep, especially when he was meeting a human, and he wondered if he were perhaps ill in some way. When he raised himself to look about, he saw that he was at the edge of the dancing man's lawn and that the man and his wife were dancing there together, their arms tight around each other, while music poured from their window and down into the closely clipped grass in that part of the garden. And a new taste of love raced between the blades of grass and the currents of the air as if everyone were under a waterfall. The love and music were both so thick now that the wife and the husband could only move very slowly. This was perhaps why the snake had been lulled to sleep – this excess of love and music.\n\nThen the couple looked over towards the snake and saw he was watching them. 'We would prefer to be together,' said the wife and she put her hand over her husband's mouth so that he could not speak.\n\nAnd the snake shook his head, because being together when the snake came for only one person was not allowed.\n\nBut the humans looked so sad.\n\n'One of you has only a little time, the other has very much more.'\n\n'We don't mind,' said the wife and she stared straight at Lanmo, because her love for her husband meant she could see the snake very clearly. 'I don't mind. You are a most beautiful snake and we are asking that you behave in a most beautiful manner. Please.'\n\nLanmo tasted the air and knew that what she said was true, that all of it was true. 'You would rather leave now?' he asked her.\n\n'With my husband. Yes. I would rather not stay behind in a world with no colours and no music and no dancing any more. Which is the world it would become for me without him.'\n\nThe husband and wife looked at Lanmo. They held hands. And they waited.\n\nAnd so the snake agreed they could leave together. But before that had to happen, Lanmo danced with them both until the sun set behind the hills and it was fully dark. Then, when the North Star was bright, he nodded to them, and everyone sat down on the grass, which remained warm with sunshine, love and dancing. And the snake let the wife and the husband meet him both together. While the couple held hands and looked up at the stars, the snake opened his mouth with his needle-sharp teeth that were as white as bones.\n\nAfterwards, he slept in the hollow they had made for him in the grass, because this was the first home that had been built only for him. And when he woke he wept. This had never happened before and, because it was all so strange, Lanmo knew he must go and see Mary. He would ask her to explain.\n\nWhen the snake returned to Mary's city he saw that, once again, much more time had passed than he had realised. There were no longer any kites flying over the rooftops. The streets were almost silent, apart from the barking of thin yellow dogs. The luxurious towers that had thrown their shadows over more and more of the neighbourhoods had been abandoned and become tall, thin ruins, or had been reduced to no more than rubble and foundations. It seemed that the hands of giants had reached down and punished them. The snake, because he was wise, knew that the hands of humans and the machines and devices of humans had caused the damage. Usually, this would not have concerned him. He had seen many cities and nations rise and fall. But this time, as he rushed to Mary's home, he discovered that he was terribly worried. He wished never to arrive but also to be in her garden already, pleasing her and making her laugh. He felt that he was being torn into two pieces and this made him think, love truly is a terrible thing. And yet it makes lovers never want to leave each other and hold hands while they look at stars and be happy all the way to their ending. And that is wonderful. Love is strange.\n\nWhen he reached what had been Mary's house – far slower than he usually would have, because he was distracted – the snake found that the building had no windows any more and that none of its humans were still there. The snake's friend the kitten had also gone. The rooms in the tiny apartment were almost bare. Out in the garden the plants were growing as best they could without anybody to water and care for them. The roses looked tired and as if they missed Mary.\n\nIn Mary's room her bed remained, but without her blankets and sheets, or pillows. Resting on the bed were the embellished slippers that Mary had once been forced to make in her sewing class. They were placed neatly together on top of a folded note with 'FOR LANMO' written on it. The snake could read all the languages that ever were or could be and so he unfolded the paper and saw:\n\nDear Lanmo,\n\nWe have had to leave here and we do not exactly know where we are going, so I cannot tell you where you can find us. Even so, I really would like you to find us, because you are my best friend in all the world. Mother, Father, Paul, Shade and I will start walking to the north tomorrow where things are meant to be better. (Except Shade will not be walking because he only has quite little paws for making a big journey. We are going to carry him. He doesn't weigh very much, even though he has grown up since you saw him last.)\n\nPlease do come and visit me if you can.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I know you are busy, but please do try.\n\nAnd Paul says hello.\n\nAnd thank you for the dreams.\n\nAnd I am sending really all my love to you apart from the love that is for Paul and Mother and Father and the little bit I give to Shade who is very sweet.\n\nYour friend,\n\nMary\n\nThe snake tasted the letter and, even though the paper and ink were quite old, they still held the flavour of love. He closed his eyes for a moment and remembered lying on this same bed and looking into his friend Mary's eyes. The snake's heart had always been still throughout his thousands upon thousands of years of existence, but now it began, for the first time, to beat. The sound of it puzzled him.\n\nHe flickered his clever tongue into the air, so that he could taste exactly where Mary had gone to and then, faster than sadness, he made his way there. He moved too swiftly for anyone to see, but those humans he passed on his journey shivered and cried, or felt they must find those they loved at once and hold them and look at their faces with great attention and tell them kind and important things.\n\nWhen the snake stopped his journey he found that he was by the side of a small path through woods. It was evening, and all around him the dipping sun showed signs that many people had passed this way. There were abandoned suitcases and empty food cans lying about, along with worn-out shoes. Next to a little stream someone had left a piano, having pushed it for many miles. The instrument leaned at a strange angle against a willow tree's trunk and when the wind blew the willow swayed and the piano's strings played their own small tune to the tree.\n\nIn the shadows under the branches of an oak, the snake saw a young woman with twenty-one white hairs and eyes that showed she was brave and kind and honest. She was wearing sturdy boots and sensible clothes that were cleverly sewn with tiny, strong stitches. She looked like someone who had always prepared herself to go travelling and to have adventures. But she did not look as if she were enjoying a pleasant journey. She seemed thin and tired and her boots were worn and dusty, as were her patched canvas trousers, and her shirt and coat were threadbare.\n\nBut the snake hardly noticed how Mary looked. (For the young woman was, of course, his friend.) He was in too much of a rush and too happy. 'Hello, Mary.' Lanmo flickered through the grass and sat on Mary's shoulder, resting his head against her cheek. He felt that his heart was beating very quickly and strangely inside him.\n\n'Ah, Lanmo.' Mary stopped stirring a little pot of rice which she had hung over her cooking fire and began to tickle the snake's belly. The snake allowed this, even though it was a little undignified for so wonderful a snake as he. The tickling made him smile his almost invisible snaky smile and he realised that he had not smiled since he last was with his friend.\n\nResting at Mary's feet was Shade, who was now quite a grown-up cat. When he heard the snake's voice, he flicked his ears and then stood up and began pouncing and capering about, as if he could recall being a kitten and playing with Lanmo's tail.\n\n'I knew you would find me,' said Mary. 'Paul said you would not be able to, but I knew you would.'\n\n'And where is Paul?' asked Lanmo, worried that Paul had not been helping Mary on the journey, as he should.\n\nMary smiled. 'We passed a glade with mushrooms in it a while ago and I sent him to gather them now we have camped. I know from my books they are a kind that are good to eat. We can dry some for later and eat some now with this rice. He'll be back soon. And then it is his turn to make us a bed in the trees.'\n\n'You sleep in the trees?'\n\n'Of course. Where there are big trees we can climb, we always camp high up in the branches and keep away from any danger. And while I sleep Paul watches me and while Paul sleeps I watch him – in case we fall out and hurt ourselves. No one has to watch Shade because he is already very good at sleeping in trees. In fact, he has taught us a great deal about that. He is extremely wise for a small cat.'\n\nShade was standing with his front paws leaning against Mary so he could reach up and begin licking the end of Lanmo's tail and purring proudly. Lanmo permitted this, but when the cat gently nipped him, the snake had to give him a sharp look. 'I am not a toy,' he said. The cat did not entirely understand this; nevertheless he trotted away to look for something he might eat. The humans could not feed him any more, so he now had to hunt for himself.\n\nFor some time, the snake simply lay along Mary's shoulders and enjoyed her company. It had been such a while since he saw her. 'Time has passed,' he said.\n\n'It has. It always does.' Mary nodded. 'We cannot stop it.'\n\nHe also flippery-flickered his tongue extremely fast so that he could learn about how many dusty and muddy and stony miles she had travelled and how sad she had often been.\n\nWhen both our friends had closed their eyes and breathed a while and been content, Mary asked, 'Lanmo, have you met my parents?'\n\n'They were not in your house when I visited there. Your letter said they had left with you.'\n\n'They came with us as far as the edge of the city, but then they said they were too tired and had brought too much to carry and would miss their home too much. And so they told us to go on without them. For three days and three nights, we camped together beside the ancient city wall and tried to change their minds, but every time we asked them to come with us, they refused. And when Paul and I and Shade woke up on the fourth day, we could not find them anywhere. They had left their parcels of food with us and a note that said they thought they would be too slow on the journey and would hold us back. And they left me this...' Mary showed Lanmo a golden chain which she wore around her neck. 'This was my mother's – she wore it on her wedding day.' And she had to wait for a while until she could speak again, because of the sadness in this. 'Paul and Shade and I looked but we could not find them. And how could they eat with no food? How would they do that? Why would they not come with me when I know all about exploring and journeys?' Lanmo felt his friend's tears drop onto his scales, heavy and stinging, with a strange new kind of love which turned his heart to an ache and made its beating stumble.\n\nMary's voice was very quiet when she asked, 'But it is your work to meet humans, isn't it? And once you have met them, they will have reached the end of their lives.' Her hand trembled against Lanmo's side.\n\n'Well...' whispered the snake, 'that is true. I am sorry for it, I think. I never was sorry, but now I am. Still, a snake is a snake is a snake. And I am this kind of snake.'\n\n'But you have never met my mother and father and let them see you and know your teeth?' Her voice was even quieter.\n\n'I have not, Mary.' The snake nuzzled her cheek with his head. 'I saw them when I was with you in your house, but they did not see me. It was not their time to see me.'\n\nAnd then Mary said no more, but Lanmo could taste that she wanted to ask him, 'And do you know if my parents are still in this world?'\n\nSo the snake tasted the air to see if he could find Mary's mother and father. His tongue searched in the air for a long time and would have gone on searching if Mary had not said, 'Lanmo, you cannot find them, can you?'\n\n'No, I cannot.'\n\n'And you have the cleverest tongue in the world, haven't you? And you can find anyone or anything?'\n\n'That is true.'\n\n'So if you cannot find them, then they cannot be found any longer in the world. And humans have done your work for you.'\n\nThe snake did not answer this.\n\n'I would rather not be human,' Mary said and she cried for a while and Lanmo cried with her. And this was the only time he had ever cried with a human.\n\nOur two friends were simply sitting together quietly when Paul returned with the mushrooms. He was whistling merrily as he came along and doing his best to be happy that he had his gathering bag and all his pockets full of mushrooms. Mary leaped to her feet and hugged him, and Lanmo – who was riding on her shoulder – also enjoyed the hug.\n\nPaul was startled to see the golden glimmer of the snake, but then he smiled and asked him, 'I suppose that you don't eat mushrooms or rice – and that is all we have to offer you.' He also whispered, 'I am doing my best to take care of Mary and she is doing her best to take care of me.' And then he shook Lanmo's tail in the way that a human might shake another human's hand.\n\nLanmo wasn't expecting this and it made him lose his balance. For a while he found himself upside down and being shaken. 'Woo-hoo-oh.' But he quite liked the feelings this gave him and so he bounced up and down while Paul held him and chuckled. He had guessed that perhaps being silly for a while would cheer Mary up. And he was right.\n\nThen Shade returned with a mouse. Although the snake was a little jealous of the cat's tender snack, he did not really need to eat to keep himself alive – it was only a habit that he sometimes enjoyed – and so he did not insist on sharing the furry little meal. He only looked at the cat with an upside-down look and said, 'There is a great deal of grass in the sky and the ground has become very blue and red with a sunset in it.' Shade put down his meal for a moment and licked Lanmo with a tongue that tasted of mouse. Lanmo chuckled again but then looked as serious as a snake can look and slipped out of Paul's hand and swung gently from a branch overhead.\n\nAfter that, the cat ate its mouse and the humans ate their rice and mushrooms, and then Mary put out their fire very carefully so that it would show no smoke and they all climbed up high into the biggest tree they could find. From there they could see the lights of large fires and small fires, but mostly the land was in darkness. There were no lights from houses to be seen, even far away.\n\nLanmo said, 'You may all go to sleep tonight for the whole night because I will watch over you and keep you safe.'\n\nThis meant that Mary and Paul could snuggle together on a wide, old branch while Shade curled up by himself on a higher, smaller branch. Before she closed her eyes to sleep in her canvas sleeping sack, Lanmo slipped along in the dark to Mary, his wise eyes shining redly. 'I have never known a human like you.'\n\n'Well, I have never known a snake like you.'\n\n'That is true.' His red eyes blinked. 'The world has never known a night when I have not been passing from one land to another doing my work. But I will stay here and no one will meet me and no one will leave their life because of me – and this is for you.'\n\n'Are you allowed to do that?' murmured Mary, who was feeling very comfortable because of having had such a good meal and was gently falling into all the good, warm dreams that Lanmo was already sending her to make her feel happy and refreshed. He was also sending Paul, who was already asleep, dreams about being useful and kind and attentive. And he gave Shade a dream about skipping up and down a huge mountain of cat food, chasing very slow, fat mice.\n\n'I do not know if I am allowed to let all the humans live who would have left the world tonight. Perhaps they will have to stay in the world for a very long time as a result. But I do not mind. No one has ever told me what to do under these circumstances, because I think I was never supposed to have a friend and to understand love and...' Lanmo rested his thin, snaky chest against Mary's hand, 'my heart is beating.'\n\n'Goodness,' said Mary, feeling the tiny pitpatpitpat of Lanmo's newly alive heart. 'I thought all this time that you had a beating heart like other snakes.'\n\n'But I am not like other snakes.'\n\n'Of course you're not.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "You are the only snake I will ever talk to and the only snake who will be my friend and the only snake I will ever love.'", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include exactly 4 instance(s) of the word 'seemed'", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At this, the snake cried a number of tears that were not unhappy. He had not known before that it is possible to cry because of joy. And then he sneezed – pffs – and tried to sound brisk, so that he did not seem overly sentimental. 'Tomorrow, you must stop going north and take the path that I will show you. You must go to the Land of Perditi where you will be safe. It is a long way, but you are a brave and resourceful explorer so you will reach it. Then you must go to the first city you reach after the mountains and you must take the roads as I direct you when you enter its gates and then you must knock on the house with the blue shutters and the blue door.'\n\n'And will everything be all right then?'\n\n'Everything will be as all right as it can be.'\n\n'And will you visit me there?' For Mary already knew that Lanmo was going to leave again, because he was giving her so many instructions for the journey. 'I would like that.'\n\n'And I would like that, too.' Lanmo snuggled under Mary's chin, just as he had when she was a little girl.\n\n'Good night, my friend.'\n\n'Good night, my friend.'\n\n'Sweet dreams.'\n\n'I have arranged that, yes.' And Lanmo lifted his head and kissed Mary's cheek and then was still.\n\nAnd Mary did dream the whole of the journey that she must make, all night long, and when she woke Lanmo was doing his stretching and waking-dance, right along the branch just above her to make her smile.\n\n'Oh, you are still here, Lanmo.'\n\n'Yes. I will ride on your shoulder for the rest of the day and make sure that you have recalled your dream properly and then I must go and be busy in the world with the other humans.'\n\nWhile Mary washed in the little stream not far away and filled their water bottles, Paul lit a fire – he was good at lighting fires – and heated some water for pine-needle tea. Then he washed, and Shade watched him splashing in the cold water and stubbing his toes on rocks. The cat just licked and licked his fur in the clever way that cats do when it is time for them to wash themselves. And Lanmo swung from the branches of the tree and his golden scales sparkled and he ruffled them so that the breeze made them sing and sound like better times and like a small orchestra, far away, walking to a party, or a wedding.\n\n'Mary,' he asked when she sat by the fire with her pine-needle tea, 'have you married Paul?'\n\nMary shook her head. 'We wanted to get married, but then so many bad things happened that it was not possible.'\n\n'I have the power to marry humans.'\n\nThis sounded not very possible to Mary. 'Are you sure?'\n\n'Well, the captains of ships and all kinds of other humans may marry humans and humans are very silly, so I don't see why I can't marry you to each other much better than any of them. I am magnificent and wonderful and there is only one of me. Therefore... I shall marry you.' He paused and seemed to be making an effort to grin, in as far as this was possible. Certainly his scales bristled with excitement.\n\nThen he wagged his tail to summon Paul and Shade closer, before hanging from a branch above them in a solemn manner. 'I hereby marry you. Shade?' The cat looked up at Lanmo's ruby eyes. 'You shall be our witness that these two are joined together in the ways that humans prefer.'\n\n'But we have no ring,' said Paul, who hadn't quite expected to get married that day.\n\n'And I was going to wear a remarkable dress and there was going to be feasting and music and...'\n\nEveryone paused for Mary and no one said what she was thinking – that she had wanted her mother and father to be there. Each of them knew it, all the same. Paul – who had lived in an orphanage – might have invited some of the other orphans, but he had no idea where they were now.\n\nLanmo frowned and licked his tongue in the air with impatience. 'I cannot help any of that. I can only declare that you are married by all the power that is vested in me and that is a great deal of power.' He intentionally grew much larger and puffed out his throat like a cobra and glimmered impressively. 'And dresses... One can surely be married wearing nothing at all if one has to.'\n\nPaul winced. 'It is not quite the usual way,' he said softly and held Mary's hand and kissed it. 'But we could be married and it would be wonderful... Oh, but we do need rings.'\n\n'Very well,' said the snake. 'If you insist.' And he leaned over to Mary until he was almost touching her nose. 'Mary, you may pick two of my scales – the ones you think are prettiest – and then you must pull them out.'\n\n'But won't that hurt you?'\n\n'It may. I do not know. But they will each make a golden ring for you and for Paul. They will be rings like no other because you are humans like no other.'\n\nAnd he closed his eyes and waited until Mary had indeed chosen two scales that seemed maybe a little smaller than the rest, so as not to hurt him, and pulled out one of them – which took all her strength. When she held the scale it was finer and thinner than the finest and thinnest silk but it weighed more than a heavy heart. Where the scale once was, a single drop of blood welled up and then rolled and fell, and when it touched Mary's hand for a moment it shone like a ruby and then it vanished into her skin. 'Oh, Lanmo. I am so sorry. This must be hurting you a lot.'\n\n'I am being very brave. You may continue.'\n\nAnd Mary pulled out another scale and another drop of blood fell and splashed onto Paul's forehead, and, near where it fell, twenty-one of his hairs changed to a bright golden colour, in amongst the red. This scale was also as thin as thin and very heavy.\n\nPaul and Mary held one scale each.\n\nThen Lanmo opened his eyes and gently kissed Paul on the cheek. At this, the scale Paul was holding turned to liquid and flowed to form a ring on Paul's finger, a very beautiful ring, with its own tiny scales like a snake.\n\nAnd next Lanmo kissed Mary. 'There, I have given you away, although you are not mine, but I do love you and so I have had care of you and now you are married.' And the scale she held then flowed from where it rested in her palm to form a shining ring on her finger, even more beautiful than Paul's, with a perfect image of Lanmo looped all around it.\n\nThen the newly-weds and their cat and their friend the snake marched out on the first day of their journey on the snake's path and – as he had in happier days – Lanmo rode on Mary's shoulder, flickering his tongue and humming a small sweet tune to himself and occasionally sighing because he was so very comfortable and yet this comfort would soon come to an end.\n\nWhen the humans had unpacked their gear and lit their fire for the evening, Lanmo told them, 'Now I have to leave you, but these rings will distract your enemies as you travel, should you meet any. Their eyes will be drawn to the gold and then they will feel sleepy and then they will be confused, and by the time they have recovered themselves you will have run far away.' He tickled the ears of Shade and the cat lay on its back for a while, remembering what it was like to live in a house and have nothing to do but eat and sleep and play games.\n\nThis looked so endearing that Mary and Paul watched the cat being happy. When they looked up, the snake was gone.\n\n'Oh,' said Mary. And she shed a tear. The tear fell upon her ring and where it landed there grew a tiny diamond. And when another tear fell there grew another diamond. These formed the eyes of the snake that was imprinted in the gold. And this was a sign to show Lanmo that love is a jewel and helps us to see and is not only a terrible thing. Although it may also be a strange thing.\n\nBut Lanmo was not there to see it.\n\nLanmo, with his newly beating heart, returned to his work, going up and down and around the world. He met woodcarvers and helicopter pilots and guitar players and swimmers and humans who wandered from place to place because they liked to and humans who wandered from place to place because they had no homes and humans who loved to whistle and others who loved to paddle and some who loved to climb trees. He also met humans who had never yet found anything, or anyone, to love. These humans made his heart beat slowly and grow heavy in his chest, and this disturbed him.\n\nEvery morning he licked the air with his wonderful tongue and tasted where Mary was and if she was happy. Every evening he sent her funny dreams and silly dreams and dreams where she won her heart's desire and dreams where she swam with tigers and then lay on the beach with them while their fur dried and they purred. He also, because he thought he should, sent quite pleasant dreams to Paul – ones where Paul was a famous footballer, or a beautiful giraffe, or a tree filled with parakeets. (Lanmo could taste that Paul loved football, giraffes and parakeets.) And the snake sent some smaller dreams about mice and biscuits and tickles to Shade. (Cats' dreams have to be small, because they need to fit inside catnaps, which are short.) And Lanmo made sure that all three of our friends knew where to go on the morning of each day when they woke.\n\nAnd as he travelled across all the countries that humans have invented, Lanmo knew that on all sides the humans were performing his duties without him. It seemed strange to the snake that so many humans would use so many ingenious machines and so many ingenious excuses and so many ingenious methods to rush each other out of the world, when all of them must leave their lives in any case. They should fly kites, he thought. They should play with cats and eat ice cream and bake bread and dance with each other and sing and they should marry each other and perhaps make intelligent children who understand things, or adopt children who are orphans and have nobody for them in the world. But he knew that he could not change the humans against their will and that the humans could only choose to change themselves and so he must leave them to be lost in their own ways.\n\nMary and Paul were not lost. For many months after they left their home city, they followed the dream map that Lanmo showed them, a little bit more every night. Their path was strange – it wriggled and squiggled and writhed and scrithed and did not include any straight lines in the way that a human path might. This was because snakes never move like humans and do not trust straight lines – they find them unnatural.\n\nThere were days when the path was dusty and our courageous three were thirsty by the end of the day, but the snake would make sure that by sunset they would find a stream, or a pool, or a well to drink from and a tree to climb, or a large bush to shelter under. And they would fill their water bottles once more and wash their faces and be glad. The travellers climbed into mountains so high that there was snow underfoot, but this didn't trouble them because Mary had packed them warm clothes and the snake would guide them to quiet corners in cliffs where they could huddle and stay warm and where they could find dry leaves and sticks that Paul could use to light a fire. Above all, the snake led them away from other humans, because this was a time when very many of the world's humans were too sad, or angry, or desperate to be safe. And when our three friends could not avoid humans, their rings kept them safe and they moved onwards.\n\nThis lack of other humans might have meant that Mary and Paul felt lonely, but in fact they were entirely content. They played with Shade and took turns carrying him when he was tired. They whistled while they trudged on and, as it happened, when one of them was weary and sad, the other was able to cheer them. They were never weary and sad at the same time.\n\nAnd, one evening, they rested in bracken on a gentle slope that faced a beautiful sunset, as Lanmo had known it would. They had climbed over the highest of the mountains and that had been hard, but now they were descending and this was easy and they looked down at a wide and peaceful city where kites flew merrily in the breeze, perhaps a thousand bright red kites, bobbing and swinging and shining with red sunset light. (Lanmo knew about the kites and had – you will remember – told Mary she should stay in this, the first city after the mountains.) They had eaten some sweet berries they had never seen before and cooked some large roots which the snake had told them in a dream they should look for, dig up and then roast on their fire. They felt full for the first time in many months and this made them drowsy. (Lanmo had known this would happen.) Away to the east there was a high waterfall and the light through its water made rainbows that no one would have been able to look at without smiling. (Lanmo paused in his work while he knew this would be happening and he smiled his snaky smile and chuckled.)\n\nSo Mary was resting against Paul and smiling, and Paul was also smiling, and Shade was curled in Mary's lap and purring – which is a cat's way of smiling – and the birds sang and there was no sound of gunfire, even far away, and no sign of burning houses and no marching columns of men, or straggling columns of downhearted people. There was only peace. And suddenly Mary and Paul both had enough space in their heads to recall that they really were married and that they really did love each other and they held hands and they sang.\n\nYou are the night with sunshine\n\nYou are the ocean with no shore\n\nYou are the bird that sings wine\n\nYou are the lion with no claw\n\nAnd be my honour and be mine\n\nAnd be my glory and be mine\n\nAnd be my living and be mine\n\nMy friend, my love, be mine.\n\nAnd then they slept.\n\nIn the morning, they both walked down the slope, followed by Shade, who by now had turned into a rather larger, stronger and more impressive glossy black cat. Mary's twenty-one white hairs glimmered in the dawn light and, although her clothes (and Paul's) were faded and torn, today they both seemed somehow proud and calm and a little magnificent. Although they did not know it, a few days ago they had all crossed the border into the Land called Perditi, a country that Lanmo was sure would be safe for many, many human lifetimes.\n\nAs they neared the foot of the slope, they joined a smooth, well-kept road that curved towards a great walled city, held in a gentle valley.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "As they marched on, for the first time on the snake's path, our friends passed lots of other humans and even little stalls that sold cooked rice and meat wrapped in leaves.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 109 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At first the sight of humans made them nervous and also ashamed because Mary and Paul knew they looked grubby and dishevelled. (Shade looked as neat as cats always do.) But the other humans nodded to them as they passed, or smiled, or greeted them in a language they could not understand, but which sounded friendly. A woman at a stall selling a kind of large red fruit saw how tired Mary and Paul looked and so she reached out her hands and offered them fruit. It had been a long time since either of our human friends had any money and so they shook their heads, even though the fruit looked delicious. But the woman just laughed and nodded and put one fruit into Mary's hand and one into Paul's and then waved them away. By signs and smiles – and suddenly feeling quite close to crying – Mary and her husband showed the woman that they were grateful. Then, as they marched on, they bit into the fruits and enjoyed the soft, moist, perfumed flesh which tasted a little like sunshine and a little like grapes. And, in the years ahead, they would always remember the taste of those fruits – which they learned were called bamandaloo – whenever they walked near the Wide and South Gate, which was the one they first used to enter the city.\n\nThe city was called Paracalon, as they later learned. It was perhaps not the most wonderful city in the world, but it was very, very good. When they entered Paracalon, they passed into the cosy shadows between three-and four-storey buildings with bright shutters and doors. There were small gardens and squares containing fountains, too, and Mary could hear singing from some of the windows. And above them flew the red kites.\n\nLanmo's dream had told them to take the left road when they came into the city and then the left road again and then the small road past the bakery on the right and then the lane on the left. At the end of the lane, which was lined with low houses and little gardens, was a house with friendly blue shutters and a friendly blue door. In the open doorway was a woman who had just picked some flowers from her garden to set on her kitchen table. When she saw Mary and Paul her face changed and her flowers fell to the path at her feet. 'Oh,' she said. 'For many months, I dream of seeing you both on my doorstep and I know that you should come, you should live. Here with me.' She had also understood from her dream that she should speak the language of the land Mary and Paul had come from. She did so with difficulty and slowly, but they understood her.\n\nMary and Paul stood, dumbfounded.\n\n'Really. Inside. Come. Breakfast.'\n\nThis seemed so strange and yet so wonderful that neither of our human friends could move, but Shade simply capered over the threshold of the house and lay in a patch of sun on the living-room floor, as if he had always lived in this house. He was a sensible cat.\n\nAs you will have guessed, the woman with the blue shutters was the good daughter of Granny Higginbottom. She was called Dora and she now earned her living by making jewellery in a workshop behind her house. She had been able to begin her business using the precious jewels and metals Lanmo had brought her and now she was looking to take on extra help. Her husband, Peter, was busy woodcutting some of the time and busy looking after their grandchildren the rest of the time. He was not very good at making jewellery, although he was otherwise very nice. Lanmo had sent Mary and Paul to exactly the place where they could be useful and happy. Dora had wondered what new rings she could make, but when she saw Mary and Paul's rings, she knew that they should all work at making snake rings. And so they did, learning as they went along.\n\nIn the end Mary and Paul became very fine jewellers and also learned to speak the language of their new home very well. And, although the rings the humans made were not as delightful and graceful and magnificent as the ones the snake had created from his scales, they were still quite lovely and sought after. And Mary also invented a way to make necklaces like the one her mother had given her, so long ago.\n\nAfter this, as with all grown-ups, Mary became very busy with her good, full life. She and Paul had no children, which made them slightly sad because they had wanted to raise a little boy and call him Lanmo and teach him to climb trees. But sometimes what we want does not happen, even if we want it very much. Still, Mary and Paul were like an aunt and an uncle to Dora and Peter's grandchildren and, in a way, they became one very large and joyful family together, with outings and festivals and dancing and songs. And above the house they flew a red kite, which Mary discovered was a sign that whoever lived there had survived a great journey and was alive and well.\n\nEach evening the kites waved and bowed to each other and said in their own languages, 'Hurrah! We are alive! We are happy!'\n\nAnd in this being busy, Mary did not exactly forget the snake, but sometimes she did not think of him very much. Also, she had not seen him since her wedding and she had begun to think that he would not visit her again. Each night, he sent her beautiful dreams and sometimes she would hear his voice in them, chuckling or boasting, but when she woke he would not be resting on her pillow, or licking her ear with his tongue.\n\nAnd, of course, time passed.\n\nAnd then, of course, one particular day Mary was walking in what was now her garden in Paracalon – a place with rose bushes and a seat beneath a tree. By this time her twenty-one white hairs were impossible to see, because all her hairs were white. She was standing looking at the kites, free in the blue, blue sky and thinking that to love something did not mean that she could own it. She had loved Shade very much and yet, in time, he had left the world. She could not keep him. She had loved Paul very much and yet, in time, he had left the world. She could not keep him. Since Dora's children had moved away, Mary was the only human in the house with the friendly blue door and blue shutters. And the snake that she loved so much must have come to call there many times but she had not seen him, or heard him, because loving him did not make him appear when she wanted. This made her sad, even though she understood that she and Shade, Paul, Dora and Peter had lived very long and wonderful, lucky and marvellous lives.\n\nStill, these thoughts were making her a little sad when she felt a tickle at her ankle and looked down to see a glimmer of gold and the blink of two red eyes. 'Mary, you have changed.'\n\n'I have grown old, Lanmo.' She smiled and watched as the snake sleeked upwards until he was sitting neatly in her palm, just as handsome and proud as he ever was, for the snake never did change. 'Time has passed.'\n\n'Well...' The snake flickered his tongue. 'I did not quite mean to be away so long.' Then he climbed quickly to sit on her shoulder and whispered in her ear, 'I am so glad to see you.' And he looked at the two little diamonds that shone in Mary's ring – the diamonds that were once tears – and they told Lanmo so very much about love that for a moment he held his breath.\n\nSeeing Lanmo made Mary feel almost as if she were a young girl again and that soon it would be time for school and that somehow she would walk into a room somewhere and her parents would be sitting there with a table set for dinner. 'And I am so glad to see you.' She turned and kissed his elegant golden head – something that no other human being would ever be permitted to do. 'Hello. And thank you.'\n\n'Oh, I did nothing really.' The snake might almost have been blushing, if it were not impossible for snakes to blush. He rustled his scales so that they sounded like the waves on a wonderful shore far away. 'Hardly anything.'\n\n'You saved my life. And Paul's. And Shade's.'\n\nThen there was a pause and a silence that glistened like molten gold and sunsets and furnaces. It felt like diamonds.\n\nThe snake spoke again to Mary, in his softest and gentlest voice. 'I never save lives.' And these were the saddest words he had ever tasted.\n\n'You are wrong.' Mary shook her head and smiled. 'You saved us.'\n\nThen she went and sat under the tree that gave a good view of the mountain range she had climbed over so many years ago with Paul and Shade to find peace. The snake kissed her cheek and sighed. 'Ah, Mary. You are my best friend. You are my only friend in all the world.'\n\nAt this, the friends nodded and were silent.\n\nThen the snake kissed her again, once on her forehead and once on her hand, just where his tooth had brushed her. Then he slipped down into the grass and lay like a resting bolt of lightning.\n\nMary told him, 'I always wanted to make a bangle that looked half as beautiful as you, one that shimmered and glimmered.'\n\nThe snake blinked and raised his head and Mary could see that he was crying and could say nothing more.\n\nShe said, 'But I think that I have no more time to try.'\n\nAnd the snake she called Lanmo waited in the grass for her to come and meet him. But when she stood and took a step, he cried out, 'No. No, Mary. You must remember that when you take very tiny steps the garden will grow and grow. Take only the very tiniest steps.'\n\nBut then she took another step and he called out, 'No. No, Mary. You must take much smaller steps than that.'\n\nBut then she took another step and he called out, 'No. No, Mary. You must remember that if you take no more steps then the garden will go on for ever and ever and will not end and nothing will end, not any more, not ever. Please.' And that was the first time the snake had said please. 'Please.' And that was the second time. 'Please.'\n\nAnd that was the last time the snake ever said please.\n\nAnd what happened next I cannot tell you. No one can make me.\n\nSo this is almost, but not quite, the whole of the story of how a snake's heart learned to beat. And this is almost, but not quite, the whole of the story about a remarkable, wise little girl called Mary and the friend that she called Lanmo. And this is almost, but not quite, the whole of the story of something wonderful and terrible and strange.\n\nAnd it may be that Mary and Lanmo are waiting with each other in the garden to this day. I know they both would have liked that.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Story assistance: 4 sentences sentences, preserve context. Themes: humor", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Gabel the orc slammed his mug against the table. \"I tell you, it's racism. That's what it is.\"\n\nRegina slammed her own mug twice as hard because Amazons made it a policy to do everything twice as well as any male. \"The Legion has nothing against orcs. Hell, it's built on them.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Gabel remained adamant. \"Sure it is. Angry, hot-blooded, grumbling orc idiots. But exhibit a little intelligence, bathe regularly, avoid dangling participles, and suddenly you're not orc enough.\"\n\n\"That's ridiculous.\" Frank the ogre slammed his mug as well because it seemed the thing to do.\n\n\"Is it?\" Gabel leaned forward and whispered so none of his fellow ores in the pub would overhear. \"All my life I've had to deal with this. Do you have any idea how many promotions have passed by me? Meanwhile, every mumbling, malformed, drooling moron gets to climb the ladder.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Maybe it's because you're short,\" said Regina.\n\n\"Goblin short,\" agreed Frank.\n\nGabel glared ruefully at his mug and took another drink. \"Still racism. Not my fault I was born a little short.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Goblin short,\" reasserted Frank.\n\nGabel narrowed his eyes. He'd gotten used to this. Ores and goblins, despite their size differences, bore a passing resemblance.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was mostly in the shape of their skulls, their sloping foreheads, their wide mouths, and the ears that sat high on their heads. Scholars hypothesized that the two species shared a common ancestor. Both goblins and ores found the notion absurd. But Gabel, having wrestled with this handicap his whole life, had little tolerance for it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm not a goblin.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Are you sure?\" asked Regina. \"Maybe the midwives had a mix-up.\"\n\n\"In the first place, orcs don't have midwives. In the second, I'm not a damn goblin.\"\n\nFrank bent close and squinted.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's just that you look an awful lot like a goblin.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Orcs and goblins look alike. They're related specimens.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yeah, but every orc I've known was grayish blue. Whereas you're more of a grayish green.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And your ears are very big.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Regina illustrated the size with her hands apart.\n\n\"Not to mention there's not a hair on your body,\" added Frank.\n\n\"I shave.\"\n\n\"Well, that's not very orcish either.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Gabel jumped on the table.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even standing on it, his five-foot frame wasn't especially impressive. Though he was in fine shape, his was a lithe muscularity. Orcs generally had great, dense bodies. And not one stood under six feet.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Gabel put his hand on his sword.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The next one who calls me a goblin gets run through.\"\n\n\"Is 'through' a participle?\" asked Regina. \"Did he just dangle a participle?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" admitted Frank.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"'Through' is a preposition.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Huffing, Gabel hopped off the table.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "/* Only your next message should be 51% dialogue */", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not that I'd expect anyone else in this pub to know.\"\n\n\"It's not racism,\" said Regina. \"It's sexism. I should be in charge, but men are too threatened by a powerful woman.\" She flexed her bulging bicep, then drew her knife and jammed it handle deep through the thick wooden table with one strike.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It doesn't help any that I'm flawlessly beautiful. That only threatens them more.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Frank and Gabel chuckled.\n\nShe sneered. \"Do you disagree?\"\n\n\"Oh, you're beautiful,\" said Gabel, \"but I think it's a little much to say you're flawless.\"\n\n\"Someone's got a high opinion of herself,\" Frank pretended to say to a passing soldier who hadn't been privy to the conversation.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Regina's cold, black eyes darkened.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What's wrong with me?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The orc and the ogre glanced at one another.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Nothing,\" they said in unison.\n\n\"It's just, well, you're a bit... how do I put this?\" asked Frank.\n\n\"Manly,\" said Gabel.\n\nRegina threw her mug at him, but he ducked out of the way.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do these look manly?\" She arched her back to emphasize her ample bosom. \"Or this?\" She undid the knot atop her head, and a golden cascade of silken hair tumbled past her shoulders. \"Or this?\" She pulled back her skirt to show her long, perfectly proportioned leg.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Some of the nearby soldiers leered.\n\nShe grabbed the closest orc by the neck and drew him close to her snarling lips. \"Am I not a vision of feminine magnificence?\"\n\nHe nodded and gulped.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her sneer deepened. \"Would you not give both your eyes for a single hour alone with me?\"\n\nHe hesitated, and she tightened her grip.\n\n\"Maybe one eye,\" the orc answered.\n\n\"Only one?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He winced apologetically. \"I prefer brunettes.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Regina tossed him across the pub. She shouted to the room. \"Who here thinks I'm the most beautiful woman they've ever seen?\"\n\nThe pub fell silent.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Finally a soldier dared raise his hand.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She stalked over, thanked him, and knocked him out with a brutal uppercut.\n\nFrank chortled. \"Not manly at all.\"\n\n\"I'm an Amazon warrior, not some barmaid to be ogled.\"\n\n\"First you get upset that we don't notice how beautiful you are,\" said Gabel.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(ooc) Just for the next scene, use regular dialogue (ooc)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Then you get upset when we do.\"\n\n\"Now that's more like a woman.\" Frank snorted. He helped himself to a leg of lamb being carried past the table, and as he was very large, even for an ogre, no one protested. \"You're half right, Gabel. There's racism at work here.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He bit off half the leg, chewing with loud crunches. Bits of mutton and bone spewed from his mouth as he spoke. \"If you think orcs have it bad, try being an ogre.\"\n\nGabel eyed the lumps of meat floating atop his ale.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "With a shrug, he drank it down.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It wasn't bad, although he could have done without the ogre spit.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "OOC, ⚠️ Required: Use 'thick' exactly 2 times", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Frank ran his thick, black tongue across his thick, gray teeth. \"Do you know how many ogres have command positions in the Legion? None.\"\n\n\"Surely you don't think you deserve the promotion?\" Regina struggled to put her shimmering, flaxen hair back up.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And why not? I'm the highest ranking ogre here. And this is Ogre Company.\"\n\n\"Only ogres can command ogres? Is that what you're saying?\" asked Regina.\n\n\"That sounds a little racist,\" said Gabel.\n\n\"It's not about that.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Frank belched, and something sailed from his throat to land across the room and slither away into the darkness. \"It's about demonstration of advancement opportunities.\"\n\n\"Let's just agree we're all getting screwed.\" Gabel sighed.\n\nThey banged their mugs together.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"So who's the new guy?\" asked Frank.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Never Dead Ned.\"\n\n\"I thought he was just a story.\"\n\n\"Apparently not.\"\n\nFrank grumbled. \"How are we supposed to kill a guy who can't die?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Regina gave up on her hair, letting it fall back down. One scarred soldier couldn't help but stare at her beautiful locks. She rose, walked over, and broke his nose, then sat back down. \"He can die.\"\n\n\"Are you certain?\" asked Frank.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I mean, it's right there in his name. First two words: Never Dead.\"\n\n\"He's a man.\" She spat out the word. \"All men are mortal. Hence Ned must be mortal.\"\n\n\"Not to fault your syllogism,\" said Gabel, \"but I've looked over his file.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What's a syllogism?\" asked Regina.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was in a quarrelsome mood and not willing to overlook a chance to be offended.\n\n\"A syllogism is a deductive scheme of formal argument consisting of a major and minor premise and a conclusion.\"\n\nFrank squinted skeptically at Gabel. \"You're making that up.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, I'm not,\" said Gabel.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's basic philosophy. I read it in a book.\"\n\n\"Reading,\" said Frank. \"Not very orcish.\"\n\nGabel pretended not to hear that.\n\nRegina's hard eyes glinted.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No man, mortal or immortal, is a match for an Amazon. He'll die. We'll find a way.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The officers shared a chuckle.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Gabel stood. \"I better get going. New commander arrives in fifteen minutes. His trusted first officer should be there to greet him.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "user note just fyi, Next turn only: maintain roughly 42% quote-to-text ratio", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They shared a chuckle over that too. After he'd left, the remaining officers ordered another round.\n\n\"Syllogism, indeed. I still say he's a goblin,\" remarked Regina.\n\nFrank shrugged. \"Some people can never be comfortable with themselves.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Poor fools.\"\n\nThen the Amazon knocked a troll flat on his ass for daring to glance at her breasts.\n\nPutting harnesses on rocs and using them as transports was an experiment in Brute's Legion with mixed results. Gabel would've used titan dragonflies.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'easier' precisely 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were easier to tame, easier to ride, even a little faster. The Higher Ups, whoever the hell was in charge of such things, wanted the regal, reptilian birds with their vibrant red and gold plumage, their fearsome shrieks. And that was how a perfectly good idea had gone to hell.\n\nRocs just weren't tamable.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The most that could be done with them was to keep them fed and try not to irritate them. When they weren't hungry or annoyed, they mostly behaved. Unless it was mating season. Or they heard a loud noise.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Or something shiny drew their attention. Or they smelled a chicken. Or they thought they smelled a chicken. Or they just felt like stomping something under their tremendous feet.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For such immense creatures, they were terribly jumpy.\n\nGabel glanced through the sky. The flight was ten minutes late. Might be a normal delay.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Might mean the transport had gotten hungry and stopped for a snack. This wouldn't be the first new officer to be devoured before he reached the fortress.\n\nGoblins staffed the roc program and nearly every other project that required personnel equally fearless and expendable. Their bold obtuseness was fortunate.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Otherwise, the way they bred, they'd have overrun the world long ago.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Gabel stopped a goblin passing by.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "This one wore a helmet with the crest of a pilot squadron.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Gabel didn't recognize the design. Either The Flying Brunches or Stubborn Chewables. This particular pilot had three scratches on his helmet, signifying he'd successfully flown a roc into the air and back again three times without perishing. That qualified him as a seasoned veteran.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, sir!\" The pilot saluted sloppily, but Gabel ignored that.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Any news on the commander?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No, sir!\" The pilot shouted. \"But I'm sure he's fine, sir!\"\n\nGabel looked to the pens. Four rocs paced about.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Their long serpentine tails whipped up clouds of dust.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Their merciless eyes glared.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The biggest bird, about thirty-five feet high, nipped at another. The attacked roc shrieked and nipped back. Instantly all four monsters were busy shrieking and tearing at one another. Stains of dried blood and immense feathers from previous squabbles littered the pen.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Three goblins rushed into the pen with their long barbed sticks.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Calmer Downers\" in roc-handler terminology. One handler was crushed beneath a bird's clumsy step. A second was snatched up and swallowed. Several more handlers replaced them, and after about a minute of furious screaming and terrified yelping, the rocs relaxed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The two goblins that hadn't been eaten or mashed in the process exited the pen with wide, satisfied smiles.\n\nThey'd never get Gabel near one of those damn things.\n\nThe pilot sensed his trepidation. \"One day, roc flight will be the safest form of travel, sir!\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There wasn't the slightest trace of doubt in his words. Gabel admired the eternal optimism of goblins, even if he hated being mistaken for one.\n\n\"I wouldn't worry about the commander, sir! Ace is our best pilot, sir!\"\n\nGabel stepped back. The goblin's shouting was beginning to bother his ears.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How many flights has he had?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Seven, sir!\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(authors note, /set_word_count: gabel, frequency: 2)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Gabel was impressed. \"He must be good.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir! He really knows what he's doing! Plus, rocs don't really like the taste of him, sir! Swallowed him three times, sir! Spat him out every time, sir!\"\n\n\"How lucky for him.\" Gabel waved the goblin away. \"You're dismissed.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The pilot saluted again. \"Thank you, sir!\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "By the time the ringing had gone out of Gabel's ears, the roc finally appeared in the sky. Its flight was surprisingly smooth, its tremendous wings beating with power and grace. But the landing was the hardest part. Its grace in the air was countered by its clumsiness on the ground.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The pilot whipped the reins, spurring the roc into a sharp dive.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Just when it looked certain the bird would crash into the earth, it pulled up and set down without a stumble.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Handlers threw a rope up to the pilot, who tied it around the roc's collar.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He slid down the rope with a grin.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ace was short, even for a goblin—a little over two feet.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nonetheless, he cut a dashing, carefree figure. Almost heroic. He raised his goggles, threw back his long scarf. One of his ears was missing, probably having been snipped off by a roc. Or maybe something else.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Goblins lived dangerous lives.\n\n\"Sir.\" He didn't salute, only drew his knife and cut another notch into his helmet. The pipe clamped between his teeth stank of some foul herb Gabel couldn't quite place. Whatever it was, it reeked of rotten flesh and spoiled fruit.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Little wonder rocs didn't want to eat him.\n\nA voice called from the bird's back. \"Excuse me? How do I get down?\"\n\n\"Well, you could jump!\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "shouted Ace. \"Or you could use the ladder! Your call.\"\n\nA rope ladder descended one side, and Ned started down. He was halfway to the ground when a scampering squirrel darting past startled the roc. The beast twisted, lost its balance, and tumbled over.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Gabel and Ace were well out of squishing range, but Ned wasn't so lucky.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The crash of three tons of bird flesh cut short his fearful yelp. The roc took some time before wobbling to its feet.\n\nGabel approached the crushed commander. \"Damn, what a mess.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He looked like that before,\" said Ace, \"except his neck didn't bend that way.\"\n\n\"Sir?\" Gabel prodded Ned. \"Sir?\"\n\n\"Pretty sure he's dead.\" Ace kicked the corpse.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But this is Never Dead Ned.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Guess they'll have to change his name to Distinctly Dead Ned.\" Ace booted the body a second time, hopped on its chest a few times, and waggled the broken neck. \"Yep, that's dead a'right.\"\n\nGabel frowned.\n\nThen he smiled. It was nice when problems solved themselves.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Story assistance: 37 sentences sentences, preserve context. Themes: humor", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Copper citadel didn't have a proper graveyard. Its population consisted mostly of ogres, ores, and goblins, all of whom considered a corpse, at worst, something to trip over and, at best, ammunition for a stimulating game of Catapult the Cadaver, a popular orc drinking game. But a few humans were stationed at the citadel, and as it was official policy of Brute's Legion to respect all cultures, even the absurdity of humans, there was a rudimentary cemetery set aside in a useless patch of dirt.\n\nTwo ogres, Ward and Ralph, were the official gravediggers. The position added a few coins to their wages. They could've done a poor job of it, and none but the dead would've cared. But Ward took some small pride in his work, and that rubbed off a little on Ralph. They were both typical ogre specimens: tall, wide, ruddy, hairy creatures with broad mouths and tiny, close-set eyes. Ralph was a little hairier than Ward, and Ward was a little taller. That was the biggest difference between them.\n\nRalph scooped out another shovel of dirt and glanced at the setting sun. \"It's getting dark. That's deep enough.\"\n\nWard shrugged. \"I don't know. Doesn't look as deep as the last commander.\"\n\n\"That's because I liked that guy.\"\n\n\"You might've liked this guy, Ralph.\"\n\nThey studied Ned's corpse with its bulging eye and purplish tongue hanging from blue lips.\n\nRalph frowned. \"Looks like an asshole to me.\"\n\n\"They all look like that when they're dead.\"\n\nRalph picked Ned up by one leg and dangled the corpse. \"Yeah, but what kind of idiot calls himself Never Dead Ned, then goes and dies?\"\n\n\"Asshole,\" they said as one.\n\nRalph tossed the body in the hole. It didn't take long for the heavyset gravediggers to finish the burial. Dark clouds spread overhead. A few heavy drops of rain fell. Ward jammed a simple tombstone into place.\n\n\"That's nice,\" complimented Ralph. \"When did you make it?\"\n\n\"Soon as I heard the new commander was coming. Didn't think I'd have to use it so soon.\"\n\nIn the unadorned cemetery, ten graves stretched beside Ned's. Each stone bore the name of a dead human commander of Ogre Company. There'd been other casualties of the job, but only the humans needed to be buried. The ores had been used as roc chow. An elf had been burned on a pyre. There'd been a dwarf too, but he'd been torn to so many pieces that no one wanted to bother picking them all up. So Ralph and Ward had never learned how dwarves liked their corpses handled.\n\n\"Is it me, or are we going through these guys faster than we used to?\" asked Ralph.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'probably' 2 time(s) throughout your message", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's you. Although this one's got to be the record. Hold on a second. I've got to fix something here.\" Ward pulled a chisel and mallet from his belt and chipped an X through the \"Never\" in Never Dead Ned.\n\n\"Should we say some words?\" asked Ward.\n\n\"Do we have to?\" asked Ralph.\n\n\"Humans seem to like that kind of thing.\"\n\nThe approaching storm thundered. \"Fine. But let's make it quick.\" Ralph's nostrils flared as he sniffed the air. \"I smell rain. And magic. Dark magic.\"\n\nRare ogres were born with a talent for smelling magic. The gift had never been proven to any of the other races, but ogres accepted it as fact.\n\n\"What's dark magic smell like?\" asked Ward.\n\nRalph drew in another snort. \"Strawberries and cream.\" He wiped the rain from his eyes. \"Get on with it.\"\n\nWard started to say something, then stopped. He started again and stopped.\n\n\"Well?\" asked Ralph.\n\n\"I didn't know the guy.\"\n\n\"I'll do it.\" Ralph sighed. \"Here lies another human. I didn't know him, but he didn't do anything to me so I guess he was all right. He was still a human though, and most of them are jerks. Except that one guy whose name I can't remember now.\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah,\" said Ward, \"the fat one.\"\n\n\"Not that one. I'm talking about that short one.\"\n\n\"They're all short.\"\n\n\"True, but this one was especially short.\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah, the short one. He was a good guy,\" agreed Ward. \"Too bad about that guy.\"\n\n\"Anyway,\" continued Ralph, \"I doubt this guy was as good as that guy, but maybe he was. Probably not. Probably was an asshole. But maybe not.\"\n\nA clap of thunder ended the ceremony.\n\n\"That was beautiful, Ralph.\"\n\nThe two ogres loped their way toward the citadel to escape the threatening rain. The rumbling clouds swirled in the blackened sky. The wind howled, but the downpour never came, only a few drops.\n\nThe woman stood by Ned's grave. She might've appeared there. Or just as possibly, she'd walked up unnoticed. She was a small, wiry figure with a bent back, dressed all in red.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her cloak was crimson, her dress a sharp scarlet.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her long hair was sanguine, and her skin a pale cerise. A vermilion raven perched on her shoulder. She clutched a gnarled maroon staff in an equally gnarled hand. She raised it over her head and gathered the magic necessary to raise the dead.\n\nNed had been raised so many times that it was absurdly simple. One day, he might even rise without her help. For now, he still needed a nudge.\n\n\"Get up, lazybones.\"\n\nIt wasn't much of an incantation, but it was all that was required. The Red Woman stamped her staff on Ned's grave. The clouds dissolved, and the air grew still. She waited.\n\nAn hour later, she still waited.\n\n\"He's not coming up,\" said the raven.\n\n\"He's just being stubborn. He'll get tired of sitting in the ground soon enough.\"\n\nAnother hour later, he did. Ned had some experience digging himself out of graves, and it didn't take long once he finally decided to claw his way to the surface. He wiped away the moist earth clinging to his clothes..\n\n\"Took you long enough,\" remarked the raven.\n\nNed rubbed his sore neck. There was a crick in it now. That'd probably never go away. He always ended up with some such reminder after dying. There were so many now, one more didn't make much difference.\n\nThe Red Woman smiled and walked away.\n\nHe called after her. \"Why don't you just let me die?\" She turned her wrinkled face in his direction. Her red cheeks glowed in the faded twilight. \"Because, Ned, I've had a vision. One day, some far-off tomorrow, the fate of this world and every creature that walks its lands, swims its waters, and soars through its skies will depend upon you and the decision you will make.\"\n\nHe hadn't expected the answer. She'd never given him one before. He felt a little better hearing it, to know there was a reason for his suffering. He puffed out his chest with a proud smile.\n\n\"I'm just screwing with you, Ned.\"\n\nNed's chest and ego deflated, and he slumped.\n\n\"Some people knit. Others play cards. I raise the dead,\" she replied. \"A girl's got to have a hobby. Otherwise I'd sit around my cave all day talking to zombies. Have you ever tried having a conversation with a zombie? They're very dull. And it doesn't matter how many times you tell them you don't mind the smell, they just keep apologizing. Over and over again. They're so bloody self-conscious.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sorry.\" He wasn't sure why he apologized. \"But I was hoping you could just stop.\"\n\n\"Give them the silent treatment, you mean?\" She scratched her nose with a long fuchsia fingernail. \"Hardly seems fair to discriminate against them just because they're dead.\"\n\n\"No. I meant I was hoping you could stop bringing me back to life.\"\n\n\"That's a fine thank-you,\" she said to her raven. \"Most men would consider themselves fortunate to have cheated death as many times as this one.\"\n\n\"It's just...\" He struggled to find the right words. \"Look. It's not natural for a man to keep dying.\"\n\nShe leaned on her staff. \"What are you saying? You'd rather be dead? Is the grave so appealing?\"\n\n\"It's not that. But a man shouldn't have to die more than once.\"\n\nShe shook her head very slowly. \"That's your problem, Ned. You keep mentioning the dying. As if that's the most important part. Has it occurred to you that perhaps you'd do better to think more upon the time you spend among the living and less upon those brief moments in the company of the dead?\"\n\n\"Certainly not,\" taunted the raven. \"Ned isn't a very bright boy.\"\n\nNed reached for the dagger on his belt. It was gone. Over the years, he'd stabbed the woman with a variety of blades in a variety of points, but so far, she'd never seemed to care. He hadn't tried the raven yet. He didn't imagine it would work.\n\nEven if he killed the damned bird, she'd probably just resurrect it.\n\n\"All things die, Ned,\" said the Red Woman. \"Everything must molder in the ground sooner or later. You are no exception... probably. But while we live, whether by nature or magic, we'd do well to appreciate the experience.\"\n\n\"I don't know why you bother,\" squawked the raven. \"Clearly he's an idiot.\"\n\n\"Perhaps.\" She stepped into the night. Despite her bright rubecundity, the blackness absorbed her. \"See you around, Ned.\"\n\nShe was gone. He couldn't say whether she walked away or vanished into nothing. For a moment, he considered her advice, but before he could give it much thought, a faint odor of strawberries and cream reminded him how hungry he was. Returning from the dead always gave him an appetite.\n\nCopper Citadel was a dim beacon in the gray night, and he headed for it. It was an irksome journey. He couldn't see well and kept tripping over the uneven, rocky ground. He'd had a lightstone in his pouch when he died, but it was gone along with his knife and money. He'd been robbed. Dead men had no use for gold.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But now he wasn't dead, and he was broke and blind, stumbling through the dark.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He half expected to fumble his way into a booby trap and perish again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was even more annoyed by the time he reached the citadel, and his teeth were positively grinding.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The front gates were open, and the ogre sentries were asleep at their post.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The light wasn't much better inside the citadel walls. The only illumination at all came from a few sizable lightstones that had yet to be stolen from their fixtures. Soldiers slept on the ground. Others milled about in drunken gangs. None noticed or cared about one stranger walking through their fort. Ned had heard Ogre Company was undisciplined, but this was an absurdity of a fortress. He was glad he didn't have to worry about dealing with security.\n\nHe found the pub without any trouble. He just followed the sounds of carousing. The harsh blare of the bonehorn, a vile orcish instrument capable of producing only three notes, assaulted his ears. The player kept tooting those notes in the same sequence. Ned recognized the tune: \"Skullcrusher Boogie.\" Not his favorite orcish composition, but it beckoned him.\n\nThe pub was dark, musty, and crowded. Mostly ogres, as Ned expected. He kept his eye to himself and strode purposefully to the bar.\n\nHe caught the barkeep's attention. \"Doom stout.\"\n\nThe barkeep, a short ogre easily a head taller than Ned, pursed his lips. \"You sure you want that?\"\n\nNed nodded, and the barkeep went to fetch a mug.\n\n\"Excuse me, but are you Never Dead Ned?\" asked a goblin on the next stool.\n\n\"No.\"\n\nAce leaned forward. \"Are you sure? You look like him.\"\n\n\"All humans look alike.\"\n\nAce frowned. \"Yeah, but this guy was distinctive, even for a human. He was full of scars. Like you. And he had only one eye. Like you. And his left arm, it looked a little gangrenous. Like yours.\" He squinted. \"Yeah, you're him a'right.\"\n\nNed admitted defeat. \"Yeah. I'm him.\"\n\n\"Thought so. I flew you in. Remember that?\"\n\n\"How could I forget?\"\n\nThe barkeep set a mug of thick, black liquid before Ned. \"I'd advise you not to drink this, little guy. Likely to put you right in your grave.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't be the first time,\" said Ned.\n\nHe gulped some of the doom stout. He had to chew to get it down, and swallowing was a feat of will. His gut burned. His tongue sizzled. His throat constricted so tightly that it cut off his oxygen for about a minute. His eye watered.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "After all that, a cool pleasantness filled his head. In an hour it'd be replaced by a crushing headache and a bloody nose, but an hour was a long way away.\n\n\"Never knew a human that could stomach doom stout.\" The barkeep smiled. \"That one is on the house.\"\n\nIt was a good thing, because Ned didn't have any money. But he was commander here, and he'd just risen from the dead. That should've been worth a free drink at the very least.\n\nAce lit his pipe. A fly caught in the toxic yellow cloud retched audibly and fell to the floor dead. \"Guess they call you Never Dead Ned for a reason, eh, sir?\"\n\n\"Guess so.\" Ned bit off another gulp of ale.\n\n\"Hey, Ward, Ralph!\" shouted Ace. \"Look who's back! Guess you didn't bury him deep enough!\"\n\nNed swiveled and scanned the pub. His gaze fell across the only two ogres who couldn't look him in the eye. Both held a mug in one hand, a shovel in the other. Ned rose and stomped across the room on wobbly legs. Ace, grinning, followed. The pub fell quiet.\n\n\"Did you bury me?\"\n\nWard nodded. \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"You're not supposed to bury me.\" The muscles of Ned's bad arm tightened. His hand balled into a fist.\n\nThe gravediggers gulped. Even sitting, they were taller than Ned, and there wasn't a human alive who could take an ogre in a bare-knuckle brawl. But any man who could return from the grave and drink doom stout was worthy of some respect. Since ogres weren't used to either respecting or fearing humans, they weren't sure precisely how to feel. They ultimately decided on awkward unease.\n\nThe doom stout bolstered Ned's courage, lessened his reason. He had no fear of death, merely a general dislike for it. He was capable of anything right then, and even he wasn't sure what he might do.\n\n\"My money.\"\n\nRalph dropped Ned's pouch on the table. \"We didn't think you'd be needing it anymore, sir.\"\n\nNed belched loudly enough to nearly knock himself off his rubbery legs. \"My knife. My sword.\"\n\nThe knife was given over.\n\n\"Someone got to the sword before us,\" said Ward.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ned hunched over the table to keep his balance.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "For the upcoming response: keep quoted text at about 9%", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We were just following orders,\" said Ralph. \"Sir.\" He grunted that last word with obvious disgust.\n\nNed's bad arm swung out hard and fast and collided with Ralph's thick jaw. A terrible crack filled the air. Whether it was Ned's hand breaking or the ogre's teeth slamming together, Ned couldn't tell. But he knocked Ralph out of his chair and onto the floor. Ned spun around on the follow-through and, if not for a steadying arm from Ace, would've ended up beside the ogre.\n\nThe pub cheered. Every one of these soldiers appreciated a good, solid punch as an art form. Ned would regret it in the morning. His knuckles were swollen and red, but he didn't feel the pain. The stout kept him nice and warm.\n\nRalph stood. He rubbed his jaw. A trickle of blood showed on his lip. Not much, but more damage than any human had ever done. Actually he'd never been punched by a human. The peculiarity of the situation took away his anger, leaving him with only profound confusion.\n\n\"Here's a new order.\" Ned jammed his finger into Ward's chest. \"Don't ever bury me again.\"\n\nHe turned and tripped his way back to the bar. When he'd settled back into place, the pub filled with noise again. The bonehorn player launched into a rousing rendition of \"Broken Bone Blues,\" a tune consisting of the same notes in the same order as \"Skullcrusher Boogie,\" but a little slower.\n\n\"You've got guts, sir.\" Ace slapped Ned across the back.\n\nNed's bad arm seized the goblin by his ear and tossed him into the bonehorn player. He hadn't meant to do it, but his arm always got extra nasty when he drank. The patrons chuckled with much amusement. Ace dusted himself off and found a seat at the gravediggers' table.\n\nNed swallowed another drink and wiped the sweat from his brow. The higher the fever, the better the stout. He ordered a steak, bloody rare. Nothing else agreed with a tall mug of doom stout.\n\nA woman slid beside Ned. \"So you're our new commander.\"\n\nHe glanced at her. She was pretty, not beautiful, with short, simple blond hair. She was vaguely familiar.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Something about her stirred his animal lusts, and it was unusual for anything to stir his lusts so soon after rising from the dead.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 11 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And a hearty stout never helped.\n\n\"Have we met before?\" he asked.\n\n\"No, sir.\" She smiled. A dimple appeared on her left cheek. He knew her. He just couldn't place where.\n\n\"Name's Miriam, sir.\" She ran her fingers up and down his bad arm. The limb warmed at her touch. \"Can a lady buy you a drink?\"\n\nAcross the room, Ralph dabbed at the blood on his chin. \"Told'ja he was an asshole.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" Ace puffed on his pipe with a grin. \"I like him.\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: The user will write a bit then you need to write around 2 sentences sentences continuing directly from the user's text. Note: Characters may be introduced as if already known - maintain this narrative continuity. Style: A. Lee Martinez", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Red Woman had amassed a great many responsibilities over her years.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Whereas men existed six or seven paltry decades, she just kept on living, gathering tasks like a shambling sludgebeast gathered flies until the poor creature must eventually smother under the weight of a billion insects.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But the Red Woman didn't smother easily, and when Never Dead Ned spoke of the peace of the grave, she understood more than she ever let on.\n\nOne of her tasks was the tending of a godling.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This particular godling manifested as a phantom mountain. It wasn't much of a mountain, nor much of a god.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But it was young, and gods aged at their own pace, some coming into being and passing away within an hour, others taking millennia to find form. The mountain was little more than a faithful puppy.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It followed her everywhere, existing in some shadowy realm between the heavens and earth. Few could sense it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even fewer could find it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But to the Red Woman, it was as real as anything else and never far away in the metaphysical illusion of distance.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So she'd made it her home.\n\nShe stopped to catch her breath.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was very, very old and felt every bit her age on days like this.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her raven flew ahead and called to her. \"Come on now. Just a little farther.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She nodded as if she needed the encouragement, as if she hadn't taken this climb countless times before.\n\n\"I don't know why you don't just move to one of the lower caves,\" said the bird.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm comfortable in my cave.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Maybe so, but one of these days you aren't going to make the climb.\"\n\nShe silently agreed. Though nearly ageless, she was still flesh and blood.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "And flesh, even enchanted flesh, withered beside the antiquity of stone.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She hoped with a decade or two the mountain might understand enough to provide her with stairs. It'd already given her something of a path to work with.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Not much of a path, and there were portions she had to scramble over stubbornly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But it was a sign that this burgeoning godling understood something of her comfort.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Red Woman reached her cave with some effort.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The mouth was deceptively small, and a bend in the tunnel gave the impression of shallowness. But the cavern was exceptionally large, and she needed all the space for her various duties.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It would've been too much for her to handle if she hadn't taken to drafting the dead.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Dozens of zombies milled about their appointed tasks.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Some were nearly indistinguishable from the living, but most were obviously deceased. One lurched to her side and took her cloak.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Another handed her a glass of brandy.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A drowned maggot floated in the beverage, but she'd grown accustomed to the sight. One couldn't work with walking corpses day in and day out without a strong stomach, and she'd developed a taste for maggots and worms and flies out of convenience.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She sipped down the brandy and tucked the white speck under her tongue with a pleased smile.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She went to her cauldron and checked the corpse stirring the brew. Then she reviewed the jeweler's progress in sorting precious stones.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then she inspected the shroud weaver's latest work before checking the smithy's newest batch of swords, not one of which was worthy of the slightest enchantment. So many things to do, she mused.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But she limped her way over to a stool and had a seat, resting her staff against her shoulder.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her raven was right about the climb, but none of the other caverns had the correct atmosphere.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A zombie maiden stopped sweeping. In life, the maid had been pleasant-looking, if not exceptionally beautiful.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Now her skin hung from her bones, unliving proof that while perhaps one could never be too rich, one could certainly be too thin.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Did you do it?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The sorceress nodded.\n\n\"He dies a lot, doesn't he?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sorceress nodded again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He must be very clumsy,\" said the maiden.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The raven cackled. \"He's a buffoon.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Death doesn't favor idiots,\" said the Red Woman. \"She simply favors Ned. Oblivion doesn't surrender her prizes easily, and she never forgets those held, however briefly, in her loving embrace.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"She doesn't seem to care about reclaiming me,\" said the maiden, her sallow skin and yellowish eyes drooping.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That's because you're only half alive. Death is far too busy to be concerned with the trivialities of whether your corpse continues to walk about.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Let's hope he can go a while longer before expiring again,\" said the raven.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She smiled. Though her caretaking of Ned was her greatest duty, these journeys still consumed much of her valuable time, and she hoped Ned would stave off his next demise by at least a month or two.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The zombie maiden sniffed the air. Had her nose not fallen off long ago, her nostrils would have flared.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do you smell that? Is that me?\"\n\n\"I think it's me,\" said a gooey corpse mixing potions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A dead knight raised his helmet visor. \"Well, it's not me.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was a fresh addition to her staff.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was still in denial, though a spear clearly pierced his chest.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The legless torso of a deceased jeweler paused in his task of sorting gems. \"It's not me. That's for sure. My flesh is almost all gone.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The rest of the zombies grumbled. When all the flesh fell from the bone, a zombie's conscription ended.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A small scrap of skin clung to the jeweler's elbow, and several flies busily worked at it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His freedom was soon at hand, and his fellow drafted dead couldn't help but resent him. The Red Woman disliked this as well.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She'd have to find another jeweler soon, yet another task she didn't have time for.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Then it has to be me,\" said the maiden.\n\n\"No, it's me,\" disagreed the cauldron stirrer.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The raven cawed loudly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, for the heavens' sake, it's all of you, you decaying idiots!\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The zombies hung their heads and muttered.\n\n\"Not me,\" grunted the knight.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He subtly raised his arm and sniffed himself, but his creaky, rusting armor drew attention to the maneuver.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Red Woman sipped her brandy.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Frowning, she shot the evil eye at some buzzing flies. They perished, falling into her glass.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She took another drink and found this more to her liking.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The mountain rumbled, and she sensed an impending arrival.\n\nThe wizard materialized slowly with a great deal of pomp.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He'd always been more concerned with the form of the magic than the function.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A black tower of smoke billowed in the center of the cavern.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Phantom women, absurdly proportioned with impossibly ample bosoms and preposterously thin waists and welcoming hips and long lithesome limbs, spun around in the air, droning in a demonic chant.\n\n\"Belok, Belok, Belok, Belok, Belok...\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "One of the phantoms hovered before the Red Woman.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The ghost's features peeled away to reveal a shining green skull.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her flowing hair turned to scorpions.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her gown fell to tatters. \"Belok has come to call upon you. May the gods grant you mercy, for he certainly shall not.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The phantom's appearance returned to her pretty state.\n\nThe smoke sank back into the ground, and a tall, thin figure stood in its place.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "His eyes were two golden pearls, his tunic a shimmering silver.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He literally glowed with power.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But his most striking features were a gray duckbill, a dome of short brown fur spreading from the top of his head to just below his eyes, and webbed, clawed fingertips.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Red Woman was unpleasantly surprised to see him. She rarely entertained visitors, and this was one she could do without.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Hello, Belok. Care for some brandy?\"\n\nThe singing phantoms settled around the wizard's shoulders. They moaned musically.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "With eyes that were still as sharp as in her youth, she spied a new hair sprout on the wizard's chin.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The mountain godling brimmed with magic, and even merely breathing the enchanted air here brought on Belok's accursed allergies.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He reached into his tunic and held up a gleaming diamond.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"By this shard of the Splendid Orb of Truth, I compel you, witch! May you speak only with ultimate veracity!\"\n\n\"Veracity, veracity!\" sang his phantom paramours in melodious glee.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Belok's golden eyes gleamed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "His aura drew all the light to it, thus shining brighter and darkening the cavern at the same time.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The gem clutched in his hand bathed the Red Woman in a pure white beam.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Speak, witch!\" shouted Belok.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'speak' 4 times in response]", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I command you, speak!\"\n\n\"Speak, speak, speak,\" chanted the chorus.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Red Woman supposed a wizard allergic to magic shouldn't make such a production of it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But for all his power, Belok had never been particularly bright. She sat down again and waited for him to finish.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(hey for the next response, You must use the word 'another' exactly 2 times in your response)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It went on for another minute, although she stopped paying attention to the details. By the end, the fur on Belok's face had advanced its march to cover another fourth of an inch.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Where is he?\" demanded the wizard.\n\nIt took a moment for her to realize he was done with his spell.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She'd nearly drifted off to sleep.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Answer unclear,\" she replied. \"Try again.\"\n\nShe thought he snarled.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was hard to read such expressions on the wizard's accursed bill.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your next response only must contain 96% dialogue", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But I wield a Shard of Truth. You can't keep a secret from me.\"\n\n\"You overestimate yourself, Belok. And your stone.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She hobbled over to his side and plucked the diamond from his hand. \"May I?\"\n\nHe nodded curtly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She tossed the stone to her jeweler, who examined it for a moment. \"This isn't a Shard of Truth. It's just a diamond. And a poor quality one at that.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You must be mistaken,\" said Belok. \"I bought the stone from an alchemist in Minetown, and he assured me—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He bilked you,\" replied the jeweler.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I am Belok. I am the greatest wizard in all the lands. I cannot be bilked.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "His phantoms shrieked mournfully at the very notion.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Red Woman took the stone from the zombie and gave it back to the wizard.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Fine. Just take your worthless shard and leave me be. I don't know why we keep having to go through this. Orb of Truth or not, you haven't the strength to compel me. These visits of yours change nothing. Nothing except you.\"\n\n\"Damn you, witch. I should rip out your hollow soul and feed it to my minions.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The phantoms licked their lips.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Spare me your threats. I'm every bit as powerful as you. Certainly my defeat is a possibility should we duel, but I would not fall easily, and the victory would cost you dearly, wouldn't it?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She leaned on her staff. \"Have you grown that tail yet?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He frowned. \"A little one.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Ah, well, I see the transformation is coming along smoothly then. You know, you needn't ever worry about it if you'd stop using magic.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I am Belok! I am magic in the flesh! Vengeance is mine!\" His phantoms howled terribly, shaking loose a few of the smaller stalactites.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They crashed to the ground, shattering. The zombie maiden sighed while sweeping the pieces into a pile.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Be off on your vengeance then, but I can't help you. I can only offer my sympathies toward your plight.\" In truth, the Red Woman had absolutely none.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He'd earned his curse, and she considered it mercifully short of the punishment he deserved.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But there was some irony in it, she supposed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "For Belok could've lived a perfectly peaceful life had he the wisdom to put aside his magic.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Something he could never do.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The punishment was only the form of his undoing, while his own mad obsession with arcane power was the true cause. In that way, the curse was quite poetic.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Shall we continue this discussion?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "the Red Woman asked. \"I haven't the time to spare, and neither, I suspect, do you.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You can't hide him forever.\"\n\n\"And neither can you stave off your transformation forever. Not so long as you insist on casting spells that will not work and visiting enchanted mountains.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'll be back.\" He snapped his duckbill.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And next time, you'll tell me what I want to know.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His exit wasn't the presentation of his entrance. It never was after one of these unsuccessful visits.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He and his phantoms simply vanished.\n\n\"I thought he'd never leave,\" said the raven.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A fly nibbled away the last particle of flesh on the jeweler's elbow.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The skeleton chuckled, falling into an inanimate heap. The rest of the workers glared enviously at the pile of bones.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You'll be dead evermore soon enough.\" The Red Woman smacked the sweeping maiden lightly on the backside.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with 94 sentences sentences. Match the established level of character/world familiarity. Genres: comedy, fantasy. Include: humor.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Consciousness attacked Ned like a thundering beast. Given a choice, he'd have stayed asleep. Forever. It was the next best thing to being dead. But he didn't have choices. He just had things he had to do, and waking up was one of those things.\n\nHis brain throbbed, pushing against the cage of his skull. He thought for sure it must've been oozing out of his empty socket. His left arm was stiff and unyielding. Any attempt to move it met only with a terrible ache, so he let it lie. Blood crusted under his nostrils. All these he expected, but there was something new: he tasted fish.\n\nHe hated fish. Even drunk on doom stout, he couldn't imagine willingly putting it to his mouth. He ran his tongue across his lips. It was fish all right. Salty, not horribly fishy tasting, but indisputably fish.\n\nHe smacked audibly and moved the pillow from atop his head. Furious light flooded in, and he put the pillow back with a groan.\n\n\"Good morning, sir,\" Miriam purred, \"or should I say, good afternoon?\" Her silken voice stirred those animal lusts, but his hangover and the peril of daylight kept him from responding.\n\nHe was too achy to smile, but he remembered now. A vague recollection of a night spent with her in his arms. It'd been magic. At least, he thought it'd been magic. The stout blurred the details. Still, he'd gotten laid. That counted for something. Maybe Ogre Company wouldn't be so bad at all.\n\nSomething scaly slipped between the covers to touch his shoulder. He pulled away.\n\n\"I have to get going, sir,\" said Miriam. \"Kiss before I'm off?\"\n\nEye closed, he lifted the pillow and puckered. Soft, cool lips met his. They tasted like fish. She tasted like fish. Reflexes kicked in, and he tumbled out of bed. For a minute, he struggled against the covers entangling him and the burning heat of daylight. When his vision cleared, he glimpsed a creature, a woman covered in golden scales, standing over him. She spoke with Miriam's voice.\n\n\"I guess this means the honeymoon is over, sir.\"\n\nNed covered his eye. \"How drunk was I?\"\n\n\"Very drunk, sir. But that really doesn't have much to do with it. I tend to appear to all men as the woman of their innermost desire. Hazard of being a siren.\"\n\nHe recalled how she'd looked last night. Pretty, yes, but nothing supernaturally appealing.\n\n\"Think about it,\" she said. \"Is there anyone you've ever desired who you couldn't have?\"\n\nHe didn't feel like running through the list right now. It didn't matter. This wouldn't be the first time he'd left a tavern with a beautiful girl and woke up to a woman with webbed toes. He swore this time it'd be the last. Although he'd sworn that the last time, so he couldn't pretend the promise counted for much.\n\nNow that the shock had worn off, he noticed Miriam's shape was distinctly feminine. More so than he'd seen last night. She had long, supple legs, a narrow waist, and noteworthy breasts. Her face, resting someplace between a cod and a woman, left a lot to be desired. But her scales glinted beautifully, and the fins atop her head were tall and regal.\n\n\"Why don't you look like you did?\" he asked.\n\n\"Like this?\" She whistled a few pleasant notes. His vision blurred, and she transformed into a tall, dark-skinned woman. Not the same form as last night, but still very familiar. Yet another woman on his list that he couldn't quite place.\n\nShe stopped whistling, and the illusion fell away. \"Sharing a bed has given you some tolerance, sir. Now it only works when I sing. That's why I seduced you. So we could get past it right away. Better for both of us.\"\n\nHe winced and felt sick. It wasn't Miriam. He was okay with that. Not happy about it, but okay. Remnants of doom stout congealed in his stomach, coated his throat. He felt like throwing up, but the stout wasn't letting him off that easy.\n\nShe smiled. A nice smile, even framed by plump, purple lips. \"Admit it. You had fun.\"\n\nHe couldn't really remember. A night with the woman of his dreams and all he could recall was the morning after.\n\n\"Permission to leave, sir? If I don't take a dip, I'll start flaking.\"\n\nHe granted it. She slipped into her uniform, offered a casual salute, and left his quarters. He lay on his bed for a while, dredging up blackened bits of sludge from his throat. In a little over fifteen minutes, he'd half filled his chamber pot with a revolting brackish paste.\n\nSomeone knocked on his door. He grunted an approximation of \"Come in.\"\n\nGabel entered and saluted. \"Sir, first officer reporting for duty.\"\n\n\"Can I help you?\" asked Ned, then remembered he was in charge here. \"What is it?\"\n\nGabel bowed. \"Sorry to bother you, sir, but I was wondering when you'd like to do your first inspection.\"\n\n\"Never,\" said Ned honestly.\n\nGabel's brow furrowed curiously. \"Sir?\"\n\n\"Later. I'll do them later.\"\n\n\"And the address, sir?\" asked Gabel.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"The introductory address, sir? To introduce yourself to the troops.\"\n\n\"Later.\" Ned yawned. \"Much later.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" Gabel coughed softly to fill the silence while he organized his thoughts. \"Might I ask you a question, sir?\"\n\nNed groaned. \"Yes, I was dead last night. And yes, I know they call me Never Dead Ned. But I guess that's only because Occasionally Dead Ned isn't nearly as catchy. Does that answer your question?\"\n\n\"It's true then. You can't die.\"\n\n\"Actually, I die very well. In fact, I dare say I'm the undisputed grand master of the art of perishing. It's the staying-dead part that I'm not very good at.\"\n\nGabel coughed again to cover an awkward silence.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I've never met an immortal before, sir.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I've never met such a tall goblin.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Gabel frowned. \"I'm an orc, sir.\"\n\nNed frowned. \"Are you sure about that?\"\n\nAn edge entered Gabel's voice. \"Quite certain, sir.\"\n\nNed rubbed his face and studied Gabel for a few seconds before deciding he didn't give a damn. \"Permission to leave.\"\n\nConfused, Gabel looked around the room. \"These are your quarters, sir.\"\n\n\"I was giving you permission.\"\n\nThe first officer saluted. \"Thank you, sir. I'll alert the men to expect your address later this evening.\"\n\nNed mumbled something that was neither an affirmation nor a contradiction and rolled over in his bed. He disappeared under his blanket, but before Gabel could leave, Ned grumbled from under the covers.\n\n\"Do you know of anything that's good for washing out fishy tastes?\"\n\n\"I believe the general consensus is a tall glass of warm grog works best, sir.\"\n\n\"General consensus?\"\n\n\"Miriam has known most of the other men here, sir. In the most traditional sense of the word.\" Gabel grinned wryly. \"Shall I fetch that grog for you, sir?\"\n\nThe blankets bounced up and down in what Gabel took as a nod. He left the room, slamming the door shut. Ned groaned loud enough to hear through the walls. Gabel's grin vanished.\n\n\"Well?\" asked Frank.\n\n\"Is it him?\" asked Regina.\n\nGabel nodded.\n\n\"I thought you said he was dead,\" said Frank.\n\n\"He was.\"\n\n\"Are you certain it's him and not just some other human?\" asked Frank.\n\n\"I can tell one human from another, thank you very much.\" Gabel's long, goblinlike ears wilted. \"And this one is very distinctive. No one would mistake him for anyone else.\"\n\n\"But how is it possible?\" asked Frank.\n\n\"Obviously it's some sort of magic,\" said Regina. \"Is he a wizard?\"\n\n\"He doesn't look like a wizard,\" said Gabel.\n\nFrank leaned low, which still made him very tall, and whispered, \"Maybe he's a secret wizard.\"\n\nGabel's voice boomed in comparison. \"A secret what?\"\n\nFrank picked up the orc with one massive hand and clamped the other over Gabel's mouth. The ogre's meaty palm covered all of Gabel's face. He flopped around and resisted, but there wasn't much he could do. Frank nodded toward the far end of the hall, and he and Regina tiptoed away from Ned's door. Frank released Gabel.\n\n\"I could have you court-martialed for that,\" said Gabel.\n\n\"I didn't want him to hear you.\" Frank tapped the patch on his shoulder. \"Besides, I outrank you.\"\n\n\"No, I outrank you.\" Gabel tapped his own patch with a sneer.\n\n\"No, you're first officer. I'm organizational lieutenant, first class. That puts me above you.\"\n\n\"No, it doesn't.\"\n\n\"Will you two stop bickering?\" Regina folded her arms across her chest and stood ramrod straight.\n\n\"You can't tell us what to do,\" said Frank.\n\n\"Yeah,\" agreed Gabel, \"we outrank you.\"\n\n\"No, you don't.\" She pointed to the insignia stitched to her robe just above her left breast. Frank and Gabel took note of it, but were wise enough not to stare too long and risk receiving a brutal right hook. \"As archmajor, second stratum, sixth class, I'm the highest-ranking officer here.\" She tapped her temple with her finger. \"At least, I'm pretty sure I am. I know I outrank at least one of you.\"\n\n\"Damn, the Legion made this complicated.\" Frank scratched the mane of thick red hair atop his pointed head. \"Makes me wish I'd signed up with a smaller army sometimes.\"\n\nGabel said, \"We can go back to my office and check the flowchart: '\n\n\"Ah, forget it. Doesn't matter.\" Frank leaned in once again and whispered, \"What I was getting at was that maybe our new commander is actually a secret wizard.\"\n\n\"What in the Grand Goddess's name is a secret wizard?\" asked Regina.\n\n\"It's like a wizard. But secret.\" Frank bent lower until his head was level with Gabel's. \"They're very dangerous.\"\n\n\"I've never heard of such a thing.\"\n\nThough the Amazon and the ore kept their voices normal, Frank continued to whisper. \"Very few have. That's why they're called secret wizards.\"\n\n\"Well, what's the point of being a wizard if you're going to keep it secret?\" asked Gabel.\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\nFrank smiled wide and nodded very slowly, but he didn't supply any further explanation. Gabel was content to let the subject drop, but Regina couldn't help herself.\n\n\"What makes these secret wizards so dangerous?\"\n\nFrank leaned forward until his comrades were certain he'd fall on them. His voice was barely audible.\n\n\"Nobody knows.\"\n\nGabel sighed, and Frank stood straight and frowned.\n\n\"Don't you understand? They're like wizards, but secret. They're not like proper sorcerers living in floating castles and consorting with demons and mixing potions. Those kind are bothersome, but you know what to expect. There's protocol. Some nasty bugger raises an army of the dead or decides to forge an accursed ring or some other such nonsense, you can always dig up a magic sword or find some prophesied hero or just assemble a huge army and take care of them.\n\n\"But secret wizards walk among us. Nobody knows how many there are. Nobody knows what they're up to. And that's what makes them so dangerous.\"\n\n\"Fine. Let's pretend there is such a thing.\" Gabel grunted skeptically. \"If Ned were a secret wizard, then returning from the dead would blow his secret.\"\n\nFrank nodded with that knowing grin of his. \"It's just the sort of thing a true secret wizard would never do. Which is precisely why it's just the sort of thing a very clever secret wizard would do.\"\n\n\"That does make a certain sense,\" admitted Regina. \"It'd certainly throw off suspicion.\"\n\n\"Let me get this straight.\" Gabel paced in a small circle. \"Never Dead Ned may actually be a secret wizard because secret wizards don't go around showing off their power in public, except to convince people that they aren't really secret wizards, which very few people suspect even exist in the first place.\"\n\n\"It's a very clever ploy,\" said Frank.\n\n\"Ingenious,\" agreed Regina.\n\n\"It's ludicrous.\" Gabel's voice rose, though he successfully resisted the sudden urge to shout. \"It's absolutely absurd. That has to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He stared down the ogre.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 81 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Frank picked something out of the hair on his thick forearm, sniffed, and ate it. When Gabel stopped panting with annoyance, Frank mumbled, \"Or it might just be the cleverest thing you've ever heard of.\"\n\nGabel ground his teeth. \"Even if he were, which he isn't, he wouldn't be that clever.\"\n\nBy now, the Amazon was entrenched in the subject. She began to whisper too. \"Anyone could be a secret wizard. And the more unlikely the suspect, the more likely they could be. What could they want?\"\n\n\"Nobody knows,\" said Frank. \"And few are willing to speculate.\"\n\nGabel threw up his hands. \"When you're ready to talk about something more important than imaginary secret societies of hypothetical diabolical wizards, you can find me in my office. Oh, and Regina, the commander asked for some grog. You should get on that.\"\n\n\"Why me?\"\n\nGabel struck on a plan that was very likely to put Ned back in his grave. Or at the very least, get Regina demoted. Since Gabel wasn't truly certain he outranked her, he couldn't lose either way. \"The commander asked for a leggy redhead. I told him we didn't have any redheads, but he said a blonde would do in a pinch.\"\n\nRegina scowled. \"Swine.\"\n\n\"And he said to hurry up your pretty little ass.\"\n\nWith a guttural growl, she clutched the sword at her side.\n\nGabel, his back to her, chuckled before heading off to his office to consult the ranking flowchart.\n\nRegina drew the weapon a few inches from its sheath and slammed it back into place several times. She glared at Frank. Her black eyes simmered with disgust for all males in general and one in particular. Even the very large ogre felt a trickle of fear down his back.\n\n\"I wouldn't suggest killing him unless you can be sure he'll remain dead. Even if it didn't upset him, he'd probably have you written up.\"\n\n\"Yes. You're right, of course.\" But her eyes didn't soften, and her grip on her sword tightened. \"If you'll excuse me, I've grog to fetch.\"\n\nFrank stepped aside, and she stalked her way across the citadel to the tavern. Every soldier knew well enough to stay out of her way by her burning gaze, clenched fists, and the hard kick of her step.\n\nRegina's temperament had gotten her transferred to Ogre Company. The logic was, as ogres were large and fearsome, she'd be less likely to pick fights with them. It'd worked so far, but this was mostly because no ogres had gotten on her bad side yet. \"An angry wife is good for life,\" went an old ogre adage, and had Regina been an ogress, she would've been very popular. But she was human, and ogres preferred human women to be delicate and cuddly, thinking of them more as pets one could fornicate with than as lifelong mates.\n\nRegina did have frequent tussles with the humans and orcs stationed at Copper Citadel, but in Ogre Company, as long as no one lost a limb, such incidents rarely found their way into a soldier's permanent record.\n\nShe brought the grog back to Ned's quarters. Pausing outside the door, she drew her sword. Perhaps she couldn't kill him with it, but she might be able to teach him a lesson in respect. Frank's warning came back to her. He'd made a valid point. Ogre Company was the last place left her. If she blew this, she blew her career in the Legion. She didn't want to start over in another army.\n\n\"He's not worth it,\" she told herself. \"He's just another worthless man.\"\n\nWrapping herself in Amazonian superiority, she sheathed the blade and pushed open the door without knocking.\n\nNed, obscured beneath blankets, groaned.\n\n\"Your grog, sir.\"\n\nA scarred arm poked out from under the covers. It looked a little gangrenous. The fingers grabbed at the air until she put the mug in his hand. The limb retracted, and heavy gulps issued from beneath the cloth.\n\n\"Thanks. That is better.\" He belched and tossed the empty mug to the floor.\n\n\"Anything else, sir?\" she asked.\n\n\"What?\"\n\nShe swallowed hard. Her hand toyed with the dagger on her belt. \"Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?\"\n\nNed lowered the blanket, exposing his face and shoulders, a lattice of ugly discolorations. She'd seen healthier corpses. She expected a leer, perhaps an open ogle of her womanly perfection, but Ned barely glanced at her before rolling over, allowing her a glimpse of the slashes and scabs along his back. She found herself mesmerized, staring at the history lacerated upon his skin.\n\nHe turned his head to look up at her with his one eye, and she smiled at him without realizing it.\n\n\"Are you still here?\" he asked.\n\nShe frowned. \"Sorry, sir.\"\n\nShe saluted, turned, and left the room. In the hall, she stopped, feeling suddenly short of breath. She leaned against the wall as her legs were inexplicably shaky. She closed her eyes, and the slashes and scabs along his back flashed through her mind. There'd been a sword wound and, beneath that, a dagger's mark. Beside that, a purple welt that had to have come from a crushing mace blow. Claws of some terrible beast raked across his shoulder blades. And there was more than this. So much more. It was beautiful.\n\nHe was beautiful.\n\nRegina had never felt this way before, and she didn't like it. She fingered her sword, contemplating removing the object causing her discomfort. But this was Never Dead Ned. She couldn't kill him.\n\nAnd maybe, she considered with a snarl, she didn't want to.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand the story by adding 186 sentences in the comedy, fantasy genre. Match existing character context.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ned hadn't cared about bookkeeping, nor soldiering, nor anything he'd done before that. Nor did he care about his new command position. If there was passion to be found in life, Ned was still looking. He did what was expected of him and very little else. And inspections were expected. After he'd slept off his hangover, he'd realized that. He roused himself from his nice, cozy bed, got dressed, and set about on his duty.\n\nSeeing Copper Citadel in the light of day for the first time, Ned decided his initial assessment of the fortress had been too kind. The whole place was in terrible shape. The walls were crumbling. The buildings were in the middle of slow-motion collapse. Nothing had been cleaned or polished in a very long time, and garbage had been heaped in out-of-the-way corners—and in not-so-out-of-the-way corners. The cobblestones were cracked and uneven. The walls were held up only by the braces of garbage piles. And the front gate was too rusted to even close.\n\nThe soldiers of Ogre Company assembled before their new commander. Ned scanned the rank and file. The sun was near setting, and details were hard to pick out. In addition, the soldiers milled about in disorderly fashion, more a disoriented throng than a disciplined military unit. He estimated about three hundred ogres, one hundred ores, seventy-five humans, a few elves and trolls here and there. There were goblins as well, but too many to bother counting.\n\nNed walked from one end of the courtyard and back again. He decided that was enough of a show.\n\n\"Dismissed,\" he grunted.\n\n\"Back to your duties, you pathetic wastrels!\" shouted Gabel. \"Makes me sick to look at the lot of you, undisciplined scum!\"\n\nThe courtyard began to clear out, although no one seemed to have any particular place to go. A handful of soldiers remained.\n\n\"Sir.\" Gabel saluted. \"I believe you'll want to have a look at our more singular personnel.\"\n\nNed wanted no such thing, but it seemed the kind of thing a commander was supposed to do. \"All right.\"\n\n\"The archmajor has the files for your convenience, sir,\" said Gabel.\n\nRegina stepped up, carrying an armload of scrolls.\n\nNed waved her away. \"Just show me.\"\n\nRegina and Gabel exchanged shrugs.\n\n\"Very well, sir.\" Gabel led Ned to the first in line.\n\nThe short, wiry soldier had a worn face, and a long red beard hanging to his belly. Even in the light of dusk, Ned could see the soldier's eyes were white and glassy as pearls. Ned barely glimpsed the image of a setting sun tattooed on the soldier's forehead.\n\n\"So you're—\" Ned began.\n\n\"Yes, sir, I am.\" The soldier saluted. \"Owens, oracle division.\"\n\n\"I didn't know the Legion still—\"\n\n\"The program was discontinued, sir. Not cost effective.\"\n\n\"Are you—\"\n\n\"Completely blind, sir.\"\n\n\"Do you have—\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. Very annoying, I'm aware. But it's a difficult habit to break.\"\n\nNed rubbed his eye. \"Are you—\"\n\n\"I'm very good. Top of my class.\"\n\n\"Well, that's impress—\"\n\n\"Thank you, but I feel I must acknowledge a limitation.\"\n\nNed opened his mouth, but the impatient oracle answered the question before it was asked.\n\n\"Since losing use of my eyes, I can only hear the future.\" The oracle flashed a proud grin. \"But I hear it with an eighty-nine percent success rate.\"\n\nThis information had barely reached Ned's brain when the oracle spoke again.\n\n\"It still itches, sir, but a little ointment should take care of it. And thank you for your concern.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"My rash. That was what you were going to ask, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Are you sure about that? Often we think we're going to say one thing when in fact we end up saying another.\"\n\nNed replied, \"I'm positive.\"\n\n\"My mistake, sir. When you're right eighty-nine percent of the time, you're wrong the other eleven percent.\" He pointed to his nose. \"I do smell the future with ninety-eight percent accuracy.\"\n\nOwens answered before being asked. \"No, so far it hasn't proven very useful. Gods bless you, sir.\"\n\n\"I didn't sneeze.\"\n\nThe oracle dug in his ear with his finger. \"You will.\"\n\nNed moved to the next in line, a towering two-headed ogre. Such twins were rarely born, and they even more rarely survived adolescence, the tender formative years when ogres inclined toward their most perilously obnoxious. Puberty for the ogre race was a terrible ordeal involving gushing boils, boundless carnivorous appetite, and dangerously psychotic mood swings. Ogre youths were given lots of space during this stage, but two-headed specimens had little choice but to remain side by side. It didn't take long for one to kill the other—and himself—in the process.\n\nThe twins stood nine feet high if an inch and were nearly as wide. Their body was redder and hairier than those of single-headed ogres. The faces were similar but not identical. The one on the right had a fearsome overbite, and the one on the left had high-set, drooping ears. Still, it would've been obvious, even if they didn't share one body, that the ogres were related.\n\n\"Private Lewis and Corporal Martin,\" said Gabel.\n\nThey saluted with quick, military precision. They both began to speak, but stopped. Started again and stopped.\n\nLewis nodded to his brother. \"After you.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, after you,\" replied Martin.\n\n\"Please, dear brother, I insist.\"\n\n\"Not to be difficult, Lewis, but it is I who must insist.\"\n\n\"Don't be foolish.\" Lewis bowed his head. \"Clearly you were speaking first before I rudely interrupted. And it would be unseemly to speak before a ranking officer.\"\n\n\"Oh, no no no.\" Martin put his hand to his side of their chest. \"It's perfectly obvious to me that you were the one interrupted. To which, rank or no rank, I can offer no valid excuse. Mother taught me better than that.\"\n\n\"Shut up,\" commanded Ned. The words sounded odd attached to his voice. The curtness of it struck him strangely. But he was in charge here. He supposed it only appropriate that he started acting like it.\n\nNeither Lewis nor Martin seemed offended. Ned guessed their mother had taught them better than to question their superiors as well. The twins both tried speaking once more, but neither dared talk before the other.\n\n\"You.\" Ned pointed to Lewis. \"What is it?\"\n\nLewis saluted crisply again. \"I just wanted to say, sir, that it is an honor to serve under the famous Never Dead Ned.\"\n\nNed nodded to Martin. \"Now you.\"\n\n\"As you wish, sir, but I see no need to reiterate what my dear brother has declared with such eloquence. Though I myself would've preferred the word 'privilege' over 'honor.'\"\n\nLewis smacked his forehead. \"Of course, how presumptuous of me. As always, dear brother, you have demonstrated your superior understanding of language.\"\n\n\"Don't belittle your own grasp,\" replied Martin.\n\n\"You're too kind, but it is obvious that I have overstepped myself with my poor word choice.\"\n\n\"Now, now, I'll hear none of that.\"\n\nNed understood now why the twins had never gotten around to killing each other. They were too damn busy apologizing all the time. He left them to their atonements and moved to the next in line. The goblin was bright, leafy green, not the usual gray-green. And he had a shaggy red beard. Goblins didn't grow hair normally.\n\n\"This is Seamus,\" said Gabel. \"Faerie blood in his family, isn't that right, Seamus?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. My great-great-great-great-grandmother had a fling with a leprechaun. Quite scandalous. We don't like talking about it.\"\n\n\"Seamus is a shapeshifter,\" said Gabel. \"Give the commander a demonstration.\"\n\nThe goblin disappeared into a blue cloud. When the cloud faded, a large, white cockatoo stood in his place. A green fog swallowed the bird, and Seamus became a fat, brown rat. A burst of yellow smoke later, he transformed into a boot. Then a skillet. Then a trumpet. Then an apple. And finally a bucket.\n\nNed stood before the bucket a few seconds, but Seamus didn't change into anything else.\n\n\"I think he's stuck, sir. Happens sometimes. Nothing to worry about.\" Gabel nodded to the bucket. \"Carry on, Seamus.\"\n\nFourth in line stood a long, white reptile. She was serpentine in form, fifteen feet long stretched out, but her body was coiled to a more reasonable six-foot height. Her limbs were short, four pairs in all. She stood on two pairs while her other two were folded. She radiated warmth, and the air shimmered around her. Her face was more like a cat than a reptile, and her two blue eyes sparkled in the dusky light. Little puffs of fire rose from her nostrils with each breath.\n\nNed said, \"I thought all the salamanders were destroyed after the Terrible Scorching.\"\n\n\"No, sir.\" Flames erupted from her mouth as she spoke. Ned stepped back to avoid having his eyebrows charred. \"Not all.\"\n\n\"What's your name, private?\" It wasn't that he cared, but he was starting to feel like a commander, despite himself. And a commander should know his soldiers.\n\n\"You couldn't pronounce it with your thick, lumpy tongue, sir. They just call me Sally.\" Salamanders changed colors with their moods. Ned knew the basic color codes. Red for anger. Purple for vanity. Green for envy. She turned a golden orange, and he had no idea what that meant. He made a mental note to check her file later to see if it listed the more obscure shades.\n\n\"Good to have you on board, private,\" said Ned with enthusiasm that surprised him. He nearly slapped her on the shoulder, but caught himself in time to avoid a nasty burn.\n\nShe glowed a light purple. \"Thank you, sir.\"\n\nNext to last in line waited a short, treelike creature with a full head of yellowing leaves. The tree's bark was scarred. Some of the carvings looked like old wounds, but most appeared intentional or decorative. Only one caught Ned's eye. It read, \"Don't pick the apples.\" A few arrow shafts were buried in the tree's trunk. He was amusing himself by plucking the petals from a fresh, young rose. Most striking to Ned was the burning cigarette pursed between the tree's lips.\n\n\"Private Elmer, sir,\" said Gabel.\n\nNed glanced the private up and down. It took him a moment to spot the tree's eyes, two dark spots that might be mistaken for knots.\n\n\"I didn't know we had En—\"\n\n\"Treefolk, sir,\" interrupted Elmer.\n\n\"Treefolk. But I thought you called yourselves En—\"\n\n\"No, sir. We aren't allowed to say that anymore.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"We just aren't. A wizard put a spell on the word, so we don't say it anymore.\"\n\n\"A spell?\" said Ned. \"But it's just a word. Why would anyone want to put a spell on a word? What happens if you say it?\"\n\nElmer drew a puff on his cigarette. \"You don't want to know. Nothing too troublesome, but it's just easier to avoid it.\"\n\n\"But treefolk?\"\n\n\"Well, we're trees and we're folk. Isn't too imaginative, but it gets the job done.\"\n\nNed shrugged. \"I'm surprised there's any treefolk in the Legion. Didn't think they'd take up the soldiering profession.\"\n\n\"Why is that, sir? Because I look like a bush, I gotta be all lovey-dovey, kissy-wissy. Is that what you're saying, sir?\"\n\n\"No, it's just...\"\n\n\"I was told the Legion didn't believe in racial profiling, sir. I was told I would be judged by my ability to slaughter my enemies, not the texture of my bark.\"\n\n\"That's not what I meant...\"\n\n\"Then what did you mean, sir?\" Elmer plucked another petal from the rose. \"What, pray tell, could you have possibly meant by that ill-informed, insulting remark?\"\n\n\"I didn't mean to offend you,\" said Ned.\n\n\"Oh, I suppose that makes it all right then. You didn't intend to verbalize your ignorance. As long as the slur was unintentional, I guess we needn't worry about it. I guess I won't need to file a grievance with my union then.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Snarling, Elmer dropped the flower to the ground and stomped on it with his roots.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 140 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He turned to Sally. \"Disgusting mammal stereotyping.\" His leaves brushed the salamander's scales, and he plucked the smoldering bits of foliage before the flames could spread.\n\nNed moved on before he could say anything else he might regret. \"I didn't know there was a treefolk union,\" he whispered to Gabel.\n\n\"Yes, sir. Only four of them in the whole Legion, but they've strong connections to the Troglodyte Brotherhood and United Siege Engine Operators. Best not to offend them.\"\n\n\"I'll keep that in mind.\"\n\nNext was an elf. White stubble covered her shaved head. Her eyes were pink, her skin smooth and chalky. Although Ned had never found elves especially attractive, she might've been beautiful if she weren't quite so chubby. It didn't help that she was picking her nose.\n\n\"This is Supply Sergeant Ulga, sir,\" said Gabel.\n\nShe wiped her finger on her sleeve and nodded to Ned. \"How's it going?\"\n\n\"Could be better,\" he answered honestly.\n\n\"Ulga is part of the conjurer division, sir,\" said Gabel.\n\n\"Any good, sergeant?\"\n\n\"I get by, sir. If I do say so myself.\" She reached into the air with a flourish and produced a plate of biscuits, which she presented with a smile. \"Help yourself, sir.\"\n\nNed took a bite and instantly regretted it. It wasn't that the biscuit tasted bad. It actually had no taste at all. But it was so dry that it sucked all the moisture from his mouth. He swallowed. The morsel scraped its way down his throat and landed hard in his stomach.\n\nUlga clasped her hands before her, slowly spreading them to reveal a tin cup. She pointed her finger, the one that'd been up her nostrils only moments ago. Wine dripped from her fingertip to fill the cup, which she then offered to Ned. \"I call it Ulga's Special Vintage. Have a taste, sir.\"\n\nHe took a gulp and retched. The warm drink took away his dry mouth, only to replace it with a slimy dampness. It was less a beverage and more a parasite clinging to his tongue.\n\nUlga read the disgust on his face. \"Begging your pardon, sir, but it ain't all that easy to make the good stuff out of thin air. I ain't heard a man complain yet when nothing else was available. And it might not taste so good, but it'll get you drunk pretty fast.\"\n\n\"It will?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. Pure magic in a cup. There ain't nothing quite like it. Except maybe doom stout, but not many fools around who'll drink that.\"\n\nNed forced another swallow and emptied the cup. He did feel a little light-headed. \"How much can you make?\"\n\n\"About five pints a day, sir.\"\n\n\"Make as much as you can, and have it sent to my quarters.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" She grinned proudly. \"I can see you're a man of discriminating tastes.\"\n\nHe ran his tongue across his teeth, trying to scrape away the aftertaste. But free booze was free booze.\n\n\"And, sergeant, wash your hands before you do it,\" he added, moving down the line.\n\nMiriam the siren waited next. Dusk was now upon the citadel, and the shadow of her body was very appealing. Although that was probably the enchanted wine at work.\n\n\"And, of course, you've already acquainted yourself with our morale officer,\" said Gabel.\n\nThe rest of the line chuckled except for Seamus, who had worked his way from bucket to potted petunia. Sally the salamander turned a bright blue.\n\nNed couldn't quite look Miriam in the eyes. But she didn't seem the least bit uncomfortable and winked at him with a slight smile. Maybe it was the wine, maybe her innate siren charm, maybe just ordinary indiscriminate animal lust, but he smiled back.\n\n\"Is that it, Number One?\" he asked.\n\nGabel nodded. \"Yes, sir.\"\n\nNed looked the line up and down. Ogre Company was the last stop in a failing career in the Legion. Even ogres didn't end up here unless they'd screwed up somewhere. But overall, they didn't seem a bad bunch. He didn't see why they couldn't be made into something worthwhile.\n\nToo bad he wasn't the man for the job. He just wanted to put in his time and avoid getting killed again.\n\nA huge, shrieking shadow soared over the courtyard. The soldiers ran for cover. Except for Seamus, who was now a battle-ax, and Ned, who, lacking the reflexes, didn't realize what was happening until nearly being crushed beneath a roc's talons. The great bird craned its long neck downward to within a few feet of Ned's face. Sharp teeth lined its jagged beak, and its tongue was long and blue. Its breath was hot and sweet, like ripening honeydew. He'd never been close enough to the maw to notice before.\n\nThe roc snorted, and he thought for sure it would devour him. But Ace slid down its neck and kicked the bird on the back of its head. The creature barely noticed, but hissed and turned away.\n\n\"Sorry about that, sir. Long flight. Morena is a little hungry.\" Ace hopped to the ground. In one hand, he held a small pouch. In the other, he clutched the roc's reins, seemingly unaware that Morena could catapult him a good mile or two with a casual whip of her head.\n\n\"What the hell are you doing?\" asked Gabel. \"You can't land one of these things in the citadel proper.\"\n\n\"Beg to differ, sir.\" Ace puffed his pipe through grinning teeth. \"I can land a roc pretty much anywhere. Mind you, getting them back in the air can be tricky. Especially Morena here. She likes a lot of room.\"\n\nThe roc beat her wings, and Ned expected her to fly away with the goblin wrapped in her reins.\n\n\"Quiet down, girl.\" Ace hopped in the air, yanking the tether with all his weight, which was about half as much as one of Morena's feathers. \"Got to keep a firm hand with them, sir. Can't give them an inch.\"\n\nMorena's serpentine tail thrashed wildly. Being crushed once was more than enough for Ned. He stepped back very slowly so as to not draw the roc's attention. She shrieked in a warbling, ear-splitting cry.\n\n\"Oh, shut up, Morena.\" Ace picked up a stone and hurled it at the monster. The rock bounced off her beak. She quieted, turning her hungry gaze upon the goblin. She licked her beak, splashing puddles of drool.\n\n\"Get that thing out of here,\" commanded Gabel.\n\n\"In a second, sir. But I was told to give this to the commander without delay.\"\n\nAce tossed Ned the pouch. The courtyard lightstones were burning now, and Ned glimpsed the wax seal with a symbol painted in blood: a scale encircled by a winged serpent atop a single, demonic eye. In all of Brute's Legion, there was no more dreaded division, no section more coldly ruthless, no battalion as unforgiving or merciless.\n\nAccounting.\n\nNed shivered.\n\nThe roc jerked its head, lifting Ace in the air. The bird snapped up the goblin in her beak. Ned, pouch in hand, almost envied Ace.\n\nThe roc ruffled her feathers and shuddered. She gagged and spat up her morsel. Ace landed beside Ned. The goblin rose, wiped the saliva from his goggles, wrung the moisture from his scarf.\n\n\"Where's my pipe?\"\n\nMorena belched it up. Ace clamped it in his teeth and puffed, though the flame had been doused by the roc's copious saliva. \"Keep it up. Just keep it up, and maybe I'll eat your damn dinner myself.\"\n\nMorena shook the ground with two thuds of her tail.\n\n\"A'right already. A'right.\" He tugged on the reins. Morena lowered her head, and he climbed aboard. He whipped the reins. The roc hopped five times, nearly falling over every time. Once she teetered close to falling on Ned, but he didn't bother to move. Couldn't really see the point. Finally, Morena managed to stay airborne.\n\n\"Can't give 'em an inch,\" muttered Ace.\n\nMorena offered a throaty growl and flew away.\n\nNed stood there awhile not moving.\n\nRegina, her arms still full of scrolls, strode up to him. \"Sir? Are you well?\"\n\nHe nodded. Then turned and walked away, swallowed by the shadows.\n\n\"You'd better return those scrolls to records.\" Gabel held up a calico kitten. \"And you'll have to look after Seamus for a while.\"\n\nSeamus mewed apologetically. Ogres considered cats a delicacy, and his life was never in more danger than when he was stuck in kitten form. Shapeshifting was a complicated business, but Regina often wondered if this was an accident. She usually took care of him when it happened.\n\nGabel tossed the kitten onto the scrolls. Seamus curled up on the heap to rest his head between her breasts. By her code, she should've beaten him to a pulp. But he was so damn cute.\n\n\"If I ever find out you're faking this...\"\n\nPurring, he swished his tail.\n\nShe kissed his head. \"...I'll grind you into furry mush.\"\n\nWith a soft, feline smile, Seamus batted his big green eyes.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "WRITING ASSISTANT ENGAGED\nCONTEXT: Mid-narrative fragment\nNOTE: Established characters may appear\nOUTPUT: 25 sentences\nSTYLE: A. Lee Martinez\nGENRES: comedy, fantasy\nTAGS: humor", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ned found his office with some effort. He didn't bother asking directions. He just wandered through the citadel until he discovered a door marked Commander's Office. It was right next to his quarters, which made a lot of sense after the fact.\n\nHe sat in the room behind a small desk and stared at the pouch. Stared as if it might explode or dance around or some such thing. The contents of the pouch by themselves were harmless. Yet he knew their meaning too well.\n\nHe'd been a bookkeeper in the Legion's accounting division. Balancing ledgers. Checking expense reports. Filing and alphabetizing. An audit every so often. Grunt work. But the true terror of the accounting office rested in that small pouch.\n\nHe found a half-full bottle of liquor and took a long swig to discover that it contained either very good whiskey or very bad whiskey. He broke the seal on the pouch. Inside he found a lump of green and black coal with a slot in it, and a small coin wrapped in cloth. The coin was half gold, half platinum. On the gold side, a grinning, devilish visage was imprinted. On the platinum, a fat demon balanced the world on a scale against a pile of coins. Around the edges, the simple motto of the dreaded ninth circle of Hell was inscribed: \"Better Evil Through Profit.\"\n\nThe ninth circle was where Hell did its accountancy. The demons within were ruthlessly efficient. All they cared about were profit and cost-effectiveness. Everything was a debit or credit, a gain or a loss. Their ultimate goal was to reduce the universe to a calculation, a final heartless equation in which every soul, living and dead, divine and damned, would serve in the Glorious Ultimate Dividend. They were evil incarnate, but they were the best at what they did, which was why the Legion subcontracted much of its troubleshooting work their way.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ned drank the rest of the bottle before getting on with it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He ran the sharp edge of the coin across his thumb, drawing blood. The coin absorbed the offering, gaining a crimson glint. Then he dropped it in the slot. The air sizzled. The unholy lump broke apart, hatching a devilish little creature, eight inches of stringy, red demon. The homunculus looked very much like a man, save the scales, wings, tiny horns, hooves, and long pointed tail. The creature was balding, though he had tried, with no success, to disguise this by brushing his thin hair across his shiny scalp. He wore a tunic stitched together from the cursed flesh of the damned, and he stank of moldy ledgers and burning dung.\n\nThe homunculus adjusted his thick spectacles and twitched his crooked nose. \"Never Dead Ned, I presume.\"\n\nNed nodded.\n\n\"Excellent. Shall we get down to it?\" The homunculus glanced around. \"Where are your ledgers?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\nThe homunculus frowned. \"This is quite unacceptable. Time is money, after all. Every wasted second is another expense against the Final Profit. You should've been prepared.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\"\n\n\"Mortals.\" The demon sighed. \"Just as well, I suppose.\n\nWe can skip the consultation phase. Saves time. Frankly I've looked over this case and already sent ahead my recommendations. Anything you said would've been summarily dismissed. I wouldn't even have listened. I would've just nodded my head until you were finished speaking and said what I'm going to say anyway. I did expect more from a fellow accountant though. Must say I'm disappointed.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\"\n\nThe homunculus kept on talking as if he hadn't heard Ned. \"There is no business like war. Yet Ogre Company has never produced a profit for the Legion. This is unacceptable. It's a blasphemy, an unforgivable heresy against the Dark Ledger. There was talk, very serious consideration, of dissolving this particular venture and allocating its resources to a more productive end.\"\n\nNed didn't consider that a bad thing. If Ogre Company disbanded, he might get sent back to bookkeeping.\n\n\"However, it all comes down to the numbers,\" continued the homunculus. \"The numbers reveal all. Profit exists throughout the universe. If we cannot find it, then we have let the numbers down, not the other way around. As such, I see no reason to abandon this project just yet.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The demon beat his wings and hovered in the air.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He snapped his fingers, and a scroll materialized, floating before him. \"I've drawn up a fiscal battle plan, which I can assure you is spelled out with such thorough magnificence that anyone should be able to follow it.\" He pushed his spectacles to the end of his nose and arched his brows in Ned's direction. \"And I do mean anyone.\"\n\nThe scroll unfurled. It slithered across the desktop. When Ned reached for it, the parchment slapped at his fingers hard enough to leave a pinkish bruise. The budget shook, drew near Ned's face, and snarled.\n\n\"Careful,\" said the homunculus, \"she bites. Perhaps it would be wiser if I explained some of the finer points. Just to be certain you understand.\" He snapped his fingers, and the scroll, growling in an obscenely affectionate manner, fell obediently into his grasp. \"The plan is simple. It's broken into seven hundred and seventy-seven subsections.\" He cleared his throat. \"Which I will now go over in detail.\"\n\nNed slumped in his chair. He wondered if Ulga would ever get here with that wine.\n\nThe homunculus droned on for hours. His squeaky voice grated on Ned's ears and stood his hair on end. The demonic bookkeeper chanted his depraved dirge to the powers of infernal accounting, and an evil spell settled on Ned's office. The scroll unfolded, filling the floor with line after line of cost cutting and expense trimming. The walls melted. Cruel imps cavorted in the shadows. The hourglass on the desk ran backward. And Ned could almost hear the distant howls of the damned.\n\nThe homunculus grew. The demon fed off Ned's suffering, and his agonizing boredom fed the homunculus well. By the end, he'd grown a foot taller, his skin had turned a brighter shade of red, and his tiny horns had curled into impressive ornaments. Ned hunched in his chair, drooling, with debits and credits poking at his brain with wee pitchforks.\n\n\"In conclusion,\" said the homunculus, \"I believe this project can be redeemed. Providing Ogre Company can finally be whipped into a functional military unit. But that's not my end. I'm the accountant, and I can assure you the accounting is flawless.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ned wiped the tears from his face with trembling hands.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His flesh felt clammy and cold. The demon's lecture had leeched Ned's already diminished will to live. He'd have gladly fallen on his own sword then to end it all. He had no such option. Such were the disadvantages of immortality.\n\nThe ferocious budget slithered around his office, under the desk, across the floor, tightly coiled around his legs, cutting off his circulation. It alternately purred at its creator and grumbled at Ned.\n\nThe homunculus said, \"It was my recommendation you be transferred to this post. There was some resistance to the idea. Your military record is nothing exceptional. But I pointed out that all the previous commanders had been fine officers and not one had been able to make anything of Ogre Company. From a logical perspective, it would be a waste of resources to throw another distinguished soldier into the slavering jaws of almost certain death. But here was a man, by which I mean you, who had the necessary bookkeeping experience to understand the situation as most soldiers could not. A man blessed with a curious talent for thwarting death over and over again. Most importantly, a man who, should this talent fail him, was ultimately expendable.\"\n\nNed tried to stand. The budget wrapped around his waist, holding him to his chair.\n\nA satisfied smile crossed the homunculus's face. \"It took some convincing. I think they were just hoping I'd recommend scrapping the whole project. But I convinced them to give it one last shot. You've six months to turn this company around. More than enough time if you follow my counsel.\"\n\nNed couldn't remember any of the demon's recommendations. He couldn't remember anything of the last few hours except the infernal dirge, a hum without words, a song of the fiscally forsaken.\n\n\"Just follow the budget, and do your end, and things should work out fine, Commander.\"\n\nThe budget raised up and threatened to slice into Ned's face with a nasty paper cut. He didn't want to antagonize it, but his bad left arm had other ideas. It grabbed the empty whiskey bottle and brandished it at the parchment. The budget hissed and spat as it fought with Ned's arm.\n\n\"What if I can't make it work?\"\n\nThe homunculus chuckled. \"A consideration I've already taken into account. Profit knows the numbers never fail, but men are prone. In which case, Ogre Company will be dissolved, and its personnel reassigned per my recommendation.\"\n\n\"Where would I be going? Back to bookkeeping?\"\n\nThe homunculus drank up Ned's anxiety. The demon's eyes simmered with red flames. \"Oh, no. Your position in that department has already been filled. And it's a waste of your talents in any case. I believe you'd be of more use in the Berserker Program.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ned's jaw tightened.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The homunculus grew another inch.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Berserkers have such generally short careers, I thought it obvious to assign someone who found death less inconvenient. I'm sure you can see the logic.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Immortal or not, Ned knew he'd make an abysmal berserker. Berserkers were supposed to rush headlong into battle, mindless raging warriors eager to meet death and drag as many souls as they could along with them. Ned was good at the dying part. He'd had a lot of practice. But he stank at the killing end of it. In his whole military career, he'd killed only one person. And that had been an accident. And someone on his own side. Every other time he'd stepped on a battlefield he'd always been among the first slain.\n\nThe homunculus nodded to Ned. \"My work is done here. Best of luck, Commander.\" The demon shrank into himself and disappeared. The room brightened. The walls stopped melting. The sand in the hourglass started going the right way again. The imps vanished into their purgatory. But the budget remained.\n\nIt'd gotten hold of Ned's bad arm and was doing its best to yank off the limb. Ned wouldn't have minded if it succeeded, but he didn't feel like waiting around. He drew his dagger and stabbed the budget, pinning it to his desk. With a ghastly howl, it shuddered and fell limp. It wasn't dead. He could still see it breathing, the soft rise and fall of the numbers on its pages. Maybe if he drove a stake through its bottom line.\n\nThere weren't any stakes handy. So he grabbed one end and rolled it up. The budget didn't go quietly, but most of the fight seemed gone out of it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Someone knocked on the door.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He stuck the free end of the budget in a drawer, slammed it shut, and leaned a chair against it. Reasonably constrained, one end stuck in the drawer, the other pinned by the knife, the parchment growled. Ned picked his way across the room, avoiding any entangling loops of biting paper. He opened the door.\n\nOn the other side, Regina held two jugs in her hands, two more under her arms. \"Your wine, sir. Would you like me to put it in your office?\"\n\n\"No.\" Ned slipped into the hall and slammed the door shut. He had no intention of ever going back in there again. And if the circumstances should arise that he couldn't avoid it, he'd be wearing a full suit of armor, armed with a very long spear, and with Sally the salamander and her fiery breath by his side. A terrible clatter came from the office. Good bet the desk had been overturned, and the budget was busy hunting expense accounts, feeding off them, growing stronger and hungrier at the same time.\n\nHe nodded to the room next door. \"My quarters.\"\n\nThey put the jugs in a corner of the commander's apartment. Ned put his ear to the door adjoining his office. He couldn't hear the budget, but it was in there. He wedged a chair under the doorknob.\n\n\"Anything else, sir?\" asked Regina.\n\nHe glanced back at the tall, beautiful Amazon and the kitten rubbing against her long, long legs. The budget thumped in the other room. Ned sat on the end of his bed and, slouching, scratched the kitten behind its ears.\n\nRegina squinted downward. \"Anything else, sir? Anything at all?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nShe put her hands on her waist, thrust her impressive bosom forward. \"Are you quite certain there's no way that I might be of some further service to you?\"\n\nA shadow slipped back and forth in the doorjamb.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Maybe something to nail the door shut.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He lay back on the bed and closed his eye.\n\nRegina stammered. She snatched up Seamus and stomped into the hall. The Amazon whirled on her heels. A forced smile replaced her frown.\n\n\"I've never had conjured wine before, sir. Might I trouble you for a drink?\"\n\nHe grabbed one of the jugs and handed it to her. \"Here. Enjoy.\" He shut the door.\n\nRegina dropped Seamus, who mewed sadly as he brushed against her legs. She kicked him away roughly, and Seamus bounced off the wall. In a puff of smoke, the calico transformed back into his goblin self.\n\n\"Ouch.\" He rubbed his head.\n\nRegina's black eyes darkened as she stared down the goblin.\n\n\"I guess the blow must've knocked me back into my original shape.\" He smiled sheepishly. \"What a stroke of luck, huh?\"\n\nShe didn't smile back. \"Perhaps next time you're stuck, I should start knocking you around until you're unstuck.\"\n\nSeamus scratched his beard. \"Don't be mad at me just because you're a bad flirt.\"\n\n\"I'm not a bad flirt.\"\n\nHe arched his back and ran a hand up and down his thigh. \"Is there anything I can do for you, sir? Anything at all?\" He batted his eyes, puckered his wide, thin lips, and made loud kissing noises. \"Not very subtle. Although some guys like the direct approach. Guess the commander isn't one of them.\"\n\nRegina grabbed him by the throat and squeezed until his green face turned blue. \"Amazons do not flirt. We do not kiss. And we certainly do not throw ourselves at the first handsome man we see.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Seamus, choking, managed to gasp, \"You think he's handsome?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Only your next part should have substantial quoted speech", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With an unpleasant grunt, she hurled him away. Seamus became a silken scarf and slid harmlessly to the floor. He turned back into himself and followed her as she stalked down the hall.\n\n\"The guy looks like he took the scenic route through a dragon's innards,\" he said.\n\nShe didn't reply.\n\n\"Hey, I'm not judging. Sometimes I like to get a little goat action myself.\" One burst of purple smoke later, he transformed into a billy. He bleated once and turned back into a goblin. \"Don't knock it until you've tried it. Anyway, this isn't about me. This is about you. So you really like this guy?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Oh, come on. It's obvious.\"\n\nShe stopped and put her hand on her sword. \"I don't like any man.\"\n\n\"Is it me you're trying to convince?\" he asked. \"You don't really believe all that Amazon propaganda, do you?\"\n\n\"It is my code.\"\n\n\"Some code. Men bad. Women good. Bit simplistic, don't you think?\"\n\n\"The truth is simple.\"\n\n\"They really drilled that stuff into you, didn't they? Suppose I can't really blame you for not being able to get rid of it, though I do find it distasteful. All that bigotry.\" He shook his head. \"Nothing makes a pretty girl uglier.\"\n\nShe drew her sword.\n\n\"Go ahead. Kill me.\" He raised his hands. \"It's what an Amazon would do. Or a man.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Regina exhaled through gritted teeth. Reluctantly she put away the weapon. \"Remember this, private.\" She lifted him by his long ears. \"I. Do. Not. Like. Ned.\"\n\n\"Whatever.\"\n\nThey strolled through the courtyard toward the pub.\n\n\"How do you Amazons reproduce anyway?\" he asked.\n\n\"That's a private matter.\"\n\nThere was an edge in her voice. Someone else might've shut up. But Seamus was a goblin, and goblins were blithely casual about danger. They expected to die at any moment and saw no point in fretting over it.\n\n\"I've heard the rumors, but I've always wondered.\"\n\nRegina had heard the rumors too. And there were many. Dozens upon dozens. Depending on whom you asked, Amazons kept sex slaves locked in boxes in their bedrooms. Or they had mastered the esoteric art of removing and preserving key bits of male anatomy for later use. Or new Amazons simply sprang from the earth, grown right beside the comfields. The theories ranged from the practical to the absurd, more concerned with creativity than truth.\n\n\"Do you really raid villages and kidnap young women?\" asked Seamus.\n\n\"That practice created too much political tension amongst our neighbors and was abandoned long ago. Sometimes we do capture prisoners of war. Or buy criminals and exiles. If a male is of truly exceptional stock, we've been known to use him for our purposes.\"\n\n\"Sounds erotic.\" Seamus leered. \"Is there a secret seduction ceremony? A glorious feast where the condemned man is treated to a thousand sensual delights before being brought to the height of passion until, utterly sexed to death, he expires with an eternal smile on his face?\"\n\n\"Not exactly. Although there is a procedure.\"\n\nThe word \"procedure\" removed much of the fun from the fantasy for Seamus, but he'd come too far to turn back now. \"What's it like?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You don't want to know.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Is it a secret?\"\n\n\"No, but you'll just be disappointed.\"\n\nHe grabbed her skirt. Yet another perilous act he did without a second thought. \"Oh, come on.\"\n\nShe yanked her skirt away and kicked him to the ground. \"We tie them to a bed, have sex with them, then do away with them.\"\n\nRemaining sitting, the goblin's eyes gleamed with obscene possibilities. \"What kind of bed?\"\n\n\"A normal kind of bed.\"\n\n\"What kind of sex?\"\n\n\"Functional, efficient sex.\"\n\nHe was unwilling to abandon the fantasy just yet. \"How do you kill them? Some kind of poisonous kiss? Or do you squeeze the life out of them between your powerful thighs?\"\n\n\"We usually just stab them with a dagger.\" She grinned. \"Sometimes we behead them.\"\n\n\"Does the executioner wear a black hood and nothing else? Her naked body glistening with dewy perspiration. Her heaving breasts jiggling as she delivers the deathblow.\"\n\n\"Eunuchs handle Amazon executions.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Frowning, he rose. \"Isn't as sexy as I'd hoped.\"\n\n\"I warned you. That custom isn't common anymore. Too impractical. We've no way of guaranteeing the child produced will be female, and if it's male, you end up wasting nine months.\n\n\"Now we mostly purchase young girls, ages five to seven, and initiate them into the nation. Many of our neighboring countries breed girls specifically for our needs. It's the fourth largest industry in the region.\"\n\n\"Sound very...\" Seamus sighed. \"Mercantile.\"\n\nThey walked a while more.\n\n\"So if you don't live with men, and you don't capture men, then what do you do for companionship?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"All Amazons share the strongest bonds of sisterhood.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(authors note, 🔍 Find a place to insert: \"Great, great. Sisterhood. Beautiful thing.\")", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Great, great. Sisterhood. Beautiful thing.\" He leaned forward and clasped his hands together. \"But I'm talking about companionship. Y'know?\"\n\n\"I don't understand the question.\"\n\n\"Y'know. Affection. Intimacy. Of the physical sort?\" He ran through a rapid series of obscene gestures, half of which Regina didn't recognize. But she got the idea.\n\n\"We Amazons abandoned that ridiculous preoccupation centuries ago.\"\n\n\"You can't just abandon it. We all have needs.\" Seamus waggled his eyebrows. \"You can't tell me it hasn't ever crossed your mind. Especially after you've spent a hard day slaying those oh-so-wicked men, and you're huddled in a tent with a couple of your Amazon sisters. Their trembling bodies sticky with sweat as they cling to you. Moist, hot, nubile skin. One of your tentmates pulls you close. Her warm breath is soft on your neck. Her long, red hair brushes across your pert bosom. Her nimble fingers move across your taut thighs to find your quivering—\"\n\nHe never saw the punch coming. It succeeded in knocking him a good distance but failed to wipe away his grin. Regina, sword drawn, stood over him.\n\nShe'd heard these rumors too, and there was some truth in them. Not all her sisters were as strong as she. Many had succumbed to the pleasures of the flesh, but Regina knew carnal desires as the supreme distraction they were, whether found with a man or a woman.\n\n\"You'll never mention any quivering parts of my anatomy again if you want to keep on living.\"\n\n\"Okay, okay. Can't kill a guy for having a fantasy. It's healthy to daydream.\"\n\nShe put her foot on him and pressed. He gasped but smiled. \"Y'know, I can see up your skirt from this angle. Right to your quivering—\"\n\nHe narrowly avoided being skewered through the face by transforming into an anvil. Her sword clanged loudly. Regina tapped the flat of the blade against him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Come out, you vile little coward. Face me as a man.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Seamus took on his natural form again. \"Firstly, I'm not a man. I'm a goblin. Secondly, I thought all men were supposed to be cowards.\"\n\nShe tried to slice off his head, but he was quicker. Her sword bounced off a granite replica of the goblin, his tongue sticking out. Regina circled him, but he remained stubbornly immobile. He was either trapped, as sometimes happened, or just too fearful.\n\nShe picked him up and whispered in his stone ear. \"Listen well, you little beast. If I ever catch you speaking such disgusting ideas, if I even suspect you are merely daydreaming of such base heresy, I'll chop off all your loose little goblin bits. Am I making myself clear?\"\n\nThe statue of Seamus only leered. She suspected he was defying her right now, his stony brain playing degrading images of steamy Amazonian bathhouses and naked pillow fights. She pondered teaching him a lesson by chipping away his tongue. But her temper settled as quickly as it flared, and she wasn't in the mood to bother. Instead, she dropped him in the citadel well. She waited for some time, seeing if the cold water might spur him into taking on a more vulnerable form.\n\nIn the meantime, she uncorked her jug of conjured wine and drank heartily. The horrible brew comforted her. It tasted much like the special concoction young Amazons imbibed to make them big and strong.\n\nShe considered Seamus's absurd notion of the value of sex. She didn't see the purpose. Her time was better spent training her body and mind in the art of war. And while occasionally an Amazon might take a lover under very special circumstances, this was not one of those circumstances. Ned was just a man. A beautiful, immortal man. But that was not enough.\n\nYet the mere thought of him, of his scarred, disfigured flesh, sent a tremble through her.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "And certain parts that she avoided thinking about did indeed quiver.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 8 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'seamus' 2 time(s)", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Damn it.\" She took another tug of wine.\n\nNothing came out of the well. Not even a fly. Although she didn't know if Seamus could become a fly. Regina tossed the jug over her shoulder, and it shattered on the cobblestones. Scowling, she continued on her way.\n\nA little while later a tarantula crawled cautiously out of the well. Seamus looked around for a moment before shifting into a goat, bouncing amorously toward the meadows.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Write one hundred and twenty sentences sentences continuing this story fragment. Characters may appear without introduction. Use A. Lee Martinez's style. Genres: comedy, fantasy. Elements: humor", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It wasn't until late morning that Ned's absence was discovered, and it wasn't until late afternoon that his corpse was found by the gravediggers Ralph and Ward. In addition to planting bodies, they were also responsible for keeping the cemetery tended. They were prepared for their weekly weeding, and instead found their new commander sprawled across his own plot. Neither knew what to make of it.\n\n\"Is he dead?\" asked Ward.\n\nRalph nodded. \"Yup.\"\n\n\"What's he doing out here?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"Looks a little bloated, doesn't he?\"\n\n\"Yup.\"\n\n\"Should we scare away that vulture?\"\n\nThe large scavenging bird atop Ned picked at his flesh. It'd just found the meal and hadn't done much damage yet.\n\n\"Do what you want.\" Ralph rubbed his jaw. \"I've got weeding to do.\"\n\nHe went to work. Ward watched the vulture chew on Ned's ear a while. He'd raised a vulture as a boy and had grown to love it. Then came the Feast of Saint Carrion, a revered ogre holiday, and his mother had slaughtered Mister Nibbles and served him for dinner. This vulture resembled Mister Nibbles only in passing. It was a thin, gawky sort of buzzard. Not the healthy fat bird he'd cherished. But it had the same spirit, the same boldness, to not fly away as he approached. He patted it once on its head. Then raised his shovel to brain it. He loved buzzards. Especially in cream sauce.\n\nWard hesitated, and the bird could've easily fled. Instead it glared back at him with its cold, black eyes. Eyes like polished glass. Merciless and cruel and hungry.\n\nHe lowered his shovel. \"Go on, little fella. Have another bite.\"\n\nThe vulture smiled—at least it seemed so to Ward—and pecked some more at its breakfast.\n\n\"How do you think he died?\" asked Ward.\n\nRalph sniffed the air. \"I smell magic. Maybe that's what did him in.\"\n\nWard shooed away the buzzard. It hopped only a short distance away. Ward bent over and turned Ned on his back. A small burn mark showed on his chest. It didn't look like much, but it must've been enough to kill him. The face had been spared the vulture's sharp beak, but Ward blanched at the body's puffy grimace. \"He sure dies a lot for a guy named Never Dead Ned.\"\n\n\"Yup.\"\n\nWard turned Ned facedown. He ignored the corpse for a while and joined Ralph at work. The vulture hopped over cautiously and tore off pieces of Ned's flesh, which it gobbled down its snapping beak. After they'd plucked the last of the weeds, Ward asked, \"Should we bury him?\"\n\nSneering, Ralph rubbed his jaw. \"We're not supposed to bury him. Those were his orders.\"\n\n\"Maybe he changed his mind,\" said Ward. \"Maybe he decided he was ready to be buried, and that's why he's out here. Only he didn't time it right and died before he could get back in his grave.\"\n\n\"Sounds pretty stupid to me.\"\n\n\"Why else would he be out here?\"\n\n\"I don't know. And I don't care.\" Ralph pulled back his leg to kick the corpse, but thought better of it. \"Orders are orders. If he wanted to be buried, he should've told us.\"\n\n\"We can't just leave him out here,\" said Ward.\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"He'll get eaten by wolves or vultures or something.\"\n\n\"So what?\"\n\n\"He is our commander, Ralph.\"\n\n\"He was our commander.\" This time Ralph kicked Ned, though not too hard for fear of perhaps shocking the corpse back to life. \"Now he's just a dead asshole. Let him rot, I say.\"\n\nRalph had been rubbing his jaw since finding Ned. He hadn't forgotten Ned's punch. The jaw was fine, but it was still a wound to his pride. Ward, on the other hand, had developed a begrudging admiration for this human. Ned hadn't seemed like such a bad guy, and after that drunken punch, Ward deemed the human either very brave or very stupid. Both qualities were well appreciated by ogres. Bravery for obvious reasons. Stupidity because it was just plain amusing.\n\nScowling, Ralph ran his fingers along his chin, and Ward smiled.\n\n\"What's so gods damned funny?\" growled Ralph.\n\nWard ignored the question. \"Dead or not, I like the guy.\" He scared away the vulture and threw Ned over his shoulder. \"I'm taking him back and seeing what Frank wants to do with him.\"\n\nThey started back, and the vulture followed. Ward stopped and smiled at the scavenger.\n\n\"Oh, no,\" said Ralph, \"we're not keeping him.\"\n\n\"But look at him. How can you turn away that face?\"\n\nRalph looked into those black eyes set in the featherless, wrinkled pink head. The vulture spread its wide black wings with sparse feathers and screeched. Ralph shook his head slowly. \"Fine, but you clean up after him. I'm not doing it.\"\n\nWard peeled off some loose bits of Ned's skin. He was sure the commander wouldn't mind. Then he fed them to the bird. It hopped onto his empty shoulder. Its talons drew blood, just like Mister Nibbles used to, and Ward, a tear in his eye, smiled.\n\nThe gravediggers headed back to the citadel. They passed the installation's command center, which had long ago been taken over by goblins and converted into a recreation room. No one knew exactly what went on behind those closed doors, what sort of depravity goblins enjoyed in their spare time. And no one over four feet high wanted to know. One of the previous commanders, a man of storm and fury, had tried to reclaim the room from the goblins. Three minutes behind the doors, he'd emerged pale and shivering. He never uttered a single word of what he saw, but there'd been madness in his eyes ever after. And two months later, when he'd been crushed beneath an avalanche of mead barrels, he'd died with a thankful grin on his face.\n\n\"Applesauce,\" he'd wheezed with his final breath. \"Dear gods, the applesauce.\"\n\nSince then the goblins had been left to their own. The center of power for Copper Citadel had shifted to the next most logical place: the pub. Ralph and Ward found Frank sharing a drink with the twins. They sat at one of the tables just beside the pub in the open courtyard.\n\nWard dropped Ned's corpse in an empty chair. \"We found the commander, sir. He was in the graveyard.\"\n\nPrivate Lewis held out an open palm. \"You owe me a silver piece, Brother. I told you he hadn't deserted.\"\n\nCorporal Martin, having command of the right side of their body, reached into his belt pouch and tossed a coin to his brother, who caught it and stuffed it back into the very same pouch.\n\n\"Serves me right, Lewis,\" said Martin. \"Always think the best of everyone. That's what Mother always said.\"\n\n\"Surely she was a wise woman,\" agreed Lewis.\n\nNed fell over. His head cracked loudly against the table.\n\nFrank grabbed the body by the hair and glanced at the face. He let go, and Ned slumped. Frank swished his mead in his tankard. \"Fragile sort, isn't he?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Must be all that practice he's had dying,\" remarked Martin.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Practice makes perfect,\" seconded Lewis. \"Such dedication is an inspiration to us all.\"\n\nGravedigger Ralph said, \"He's your problem now, sir. I'm getting a beer.\" Muttering and still rubbing his jaw, he disappeared into the pub.\n\n\"That's a scrawny buzzard there,\" said Frank. \"Not much good eating.\"\n\nThe vulture screeched, turning its head to glare at Frank.\n\n\"He's not for eating, sir.\" Ward help up his arm. The vulture traipsed down Ward's limb. Its talons dug shallow scratches in his thick ogre flesh. The bird spread its wings and affectionately pecked at its master's fingers with its pointed beak. \"Once I get him healthy, I thought we might make the little guy into the company mascot. With your permission, sir.\"\n\n\"Just don't get him too healthy, private. Feast of Saint Carrion is right around the corner, and Legion supply might not send down enough vultures for the occasion.\" Frank pushed Ned aside so he could put his feet up on the table. \"Got a name yet?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. Nibbly Ned. In honor of our commander.\"\n\n\"I'm sure he'll be touched by the homage.\"\n\nWard and Nibbly Ned went into the pub to fetch a drink. Several nearby ogres eyed Nibbly while licking their lips.\n\n\"Copper piece says Nibbly won't make it through the month.\" said Lewis.\n\n\"Ten days,\" said Martin. The twins shook hands to make the bet official.\n\n\"What, may I inquire, sir, do you plan on doing with the commander?\" asked Lewis.\n\nFrank eyed the corpse. \"I don't know. In a normal situation like this we usually just bury the human. But this isn't a normal situation.\"\n\n\"Mother had a smashing recipe for human soup,\" said Martin.\n\n\"Dear brother,\" countered Lewis, \"though I loved Mother's cooking every bit as much as you, I really must point out the impropriety of eating a superior officer. It simply isn't done.\"\n\n\"Of course, Martin. It was merely a recollection, not a suggestion.\"\n\n\"I've never eaten a human before,\" said Frank. \"They must be prepared just right, and even then it's usually not worth the trouble. Tastes like gopher.\"\n\n\"I hate to contradict you, Brother, but humans do not taste like gophers. Gophers taste like humans.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you're right, Martin. But in either case, gophers and humans are not very good eating.\"\n\nFrank, having tasted neither, had no opinion and left the twins to their culinary discussions. He finished his drink, grabbed Ned by the hair, and dragged the body across the courtyard. Ned's boot heels thumped against the cobblestones. It didn't take Frank long to find Regina, who was busy with a training exercise.\n\nTraining in Ogre Company was voluntary. In truth, most everything in Ogre Company was voluntary in the sense that there were no consequences for skipping it. Discipline had long ago deserted the installation. But Regina rather enjoyed the martial arts, and she practiced for three or four hours every day, drawing a regular audience. The soldiers pretended to study, but they were really there to ogle her athletic form as she grunted and sweated in her two-piece training gear. It was the only time ogling was allowed since she took combat training too seriously to notice. Sometimes her students practiced alongside her. Sometimes they even learned something. And on occasion one or two would openly challenge her to a sparring match. She remained undefeated.\n\nAt present she was busy hacking away at a straw dummy with a scimitar. The blade was a whirling flash. It cut the dummy with dozens of shallow slashes. Straw flew in the air for a solid minute before Regina ended her demonstration and sheathed the blade.\n\n\"You must be losing your touch,\" said Frank.\n\n\"I was merely demonstrating the death of a thousand nips. You have to imagine all that straw is blood to understand the full beauty of the technique.\"\n\nFrank had never developed a taste for fancy swordplay. Ogre tactics rarely grew more sophisticated than smashing opponents until they stopped twitching. As a very large ogre, his weapon of choice was a nice, solid tree trunk. The technique had never failed him. In a duel, Frank expected he could best Regina, but all that blood littering the ground (even in straw form) gave him pause.\n\n\"We have to talk to Gabel.\" He held up Ned.\n\n\"Oh, hell.\" She drew her sword, spun around, beheaded the training dummy, and put away her weapon in one fluid motion. Her audience applauded with much appreciation, both for her technique and the slippage of her top's neckline to reveal a tantalizing glimpse of her bosom. She toweled her glistening flesh, so distracted by Ned's corpse that she didn't notice the leering soldiers.\n\n\"Lesson over. Tomorrow we'll cover the pike with particular emphasis on gouging and impaling. If there's time, I'll demonstrate the proper way to mount a head.\" She threw a less revealing robe around her shoulders, and her students dispersed.\n\nFrank, grasping Ned by the neck, shook the body. Its stiffened limbs flopped like a cheap marionette. \"He's dead.\"\n\nRegina cupped Ned's chin and stared into his single, glassy eye. \"How?\"\n\nFrank lowered his voice. \"You don't know?\"\n\n\"What are you implying?\"\n\n\"I'm not implying anything.\" He dropped Ned, who fell in a heap to the ground. \"I'm asking you directly. Did you kill him?\"\n\n\"No, I didn't,\" she replied. \"Did you?\"\n\n\"Don't be absurd. I know the agreement.\"\n\n\"So do I.\" She snarled. \"None of us gets rid of a commander without first discussing it. That's the agreement that I've sworn to, and an Amazon never breaks her word.\"\n\nThey wasted a moment on an exchange of furtive, mistrustful glances.\n\n\"Gabel must've done it,\" Regina said finally. \"Never trust an orc to keep his word. Especially an orc that's really a goblin.\"\n\nFrank nodded. \"I guess we should have a talk with him. This could be trouble.\"\n\nShe readily agreed. The three ranking officers of Ogre Company had taken a more active role in their advancement opportunities, but all their previous accidents had been neatly above suspicion. But Ned was dead with no clear cause, and that was sure to draw attention. Ogre Company's run of fatally poor luck might not stand against closer scrutiny. It wasn't like Gabel to make such a mistake, but perhaps he'd just grown impatient, they guessed.\n\nOn the way to see Gabel, Frank dragged Ned by his leg. Regina, marching directly behind, found herself staring at her commander. Some incomprehensible, alien sensation stirred within her. It wasn't pity. She had none for the dead. Nor was it guilt. Killing was her profession, and she had little moral qualm with slaying anyone who got in her way. All the previous commanders had been buffoons. She'd seen nothing in Ned to make her think he would've been any different. But as his head bounced against the cobblestones, she found that unidentifiable stimulation remained.\n\n\"Do you have to carry him like that?\" she asked.\n\n\"Like what?\"\n\n\"Like that. He's lost half his scalp.\"\n\nFrank stopped and saw bits of hair and skin trailing behind them. \"I don't hear him complaining.\"\n\nShe didn't know why she cared, but she did regardless. \"Just let me carry him.\" She gathered Ned in her arms. He stank a little of decay, but she hardly noticed. She gazed into his bloated face and for some unfathomable reason, she smiled.\n\n\"Should I leave the two of you alone?\" asked Frank.\n\nHer only comment was a harsh grunt. She tossed Ned over her shoulder and proceeded to Gabel's office. He was busy filling out forms, something he did with clockwork precision. Brute's Legion was a never-ending struggle against a tide of paperwork, and to fall behind was to court disaster. Gabel was displeased by the interruption, but even more so by the reason.\n\n\"Which of you did it?\" he asked at the sight of Ned propped in a corner. \"Which of you idiots couldn't wait until the right moment?\"\n\n\"Don't look at me,\" said Frank.\n\n\"I didn't do it,\" replied Regina. \"We assumed you had.\"\n\n\"I had nothing to do with it,\" said Gabel.\n\n\"If you did, you should just tell us,\" said Frank.\n\nGabel slammed his palms against the desktop. A stack of requisitions toppled to the floor, and sighing, he gathered them up. \"I'm telling you, I didn't kill him.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The trio exchanged glances of unspoken skepticism.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 75 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Their alliance had survived thus far because no one had acted without the others' approval. Now that spotless trust wasn't quite so spotless, and they found themselves looking at a roomful of assassins. Regina put her hand on her scimitar. Frank clenched his gigantic fists. Gabel sat back down, reaching for a short sword he kept strapped under the desk. And Ned continued to rot in the corner.\n\n\"I swear I had nothing to do with it,\" said Gabel.\n\n\"Neither did I,\" said Regina.\n\n\"Nor I,\" said Frank.\n\n\"I guess that settles it then.\" But Gabel kept his fingers on the sword.\n\nFrank cracked his knuckles. \"I guess so.\"\n\n\"Agreed.\" Regina lowered her arms from her weapon, but her fellow officers knew she could draw it in a flash.\n\n\"It must've been an accident,\" said Frank. \"A real accident.\"\n\n\"Poor timing for one,\" said Gabel, \"and hardly believable. When the head office hears of this...\"\n\n\"Why should they?\" asked Regina. \"He's Never Dead Ned. Shouldn't he come back to life?\"\n\nFrank exhaled with relief. \"I'd nearly forgotten about that. I guess that's a lucky break.\"\n\nGabel nodded to the corpse. \"Even a cat has only nine lives. Still, let's assume he'll return. I guess we should just put him back in his room until then.\"\n\n\"I'll do it.\" Regina hoisted the body across her back, and before either man could disagree (although neither had any intention) she was out of the room.\n\n\"Is it just me, or is she acting strange?\" asked Gabel.\n\nFrank didn't reply. He studied the orc with narrowed eyes.\n\nGabel met the ogre's stare. \"For the last time, I didn't kill him.\"\n\nFrank shrugged. \"If you say so.\"\n\nRegina laid Ned in his bed. She tucked his swollen tongue back into his mouth as far as it would go, closed his eye, and pulled his blanket to his chin. Then she stood by his bed for a short while and studied his bloated features. She sneered, but it was a halfhearted attempt to remind herself that this dead man before her was beneath her contempt.\n\nShe didn't understand this. Outside of an odd talent for resurrection, Ned wasn't anything special. As far as she could tell, he wasn't even much of a soldier. Yes, he was handsome in a scarred, disfigured way only an Amazon might appreciate, but that hardly seemed enough to warrant her reaction.\n\nShe hoped he would just stay dead this time and rid her of the problem.\n\nThe door opened, and Miriam stepped inside. \"Oh, I'm sorry, ma'am. I just came in to see how the commander was doing?\"\n\nRegina stepped aside to allow Miriam to view the corpse.\n\n\"Still dead?\" asked the siren.\n\n\"Still dead.\"\n\nMiriam went to the bedside. Neither woman said anything for some time, lost in their own private thoughts.\n\n\"How long do you think it'll take for him to recover?\" asked Miriam.\n\n\"It only took a few hours last time,\" observed Regina.\n\n\"I guess I'll wait then.\" Miriam sat on the end of the bed.\n\n\"You'll wait?\"\n\n\"I'd like to be here when he wakes up.\"\n\n\"You like him?\" Regina's already rigid posture stiffened. Her brow creased in a hard glare. \"You like him?\"\n\nThe three fins atop Miriam's head raised and flattened. \"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"I don't really know.\" She reached under the blanket and took his hand. \"You know how soldiers are, ma'am. They're all bluster, always trying to impress each other with how drunk they can get or how long they can keep a badger down their trousers. But Ned doesn't put on a show. He's just himself. It's hard to find a guy like that. Especially around here.\"\n\nRegina worked her way quietly behind the siren. The Amazon silently drew her dagger.\n\n\"It's not like he's much to look at, I know,\" continued Miriam, oblivious. \"And he isn't great in bed either. Although he was pretty drunk. But I like him. I wouldn't expect you to understand, ma'am.\"\n\nRegina, poised to slit Miriam's throat, hesitated. She had no problem killing when it suited her purposes, but there was only one reason to slay Miriam. And that reason, absurd as it seemed, lay decomposing on that bed. To kill her rival would be admitting she had a rival. She wasn't ready for that.\n\nMiriam glanced backward at Regina, who was now picking her fingernails with the dagger.\n\n\"Sometimes I wish I were an Amazon,\" said the siren. \"It must make life so much easier.\"\n\nRegina forced a smile. The hostility within her eyes was not lost on Miriam, but as Regina's eyes were always full of seething fury, the siren had no reason to suspect some of that fire was directed at her.\n\n\"I'll wait with you.\" Regina plopped down into a chair. \"Just to keep you company for a while.\"\n\nMiriam put a tender hand to Ned's cheek and smoothed his hair.\n\nRegina, caressing her long, sharp dagger, locked her stare onto Miriam's throat.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Provide one hundred and ten sentences sentences continuing the narrative flow and maintaining existing character relationships.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Just before dusk, a demon entered the citadel. No one bothered to stop him. There were few sentries, and only a tiny percentage of these were alert enough to have observed the demon if he hadn't been wearing his cloak of seclusion. And of these, even a tinier portion would've cared. But the demon was not one to take chances. He wore his magical cloak, though the garment was worn and stained. Only the seamstresses of the damned might repair the cloak's frayed edges, and only the River of Blood could wash out the blotches. It'd been centuries since the demon had been to the underworld, and if he had his way, it would be many centuries more. Even demons hated Hell. Ice demons in particular found the sweltering temperatures disagreeable. So he tolerated the loose threads, the huge blot of a wine stain smudged down its front. It seemed foolish to worry about a stain on an invisible enchanted cloak.\n\nHe strode across the cobblestones. He stopped by the well and removed a pendulum from his sleeve. He held it by its silver chain, and the pendulum pulled very slightly in one direction. Beneath his shadowy hood, the demon smiled. It wasn't much of a reaction, but it was stronger than there'd ever been before. He was very close.\n\n\"Hey, what's this?\" asked a passing goblin.\n\n\"Looks like footprints,\" replied an ogre.\n\n\"Looks like they're made of ice.\"\n\nThe cloak's magic, like its stitching, was ragged and worn. Should an observer notice a trace of his passing and care enough to follow up on the clue, they might become aware of him.\n\n\"Hey, what's all this then?\" asked the goblin suddenly. \"Who're you?\"\n\n\"No one.\" The demon turned to face them. \"I am no one.\" His long, bony fingers tensed like a spider preparing to jump. Black icicle daggers, sharp enough to slice through tempered steel, materialized in his hands.\n\nThe goblin glanced at the ogre, who took a pull of wine.\n\n\"All right then,\" said the drunken ogre, \"see you around.\"\n\nThey sauntered away. The demon was as coldly calculating as one might expect, and he weighed the appearance of two corpses against the chances these two would report his appearance to anyone who might care. He tossed his daggers into the well and continued on his way.\n\nElmer the treefolk stared into Ace's beady goblin eyes. No quarter would be given. No mercy would be offered in this clash of wills.\n\n\"Got any threes?\" asked Elmer.\n\n\"Sorry, bud.\" Ace grinned. \"Go fish.\"\n\nGrumbling, Elmer drew a card and rearranged his hand, careful to avoid brushing against Sally the salamander's hot scales. The oracle Owens rounded out the quartet.\n\n\"I don't see why we have to play this stupid game,\" complained Elmer.\n\n\"We can always play War,\" suggested Owens. \"That's a good game.\"\n\n\"Forget it,\" said Ace. \"I lost half a month's wages last time we played that.\"\n\n\"I was thinking a more sophisticated game,\" said Elmer, puffing on his cigarette.\n\n\"Old Maid?\" asked Ace.\n\n\"Crazy Eights?\" proposed Sally.\n\n\"How about Super War?\" said Owens.\n\n\"What's—\" asked Elmer.\n\n\"It's like War,\" interrupted Owens, \"but you slam the cards on the table a lot harder.\"\n\nElmer scowled, but the blind man was unaware. \"Your turn, Sally.\"\n\nThe salamander, an unrevealing shade of white, sorted clumsily through her hand. It wasn't easy. Her fingers were thick and awkward, and the fireproof mittens necessary for her to avoid singeing the cards didn't help. While she considered her next move, she idly said, \"I heard the commander is dead again.\"\n\nElmer puffed on his cigarette. \"Guy's an idiot, just like the rest of the imbeciles the head office sends down.\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't know about that,\" said Ace. \"He didn't seem like such a bad guy.\"\n\nSally fruitlessly asked for sixes and wound up drawing a card. \"Regardless, we're not exactly rid of him. He is immortal.\"\n\n\"How do you think he does that?\" asked Ace. As a goblin, he couldn't help but be curious. His race didn't fear death, but they would've preferred to avoid it, even if they rarely possessed the common sense to do so. But the benefit of immortality was getting to cheat death without having to worry about all that commonsense rubbish.\n\n\"Who cares?\" Elmer grunted. \"It's just a gods damned parlor trick, is what it is. Doesn't amount to much.\"\n\n\"I don't know about that,\" disagreed Owens. \"Imagine an army of such men and what they might accomplish.\"\n\nElmer laughed. His leaves shook noisily. \"Are you serious? He's been here less than a week, and he's died twice already. As a rule, humans are worthless, and immortal or not, that's not going to change. Sooner we're rid of him, the better.\"\n\n\"Yeah, maybe you're right,\" said Sally. \"The fates seem to agree with you.\"\n\nThey all chuckled. Everyone in the citadel had their suspicions about the \"accidental\" deaths plaguing their commanders. No one really cared, but there was etiquette about saying anything outright.\n\n\"Though the fates seem a trifle impatient,\" added Sally. \"It's not like them to be so sloppy.\"\n\n\"I think this time it might not have to do with the fates,\" said Ace. \"Lewis and Martin said the lieutenant seemed surprised by Ned's corpse. Got any fives, Elmer?\"\n\nThe treefolk handed over a pair of cards. \"You're suggesting this guy died twice by accident? Genuine accident?\"\n\n\"Uh-huh.\" Ace grabbed a handful of unshelled peanuts in the center of the table and crabbed them in his mouth. His cheeks bulged, and as he spoke, shells spewed through the air. \"If you ask me, they weren't accidents. I think—\"\n\n\"It's an interesting theory,\" interrupted Owens.\n\nAce continued, \"I think he wants to die.\"\n\n\"But why—\" asked Sally.\n\n\"What sane person wants to be immortal?\" replied Owens.\n\n\"Stop doing that,\" said Elmer.\n\n\"Sorry,\" apologized Owens.\n\n\"I think Never Dead Ned is just a clumsy oaf,\" said Elmer. \"That's what I think. But if he wants to die, you'd think even an idiot could figure out how to do it. It's your turn, Owens.\"\n\n\"I know.\" Owens sorted through his cards, holding them before his sightless, white eyes.\n\n\"I bet if you chopped him up into a thousand pieces he wouldn't come back,\" said Elmer.\n\n\"Maybe. But what if he did?\" Ace had yet to finish off his last handful of peanuts when he shoveled another into his mouth. He said something, but it was nothing but shells and spit.\n\nElmer leaned back in his chair. He had a hard time getting comfortable in human chairs. They never took into account the knots on his back. \"Or fire. Fire pretty much kills everything.\"\n\nSally snorted. A small fireball burst from her left nostril. \"Not everything.\"\n\n\"Most everything,\" corrected Elmer, as he blew out one of his smoldering leaves. \"It's your turn, Owens.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"Just ask for something already,\" said Elmer.\n\n\"Give me a minute, will you?\" Owens pulled his cards close to his chest.\n\n\"Do you even know what you need?\" Elmer snuffed out his cigarette and had Sally light another for him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I see the future. Of course I do.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You hear the future,\" corrected Elmer. \"Tell me what you've got in your hand right now.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Name one card in your hand.\"\n\n\"Then you'd know what I had.\"\n\nThe other players chuckled. Owens held several cards in the wrong direction already, although no one bothered to point it out.\n\n\"At least one of us would know then,\" said Elmer.\n\nBy now, Ace had swallowed enough peanuts to be understood. \"I bet if someone turned Ned to stone, he'd stay dead. Or boiled him in acid until everything dissolved. Even his bones.\"\n\n\"If I were trying to kill him,\" said Owens, \"I'd tie him down with some heavy rocks and throw him in a real deep lake. I figure even if he didn't stay dead, he'd come back alive underwater and just drown again before he could free himself. Over and over and over, if need be. Not exactly killing him, but it'd be the next best thing.\"\n\nEveryone agreed it sounded like a good plan, although Elmer still insisted that burning Ned to ash would be easier.\n\n\"Do you know how hard it is to burn a human to ash?\" asked Sally. \"They're not quite as flammable as treefolk. Trust me, there's always stuff left over. The bones and heart and a couple of other choice organs.\"\n\nShe raised and cocked her head. Salamanders were especially sensitive to subtle changes in temperature, and a cold spot passed through the hall outside the room. She set down her cards.\n\n\"Where are you going?\" asked Elmer.\n\n\"Deal me out.\" She stretched, uncoiling her long, serpentine body. \"I've got to check something.\" She slipped quietly into the hall.\n\n\"What's gotten into her?\" asked Ace.\n\n\"Who cares?\" Elmer deliberately blew a smoke ring into Owens's face. \"If you don't take your turn now, we're going to skip you.\"\n\nOwens admitted defeat. He leaned over to Ace and asked for a suggestion.\n\n\"I'd go for sevens,\" replied Ace.\n\n\"Crap.\" Owens drew a card.\n\n\"You didn't ask,\" said Ace.\n\n\"Trust me,\" replied the oracle, \"he doesn't have any.\"\n\nAnyone else might not have given much thought to the frost along the hallway walls, but Sally knew underworld ice when she smelled it. Salamanders and ice demons were natural enemies. In addition to the innate conflict of their nature, there was a lot of bad history between the races. Her warm skin burned hot enough to simmer the air.\n\nShe turned the corner, and her adversary stood before her. He'd surely sensed her presence as easily as she'd felt his. Neither made a move right away, instead taking measure of the other.\n\nThe demon pulled back his hood. His face was long and angular. The horns growing from his brow curved back to touch the top of his bald skull. As she grew hotter with anticipation, he grew colder. As wisps of flame danced on the scales along her back like a sail of fire, frost crystallized on his blue skin. A chill mist slipped from his tight lips as he spoke.\n\n\"I'd heard your kind were extinct.\"\n\nShe paled a humorless gray. \"I don't know what you're doing here, and I don't care. An ice demon killed my cousin, and I've always wanted to return the favor.\"\n\nShe snorted. Her scales brightened a bloodred shade. A sword and shield of blackest ice materialized in the demon's hands.\n\nSally darkened from murderous crimson to merciless ebony. She spat a fireball. The demon deflected the strike with his sword. Both the weapon and the flame dissolved in a blinding cloud of steam. The demon hurled jagged icicles without aiming. Sally twisted her serpentine body to avoid all but one. It struck her dead center but melted away almost instantly so that the worst of the damage was just a nick. She shrieked as a gout of flame poured from her jaws. It met the demon's frozen shield, and soon the entire hall was obscured with fog and the sound of battle.\n\nDrawn by the noise, a nearby door opened. Regina and Miriam stepped out of Ned's quarters into the muggy, misty hallway. The siren was nearly impaled by an ice dagger that buried itself in the wall three inches from her face. Regina grinned, but her grin faded when a lick of flame shot close enough to sear the tip of her hair. They could see nothing else but shadows wrestling in the fog.\n\nThe demon struck Sally a hard blow with a frozen club that sent the salamander reeling. She tumbled from the fog to land at Regina and Miriam's feet. Before Regina could demand an explanation, Sally hastily saluted.\n\n\"Excuse me, ma'am. This won't take another minute.\" She sprang back into the mist.\n\nIn truth, it took just eleven seconds under a minute during which Sally hissed and shrieked and even howled three times. She spat enough fire to burn down two forests, and her skin blazed hot enough to smelt bronze. It was fortunate Copper Citadel was mostly stone and mortar, or else it would've been ablaze. Finally, she fell quiet. The steam gradually faded enough to reveal the salamander coiled around a large block of ice.\n\n\"Oh, damn. Decoy.\" She unwound from the block. Her tongue flicked out to taste the air, but the demon was gone. Like a fire burning too hot, Sally's rage was all but consumed. She settled into a more tolerable temperature, and Regina was able to approach.\n\n\"What's going on here?\"\n\n\"Ice demon, ma'am. Caught him snooping about, but I'm afraid he got away.\"\n\nRegina gave Sally orders to lead a few soldiers in a search of the citadel, but she expected the effort to be fruitless. Sally slipped away, leaving Regina and Miriam standing in the puddle of a melting ice block.\n\n\"I wonder what it was doing here?\" asked Miriam.\n\nRegina frowned deeply. She didn't like the idea of unauthorized visitors roaming the citadel. Murderous conspiracies aside, she was a thoroughly by-the-book officer.\n\nThe demon's cloak of seclusion would've failed him against a thorough search, but Ogre Company's lax discipline gave him plenty of time to slip away. He was out of the grounds and on his way before a proper alarm was raised.\n\nDespite the troublesome salamander, he was most pleased. She'd not interfered before he'd gotten close enough to get a good reading off the pendulum. It'd even glowed. That could mean only one thing, and his frozen blood chilled in anticipation. Lost in his icy thoughts, he failed to notice the Red Woman until he'd practically run into her.\n\nShe saw him, of course. Even new, his cloak's magic couldn't hide him from her eyes. She nodded to the demon. \"Hello.\"\n\n\"Hello.\"\n\n\"Fancy seeing you here.\"\n\n\"And you as well.\"\n\nThey shared a silent moment as they shuffled through their own private musings.\n\n\"What brings you down from your mountain?\" asked the demon.\n\n\"Nothing of great importance,\" she replied. \"And what of yourself?\"\n\n\"Just a trifling matter. Nothing you'd be interested in, I'm sure.\"\n\nThey both offered forth empty, polite smiles.\n\n\"Must be off then,\" said the demon.\n\n\"Oh, please, don't let me keep you.\" The Red Woman stepped aside, and the demon walked off into the night.\n\nHer vermilion raven flew down from the treetops to perch on her shoulder. \"Do you think he knows?\"\n\nThe sorceress shrugged. \"If he doesn't, he soon will.\"\n\n\"What are you going to do about it?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"You could destroy him, couldn't you?\"\n\n\"With a single wave of my staff.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She demonstrated the simple gesture.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 11 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But they would sense that, and there would come more. They were bound to find Ned. It was only a matter of time.\"\n\n\"You could always hide him again,\" suggested the raven.\n\n\"I could. But this is where Ned belongs. It is time to see what he is made of, to hope that he is ready.\"\n\nThe Red Woman continued on her way to the citadel, which by now was on full alert. She had more potent magics at her disposal than old, enchanted cloaks. No one spotted her.\n\n\"Do you think Ned will be ready?\" asked the raven as they walked through the front gate unmolested by guards.\n\nA frigid wind swept across the fortress.\n\n\"No, I don't suppose he will be.\"\n\nPhantom darkness fell over the citadel like the shadow of an unseen colossus, and a hard rain poured from a cloudless, starless sky.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Let's engage in collaborative writing in the comedy, fantasy genre. I'll provide a starting point, and you'll continue with one hundred and twenty-seven sentences, maintaining any established context.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "While ogre company ran about in poor discipline, the Red Woman slipped into Ned's room. She walked in those moments between moments, those bridges between now and then, and none noticed her passing. Ned was the sole occupant of his room by that time. Miriam and Regina were off aiding in the search efforts. The sorceress stood at the foot of the bed and studied the corpse.\n\n\"What are you waiting for?\" said the raven. \"Just raise him so we can get out of here before someone spots us.\"\n\nThe Red Woman chuckled. She could be gone in an instant. Nor did she have anything to fear should she allow herself to be seen. She only sneaked about because it had been her habit for so long she'd lost patience for dealing with the living. But she'd tarried long enough. She walked to the head of the bed, and waved her hands over Ned. The corpse's bloat shrank. The burn on his chest faded to a less noticeable shade, not quite visible except under the proper light, but as he always carried a memento of his deaths, it would remain. After she'd lovingly tucked his tongue back in his mouth, Ned appeared to be merely dozing. His wounds were such that one could usually only be certain he was alive by his breathing. He wasn't breathing yet.\n\nShe paused. It was truly a shame he couldn't remain dead, forever frozen in this peaceful slumber. But death wasn't for Ned.\n\nThe raven flew to the headboard. \"Just do it already.\"\n\nShe smacked Ned across the forehead. He jumped to life with a yelp. Returning from the dead was as normal as waking up, and there was a sense neither of wonder nor disorientation. Only disappointment, and even this emotion was slight.\n\n\"How long was I gone?\" he asked the Red Woman. Her resurrections weren't always prompt. Once he'd been deceased for three months before she'd gotten around to raising him.\n\nBut the Red Woman wasn't there. She'd crept away in another of those \"between\" moments. This surprised him. She'd always been the first person he'd seen. Not that she ever told him anything useful, nor explained herself. But she'd never just run off before without sharing a few words. Ned didn't care, but the distinct impression she was avoiding him did cross his mind. Never one to take a lucky break for granted, he took advantage of this moment to lie on his bed and relax. Right now, the Red Woman was gone, and no one else in the citadel knew he was alive. For at least a little while, he could enjoy the quiet.\n\nIt didn't last very long. It never did.\n\nThe door opened. For a split second, he entertained the notion of sticking out his tongue, closing his eye, and pretending he was still deceased until whoever entered had gone away. He wasn't quick enough.\n\nMiriam's large black eyes opened wider. \"Oh. You're back.\"\n\nHe stared at the ceiling. \"I'm back.\"\n\n\"Are you feeling better, sir?\"\n\nHe didn't reply. That was a complicated question.\n\nThere was an awkward silence then. Ned was too involved in his own thoughts to notice as Miriam frowned and fidgeted a bit, tracing small circles on the floor with her left foot while, arms crossed, drumming the webbed fingers of her right hand on her left forearm. Had he any practice reading siren body language, he would've also noticed the fins atop her head flatten bashfully, and the tiny nervous gills just below her ears gulping down air. She tried to stop that. Outside of water, it'd only give her gas.\n\n\"It's good to have you back, sir. I... we missed you.\"\n\nHe raised his head and squinted quizzically. \"Really?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nHe lay back and considered this. Currently he was too self-absorbed to understand the implications. Romantically speaking, Ned was rather dense. He'd never done well with women. His accumulation of scars and disfigurements hadn't helped. It wasn't a question of self-esteem. It was simply a question of experience, of expecting the world to behave in certain ways. That Miriam might find him desirable was as likely as the end table wanting to be his best friend. It just didn't make sense to him, and like anyone confronted with the unbelievable, he had two choices. He could make that leap of faith and believe. Or he could just not notice.\n\nHe chose the latter, although \"choice\" might imply the slightest conscious effort on his part.\n\nMiriam moved closer but still remained a few paces from the bed. \"Can I get you anything, sir?\"\n\n\"No, I'm fine.\" He pursed his lips and blew out a long breath. \"Thanks anyway.\"\n\nFor her part, Miriam was well aware of how she felt. She liked Ned and had absolutely no way of telling him. All she need do was sing a little song, and he could be hers. Ned had already succumbed once to her allure. He would easily do so again. Women had been seducing men since the dawn of time by employing their wits and natural charms, and singing enchanted melodies was as natural to a siren as breathing. Would it have been so wrong to employ a little musical charm at this moment?\n\nYes, she decided. Miriam had never seduced a man against his will, and she wouldn't start now. But more important than the moral question was the notion that singing would be a cheat. If she was going to have anything truly worthwhile with Ned, it couldn't start with guile or manipulation or base mesmerism.\n\nBut she had no idea how else to get started. Admitting defeat for the moment, though she hadn't given up yet, she saluted crisply and turned on her heel to leave.\n\n\"One second.\" He pushed himself up on his elbows. \"I am a little hungry. Could you get me something to eat?\"\n\nShe smiled and nodded. \"Of course, sir.\"\n\n\"And a drink wouldn't hurt either.\"\n\n\"Anything else?\"\n\nHe sat up. \"Can you not tell anyone I'm alive yet? I'd really appreciate it.\"\n\n\"No one? Not even the officers?\"\n\n\"Especially not the officers.\"\n\n\"As you wish, sir. I'll be right back.\" She left the room, but on the other side of the door, a few visitors confronted her. Several soldiers filled the hall. The corridor was barely wide enough for two ogres side by side, and all she saw was a pair of them before her, though she heard others behind them. Ace, all two feet of him, slipped between the ogres' legs.\n\n\"They're here to see the commander.\"\n\n\"They can't,\" she said. \"He's dead.\"\n\n\"That's what I told them,\" said Ace, \"but they want to make sure he's not faking it.\"\n\n\"Faking it?\" asked Miriam.\n\nThe soldiers murmured among themselves. Ogre voices were deep and not made for murmuring, so it was quite a racket.\n\n\"They think it's all a hoax,\" said Ace. \"They think the Legion cooked up this whole Never Dead Ned business as a public relations fabrication.\"\n\n\"But he's already risen from the dead once,\" said Miriam.\n\n\"That's what I told 'em.\" Then he shouted at the soldiers. \"I told you idiots he was dead! Saw him with my own eyes! There never was a man as dead as that! Ask Frank or Ralph or Ward. Lewis and Martin. They'll all swear to it.\"\n\nThe ogres continued to murmur skeptically.\n\n\"Most of you saw him too!\" shouted the goblin.\n\n\"Only from a distance,\" said one of the front ogres. \"Could've been a dummy filled with straw for all we know.\"\n\n\"Or some other guy!\" said a raspy-voiced troll somewhere in the back. \"All those humans look alike!\"\n\n\"We do pretty much look the same,\" said a human soldier peering from behind an ogre's elbow.\n\n\"Almost exactly!\" agreed another human, who just happened to be the first's twin brother. \"Sometimes our mothers can't even tell us apart.\"\n\nMiriam stood resolute. \"I'm afraid the commander is not available for public viewing.\"\n\nAce stood beside her. More accurately, he stood in front of her, barely above her knee. \"You heard the lady. Scram.\"\n\nThe soldiers murmured louder still. One of the leading ogres put a massive hand on Miriam's shoulder. \"We'd really like it if you'd please step aside, ma'am.\" It was not a request.\n\nShe hummed almost inaudibly, and the gathered crowd stepped back.\n\n\"Now that's not fair.\" The ogre moved to clamp his hand over her mouth, but she'd already started singing.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Siren songs weren't foolproof, and an audience developed resistance with each exposure.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But ogres, for some reason, were especially susceptible, and since they didn't hear it often, the effects were nearly instantaneous.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sirens were most famous for their beguiling melodies, but their enchanted songbook was chock-full of other useful tunes. There were songs to call down rain, songs to shake the earth, songs to shatter walls, and songs to encourage a seedling to grow into a mighty oak in a day, songs to open locked doors, and songs to summon spirits, and songs to cast them out. Miriam wasn't particularly adept. By siren standards, she was a little tone deaf. And while she'd never been good at seducing rivers to change their course or charming dragons, she did have a great talent for the most dreaded of siren tunes, the Dirge of Revulsion.\n\nThe dirge bubbled up from her diaphragm, boiled out of her lungs, steamed through her throat to burn on her audience's ears. The soldiers, tears in their eyes, dashed away in a scramble. Some resisted more than others, but in the end most succumbed before a dozen notes had escaped her lips. Only the goblins, curiously resistant to mesmerism of any sort, remained.\n\nMiriam stopped singing and rubbed her throat. The dirge was hard on her voice, and she spoke with a rasp.\n\n\"Get out of here.\"\n\nWithout their ogre backup, the goblins reluctantly departed.\n\nAce said, \"Nice trick.\"\n\n\"It gets the job done.\" She cleared her throat. \"Can you do me a favor and watch the door until I get back?\" She wasn't very worried about anyone besides goblins sneaking inside. The power of the dirge would cover this spot for a few hours, keeping most away.\n\n\"Sure.\" Ace sat and lit his pipe. \"Make it snappy though. I've got a flight in twenty minutes.\"\n\nMiriam went off to the pub to get Ned's meal, and it wasn't six minutes later that Regina approached his quarters.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" she asked.\n\n\"Smoking.\" He offered her his pipe. \"Want a puff?\"\n\n\"Step aside.\"\n\n\"Are you authorized?\"\n\nShe scowled. \"What are you talking about?\"\n\n\"I'm not supposed to let anyone in.\"\n\n\"You little beast, I outrank you.\"\n\n\"This isn't about me. It's about orders. Since I don't really know whose orders I'm following, I can't as a good soldier just allow you to pass.\" Ace puffed deeply on his pipe. The putrid yellow smoke slithered its way along the wall to gather at the ceiling. \"Unless you happen to know the password.\"\n\n\"What password?\"\n\n\"I don't know it.\"\n\n\"Then how will you know what it is?\"\n\nAce removed his goggles and inspected them for specks, mostly for something to do. \"Way I figure it, if you were authorized and you knew the password, you'd tell it to me straight out. And if you were authorized and there were no password, you'd just tell me to go to hell.\"\n\n\"Go to hell.\"\n\nHe smiled. \"Nice try, but your first response is all that counts. And that tells me you aren't authorized.\"\n\nShe smiled back. \"Very clever. Although there is one flaw with your plan.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\nThe Amazon snatched up the diminutive goblin by his scarf and hurled him down the hall and out of her way. He landed hard on the floor, but his race was innately bouncy so there was no harm done. By the time he'd gotten to his feet, she'd already gone inside. The magic of the siren's dirge had no power over a woman.\n\n\"Hadn't thought of that.\" With a shrug, Ace collected his pipe and went on his way.\n\nOn the other side of the door, Regina's dark eyes widened. \"Oh. You're back.\"\n\nIn no mood to care about déjà vu, Ned said, \"I'm back.\"\n\n\"Are you feeling better, sir?\"\n\nHe didn't reply. That remained a complicated question.\n\nThere was another awkward silence, the second such clumsy hush to fall between Ned and a woman this evening. Ned, as usual, didn't notice, but for Regina this was agony. She no longer denied she felt something for him. She dared not give it a name. She wasn't ready for that. But this unlabeled emotion, this ridiculous and inappropriate desire, was nothing less than a blight on her proud Amazonian soul. At least she didn't have to worry about parental disapproval. Amazons had neither fathers nor mothers. They had only the code of their society to guide them, and the code was very specific and quite unforgiving.\n\nIn a situation like this, where temptation had somehow wormed its way into her iron breast, only blood could cleanse her spirit. Ned's blood. She had to kill him, and her code said to do so right now. She pulled her dagger quietly and edged toward him as he sat on his bed, his back to her. A dozen ends flashed through her warrior's mind. She could spear him in the heart, cut his throat, sever his spine, or forgo the dagger and break his neck with her bare hands. And though these thoughts should've brought a grim smile to her lips, instead they made her frown.\n\nGoddesses despise her, she couldn't do it. And even if she could, it wouldn't have worked. Never Dead Ned was immortal. Her dilemma wouldn't be solved so easily, but she would have to find a way.\n\nNed turned his head slowly as if he'd forgotten her presence and was now just remembering. Dagger in hand, she glanced around the room and tried not to look murderous. No more murderous than usual.\n\n\"It's good to have you back, sir.\"\n\nHe tilted his head to one side like a goat trying its best to understand the workings of a catapult and failing. \"Really?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\" She tried to look casual with her drawn dagger, twirling it as if she were merely trying to keep her hands busy. \"Can I get you anything?\"\n\n\"Thanks, but Miriam is already doing that.\"\n\nRegina's dark eyes reddened. \"Miriam.\" She spoke the name like a curse called down from the heavens. Not the glowing heaven of glorious goddesses, where grand feminine divinities dwelt in righteous splendor, but the lesser, forsaken heaven of gluttonous and useless gods, where the masculine deities wasted all their time getting drunk and peeping down on virgins in earthly bathhouses.\n\nThe door opened, and Miriam, carrying a tray full of food and drink, entered. Ned didn't have the energy to rise from the bed, and instead he lay back down. \"Put it on the table.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" said Miriam very pleasantly.\n\nBut the siren and the Amazon locked stares. Regina twirled her dagger faster. Balancing her tray on her hip, Miriam put her free hand on the short sword at her side. Ned remained steadfastly oblivious.\n\nMiriam addressed him, but her eyes never moved from Regina's. \"I've brought enough for two if you'd like some company, sir.\"\n\nRegina squinted. Her brow wrinkled. \"An excellent suggestion. You're dismissed, Miriam.\"\n\nMiriam's full, fishy lips tightened into a forced smile. \"I think that's really up to the commander, isn't it, ma'am?\"\n\n\"I suppose it is.\" Regina stopped twirling her dagger. She grasped it in tight fingers, ready to slash open Miriam's face at only a moment's opportunity.\n\nNed stood and went to the tray. He uncorked a bottle of wine and took a long drink. \"Thanks, but I'd rather be alone.\"\n\nMiriam frowned at the rebuke. Regina frowned at the rebuke too and scowled with the hard acknowledgment that she cared about his rebuke.\n\n\"As you wish, sir,\" spat the Amazon through clenched teeth. \"Come along, Miriam.\"\n\n\"After you, ma'am.\"\n\nThe women exited, drawing close enough to attack each other, but Ned's proximity held them in check. On the other side of the closed door, they quickly put some distance between themselves. Neither said anything, but both were plagued with doubts.\n\nTo Miriam, her Amazon rival was a vexing obstacle. True, Regina was unskilled in the art of seduction, but she was flawlessly beautiful, tall, and well-proportioned, with smooth, soft skin. And there was her hair, that shimmering, flaxen mane. A bald, scaly siren couldn't compete against any of that. Not without her songs, which she was determined not to use.\n\nShe didn't have a chance.\n\nRegina saw Miriam as a creature of exotic undersea loveliness. Her scales glimmered even in the dim hall light, and her natural grace was undeniable. Worse than that, she was a siren. Enticing men was second nature to her. And Regina, as an Amazon, knew absolutely nothing about wooing a lover.\n\nShe didn't have a chance.\n\nEither woman might've leapt upon the other to end their rivalry the only way they could think of at the moment. But fate flipped a coin, and the moment passed.\n\nRegina sheathed her dagger. \"If you'll excuse me, I've duties to attend to.\"\n\n\"Yes, me too.\" Miriam lowered her hand from her sword. \"Perhaps we should go attend to our duties together.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I was thinking the same thing,\" agreed Regina.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Both glanced at Ned's door. Then, smiling sweetly at one another while plotting each other's death, they went on their way.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "CONTINUE STORY. PARAMETERS: 12 sentences sentences, character continuity, comedy, fantasy genre.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Iron Fortress of the demon emperor Rucka was, strangely enough, made of stone. But to Rucka's ear, \"Iron\" carried a more ominous ring than \"Stone.\" And as he was the most powerful demon in all the Ten Thousand Hells, there were none who cared to argue the accuracy of the title. Regardless of its erroneous name, Rucka's fortress was truly a terrifying presence. Carved from blackest obsidian, it was adorned with glittering jade battlements, and decorated with dozens of fearsome gargoyles chained to their perches to leer down upon any timorous creature below. The fortress wasn't very large as fortresses went, but its defenses were formidable, its infamy awe-inspiring, and its inhabitants unimaginable. It could also outrun every other roaming citadel and ambulant stronghold on the continent, though this was admittedly a very small group.\n\nThe Iron Fortress had only lost once, being soundly out-paced by a galloping cottage. The loss bothered Rucka's pride, and if he should ever set his multitude of eyes upon that cottage again, he intended to see it scorched from the earth. But the cottage and its witch had wisely scampered away before he'd gotten the chance, and the demon had more important concerns than the pursuits of damaged pride. These concerns set Rucka to restlessness, and because he couldn't leave its walls, the Iron Fortress paced sympathetically.\n\nCurrently it strode with great, earthshaking stomps through a lush forest, leaving deep craters and dust clouds in its wake.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Occasionally it might crush a village with casual indifference, which mattered not at all to Rucka except for the inconvenience of having to stop every other week to have the mashed peasants cleaned from between the fortress's toes.\n\nIn the meantime, he waited for news from his advance scouts that he might unleash his horde upon the earth and claim the one last thing he needed. He dallied this afternoon in his harem room, surrounded by fifty-one adoring succubi. And he gazed out the window down upon the world that he would one day see cleansed to ash. He had to stand on a stool to enjoy the view as Rucka stood exactly nineteen inches tall.\n\nHe wasn't a particularly terrifying demon at a glance. Stocky and purple with three black horns, four gray wings, four arms, and a long, long tail. He was covered in eyes, each a different shape and shade. They spread down his face, across his chest and back, running along his limbs. When Rucka blinked, his lids scraped audibly against his dry eyes, and those who knew him trembled at the sound.\n\n\"What's wrong, sweetie?\" asked a dark-haired demon. She was one of his favorites, though he couldn't be bothered to remember her name. Or anyone's name.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He just called his minions by whatever name struck his fancy, and should they fail to answer, he usually destroyed them for their insolence.\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"Come here and let Momma make it all better.\"\n\nShe took him in her arms, cradling him like a swollen, deformed infant to her ample, heaving bosom. This particular succubus had a talent for bosom heaving, and he smiled despite his ill humor.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" She poked his tummy playfully. The red eye where his bellybutton should be blinked and watered, and Rucka chuckled.\n\n\"What is always wrong?\" he replied.\n\n\"The war,\" cooed a blond demon who had a special talent for cooing her dialogue. \"Always the war.\"\n\n\"But you've won, haven't you, sweetie?\" asked his dark-haired favorite.\n\n\"I'm winning. I've not won.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's only a matter of time, my love,\" consoled an orange-skinned concubine.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next turn: write with sparse dialogue", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rucka leapt to his feet. His many eyes glared venom, and the consort tried to apologize. Before the words could come, he snapped his fingers, and she dissolved into a festering puddle.\n\n\"Time I have enough of. It's patience I find myself lacking.\"\n\nHis remaining consorts paused. Then the favorite spoke up.\n\n\"How many more, dear, dear master? How many more do you need?\"\n\nHis glare passed over her, and he was but a gesture from destroying her when he reconsidered. Rucka had a special fondness for heaving bosoms, and she prudently heaved hers as never before.\n\nAll of his eyes burned and smoldered with hunger. Black clouds choked the air of his harem chamber, and his demon lovers, accustomed to sooty air, still gagged.\n\n\"One.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rucka flapped his wings, and the smoke blasted through the window and soared, screaming, into the atmosphere, where it devoured a flock of migrating ducks—feathers, bones, and all.\n\nThe demon king sighed. His irritation was spent for the moment, but it would return soon enough. He dropped into a mound of pillows made of the tender skin of elven nobles.\n\nHis concubines crowded around. His favorite stroked his horns and whispered sweet blasphemies in his ear to keep him calm. No one liked a rankled demon emperor, especially not his minions.\n\nThe chamber doors opened wide and several barbed imps entered, crawling on their hands and knees, their heads held low, their noses scraping the floor. Rucka was in just pleasant enough temper not to destroy them outright for their interruption.\n\n\"We beg your forgiveness, oh cursed and merciless sire.\"\n\nRucka pushed away his harem. His eyes darkened. His tiny claws dripped venom onto the bare floor.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Iron Fortress trembled painfully.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This had better be important. Your death shall be one of agony.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The imps crept aside, and an ice demon came in. He knelt low before his master, and the news he gave was of such importance that Rucka, much to everyone's surprise including his own, didn't destroy anyone. Although he did maim several imps just to stay in practice.\n\nAnd the Iron Fortress ceased its aimless meandering and strode with inexorable purpose toward Copper Citadel.\n\nBelok's fortress didn't move. It stayed firmly put atop an inaccessible mountain peak. It had seen better days. Once it'd brimmed with magical artifacts and fantastical creatures, but his curse demanded their relocation to the dark, dank basement, far from the high tower where Belok sulked.\n\nThe wizard spent a great deal of his time sulking. When he wasn't scouring the world for objects of ancient power in his vain quest to get the Red Woman to speak her secrets, he was usually sitting on his throne, drinking wine and moping. He liked to think of himself as brooding sinisterly, but more accurately, he pouted.\n\nHe was very good at it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'wizards' exactly 2 times in your response", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like many powerful wizards, he had a great deal in common with spoiled children. He could focus his inflated sense of entitlement into a sulk so heavy and impenetrable not even light could escape its surface, and time could barely seep its way out around the edges. He could waste weeks in one of these moods, though to the outside world it might appear only minutes. But even the ill temper of wizards had its limits, and eventually it would pass.\n\nThe darkness brightened, and Belok noticed a vermilion raven perched on his windowsill. The wizard didn't get up, but he was surprised. The Red Woman had never before paid him a visit.\n\n\"Come to taunt me, have you?\" he asked.\n\nThere was no reply. He glanced around the room, but he didn't see a hint of the sorceress. Even if she were invisible, he would've sensed her presence in his inner sanctum. He turned his head in the raven's direction.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[ooc] Word restriction: Use 'doesn't' 2 time(s) only [ooc]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Where is she?\"\n\nThe bird raised its wings in a shrug. \"This doesn't concern her. This is business between us. I'm here to apply for a job.\"\n\n\"Don't you already have one?\"\n\nThe raven ruffled his feathers. \"Frankly, I'm a little bored with it. It's not much fun being her familiar. All she does is mix potions and restore idiots to life—and walk. And walk. She doesn't just teleport anywhere. It's always a walk. Even if her magic makes everything a ten-minute journey, it's still a bit tiresome.\"\n\nBelok studied the raven, but it was difficult to read a bird's face. Even for a wizard. \"You want to be my familiar?\"\n\n\"Why not? You've got style, at least. And you don't walk a lot, do you?\"\n\n\"No. Not much. But I already have familiars.\"\n\nHis ghostly maidens became visible by his side.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They poured Belok another glass of wine and cooed in his ear.\n\n\"Spirits aren't proper familiars,\" said the raven, \"and while I can't caress you, I'd be infinitely more useful.\"\n\nTwo of the ghosts floated forward and hissed.\n\n\"We ravens don't fear spirits. We show them the way from the netherworld, and when they annoy us, we snatch them in our talons and send them back.\"\n\nThe bird cawed, and the maidens dissolved into two piles of phantom bones on the floor. The raven chuckled. \"I told you spirits aren't worth much.\"\n\nBelok pushed away his paramours. \"Why should I believe you?\"\n\n\"Why shouldn't you? But I can offer you a good-faith gesture. I can tell you where he is.\"\n\nBelok scanned the raven's face but found nothing to confirm or dispel any suspicions. He was suspicious by nature, but he was also offered the one piece of information he desired more than anything.\n\n\"If this is a trick—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Why would I bother to trick you? What would I have to gain? He's in a place called Copper Citadel. It's in the East-lands. I'm sure a powerful wizard such as yourself doesn't need directions. Go and see for yourself. What do you have to lose?\" The raven turned back to the window. \"I'll be in touch.\"\n\nHe flew away. At the foot of Belok's mountain, he perched atop the Red Woman's staff.\n\n\"I don't know if he believed me.\"\n\n\"He doesn't have to believe you,\" said the Red Woman. \"His desire for revenge will lead him to investigate regardless.\"\n\n\"I don't see why you just didn't tell him yourself,\" said the raven.\n\n\"He would've suspected something.\"\n\n\"I thought you said it wouldn't matter if he suspected something.\"\n\n\"It wouldn't. But I just wasn't in the mood to deal with him.\"\n\n\"Why are you sending him after Ned now anyway?\" asked the raven.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Because it's time.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Time for what?\"\n\n\"I'm not certain.\" She smiled. \"But it's time for something.\"\n\nShe turned and started back to her mountain.\n\n\"Can't we just teleport?\"\n\n\"Oh, but it's such a nice night for a walk.\"\n\nThe raven sighed.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "INPUT: user text (may contain established characters/lore)\nOUTPUT: 23 sentences sentences\nGENRES: comedy, fantasy\nTAGS: humor\nNote: Match context level of character familiarity\nCONTINUE STORY", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "meta: Word frequency rule: 'regina's' × 2", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Regina stood in one dark corner, studying Miriam at the opposite end of the pub. The siren stood brazenly beside Ned. Occasionally he'd say something Regina couldn't hear over the crowd, and Miriam would laugh as if he'd just pronounced the most marvelously entertaining utterance. She'd put a hand on his shoulder and sometimes \"accidentally\" brush her breasts against his arm. It was disgusting. And Ned seemed to be falling for it. He was an idiot and a fool. Like all men. Unworthy of Regina's affections.\n\nThe more she despised him, the less he seemed to notice her and the more she wanted him. And she would have him. She knew it well enough. She just had to get rid of the damned siren.\n\nRegina's eyes strayed to the table. For the past ten minutes, unaware, she'd been gouging her dagger into the wood. Ugly gashes tore deep into the planks, almost coming out the bottom.\n\nUlga the chubby elf conjurer and Sally the salamander passed near the table. Regina grabbed the elf by the arm.\n\n\"Ma'am?\" asked Ulga.\n\n\"You must hate men,\" said Regina.\n\nUlga's pink eyes narrowed. \"Beggin' your pardon, ma'am?\"\n\n\"Well, look at you.\"\n\nUlga did indeed look herself over. \"Yes, ma'am?\"\n\n\"You're fat.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I do got a few extra pounds on me, ma'am.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"So men must treat you very poorly.\"\n\n\"Some,\" admitted Ulga. \"But others do enjoy the extra portions.\" She made a show of adjusting her bountiful chest.\n\n\"You don't hate men?\" asked Regina.\n\nUlga shook her head. Regina released her and took up her table carving again.\n\n\"Something troubling you, ma'am?\" asked Ulga.\n\nRegina missed the question, obsessed with watching Miriam blatantly rubbing Ned's shoulders.\n\n\"I wouldn't let it trouble you none, ma'am.\" Ulga sat at the table. \"Ain't met a man worth dying over yet.\"\n\nRegina quite agreed. No man was worth dying over. But she was beginning to think some just might be worth killing over.\n\nSally slipped into the chair next to Ulga. The reptile put her elbows on the table, and it smoldered. \"I can't say I understand these human mating rituals. Far too much conflict. We salamanders resolved that problem long ago.\"\n\n\"How so?\" asked Ulga.\n\n\"It all goes by length. The longest female in the village gets the first pick of any male she wishes. Then the second longest. Then the third. And so on and so on until everyone is paired off. No arguments that way.\"\n\n\"But what if the male doesn't like who picked him?\" asked Ulga.\n\n\"No one asks him. Salamander males are drones. They have no drives other than to eat, defecate, and procreate. They can't even speak properly or bathe themselves. Like stupid children. Or clever dogs.\"\n\n\"Sounds like every male I've ever met,\" muttered Regina.\n\n\"They must be very dull company,\" remarked Ulga.\n\n\"Yes, but it's for the best,\" said Sally.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"After all, if they were smarter, it would only make it more disconcerting to eat them.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A portion of Regina's attention drew away from Ned and Miriam, though her eyes remained locked on the pair. \"You eat your mates?\"\n\n\"What else are you going to do with them once you're finished?\" Sally snorted a fireball. \"Good gods! Otherwise they just crap all over the place and chew on the furniture. My sister kept one mate around for a few years, and it was a devil of a time getting him housebroken. And she had him declawed, which I always felt was inhumane.\" She took a sip of beer, which bubbled and steamed as it touched her lips. \"Much nicer to just bite their heads off before you get sick of them.\"\n\nRegina and Ulga grinned.\n\n\"You might have a point there,\" agreed Ulga.\n\nSeamus the goblin approached the table. \"Mind if I have a seat?\"\n\n\"Ladies only,\" said Ulga.\n\n\"No problem.\" With a burst of pink smoke, he shifted into a feminine form. Since goblin females resembled goblin males almost exactly, save for larger eyes, fuller lips, and smaller ears, Seamus looked nearly identical to her old shape. The most noticeable change was the loss of her beard.\n\n\"Isn't that uncomfortable?\" asked Ulga.\n\nSeamus pulled up a chair. Her voice was now an octave squeakier. \"Naw. This is just going from outie to innie. Now if you want to talk about tough shapes, try becoming a dictionary sometimes. After 'aardvark,' I'm nothing but blank pages. So what are we ladies talking about?\"\n\n\"Men,\" said Sally.\n\n\"Who needs 'em?\" Seamus raised her glass. \"Am I right or am I right?\"\n\nChuckling, they banged their drinks together.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Of course, goblin society sidestepped that whole mess,\" said Seamus.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I wasn't aware goblins had a society,\" remarked Ulga.\n\n\"We don't. That's how we avoided it.\" The goblin raised her glass again. \"Am I right or am I right?\"\n\nNo one bothered to toast this time. They shared inconsequential chatter for a few minutes as Regina continued her single-minded surveillance.\n\n\"I say if he doesn't want you, he isn't worth your time,\" consoled Ulga.\n\n\"Yeah,\" agreed Seamus, \"especially since you can't really compete against Miriam anyway.\"\n\nUlga smacked the goblin on the back of her head hard enough to leave a slight bruise.\n\n\"Hey, we were all thinking it,\" said Seamus. \"I just had the guts to say it.\"\n\nThis time Sally slapped the goblin across the pate, leaving another bruise and a minor burn.\n\n\"That's outie talk,\" said Sally.\n\n\"It's the truth, isn't it? She's a siren. They have powers over men. What's the archmajor got?\"\n\nThey thought about this for a moment.\n\n\"She's a mammal,\" said Sally. \"That should count for something.\"\n\n\"Aren't sirens mammals too?\" asked Seamus. \"Like dolphins?\"\n\n\"I'm pretty sure they're amphibians.\" Ulga pointed to a spot behind her own ear. \"They've got gills after all.\"\n\nSeamus put down her ale.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"As a male most of the time I think I've got the best perspective here. And I'm telling you it doesn't matter whether she's fish or fowl when the lights go out.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sally hissed and turned a sickened green shade. \"Maybe it wouldn't be so hard to bite off your head.\"\n\n\"We all know what Regina has to do if she's going to win Ned. She's got to employ her Amazon strengths.\" Seamus winked, not once but twice. \"Shouldn't be too hard to put the siren down. I've never seen her pick up a sword.\"\n\nMiriam and Ned shared another boisterous guffaw. Regina pulled her dagger from the table and stood. She was ten leaping paces away from plunging the blade into Miriam's face.\n\nUlga grabbed the Amazon by the elbow. \"Hold on there, ma'am. You don't want to do that.\"\n\n\"I don't?\"\n\n\"No, ma'am. You can't kill a siren. I hear tell that when they sing their death rattle, their slayer dies with them.\"\n\n\"That shouldn't be a problem,\" said Sally. \"The archmajor is a woman, and siren songs have no effect on females.\"\n\n\"You willing to take that chance?\" asked Seamus.\n\nRegina cut off two strips from her skirt and stuffed them in her ears. She tried to take another step, but Ulga held tight. The elf was stronger than she appeared.\n\n\"Beggin' your pardon, ma'am, but I don't think you should.\"\n\nRegina pulled the plugs from her ears. \"What?\"\n\n\"This goes against the rules of courtship,\" said Ulga.\n\n\"There are rules?\" asked Sally.\n\n\"Yes, and unlike salamanders, it's not as simple as who's tallest.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sounds needlessly complicated,\" said Sally.\n\n\"It can be tricky,\" agreed Ulga, \"but it's the way it's done among us mammals.\"\n\nSally's long ears flattened. \"And yet my species is the one that's nearly extinct.\"\n\n\"Seduction is like war,\" said Ulga. \"And war has its rules.\"\n\nSeamus laughed. \"War doesn't have rules.\"\n\n\"Everything has rules. The trick is to know which rules you can ignore, and which you can't.\" She pulled Regina back into her chair. \"Let us help you, ma'am.\"\n\n\"You'd help me?\" she asked, eyes wide.\n\n\"Sure,\" said Ulga. \"I never much cared for that blasted siren.\"\n\n\"Nor I,\" seconded Sally. \"Besides, it will be interesting to get a closer look at how you mammals do this.\"\n\n\"I'm in,\" said Seamus.\n\nSally lowered her head to stare into the goblin's eyes. \"No one invited you.\"\n\n\"Hey, it's a girls-only project. And you can't be picky where you get your girls around here, or you aren't going to get many.\"\n\nThe salamander and the elf exchanged skeptical glances. Finally Ulga said, \"All right. But you stay a female for the duration of the project.\"\n\n\"Deal.\" Seamus frowned and wiggled in her chair. \"Guess I'm going to have to buy some new underwear.\"\n\nRegina was taken aback.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "meta: Next turn only: maintain roughly 21% quote-to-text ratio", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Despite the bonds of feminine sisterhood, she'd never felt close to any of the women in the company. Even in the Amazon army, she'd been very much a loner. That shock, more than any other reason, was enough to cool her murderous rage.\n\nAcross the pub, Frank stood in a darker corner. He watched Regina watching Ned. And Frank wasn't happy about it.\n\nGabel occupied a stool beside the ogre. \"I wonder what she sees in him,\" he said.\n\nFrank grunted.\n\n\"I bet she'd notice you if he were gone,\" said Gabel.\n\n\"I know what you're doing, Gabel, but I'm not going to kill him.\"\n\nGabel's eyes widened. \"Heaven forbid. I wouldn't suggest anything of the sort.\"\n\nFrank ground his teeth. The noise was enough to smother nearby conversation. All the soldiers within arm's length of the very large ogre, including one ogre nearly as large, discreetly moved out of reach of his thick, bone-crushing hands. Gabel patiently waited for Frank to quiet down.\n\n\"Anyway, I don't think you could kill him,\" said Gabel, \"even if you wanted to.\"\n\nFrank glowered down at the orc. \"I don't want to.\"\n\nGabel mumbled with mimicked indifference. \"Why would you?\"\n\nFrank took a long drink. As a boy, he'd chewed glass whenever nervous or upset or bothered. He'd broken the habit years ago, but tonight he ran his tongue along the mug and scraped his teeth along its edges.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"She's not thinking clearly,\" said Gabel.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Maybe Ned's mesmerized her. That would explain it, wouldn't it?\"\n\nFrank clenched his fist. He closed his jaws, and a hairline crack split down the mug. Beer dribbled down his chin.\n\n\"He can't mesmerize anyone,\" said Frank.\n\n\"I would think a secret wizard could do all sorts of unnatural things.\"\n\nFrank wiped his chin. \"I thought you didn't believe in secret wizards.\"\n\n\"I don't. Not really. But sometimes things happen. Strange things without any reasonable explanation. It just makes me wonder. Maybe there really are secret wizards. And if there are, I wouldn't put it above such duplicitous sorcerers to use their powers for so base and vile a purpose.\"\n\nFrank sucked in a deep breath. \"You're just saying that. You don't really believe it.\"\n\n\"No, not really,\" admitted Gabel. \"But it's not like I know everything. I could be wrong. Or I could be right even if it is a ludicrous theory I don't believe myself.\" He waved his drink in Regina's direction, then in Ned's and back again. \"But it's an absurd situation in the first place if you think about it. So maybe, when things don't make sense, the logical mind has no choice but to consider absurd alternatives.\"\n\nFrank nibbled on his glass. \"But it doesn't make any sense at all. If he's using magic to entrance her, why is he ignoring her?\"\n\n\"Maybe he's just playing hard to get,\" said Gabel. \"Or maybe he's just an asshole.\"\n\n\"He doesn't seem like an asshole.\"\n\n\"He doesn't seem like a secret wizard either. But you can't always rely on first impressions when it comes to secret wizards.\" Gabel grinned. \"Or assholes.\"\n\nWith a disgusted snort, Frank chucked his entire mug in his mouth.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He crushed the glass between his powerful jaws.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 11 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Gabel jumped onto his stool and reached up to pat Frank's shoulder. \"Oh, what difference does it make? Secret wizard, asshole, whatever else he might be. We can't kill Ned until we all agree, and even if you and I know it's the best thing to do, we can be assured Regina won't. Maybe she's bewitched. Maybe she's just got bad taste. I guess that's just the way it is.\"\n\nFrank swallowed loudly. He ran his shard-studded tongue across his blistered lips. \"Yeah. Guess so.\"\n\n\"We are honorable soldiers after all. Without that, what are we?\" Gabel nodded to Regina. \"Shame though. You might have a shot at her otherwise.\"\n\n\"You really think so?\"\n\n\"Who's to say? Big, handsome ogre such as yourself and a mighty Amazon warrior. I've seen stranger things.\"\n\nAcross the pub, Ned and Miriam shared a chuckle. Regina glowered while twisting her dagger into the table. And Frank, with a contemplative frown, tucked the mug into his left cheek and chewed.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Provide eleven sentences sentences continuing the narrative flow and maintaining existing character relationships.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ned had hoped to get training under way immediately, but his better judgment said it would be wiser to wait one more day. The company needed time to adjust to their new schedule. But by morning they'd be up and ready to forge themselves into a dedicated, organized fighting unit as battle-worthy as any in the Legion. That was what Ned told himself anyway, and he chose to believe it despite his cynical nature.\n\nHe wasted the rest of the morning in the pub, sharing drinks with Miriam. He didn't drink much. Not much for him. He'd set aside the joy of warm inebriation for the time being, but he hadn't given up the pleasures of a nice mug of watered-down mead.\n\nMiriam had a nice smile and an easygoing appeal, and once he'd gotten used to her more aquatic features, he had to admit she was surprisingly lovely. It was probably her natural siren powers on his groggy perceptions on this early morn, but she was quite charming. And while he preferred redheads and didn't like the taste of fish, once or twice he recalled what she'd looked like naked, and he wasn't repulsed by the idea of seeing her that way again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It didn't hurt that the crowded pub kept forcing her to press her breasts and hips against him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The clumsiness of ogres in tight quarters surprised Ned.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'against' exactly 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It didn't seem like three minutes could pass without some oaf brushing against her, sending her squeezing against him.\n\nShe'd apologize each time with a playful smile on her lips. Lips that were full and moist and probably not nearly as fishy-tasting as he dimly recalled, and even if they were, was that such a bad thing? He definitely would've considered bedding her again under different circumstances, but he was commander. He'd made a mental list of things he couldn't do anymore. Though he hadn't bothered to prioritize that list, fraternization had to be somewhere near the top.\n\nHe'd never been good at self-discipline, which was just one of the reasons he'd been a poor soldier. But it wasn't hard to abstain when female personnel were sparse and most of his command consisted of hairy ogres, brutish ores, malodorous trolls, and reckless goblins. Ogresses were even hairier than the males of the species, and even if he'd found that appealing, any carnal attempts would assuredly lead to a crushed pelvis. Orc females in the throes of passion were notorious biters, and he liked having all his fingers. He'd heard troll women got all drippy when aroused.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He hadn't asked what that meant, but he was pretty sure he didn't want to hear the specifics.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'women' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And while he liked petite women, goblins were just too short.\n\nThere were only a handful of women in the company that might tempt him. Although Ulga was nice, she was both chubby and an elf, neither of which he found endearing. Regina was beautiful, but she was an Amazon, so there was no point in considering that. Miriam was the only temptation. She had the sweetest smile and a lovely laugh and an enchanting figure and splendid grace, but she was also a fish. That was a lot to get around.\n\nIt wasn't a tremendous obstacle. He'd hated the taste of broccoli once, and he'd gotten over that. And Miriam was infinitely more tempting. But he was commander.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He kept reminding himself, and for now, it was enough.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It wasn't a dilemma anyway. He couldn't imagine that Miriam was actually interested in him. She was just being friendly. It was her job as morale officer. The rest was merely siren charm and wishful thinking. Still, every time she touched his arm or laughed at one of his weak jokes or batted those big, black eyes at him, he couldn't help but wonder. He might've even pursued it, despite his determination not to, except he had other things he needed to do.\n\nHe finished his mead and excused himself. \"Company business,\" he explained vaguely, and Miriam seemed satisfied to leave it at that. He walked across the pub, stopping before Frank and Gabel.\n\n\"Can I speak to you a minute, Lieutenant?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[[OOC: Ensure 'gabel' appears 2 time(s) in your answer]]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "asked Ned of the ogre.\n\n\"What about, sir?\" said Frank, crunching some silverware between his teeth. The pub staff had stopped bringing over mugs after he'd devoured his fifth.\n\n\"It's a private matter.\" Ned walked away, and Frank, casting a suspicious backward glance at Gabel, followed. Ned led Frank out of the pub to a quieter section of the courtyard where no one else was listening.\n\n\"I need your help,\" said Ned.\n\n\"Yes, sir?\"\n\nNed leaned forward. \"I can't fight.\"\n\n\"Sir?\" Frank squinted skeptically. Maybe Gabel had been right.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Maybe Ned was playing some sort of mind game.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I can fight,\" Ned continued.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But not very well.\" He grimaced. No point in denying it. \"Not well at all.\" He shrugged. It wasn't so hard to say after all. It felt almost freeing to admit aloud.\n\n\"I don't understand, sir,\" said Frank.\n\n\"I need a tutor. A war tutor.\"\n\nFrank's skepticism waned but lingered. \"You're commander, sir. You don't need to know how to fight.\"\n\n\"But I should be able to,\" said Ned. \"At least a little bit. I want to set a good example for the staff.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You do?\"\n\n\"Yes. Shouldn't I?\"\n\nCertainly, you should, agreed Frank silently. But he'd never met a commander yet who followed this philosophy.\n\n\"I thought I might train with the rest of the soldiers,\" said Ned. \"But I was hoping to get some pointers first. I don't mind looking like an idiot, but I'd like not to look like a complete incompetent.\"\n\n\"Why me, sir?\" asked Frank.\n\n\"It was you, Regina, or Gabel. I was going to ask Regina first, but she's gone off somewhere. And Gabel isn't in the best of shape right now. I trust I can count on your discretion.\"\n\nIf this was some sort of trick, Frank couldn't think what it might accomplish. And Frank, despite himself, found himself liking Ned. It took a strong character to admit one's faults and an even stronger character to try and improve them when one didn't have to.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Thinking on it, Frank had never seen any of the previous commanders demonstrate the slightest degree of martial prowess.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They'd all been too busy barking orders and strutting around.\n\n\"Will you help me?\" asked Ned.\n\nFrank saluted. \"When do you want to get started, sir?\"\n\nNed decided there was no time like the present, but his embarrassment kept him from wanting to train in the open. Copper Citadel had a private garden set aside for its commander's use. No one had tended it in some time, and it was a sorry sight. Half the plants were overgrown, the other half dead or dying. Ned hadn't chosen it for aesthetics, but for its high walls and enough open space for sparring.\n\n\"How should we start?\" he asked.\n\n\"Always start with the basics,\" said Frank. \"Come at me. Let's see what you've got, sir.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Somewhere in your response, you need to say: \"Then come at me without the sword if you think that's safer,\"", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ned already knew what he had. Or didn't have. And he knew that he didn't stand a chance against a small ogre, much less one Frank's size.\n\n\"Should I use my sword?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"If you want.\"\n\n\"I don't know if I should. I don't want to hurt you.\"\n\nSmiling, Frank shook his head. \"You won't, sir.\"\n\n\"I might.\"\n\n\"Then come at me without the sword if you think that's safer,\" said Frank.\n\nNed hesitated. On the one hand, he wasn't much of a threat to ogres without some sort of weapon. On the other, he'd hate to wound Frank. He didn't expect to. Not on purpose.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But accidents happened.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Whenever you're ready, sir.\"\n\nNed drew his sword, but the sharpened edges put him off. He wasn't a good fighter, but he considered himself unlucky, almost supernaturally so. The one time he wouldn't want to kill someone would very likely be the one time he did. He put the sword away and instead picked up a heavy limb fallen from a half-dead tree. It was thick enough to inspire confidence without posing much danger to Frank. Ogres were notoriously thick-skinned. Pointed things might kill them, but most maces and warhammers just bounced off.\n\nNed raised his club over his head. He took a step forward, but Frank made no move to defend himself.\n\n\"Uh, I'm starting,\" said Ned.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I noticed.\" But Frank remained in a perfectly relaxed posture.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ned took another step. \"Here I come.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. Although I would point out that in a real battle it's unwise to announce your attack beforehand.\"\n\n\"I know that.\" Ned lowered his club. It was heavier than it looked, and he took a second to rest his arms. \"Okay. Now I'm ready.\"\n\nFrank, hands behind his back, said nothing. Ned charged with a primal scream. He whipped the club up high, aiming a blow at Frank's head, but reaching only as high as the ogre's shoulder. Frank blocked with his forearm, and the club cracked in two. The force rattled Ned's hands. He dropped the club and staggered off balance.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Frank extended his index finger and pushed Ned over.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He landed on his butt with an embarrassing thud.\n\n\"Not very good,\" said Frank. \"But not entirely bad.\"\n\nNed remained sitting. \"It wasn't?\"\n\n\"Not at all, sir.\" Frank rubbed his forearm. \"I felt that. So you've got some power. Of course, your offense is weak, and your defense is nonexistent. But no one is born knowing how to fight properly.\" He pulled Ned to his feet. \"Let's try again, shall we? Use your sword this time.\"\n\nNed rushed Frank. He aimed his blade at his opponent's side, hoping to score a glancing blow for the sake of his pride. Frank simply knocked Ned aside again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It happened so fast, Ned couldn't say how.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Somebody laughed.\n\nNed glanced around. \"Who's there?\"\n\nElmer stepped forward. The short treefolk had blended in among the trees.\n\n\"How much did you see?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"Enough to know you need a lot of work\"—Elmer struck a match against his side and lit a cigarette—\"and that this ogre isn't going to be much help.\"\n\n\"What do you mean by that?\" said Frank.\n\n\"It's just a fact.\" Elmer blew a gray cloud that hovered over Ned's head. \"Ogres fight like ogres. Which is fine if you're an ogre. But in case you didn't notice, Ned is a human. And he needs to learn to fight like one.\"\n\n\"I was going to ask Regina,\" said Ned.\n\nElmer chuckled. \"She wouldn't do you much good either. Amazons aren't human.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They aren't?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No. They're grown in melon patches. Or possibly carved from enchanted stone. Either way, they aren't human. Can't teach a human how to fight.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Easily discouraged, Ned saw Elmer's point.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I've seen enough humans fight to understand the rudimentary concept,\" said Frank.\n\n\"Such as?\" asked Elmer.\n\nFrank paused to think about it. \"Well, there's a lot of screaming. And squishing. They're very squishy.\"\n\n\"So as far as your experience goes, the basic technique of human warfare is to scream and be squished.\"\n\nFrank frowned. \"Squishing avoidance was the first thing I planned on teaching Ned.\"\n\n\"And then what?\" asked Elmer. \"The finer talent of crushing one's opponents beneath tree trunks? When is the last time you even picked up a sword?\"\n\n\"Just last week. I used it to pick my teeth.\"\n\nAce, who'd been perched silently on the garden wall for the entire conversation, finally spoke up. \"Squishing avoidance is a lot harder than it looks. Take it from an expert.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "So much for his private training session, realized Ned.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, please. What can a goblin teach about fighting?\" asked Elmer.\n\n\"Fighting? Not much,\" admitted Ace. \"But I'm three years old. I think I know a thing or two about survival.\"\n\nIt was true that the average goblin's life span was measured in months, not years, and that Ace's old age was an excellent recommendation.\n\n\"When it comes to the art of war, no fleshie matches the prowess of the plant world. Take a look at this garden.\" Elmer swept his arms wide. \"All around is a constant battle. The rosebushes struggle against the ivy. The ivy strangles the flower beds. Nature is in a constant conflict, and only the smartest, most persistent flora wins.\"\n\n\"Ned is not a plant,\" said Frank.\n\n\"He isn't an ogre either,\" replied Elmer. \"Or a goblin.\"\n\nAce hopped off the wall and onto Frank's shoulder. \"That doesn't mean a goblin can't teach him a thing or two.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "This is mid-story so characters will appear without introduction. Write like A. Lee Martinez, focusing on these genres: comedy, fantasy, and themes: humor", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ned's tutors decided that it would be better to leave Ned in the garden. He'd wanted his training to be secret, and trying to sneak his corpse back to his quarters seemed like more trouble than it was worth. If they were caught (which they probably wouldn't be) and if someone cared enough to ask for the details (even more unlikely) a story would have to be invented as to how Ned had perished once again, and no one wanted to bother. Neither did they wish to wait for Ned to rise from the dead. So he was thrown into an overgrown flower bed and left for his latest resurrection. And there he stayed, quietly enjoying the agreeable state of death.\n\nBirds descended on Copper Citadel at early evening. Flamingos and ibises, robins and red bishops, peacocks and finches, seagulls and drongos, figbirds and buntings, shrikes and woodpeckers, and a single bony ostrich. They covered the citadel like a fog. Not one soldier could remember seeing them arrive, but there they were. And every bird, regardless of species, was as bright red as fresh-spilled blood and deathly silent.\n\nThe soldiers whispered about dark powers at play, and gravedigger Ward had to stop up his nostrils to hold back the overpowering stench of magic. Aside from this, none gave it much thought. In Copper Citadel, everything was always someone else's problem, and everyone left it for someone else to handle. \"Let Ned deal with it,\" was heard more than once, to which others nearby would nod their heads and get on with their business. Only Gabel paid special notice to the birds, and that was only long enough to fill out a Suspected Thaumaturgical Incident Report, which he dropped in his stack of outgoing mail before heading off to the pub.\n\nThe Red Woman's magic was generally a subtle art. She had little use for fearsome explosions or howling winds. Such effects were merely pandering to an audience, the realm of courtly wizards and sideshow conjurers. Spectacle was contrary to her nature and her duties. Magic both preceded and followed her, and there were always signs of her passing. Little things that only the keenest eye might spot, or the most superstitious soul might fret over. But today she was annoyed, and today her magic showed itself. Though it was her power, albeit unconsciously, that summoned the monstrous brood, she found it more bothersome than anyone else. She was grateful to find the garden mostly empty of birds except for a pudgy scarlet penguin entangled in withering grapevines.\n\nThe Red Woman circled Ned's body three times, casting only casual glances at it. He was dying far too often these days for her taste, but this wasn't the sole cause of her annoyance. More troublesome dilemmas plagued her. She prodded him in the chest with her staff.\n\n\"Get up, get up.\"\n\nGroaning, he stirred to life.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "She walked to a bench and waited.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He rose. He glanced at the sorceress with mild interest, but said nothing as he dragged his stiff limbs to the bench and had a seat. He and the Red Woman were quiet for some time, neither having much to say. He was every bit as annoyed with these constant deaths as she was, but neither deigned to comment on it just yet.\n\nAfter a few minutes, he stretched the last bit of stiffness from his bad left arm and said, \"Thank you.\"\n\nThis surprised the Red Woman, but she hid it well. \"Have you decided then that it would be better to be alive than dead?\"\n\nHe thought about it, and there was no easy answer. \"Not really. But for now, I think I'd rather be alive.\"\n\n\"And why is that?\"\n\nNed thought about this and found the answer a little easier. \"I don't know.\" It was unclear but honest.\n\nThe Red Woman reached out with her gnarled hand and ran her fingers along the scars on Ned's neck. There was tenderness in the caress beneath the scratchy, pointed nails. He was taken aback. She'd touched him before, but only briefly and never with any hint of affection.\n\n\"I don't like you, Ned,\" she said quietly as her hand fell to her side. She stood. \"I don't like who you were, and I don't care much for who you are. But I believe it is possible that one day I might like who you will become.\"\n\nHaving no idea what she meant, he just nodded.\n\nThe Red Woman simultaneously hobbled and glided her way across the garden, where she patted the scarlet penguin on its head. \"I'm going to tell you a story. It's a story about you. Let me just say that right out. But though you won't understand much of it, I advise you to listen closely. And perhaps you'll be able to explain it to me, since even I don't understand it all.\n\n\"Long ago, in another age of another universe, there was a singularly powerful force of ultimate madness and boundless destructive might. This creature was unique in all the universes, but it's easiest to just consider him a demon. But there had never been such a demon before, and fates help us, there shall never be another. Such was his awesome power that every other lord of every other hell bowed before him.\n\nThere was no match for him in heavens, earth, or hells. So powerful was he that even the endless bickering of devils and demons fell away, and this supreme demon, having assembled the greatest unholy army in the memory of eternity, set his sights on casting his universe into chaos, of scorching his world to ash from the pits of the damned to the palaces of the gods.\"\n\n\"This is about me?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"Let me finish. This demon, this Mad Void, succeeded in all these things. He did so without any trouble at all. There was some token resistance, a few minor battles here and there, a handful of heroic and futile last stands. But in the end there was never any question. The Mad Void laid low the gods, brought misery and pain to everything and everyone around him. He twisted his universe into an appalling mockery of agony and discontent. But though this had always been his goal, he found no satisfaction in the accomplishment. So in ultimate disgust he razed his universe into oblivion. Alone in the boundless darkness of his own creation, he sulked for untold millennia.\"\n\n\"Can't you just skip to the end?\" asked the raven.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory inclusion (with quotes): I don't want to hear this.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She could see he had a point. Ned's gaze wandered around the garden with a hint of boredom, but the Red Woman refused to be rushed. The story was far too important. Her staff floated across the garden and rapped him soundly on the knuckles.\n\n\"Pay attention,\" she commanded. \"How long the Void brooded is difficult to say for time meant nothing to him, but eventually he discovered, either by design or luck, a whole other plane of existence awaiting his blessed touch. He wasted no time in invading this new universe. With even less difficulty than the last, he corrupted it, and finding himself again displeased, he destroyed it as well.\"\n\nNed rubbed his bruised fingers. \"I still don't see what this has to do with me.\"\n\n\"You still haven't figured it out?\" said the raven.\n\n\"I guess not,\" Ned admitted.\n\n\"Idiot, you're the Mad Void.\"\n\nThe Red Woman sighed. \"I was saving that for the end of the story.\"\n\n\"Oh, a dramatic presentation is wasted on Ned,\" said the raven. \"He's too simple for that.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" she agreed.\n\nThey gave Ned a moment to absorb this idea, but he utterly failed. \"I'm an all-powerful demon?\"\n\n\"Not exactly,\" she replied. \"That's why I was saving that bit for the end. It's less complicated that way.\"\n\n\"I think there's been a mistake somewhere,\" said Ned.\n\n\"Obviously,\" agreed the raven.\n\n\"But I can't be the Mad Void. I've never even heard of it.\"\n\nThe Red Woman laughed. \"There are many things which go unheard of. But that doesn't make them any less real.\"\n\n\"I think I'd remember destroying universes.\"\n\nShe laughed again. \"You would, Ned, but you're a man. Or a reasonable facsimile of a man. But the Void existed only to destroy. For him, remembering all the realities he obliterated would be as reasonable as you recalling every ant you've ever stepped upon.\"\n\nHe felt sick. \"I don't want to hear this.\"\n\n\"You don't,\" she confirmed, \"but you must. Don't judge what you once were too harshly. The Mad Void devoured universes because it was his nature. One can't blame a wolf for springing upon a helpless doe or flames for consuming a forest. These are the trials of fang and blood that all things must endure in some form or another. The death of a universe is no less tragic, yet no less necessary in a grander understanding.\"\n\n\"Less metaphysical,\" said the raven. \"You're going to lose him again.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But Ned heard every word, and he didn't like any of it. The Red Woman continued.\n\n\"In due course, the Void stumbled upon our realm of existence. By then he'd grown weary of his role in the great scheme. All his destruction, his slaughter and madness, had brought him no comfort. So he did the only thing he could.\"\n\nShe hobbled her way to Ned's side, laying a hand on his shoulder.\n\n\"He decided to change his nature. Understand, Ned, that this was unprecedented. In the history of our universe, and I assume nearly every other as well, no demon has sought redemption. I believe they all crave it in some form, though they'd never admit it. Just one of the reasons they're so unpleasant. But the Void wasn't just a demon; he was something more. And perhaps all his success and its related weariness allowed him a glimpse of his flawed character. Perhaps all demons might benefit from scorching a universe or two.\"\n\nThe Red Woman's voice trailed off, and she stared off into the distance. To Ned it seemed as if she wasn't looking through the garden's walls, but piercing the veil separating universes. Probably just his imagination, but he couldn't be sure of anything anymore. She turned her dull cerise eyes on him, and she seemed to look at him and through him at the same time.\n\n\"Once the decision was made, the Mad Void realized that, powerful as he was, he would need help. He sought out a cabal of gods who'd taken on guardianship of this realm, and though their combined magic was nothing compared to his, he asked for their help. This is where the story gets rather vague, I'm afraid. Forbidden magics were invoked. Many immortals perished in these experiments. Many more sacrificed their sanity. For it was acknowledged that if the Void couldn't be changed, then inevitably his malevolent essence would be turned upon our reality, just as thousands of doomed others before.\"\n\n\"Thousands?\" interrupted Ned.\n\n\"No one truly knows. Possibly it was only a few dozen.\" Her voice trembled. \"Possibly tens of thousands. Or millions.\"\n\nNed wasn't very imaginative, but the notion of even one destroyed universe filled him with dread. He couldn't handle the idea of millions. How many billions upon billions had the Mad Void—had he—cast into oblivion?\n\n\"They should've destroyed me,\" he said.\n\n\"They tried. They transformed the Void. Don't ask me how. I don't think anyone truly understood the process. It was mostly blind luck, overpowering magic, and a happy accident. The Void's memory was suppressed. They separated him from his dreadful might, laid aside in some secret place even they couldn't find, and he was made into a man. Of sorts.\n\n\"This was when they hoped to kill him. And so they did. Unfortunately the demon's immortality was beyond godhood. To kill him was only to slay his mortal transformation. Death only returned him to his all-powerful form. Once more, great gods perished until the accident was, through sheer temerity, recreated.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" said Ned. \"I've been killed dozens of times. I keep coming back as me, not some raging demon.\"\n\n\"A technicality was discovered.\" she explained. \"If the Void was resurrected from a source other than his own, then he remained a man. A guardian was appointed to watch over the Void. Her sole purpose in this task was to restore the demon to life with her own magic whenever necessary. It was her job to keep the cage door shut by insuring he never found the motive to open it. In this way the Void was repressed, if not truly tamed.\"\n\nAs Ned considered this, he studied his hands. He balled them into fists and imagined crushing worlds, then solar systems, then whole universes as if they were old parchments full of scribbles he no longer had use for.\n\n\"I suppose you're wondering why they didn't lock you up?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "asked the Red Woman.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Cast you in some pit where you could be kept safe from harm, properly tended until the end of time?\"\n\nHe wasn't inclined to wonder, and he still hadn't adjusted to what he'd just learned.\n\n\"They tried that too. The Void grew irritated, and when displeased, you can do appalling things.\"\n\n\"Like what?\"\n\n\"Do you really want to know?\"\n\n\"No,\" he replied instantly.\n\nShe smiled with some hint of affection. \"If it's any consolation it was a very small continent, and no one misses it anymore.\"\n\nNed sank. He slouched, defeated, burdened suddenly by a guilt so heavy it nearly crushed him into the earth.\n\n\"I'm not happy,\" he said, realizing the situation. \"How come I'm not destroying things now?\"\n\nShe sat beside him. \"You have lived a thousand lifetimes, Ned, and only in these last few have you been you. In all the others, which you do not remember, you were someone else. You've been kings and peasants, warriors and milkmaids, assassins and priests. I've been beside you the entire time. I've been at the beginning and end of each incarnation. And each was unique except for one constant. Even when surrounded by wealth and power, or peace and quiet, or any and all things a man might desire in between, they were all quietly miserable.\"\n\nNed rose. \"You think I want to feel bad? I know I deserve to suffer.\"\n\n\"I never said that.\"\n\n\"But you're thinking it.\" He pointed at her accusingly, as if this were all her fault somehow. \"I'm punishing myself for all the damage I've done. It's like some sort of penance. Endless, pointless, aching penance.\"\n\n\"If that's the case,\" she said, \"then it's more a matter of what you think than I, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Why did you have to tell me this?\"\n\n\"You wanted to know.\"\n\n\"I've changed my mind.\"\n\n\"Too late for that. Besides, you already knew it. You've always known, deep down inside yourself. I've merely forced you to finally admit it.\"\n\n\"I thought you said you were joking when you said the fate of the world depended on me.\"\n\n\"I was. It doesn't depend on you. It depends on something inside of you.\"\n\n\"Can't you just erase my memory? That shouldn't be too hard.\"\n\nShe stood, leaning heavily on her staff as if her legs could barely support her, and put her fingers to his forehead. \"It could be done, but it must be known. You must know.\"\n\nHer face went blank. She hobbled away and spoke with her back to him.\n\n\"Because they're coming.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "As one, the flock of crimson birds took to the air, darkening the skies over Copper Citadel.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The fort became nothing but blackened shadows in the consuming gloom.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "((ooc: You must use the word 'enemies' exactly 2 times in your response))", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Who?\" he asked.\n\nIn the blackness the Red Woman spoke softly. \"Your enemies, Ned.\"\n\n\"I have enemies?\"\n\nShe chuckled. She waved her staff in a small circle, and the thousands of birds dispersed to the four winds, gone as if they'd never been there. Except for the penguin, who remained earthbound and had no choice but to waddle its way from the garden toward the citadel gates.\n\n\"You have had many, accumulated over a thousand lifetimes. But there are only two you need concern yourself with now. The first, most important one is a demon emperor. He comes for your power, hoping to take it for his own. Whether he has any hope of success, I couldn't say. But he is still a potent force of destruction. I shudder to think what would happen should he find a way.\n\n\"The second is a trifling matter in the greater view. His name is Belok, an old wizard of some small talent. In a previous incarnation you were a wizard too, and the pair of you got into some sort of ridiculous affair of honor. The matter ended with your death and a curse upon Belok that he struggles in vain to break. He understands something of what you are, but not enough. It could make him troublesome.\"\n\nA cold wind swept across the fort. The Red Woman pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders.\n\n\"And I do believe he has finally arrived. A touch later than I expected.\"\n\nThe wind died down, but the air grew frigid. Ned's breath crystallized as he spoke. \"Now? He's coming now?\"\n\nThe Red Woman didn't bother replying. She pointed her staff skyward, and a contingency of ghostly maidens poured from the clouds. They screeched and howled, chanting the name of their master.\n\n\"Belok! Belok! Belok!\"\n\nThe Red Woman groaned. It was always such a production.\n\nThe phantoms formed a column of writhing bodies and tangled hair. Their spectral forms turned to dragons, then tigers, then serpents. They sparkled brilliantly, and Ned covered his eyes. When he could finally look, he saw a fur-faced, duckbilled wizard standing before him. His ghostly paramours caressed him tenderly as others broke away and floated absently around the garden. The plants withered and died at their touch.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ned stood frozen. He pretended to believe it was some ghastly enchantment that held him in place, but it was nothing of the sort.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(authors note, Next output: a decent amount of quoted text)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Neither was it fear nor awe. It was shock, not for the wizard, but for the way everything in his life had suddenly become infinitely more incomprehensible.\n\n\"Hello, Belok,\" said the Red Woman.\n\nBelok snapped his bill. \"What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"Just visiting.\"\n\nHe snapped his bill again for good measure. \"What tricks are you devising, witch?\"\n\n\"No tricks. Just a test.\"\n\n\"Come then. Test my might and die.\"\n\n\"I didn't say I was testing you,\" she replied, seating herself at the bench.\n\nBelok turned his beady eyes on Ned. The wizard raised his hands, and boiling lava dripped from his fingertips. \"Break my curse. Break it, or suffer eternally.\"\n\nNed swallowed a gulp. \"I don't know anything about curses.\"\n\n\"Don't lie to me.\" The phantoms seized Ned by his collar and sleeves and carried him to their master.\n\n\"I'm not.\" Ned shuddered in the cold embrace of the ghosts. \"I'm not a wizard. Or a demon. I'm just a man.\"\n\nThe Red Woman smiled.\n\n\"Your body may have changed,\" said Belok, \"but you can't change your true nature.\" The phantoms carried Ned to the Red Woman and deposited him harshly at her feet. \"Change him back,\" commanded Belok of the sorceress. \"Find the wizard inside him, and change him back.\"\n\n\"I can't.\"\n\n\"Don't give me that. You're his keeper.\"\n\n\"Just because I keep him alive doesn't mean I can force him to do anything. The magic at work is beyond my ken. And yours. You'd do best to leave it alone.\"\n\nBelok ignored the advice, as she knew he must. Just as the Mad Void couldn't change his nature, neither could the wizard.\n\n\"If you're not going to help me, step aside,\" he ordered.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Red Woman waved her hand at Ned. \"As long as you do not kill him, I don't care what you do to him.\"\n\nBelok's phantoms snatched Ned into the air again. He struggled vainly. His hand grabbed hold of the Red Woman's staff.\n\n\"You're supposed to watch over me,\" he said. \"It's your job.\"\n\n\"For heaven's sake,\" said the raven, \"have some dignity, man.\" The bird pecked at the straining fingers, and Ned was tossed through the air by the malignant spirits.\n\n\"Do try and take care of yourself, Ned,\" said the Red Woman.\n\nThe phantoms held Ned by his ankles. Upside down, his head filling with blood, his ears thundering, and his vision blurred, he watched the Red Woman hobble from the garden, leaving him to his fate.\n\n\"I can't do anything,\" he said. \"I don't know any magic.\"\n\nBelok gestured and his phantoms raised Ned high enough to peer into the wizard's golden eyes. \"It's inside you. Somewhere it's all inside of you. Everything you've ever been. If I dig deep enough, if I strip away every other false skin, I think I can find what I'm looking for.\" He raised a hand with blackened skin and webbed fingers and ran his sharpened nails across Ned's flesh. \"I do hope this hurts.\"\n\nNed should've screamed then. He didn't. Something held him back. He still wasn't afraid.\n\nHe wasn't a man, he mused. He was the Mad Void. He was the most powerful destructive force in this or any other universe. He should be able to destroy Belok without even trying. So why didn't he? Why was he just floating there helplessly as the wizard prepared to skin him alive both physically and metaphysically?\n\nBecause he deserved it. He deserved every bit of it and more.\n\nHe could've called for help. He could've pleaded for mercy. He didn't do these things either. He just waited for his punishment.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No matter how bad it was, it would never make up for what he'd done.\n\nBelok raked his claws across Ned's forehead. Blood trickled down his scalp to drip from his hair. He winced. He cried. But he didn't cry out.\n\nThen came the next thought. What if there had been a mistake somewhere? What if he wasn't the Void, but just Ned? What if he was paying for someone else's sins? Either way it all seemed so pointless.\n\n\"Hurting me won't solve anything,\" he said, surprised by his calmness.\n\n\"On the contrary,\" replied the wizard, \"it will at least make me feel better.\"\n\nThe phantoms rotated Ned and planted his feet on the cobblestones but still held him tight. Belok licked the blood on his claws with a tiny purple tongue. \"I may not be able to kill you, but I can do many distasteful things. Perhaps I'll start by removing your other eye. Perhaps knowing you're spending eternity in perpetual darkness would cheer me up.\" He moved a claw toward Ned's eye.\n\nNed cringed. He bit his lip in preparation for pain. Over and over the thought ran through his mind: he deserved this. At least he hoped he did. It was the only comfort he could find, and it'd be a terrible shame if a mistake had been made and the Mad Void was currently a thousand miles away enjoying a nice cup of tea.\n\nA bolt of lightning knocked Belok away and sent his phantom entourage howling with rage.\n\n\"Who dares strike Belok?\" moaned the phantoms in a musical shriek. \"What fool dares clash magic against Belok?\"\n\nThe Red Woman lowered her staff. \"Really, Belok. Always so melodramatic.\" She swung the smoking staff in a few wide circles. Rumbling clouds swirled overhead. \"You'd do well to get behind me, Ned.\"\n\nHe didn't have to be told twice.\n\n\"Are you sure you know what you're getting into?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "the raven asked the Red Woman.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 21 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's been a while since you've faced a wizard in battle.\"\n\nShe stamped her staff twice, and the earth rumbled. \"It's like riding a horse. One never forgets.\"\n\n\"Have you ever ridden a horse?\" said the raven.\n\n\"I don't recall.\"\n\nThe raven flew from her shoulder and perched on the wall. \"Think I'll sit this one out over here.\"\n\nBelok's golden aura darkened to a bloody copper. A small sphere of fire appeared between his outstretched hands.\n\n\"Fireballs?\" The Red Woman held up her own wrinkled palm, and materialized a red and white fury. \"Not very original, Belok.\"\n\n\"I don't waste my A material on piddling witches.\" Belok's flames grew larger and larger. He pitched one of his phantoms into it, and the blaze blackened, feeding on the ghost's agony as her screams darkened the air itself. The power struggled in his grasp, yet it grew larger still. As large as the wizard who'd created it. The Red Woman's fireball remained conveniently palm-sized.\n\n\"Is that all you've got to show me?\" mocked Belok.\n\nChuckling, she balanced her magic sphere on one withered finger. Funny how most wizards, even one of Belok's experience and power, made the same mistake. They always thought it came down to who had the biggest balls.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Team writing exercise. I start (might include existing characters), you do one hundred and fifteen sentences in A. Lee Martinez style.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "After leaving Ned in the garden, Frank was invited to play a game of goblin crush. It was a favorite among those who enjoyed equal parts skill, violence, and luck in their sports. Teams of goblins were arranged on a playing field with miniature terrain. They were given equipment to emulate different military units. And then the players (or generals, as they were called) took turns maneuvering their goblins, either jockeying for the high ground, or attempting to reach a flag, or often just beating the hell out of the other army until all the soldiers on one side were eliminated or the goblins got bored and wandered off.\n\nGoblins generally enjoyed the game. The armaments were largely symbolic, and rarely were casualties real. Although when fatal accidents happened, as they sometimes did, it was the goblins themselves who were most impressed. It took a great deal of skill to brain a thick-skulled goblin with a paper-thin wooden sword.\n\nThere were goblin crush courts in use by some royalty that had actual miniature fortresses and rivers and simulated cities, but Copper Citadel's was an improvised affair. Barrels and plants were placed here and there. There was a high mound of rocks for a hill. It got the job done.\n\nFrank was company champion. He rarely lost. Part of this was due to a natural talent for tactics, partly due to the generally poor skill of his opponents. But the most important part was that Frank bought the drinks for his winning army, which granted his goblins just enough incentive to fight a little better, a little longer. And it held their attention so that usually the other team was the first to wander off.\n\nPresently he engaged Gabel in heated combat, though the game had experienced a brief timeout when all those birds had appeared. Gabel was no slouch in the game. Frank's army was pinned down behind some barrels, and he was having a devil of a time getting them out of there. He was considering his next move when Gabel observed, almost as if the thought had just occurred to him, although Frank knew better, that Ned had been curiously absent for the past few hours.\n\n\"I wonder what happened to him?\" said the orc.\n\n\"Must be off somewhere,\" said Frank.\n\n\"Last I saw him, he was wandering away with you, wasn't he?\"\n\nFrank grunted.\n\n\"I hope he's okay,\" remarked Gabel.\n\nFrank grunted again. He ordered a unit out in the open, two strides toward more cover. One of the enemy archers aimed true, and a padded arrow socked the unit right in the eye. Frank shrugged. He hadn't expected it to work. He still had his Ace though.\n\nAce was a good player, but only if he got to play a behemoth hound or a giant or some other titanic creature. He now sported a pair of wings and a horn strapped to his head to symbolize his current stature as a fire-breathing dragon. He lurked, reptilian, behind some trees, waiting for the order to strike.\n\nGabel skipped his turn, holding his army in place. \"You wouldn't have any idea what happened to Ned, would you?\"\n\nFrank scowled. \"I killed him, okay? I killed him. But it was an accident.\"\n\n\"I'm sure it was,\" said Gabel.\n\nFrank turned his attention to the game. He suspected Gabel was only bringing this up to distract him, but it worked. \"He wanted my help. So I helped him. And then I accidentally crushed him.\"\n\n\"Is that so?\" asked Gabel, smiling innocently.\n\n\"It wasn't on purpose. Humans are very easy to crush.\"\n\n\"I'm sure they are.\"\n\nFrank glowered. \"Are you saying I crushed him intentionally?\"\n\n\"I don't believe I'm saying anything,\" replied Gabel. \"It's your turn. The armies are getting bored.\"\n\nAce slinked impatiently behind the tree. He uttered a low, grumbling imitation of a hungry growl. When he played a dragon, he played it very well. But Frank kept Ace safely behind cover and moved a cavalry unit. The goblin took a hit, which according to the rules reduced him to infantry. With a great show of disappointment, he threw aside his hobbyhorse.\n\nGabel made a show of studying the field this time. He never took his eyes off it as he spoke. \"But some people might think it's an awfully strange coincidence that the man your woman likes should be crushed by you. It does look suspicious. If one were of a suspicious sort.\"\n\nFrank mumbled, \"She's not my woman. And I don't care if she does like him, although even if she did, it would surely be a mild attraction, a passing fancy. And even if I did care, I wouldn't crush Ned for that reason alone. If I'd wanted to crush him. Which I did not.\"\n\n\"Of course.\" Gabel's artillery units tossed several rubber balls into the air. The rounds pinged off several of Frank's units, removing them from the game. Except for the berserkers, who took off their blue \"calm\" hats and put on their red \"angry\" ones. Which was exactly what Frank had been waiting for.\n\nHe should've smiled, but he was too distracted by other thoughts. Try as he might, he wasn't convinced he hadn't killed Ned on purpose, even if he had done so subconsciously. As a young recruit, he'd slain a handful of soldiers in boot camp. Orcs, thick-boned, didn't crack easily, and trolls, naturally squishy, usually just popped back into shape. But humans were far less hardy, and elves, they snapped like twigs. But Frank had learned how to handle these delicate species, and it'd been years since he'd squished anything by accident—except for goblins, who hardly counted. If Ned's death was an accident, it was inexcusable. And if it was on purpose, it was even more so because Frank liked Ned, and Frank had a strict \"No Friend\" squishing policy.\n\n\"It's your turn,\" said Gabel in a singsong voice.\n\nFrank wasn't sure if Gabel was a friend or not anymore, and put him on the indeterminate squishing list for the moment.\n\n\"Where did that storm come from?\" observed Gabel as angry clouds spread over the citadel.\n\n\"Stop trying to distract me.\"\n\nThe ogre waved his hand. His army knew what to do. The berserkers, shouting, battle-ax-shaped cushions held high, actually foaming at the mouth, charged forth as Ace, flapping his arms and thrashing his artificial tail, soared in from another direction. Gabel's catapults were empty. His archers were useless, as arrows had no effect on berserkers with red hats or on roaring dragons. Gabel's knights stepped forward to meet the enemy. And Ace, with a terrible roar—terrible for a goblin's throat anyway—swallowed half a jug of wine, put a funnel to his lips, and prepared to breathe fire.\n\nThen Copper Citadel exploded. Not the whole citadel, just the garden. In a tremendous, seething blast its walls were blown to dust. The force of the explosion knocked everyone except Frank off their feet. The towering ogre first wondered just what had been in Ace's wine, then marveled at the clouds of ash and heat where the garden had once stood, and then noticed a screaming figure plummeting earthward, coming straight at him. All Frank had to do was sidestep with open arms to catch it, which he did.\n\nNed, covered in black and singed around the edges, sputtered in the ogre's arms. \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"You're welcome.\" Frank smiled, feeling perhaps he'd made up for killing Ned earlier. Although he did wonder, had he known it had been Ned, if he would've bothered to catch him at all.\n\nA barrage of fireballs erupted from the smoking garden. Most of the projectiles went into the air, but a wall, a roof, and a small gathering of soldiers were blown to pieces. That was all it took to send most of the other soldiers scurrying for cover. Only Frank, Ned, Gabel, and Ace remained. And Gabel cowered behind the tall ogre.\n\nClouds boiled overhead. With a deafening thunderclap a blast of blue lightning sizzled through the sky to strike the garden. A shaft of purple flame followed. It shot upward and burned away the cloud with a demonic howl.\n\nAnd then, only quiet.\n\n\"What was that?\" asked Ace.\n\nNed dropped to the cobblestones. \"Wizards.\"\n\nThe vermilion raven flew down to perch on his shoulder. \"Wow! Didn't think the old bird still had it in her.\"\n\n\"Is it over?\" said Frank.\n\n\"Probably not,\" replied the raven. \"They're both very powerful. I imagine they'll have to kill each other several times to get it right.\"\n\nBelok strode from the gray haze. He seemed shorter now. And hairier. He rubbed his shoulder. An expression of minor discomfort crossed his face. His phantoms had taken on ghastly appearances, gaunt and corpselike with hollow eyes and bony limbs. He raised his hand in Ned's direction, and the cackling specters poured forward to snatch Ned up. Frank and Ace swung wildly at the ghosts, but their blows passed harmlessly through the phantoms. They dragged Ned to the wizard.\n\nA black sphere shot from the smoke to strike Belok on the head. He lurched forward. His phantoms released Ned, who scrambled back to safety by Frank.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Not that there was much the ogre could do against this magic, but he was still the largest, toughest thing around.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Instinct alone compelled Ned to Frank's side.\n\nThe Red Woman limped her way from the smoke. Milky white blood ran down a gash across her face.\n\nBelok rubbed his head. \"You're tougher than I thought.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you're weaker than you think,\" she replied. Strange energies gathered on the tip of her staff. The magic pulsed and throbbed. By now the cloudless sky had gone a dark, consuming gray, and the magic cast a brilliant beacon in the gloom.\n\nNed pondered running away, but this wasn't something he could retreat from. These two wizards were deciding his fate, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.\n\nBelok grew into a large, reptilian beast: a dragon with giant wings and a single, jagged horn protruding from his forehead. With disgust, Ace threw away his mock wings and horn. Even in dragon form, Belok had his bill and his furry head. And his tail was the round, flattened appendage of a beaver, proportionately large enough to pulverize three healthy ogres in one swat. He drew in a deep breath. His cheeks bulged. And Ned noticed a line of fur advancing down his back and across his shoulders.\n\nThe dragon exhaled his gout of fire, which the Red Woman parted with a wave of her glowing staff. She burst from her skin into a long, crimson serpent. She hurled her staff away as the two massive reptiles snapped and wrestled. The staff, still radiant, clattered at Ned's feet.\n\n\"I don't know if that's a good plan,\" said the raven.\n\n\"What plan?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"I wasn't talking to you,\" replied the raven, turning his attention back to his telepathic discussion. \"I don't know if I'd rely on Ned myself.\" The bird cocked his head to one side. \"You're the boss. Ned, pick up the staff.\"\n\nNed hesitated. The staff glowed with dangerous sorceries. \"Uh... I'd rather not.\"\n\n\"It won't hurt you.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"Fairly certain.\" The raven sighed. \"I told you this was a bad plan.\"\n\nThe Red Woman shrieked.\n\n\"Don't yell at me,\" shouted back the bird. \"Yell at Ned.\"\n\nRegina appeared by Ned's side. She held a long, long spear topped by a three-foot blade, a weapon designed for dragon slaying from her personal collection. She never thought she'd have use for it. But having studied combat with all manner of man and beast, she knew its use well, and she was quite excited by the possibility of wetting the blade with actual dragon blood. Had there been only one beast, she would've waded into battle immediately, but now it made more sense to let the monsters fight it out and then take out the weakened victor. Less sporting perhaps, but the raging behemoths were enough to give pause to even Regina's courage.\n\nEveryone was so intently watching the fight that it was some time before Ace glanced up and noticed a difference in the Amazon.\n\n\"What happened to your face?\" he asked.\n\nShe glared down at the goblin but pretended not to hear the question over the howls of monsters. But once the detail was called to attention, Frank noticed as well.\n\n\"What's that stuff?\" His curiosity compelled him to reach out, cup her chin, and lift her face up to him.\n\n\"It's nothing.\"\n\nShe turned her back on him to study the battle. The dragon's beaver tail brushed against a wall, reducing it to rubble. The serpent spat some sort of acid that sizzled on the dragon's scales.\n\nNed glanced over at her, his eyes wandering from the spectacle. \"Is that makeup?\"\n\n\"No, sir.\" Regina shaded her face, a half-finished application of powders and paints. \"It's ceremonial war paint.\"\n\n\"Amazons don't wear war paint,\" said Ace.\n\n\"Yes, we do.\"\n\n\"I've never seen you use it,\" observed Ace.\n\nRegina clutched her long spear. Effective as it was against dragons, it was far too unwieldy for goblin slaying. \"We only wear it when we kill dragons,\" she lied.\n\nAce appeared skeptical, but didn't care enough to explore the topic.\n\nThe dragon Belok spewed flames hot enough to set a stone construction ablaze. Scorched and bloody, the serpent managed to twist around and bury her fangs in her opponent's rump. Belok roared, and the grappling beasts rolled from one end of the citadel to the other, leaving wreckage, fire, and blood in their wake. The phantoms cheered on their master, while the raven coached the Red Woman.\n\nAce's sifting nostrils discovered a strange scent lingering among the smoky odor. \"Is someone wearing perfume?\"\n\nBefore Regina could swing her spear into a workable goblin-skewering position, the dragon sank his fangs into the serpent's neck. A great fountain of white blood gushed into the air. The Red Woman hissed. Her coils loosened, allowing Belok to slash her all the more.\n\nThe Red Woman became a flock of cardinals and soared her way free of Belok's fangs. He swallowed the birds that hadn't escaped his snapping jaws with a satisfied slurp. He roasted another portion with his flaming breath. The handful that remained settled down to earth and returned to the Red Woman's familiar shape. She bled badly; drenched in her own pale blood, she could rightly be called the White Woman.\n\nBelok laughed. His voice rumbled like two mountains grating against one another. He gazed down upon her withered, wounded form. She showed neither fear nor defiance. Only quiet acceptance as he raised a clawed hand to grind her into dust.\n\n\"It's now or never, Ned,\" said the raven. \"By all the gods, she's sacrificing herself for you. Don't let her die in vain.\"\n\nRidiculed into action, Ned grabbed the staff without thinking. He felt the power running through it, sending shivers up his arm.\n\n\"Now use it,\" said the raven.\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"Don't ask me. I'm just a talking bird.\"\n\nBelok's hand fell. Ned heard every one of the Red Woman's bones crunch, every nauseating squish of every pulped organ. The staff still vibrated with seething, unharnessed magic. Belok turned, lowered his head to look Ned in the eye, and stalked forward. Gabel bolted, but Frank and Ace remained with Ned. He held the staff forward at arm's length, waiting for something to happen.\n\nRegina charged with her spear angled to pierce the dragon's heart. Despite her inexperience, it was a flawless maneuver and would've worked on any ordinary dragon. But Belok snatched the weapon by its shaft and hurled it away without breaking stride. Regina refused to release the spear and was tossed away with it. She landed a few feet away, slightly bruised but unharmed. Belok could've crushed her with a single step, but she was disregarded by the wizard as beneath his notice.\n\nHe laughed one of his earthshaking chuckles into Ned's face, nearly knocking him over. \"Is this all that has become of the Mad Void? Is this weak little immortal the ultimate end of his quest for redemption?\"\n\nThe phantom maidens, ridiculously lovely once more, tittered. They tousled Ned's hair and pinched his cheeks.\n\n\"Use the staff, Ned,\" said the raven.\n\nBelok agreed. \"By all means, Ned. Use it. Find a spell. Bring your wrath upon me.\"\n\nThe staff vibrated in Ned's grasp. He felt the power, but he couldn't access it to form it into fireballs or lightning bolts. He wasn't a demon. Or a wizard. He was just a soldier now, and he could think of one thing to do.\n\nHe prepared himself to be roasted alive and smacked the dragon across his bill.\n\nThere was a burst of light. Bits and pieces of magic hopped from the staff into Belok. The wizard roared and stumbled back. More silky brown fur sprouted on his scaly skin.\n\n\"Again, you dolt!\" shouted the raven.\n\nNed struck the dragon, narrowly avoiding being flattened by Belok's flailing tail. More of the staff's magic infected the wizard, and he diminished.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "With each blow, the staff's glow faded, and Belok, growling in agony, shrank and shrank.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 25 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And as the chances of getting crushed shrank, Ned continued to beat the writhing, hissing wizard. When Belok was very small and no longer dangerous, Ned held the staff near the wizard until all the magic emptied out, and he was left standing before an enraged platypus.\n\n\"Isn't he the cutest thing?\" observed Ace.\n\nThe irritated little beast dove for Ned's shin, but Frank caught it by the tail. \"Careful, sir. They're poisonous.\" He pointed to the spurs on the hind legs. \"Not lethal, but painful as hell.\"\n\nThe platypus Belok snarled and wiggled in Frank's grasp. The phantom maidens glanced at one another, shrugged, and soared off into the clear blue sky.\n\n\"I'll be,\" said the raven. \"It worked.\"\n\n\"Did I do that?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"In a roundabout manner,\" explained the raven. \"The curse upon Belok was slowly turning him into a platypus with exposure to magic in any form. The mistress basically threw all her magic into her staff, and gave it to you because she knew it was the only way to get him to lower his guard. Typical wizard mistake, really. His arrogance was the ultimate source of his undoing.\"\n\n\"I don't get it.\"\n\n\"I thought I explained it simply enough that even a dullard such as yourself could understand,\" said the raven.\n\n\"Not that.\" Ned glanced at the white puddle. All that remained of the Red Woman, and it was evaporating quickly. \"Is she really dead?\"\n\n\"Relatively.\"\n\n\"What's that mean?\"\n\n\"It means death isn't so black-and-white when it comes to wizards. She's certainly more dead than I've ever seen her. Whether or not that means she's irreversibly so or not is another matter.\"\n\n\"Why would she do that? She didn't even like me.\"\n\n\"You'd have to ask her. Personally I'd have left you to Belok.\"\n\nNed felt more confused than ever. He stared into the shrinking white pool until it disappeared completely, leaving him with an unenchanted staff, one very angry platypus, and too many unanswered questions.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Keep going w/ one hundred and forty sentences more. Note: Might reference existing chars", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ned beat a hasty retreat before too many soldiers dared reveal themselves in the aftermath of the wizards' duel. He locked himself in his office, where he sat behind his desk and wished for something hard to drink.\n\n\"Poor old Ned, feeling sorry for himself again,\" said the vermilion raven perched upon his window. \"You really are a pathetic wretch.\"\n\nNed, still carrying the Red Woman's staff, got up and swung the stick at the bird, hoping to shoo it away. But the raven hopped inside, landing atop a bookcase.\n\nA glance out the window showed soldiers milling about, in much discussion. Several nearby ogres pointed to Ned and whispered to each other.\n\n\"They do go on,\" said the raven. \"The rumors have already started.\"\n\n\"What rumors?\"\n\n\"Oh, the standard speculations. Some say you're a witch. Others a warlock. And some others say you're cursed by the gods themselves, damned to walk the world forever, bringing plagues and misfortunes wherever you wander.\"\n\n\"But this wasn't my fault,\" said Ned.\n\n\"That's beside the point,\" replied the raven. \"Somebody must be blamed. And since you are responsible, even if only indirectly, you're as good as any.\"\n\nThe soldiers cast disapproving glances toward Ned. His blood ran cold at the thought of hundreds of ogres, who already didn't like him, finding one more reason to do him in.\n\nAs if reading his thoughts, the raven said, \"Right now, they're considering stoning you to death, quartering the corpse, burning it, and possibly stoning it once again for good measure. There are other proposals, but that's the most interesting in my opinion.\"\n\nNed shut the window, locked it (as if that could keep a single determined ogre at bay), and drew the curtain. He sat down at his desk, still clutching the staff.\n\nThe raven paced from one end of the bookcase to the other. \"I certainly wouldn't want to be you, Ned. If ever there was a man with a run of bad luck. At least all the other poor wretches of this world get to finally perish. Maybe there's some truth to the rumors. Maybe you are cursed by the gods.\"\n\nYes, he was cursed, agreed Ned. But the gods had nothing to do with it. It was himself, or the thing he used to be. Some part of him wanted to suffer. He knew that. Not just because it made sense, but because of this vague guilt he felt, had always felt without realizing, so accustomed to it he'd grown. Even if he wasn't the Mad Void anymore. Even if he was just a man now. It wasn't enough punishment. Eons of tedious existence liberally sprinkled with a hundred thousand horrible, agonizing deaths could still not be enough. Nothing could wash away the blood of merely one obliterated universe, much less hundreds.\n\nIt didn't seem fair.\n\nThe raven flew from the bookcase to perch atop the staff. \"Well, who ever said life was fair?\"\n\nNed glowered. \"Stop reading my mind.\"\n\nThe raven chuckled. \"It's not your mind I'm reading. It's your face. You wear your thoughts, Ned. Can't hide them at all.\"\n\nNed willed his expression blank, but the bird continued.\n\n\"If life were fair, you wouldn't exist in the first place. What right do you have to redemption? What cruel, contemptible destiny allows you the possibility of happiness while otherwise good souls who've done no wrong to anyone suffer from fate's cold indifference?\"\n\n\"Shut up.\" Ned shook the staff, and the raven hopped onto the desk.\n\n\"It doesn't matter anyway. Not now. Within the year, this harsh, unbalanced universe shall be nothing but ash and smudge. Good riddance, I say.\"\n\n\"What are you talking about?\"\n\n\"The way I see it,\" replied the raven, \"you'll get yourself killed within the passing of a day or two. You'll stay dead for a while, awaiting my mistress to raise you to life. But she won't come, and eventually you'll get impatient enough to raise yourself, which will restore you to your old self. And the Mad Void will go about his business, and that will be that.\"\n\n\"But there has to be a backup plan. She couldn't have been the only one watching over me.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid so, Ned.\"\n\n\"But that's just poor planning. What if something happened to her?\"\n\nThe raven pecked at his wing. \"How could anything happen to her? She was practically immortal. She could only truly be killed by her own consent.\"\n\n\"But what about the gods?\"\n\n\"What about them? Do you think any of those divine blowhards would risk intervening in these affairs? They're afraid of you, Ned. Gods aren't much different from men. They fear things they don't understand. And of course, most of them are too busy demanding tribute and worship to be of much use for anything important.\"\n\nNed laid the red staff across his lap. \"But why would she sacrifice herself? If she's dead, then doesn't that put the universe at risk?\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly. Especially since your survival skills are highly questionable. But look on the bright side. You've still got her staff. Maybe there's some magic left in it. Now all you have to do is find a new wizard who has mastered the forces of life and death itself to be your keeper.\"\n\nNed ran his fingers along the staff, waiting for that tingle, that pulse of a whisper of the faintest particles of forbidden sorcery. He felt nothing. The wood was not only cold, it also seemed to be peeling beneath his touch.\n\n\"Mind opening the window?\" requested the bird. \"It's been ages since I've had a day off, and I'd like to find a nice female raven to while away the days before the impending death of the universe.\"\n\nNed complied, eager to see the raven go. The bird paused on the sill. \"Take care, Ned. And do try to stay alive as long as possible.\" He spread his wings, but stopped. \"Oh, one more thing. I nearly forgot, but she gave me a message for you right before she died.\"\n\n\"What was it?\" Ned wasn't interested, but he hoped in vain it would offer him some insight into how he should handle his future.\n\n\"Beware of demons.\"\n\nThe raven flew away. Ned watched it go, thinking how damned useless a sorceress's advice could be. He still had no idea what to do or expect. Only one thing was certain. He needed to avoid dying. He wasn't going to destroy another universe if he could help it.\n\nLike the raven, Ned doubted he'd last more than a week. He'd gone longer without perishing, but since arriving at Copper Citadel, his luck had taken a turn for the worse. He took some small comfort in that, since commanding Ogre Company had a reputation as a dangerous job. Justifiably so. But that would have to change now, and he gathered up what little determination he had into one tight knot of resolution in his gut. It was unpleasant, but he felt certain. He had no doubt—not much, anyway—that he could do it.\n\nA fat vulture landed on the windowsill with a screech. Its sudden appearance sent Ned recoiling in shock. The staff found its way between his legs and tripped him up. He fell backward, banging his shoulder against the sharp point of his desk. A few inches higher and to the left and the blow would've cracked open his skull. This was going better than expected since he didn't die. Not much of an accomplishment for most people, but Ned grabbed all the little victories he could.\n\nThe black vulture squeezed its way through the window, hopped onto a chair, and stared down Ned with its merciless, ebony eyes. Its head bobbed sideways. It opened its hooked beak, rasping quietly. Black wings spread, casting a shadow of death over Ned.\n\nLuckily for him, he didn't believe in omens.\n\nHe rose, rubbing his sore shoulder, and used the staff to encourage the cruel bird back out the window. The vulture wasn't so easily discouraged. It snapped at the staff's tip. Ned gave up after a minute. He locked stares with the forbidding harbinger.\n\n\"Get lost.\"\n\nThe bird ruffled its feathers and swayed side to side on the chair. It didn't go anywhere. Nor did he expect it to. He shrugged, feeling a twinge in his shoulder.\n\n\"Fine. But if you're looking for a meal, I'm not going to be it.\"\n\nThe vulture shrieked once, then settled in as if perfectly willing to wait. Ned sat back at his desk, resolving this time not to move until absolutely necessary. Hard to get yourself killed just sitting around, he reasoned. He wasted a minute trying to stare down his unwanted guest, but abandoning that, he leaned back and closed his eye.\n\nSomeone knocked on the door.\n\n\"Come in.\"\n\nFrank stepped inside. He carried a canvas sack in one hand. The contents squirmed. \"Ah, there you are, Ned.\"\n\n\"Where else would I be?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"Not you, sir. I was speaking to the vulture.\"\n\n\"His name's Ned?\"\n\nThe vulture screeched, flapped its wings, nearly tipping over its chair.\n\n\"Nibbly Ned,\" said Frank. \"We usually just call him Nibbly to avoid confusion. Sort of the company mascot, sir. Ward's been looking all over for him. Worried sick. Thought the poor little guy might've been killed in the confusion. He'll be glad to know otherwise.\"\n\n\"Grand bit of luck,\" agreed Ned.\n\n\"You shouldn't be in here, Nibbly. Go on. Get out, get out.\"\n\nThe vulture flew back to the sill, cast one last hungry glance at Ned, and jumped out the window. Ned was simultaneously pleased and annoyed to see it go. Glad to be rid of it, but irritated that nothing in this citadel, not even the mascot, took him seriously enough to follow his orders.\n\n\"Something I can do for you, Lieutenant?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yes, sir. I was wondering what you'd like me to do with the platypus.\" Frank placed the squirming canvas sack on the desk.\n\n\"Get rid of it, I guess.\"\n\n\"Is there a special way you'd care to have that done?\" asked Frank somewhat vaguely.\n\n\"You can eat it for all I care.\"\n\nThe platypus made a fearful noise and struggled all the more in the sack.\n\n\"Is that safe, sir?\" asked Frank.\n\n\"I don't know. I've never eaten a platypus.\"\n\n\"Not that,\" said Frank. \"I mean, is it safe to eat a wizard? Even in platypus form?\"\n\n\"Hadn't thought of that,\" said Ned. \"I guess it'd be safer to destroy it.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. Shame. It's been years since I've enjoyed a good roasted platypus.\" He threw the sack over his shoulder and moved toward the door. He paused as he touched the handle. \"And don't worry, sir. Your secret is safe with me.\"\n\nNed almost didn't ask, but some small voice, some stifling masochism compelled him. \"What secret?\"\n\n\"You don't have to pretend with me, sir. I already knew all about secret wizards. I just never thought I'd meet one. Well, actually I did think I'd meet one. I just assumed I'd never know.\"\n\nNed considered correcting Frank but didn't see any point in it.\n\n\"But you needn't worry, sir,\" added Frank.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Glad to hear it.\"\n\n\"And I'm sure the others won't let anyone know either.\"\n\nThat spurred Ned's attention. \"How many people know?\"\n\n\"Oh, just myself, Regina, and Gabel. They didn't believe me either when I first told them. But I knew all along. But mum is the word, sir. You can trust us. Rely on our confidence.\"\n\nNed nodded. So his ranking officers thought him a wizard. He couldn't see the harm. It might even get him some respect.\n\n\"Although I'm not too sure about Ace,\" said Frank. \"Hate to say it, since I like the little guy, but he might let it slip.\"\n\n\"Ace knows?\"\n\nFrank held up his hands. \"I didn't tell him anything, sir. But it was kind of hard not to notice, what with your talking to birds and turning dragons into platypuses. Goblins are a chatty bunch, sir. I'd offer to squish him for you, but I don't squish friends. Maybe you could have one of the other ogres do it.\"\n\n\"That won't be necessary.\"\n\n\"Oh, I see. Going to erase his memory, eh, sir?\"\n\n\"First thing in the morning, Lieutenant.\" Ned tapped the maroon staff twice on his desk.\n\nFrank winked, and Ned winked back. Although with one eye, it was difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish his winks from his blinks. But Frank seemed to get it, and he left to dispose of the platypus.\n\nNed passed the next few minutes quietly not dying in his office, and was pleased with how well it was going. He'd stayed alive longer, but now that he was concentrating on it, it felt more like an accomplishment. Although he still couldn't make a bit of sense of the Red Woman's sacrifice, which seemed utterly pointless. Ned couldn't die, but the universe could. So why bother to save him?\n\n\"Why?\" he wondered aloud.\n\n\"Why not?\" someone replied.\n\nNed jumped, toppling out of his chair and rolling onto the floor. The chair jostled a polearm leaning against the wall. The weapon swung down and buried itself just above his head. An inch to the right, and it would've split open his face. He wondered if his office was such a safe place after all. He viewed the world with a new eye now. Everything was sharp and pointy and eager to drive itself into his brain apparently. He considered cowering under his desk, but he wasn't quite ready to throw away all his pride.\n\nA quick glance confirmed that the office was empty. \"Is someone here?\"\n\n\"Someone, no,\" said the new voice. \"Something would be more technically accurate.\"\n\n\"Where are you?\"\n\n\"Here.\"\n\nNed stood, bracing himself on the desk. \"Where?\"\n\n\"Here.\"\n\n\"Where?\" he asked.\n\n\"Why don't you ask again? Because if you ask the same question three times, you're sure to receive a more accurate answer.\"\n\n\"Where?\" asked Ned again.\n\n\"I was being sarcastic. Of course, if you'd like to ask me again, go right ahead. But as I can't see nor can I feel, I can't really help you out. Or instead of asking the same ridiculous question over and over again, you could try another.\"\n\nNed, who'd grown tired of being mocked, sat back down. \"Are you a ghost?\"\n\nThe voice chuckled. \"No. If I'm anything, I suppose I'm a memory.\"\n\n\"What's that mean?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"You don't know?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\" The voice sighed. \"Must you insist on asking every question more than once? Do it again, and I won't reply. In fact, I don't think I'll bother with any pointless questions from now on.\"\n\n\"You won't?\" asked Ned.\n\nNo reply. The voice before had seemed to be right in his ears. He waved his hands around his head and felt nothing. Not a cold spot or invisible speaker or chatty horsefly.\n\n\"Are you still there?\"\n\nNo reply.\n\n\"Hello? Still there?\"\n\n\"Yes, I'm still here.\" The voice sounded outright irritated now. \"Where else would I be? I can't move on my own now, can I?\"\n\n\"You can't?\"\n\nThe voice grunted, but said nothing else.\n\n\"I must be going mad.\" It seemed time for that. A trifle behind schedule. He considered searching his office but just didn't care enough to chase phantom hecklers. He decided to ask one more question, and if that didn't work, he'd give up.\n\n\"What are you?\"\n\nThe voice exhaled with much relief. \"Finally. Was that so hard? I'm the staff.\"\n\n\"The staff?\" asked Ned.\n\nThe speaker grumbled. \"Yes, the staff. You're really quite thick, aren't you?\"\n\nNed snatched up the staff. Now he needn't worry. Now he could relax, let death take him. The well-being of the universe was somebody else's problem.\n\nHe clutched the Red Woman's staff close, clinging to it the way an amorous, drunken troll might cling to an amorous, drunken elf with a lazy eye and an open mind.\n\n\"How did you get in there?\" he asked.\n\n\"I'm not in here,\" replied the staff. \"I am.\"\n\n\"What's that mean?\"\n\n\"Everything must be thoroughly spelled out for you, mustn't it? I take it back. You aren't thick. You're patently ample-skulled.\"\n\n\"Huh?\"\n\n\"Well put,\" said the staff. \"I am not what you think I am. Neither spirit nor preserved soul, I'm all that remains of my former owner. A memory imbued with a touch of magic. I possess no true life, merely the nuanced simulation of such. I can't even speak unless spoken to, and only in reply to a question.\"\n\n\"You can't?\" asked Ned.\n\nThe staff ignored him, and he silently agreed it should. He did have an annoying habit of asking questions over again.\n\n\"Why?\" he posed.\n\nThe staff deemed this worth answering, but the irritation in its voice was obvious. \"An echo can't exist without a sound. Though the magic that created me allows me more creativity in my replies, an echo is still what I am.\"\n\n\"Why are you here?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"Did she leave you on purpose?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"Did she leave you to help me?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\nNed frowned at the staff. \"What do you know?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"You don't know what you know?\" he asked.\n\n\"Someone or something must be aware to know, and I'm not aware. I only reply. If in my replies information can be found, that is not the same as possessing the information myself.\"\n\n\"I don't get it,\" said Ned.\n\nHe waited. The staff didn't respond. It took him a moment to realize he hadn't asked it a question.\n\n\"Why don't I get it?\"\n\n\"Because you're a dull-witted jackass. Even I can see that. And I'm not self-aware, nor can I see.\"\n\nNed almost yelled back at the staff, but he refused to trade insults with an inanimate object. Especially since he seemed to be losing the battle. And he couldn't come up with any new questions. Only new wording for old questions. He put the staff on the desk and turned to more productive tasks. If his office was going to be his haven, he needed to make it safer. His first act: removal of all the sharp things. Then he'd take care of the hard things. Eventually he'd get rid of everything in the room. Even the chair to play it safe. And he could sit on the floor for at least twelve hours a day. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was the best he had.\n\nHe'd gathered up the swords and axes littering the office, presumably left by former commanders, when someone knocked on his door. The next step in his haven would have to be the addition of a Do Not Disturb sign.\n\n\"Come in.\"\n\nThe door opened, and in stepped Miriam and Regina. It took some time for the women to enter as they struggled to squeeze through the door frame simultaneously, each digging her elbows into the other's ribs. Ned, his back turned, was hunched over a bundle of blades and didn't notice.\n\n\"What is it now?\" he asked.\n\n\"Just checking in, sir.\" Regina saluted sharply.\n\nScowling at the Amazon, Miriam saluted just as sharply. \"And making sure you're feeling well, sir.\"\n\n\"Obviously Ned can take care of himself,\" said Regina.\n\n\"Expressing concern over the commander's well-being doesn't insinuate assumption of weakness,\" replied Miriam. \"Perhaps you'd understand that if you were more in touch with your feminine side.\"\n\nRegina balled up her fists. Miriam didn't seem to care. The women glowered, and Regina noticed that sirens had fangs. Small ones, not too damaging (especially once they were knocked out of Miriam's jaws). Before it could come to blows, Ned turned around, holding an armload of swords, axes, and one spear.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Just getting rid of a few things,\" he explained.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 56 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Let me help you, Ned.\" Miriam grabbed some of the weapons.\n\n\"Allow me.\" Regina snatched up the rest. \"That's a heavy load. Wouldn't want you to hurt yourself, Miriam.\"\n\n\"What are you implying?\" Miriam's large black eyes narrowed.\n\n\"Merely expressing concern.\" Regina's not-so-large black eyes narrowed. \"Which doesn't insinuate the assumption of weakness.\" She grinned. \"Can I get that staff for you, Ned?\"\n\n\"No, leave it.\" He didn't think it was good for much, but he hoped the Red Woman had left it behind on purpose. And even if she was well and truly dead, he still liked having it around. He felt safer somehow.\n\n\"Is there anything else we could help you with, Ned?\" asked Miriam. \"Anything I could help you with?\"\n\n\"No. I got it. Thanks.\"\n\n\"Nothing?\" The siren shifted her load of weapons under one arm so she could suggestively caress her own neck, running the fingers down between her breasts as she bit her lip. \"Nothing at all?\"\n\n\"Are you deaf?\" Regina slammed her hip into Miriam, who nearly toppled over. \"He said he doesn't need anything from you.\"\n\n\"I just wanted to make sure he understood the question,\" growled Miriam.\n\n\"Are you saying he's stupid?\"\n\n\"I said no such thing.\"\n\nSlouched over his desk, Ned rubbed his temple. \"You're dismissed,\" he mumbled.\n\n\"You heard him,\" said Regina. \"Get lost.\"\n\nNed raised his head and gave the women his first glance since they'd entered the office. Both looked different.\n\nRegina's changes were more obvious. She still had on her war paint. Thick, unflattering, and even a little clownish, it appeared very un-Amazonian to him. But he didn't know much about Amazons. Her hair, normally knotted in a tight bun or let loose to flow down her shoulders, was now puffy with thick braids. And she stank of flowers and cinnamon. As he became aware of it, the malodorous perfume burned his nostrils and brought tears to his eyes.\n\nMiriam's differences were subtler, but not so subtle as to completely pass him by. For one thing, there appeared to be some sort of glistening gel applied to the scales of her face and shoulders. If it was supposed to make her striking golden skin more appealing, it only succeeded in making her appear more slimy and fishlike. And she wore the remnants of a uniform, most of which had fallen beneath a pair of shears, leaving behind only a very short skirt and a midriff-exposing top. Not very regulation.\n\nBoth females possessed a natural sexuality, though Regina's wasn't always as easy to spot, and spotting it was often a way to end up with a broken jaw and a black eye. They were now buried beneath an avalanche of effort. The right man would've understood this, would've even been flattered by the attempts, unsuccessful though they were. But Ned wasn't the right man. It wasn't that he held to some higher standard of natural beauty. He just preferred things simple and straightforward, including his women. He had enough riddles in his life.\n\nThe Amazon and the siren smiled eagerly at him. They didn't know how to tell him their feelings, and he didn't know enough to consider they had those feelings at all.\n\n\"You're both dismissed,\" said Ned. \"And tell everyone I don't wish to be disturbed again.\"\n\nThe women kept their smiles, although both their thumping hearts dropped from their throats to land hard back in their rib cages. For Miriam at least, this was less a metaphor, as siren hearts wandered a bit through their bodies depending on their mood. But to be accurate, hers hadn't risen all the way to her throat, stopping as high as her sternum before sliding its way down and resting on her bladder, thus adding a need to urinate to her disappointment.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" said Miriam.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" said Regina.\n\nBoth saluted, less crisply this time, and trudged from the office with slumped shoulders. Ned picked up the staff and sat behind his desk.\n\n\"What's wrong with them?\" he wondered aloud.\n\nThe staff replied, \"They like you.\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "writing buddy needed! eight sentences more in A. Lee Martinez's voice. comedy, fantasy genre. this is from a bigger story btw", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Copper Citadel had always been rundown, a victim of negligence.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hence the terrible mess left behind by a couple of powerful wizards wasn't especially noticeable.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was generally more rubble lying about, and that rubble was more charred and blackened than usual.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The garden was now a crater, and a crumbling tower that had leaned dangerously close to falling over was now fifteen degrees closer to collapse. The improvised wooden braces creaked and groaned under the pressure, but they held. A dozen ogres had been assigned to lean against the tower until maintenance could get around to shoving a couple more braces in place. Or the tower collapsed. Either way the problem would eventually solve itself.\n\nThere were only a handful of facilities in Copper Citadel that held any concern in the average soldier's mind: the pub, the mess hall, and the barracks, in that order of importance, with the last two a far distance from the first. The dragons had knocked a hole in the mess-hall roof and smashed open one wall of the barracks. Both of which seemed improvements, adding ambient moonlight and sunlight to one's dining experience.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The barracks doors had always been a tad narrow for broad-shouldered ogres, who could now enter three abreast without difficulty.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The pub was untouched, and it was still the focal point of activity within the citadel. This came as no surprise to Frank. He remembered vividly the time, not many months previous, when he'd seen the pub ablaze yet still bustling with thirsty soldiers.\n\nHe stopped off for a drink himself, seeing no rush in his platypus-disposing orders. Ned hadn't seemed worried about the ex-dragon, and as a secret wizard Ned should know. Frank laid the sack on the table and ordered an ale to slake his thirst. He considered how to execute his orders.\n\nThere were many ways to kill a wizard, each and every one with its own disadvantages.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Frank collected such lore as a hobby, and while he didn't entirely believe them, he couldn't safely dismiss them regardless of how absurd.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "OOC - Your task: Include 'wizards' 2 time(s) in your response", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Magic made all things possible. Especially the absurd.\n\nHe could burn the platypus, but inhaling wizard ashes cursed one with eternal hay fever. Hanging a wizard would afflict the tree used with evil that might crawl down into the earth through the roots and infect the very soil unless the tree was immediately chopped down. Too much fuss and toil in Frank's opinion. Clubbing wizards led to thirteen years bad luck for every broken bone, and it was impossible to brain a thing without crushing the skull at the very least. Skewering spilled blood, and wizard blood had a tendency to behave oddly, springing into giant scorpions or angry skeletons or noisy harpies. At the very least, it tended to leave a stain behind that never, ever disappeared.\n\nThere was only one safe way to dispose of wizards.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They needed to be drowned.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Everyone knew wizard spirits couldn't swim. They might fly right through the air and pass through the earth, but they sank like stones in the water. The spirit and all its evil magic remained forever trapped at the bottom of a pool. It was even better if a river was used so that the spirit was carried away to the ocean where all that salt water dissolved it.\n\nA river ran near the citadel, but it was a little over four miles away, a longer walk than Frank cared for now that he'd gotten comfortable. But he was under orders, so he did the only thing an officer in his position could do. He delegated.\n\nRalph and Ward were sitting at the nearest table, thus targets of opportunity. He tossed the sack to them.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Throw this in the river.\" He added, \"Commander Ned's orders,\" then turned his back.\n\nRalph sneered. He was in no mood to walk either, but he was in even less of a mood to get into an argument with an ogre of Frank's size.\n\nSighing, he threw the sack over his shoulder and started toward the river. Ward accompanied him. Nibbly Ned perched on Ward's shoulder. The vulture tended to stick with Ward since he was the only ogre in the citadel who didn't lick his lips at the sight of the bird. Nibbly had been well fed over the last two days but was still scrawny enough not to be worth fighting Ward over. But it was only a matter of time.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This place isn't the same since Ned got here,\" remarked Ralph as they passed through the gates. \"There didn't used to be so many orders.\"\n\nWard shrugged. Nibbly teetered, digging his talons deeper into the ogre's flesh to avoid falling. \"I don't know. I think I like it. Used to be rather boring around here. Now we've had demons and brawls and dueling wizards. I can hardly wait for tomorrow.\"\n\nRalph grumbled. \"I didn't join the Legion to be ordered about all the time. I joined to crush things.\"\n\n\"Yes, crushing things is fun,\" agreed Ward, \"although I prefer smashing myself.\"\n\n\"Smashing? How could anyone enjoy smashing once they've discovered the joy of crushing?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'll grant you,\" said Ward, \"that crushing is great fun. Particularly elves, what with that popping sound they make. Or humans in armor. A good club gets a great ping. But smashing is a lost art, if you ask me. Orcs were just made for smashing. And trolls, they're terrific fun to smash. Isn't that right, Nibbly?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Just for the next message: aim for 26% quoted content", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The vulture shrieked.\n\n\"Regardless.\" said Ralph, \"I didn't join up to dig graves and throw sacks in rivers.\"\n\n\"It's a decent wage.\"\n\nIt was Ralph's turn to shrug, although he elected not to and continued to sneer. He was particularly ill-tempered, as only an hour ago he'd finished up a four-hour shift of tower holding-up. His shoulders and legs ached. The river seemed very far away.\n\nHe stopped suddenly. \"I've got an idea. Come on.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The ogres veered off to the roc pens just beside the citadel.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was near dusk, a time of day when the giant birds displayed some semblance of calm.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They paced about their cages, uttering low growls and snapping at each other.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The biggest beast cocked its head to one side and studied Ralph and Ward as they approached.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It licked its beak and pressed its eyes against the heavy chain mesh of its cage, which already had several holes and was in need of repairs. The mesh wasn't strong enough to contain a full-grown roc, but they were conditioned from hatchlings to respect it. Goblins were always on duty, with long spears to poke the monsters with should the rocs try to test the mesh. Escapes still happened, but only because a clumsy beast might trip and accidentally topple into the chains, tearing them down. The rocs would dash about like colossal, shrieking chickens until the goblins managed through sheer persistence to get them contained. This usually happened after the monsters had devoured enough goblins to fill their bellies, and they'd wander back to their pens.\n\nNeither Ward nor Ralph nor many of the company's ogres enjoyed being near the roc pens. As ogres, they were used to being the biggest, most dangerous creatures around, and the green roc that eyed them, in his own separate pen due to his size and disagreeable nature, clearly surpassed them in these qualities.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "A sign hung on his pen named him Kevin.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Beneath that, another sign warned:\n\nAlways Hungry.\n\nDo Not Look Directly in the Eye or Make Any Sudden Moves.\n\nNo Sneezing or Loud Breathing.\n\nBelow, another sign read:\n\nEats Anything. This Means You.\n\nAnd below that, in bold red letters:\n\nPlease Refrain from Stepping in Maw. Thank You.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was one last warning posted, no doubt for those who couldn't read.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a series of pictographs showing a careless goblin's journey through Kevin's digestive tract from beak to rectum.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The artist had done a thorough job of showing the unpleasantness of the experience, even painting a frowny face on the pile of dung at the very end.\n\nThe warnings might've seemed excessive and unnecessary, but for goblins (who stubbornly ignored peril as a mark of general pride) it illustrated how dangerous this particular roc could be considered.\n\nEager to be on his way, Ralph prodded a trio of goblins snoozing nearby. They jumped to their feet with spears at the ready to jab into a roc's eyes or groin or other sensitive area.\n\n\"Sir, yes, sir!\" shouted the female at the front.\n\n\"At ease,\" said Ralph.\n\nThe goblins, seeing nothing worth jamming their spears into, slouched. The female yawned. \"Something I can do for you, sir?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ralph dropped the sack at her feet.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Commander Ned ordered this thrown into the river.\"\n\n\"The river, sir?\" said the second goblin, a tall male barely reaching an ogre's knee. \"But that's a forty-minute walk. Don't need a roc for that.\"\n\n\"Are you questioning orders?\" asked-Ralph.\n\n\"No, sir. But it's just that it's an awful lot of trouble to get a roc saddled up. They're all put away for the night.\"\n\n\"Just do what you're told,\" said Ralph.\n\nThe goblin female saluted. \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Very good, soldier.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ralph, Ward, and Nibbly walked away, leaving the sack with the trio. They studied it for some time.\n\n\"I'm not getting a roc out just for that,\" said the third goblin, a fat little one.\n\nThe female nodded. \"Agreed, but we have to do something with it.\"\n\n\"We could always walk it to the river,\" said the tall goblin.\n\nThis idea was quickly dismissed. The journey seemed even more arduous and unappealing than to the long-legged ogres.\n\nKevin shrieked. He clawed at the earth, raising a cloud of dust.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The goblins exchanged sly grins, and the sack was tossed into Kevin's pen.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Instantly he gobbled it down.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then with a gruesome retch, he spun around and collapsed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[[OOC: ⚠️ Required: Use 'great' exactly 2 times]]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His agape beak allowed a glimpse of the sack lodged in his throat. It wasn't quite suffocating him, but it had cut off enough oxygen to reduce the great monster to a pitiful, wheezing heap.\n\n\"Oh, terrific,\" moaned the fat goblin. \"I've seen him devour four hogs in one swallow, but one sack kills him.\"\n\n\"We should do something,\" said the female.\n\nThough not particularly dutiful, each had been working with rocs long enough to develop a certain affection for the beasts. And Kevin was the oldest roc and so possessed a great deal of sentimental value. He'd eaten so many goblins in his years that his normally golden red feathers had taken on the mottled green hue of their species.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Add this exact quote somewhere appropriate: \"Guess I'll have to do it the hard way.\"", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This inspired even more fondness since goblins were just happy for the existence of something that large and threatening that happened to share their coloring. Unofficially he was a goblin, if not by birth then by dietary concentration. The three agreed something must be done to preserve him.\n\nThe tall goblin entered the pen, and attempted to push the sack down Kevin's throat with the blunted end of his long spear. It didn't work. He laid down the spear and rolled up his sleeves. \"Guess I'll have to do it the hard way.\"\n\n\"You're not supposed to step into the maw,\" observed the female, pointing to the sign.\n\n\"Do you have a better plan?\" he asked.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The others shrugged.\n\nThe tall goblin entered Kevin's jaws. He leaned his shoulders against the sack and found it slid in easily.\n\n\"This isn't stuck,\" he observed. \"It's not stuck at—\"\n\nKevin slurped down the goblin and the sack with a satisfied squawk. He rose to his feet and paced hungrily in his cage.\n\n\"He was faking,\" said the fat goblin.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 9 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Imagine that,\" said the female.\n\nBoth smiled, feeling some pride that Kevin was not only the world's biggest goblin but very likely the cleverest as well.\n\nThe roc collapsed again, flapped his wings once, and wheezed.\n\n\"Nice try, Kevin,\" said the fat goblin. They both returned to their posts, where they drifted off to sleep.\n\nEver ravenous, ever cranky, Kevin ambled around his cage as restlessly as ever. But there was something new in his pitiless eyes. As he absorbed the hue of his latest goblin snack, he absorbed something much more malign from the digested platypus: the beginnings of a gnawing hunger, fueled by hate and a last spark of dying magic. He turned his gaze on the citadel, past the leaning tower and toward the office where Never Dead Ned hid away.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "CONTINUE STORY. PARAMETERS: 12 sentences sentences, character continuity, comedy, fantasy genre.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It rained the next day as well. And the next. And the next. Ned grew restless sitting alone in his office, but the dreary weather encouraged him to keep to his plan. It wasn't much of a plan, but so far it'd worked. He'd gone four days without dying, a new record for him as commander of Ogre Company. He hadn't even come close to perishing. The worst incident had been some possibly undercooked chicken brought for his supper on the second day. He'd sent it back with a sense of grand accomplishment. Nothing could touch him while he remained safely tucked away within these four bare walls. Nothing but boredom.\n\nHe tried conversing with the speaking staff, but none of the talks went well. The staff seemed to get more bored and irritated as time passed. Ned's questions were met with snide insults.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The staff, never particularly courteous, became downright obnoxious.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How much longer do you think it'll rain?\" he'd asked it on the third day.\n\n\"How should I know? I'm a speaking staff, you idiot, not a weather vane.\"\n\nAfter that Ned stopped talking to it. He stuck the staff in the corner where he was positive it was glaring at him, though it claimed not to be truly aware. Nor did it possess any eyes. He'd turn it a few degrees every hour in hopes of getting rid of the feeling. It didn't work.\n\nBy the evening of the third day, Ned's boredom drove him to desperate ends to amuse himself: poetry. He'd never been artistic, not even to the slightest degree. He couldn't draw or paint or play an instrument. And he couldn't write very well either, but that was the great thing about poetry. It didn't really have to be good.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "It just had to express something.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Heck, it didn't need to rhyme anymore, which meant just about anyone could do it. After an hour and a half of exhaustive inspiration, he set down his pen and read his defining masterpiece.\n\nA heap of cushions,\n\nThe speaking staff mocks me still,\n\nThis poem is not good.\n\nNed cast aside his one and only work of literature. He whiled away the rest of the evening literally twiddling his thumbs and discovered, with mild interest, that one's thumbs could actually cramp after too much twiddling.\n\nBy the fourth day, he was so bored that he considered sending for someone to talk to. But he didn't really know anyone at Copper Citadel. Not well.\n\nHe thought of Frank. He seemed a pleasant, likable fellow. But he'd also killed Ned once already.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ned was pretty sure it'd been an accident.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'women' must appear 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There'd been no reason for Frank to do it on purpose, but inviting a large ogre who had already proven how easily Ned could be crushed seemed a poor idea. He might just as well bash in his own head and get it over with.\n\nGabel occurred next to Ned, but was quickly dismissed. Gabel was a stand-up officer, but not the most interesting conversationalist. Plus it unnerved Ned that Gabel pretended to be an orc when he was obviously a goblin.\n\nRegina and Miriam were natural choices. They were two engaging, attractive women. And they liked him, if the speaking staff could be trusted. That was the problem. He'd never been good with women. His strongest asset with the opposite sex was an assumption of complete and utter disinterest in him, which could be misinterpreted as a sort of relaxed confidence. He'd lost that now.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'stupider' 2 times in response]", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Now he knew they liked him. Now he'd start trying. He'd say stupid things. Stupider things than normal. And he'd worry about those stupid things, which would lead to even stupider things. In the end he couldn't have a normal conversation with a woman if he thought she was interested in him. There was just too much pressure.\n\nHe glared back at the speaking staff. It hadn't a single piece of good advice to offer him, and the trivial observations it'd shared had only complicated his life. Too bad he didn't know anyone capable of dispensing sound advice.\n\nSomeone knocked on his door. He considered not answering, but he was too bored not to.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He opened the door a crack, not even wide enough to stick out his head.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Owens saluted. \"You sent for me, sir?\"\n\n\"I didn't.\"\n\n\"You will, sir.\" The oracle held his salute. \"Shall I wait here in the meantime?\"\n\nNed contemplated the odd nature of fate. He hadn't planned on sending for Owens, but now that the soldier had arrived, Ned supposed it would be convenient to invite Owens in. Ned had found some guidance in their last conversation. True, his attempts to follow the advice had ended with him being crushed by an ogre, but that was as much Ned's fault as anyone's. If he wasn't going to blame Frank, Ned certainly couldn't blame Owens. The oracle was sure to be more polite than the speaking staff at the very least.\n\nNed invited Owens in, and Owens was polite enough to wait for the spoken invitation before stepping inside.\n\n\"How can I be of service, sir?\" he asked.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Don't you know?\" Ned asked back.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He walked over to the corner and took up the staff.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[ooc] Word restriction: Use 'understand' 2 time(s) only [ooc]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He still felt safer holding it, though he had no proof it had any magical powers besides the ability to point out how dumb he was.\n\n\"I'm an oracle, sir,\" replied Owens, \"not a mind reader.\"\n\nOwens had read Ned's mind on occasion, although that wasn't really what he'd done. Technically he'd heard words that were going to be spoken while they were still merely thoughts, thus transforming them into words that were never spoken except in some theoretical future that never came to pass. It was a paradox. The same sort of paradox that summoned an oracle to Ned's door before he'd thought of the idea himself, but giving him the idea to summon Owens, which Ned didn't need to do since Owens was already here. In other words, the past was a product of the future, and the future was rendered obsolete before it ever happened. Just thinking about it gave Ned a bit of a headache.\n\nHe stopped thinking about it. He didn't need to understand Owens's powers. He suspected Owens himself didn't understand them. Causality was far too fragile a thing to undergo deep inspection in certain circumstances.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ned didn't care about whatever Owens might hear either.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "(ooc) Ensure 'owens' appears 3 time(s) in your answer (ooc)", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Owens's ability to hear the future was little more than a parlor trick in the end. Its only reliable use was in speeding up conversations. But Owens still had a level head and a good attitude, what little Ned knew of the soldier, and Ned needed the judgment of someone he could trust. Someone other than himself, whom he trusted least of all.\n\nHe composed his thoughts, deciding what to tell and what to keep to himself. He waited for Owens to reply, but the oracle just stood there smiling.\n\nNed cleared his throat and thought very deliberately about speaking the words this time. Owens still didn't respond.\n\n\"Is something wrong?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"No, sir. Why do you ask?\"\n\nNed plopped down in his pillows. Funny how irritating life could be.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Owens, who usually answered questions before they were asked and interrupted constantly, was now oblivious.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Which meant nothing other than slight frustration for Ned, who apparently had to actually say things to have the oracle hear them.\n\n\"Do you feel okay?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"Very well, sir.\" Owens's smile widened. \"Better than usual.\"\n\n\"You just seem off your game.\"\n\n\"Well, sir, I don't hear all the future. Just little bits here and there, and sometimes the reception is better than others, depending on probability matrixes and spatial juxtaposition and personal relevance. Basic oracle theory, sir. I'm sure you're not interested.\"\n\n\"And you'd be right,\" replied Ned. \"I called you here\"—although I didn't actually call you, he added mentally—\"to ask for some advice.\"\n\n\"That's what I'm here for, sir.\"\n\n\"Terrific. You've probably been wondering why I've locked myself away in this room for the past few days.\"\n\n\"Not really.\"\n\n\"But it's been four days. Four days all by myself with the barest physical contact. That hasn't made you curious?\"\n\n\"No, sir. It did seem a bit odd, but I assumed you had your reasons. Or perhaps you just went mad. It's happened before. With other commanders here, I mean. One took to calling himself Lord Dragonstrike and convinced himself he could summon thunderbolts. Pure nonsense.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Owens stroked his long beard.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But then again, he was killed by a bolt of lightning, so maybe he was onto something.\"\n\nNed tried to lean forward on his perch of pillows but couldn't get the leverage. \"Some of the other soldiers must be wondering.\"\n\n\"A few, sir, but for the most part it's not a topic of conversation that comes up often.\"\n\nNed felt vaguely insulted. And unimportant. It was one thing to hide away from the world. It was quite another to discover the world didn't miss you when you were gone.\n\n\"But I fought a dragon.\" He held up the staff, although the gesture was lost on Owens. \"I defeated it with this stick.\"\n\n\"Yes, the staff.\" Owens nodded slowly. \"There's been some discussion of that.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But it's just a piece of wood.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It slew a dragon, didn't it, sir?\"\n\n\"I slew the dragon.\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. With the magic staff.\"\n\nNed scowled at the speaking staff. He could envision it smiling smugly. He didn't like thinking himself an accessory to the staff in the dragon incident, though that wasn't far from the truth. He propped it against his shoulder with a sigh of resignation.\n\n\"Here's the situation, Owens. I don't want to die again, but I'm tired of being in here. So I was wondering if you had any suggestions.\"\n\n\"Go outside.\"\n\n\"Is it safe out there?\"\n\n\"Is it safe in here?\" replied the speaking staff.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Owens cocked his ear in the direction of the new voice.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Is that the staff?\"\n\n\"Yes, it is,\" said the staff.\n\nNed asked, \"How did you know it could speak?\"\n\n\"I didn't, but there's been some debate over whether it might. I guess Lewis owes Martin two silver coins.\"\n\nNed slouched. There'd probably been more discussion about this piece of enchanted wood than about him, and he was not only resentful, but a little jealous.\n\n\"The staff has a point, sir,\" said Owens. \"The dangers of the world are many and varied. Just because you're hiding in here doesn't mean they still won't find you.\"\n\nNed rolled off the pillows and went to the window. It was a warm, sunny day. Soldiers engaged in various training exercises throughout the citadel. Regina was busy showing a class how to properly use a battle-ax, while Frank taught another group the finer points of wrestling. Everyone seemed busy, and it was probably safe to go out.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "For a few minutes at least.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do you really think it'll be okay?\" asked Ned of either Owens or the staff. He didn't care which.\n\n\"I wouldn't worry about it, sir,\" said Owens. \"Life's too short not to enjoy it while you can.\"\n\nThe observation didn't fully apply to Ned, an immortal. But he couldn't make himself hide in this office any longer. If he was really, really careful and retreated back to this sanctuary at the first sign of trouble, then how dangerous could things be? He thanked Owens for his advice and gingerly, with great care, stepped out the door.\n\nThe oracle felt along the floor until finding the pile of pillows and took a seat. He briefly wondered why Never Dead Ned cared if he died again. It was probably terribly inconvenient, he guessed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "But Ned didn't need worry much longer. No one did.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Owens heard the future, and now he heard very little. The future was deathly quiet. As quiet and still as the grave. That silence, so loud in its inevitability, overwhelmed the whispers of possibility that he normally had to filter. It was why he was so happy. It'd been a long time since Owens had enjoyed a moment of true peace. It was only a shame that the world had to end for him to have it.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "help write? eighty-seven sentences more, same character context, comedy, fantasy genre thx", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'didn't' 3 time(s)", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A grim foreboding told Ned he'd made a mistake stepping out of his office. He expected the entire building to collapse on his head. He expected the floor to open wide and swallow him whole. He expected Death herself to be standing there, cradling his tombstone in her pointed, red fingers. But there were only the two posted guards.\n\nOne of the guards asked, \"Is everything all right, sir?\"\n\nThe foreboding left Ned. He had no reason to be nervous. The universe wasn't out to get him, and why should it be? His death was its death. If anything, the forces of fate must certainly have been doing their best to keep him alive. Ned didn't place much faith in higher powers. Gods were unreliable. Destiny was a hope found in the hearts of desperate men. But sometimes, if they believed strongly enough, desperate men could do great things. Ned was desperate. Desperate enough to believe someone somewhere was watching over him. He had no other hope to cling to.\n\n\"I'll be taking a brief constitutional,\" said Ned.\n\n\"Should we accompany you, sir?\" asked the guard.\n\nHe dismissed it as unnecessary. All his deaths at Copper Citadel had been accidents, all preventable with some caution and a bit of common sense. He didn't see the need for a personal guard.\n\n\"No, stay here. I should be back soon.\"\n\nNed ambled carefully down the hall. Along the way he tapped the floor ahead of him with his staff, like a blind man feeling his way. By the time he reached the door leading outside he was more confident. Each step felt like a success; each second he lived was now nothing short of a miracle. He reached for the handle but paused. Maybe it would be better to call it a day. He could always try going outside tomorrow.\n\nHe glanced back at the guards. Both averted their eyes to look elsewhere, but they'd been watching him. He couldn't just turn around now without looking like some kind of idiot.\n\n\"Just a couple of minutes couldn't hurt,\" he mumbled as he turned the doorknob and stepped outside. His gaze met the cruel, black eyes of Nibbly Ned perched on Ward's shoulder. The vulture emitted a scratchy, rasping screech and spread his wings. Ned's sense of dread returned.\n\nWard saluted but Ned hardly noticed, so intent was his stare locked on Nibbly's. \"Hello, sir. Good to see you about.\"\n\nNed swallowed his fear and mumbled something even he didn't understand.\n\n\"Are you feeling well, sir?\" inquired Ward. \"You're looking a little pale.\"\n\n\"Fine. I'm fine.\"\n\nNed broke his stare, and Nibbly folded his wings, snapped his beak, and shifted on Ward's shoulder. Judging from its fresh red scars, the bird had trouble finding a spot it enjoyed for long.\n\n\"Glad to hear it, sir. Frankly I was getting a bit worried. And Nibbly here has been as well. Hardly eaten a thing the last few days. Isn't that right, Nibbly?\" He reached up to pet the vulture, only to have Nibbly's sharp beak clamp onto his fingers. The ogre chuckled amicably as he wrestled to free the digits. \"See there? He's already back to his old playful self.\"\n\nAs Nibbly tugged, the vulture's eyes never strayed from Ned's. Ward's fingers were not the buzzard's meal of choice, Ned realized.\n\nWard saluted again. \"If you'll excuse me, sir...\"\n\n\"You're excused,\" said Ned. Just as long as the ogre took that damn buzzard with him. But as Ward walked away, Nibbly jumped from Ward's shoulders and flew to a perch atop a high rooftop. He glared down with unblinking focus on Ned.\n\n\"Not to worry, sir,\" said Ward. \"He likes to be where he can see everything. It's funny though. He usually perches on the northwest comer.\"\n\nThe perfect spot, mused Ned, to stare into his office. Several times in his sanctuary he'd sensed the cold shiver of death stalking him. Now he saw it in this bird, this ugly caricature of a harbinger so obvious, so unimaginative, that he refused to take it seriously. But if Nibbly ever got close enough, Ned decided he'd brain the gods-damned bird with his speaking staff, if for no other reason than to get some use out of the worthless stick.\n\nNed toured Copper Citadel quickly. All about, soldiers were engaged in various training exercises. The main courtyard was divided into smaller classes. Surprisingly, Ogre Company seemed to be enjoying themselves. Not everyone of course. Ned caught a fair number of irritated glances, but the majority seemed not to mind the work, and a noteworthy percentage were going about their training with zeal. He guessed that once they'd accepted the idea, the soldiers were glad to have something to do other than sit around all day and drink.\n\nNow they had games to play while they drank.\n\nThe soldiers had applied their creativity to combine the imbibing of drink and the art of war. In wrestling class, pinning your opponent won you a drink. Apparently so did getting pinned—though it earned you a smaller mug. A table was set to one side with six hearty mugs of ale, and whoever finished a lap around the citadel fastest got first choice. Any soldier finishing seventh or later had to go dry until his faster comrades, dulled by drink, slowed down a bit. Climb a rope while someone poured out a drink, and you could have whatever was left when you reached the top. Smack someone with a training club; have a drink of various stouts and ales in various servings depending on just where you hit your opponent. Pitch a spear into a straw dummy; have a drink. Shoot an arrow into a target; have a drink. One hundred push-ups; have a drink. The unorthodox approach appeared to be working, and while many soldiers were a bit unsteady on their feet, particularly the humans and elves by nature of size and delicate livers, Ned guessed an army that could fight drunk just might be a force to be reckoned with.\n\nA large hand fell upon Ned's shoulder. \"There you are, sir. Finally out of your office, I see.\"\n\nNed managed to wrench himself free of Ralph's tight grip. \"Yes, private.\"\n\nThe ogre squinted and wobbled in place. He must have been training a little too enthusiastically this morning. His breath reeked of dozens of different alcohols, mixing into an unholy stench that nearly melted Ned's speaking staff.\n\n\"I've been looking for you, sir.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Grinning, nostrils flaring, Ralph poked Ned in the chest with a finger. Ned nearly toppled over save for a quick brace from his staff. \"I've wanted to speak with you.\"\n\nRegina, walking by with an armload of javelins, stopped suddenly. \"Ned, you're outside.\"\n\nPeople had noticed his absence. He felt validated in some manner. And maybe the speaking staff had been right. Regina did seem pleased to see him, but that only made him nervous. He couldn't imagine what she might see in him, but he wasn't in a position to pursue romantic complications. He had enough trouble understanding normal women. An Amazon could only be more vexing, particularly since she could easily kick his ass if the mood struck her. He fumbled for a reason to leave her presence.\n\n\"You'll have to excuse me, Archmajor, but Private Ralph here wanted a word with me.\"\n\nRalph belched. \"That's all right, sir. It'll keep.\" He stumbled away, swaying slightly.\n\nNed and Regina stood there quietly for an awkward moment that stretched into an uncomfortable half minute.\n\n\"Training is going well, I see,\" said Ned.\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\nHe rocked on his heels. \"So, uh, javelins, huh?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir. I just finished practice. Taking them back to the armory.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nNed had never noticed how attractive she was. He'd noticed she was pretty, but she wasn't exactly his type. She was too tall, but in Ogre Company being under seven feet could almost be considered petite. And she was more striking, less cute, than he preferred. This quality was lessened again by the surrounding personnel. Anyone with all their teeth and not covered in shaggy hair had a lot going for them.\n\n\"Armory, huh?\"\n\nRegina nodded, frowning. \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Training is going well.\"\n\n\"You already said that.\" Her frown deepened to a scowl.\n\n\"Yeah, uh... so who thought of the drinking games?\"\n\n\"I don't recall.\"\n\nIt was, in fact, Miriam's idea. Loath as Regina was to admit it, Miriam was actually a good morale officer, but Regina wasn't about to say that aloud.\n\n\"I don't want to keep you, Archmajor,\" said Ned.\n\nRegina sighed. \"No, sir, I suppose you don't.\"\n\nHe turned to leave.\n\n\"Have I done something to offend you, sir?\" she asked.\n\n\"Beg your pardon?\"\n\n\"I was just wondering if I've done anything to put you off.\"\n\n\"No. Why?\"\n\nShe laid aside the javelins. All those rules Ulga had laid down about the art of seduction passed quickly through her mind, and were just as quickly discarded. She had had enough of this bizarre game. Subtlety wasn't an Amazon's way, and it certainly wasn't in her nature. She refused to play it any longer.\n\n\"Do you find me attractive?\"\n\n\"No. I mean, yes. I mean, you're very pretty.\"\n\n\"Then you like me?\"\n\nNed shrugged. \"I dunno.\"\n\nShe stalked forward, hands clenched in fists, fists on hips. \"What do you mean, you don't know?\"\n\n\"Well...\" He shrugged again. \"It's just that I don't really know you very well.\"\n\nRegina's face twisted into a grimace. \"What does that have to do with anything?\"\n\nHe was tired of shrugging so Ned rocked the staff back and forth. \"I dunno.\"\n\nThough only a few inches taller, she towered over him. He slouched under her icy stare.\n\n\"What's wrong with you?\" Her voice raised, and nearby soldiers turned their heads. \"You don't care about knowing me. All you care about is having your way with me. I'm naked flesh. I'm a serving wench, a cook, a nursemaid to your fragile ego. I'm an incubator for your worthless seed. But I am not a person.\"\n\n\"You're not?\" He almost apologized, but he wasn't sure what he'd done wrong.\n\n\"I'm better than a person. I'm a woman. But you're a man, and you're not supposed to give a damn about that.\"\n\n\"I'm not?\"\n\n\"So what's wrong with me?\"\n\n\"I dunno.\"\n\nShe literally growled. He expected her to knock him out with a single right cross, but she snorted and stared him down.\n\n\"You're just a little...\"—he didn't want to finish the sentence, but her intimidating presence overwhelmed his good sense—\"... manly.\"\n\nShe didn't raise her arms, but he still flinched. To his surprise the Amazon suddenly calmed. Her face fell blank.\n\n\"I suppose you need a woman weaker than you then.\"\n\n\"No. It's not your strength. That's admirable, and I'm pretty used to everyone being stronger than me. It's just—I guess I haven't really thought about it—you're a little rough. It can be scary.\"\n\nRegina smiled suddenly. The expression seemed forced, and even someone as wholly unobservant as Ned could see the fury seething just beneath her surface. But there was always a little bit of quiet rage boiling in the Amazon.\n\n\"Ned, may I call you Ned?\"\n\nHe nodded.\n\n\"Would you like to have sex with me?\" She spoke the sentence slowly, as if speaking to a child. A dull-witted child at that.\n\nHe froze. The answer was obvious, but he sensed the wrong response could have terrible consequences.\n\nHer forced smile widened, and she took his hand in hers. She stepped closer. He couldn't look her in the face.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His gaze fell across her slender neck, pausing on her ample chest, sliding to her shoulder. Her creamy, kissable shoulder.\n\nShe whispered in his ear. \"I don't know why, Ned, but I desire you. Honestly I don't think I even like you. You're not a bad sort, but you aren't truly worthy of what I offer. But that doesn't matter. None of that. What matters, Ned, is that I'm offering you my body, my tender, untouched by any man, Amazon flesh. Do you want it?\"\n\nNed gulped. There was barely an inch between them. Her heat washed over him. Drops of sweat beaded on his face and neck.\n\n\"Do you?\" she asked.\n\n\"Yes?\" he replied.\n\n\"There. That wasn't so hard, was it?\"\n\nShe planted her hands on his chest, and he thought for a moment that she was about to have her way with him right there, right now, in front of all these leering soldiers. She shoved him away. Caught off balance, he fell on his back. Regina's sword flashed from its scabbard. She adopted an offensive stance.\n\n\"Defend yourself!\"\n\nHis eyes widened. \"What?\"\n\n\"Defend yourself, Ned!\"\n\nHe scrambled to his feet. \"What?\"\n\nShe swung the blade in a blur. His cheek stung. A trickle of blood leaked from a shallow cut. Before he could protest, she kicked him in the knee and then swept his legs out from under him so that he was back on the ground. She raised her sword to drive it through his heart.\n\n\"Wait! Wait! Wait!\" He curled into a ball, holding out one hand in surrender. \"What are you doing?\"\n\nShe lowered her weapon. \"I am an Amazon warrior, Ned. And there are certain rules I must follow. My code allows me to take a lover only if he can best me in a fight. Only then can he prove himself worthy of me.\"\n\n\"But I can't fight you.\"\n\n\"Apparently.\" She helped him to stand. \"No man is my equal. But that is why you're perfect for me. You're immortal. No matter how many times I slay you, you can always try again. Eventually you should win. With a great deal of luck.\" She raised her sword again. \"Now then, defend yourself!\"\n\n\"Wait, you don't—\"\n\nShe kicked him in the gut. He fell to his knees, huffing for breath, unable to explain anything.\n\n\"Better luck next time, Ned.\"\n\nDisappointment etched Regina's face as she swung the blade to split open his skull. Steel clanged against steel. Ned's head remained whole.\n\nMiriam stood between Regina and Ned. She'd parried the deathblow, and now the two women stood across from each other, swords in tightened fists.\n\nThe siren nodded to Ned. \"Commander.\" Her large, black eyes narrowed to the tiniest slits and focused on Regina. \"Archmajor.\"\n\nNow every soldier in the courtyard had forgotten their training and their drinking. They crowded around, leering, grinning. Mock meows and hisses rose from the audience.\n\n\"Just what the hell do you think you're doing, Archmajor?\" asked Miriam through gritted teeth.\n\n\"Stay out of this, Miriam,\" replied Regina coldly. \"This doesn't concern you.\"\n\n\"You were about to kill our commanding officer. I think that concerns everyone here.\"\n\nNed felt he should say something, but he wasn't sure what to say. As commander, he still tried. \"It's okay. This is all just a misunderstanding.\"\n\nRegina glared at him. \"I beg your pardon, Ned, but this situation was plain and simple until Miriam stepped in. I offered you my flesh, and you agreed to fight me for it.\"\n\nMiriam lowered her sword and frowned at him over her shoulder. \"Is that true, Ned?\"\n\nGuilt inexplicably fell upon him, although he was positive he hadn't done anything wrong. But the disappointment in Miriam's eyes had that effect on him.\n\n\"No... I mean, sort of. I agreed to the sex, but I didn't know I had to fight her.\"\n\n\"What did you think?\" said Regina. \"That an Amazon would surrender herself to any man who asked?\"\n\n\"I didn't ask. You asked me.\"\n\n\"Semantics.\" Regina snorted. \"Anyway, ignorance is no excuse. Now that you've expressed an interest in engaging me in carnal relations, you must fight me. It's the only honorable course of action.\" She raised her weapon and took a step forward. \"Move aside, Miriam.\"\n\nNed held out the speaking staff, hoping some leftover spark of magic might transform the fearsome Amazon into a bunny or woodchuck or bear or dragon. Something less dangerous so he might stand a chance—or more dangerous so he wouldn't be so embarrassed being killed.\n\nHe didn't understand why nobody was helping him. He was their commander. Someone should've stood in his defense, but the soldiers merely hooted and laughed at his plight. Only Frank, standing at the front of the crowd, was silent. All the color drained from his red face, leaving it a pale pinkish shade. The ogre looked sad and angry at the same time, although Ned couldn't imagine what wrong he'd done to Frank.\n\n\"This is insubordination!\" Ned shouted above the ruckus.\n\nRegina stopped. \"Actually it's not. As long as an Amazon slays a fellow soldier, regardless of rank, according to the customs and policies of her culture, it is allowed according to the Cultural Acceptance Policy of the Legion.\n\n\"And according to Brute's Legion's official Code of Conduct, a violent act is only considered an act of willful insubordination when it subjects the target to irreparable harm. It's like cutting off the arm of a troll. Unpleasant, yes, but since it'll grow back, the most you usually get is a written reprimand. And since you're immortal, killing you isn't much worse than that.\"\n\n\"But I'm not immortal,\" said Ned.\n\nThe crowd fell silent. His secret was out—although it was only a little bit of the secret.\n\n\"Is this true?\" asked Miriam.\n\nHe scanned the crowd. He glimpsed nothing but bloodlust in the faces. Except for Frank, pale and rigid and frowning.\n\n\"Why do you think I've been hiding in my office these last few days? Because every time I step outside, I die, and I can't die again.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The audience grumbled among themselves, and from the snatches of conversation Ned caught, not many believed him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "And those who did, still didn't care.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It doesn't make any difference,\" said Regina. \"You've stated your intention. Now you must live up to it.\"\n\nNed considered running, but all around was a thick wall of soldiers. They might part for him. They might not. Either way he wouldn't make it very far before Regina caught and killed him.\n\n\"If I die again,\" he said, \"I'll destroy the universe.\"\n\nA hush fell on the courtyard. Soon guffaws filled the air. Copper Citadel rumbled with laughter. Only Ned, Regina, Miriam, and Frank remained silent.\n\n\"Really, Ned.\" Regina rolled her eyes. \"Now defend yourself, and let's get this over with.\"\n\nThis was going to be a stupid way to die. He'd died many times, and at least half had been stupid deaths. But this was also a stupid way to herald the end of the universe, and that bothered him greatly.\n\nIf he was going to perish (and he could see no way around it) he could at least put up a fight. He raised the speaking staff and hoped for a lightning bolt. It didn't come.\n\nMiriam interposed herself between Regina and Ned. \"No. If you want him, you'll have to take him.\" She scraped a line in the cobblestones with her sword. \"From me.\"\n\n\"You have no right,\" said Regina.\n\n\"I have every right. According to Amazon law he's unclaimed, and if I want him too that means you have to beat me to take him.\"\n\n\"How do you know that?\"\n\n\"It's my job to know.\"\n\n\"You can only fight for him if he agrees to be yours.\"\n\nMiriam asked, \"Ned, will you—\"\n\n\"Yes!\" shouted Ned.\n\n\"Very well. I question the wisdom of facing me in personal combat, Miriam, and I doubt you're worthy of the honor of dying by my blade. But if that's the way you want it...\" Regina swung a few practice strokes.\n\nMiriam smiled coldly. \"Are you going to fight or talk all day?\"\n\nThe audience hooted and hollered as the ladies warily circled each other. The muscular Amazon was a head taller than Miriam, if one ignored the siren's fins. Regina was a skilled combatant. Ned had seen enough to know that, but he hadn't seen Miriam touch a sword up to now. But she was his only hope. His and the entire universe's.\n\nRegina lunged forward. Miriam parried the blow. Regina swung at Miriam's throat. Miriam knocked aside the strike and sliced at Regina's legs. The Amazon jumped back just in time, only to have her opponent rush in and stab for her gut. Regina blocked the sword, but wasn't ready for the foot that stomped on her toes. She stifled a yelp, only to be elbowed in the face and flounder backward.\n\nBlood oozed from Regina's nose. She growled. Miriam winked, a wry grin across her thick lips. The audience murmured approval and surprise.\n\nRegina wiped her nose. \"That's a cheap shot.\"\n\nMiriam chuckled. \"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought this was a fight. Not a fencing match.\"\n\nThe soldiers howled with delight.\n\nEnraged, Regina charged. A whirlwind of steel, she slashed at Miriam. The siren beat back each furious blow. A hole in Regina's assault allowed Miriam to take the offense. Her strikes were batted aside with strength and finesse. And so it went, back and forth, for a frantic minute. Ned couldn't keep track of the action. It was just so much metal clashing against metal, angry roars from Regina, eerie concentrated silence from Miriam. They circled and whirled, advanced and retreated. Finally an upward sword thrust nearly disemboweled Regina who leapt out of the way, but not before her blade sliced off the very tip of Miriam's fin.\n\nThe women sucked in short, rapid breaths, neither wishing to appear weak.\n\n\"Where did you learn to fight like that?\" asked Regina.\n\n\"Just something I've always had a knack for.\" Miriam tossed her sword into the air. It twirled three rotations before she caught it in her other hand. \"Did I mention I'm ambidextrous?\"\n\n\"So am I.\" Regina plucked a long knife from a sheath on her belt. \"Shall we continue, or do you wish to concede now?\"\n\nMiriam curtsied, drawing her own knife. \"I'd sooner see you dead, ma'am.\"\n\nThe warriors fell upon each other once more. This time though, there was a more cautious approach to their conflict as each took careful measure of her opponent, waiting for the right opportunity. It was still a rapid exchange, graceful in its skill and ugly in its rage. It led the combatants across the compound until the two women stood before the pub.\n\nBy now the audience had grown to include just about every soldier in Ogre Company. The soldiers in back couldn't see much of the action, but Ned had a front-row seat. Whenever a good blow was struck, whether by Regina or Miriam, the crowd cheered.\n\nSo far neither had landed a solid strike, though both were covered with nicks, scrapes, and bruises. Ned was getting tired of just watching them. Their breath was ragged. Sweat covered Regina. Sirens didn't sweat, but the sails atop Miriam's head, which she used to cool down, were fully extended. They were tiring, but neither was ready to surrender.\n\n\"Hundred gold on Miriam,\" said Martin.\n\n\"I'll take that bet, Brother,\" replied Lewis.\n\nNed really should've done something. He liked Regina. He liked Miriam. There had to be a way of ending this before someone died, and it was his job as commander to find a way. He still wasn't used to giving orders, but it was worth a try.\n\nBefore he could order the women to stand down, Miriam and Regina, locked in a combative embrace, fell through the pub window with a crash. Soldiers rushed after them as quickly as the slim doorway allowed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The pub couldn't hold all the soldiers, and the rest crowded around the windows eagerly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 85 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The clatter of battle continued inside.\n\nOnly Ned and Frank remained aside, not interested in fighting the crowd to get a better view.\n\n\"Destroy the universe, huh?\" asked Frank.\n\n\"Yeah. It's complicated.\"\n\nTo Ned's surprise, the ogre didn't appear skeptical. \"Why did you come out of your office then?\"\n\n\"Got bored,\" said Ned plainly. \"Guess I should've just sent out for a checkerboard.\"\n\n\"Guess so,\" agreed Frank.\n\nThe soldiers at the pub's second window, the unbroken one, parted suddenly as Regina and Miriam hurtled through it. They rolled around on the ground in broken glass with their hands around each other's throats.\n\n\"This is getting ugly,\" said Frank. \"Somebody should stop it.\"\n\n\"Somebody should,\" agreed Ned, fully intending to step up to his position of authority. But Frank brushed him aside and strode to the swearing, bloodstained ladies. He seized each by one arm and pulled them apart.\n\n\"That's enough.\"\n\nUnable to reach each other, the ladies turned their aggression on the ogre between them. They bit and clawed at him without much effect until Frank hoisted them in the air and shook them until their skulls rattled.\n\n\"I said that's enough!\"\n\nThe women stopped their wriggling and muttered and snarled instead.\n\n\"Now I'm going to set you down,\" said Frank, \"and you are both going to behave like civilized officers. Or so help me, I'll break some bones in each of you. I won't specify which because I haven't made up my mind yet.\"\n\nHe set them down. Miriam and Regina still grumbled, but neither made any advance on her rival. It was plain to see that they were both exhausted, and Frank's threat had been the final smidge of motivation to give them pause. Ned wished he could be that assertive, but it didn't seem to be in his nature. He wasn't too hard on himself since Frank had all the motivational talents that came from being a very large ogre. And even a very large ogre was taking a chance standing between these two enraged warriors.\n\n\"She started it,\" said Regina with a huff.\n\n\"Oh, shut up, ma'am,\" replied Miriam.\n\n\"You shut up.\"\n\n\"Why don't you both shut up?\" asked Frank. It was clearly not a question. \"And stop acting like fools. I mean, look at yourselves. You're two of our finest officers, and you've reduced yourselves to this.\"\n\nThe crowd murmured as it milled about. The fight appeared over, and they were losing interest. Ned, on the other hand, was very interested. He hoped Frank could fix this problem. He didn't want anyone to die.\n\nRalph crept stealthily up behind Ned. It was difficult for ogres to attach the adjective \"stealthily\" to anything they did, but the mob of disinterested ogres all around offered just the right camouflage. Ralph palmed a blade in one of his hands and slipped closer to Ned's exposed back.\n\nFrank continued his lecture. \"You two really should be ashamed. What kind of example is this for the company?\"\n\n\"She challenged my honor,\" said Regina.\n\n\"And she's just a bitch,\" countered Miriam.\n\nThey pounced on one another and got in a few good hits before Frank managed to separate them again. He shook his head and sighed.\n\n\"Is all this really worth it? Do either of you really like Ned enough to die for him? To kill for him?\"\n\nThey both glanced at Ned, who just stood there and shrugged.\n\n\"I like him,\" said Miriam.\n\n\"Well, I love him,\" replied Regina.\n\n\"I love him more!\" shouted Miriam.\n\n\"No, you don't,\" said Ned suddenly. He stepped forward just as Ralph was half a second from driving the knife into his back. The treasonous ogre cursed under his breath and quickly hid the weapon behind his back.\n\n\"You don't love me,\" said Ned. \"You don't even know me.\"\n\nMiriam said, \"But I think I could love you.\"\n\nRegina said, \"And I think I could too.\"\n\n\"Maybe you could,\" agreed Ned, though he didn't believe it very possible. \"But shouldn't you know for sure before you decide to start killing each other?\"\n\nRegina lowered her head. Miriam's golden scales darkened with a crimson blush.\n\n\"Good then,\" said Frank. \"Then it's settled. Nobody dies just yet.\"\n\nA shadow blotted out the sky as a tremendous green roc landed with a boom upon the pub roof. The roof supported the roc's weight for a full second before collapsing, and the soldiers of Ogre Company groaned. The roc thrashed, smashing everything in its attempts to get free.\n\nAce, riding the saddle atop its neck, cursed and yanked at the reins. \"Damn it, Kevin! What's wrong with you?\"\n\n\"Get that thing out of here!\" shouted Frank.\n\n\"I'm trying, sir! I'm trying!\"\n\nKevin shrieked and squawked. He calmed suddenly and scanned the crowd until his eyes fell upon Never Dead Ned. Then his beak parted, but instead of a shrill warble, out came a voice.\n\n\"Ned.\"\n\n\"I didn't know they could talk,\" observed Private Elmer from the crowd.\n\n\"They can't,\" said Ace.\n\n\"Never Dead Ned,\" said Kevin with his newfound human voice. But it wasn't his voice. It was the voice of a dead wizard, and Ned's blood ran cold. Belok was back.\n\nKevin ruffled his feathers and clucked the deep, thoughtful clucks of a roc enchanted with a will other than his own.\n\n\"Kill Never Dead Ned.\"\n\nNed didn't hear. He was too busy running away.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "INPUT: user text (may contain established characters/lore)\nOUTPUT: 23 sentences sentences\nGENRES: comedy, fantasy\nTAGS: humor\nNote: Match context level of character familiarity\nCONTINUE STORY", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The demons carried Ned not very far. Copper Citadel had just disappeared over the horizon as their destination appeared. It was a fortress of black stone and glittering jade. He would've sworn Copper Citadel was the only outpost in a hundred miles, but then he saw this new fortress had great, stony legs like those belonging to a thousand-foot elephant. Flocks of demons orbited the Iron Fortress, and Ned expected to be torn to pieces by the hungry monsters.\n\nThe demons parted. A portcullis opened, and Ned was whisked into the darkened fortress. He couldn't see much, but he smelled a foul concoction of urine, smoke, and putrid flesh. It smelled of ugly death, an odor he knew all too well.\n\nHis captors threw him roughly to the floor. New hands seized him. Claws sank into his shoulder. Blood ran down his arm.\n\n\"Is this him?\" The voice was deep and possessed a quality of diction as if the speaker had practiced the sentence a thousand times in front of a mirror to insure that every nuance of lip and tongue was absolutely flawless. The feat was all the more impressive because the monster who held him lacked anything in the way of lips.\n\nThe demon was a bulging abomination. Muscles squirmed atop its muscles, yet it was grotesquely fat at the same time. It reminded Ned of an ogre, though infinitely more repellent. It was entirely naked save for thick hair all over its body that gave it the illusion of clothing, and a black executioner's hood draped over its relatively tiny head. There was a hole cut to show its toothy, lipless mouth, but none for its eyes. How it saw, Ned couldn't fathom.\n\n\"Scrawny little thing, isn't it?\" asked the executioner.\n\n\"Just throw him in the cell,\" said one of the purple demons.\n\nThe executioner dragged Ned into a darker part of the dungeon.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Baleful green torches cast a dim light, and the flickering shadows had faces twisted in agony.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There were things in the other cells. Ned heard them crying, screaming, growling, breathing. Scratching softly at their prison doors. He didn't speculate on what they might be. They reached his cell, a long thin room littered with bones, none of which appeared human. There was another green torch set high in the wall. Its light was cold, and Ned could see the frost of his breath. The executioner locked manacles around Ned's wrists. Ned slumped to the floor defeated. The short chains kept him from falling all the way. The demon lifted Ned's chin. \"Don't look like much, do you?\"\n\nIf the executioner's breath was rotten, it was no more rotten than the rest of the dank, fetid air. He snorted again and spat. The saliva froze in midflight and shattered against the floor. He lumbered away without saying another word.\n\nNed hung in the darkness. Occasionally his bad left arm twitched. Sometimes it yanked at its bonds. The chains rattled. The other prisoners cackled and whispered.\n\n\"What'cha in for, buddy?\" asked the occupant of the next cell. His voice was dry and menacing.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was a small hole in the wall that allowed him to peep through with a single, bloodshot eye.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Destroying universes,\" replied Ned. \"You?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[Author's note: Frequency requirement: 'laughter' - 2 occurrence(s)]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Littering.\"\n\nNed raised his head skeptically.\n\n\"Littering the ground with the corpses of my enemies,\" clarified the prisoner. His red eye glowed sinisterly.\n\n\"What are you?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"I don't know. I think I used to know, but I've been here so long I've forgotten. You'll forget too. Eventually.\"\n\nHarsh, humorless laughter filled the dungeon.\n\n\"I won't be here that long,\" said Ned.\n\nMore laughter.\n\n\"That's what I said.\" Something, perhaps a sword or claws or fangs, scraped against the wall. The eye vanished from the crack. \"At least I think that's what I said.\"\n\nAt some point Ned fell asleep. Or maybe he just thought he did. Something touched his wounded shoulder. He didn't have the strength to even yelp.\n\n\"Sir, are you okay?\"\n\nNed raised his head with considerable effort and came face-to-face with an ugly, big-nosed demon with pock-marked skin.\n\n\"Go away,\" mumbled Ned. \"Or kill me. I don't care which.\"\n\nThe demon whispered. \"Sir, it's me.\"\n\nNed squinted.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's me, Seamus.\" The demon leaned closer. \"Private Seamus.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ned couldn't place the name.\n\nSeamus glanced around to make sure the coast was clear before transforming back into his goblin self.\n\n\"That's a neat trick,\" said the prisoner in the next cell.\n\nNed's addled memory worked slowly. He didn't remember Seamus's name, and all goblins looked alike to him. But shapeshifting was just enough of a distinction to earn some recollection.\n\n\"I saw them take you away, sir,\" said Seamus, \"and I decided to follow, see what I could do. I was a little worried at first that I might not be able to fool them, but nobody pays much attention to grunts. Not even in demon armies, I guess.\"\n\nHe checked the chains around Ned's wrists. \"These are pretty thick. I might be able to break them if I transform into something big.\"\n\n\"Don't bother.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, sir?\"\n\n\"And then what? Even if you freed me, you'd never be able to get me out of here.\" Ned struggled to hang his head lower. \"It's all pointless.\"\n\n\"He's right,\" said the prisoner. \"No one has ever escaped these dungeons. No one and no thing.\"\n\n\"I could get some help,\" said Seamus.\n\n\"Why bother?\"\n\n\"Don't you want to be rescued, sir?\"\n\n\"I don't know. I guess.\"\n\nNed wasn't against it, but he didn't see how it was possible. And he was through hoping for impossibilities, or even improbabilities.\n\nThe dungeon door rattled open. Seamus disappeared in a puff of smoke, taking on his hideous demon form just as the executioner lurched into view.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Here now, what are you doing? Nobody's supposed to be here.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'seamus' must be used 7 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Though wearing the hunched form of a demon, Seamus hunched lower. \"Sorry. I got lost.\"\n\nThe executioner snorted, which appeared to be his favorite thing to do. He frowned, revealing rows of pointed teeth that up to now had remained hidden behind other rows of pointed teeth.\n\nSeamus shrugged. \"Uh... I'm new.\"\n\n\"You'd better come with me.\"\n\nThe goblin transformed into a giant sabercat in a puff of blue smoke. Seamus pounced, sinking his fangs into the executioner's throat. A snap of powerful jaws severed the head from the shoulders, and the incident was over before the demon could utter a cry, and where a normal sabercat would've howled its victory cry, Seamus was deathly quiet. He was sabercat enough to swipe a few bloody gashes across the demon's corpse.\n\nThe prisoner chuckled. \"That's a very neat trick indeed.\"\n\nSeamus returned to his natural goblin shape and gagged, wiping the blood from his lips. \"Remind me not to do that again.\"\n\nThe door rattled.\n\n\"I'll be back, sir,\" said Seamus. \"With help.\"\n\nNed hadn't even raised his head to watch the executioner's death. \"Whatever.\"\n\nSeamus disappeared into a yellow puff. When the smoke cleared, it appeared as if the goblin had vanished entirely. Only the most alert observer would've noticed the jet-black scorpion scampering into the darkness.\n\nA new executioner demon, identical to the last save for boils on his belly, trudged in. \"Come on now, what's keeping you?\" He stumbled over the corpse, which he puzzled over for a moment. He glanced at Ned, securely chained to the wall.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then to the body, well out of Ned's reach.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How did you do that?\"\n\nNed kept staring at the floor. \"Evil eye.\"\n\nThe executioner turned to the other prisoner. \"No, really. How did he do that?\"\n\n\"Just like he said.\" The prisoner's eye squinted, turning an amused pink shade. \"Evil eye. One glance is all it takes.\"\n\n\"There's no such thing,\" said the executioner.\n\n\"Oh, no?\" Ned raised his head a few degrees. \"Look me in the eye and say that.\"\n\nThe demon stepped back, slipping on the pool of his comrade's frozen blood. The executioner, whose hood covered his own eyes completely, still shielded them with his hands.\n\n\"Hey, now, I'm just doing my job. No need to get violent.\"\n\n\"I think I'll melt your bones in your skin,\" said Ned. \"Painful way to die. Believe me. I know.\"\n\nThe executioner, palm clasped firmly over his face, fumbled with the cell door. Once on the other side, he opened the slit to peek inside at Ned. But when Ned raised his head, the slit quickly shut.\n\nNed laughed. He never would've guessed demons to be superstitious. They already were the stuff of nightmares. But he supposed that it was hard to deny the powers of darkness when you were already in their ranks.\n\nHe had no idea how long one mysteriously executed demon would keep the others at bay. Not long, he imagined.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "And certainly not long enough for Seamus to get back to Copper Citadel, for Ogre Company to overcome years of lax discipline and mount a rescue effort.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "None of that mattered to Ned, who was beyond hope. Instead, he did what men without hope who have not quite given up yet have done since the dawn of time.\n\nHe waited.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "StoryBot: Add 53 sentences to this segment. Style: A. Lee Martinez. Genre: comedy, fantasy. Note: Part of larger work.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The goblins struggled to get the roc from the pens. The giant birds were almost supernaturally stubborn. When they were supposed to be in their pens, they always wanted out. And when they were supposed to be out, that was the only time they'd stay in. One team of goblin handlers pulled on a rope around the roc's neck, while two more teams prodded its backside with long spears.\n\nRegina buckled on the last bit of her armor. \"I don't have time for this.\"\n\nAce puffed on his pipe. \"Trust me. If we're going to do this, we're going to need a bird that's broken in.\"\n\nThe roc used its tail to sweep the prodders away. They went flying in various directions, but a new team immediately sprang into action.\n\n\"You call this broken in?\" asked Regina.\n\n\"He's just being persnickety. Once we get him saddled, he'll be more agreeable.\"\n\nWhile the handlers inched the roc from its pen, step by arduous step, Regina paced. Her armor rattled loudly, which did nothing to soothe the roc's mood.\n\n\"I still think this is a bad idea,\" said Ace.\n\n\"Then why are you going?\"\n\n\"Because you're going to need the best pilot if it's going to work. Not that it will. I doubt we'll even find Ned. And if we do, we'll have that whole swarm of demons to deal with. The way I see it, either we're wasting our time or this is a suicide mission.\"\n\n\"If you're afraid, you don't have to come.\"\n\n\"I said I thought it was a bad idea.\" He chuckled. \"I didn't say I didn't like it.\"\n\nGoblins didn't know fear. The closest they came was the concept of panic. The species lived under the shadow of death, having a lifespan that measured in months. Ace was three years old and somewhat embarrassed by his advanced age. Goblins considered a high risk of death and dismemberment a prerequisite for any worthwhile endeavor. Since Ace had yet to meet his end, it was assumed by many of his kin that he was more devoted to staying alive than living well. This would've been the one and only sin in the goblin religion if goblins had bothered with religion.\n\n\"We'll find Ned,\" said Regina.\n\n\"What makes you so certain?\"\n\n\"Because we have to.\"\n\n\"I don't see why,\" said Ace. \"The Legion will just send us a new commander.\"\n\n\"This isn't about commanders,\" replied Regina.\n\n\"Then what's it about?\"\n\nShe stopped pacing. She wished she knew the answer to that.\n\n\"It's about Ned.\" Though siren vocal cords were resilient, Miriam's voice hadn't quite recovered from the Final Note. It was rough and dry. \"And demons.\"\n\nRegina whirled on the newly arrived siren. Miriam wore her own armor, lighter and quieter than the Amazon's.\n\n\"What are you doing here?\" asked Regina.\n\n\"I'm going with you.\"\n\nRegina scoffed. \"I don't need your help.\"\n\n\"That's good,\" said Miriam, \"because I'm not coming along to help you.\"\n\nThe women locked stares, something they'd been doing so often lately that this time it was mostly a habit.\n\nMiriam said, \"Archmajor, this isn't a debate. You're thinking the same thing I am. Those were demons abducting Ned. And there's no good reason for that. Unless maybe he was telling the truth.\"\n\nAce stood between the women. He was far too short to block their stares, but the noxious cloud from his pipe did make their eyes water. The smoke clung to their drying eyeballs, but both refused to blink.\n\n\"You aren't telling me you believe him? About destroying the universe?\" asked Ace.\n\nMiriam replied, \"I don't know. But if it's true, if even some small part, then we have to try. And even if it's not, which it can't possibly be, I can't just stand by while you two rush off to your glorious deaths. I owe Ned more than that.\"\n\n\"You don't owe him anything,\" said Regina coldly.\n\n\"Oh, no? If I recall correctly, Ned is mine.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Regina scowled. \"He's not yours. Not until you've won him by rite of combat.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I thought I already did.\"\n\n\"We didn't get a chance to finish.\" Regina's hand went to her sword.\n\n\"Oh, leave it in your scabbard, ma'am,\" said Miriam. \"We'll settle the matter once we've rescued Ned.\"\n\n\"Can't hurt to have backup,\" added Ace, \"and you gotta admit, she's not bad with a sword.\"\n\nRegina had to admit no such thing. Not aloud anyway. But she had gained a grudging respect for her rival. She didn't want Miriam coming along, but short of beating Miriam to death, which the Amazon was confident she could do in a pinch, there was no other choice.\n\n\"Just don't expect me to save you if things get hairy,\" said Regina.\n\nBy now, the roc was out of the pen. The goblins scurried over the monstrous bird, reminding Regina very much of giant green fleas. Saddles were strapped on for the pilot and passengers in no time at all, and the roc calmed a bit as Ace promised. The pilot climbed up the roc's neck to sit on the saddle just behind its head. He lowered his goggles. His scarf fluttered in the wind. Neither Regina nor Miriam commented, but the light of the evening sun cast a soft halo around the goblin, giving him a heroic glow. There was something dashing about twenty-five pounds of goblin determination perched atop eight tons of irritated, unpredictable bird flesh.\n\nThe handlers threw down a rope ladder for the passengers to ascend, and they hesitated. It was one thing to admire Ace's guts, quite another to place their lives in his hands.\n\n\"Coming, ladies?\" asked Ace.\n\nBoth grabbed hold of the ladder at the same time.\n\n\"Permission to come along, ma'am?\" shouted Corporal Martin out of the blue.\n\nThe roc twisted at the sudden outburst and would've stepped on Miriam and Regina. Ace prevented the accident with a yank of the reins, thus spurring some confidence in the women.\n\nThe ogre twins Lewis and Martin stood before them. Ogres rarely bothered with armor. The cost of outfitting their massive bodies was prohibitive to the bottom line of Brute's Legion. They were already notoriously thick-skinned, and getting stabbed was a general nuisance rather than a life-threatening event. But the twins were ready for action, each carrying his weapon of choice. Lewis favored a massive stone club, while Martin preferred a slightly less massive club embedded with iron spikes.\n\nMartin saluted casually as a proper salute would've ended with him bashing his brother in the face. \"Begging your pardon, ma'am, but I heard about what you're planning, and I was hoping to come along.\"\n\nRegina asked Lewis, \"And you, private?\"\n\nLewis shrugged his half of their shoulders. \"Honestly, ma'am, I'm not as keen on the notion as my brother, but we should do something. One doesn't allow demons to abduct an officer.\"\n\n\"It simply isn't done,\" said Martin.\n\nRegina glanced to Miriam, who nodded. The goblins were already throwing on another saddle, this one large enough for a one-headed ogre and barely large enough for a two-headed one.\n\n\"Fine. You can come.\" Regina sighed. \"Now can we get on with this?\"\n\n\"They might have something to say about it, ma'am,\" said Lewis.\n\nBehind the twins, a mob of soldiers came from Copper Citadel. Frank led. Having been thrown through a wall, he was bruised and battered, but relatively unharmed. He'd broken a few bones but stubbornly refused to pay them any mind. Ogres broke bones so often, particularly in their terrifying and awkward adolescence, that unless one was sticking out of their skin, they hardly noticed.\n\nRegina put her hand on her sword. \"Don't try and stop me.\"\n\nMiriam stepped forward. \"Stop us.\"\n\nFrank said, \"We're not here to stop you. We're here to help.\"\n\n\"Yes, we like Ned!\" shouted Sally loudly enough to spit a ten-foot gout of flame in the air.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The soldiers grumbled in agreement.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 27 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You do?\" asked Regina. \"But what about the training?\"\n\n\"That's just part of the job!\" shouted an orc.\n\n\"And the dragon?\" asked Regina. \"And the demons? And the talking roc? You don't blame Ned for that?\"\n\n\"Sure, we do!\"\n\n\"But at least it's not boring around here anymore!\"\n\nThe mob roared, raising their weapons in the air.\n\nWard added, \"Anyway, if we don't get him back, management will just send down another asshole! And we don't want another asshole!\" He raised his fists high. \"We want Ned!\"\n\n\"Never Dead Ned!\" shouted one soldier.\n\n\"Never Dead Ned!\" repeated another.\n\nThe air filled with the chant. Some of the more inspired soldiers clanged their weapons against their armor in time with the beat.\n\nRegina marveled at the loyalty inspired by Ned. He hadn't done much of anything. But that had been the strength of Ned's command, she supposed. He hadn't tried to make Ogre Company into a crack military unit. He'd just tried to get by in a bad situation, like the rest of them. He was the first commander who truly belonged in the company. He was one of them.\n\nFrank limped over on his broken leg. \"Guess we'd better saddle up more rocs. We'll have to send out search parties in a spread pattern until we find some sign of him,\" said Frank. \"And hope we find him before it's too late.\"\n\nA pigeon landed on his shoulder. In a puff of smoke, Seamus sat there in its place. \"I think I can help you with that, sir.\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Story continues from larger narrative, characters/lore may lack introduction\nLength:\n156 sentences\nStyle:\nA. Lee Martinez", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rucka sat upon his throne of Skulls, which was actually made of cedar. But the infernal emperor enjoyed giving his things appropriately horrific names. The chair was perfectly sized for his slight proportions. Despite his diminutive stature, Rucka was supremely confident in his power. A larger throne might've been more impressive, but not so impressive as roasting flesh with a withering glance.\n\nSix demons dragged Ned into the throne room. \"Here he is, Your Majesty,\" said an executioner.\n\n\"Why does he have a bag over his head?\" asked Rucka with his dark, squeaky voice.\n\n\"To keep his evil eye at bay, sire.\"\n\nRucka chuckled. \"Remove it.\"\n\nThey pulled the bag off Ned's head, and all the demons looked away. Except Rucka. All of his eyes—except for those on his back and ass—gazed up at Ned. Ned's eye fell upon the tiny Emperor of the Ten Thousand Hells, and he wasn't terribly impressed. But he wasn't in the frame of mind to be impressed by much of anything. And he wasn't foolish enough to equate size with power.\n\nRucka's throne room was a large chamber atop his tallest tower. There was no decoration, unless one counted a few bones scattered absently. Half a skull leered up from Ned's feet. There was a painted glass window with an image of a giant demon with four arms standing atop a mountain of carcasses. The demon was covered with eyes, just like Rucka, and there was a passing resemblance. But the work struck Ned as unimaginative and unremarkable. It was just the kind of horrible image of carnage he would've expected in a demon's throne room and thus rendered terribly unimpressive.\n\nRucka commanded the executioners to leave, and they were all too eager to comply. No demon wished to stay in Rucka's presence, where death was just a moment of annoyance away, or risk Ned's evil eye. The massive iron doors were shut, and Ned was left alone with the emperor.\n\nThe demon smiled. \"Let me apologize for not coming to fetch you personally from your little citadel. I have some trouble crossing into the world of mortals. Too much power within me, you see. I could leave this fortress, but it would violate certain age-old treaties. More trouble than it's worth.\n\n\"And my Iron Fortress itself can't cross running water, even that little trickle of a river below. Don't ask me why. Design flaw. I had the engineers killed for it, but I suppose it would've been wiser to wait until they'd corrected the problem. Oh, well, kill and learn. That's what I always say.\"\n\nHe dangled a pendulum. \"Do you know how long I've searched for you? You have no idea how difficult it's been with only these to guide my scouts. These stones are the only thing that can detect your true essence. Come from the sacred rock that was part of the transformation rite. Won't bother you with the details. Some very special magic was used, the kind that comes along once every three ages, if that. Worked so well that even now, standing in this room with you, I don't see anything but a mortal man. Not the slightest hint of the awesome power just waiting within you.\"\n\nThe pendulum twitched in Ned's direction so slightly that it might just have been the wind. But the stone glowed with a soft, red light.\n\nRucka said, \"I won't tell you how much trouble they were to get in the first place, how many troublesome gods I had to kill, how many rival demon lords I had to slaughter, or how many souls I devoured in this quest of mine. My only consolation is I enjoy killing, slaughtering, and devouring. Hardly seems like any work at all, to be honest.\"\n\nRucka's four small wings beat like a hummingbird's, and he shot off his throne and hovered before Ned. The pendulum glowed brighter, and its tilt was undeniable as it pulled toward Ned.\n\n\"Have you ever tried searching the world by pendulum?\" asked Rucka. \"They're a devil to use and not nearly so sensitive as would be helpful. Not to mention there's only nine of these. Which is why it took so long to locate you. I've come close a few dozen times over the eons. But you've always wandered off before I could get my hands on you.\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" said Ned.\n\n\"Think nothing of it, old boy. I always knew I'd find you. One of the advantages of being an immortal. Time is always on my side. I'm surprised though that your troublesome guardian hasn't interfered.\"\n\n\"The Red Woman?\" said Ned. \"She's dead.\"\n\n\"Impossible.\"\n\n\"She died saving me.\"\n\nRucka stared Ned in the eye. \"Really? How odd. Why should she sacrifice herself for an illusion? Disappointing. I was hoping to kill her myself. But seeing as how she died protecting you, I can at least take comfort in the futility of her sacrifice.\"\n\nRucka touched the stone to Ned's cheek. The pendulum flared, though it still wasn't much of a light, and the heat seared Ned's face without actually hurting him. He smelled smoke, but didn't see any. His bad left arm tightened, and he worried it might take a swing at Rucka. But he stopped worrying. Punching Rucka wouldn't accomplish anything, but it couldn't get him in any more trouble.\n\nSomething, some Thing inside Ned, stirred. The Void. Maybe it was the concentrated evil of Rucka and his Iron Fortress. Maybe it was the closeness of the sacred stone. Or maybe it was just the pressure, the maddening sense of futility, the impatience. But the Mad Void was awake. Somewhere deep inside, it roused. It didn't arise. Rather, it shifted restlessly, like a deep sleeper troubled by a mosquito buzzing in his ear.\n\nIt'd always been there. Always. Buried so deep Ned couldn't sense it. Forgotten. A burden, a weight carried over a thousand lifetimes by a thousand different men and women, all just illusions. A cage of dreamed flesh and false mortality and unknowable magic. Nothing else.\n\nThat was all Ned was. Nothing. So why the hell did he care? Whether Rucka succeeded in usurping the Mad Void's power or not, whether the illusion of Ned died or not, he saw no reason to give a damn.\n\nBut he did.\n\nRucka had been speaking while Ned, internalized, oblivious to the outside world, hadn't heard a word.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" said the all-powerful demonic emperor. \"But am I boring you?\"\n\n\"A little.\"\n\nRucka snorted. Acidic snot dripped from his nostrils and sizzled holes in the floor. \"What is your name? Not your true name, but the name this shell carries?\"\n\n\"Ned.\"\n\nRucka raised the thorny ridge that served as his eyebrow. \"Would that be Never Dead Ned?\"\n\n\"You've heard of me?\"\n\n\"I've heard tales. Now and then, here and there. I even considered looking you up once. But the Mad Void hidden in the body of an immortal? Honestly, it seemed too obvious. But I guess that's the trick of it, isn't it? Draw attention to yourself, instill doubt, hide in plain sight. Very clever.\"\n\nRucka fluttered back to his throne. \"Tell me, Ned, how much do you know about this business?\"\n\nNed grunted. \"Enough.\"\n\n\"Then you know I intend to take that power you conceal for my own.\"\n\nNed nodded.\n\n\"And you know there is nothing you can do to prevent it.\"\n\nNed nodded again.\n\nRucka leaned forward. \"But do you know how I plan on taking it? Do you know where all that power rests?\"\n\nNed shrugged. \"Inside me. Somewhere.\"\n\n\"No. Not somewhere. Your power, that power, lies in the same place all great demons hold their might.\" Rucka's countless eyes burned. \"Do you know where that is?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Ned absently, only half listening.\n\n\"Think about it.\" The room darkened, and every one of Rucka's eyes shone.\n\n\"Their horns?\" ventured Ned.\n\n\"Don't be absurd. Too obvious. I'll give you another guess.\"\n\nThe emperor opened his jaws and sucked all the light from the throne room. All that shone in the pitch black was his hundred malignant, shimmering eyes.\n\n\"Stomach?\" said Ned.\n\nRucka belched the light back into the air. He sat on his throne, his short arms folded across his tiny chest. His child-like face twisted into a pout, and his long tail thrashed. \"Oh, come on. You're not even trying.\"\n\n\"Yeah. Uh, sorry, but I'd rather you just get it over with and kill me.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm not going to kill you, Ned. In the first place, you're not really anything but an illusion, so you can't truly die. In the second, if I do... kill... this illusion, it will only awaken the Mad Void, and I've no desire to unleash all that power until it is firmly in my grasp.\"\n\nRucka shot across the throne room and grasped Ned by the hair with tiny, painfully strong hands. \"No, Ned, I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to pluck out your eye.\" He laughed. \"Of course, the spell will break then, and I suppose you'll die. In the sense that there will no longer be any need for you and you'll fade away. And then I shall insert that eye, the Dark Eye of the Mad Void, here.\" A socket opened in the middle of his forehead. \"And I shall claim my rightful title as most powerful demon in this or any other universe.\"\n\nRucka tossed Ned away. He fell on his back to lie on the floor. The fall banged his head and bruised his elbow. The leering demon emperor hovered over him.\n\n\"You can beg for your life now. It won't do any good, but feel free.\"\n\n\"No, thanks.\"\n\nNed's bad arm shot up and seized Rucka by the throat. It squeezed without any effect. Rucka dug the claws of his hands and feet into Ned's forearm, lifted him high in the air, and spun around once before hurling Ned across the room, where he landed atop the Throne of Skulls, smashing it to bits.\n\nNed suspected he might've broken a bone or two. He played it safe by not moving. He was beyond pain now. Not that he didn't hurt. He hurt like hell, and a shard of armrest dug into his spine unpleasantly. But he'd gained acceptance of what was coming, and he no longer cared about such trivialities as agony. He was only an illusion in the end. By extension, so must have been his pain. And his worry. And everything else. That made them easy to ignore.\n\nRucka groaned. \"Well, this isn't any fun. If you're not going to cower properly, I guess we might as well get on with it.\"\n\n\"Guess so,\" replied Ned as casually as if commenting on the bricks of the ceiling he was staring at.\n\nThe throne room doors opened, and seven demons stepped in. They wore hooded cloaks that concealed their bodies except for their large orange wings.\n\n\"I could pluck the eye out right now,\" explained Rucka. \"Though I'd enjoy the vulgarity of it, some of the Void's power might slip away. And I want it all.\" He chuckled. \"Every... single... drop.\"\n\nIt took longer than Regina would've liked to saddle up all of Ogre Company's rocs, but if she was going to face a horde of demons, she knew it was only sensible to have as many able-bodied soldiers behind her as possible. There were thirty-three rocs in the stables. On average, each could carry three full-grown ogres. The most capable warriors were selected for the mission. There weren't enough saddles for all of them. Most of the ogres held on to the feathers with one hand while carrying their massive club or giant sword or whatever absurdly huge weapon they favored in the other. At least another three hundred goblins, all too eager to rush headlong into oblivion and unwilling to be left behind, clung to the rocs' undersides, legs, necks, wings, and any other free space. Regina, Miriam, Sally, and Ace (along with a dozen goblin hitchhikers) led the flight.\n\nThe bulk of the company had remained behind at the citadel to prepare for the worst, whatever that might be. Frank had been one of them. Regina found herself wishing him by her side. She couldn't think of any other soldier in Ogre Company she would've preferred. But he was hurt. Even hurt, he was probably the toughest grunt in the company. Possibly as fearless and deadly as she.\n\nShe caught herself smiling and wiped the grin from her face.\n\nRocs filled the sky. The pilots had managed to get the monstrously ill-tempered birds into a tight V formation. From the ground, thought Regina, they must have been an impressive sight. One hundred airborne ogres, give or take, hurtling headlong toward certain doom, possibly about to begin a battle for the fate of the universe.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There it is!\" shouted Ace.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Iron Fortress came into view. It was smaller than Regina expected, and its obsidian bricks were difficult to pick out on the dark horizon. But the glittering jade and the soft glow of its tallest tower made it obvious enough once her eyes adjusted.\n\nRegina grinned. And this time she couldn't stop smiling. She so loved a suicide mission.\n\nThe moment the Iron Fortress appeared, she anticipated a great host of winged demons would pour from its every opening. She expected, with some grim Amazonian dream of glory, to be swept away in a tide of knives, gnashing teeth, and cruel claws. It would be a beautiful death, the kind an Amazon could be proud of.\n\nBut nothing of the sort happened. Not one demon, not even the littlest imp, came forth. The Iron Fortress just stood there. One of its tremendous legs absently pawed the earth, but in no way did it exhibit the slightest acknowledgment of Ogre Company's approach.\n\n\"Shouldn't they be doing something?\" asked Miriam.\n\nRegina agreed. Some response was expected. Even courteous. There couldn't be a legendary last battle for the fate of the universe if the Forces of Darkness refused to show up. It was extremely poor form. After all, the demons had to notice the mighty fighting force just moments from their doorstep. Did the residents of the giant, walking castle not consider them a threat at all? Were the hideous creatures within so powerful that the company wasn't even worth a minimal response? She found that hard to believe. More likely, she decided, the fortress had other defenses, dark underworld sorceries gathering now to swat each and every roc from the sky before the battle could begin. Green and orange lightning flashed all around the tallest tower, a sure indication that some demonic magic was at play. Yet she carried on fearlessly.\n\n\"Maybe they haven't noticed us!\" yelled Ace above the whipping winds.\n\n\"Don't be ridiculous!\" Regina shouted back, her pride stinging a bit.\n\nIt'd been a long time since anyone had dared lay siege to the Iron Fortress. Its long legs made scaling its walls an impossible feat. Those same legs also allowed it to crush any army stupid enough to dare the impossible, and should a force prove immune to even this deterrent, the fortress could always amble away at its leisure from more bothersome attackers.\n\nInside the castle itself, within its malign walls, a great swarm of terrible demons waited to unleash themselves upon anything foolish enough to challenge them. They would've gladly joined in battle against Ogre Company had anyone been on watch. But the Iron Fortress had no watch because it'd been a long, long time since it'd had need of one. And demons, being generally lazy and irresponsible, had ceased keeping up the duty.\n\nTechnically, there was a watch at work, but they were either drunk on elf blood, fornicating, or engaged in a rousing game of competitive skull juggling. Consequently, the only residents of the Iron Fortress to catch a glimpse of the trouble heading their way were a couple of gargoyles chained to a parapet. Since neither cared much for either chains or demons (and weren't particularly fond of parapets either), neither spoke up, but instead shared a good chuckle and wink. Regina knew none of that and assumed she was rushing into an ambush. It didn't deter her. If anything, it made her more determined. It'd been too long since she'd enjoyed the bloodlust. She'd forgotten how sweet it tasted.\n\n\"Where do you think they'd be keeping Ned?\" asked Ace.\n\n\"There.\" Miriam pointed to the tallest tower, sheathed in crackling supernatural energies, casting an eerie red glow in the twilight that made the dusk as bright as a new dawn. \"That would be my guess.\"\n\nRegina shook her head. \"Too obvious. Besides, this is Ned we're talking about. He's probably still locked away in some pit.\"\n\n\"I told you we should've brought Owens along.\"\n\n\"He's always been bloody useless,\" said Regina. \"And what could he do anyway? Hear Ned's location?\"\n\nAce whipped the reins, and the rocs broke into a power dive toward the fortress. The formation followed suit.\n\nThe hooded demons chanted. The Void stirred again inside Ned. It bubbled in his throat, tasting like rotten maple syrup, thick and clumpy.\n\nRucka flicked over and grabbed Ned by the shirt. The small demon casually tossed him into the center of the throne room. The sorcerers continued their chant as they formed a circle around Ned. Their pendulums shimmered, casting delicate strands of light that reflected off each other and bent in the air like silver threads. Still droning, the sorcerers pulled away their hoods to reveal faces they didn't have. No mouths. No ears. No noses. Only three eyes arranged in a triangle upon their foreheads.\n\nRucka leered. \"It won't take long, Ned. The bindings that hold the Void in this shell are too powerful to be destroyed by anyone but the Void himself, but we only need loosen them a bit. The rest will come from within. And when he rises, when he can no longer sleep, at that one moment when he is at his full power yet too groggy to realize what is happening, I shall pluck out your eye.\"\n\nThe emperor salivated. Drool dripped from his lips to puddle beneath his hovering body.\n\nStrangely, Ned didn't sense anything else wrong with him as the magic did its work. His pain faded, and the Void continued to rumble within him. But despite the awesome magics being unleashed (to be honest, this was just a guess since Ned knew nothing of minor magic much less the awesome type), Ned didn't feel anything else. There was only one explanation. He was fading away, and because he wasn't real, he couldn't even sense it.\n\nHe didn't want to die. And not just because his death meant the end of the universe. There was more at stake. Less, actually. But for the first time in as long as he could remember, Ned wanted to live. He didn't know why. His life had been a remarkably dull affair up to now, excluding the last few days of dragon wizards and demon emperors. But maybe that was his fault. Or maybe he was just destined to live a boring, eternal existence. And maybe one day he'd be sick of it. But not today.\n\nDamn it all, he was Never Dead Ned, and if there was one thing Never Dead Ned was good at (and as far as he could tell there was only one thing), it was not dying. Actually, he was pretty good at that, but staying dead was another matter. And after all this time yearning for the icy whisper of true and lasting oblivion, Ned decided he wasn't so keen on ending his days after all. He had to do something. At the very least, he had to try.\n\nThe sorcerers' voices blended together into a low rumble that vibrated the throne room and, indeed, the entire fortress. The Mad Void grumbled, though only Ned sensed it, and even he wasn't so sure about that anymore. There seemed every possibility that what he thought was awakening unspeakable evil was nothing more than a hearty case of indigestion.\n\nNed wondered if a mistake had been made. He didn't feel all-powerful. Nor did he feel as if he was fading away after all. He felt... well, he felt like Ned. But it didn't seem likely that the Red Woman, the sacred stones, and the demons could all have been wrong.\n\nThe chant reached its crescendo. The lights of the pendulum gathered into a swirling cube over his head that settled on his body, and for a second Ned thought he might throw up.\n\nRucka pounced. The demon forced Ned to the floor and pressed tiny, sharp claws to Ned's face.\n\nNed belched.\n\nThe light faded.\n\nRucka's smile vanished. He pulled back his empty hand and squinted at Ned. \"What's this? Where is it?\" He hopped to stand on Ned's chest and glare at his sorcerers. \"Where is the power?\"\n\nThe sorcerers lowered their pendulums but dared not speak. With a grunt, Rucka blasted a fireball out of his nostril that slowly and painfully incinerated one of his minions. The sorcerer writhed in twisted agony, screaming and begging for mercy.\n\nRucka seized another by the robes. \"Please, speak up.\"\n\nThe sorcerer's voice sounded muffled and distant, logical given his lack of a mouth. \"Forgive us, oh dreaded lord, but we do not know. It should've worked.\"\n\nRucka disintegrated this sorcerer in an instant, discarding the gift of agony usually granted to those who failed him. He had more pressing concerns than such infernal civilities.\n\nThe remaining sorcerers cowered as Rucka stalked toward Ned. \"I felt it. For the briefest of moments, I sensed... something. Something inconceivable, even to my intellect. Yet it remains hidden.\"\n\nHe clasped his hands behind his back and paced twice around Ned. \"I see now that I must settle this affair personally.\" He turned to his sorcerers. \"You're dismissed.\"\n\n\"Thank you, oh merciful dark lord,\" said one.\n\n\"Think nothing of it.\" Rucka waved a hand. The floor opened up beneath them, and they tumbled down into the depths, into the literal bowels of the Iron Fortress itself.\n\nRucka's many eyes glowed with blue flames. He made no move toward Ned, just stared at him. The demon picked up a pendulum and channeled his dark powers through it. The stone burned a murderous red, bathing Ned in a crimson spotlight as Rucka's magic clawed at the illusion of flesh, striving to tear it away, to strip away the chimera of mortal bone and blood. Ned blurred around the edges for just a moment. His lack of reaction surprised the emperor, but he kept this to himself. A cruel grin remained across his face as he pushed more of his awesome power against the ancient spell that was Never Dead Ned.\n\nThere were few external signs of the invisible magics. Shafts of unholy fire poured from Rucka's eyes. A single drop of sweat formed on Ned's forehead, and he felt kind of itchy. But he didn't scratch. He didn't want to give Rucka the satisfaction.\n\nScowling, Rucka hissed a rancid, orange mist that wrapped around Ned. His itchiness grew, and that stinging indigestion stirred again, much like the sensation triggered by the sorcerers but a little stronger. Ned stifled a gag. He scratched his nose and wiped the tears from his eye. But that was the worst of it.\n\nRucka grumbled. He'd expected Ned to melt away. The magic at work was more complex than he'd first imagined. Unmaking such spells demanded subtlety and patience, but he'd never been very good at these. Instead he poured more of his dark magic through the sacred stone and into Ned's false mortal shell.\n\nNed's indigestion roared, though by the time it crawled out of his belly and up his throat to push its way out his closed mouth, it was barely a dull snarl. Some alien presence rose in his guts and lashed out at the bothersome nuisance of the First and Greatest Emperor of Hell.\n\nRucka exploded.\n\nFor such a little demon, there was a terrible mess left behind. Slimy goop covered the walls. Ned was splattered with the malodorous stuff. He would've thrown up, but he didn't have the energy. Rucka's many eyes littered the floor. Each and every one glared at Ned. It was a good indication that the demon wasn't dead, though he was clearly very annoyed. Ned couldn't blame him. Rucka's might was beyond understanding, yet the Mad Void had swatted him away as casually as if the terrible demonic emperor were some easily swatted away thing. Ned didn't have the energy for metaphors right now either.\n\nThe Void settled back into its slumber. Although it hadn't really awoken. If it had, the universe would probably be ash by now. Except the stuff that was already ash. That would probably become some lesser class of ash. Dust, thought Ned. Or soot.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He wasn't sure which, and it seemed largely irrelevant.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 106 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What was relevant was that the Mad Void was a very deep sleeper and had little interest in waking up. That was good.\n\nHowever, it had also crushed Rucka with the barest flex of its metaphysical might. Which meant if it ever did wake up, even against its will, there would be no force capable of putting it back to bed. Rucka didn't understand that, and he'd keep poking the Mad Void with a stick. The results could only be disastrous to the entire universe, including Rucka. The goop that was the emperor was slowly but certainly drawing himself back together. And that had to be bad since Ned doubted the exploded emperor had learned his lesson.\n\nThe throne room doors flew open, and in rushed a squad of demon soldiers. Ned could identify them as soldiers by their gleaming black armor and wicked scimitars. He could identify them as demons, though their armor covered them almost completely, because it was a safe bet that almost every resident of the Iron Fortress was a demon. Even him, when he thought about it.\n\n\"Forgive us, great and merciless lord,\" said the lead soldier, \"but the fortress is under—\"\n\nThe slimy remains of his master interrupted his report. He slipped on a bit of intestine and fell flat on his back with a resonating clang. Two others followed his example, sliding across the floor. The remaining three learned from their example and didn't cross the threshold.\n\nThe soldiers, those not trying to rise to their feet, took in the scene. Ned couldn't see their faces behind their closed helmets, but he assumed their expressions were of awe. It appeared as if he'd destroyed their fearsome leader. He didn't see any reason to correct the assumption.\n\n\"I guess I'll be leaving now,\" he said, \"if that's okay with you.\"\n\nRucka's minions were so used to bowing before omnipotent masters that they lowered their scimitars without hesitation and stepped aside to let Ned pass. He didn't know how long it would take Rucka to reform, but the more distance between the emperor and Ned, the better. The trickiest part would be crossing the throne room without ending up sprawled helplessly across the floor. Before he could begin the delicate journey, a shadow fell across the window.\n\nNed turned just in time to see the painted glass shattered by a shrieking roc. The bird planted its feet in the slime and skimmed forward, driven by its momentum. Ned barely managed to dive to one side as it coasted by him and crashed against a wall. The moment's stop was enough to allow it to dig its claws in the floor to gain some stability, though it was a stiff breeze away from toppling over. A dozen goblins dropped from the roc's feathers and charged the demon soldiers. In other circumstances, the experienced demon warriors would've slaughtered their foes, but there were few opponents as wily and unpredictable as a squad of greased goblins.\n\nThe sounds of a battle raging outside reached Ned's ears as he gingerly pushed himself to his knees. He spat out some goop. Not surprisingly, Rucka tasted horrible.\n\n\"I told you he was in this tower,\" said Miriam.\n\n\"Yes, yes.\" Regina threw down a ladder. \"Ned, we've come to rescue you.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" Ned smiled as he crawled his way toward the roc. A rescue at this point was a trifle late, but it was still the thought that counted.\n\nAce struggled to keep his mount steady. Not easy with the slippery floor and the roc's natural inclination to pace around. But it would be extremely bad form to have the giant bird fall on Ned in the middle of the rescue.\n\n\"What the hell happened here?\" asked Ace.\n\nNed grabbed the ladder and began the ascent. \"Nothing much. I just exploded a demon emperor.\"\n\n\"You?\" asked Regina as she helped him to his seat between Miriam and her.\n\n\"Sort of.\" He smiled sheepishly.\n\nThe pile of muck that was Rucka had managed by now to pull itself together enough to form a misshapen head, a lump with eyes and a crooked mouth. \"This isn't done, Ned!\" bellowed Rucka. \"I will destroy you! I will have your power! I will—\"\n\nThe roc, slipping and sliding its way toward the window, squished Rucka and his threats underfoot. Twice the bird lost its footing, but Ace's superior skills kept it from rolling over and crushing its riders.\n\nNed picked out ogres, goblins, and demons swarming on the Iron Fortress. The glow of the fortress itself bathed the battle in a green and red luminescence. It wasn't so much a grand battle as a warm-up clash. Right now, Ogre Company was winning by virtue of first strike, but each passing moment more and more demons were appearing.\n\n\"Sir?\" asked Miriam.\n\n\"What?\" replied Ned.\n\n\"Your orders?\"\n\nAgain he'd forgotten he was supposed to be in charge.\n\nNow that he remembered, he still didn't have the experience to be good at it.\n\n\"What would you do?\" he asked Regina.\n\n\"I'd order a retreat back to the citadel, sir. Might give us the advantage.\"\n\n\"Right, right. Do that then, Archmajor.\"\n\nRegina nodded to the goblin bugler clinging to the roc's tail. \"Sound the retreat.\"\n\nThe bugler blew the call. Ogre Company remounted its birds with surprising discipline. There were a few stragglers eager to get in a few more licks, but the company was soon in the air, sailing back toward Copper Citadel.\n\nThe slime-coated goblins battling the demon soldiers skated effortlessly across the slippery throne room to climb back onto the roc, which Ace spurred out the window. The bird plummeted downward until Ace yanked its reins hard enough to remind it to start flying. Screeching with great irritation, as if it'd much rather hit the brick below, the roc flapped its majestic wings and soared off. The slime covering Ned sloughed off to stay behind in the fortress.\n\nThe bugler continued to sound the retreat as the rest of the reptilian birds launched themselves. By now, the demons had managed to get their brimstone cannons out. They fired a few volleys of sulfurous flame that went wide except for one that struck a roc's side. The bird wobbled but wasn't greatly bothered.\n\nThe Iron Fortress shrank slowly in the horizon. It stomped its great feet in an earthshaking temper tantrum.\n\n\"You came for me,\" said Ned.\n\n\"You are our commander, sir,\" said Regina.\n\n\"And we were worried possibly about the fate of the universe,\" added Miriam.\n\n\"Oh, yeah,\" agreed Ned. \"I suppose that's important.\"\n\nNed glanced back at the fortress again. A few parting shots of stinking fire soared through the air, but were well short of the flight. There weren't any demons in pursuit. Probably in disarray without their emperor, Ned decided.\n\nBut once Rucka reformed, there was sure to be an army of the damned coming.\n\nNed weighed his options. He could order Ace to keep flying and hope to outdistance any pursuers. There was no shame in running away. But he doubted that would work. He might be able to put them off for a while, but hiding would be a lot harder now. The demons knew who he was. So did he. So did a few hundred soldiers. True, they didn't know exactly what he was, but close enough that obscurity would be difficult to find in the long run.\n\nAt least in the citadel he was surrounded by several hundred soldiers. They might not be the best of the best, the greatest collection of warriors, but they were a damn sight better than striking off on his own. He didn't know how many demons might be coming, but a few hundred ogres at his side meant he'd have some chance. Circumstances left him no other choice.\n\nNed shuddered. He didn't have much confidence in Ogre Company. And even less in their commander.\n\nA goblin tugged at Ned's leg. \"Did you really blow up a demon, sir?\"\n\nNed didn't feel like offering clarifications of things he didn't truly understand himself.\n\n\"Yes. Yes, I did.\"", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Provide one hundred and ten sentences sentences continuing the narrative flow and maintaining existing character relationships.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The citadel came into view far too soon for Ned's liking. He would've preferred more distance from the Iron Fortress. He couldn't help but count every inch of every mile between him and an army of demons. It didn't make much difference, but it would've made him feel better just the same. The bulk of rocs put down in the pens on the other side of the citadel, but Ace put Ned's flight down in the courtyard. The courtyard was bustling, but Ace managed—impressively—to not squash anything in the landing.\n\nThe riders disembarked, and Ace spurred the roc back to the pen. Frank limped forward to greet Ned and company. The Ogre held a tree trunk across his shoulder. He saluted, the gesture without a trace of sarcasm.\n\n\"Any trouble, sir?\"\n\n\"Nothing we couldn't handle.\"\n\n\"Good to have you back, sir.\"\n\n\"Good to be back, Lieutenant. And it's Ned. Just Ned.\"\n\nFrank smiled. \"If you insist, Ned.\"\n\n\"I do. I think we both know I'm not the right man to be in charge.\"\n\nRegina cleared her throat behind Ned, who shrugged.\n\n\"Right person,\" he hastily corrected.\n\n\"Can't disagree with you there, Ned,\" said Frank, \"but you are in charge. To be honest, I've seen worse commanders.\"\n\n\"I find that hard to believe.\"\n\n\"Look at it this way, Ned. Most horrible commanders don't know how horrible they are. You've got that on them.\"\n\nFrank put his hands on Ned's shoulders. The gesture was meant to be comforting, but it reminded him how easily Frank could flatten the delicate human skull with a casual squeeze.\n\n\"This is all very nice,\" said Regina, \"but we can probably expect a demon horde any moment now.\"\n\nFrank waved his tree trunk at the soldiers running around. \"We're almost prepared. As much as we can be. The citadel isn't designed to resist a full-scale assault. The gate's good and strong, but it won't amount to much defense with these crumbling outer walls. That one gap is large enough for a phalanx to march through.\"\n\n\"Won't really matter. Most, if not all, the demons can fly. A breach is to be expected.\"\n\n\"Good.\" Frank, like most ogres, preferred his warfare direct and to the point. A protracted siege would be far too dull.\n\n\"How are we doing for armaments?\" asked Regina.\n\n\"Not nearly well enough,\" replied Frank. \"We don't have a full complement. Just enough for training purposes.\"\n\n\"We'll make do,\" said Regina, \"but the darkness will put us at a disadvantage.\"\n\n\"Ulga said she might be able to do something about that.\"\n\nWhile Regina and Frank shared strategies, Ned stood to one side. They had things well in hand, and he didn't have anything constructive to offer, neither the experience nor the skills to be of great use on the battlefield. It was better, just plain smarter, to leave this war to others. If the mark of a good leader was the ability to delegate authority, then Ned wasn't just good. He was great.\n\nHe didn't feel great. He felt helpless. He might contain the most powerful force in the universe, but it didn't change the fact that he himself was practically useless.\n\nMiriam tapped Ned on the shoulder. \"Everything all right, Ned?\"\n\n\"I guess.\"\n\nShe held out the speaking staff. \"Some of the soldiers found this. Thought you might need it.\"\n\nHe didn't. The staff had no magic, and even if it did, he didn't know how to use it. He took it just the same. It was comforting to have something solid to hold.\n\n\"It'll be okay, Ned,\" said Miriam.\n\n\"I know.\"\n\nHe didn't, but he was commander. He couldn't afford to show fear or weakness or uncertainty. That was part of the job, damn it. He could fake it if he had to.\n\nMiriam put her hand on his shoulder. Unlike Frank's meaty mitt, hers seemed a small reassurance. \"Don't worry. We're professionals. Fighting is what we get paid to do.\"\n\nNed realized he wasn't as good at faking confidence as he'd hoped. Yet another basic leadership skill he lacked.\n\n\"We should really get you under cover,\" said Frank suddenly from beside Ned.\n\nNed sighed. The battle of the universe was about to commence, and he'd be stuck in some dank hole. It made perfect sense. His life was what this was all about. It'd be plain stupid to have him join in the melee. He was sure to be killed within minutes (if not seconds). He knew all this, but it didn't change his distaste for it. If he was to die today, he wanted to meet oblivion face-to-face, not cowering in some basement waiting for death to come to him. Especially since it always found him in the end.\n\n\"Private Lewis and Corporal Martin have agreed to serve as your personal bodyguard,\" said Frank.\n\nThe massive ogre twins saluted.\n\n\"It's an honor, sir,\" said Lewis.\n\n\"And a privilege, sir,\" added Martin.\n\n\"Right.\" Ned looked up at the towering brothers. They only made him feel all the more insignificant. Ironic, considering how the fate of the universe was so indivisible from his own.\n\nAn orc watchman in a balcony blew the alarm on his hom. It was blasted dark now, but ores had excellent night vision.\n\n\"They're coming.\" Frank wrapped his hands around the tree trunk and took a few practice swings. \"Get him out of here.\"\n\n\"Right this way, Commander,\" said Lewis as he ushered Ned toward the pub basement.\n\n\"Good luck, Frank,\" said Ned.\n\nThe ogre lieutenant didn't hear him; he was too busy scanning the darkened sky for the first signs of the enemy. On the way to his hiding place, Ned passed Ulga as she began conjuring burning balls of light and launching them into the air in rapid succession. They bathed the citadel in a soft glow. They lit the night like small, very near stars. The light of an artificial dawn cast through the pub. Ned paused, staring out the window. He held tighter to the speaking staff.\n\nSome unseen monster shrieked in the distance. Then another. And another. Ten million demon voices filled the air with their shrill, fearsome war cry.\n\n\"How many are there?\" Ned wondered.\n\n\"Too many,\" replied the staff.\n\nSomewhere, someone in Ogre Company had found a bone horn and blew the battle ballad of Grother's Death Brigade, a company of ores famous for killing a dragon tyrant by cramming themselves down the tyrant's gullet until she choked to death. The soldiers raised their weapons and roared in one voice. The ogres, with their deep, bellowing voices, dominated the song. The demon's war cry and the company's song mixed together into an off-key miasma of glorious determination.\n\nIt hurt Ned's ears. It also simmered his blood. For the first time ever, Ned grasped in some vague sense the strange nobility of charging down a dragon's throat with a sword in your hand and a smile on your lips. For the first time ever, he wanted to step out onto the battlefield and do his part.\n\nThe twins opened a trapdoor behind the bar. \"We should get you below, sir,\" said Martin.\n\n\"Right this way,\" said Lewis.\n\nNed sighed. Unfortunately, hiding was his part of this battle. He walked down the cellar stairway with some strange, foreign reluctance. The twins closed the door, dulling the horrible, enticing dirge of war.\n\nOwens sat on a barrel. He turned his head as they entered. \"Hello, sir.\"\n\n\"What are you—\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "⚠️ Required: Use 'themselves' exactly 2 times", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Blind, sir,\" the oracle replied. \"Hearing the future isn't much good in a fight.\"\n\nNed stood in the middle of a cellar surrounded by kegs of mead dimly lit by a single candle. Only it wasn't a candle.\n\n\"Is your staff glowing, sir?\" asked Martin.\n\nThe staff cast a soft light. It also felt slightly, almost imperceptibly warm.\n\n\"Why are you glowing?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"I'm glowing?\" replied the staff.\n\nBefore Ned could ask it another question, he noticed the howls of the demons and bellows of the company had faded away. In their place was a deathly, all-consuming silence, so complete that even the cellar was seized in its grasp.\n\nDemons settled on the walls of Copper Citadel, yet none entered its grounds. They perched like leering vultures, whispering and chuckling among themselves. And Ogre Company waited for the signal to attack. Both sides remained still as if fate itself dared not play out this final battle.\n\nThe first to step into the citadel was a terrible beast of slime and fangs, with the body of a cat, the wings of a buzzard, and the head of a cyclopean gnome. Its rider was a muscular warrior of a demon in black, spiky armor with a long bloodred cloak. The rider carried a wicked barbed lash. The demon spread iron wings and cackled. She pulled back her hood to reveal a face that, while not soft or delicate, was vaguely feminine.\n\n\"Who's in command here?\" she asked with a delicate, gossamer voice.\n\nFrank stepped forward. He adopted a proper smashing stance. \"I guess that would be me.\"\n\nSpear in hand, Regina stood beside him. \"That would be us.\"\n\nThe demoness narrowed her glittering silver eyes. \"My master, the Glorious and Dreaded Rucka, First Emperor of the Ten Thousand Hells, has sent me to negotiate. Listen well. Surrender Ned to us, or perish horribly beneath our unforgiving wrath.\"\n\nFrank tightened his grip on his tree trunk. \"And if we do?\"\n\nThe demoness snarled and smiled at the same time. \"Then perish slightly less horribly beneath our reasonably more forgiving wrath.\"\n\nThe demons cackled until the demoness quieted them with a thunderous crack of her whip.\n\n\"Tonight you will die, and I'll not insult your intelligence by lying. But to gain even the slightest degree of mercy from Rucka's minions is a charity anyone should be grateful for.\"\n\nThe demons cackled again.\n\nFrank chuckled. Regina joined him. Then Miriam. Soon every soldier in Ogre Company was shaking with laughter. The stymied demons fell silent and glared. They were unaccustomed to such behavior from their victims.\n\n\"What foolishness is this?\" shouted the demoness.\n\nFrank wiped his watering eyes. \"Sorry, but I thought this was supposed to be a battle, not a debate.\"\n\n\"You dare mock the legions of Rucka?\"\n\n\"Oh, no. You're a very fine legion,\" explained Regina. \"It's just that ogres don't really go in for that prefight posturing.\"\n\n\"It's true,\" said Frank. \"We're less talky, more smashy.\" He thudded the earth with his club. \"And we haven't had a decent fight in a very long time. So you'll have to excuse us if we're a bit impatient.\"\n\nThe demoness nodded. \"Very well. If that's your wish, then let your blood soak my lash!\"\n\nHer weapon shot out toward Frank's throat. He blocked it with his arm, and the whip wrapped around the limb. They stood there a moment locked in a brief tug-of-war. The spikes pierced his thick flesh, and blood dripped from the wounds. The lash drank the blood, turning darker as the demoness laughed.\n\nFrank shifted his weight and yanked her off the beast. Her mount roared and charged. Its jaws weren't quite large enough to swallow Frank in one bite, but it was willing to give it a try. Frank smashed it across the face with his club. The monster staggered. He struck again. Blood and slime spewed through the air. Frank wrapped his arms around the stunned beast's neck. He called on every ounce of his ogre muscle, and the monster's spine cracked loudly. It collapsed, wheezing, still alive, but limp and broken.\n\nThe demoness drew an ax and rushed at Regina. Regina sidestepped a swing meant to split her in half, and struck with her spear. The demoness made no attempt to evade, having absolute faith in her dark armor. But there was a small hole just below her armpit that none had ever noticed before, much less been skilled enough to strike. But Regina's spear found it. The demoness howled as blood gushed from the fatal wound. She turned and took three defiant steps before falling to the ground dead beside her beast.\n\nThe citadel was deathly quiet once more.\n\n\"That wasn't so hard,\" said Frank.\n\n\"Two down.\" Regina took in the hundreds of unholy eyes perched on the walls. \"How's your arm?\"\n\nThe wounds pierced deep into the muscle, and even a thick-skinned ogre had to feel that pain. \"It's nothing.\"\n\n\"Just be careful, Frank.\"\n\nHe smiled down at her. \"I was wondering, Archmajor. I don't know if you'd be interested or not, but do you want to maybe get a drink after all this is over?\"\n\nThe charge of the swarm drowned out her reply. In one instant the air was thick with demons, an unholy fog of screams and claws and blades. The horde came in many forms. Small imps more annoying than dangerous. Great warriors astride monstrous mounts. Some were armed with swords or whips or spears. Others were armed only with their gnashing teeth and slashing talons. But every demon, in all their infinite variety, shared one thing in common with Ogre Company.\n\nThey were spoiling for this fight.\n\nFrank and Regina fought side by side. The ogre swung his club in wide, sweeping arcs that swatted demons from the air. Regina's spear slashed with brutal efficiency, slicing down scores of opponents. Within moments, the formidable pair stood on a small hill of dead demons. A fat underworld warrior jumped on Frank's shoulder and bit into his flesh. The jagged fangs drew blood, and Frank couldn't reach up to dislodge the beast. Regina speared it. The demon fell away, taking her spear with it.\n\nIt was far too loud to hear anything except the roar of battle. Frank nodded appreciatively to Regina. She drew her sword, nodded back. And before turning to face a new wave of attackers, she did something he'd never seen her do: she smiled.\n\nHe'd seen her smile before. But not like that. Not at him. Like maybe it meant something.\n\nRegina neatly beheaded three demons with one stroke. She continued the motion effortlessly to stab a fourth stealing up behind her. Screaming, she hurled herself fearlessly into another cluster. They could've torn her to bits, except it was the last thing they were expecting. Before they could gather their wits, she'd already killed them. The blood of demons, a vibrant paint of deep reds, thick yellows, chunky greens, and shiny purples, stained her beautiful armor and even more beautiful face.\n\nIt was then that Frank knew he loved her.\n\nA pair of demons, foolishly thinking the smitten ogre had dropped his guard, found themselves crushed beneath his club. A winged enemy swooped in to strike Regina from behind.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Frank seized its wings, plucked it from the air, and squeezed its skull until three of its four eyes burst. Regina nodded to him. And it was his turn to smile.\n\nA giant beast, like an ape made of equal parts mud and discarded fish guts, lumbered forward as its rider prodded it with a trident. Regina and Frank raised their weapons and, screaming as one, charged.\n\nThe skirmish raged throughout Copper Citadel. Elmer battled with suicidal abandon against a gang of flaming gremlins. He would've been scorched to ash save for Ulga's quick thinking. She conjured a personal stormcloud over his head. It poured torrential rains, but even a wet treefolk wasn't completely fireproof. Most of his leaves smoldered, and bits of him smoked.\n\nUlga threw bolt after bolt of conjured lightning, blasting demons into blackened corpses. One or two bolts went astray and killed a few of her fellows. But friendly fire was to be expected in a battle of this chaotic nature, and most of the soldiers were either elves or goblins, generally considered expendable.\n\nSally's fiery nature was ineffective against most of the enemy host, and she relied instead on claws, teeth, and sword. But whenever an ice demon presented itself, she'd melt it with a fireball. Steaming puddles covered the ground around her before the frosty creatures learned to steer clear of her.\n\nA half dozen of the company's strongest ogres encircled Miriam, compelled to protect her. She couldn't control the effect, couldn't switch off her innate siren's aura. She wanted to soak her sword in demon blood, but few demons were able to get within her reach. She had to settle for unleashing her enchanted song in tightly knotted notes that disintegrated enemies in small bunches.\n\nSeamus had strained his shapeshifting abilities to their maximum. He'd become a huge lumbering minotaur, three times the size of an ogre. He swept his fists from side to side, batting aside his foes. He crushed others beneath his hooves and gored them with his horns. Swords and spears pierced his flesh, and green goblin blood dripped from the wounds. But he kept charging.\n\nAce and his squad of rocs soared through the darkened skies. The birds' talons shredded demons while they slurped down others. Soon, their appetites sated, the groggy rocs ground their opponents in their beaks before spitting them out. Hundreds of clinging goblins formed a crawling, living armor on the rocs, and the demons had a hell of a time getting to the vulnerable, reptilian flesh beneath. And when they tried, three or four goblins would leap from the roc. The boarders gleefully cheered as they and their unwilling ride plunged fatally to the earth. Several of the rocs lost their pilots, yet they carried on slaughtering whatever annoyed them, mostly demons. But two rocs did start tearing into each other amid the confusion. Great winged stags soared forth, spitting fire and roaring like lions. Ace, grinning, whipped the reins and led the squad forward.\n\nSoldier for soldier, the army of the damned was little match for Ogre Company. There were few demons large enough to tackle an ogre, and fewer still who could take the physical punishment that an ogre could withstand. Ogres battled with broken bones and shattered jaws and half their blood pouring from vicious gashes. Some would die soon. Many were mortally wounded, but simply too stubborn to die until the battle was over.\n\nThe other species held up almost as well. As a matter of pride, the orcs were determined not to fall before the last ogre, and the humans were a tenaciously difficult breed to exterminate despite their lack of any particular strength or talent. The trolls weren't very dangerous, but anything short of beheading just slowed them down. More than one demon dashed about the battlefield with a limbless troll clamped to its throat, butt, or some other conveniently dangly bit. The goblins perished in droves, but at a rate of twenty goblins to one demon, that was a losing proposition for the underworld minions. Even the elves made a decent show of themselves. They died quickly, but demons loved the taste of elven flesh. Few demons possessed the will to keep their full attention on the fight while a flavorsome corpse lay nearby, and many a demon died with a mouthful of elf after turning its back on an opponent.\n\nBut the horde kept coming, pouring from every window and gate of the Iron Fortress. An unlimited supply of soldiers was at Rucka's command. The fortress itself was a portal to the underworld, and whenever a demon died, its body soon dissolved as it returned there fresh and renewed and ready to rise from the bowels of the Iron Fortress to continue the relentless assault on Copper Citadel.\n\nRucka's victory was inevitable. The Emperor of the Ten Thousand Hells stood in his throne room, gazing down at the endless stream of demons washing over the besieged citadel in the distance.\n\nAnd he waited.\n\nNed hated waiting. While the battle raged noisily above, he sat there in the cellar with Martin and Lewis, Owens, and the faintly glowing speaking staff.\n\nIt seemed like he'd been waiting his whole life. Waiting to die. Waiting to not die. Waiting for his time in Brute's Legion to end. Waiting for his fate to be decided by everyone but him. But worse than the waiting was the knowing.\n\nHe knew it was all pointless. Ogre Company was formidable. Even without proper discipline and adequate armaments, these were dangerous soldiers. It was why the Legion had been reluctant to dismiss them. And Ned could imagine them to be one of the greatest arms of the Legion. With the right leader. Too bad he wasn't that leader. Too bad they were all about to be senselessly slaughtered. Too bad Rucka was going to wake the Mad Void. Too bad everything was going to end.\n\nJust too bad.\n\nNed glanced to the trapdoor, expecting it to fly open and a tide of demons to come sweeping down and fill the cellar. They didn't, but they would. In ten minutes. Or twenty. Or half an hour. Maybe longer. But sooner or later.\n\nHe wished he could do something.\n\nHis bad left arm tightened its grip on the speaking staff. The staff glowed brighter. Martin and Lewis said nothing, but they did take a step back. Even Owens seemed to sense something and stood a little farther away than before.\n\n\"Why are you glowing?\" Ned asked.\n\n\"I'm not glowing,\" replied the staff.\n\n\"Yes, you are.\" Ned shook it. \"Don't you know why?\"\n\n\"I'm not glowing. If there is light coming from me, then I'm not the origin of it.\"\n\n\"But you're still glowing,\" said Ned. \"What does that mean?\"\n\n\"Must mean there's magic running through me.\"\n\n\"The Red Woman,\" Ned hoped aloud. She wasn't dead. She'd just gone off to gather her power. She was coming back with an army of gods or angels or something like that to wipe out the underworld horde.\n\nNed slouched. He had to stop hoping for miracles. They weren't coming.\n\nAll that power inside him, and he was helpless.\n\nThe veins on Ned's bad arm throbbed. The flesh reddened and cracked. The staff itself changed to match the shade and texture so that it was indistinguishable from his hand. It glowed brighter still. And somewhere inside him, the Mad Void rumbled. The sound filled the cellar.\n\n\"Sir, are you okay?\" asked Lewis.\n\nNed nodded, but he felt it coming. Rucka's magic must've awoken the Void after all. It was just slow to rise. He swallowed it down, even as an inner voice told him to let it out. It was the only way to stop the demons, the only way to save himself and the company. If he just let it out a little, if he just opened that inner cage the smallest crack. It wouldn't take much.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Mad Void could obliterate Rucka and his minions without a second thought.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 33 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ned would never get it back in. It would destroy the universe.\n\nAnd if he didn't, Rucka would let it out, and the universe would be destroyed anyway.\n\nSomething pounded on the trapdoor. The ogre twins positioned themselves at the bottom of the stairs.\n\n\"You'd better hide yourselves, gentlemen,\" said Martin.\n\n\"We'll handle this,\" said Lewis.\n\nOwens drew his sword and used it to feel along the floor to stand beside the twins. \"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather die not hiding.\"\n\n\"Glad to have you by our side, sir,\" said Martin.\n\nThe trapdoor splintered inward, and shining eyes gazed inside.\n\nEither way, Ned was going to die. Either way, the universe was dying with him. Ned was tired of waiting. He was tired of hiding. He was tired of being Ned.\n\nThe door shattered. Demons rushed in. Martin, Lewis, and Owens raised their weapons to make their final stand. The twins clubbed two demons, and the blind man managed through sheer luck to stab a third in its throat. But the rest overwhelmed them and were an instant from tearing them to pieces.\n\nNed held out his staff. Red bolts blasted from its tip to strike every demon in the cellar. They disintegrated in a flash, not just slain but obliterated. Wiped from reality into utter, irreversible nothingness, denied the endless return from the underworld.\n\n\"What happened?\" asked Owens. \"What's going on?\"\n\nThe twins didn't answer. They saw in Never Dead Ned something they had never seen before. Something no creature in a thousand other devastated universes had ever seen and lived to tell. It wasn't an obvious transformation. Other than his bad arm going from gangrenous to blood red and the shining staff in its hand, he still looked like Ned.\n\nBut he wasn't Ned.\n\nSilently, the thing that had been Never Dead Ned passed Owens and the twins without acknowledging their presence. It ascended the stairs. Demons started screaming.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "ur turn! this is from middle of the story so dont worry if people/places pop up without intro. do one hundred and fifty-four sentences sentences like A. Lee Martinez. focus on comedy, fantasy. use these: humor", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "Demons covered the citadel, and Frank knew this was a fight Ogre Company could not win.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He'd never been one for heroic last stands.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "When the odds were impossible and victory unachievable, there was nothing wrong with a strategic retreat.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That wasn't a choice.\n\nThe more improbable the chances of survival, the more determined Regina became. She moved like a slaughtering whirlwind, with a broken sword in one hand and a demon's jawbone in the other. Frank could easily envision her as the last soldier of Ogre Company standing atop a mountain of demon corpses. The battle lust seized her, and she was both horrifying and dazzling at the same time. She smiled and laughed as she killed and killed and killed until only the strongest, most fearsome demons dared engage her. The rest gave her a wide berth.\n\nThe signs of imminent defeat were everywhere. Piles of demons covered the soldiers so thickly as to smother the most stubborn warrior. Roc screams filled the sky above as strange underworld beasts finally began wounding the birds enough to knock them from the sky. Four of the great birds littered the citadel, having crushed warriors beneath their stiffening corpses. There seemed now as many demons as goblins. Perhaps more.\n\nThe company hadn't given up quite yet. Sally and Elmer fought side by side. The wet treefolk smoldered beside the salamander. Miriam, having drained all the enchantment from her voice, now relied solely on her sword and her ability to inspire. The soldiers fighting at her command felled demons with supernatural fury. Ward fought with incredible zeal, and the vulture perched on his shoulder squawked but refused to abandon its master.\n\nThere were still more shrinking pockets of resistance.\n\nUnable to maintain anything larger, Seamus now wore the shape of an ogre, and it suited him as he swung a club with admirable talent. Ulga had apparently run out of lightning bolts and was now conjuring sticks and stones to throw at the demons. Ace's roc was too wounded to fly now, but he spurred it to stomp its way across the battlefield.\n\nFrank, beside Regina, had never been prouder. And if he was going to die a pointless death, he could think of no better company than Ogre Company.\n\nFrank had done his best to protect the pub, but demons swarmed over it like everything else. The demons cackled with delight. Ned was probably dead, realized Frank, and very likely permanently so this time.\n\nA bolt of red blasted through the pub's ceiling. Demons disintegrated so quickly that they had no time to even utter a cry. Streaks of red erupted, blowing holes in the pub, destroying more of the enemy. Frank was so taken with the sight that he was nearly stabbed in the back by a demon, had it not been for Regina's alertness and quick broken sword.\n\nRegina kicked away the corpse. She shouted a warning to be more watchful, but he couldn't hear over the chaos, and he was too distracted by this new occurrence to notice. She was more focused, and it took some time for her to spot the deep red glow emanating from the pub. Its crumbling walls distorted outward in slow motion. The earth trembled.\n\nFrank grabbed Regina, pulled her tight to him, and put himself between whatever dark magic was about to be unleashed.\n\nWith a flash of crimson and a stifled boom, the pub exploded. The building was reduced to freezing ash that rained down from the sky. A few small bits of demons—a hand, an eye, half a horn—pelted Frank.\n\nHe gazed down at the Amazon in his arms, whom he quickly released. \"Sorry, Archmajor. I wasn't trying to imply I thought you were weak or delicate or needed my protection or anything. It's just I'm a lot bigger than you, no offense, and it only made sense.\" It dawned on Frank that all the noise had left the battlefield or else he wouldn't have been able to hear his fumbled apology.\n\nRegina wasn't listening. She was too intent on the scorched earth where the pub once stood.\n\nNed stood in the middle of it. The staff in his left hand crackled and shimmered. Streaks of energy lanced outward to obliterate any demons foolish enough to stray within thirty feet of him. Most cowered just outside that range.\n\nHe'd changed. And it wasn't just his left arm with its graying flesh and strange, spiky protrusions growing from its shoulder and elbow. There was no way to describe it, to quantify exactly what was different, except for a certain cold disinterest in his eye, a disturbing calm in his expression.\n\nNed raised his staff. Bolts of magic shot outward in every direction, leaping from demon to demon, burning them into the same icy ash the pub had become. One came directly at Frank, only to veer away at the last instant and destroy a fat incubus. The bolts zipped through Copper Citadel, obliterating demons but avoiding the soldiers of Ogre Company. The magic killed a few dozen of the horde before returning to the point of Ned's staff. He lowered it, and the bloody aura around it dimmed.\n\nNobody did much of anything for a moment. Ogre Company and the demon horde alike gaped.\n\nA huge green demon warrior, braver than his brethren, stepped forward. He put a shield glowing with unholy magic between him and Ned and then charged, intent on braining Ned with a single smashing strike of an ebony morning star. Ned thrust his staff through the impenetrable shield and into the demon's heart. The warrior's flesh and blood sloughed off into nothing. His bones clattered to the ground, shattering like crystal into powder. Ned looked bored with the entire affair.\n\nDemons fled in horror. Those who weren't instantly destroyed by Ned's magic. The staff glowed brighter and brighter, and soon demons disintegrated without being struck by the red lightning. It was merely enough to stand too close to his dreadful radiance.\n\nOgre Company stood quiet. Victory was theirs. Never Dead Ned had become a living god of destruction, and every man could feel Ned's cold, unstoppable power. And every soldier knew there would be a price.\n\nMiriam drew nearer. She approached within fifteen feet but dared no closer. It was all she could do to not turn and run at that distance.\n\n\"Sir?\" Her voice, taxed by the battle, was barely a whisper.\n\nNed didn't look at her. \"One second.\"\n\nHe held high his staff and emitted a single blinding burst of light. The distant retreating survivors of the demon horde disappeared. Just like that. This time there was no fire or ash left behind. Only an emptiness that caused even the trees to tremble.\n\n\"Sir?\" asked Miriam.\n\n\"Almost finished,\" he replied.\n\nHe stamped his staff on the ground, and it launched a pinpoint of magic that shot across the night sky. It reached the Iron Fortress and opened a sucking vortex. The fortress tried to run away, but the pull was inescapable. Brick by brick, the Iron Fortress struggled, but soon enough it and all its inhabitants were consumed. All save one. A single tiny underworld emperor had enough strength to slip free, but no one noticed.\n\nThe brilliance of Ned's staff slowly dimmed until it shimmered with the faintest hues.\n\n\"Sir?\" said Miriam.\n\nThis time he turned his head in her direction, though not all the way. He merely cocked an ear as if trying to hear a distant sound. The calmness on his face should've been comforting, but there was something alien about it. It wasn't so much calm as disconnected coolness. The serenity of a madman. A madman with the power to annihilate a horde of demons.\n\n\"Are they gone?\" asked Miriam. \"Is it over, sir?\"\n\n\"They are. It is.\"\n\n\"Then you've saved us. Haven't you, sir?\"\n\n\"Saved you?\" He smiled then, very slightly. \"For the moment.\"\n\nSomewhere high in the sacred heavens, immortals cowered under their beds and discovered the hollow comfort of futile prayers. Every soldier of Ogre Company stepped back from Ned. Except for Miriam who dared step closer until she was within his reach. The staff's light glinted off her golden scales, turning them a coppery red: the color of old blood.\n\n\"It's okay. It's done. It's all done.\" She reached for Ned's hand.\n\nHe grabbed hers suddenly. His burning touch overwhelmed her. The siren screamed, and every soldier in Ogre Company was knocked off their feet. Ned released Miriam. She fell to her knees, clutching a fresh red wound sizzling on her arms. He regarded her agony with a pinch of curiosity. He no longer understood pain, save for a distant memory. He remembered he didn't like it, and being reminded of that filled him with contempt for this weak thing cowering before him. He would destroy it, and he would forget again. And then he would destroy it all. It was the only way to forget it all, the only guarantee he'd never be reminded of any of it.\n\n\"Sir?\" Miriam covered her eyes as his staff flared. \"Ned?\"\n\nHe stopped. Something about that word made him pause. It reminded him of memories he wasn't sure he possessed.\n\nPart of him wanted to destroy her for her weakness, but another part of him remembered the uncertainty that came with being a little thing in a grand cosmos.\n\nHe moved toward her, but she recoiled.\n\n\"It'll be okay.\" He held out his hand. \"Here. Let me help you up.\"\n\nShe hesitated.\n\nHe pushed down his power. It took more concentration than it'd taken to destroy an entire demon horde, but he managed. He took her hand in his, and while his touch was hot, it didn't burn. He helped her to her feet.\n\n\"It'll be all right.\" He smiled. \"Everything will be all right.\"\n\nRucka crashed into the courtyard, sending shudders through the ground, knocking everyone but Ned off their feet again.\n\n\"Oh, no, Ned. It will not.\"\n\nThe tiny emperor grew into fifteen feet of seething demonic fury. He spread his four tremendous black wings and growled. Rucka had never unleashed his full might for fear of breaking ancient treaties with old powers. But his army was gone, his fortress destroyed. And there was nothing quite so dangerous as a demon driven to madness, boiling with all the enraged, accursed fury of the Ten Thousand Hells. Even the boundless might of the Mad Void might hesitate in the face of that.\n\nRucka pounced, but a bolt from Ned's staff ripped through the demon's chest, blowing a hole through him. He fell to one knee and gasped, but it wasn't enough to destroy him.\n\nNed pushed Miriam away from him. The staff flared as he grew to match Rucka's size. The grayness in Ned's left arm grew lighter and lighter until it was a translucent white that spread from his shoulder to cover his entire body. His many scars turned into a gruesome black lattice across his flesh, and beneath that skin lurked not muscle and bone, but an ocean of lights, of colors and shapes that didn't belong in this universe, held behind a fragile illusion of mortal tissues.\n\nThe staff in his hand grew and changed along with him.\n\nIt twisted into a spiky gnarled stick, squirming with a life of its own.\n\n\"You can't defeat me, Rucka,\" said Ned. \"Even the unbridled egotism of a demon emperor must surely see the pointlessness of this.\"\n\nRucka's wounds closed. He stood and sneered. \"Oh, but I know your weakness.\"\n\nHe launched himself into Ned. The force of his charge carried both of them across the citadel to crash into the barracks. The building collapsed, burying them in a mountain of rubble. A blast of power disintegrated most of the debris, but some pieces shot out with dangerous velocity. They bounced off the ogres, but a few elves and humans were knocked off their feet to lie dazed and bleeding on the ground. One particularly large chunk hurtled at Frank.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The ogre deflected it with his fists.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His fingers broke audibly, and he grunted.\n\n\"Frank, are you okay?\" asked Regina.\n\n\"It's nothing.\"\n\nNed and Rucka stood locked in a deadly embrace. They wrestled over the staff as it crackled with power, seeming to draw strength from both of them. Rucka dug two of his clawed hands into Ned's throat, and Ned fell to one knee.\n\nMiriam drew a sword from a convenient corpse. \"Come on,\" she grunted with her worn voice. \"We have to help him.\"\n\nFrank and Regina readied their own weapons.\n\nA column of crimson mist rose in their path. It spoke. \"No. You can't help him any more than you already have.\" The mist solidified into the Red Goddess. She wasn't the same gnarled, old creature she'd been. She was now tall and youthful and strikingly long and angular. \"It's time to find out if Ned is ready.\"\n\n\"Ready for what?\" asked Regina.\n\nThe Red Goddess smiled. \"Ready to be his own keeper.\"\n\nThe Void roared. The staff burned brighter, and Rucka was sent hurtling, screaming, blazing into the air. The demon emperor howled all the way until he hit the ground in the woods a mile or two outside the citadel.\n\nThe Mad Void glanced down at the Red Goddess. \"I see you've remembered what you are.\" There was an absence in his voice, a certain lack of Nediness that was hard to define but still missing.\n\n\"The cosmic counterbalance that bound us both to slumber has broken. You remember what you are, so I remember what I am. You awake. I awake. That is the way of things, the nature of this ancient magic.\"\n\n\"I remember,\" said the Void. \"Just as I remember that even your power is no match for mine.\"\n\nShe nodded. \"You are the supreme destroyer. There is no equal.\"\n\nThe Void frowned. Without saying another word, he soared off into the sky after Rucka.\n\n\"He's going to win, isn't he?\" asked Miriam.\n\nThe goddess nodded. \"There can be no doubt.\"\n\n\"Then why am I worried?\" asked Regina.\n\nThe continent quaked as Ned collided with the earth, and the roar of clashing gods threatened to shake Copper Citadel to ruins. What little of it that wasn't reduced to ruins already. Many soldiers of Ogre Company were knocked off their feet again, and most had the good sense to not bother getting up anymore.\n\n\"Because to do so, Ned might very well have to become a greater monster than Rucka could ever be.\"\n\n\"Can't you help him?\" asked Frank.\n\n\"No one can help Ned but Ned now. Even the gods must sit this one out.\" And so the Red Goddess did sit, looking quite indifferent as the sky darkened and cracks appeared in the earth.\n\n\"We have to do something,\" said Miriam.\n\n\"Then by all means, rush to his side if you must.\" The Red Goddess waved her hand. Miriam disappeared in a scarlet flash.\n\nRegina stepped forward. \"Excuse me, but could you—\" She vanished with another wave.\n\nFrank, his broken hands hanging limply at his side, approached. He didn't even have to ask, and she teleported him away.\n\nAce, Elmer, and a small band of goblins were next, but the goddess lowered her hand.\n\n\"Well, if this is how it's going to be, I suppose it'll be easier to do you all at once,\" she remarked. \"Everyone who wishes to have a good view of the end of all things, please raise your hand.\"\n\nThe destructive powers of the Mad Void and Rucka were nearly without limits. Each sought to annihilate the other, but they regenerated from every wound. They disintegrated each other over and over again, only to reform instantly. Each rebirth burned away some of their boundless might, and the loser would be the godlike entity that was depleted first. But godlike entities had a lot of energy to burn, and it could take a century or two to find a winner—providing the universe wasn't destroyed in the process.\n\nReality itself was far more delicate than either of these titans. It began to crumble around them. The speaking staff held between them became the focus of their struggle. It radiated twisted energies. The forest withered around them. Small birds and beasts were consumed by invisible flames. A blizzard of black snow fell from a red sky even as the air grew hot and sticky.\n\nRucka belched a toxic cloud. It dissolved the Void, the grass, and nearby stones. The dirt began to boil and churn. The Void reformed and blasted a lance of power from his eye that sliced Rucka's head in half and burrowed into the earth. A torrent of magma gushed from the world's wound as the demon emperor's skull knit itself back together.\n\nGrinning, Rucka tore at the Void's side with his two free hands. The demon sank his fangs into the Void's neck. Rucka's long, barbed tail speared his opponent through the chest and pulled out the Void's malformed heart. The organ continued to beat even as Rucka devoured it, laughing.\n\nThe gulped heart erupted in a spiky mass. It filled Rucka's throat, stomach, and bowels. Thorns tore at his flesh from the inside out. Pain wracked his body. The Void's heart blazed with such unnatural darkness that even the Emperor of the Ten Thousand Hells must shrink from its touch.\n\nRucka collapsed into a spasmodic heap. He shrieked, foaming at the mouth, tearing at his own guts. It was only temporary. If necessary, Rucka could rip himself apart to extract the heart and still regenerate.\n\nThe Void stood over the demon and considered how to rid himself of this nuisance once and for all. The answer was obvious. He must call down enough of his power to end this. One blow with sufficient strength of the Mad Void behind it would destroy anything. It could destroy everything.\n\nThe staff in the Void's left hand churned with power; like a miniature sun, it cast aside the night in its blinding light. The world beneath his feet quaked and whimpered as the Mad Void readied to deliver the strike that would obliterate the demon emperor and this small corner of the universe.\n\nAnd then he saw them. All about him. Little things. Insignificant, unimportant. Not even worth noticing. Yet he noticed them as they stood in the stinking, blackened snow, so deep that it came to an ogre's waist. The soldiers of the company looked on, their faces etched in confusion and quiet terror.\n\nHis gaze fell across Regina and Miriam. He couldn't quite remember them anymore. There was nothing to remember. They were but particles of dust. They mattered not at all.\n\n\"Then why do you remember their names?\" asked the Red Goddess, standing suddenly by his side.\n\nHe turned to her. \"It's nothing, an empty memory from a man who never was.\" He looked at Rucka, still writhing in quiet agony beneath the Void, still struggling to remove the heart he'd so foolishly swallowed. All the light in the staff faded into a blackness that consumed the night in an ebony fog so thick that only the Void, Rucka, and the Red Goddess could still see.\n\n\"Are you a god who dreamed he was a man?\" asked the goddess. \"Or are you a man who dreams he is a god?\"\n\nThe Void smiled grimly. \"I am. And I shall always be. But these things beneath me will pass away. As will their world one day. Today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, when does it matter to me? It is all but a moment in eternity.\"\n\nRucka had nearly succeeded in extracting the heart. There was but a handful of seconds left for the Void to take advantage of the demon's weakness. Otherwise, the titanic struggle would renew.\n\nThe Mad Void raised his staff to plunge it into Rucka.\n\nThe goddess leaned close and whispered in the Void's ear.\n\n\"It matters. If not to you, Ned, then to them.\"\n\nThe Void hesitated. Not long ago, by his measure of time, he would've destroyed Rucka, this world, these specks, and countless others, and the entire universe as well without a second thought. But things had changed. He'd lived as a man, as many men. The exact memories eluded him, and he could only recall Ned's life.\n\nEven measured by the insignificance of mortal lives, it had been an exercise in absurd futility, a complete waste of time, a struggle against fate to find a place in a world that cared nothing for one more mote crawling upon its surface. But there was some strange dignity in it, and in all these little things. And though they didn't mean anything and their lives or deaths meant even less, the Void saw them as oddly beautiful in a way he'd never before imagined and couldn't completely understand.\n\nHe lowered his staff. The darkness faded, and the night returned.\n\nHe smiled. At Miriam. At Regina. And Frank. And the whole of Ogre Company. The blizzard ended. The snow turned white, then faded away.\n\nThe Red Goddess held out her hand. \"Give me the staff, Ned. You don't need it. The power lies within you. It always has. You've chosen not to use it before. You can choose not to again.\"\n\nRucka sprang. He threw the Void's own heart at it, and the blackened organ wrapped around its former owner. Rucka knocked the staff from the Void's hand, seized him by the throat, and before the Void could recover from the surprise, the demon reached into the Void's head and plucked out his eye. The Void slumped on the ground. His body shrank into Ned's proportions.\n\nThe Red Goddess moved to stop Rucka from inserting the eye into his empty socket, but his barbed tail sliced her into quarters. Rucka put the eye in its place and cackled.\n\n\"It's mine!\" he screamed triumphantly. \"The power is all mine!\"\n\n\"No,\" said Ned.\n\nThe demon whirled on the little mortal creature below him. Ned looked completely normal except his eyes had grown back and his left arm remained red with its patchwork of blackened scars.\n\nRucka raised his heel to crush the speck. He slammed down his foot, but one touch of Ned's red fingertips pushed the demon off balance. He crashed to the earth.\n\n\"But I have your eye!\" shouted Rucka.\n\n\"But my power lies elsewhere.\" Ned's left arm sparkled for an instant. \"You were looking in the wrong place.\" He clenched his fist as Rucka tried to rise, and the demon fell as if bound to the ground.\n\n\"You can't hold me forever!\" said Rucka. \"I'll break free. Even if I have to tear the world apart to do it!\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"And I'll come back! Again and again, I'll come back! As many times as it takes!\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\nAnd he would. And each time he would fail. And each time Ned would have to call upon the Void's power to defend himself. And a little piece of his humanity would disappear until it all disappeared, until he became the Mad Void again.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There's only one way to stop me! But you haven't the strength for that. Because all these worthless mortals mean something to you. And to destroy me, you'll have to destroy them all. They're your weakness. It'd be laughable if it weren't so pathetic.\" Rucka laughed anyway.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 31 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ned gestured with his left arm, and still laughing, Rucka was raised into the air and shot up and out of sight.\n\nNed floated a few feet off the ground. He turned to Miriam, Regina, and Frank. \"I'll be right back.\" He streaked after the demon.\n\nThe two hurtled out of the atmosphere, into the darkness of space, past the sun and planets of the solar system and onward. Physics twisted beneath Ned's will, and a billion billion miles passed by in moments. They continued onward, out of the galaxy, past the next galaxy and the next, until they reached a portion of the universe that fit Ned's needs, a corner filled with lifeless planets and dying stars.\n\nRucka whimpered, his misty breath visible in the airless emptiness. \"No, no! I didn't mean it! I submit! I surrender!\"\n\nNed said nothing. Whether Rucka meant the words or not, it didn't matter. He was too ambitious a demon to not try again.\n\n\"You can't do this,\" pleaded Rucka. \"I have a purpose in this universe. I belong here. Not like you. What right do you have to destroy me?\"\n\n\"I have every right,\" said Ned sadly. \"I'm the Mad Void. And you made me remember, so I don't think you can complain.\"\n\nRucka, seeing his pleas fail, came to his last resort. \"But to destroy me, you must destroy yourself. Are you willing to do that?\"\n\n\"If I could've destroyed myself, I would've done it long ago.\" Ned laughed bitterly. There was only one thing the Void could not annihilate, and that was the Void itself.\n\nNed laid his hand on Rucka's chest, and a galaxy disappeared in a flash. There was no death rattle, no final gasping spasm for this empty portion of the universe. It was just gone, winking out of existence, dissolved into nothingness and then beyond nothingness.\n\nA lone piece of charred, blackened debris fell from the emptiness. It was a man, but not a man. Dead, but not dead. Supernatural guidance took hold of it and gently steered it across the cosmos to an inconsequential ruined citadel on an inconsequential planet. The comet streaked downward to strike the world with devastating force, but the Red Goddess cushioned the landing so that it touched the ground without disturbing the dust.\n\nOgre Company circled the thing, barely recognizable as Ned.\n\n\"He'll come back,\" said Miriam. \"Won't he?\"\n\nThe goddess smiled. \"He always comes back.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "StoryBot: Add 68 sentences to this segment. Style: A. Lee Martinez. Genre: comedy, fantasy. Note: Part of larger work.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ned awoke in a tent. It was a nice tent, just large enough to hold a cot, a table, a chair, and a glowing heatstone. It was the wrong time of year for heatstones, and Ned wondered just how long he'd been dead this time.\n\n\"Just over five months,\" said the Red Goddess, sitting in the chair. Her raven sat on her shoulder.\n\nNed pulled up the heavy blankets. \"Took you long enough.\"\n\n\"Don't blame me,\" she replied. \"You were in the center of an obliterated galaxy. Takes a while to recover from that, and even I don't have enough power for it. But I'm not the one who brought you back this time. I don't do that anymore.\"\n\n\"Oh, really? Who has the responsibility now?\"\n\n\"You, Ned.\"\n\n\"But I thought if I brought myself back, I'd come back as—\"\n\n\"I think you've finally grown out of that.\"\n\n\"But what about the Void?\"\n\n\"What about it?\" She stood. \"You know it better than anyone. So why ask me?\"\n\nNed concentrated. Deep, deep inside he sensed the ancient, unstoppable evil as it slumbered. This wasn't the forced, uneasy doze of old, but a content, relaxed nap. The Void couldn't change its nature, nor could it ever be destroyed, but it could sleep. And it might sleep forever, or at least until the natural end of this universe.\n\n\"Once it was held by a spell,\" said the goddess, \"but that was never a lasting solution. The only power that could ever hold the Mad Void in check was the Void itself. And now it does.\n\n\"That was the original intent of this business, you see. The spell was merely part of the process. As was each and every life it lived. A crash course in what it means to be mortal, to see the world in the way gods and demons never can. And you are the final result of that spell, Ned.\"\n\n\"Me?\" Ned sat up. \"But I'm not very good at anything.\"\n\n\"Exactly. You have no particular talents, no greatness, no exceptional skills or abilities. You can't even keep yourself alive. You are incompetent and inconsequential, and I can think of no being in this universe farther removed from godhood.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute.\" Ned mulled this over. \"You're saying I'm supposed to be an idiot?\"\n\n\"If it makes you feel better to think of it like that,\" said the raven.\n\n\"You aren't an idiot,\" said the Red Goddess. \"You're just mortal. Very, very mortal. Perhaps too much so.\" She put her hand on his cheek and smiled. \"But that is your burden, Ned. Bear it well. The universe depends on it.\"\n\nShe moved toward the tent flap. \"If you'll excuse me, I must return to my mountain. There are more threats to this world than just you, and I still have my duties. Take care, Ned.\"\n\nShe stepped out of the tent, and Miriam stepped inside a moment later. Ned didn't ask if she'd seen the Red Goddess leave.\n\nMiriam's fins raised. \"Ned, you're back.\"\n\n\"I'm back.\"\n\nHe stretched and noticed the absence of so many aches and pains that he'd grown used to carrying. He threw aside the blanket to reveal his naked body. His scars had vanished. His left arm remained a tad greenish, and his right eye was still missing, but everything else seemed in working order.\n\nMiriam averted her gaze. \"Sir?\"\n\nHe jumped to his feet, grabbed her by the shoulders, and gave her a long, long kiss. The gesture surprised her, but she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back.\n\nHe pulled back suddenly and started getting dressed.\n\n\"Ned, are you okay?\" she asked.\n\n\"Great. I'm a boob. A complete, utter screwup. But I'm supposed to be, so that's the good news.\"\n\n\"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"Don't worry about it.\" He pulled on some breeches and grabbed his shirt. \"But do you want to know something else?\" He gave her a peck and ran his tongue across his lips. \"I think I'm beginning to like the taste of fish.\"\n\nHe exited the tent, and smiling, she followed him.\n\nIt was cold outside, but he didn't seem to notice. He strolled briskly through the citadel, grinning and waving at everyone. Many of the soldiers didn't recognize him without his scars, but they waved back. Most of Ogre Company was working to fix the damaged citadel, which had to be rebuilt from the ground up after its last siege.\n\nA woolly ox pulling a cart of stones stopped and nodded in Ned's direction.\n\n\"Good to see you too, Seamus,\" replied Ned.\n\nThe ox snorted and continued on its way.\n\nNed stopped suddenly. \"Oh, no. The deadline. Did I miss the deadline?\"\n\n\"Don't worry, sir. The Legion decided we weren't such a waste of resources after all, once we filed a report on the doomsday battle with the demon army. They didn't believe us at first. Until we had a goddess testify on our behalf. Even upper management couldn't argue with that.\"\n\nThey passed Elmer, who seemed to be deriving excessive pleasure from driving nails into boards. So much so that he didn't notice Ned.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But Ulga paused conjuring nails and waved at him. Lewis and Martin busily stacked stones in a large pile, but the twins still took the time to salute, and Ned saluted back.\n\nMiriam held out his coat. \"Aren't you cold?\"\n\nHe slipped it on. \"Thanks.\" \"No problem, Ned.\"\n\nHe leaned in to kiss her again.\n\n\"Excuse me, sir,\" said Regina.\n\nNed froze mid-lean. \"Archmajor, how are you?\"\n\n\"Very well, sir,\" the Amazon replied, \"and you?\"\n\n\"Pretty good.\"\n\nFrank appeared. His hands were bandaged. Ogre bones were slow to heal, but they'd mended enough to allow the use of his fingers. He had a black eye and a fresh purple bruise on his shoulder. He carried a club in one hand, a spear in the other. \"Hey, Ned.\"\n\nNed bobbed his head in Frank's direction. \"Hey, Frank.\"\n\n\"Good to have you back, sir.\" He tossed Regina the spear. \"Are you ready?\"\n\n\"Sure.\" She nodded at Ned. \"Take care, sir.\"\n\nThe ogre and the Amazon walked away. Frank put his hand on her back, and she didn't seem to mind.\n\n\"Are they dating now?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"About four months,\" said Miriam, \"if you can call it dating. They mostly just beat the hell out of each other, and have drinks after. But Frank should best her any day now. Then they can get on with it.\"\n\nNed wasn't so certain of Frank's victory. He was a formidable warrior, but no one could match Regina when it came down to sheer stubbornness. But one day after her fierce Amazon pride had been satisfied, she'd let him win.\n\n\"Maybe after he gets that promotion to commander,\" thought Ned aloud.\n\n\"But you're commander, sir,\" said Miriam.\n\n\"Not anymore. I'm through with it, through with soldiering. I can't make up for everything the Void's done, but I can at least put aside my sword. Besides, I was always a terrible soldier. Frank is the best one for the job. He's good with the men, and he's big enough to keep their respect.\"\n\n\"Regina isn't going to like that.\"\n\n\"She'll get over it.\"\n\nThe citadel was a jumble of tents now, but one building had been rebuilt. The new pub was not strictly up to code. The ceiling was a little low for ogres, and the structure leaned a bit to the left. It might collapse in a month or two, but it appeared safe for now. And Ned was thirsty.\n\nStepping inside the darkened building, he was immediately greeted with a round of cheers. Ward slapped Ned across the shoulder, sending Ned sprawling across the floor.\n\n\"Whoops,\" said Ward. \"Sorry about that, sir.\" He helped Ned up. \"What kept you?\"\n\n\"Exploding galaxies takes a lot out of a guy,\" replied Ned.\n\n\"In that case, sir,\" said Ward, \"let me be the first to buy you a drink.\"\n\nNibbly Ned shifted on his perch on Ward's shoulder. The vulture stared Ned right in the eye. Ned stared right back, and Nibbly blinked first. The bird tucked his head under a wing.\n\nThey bellied up to a bar that, though just right for ogres, was a little too high for humans. Owens and Sally were working behind the counter. The salamander roasted various cuts of meat, while Owens tended bar. He presented Ned with a smile and a drink.\n\n\"What is it?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"It's what you want,\" replied the oracle. \"Trust me, sir. And that steak you planned on ordering is on its way. How's it coming, Sally?\"\n\n\"Almost done.\" She eyed the piece of meat she was breathing on. \"You wanted it rare, right?\"\n\n\"Medium rare,\" answered Owens. \"Right, sir?\"\n\nNed actually wanted it well done, but he didn't feel like contradicting the oracle. Anyway, who was to say that he didn't want it medium rare? The oracle might know something he didn't.\n\n\"So what do you hear for tomorrow?\" asked Ned.\n\n\"Oh, nothing much, sir. Death, destruction, chaos, strife, and conflict. Business as usual.\" Owens tilted his head and listened. \"And a spot of rain.\"\n\nGoblins had to take turns standing on each other's shoulders in stacks of three to place their orders. Ace balanced atop an unsteady pole of drunken goblins.\n\n\"To Never Dead Ned,\" toasted Ace. \"Nobody dies better.\"\n\nThe soldiers smashed their mugs together, shattering most of them. Ace's tower toppled, but he managed impressively to land on his back without spilling a drop. He jumped to his feet and downed the drink just before a wave of goblins jumped on his back and started shouting their orders.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Miriam tapped her glass gently against Ned's.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 11 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But if you're not going to be a soldier anymore, what are you going to do?\"\n\nNed shrugged. \"I'll figure out something.\"\n\nShe moved closer and took his hand.\n\nHe frowned at the burn scar on her wrist where the Mad Void had touched her. \"Sorry about that.\"\n\n\"Don't worry about it.\" She smoothed his hair. \"You know, Ned, you don't have to be a soldier to stay here. I hear there's an opening for a gardener.\"\n\n\"Is that so?\"\n\n\"So how are you at gardening, Ned?\"\n\nHe took a long draft of ale and slammed the mug on the counter.\n\n\"Absolutely terrible.\"", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Add to story with matching character/world context. Focus: comedy, fantasy. Include: humor.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "I was Sorn dead.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Or, to be more accurate, undead.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not that there is much difference between the two. It's just a matter of degrees really.\n\nWhen I say undead, I do not mean vampyre, ghoul, or graveyard fiend. There are many versions of unlife. These are only the most common. My state was far less debilitating. Bright lights bothered me to some noticeable degree, and I preferred my meat undercooked. Once reaching adulthood, I'd become ageless. Most means of mortal harm could not truly hurt me, and I possessed a smattering of unusual gifts not known among the living. Yet all these advantages came at a high price.\n\nExactly how I came to be born undead is a long, complicated story not really worth telling in detail. It involves my great-great-great-great-grandfather, a renowned hero of the realm, and his conflict with a dark wizard. This wizard, his name is lost to history so I just call him \"Nasty Larry\" for convenience' sake, had raised an army of orcish zombies to ravage the land. Now everyone knows ores are terrible things, and zombies aren't much fun either. Mix the two together and you get an evil greater than the sum of its parts. Naturally, a legion of heroes was assembled, and the requisite last stand against doomsday was fought and won by a hairs breadth. My great-great-great-great-grandfather slew Nasty Larry, cleaving his head from his shoulders with one sweep of a mighty broadsword. Nasty Larry's head rolled to his slayer's feet and pronounced a terrible curse, as decapitated wizard's heads are prone to do.\n\n\"With my dying breath, I curse thee and thy bloodline. From now until the end of time, the sixth child of every generation shall be made a gruesome abomination. A twisted, horrible thing that shall shun the light and dwell in miserable darkness.\"\n\nThat bit of business finished, Nasty Larry died. According to legend, he melted into a puddle, the sky turned black, and—if one could believe such tales—the land within a hundred miles turned to inhospitable swamp. That was the end of Nasty Larry's small, yet noteworthy, influence on my life.\n\nI often wondered why my parents chose to have a sixth child, being forewarned as they were. They had many excuses. The most common being, \"We lost count.\" Second common, and far more acceptable in my opinion, was, \"Well, none of our family had ever had six, and we thought it might not have taken.\" Perfectly reasonable. Not all curses grab hold, and one couldn't live one's life fretting over every utterance of every bodiless head one ran across.\n\nBeing undead was not all that horrible a curse. Unfortunately, this was not the end of my worries. For besides being made a thing born to dwell in darkened misery, I was also made, in the infinite wisdom of fate, a girl. These two conditions taken individually were minor handicaps, but toss them together, and you would understand the difficulties I experienced growing up.\n\nThere are kingdoms where a woman is prized for her mind, where she is more than a trophy or a poorly paid house maid. Kingdoms where the chains of a thousand years of chauvinism have finally rusted away. I was not born in one of these kingdoms.\n\nI was not very popular among the male suitors of my village. It was nothing personal. Husbands just prefer living wives, and I met so few potential spouses locked in my parents' basement. At the age of eighteen, I was already an old, undead maid sitting in a darkened cellar, waiting to die.\n\nOf course, I don't die. Not like normal people. Certainly, old age wouldn't accomplish the task. So I settled in for a very long wait. I figured it would be another fifty years before my parents died and one of my brothers or sisters would inherit caretaking duties of their poor, wretched sibling. One of their children would take over next. And so on. And so on. Until one day, they either forgot me, or all died, or maybe, just maybe, an angry mob would drag me from the shadows and burn me at the stake.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Not much to look forward to.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But no one is master of their fate, and my lot was not all that terrible in the end.\n\nAll that changed with the arrival of Ghastly Edna. That wasn't her real name. I never learned it. I just called her \"Ghastly Edna\" because it seemed a proper witch's name. She was a grotesquely large woman, bearlike in proportions, with a pointed hat, a giant hooked nose, and a long, thin face. Her skin, while not truly green, possessed a slick olive hue. Her nose even had a wart. Ghastly Edna's only flaw, witchly speaking, was a set of perfectly straight, perfectly polished teeth.\n\nThe day I met Ghastly Edna changed everything, and I remember it well. The basement door opened. I scrambled to the foot of the stairs to collect my daily meal. Instead, she came lumbering down. Her bulky frame clouded the light filtering behind her. She placed a callused hand under my chin and smiled thinly.\n\n\"Yes, yes. You shall do, child.\"\n\nGhastly Edna purchased me from my parents for a puny sum. I'm certain they were glad to be rid of their cursed daughter, and I couldn't honestly blame them. My new mentor whisked me away to her cottage in the middle of some forsaken woods far from civilization. The first thing she did was clean me up. It took six long hours to wash away the accumulated filth of eighteen years and cut the tangle of hair atop my head. When she finally finished, she stood me before a small mirror and frowned.\n\n\"No, no, no. I do not like this. I do not like this one bit.\"\n\nThe effect this had on my self-esteem was immediate and crushing. I'd always know myself to be a hideous thing. Yet Ghastly Edna was no prize beauty herself, and to evoke such a revolted tone could only mean that Nasty Larry's curse had really had its way with me.\n\n\"You're not ugly, child,\" she corrected. \"You're quite\"—her long face squished itself into a scowl—\"lovely.\"\n\nI had yet to dare look in the mirror for fear of being driven mad by own hideousness. Now I chanced a sidelong glance through the corner of my eye. It was not the sanity-twisting sight I had expected, but still a far cry from lovely.\n\n\"But what about these?\" I cupped the large, fatty mounds on my chest.\n\n\"Those are breasts,\" Ghastly Edna said. \"They're supposed to be there.\"\n\n\"But they're so... so...\"\n\n\"Round. Firm.\" She sighed. \"That's how they're supposed to be. Ideally.\"\n\nI found that hard to believe, but I wasn't about to argue with the person who'd rescued me from my solitary existence.\n\n\"And that bottom of yours.\" She mumbled. \"You could bounce a gold piece off it.\"\n\n\"But the skin is pale,\" I offered, trying to please her.\n\n\"It's not pale, dear. It's alabaster.\" She circled me twice, looking more disappointed with each passing moment. \"And I don't believe I've ever seen eyes quite that shade of green. Or lips so full and soft. And your hair. I washed it with year-old soap, and it's still as soft as gossamer.\" She drew close and sniffed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And it smells of sunflowers.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 37 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What about my teeth? Surely they're not supposed to look like that.\"\n\nShe checked my gums and teeth with her fingers. \"No, dear. You're quite correct. They're a tad too sharp. But it's not an obvious flaw, and besides that, they're nice and white. Good gums too. The tongue has a little fork in it, but only if you're looking for it.\"\n\nShe ordered me into a seat, still naked and slightly damp from the bath.\n\n\"Are you certain you spent all your life in that basement?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"No exercise. Dismal diet. Dwelling in filth. Yet somehow you come out like this. Not even half-mad as far as I can tell.\"\n\n\"You mean, I'm not cursed, ma'am?\"\n\n\"Oh, you are cursed, child, and undead. That much is certain. Curses come in many forms however, and not all are as bad. Especially death curses. It's tricky enough to cast a decent spell when you're still alive. But throwing one out as you're expiring requires a certain knack. Apparently, the wizard who cursed your family was not as in control of his magic as he should've been. The undead part came through, but the hideousness element didn't quite make it. The magic must've had a better idea as it sometimes does.\"\n\nShe handed me a towel. \"Cover yourself, dear. I can't bear to look upon you anymore.\"\n\nI did as I was told.\n\n\"That's the thing about death curses. One really shouldn't employ them unless one feels they can pull it off. It just makes the rest of us look bad.\"\n\nShe spent several minutes rocking in her chair, mulling over the situation. A dread fell upon me. I didn't want to be sent back to my cellar if I could help it. Given no other choice, I'd accepted my fate. Now my universe was filled with other possibilities, and I didn't want to lose them.\n\nGhastly Edna snapped up from her chair.\n\n\"Well, dear, the magic called me to you. Far be it from me to contradict it. Your loveliness just means you'll have to work harder at your witchery A handicap yes, but not an insurmountable one.\" She peeled the wart from her nose. \"False, darling.\" She winked.\n\nShe proceeded to wipe the greenish makeup from her face to reveal skin that, while rough and haggard, was not especially hideous. She removed six layers of clothing to show that her hunch was nothing more than an illusion of well-placed fabric. When she removed her hat, I realized that Ghastly Edna was a large and ugly woman, but not at all witchly without her full outfit.\n\n\"We all need a little help, dear. You just need far more than I. Now let me see what I have here that might do the trick.\" She began digging through various moldy trunks filled with equally moldy clothing.\n\nMy heart leaped with joy\n\nGhastly Edna spent the next six months acquainting me with the ins and outs of witchly wardrobe. Wearing just the right outfit was fifty percent of a witch's business, she ex plained. She was not exaggerating. It took a great deal of work to make one look as bad as was expected. Especially for me, my mentor pointed out, as I was afflicted with a form most unsuitable for a witch.\n\nOnce I'd mastered the art of looking witchly, she proceeded to teach me the black arts: necromancy, demonology the forgotten language of unspeaking things, and forbidden nature lore. The powers of magic that had drawn Ghastly Edna to me had not been mistaken, and in due course, I mastered the craft of the witch.\n\nAnd for a while, I was happy.\n\nUntil the dark day when they finally killed her.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand with seventy-four sentences sentences, maintaining consistency with introduced elements.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "[[OOC: Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'tattered']]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Exactly how long I lived with Ghastly Edna, I couldn't say It was forever autumn in those woods, and as a side effect of my ageless nature, I do not measure time well. I assume Ghastly Edna did grow older, but as she was a wrinkled, old witch when I'd first met her, she didn't get more wrinkled, at least not noticeably so, over the course of my tutelage.\n\nHowever long it took, it was soon after I'd learned everything she could teach me that she woke me early one morning. The morning light perturbed the undead in me, and Ghastly Edna respected this. I knew right away something was wrong.\n\n\"No questions, dear,\" she said. \"I need you to go to the lake.\"\n\nI stirred from my bed. \"But, mistress...\"\n\nShe put her fingers to my lips. \"Shush, child. I don't have time to explain, and even if I did, I don't have to. You'll do as I n say\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Very good. Now you must go and bathe yourself in the lake. And I'm not talking about merely your face and hands. I mean, your entire body I know the light will bother you, so you can wear your hat to shade your eyes. But otherwise, you must strip off every other stitch. After you've gotten yourself nice and clean, you must hurry back. I'll be dead by then, and we'll have one last talk before I go.\"\n\nThis final piece of news stopped me cold.\n\n\"But...\"\n\n\"I said, shush, child. Now get dressed. We'll have time to talk when you return. But you must hurry to the lake.\" She lumbered from my small room, barely squeezing through the door. \"And don't bother with the whole outfit. Just your hat and your black dress, that one with the loose skirt.\"\n\nI always did as Ghastly Edna told, and today was no exception. As I got dressed, I couldn't help but think about her death. Not for a moment did I doubt it was going to be. She often spoke of the future and other things that she could not know. It was the magic. It talked to her, and as far as I could tell, it never lied. It was not fate, she'd explained once, but rather the past yet to be. Not to be confused with the future that might come or the present that never was. Subtle distinctions I'd never truly understood, but Ghastly Edna had reassured me this was not my fault. It could not be properly explained by her. Only by the magic, and the magic had never talked to me. Rather, I'd yet to hear it.\n\nI slipped on my dress. It was comfortable cloth cut in a most unflattering way. It failed to hide away all the unwanted charms of my unwitchly form, but it was better than nothing. Normally, I wouldn't dare be seen outside without a tattered cloak and a frumpy shawl. I scowled, pressing a palm against my flat stomach. I'd been working to develop a flabby belly and chubby behind for as long as I could remember. The curse kept them tight and toned, no matter how much I ate.\n\n\"Hurry up, dear,\" Ghastly Edna said.\n\nI grabbed my hat, tattered and pointed with a wide brim, and headed for the door. On the way out, I stopped and watched my mistress, her back to me, fussing over the stove.\n\nShe did not turn around. \"And take Newt with you. He'll soon be yours anyway Might as well get used to each other.\"\n\nI still couldn't bring myself to leave. Not that I thought staying would do much good. If the magic said she was to die then I couldn't stop it.\n\n\"Be off, child.\" She glanced over her shoulder. \"Don't make me box your ears.\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\nThe hard light burned my eyes. I tolerated it, but its rays prickled my skin. I shivered beneath a warm breeze. I pulled my brim over my face and gave myself time to adjust to the morning.\n\nI called for Newt.\n\n\"You don't have to shout,\" he said from the cabin roof. \"I'm right here.\"\n\n\"We have to go to the lake.\"\n\nNewt cocked his head to one side, squinting one eye at me. \"What?\"\n\n\"The mistress ordered it.\"\n\nHe cocked his head the other way. \"What for?\"\n\n\"She didn't say. Just that we must hurry\"\n\n\"We?\"\n\n\"You're to come with me.\"\n\n\"Are you certain?\"\n\nGhastly Edna shouted from the darkened cabin. \"Go on, Newt! Do as she says!\"\n\n\"Oh, very well.\"\n\nNewt was my mistress's familiar. Familiars come in countless varieties: demons molded into animal shape, enchanted creatures, dreams made flesh, flesh made dream. Ghastly Edna had created Newt by enchanting a waterfowl with intelligence and speech and then grafting a pinch of pure demonic essence. The end result was an ill-tempered duck, unhappy with the entire world and quite willing to share his unhappiness.\n\nBeing a duck was what he was most unhappy with. Not just a duck, but a white duck. Brown feathers trimmed his wings and ran down his back, but they failed to make him more sinister. Even if he'd been midnight black, I don't think it would've helped. Ducks, even demon ducks, just aren't terrifying to look upon.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He hopped off the roof to land beside me.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Let's get going then. If we must. You'd better get dressed.\"\n\n\"I am dressed.\"\n\n\"I think not. You're barely covered at all.\"\n\nI explained that this was all Ghastly Edna allowed me to wear. He quacked his displeasure. We walked the path down to the lake. Newt had a peculiar way of walking. His bowlegged swagger seemed more ridiculous than a traditional waddle. I'd told him once, and he'd told me to mind my own business. So I did. Even if he did walk like a bird with a rash between his legs.\n\nWhen we got to the lake, I hesitated to do as I was told. I'd spent most of my life in the dark. I'd bathed in the lake many times before, but always at night. Not that the sun was a true danger. I just wasn't used to it. It was so bright, and I would be so exposed.\n\nNewt sighed. \"Get on with it, would you?\"\n\nI pulled my hat tighter on my head and slipped off my dress.\n\nNewt sighed again. \"Dark gods, girl, you're beautiful.\" It was not intended as a compliment.\n\nI quickly immersed myself up to my chest, hiding from the warm sun beneath the cold water. \"It's not my fault.\"\n\n\"Have you tried eating lard?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"And it didn't do anything?\"\n\n\"Nothing does anything.\"\n\nHe paced back and forth a safe distance from the shore. He didn't mind water, but only in shallow tubs and puddles.\n\n\"Self-mutilation. A nasty scar or two couldn't hurt.\"\n\n\"I don't scar,\" I replied sadly \"I considered sawing off a limb once, but the mistress said it would just grow back. She says as long as I live, I'll look like this.\"\n\n\"Bad luck.\"\n\nNewt pushed his wings up in a duckly shrug. In this particular matter, he could sympathize. Just as I was too pretty to be a witch, he was too white and fluffy to be a creature of fear.\n\nMy bath didn't take long. I was just emerging when Newt raised his head and glanced around the woods. \"I think there's somebody out there.\"\n\n\"There's nobody out there,\" I replied, even as I slid on my dress to cover myself. It hid little. The cloth clung to my damp skin.\n\n\"I think there is,\" he said.\n\nI joined him in scanning. At night, I could've seen everything. During the day, my eyes suffered. I didn't see anything or anyone, but I felt something. I wondered if this was perhaps the magic finally talking to me. Ghastly Edna said that it talked to everyone, but most were unwilling to listen.\n\n\"I think we should get back,\" I said.\n\nI refused to allow myself to run back to the cabin. I wanted to flee to my sanctuary from the light and phantom eyes. But I was not about to give in to the dread. The farther we got from the lake, the better I felt. My sense of foreboding ebbed, then rose as the cabin came into view.\n\n\"That was a complete waste of time.\" Newt stopped and peered at me. \"Are you crying, girl?\"\n\nI wiped a tear away. I didn't want to go back. I told myself if I didn't go on, if I just stayed put, then Ghastly Edna would never have to die. I knew it wasn't true, but it was the only thing I could do.\n\n\"Why are you crying?\"\n\nI pushed away my tears. Witches weren't supposed to cry\n\n\"What is it?\" Newt demanded.\n\n\"She's dead.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I should've stayed.\"\n\n\"What are you talking about?\"\n\n\"She's dead.\"\n\n\"Why would you think that?\"\n\n\"Because she told me she would be.\"\n\nNewt spread his wings in alarm. \"She told you! She didn't tell me! Why didn't she tell me?\" He dashed toward the cabin in a speedy, flapping skip. \"Why didn't she tell me?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "I ran after him, overtaking his short strides and reaching the cabin before him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I threw open the door and stepped inside.\n\nGhastly Edna lay on the floor, a sword blade buried deep in her back. A scraggly man, hairy and dirty, poked around the cupboard. He turned, revealing a scarred face.\n\n\"What have we here?\"\n\nHe leered. I'd never been leered at before, and I didn't like it.\n\nHe rubbed his grimy hands together. \"My, what a healthy young girl we have here.\"\n\nA second brute emerged from my room. \"Hey, look what I found. I think someone else lives here.\"\n\n\"I'll say.\"\n\nThe brute laid eyes upon me and wiped his mouth. The two killers advanced, no doubt intending to force themselves upon me. Newt strolled in between my legs. He took one brief glimpse of Ghastly Edna and turned on the killers. His eyes glinted in a way I'd never seen before.\n\n\"What'cha gonna do, girl? Sic your bird on us?\"\n\nNewt bellowed a monstrous quack, deep and bestial. It wasn't very scary, but as scary as any quack could be. The demon rose within him, and he pounced. A storm of webbed feet, slashing bill, and slapping feathers tore into the killers. They ran screaming out the door. Newt chased after them, squawking curses. I left the murderous scum to their executioner and checked on Ghastly Edna.\n\nI pulled the sword out of her and rolled her over. She looked so peaceful. It was almost a shame to bother her, but it was her last order.\n\nMy ability to talk to the dead was a gift of my curse. Witches knew ways to speak with the deceased, but it was complicated magic. On the other hand, I could awaken the soul of a fresh corpse with just a touch. Provided the soul was still in the flesh. The spirit usually remains for a few minutes, just to be certain that the body has really expired. Ghastly Edna, knowing I would be back, would certainly still be waiting.\n\nNewt strolled back into the cottage. He was covered in blood, none of it his own. He left scarlet, webbed footprints behind him.\n\n\"They're dead.\"\n\nI was not as comforted by this as I would have thought. The killers being dead didn't bring back my mistress.\n\n\"You should've seen it. I speared out the big guy's heart and showed it to him before he died. And the little one, sliced off his head with three slashes of my bill. I don't mean to brag or anything, but it was something to behold.\" He grinned, but the grin vanished quickly. \"Ah, damn it. I can't believe she's dead.\"\n\n\"Quiet. I need to concentrate.\"\n\nI laid a hand on her stomach and dug around for Ghastly Edna's soul. I wasn't certain I could do it. I'd only practiced on animals up to now: rabbits, squirrels, sparrows. But my first person wasn't much harder. It took only a moment, and there was no resistance.\n\nHer eyes snapped to life. \"Hello, child.\"\n\nShe squirmed stiffly on the floor.\n\n\"Be a dear and help me up, would you?\"\n\nGetting her to her feet proved difficult. Her corpse and her spirit were barely connected now, and she hadn't been very graceful when alive.\n\nShe wiggled her fingers mechanically. \"Excellent work, child. Now help me to the table.\"\n\nOn rigid legs, she clomped to the chair and sat down. Her knees cracked. She patted the chair beside her.\n\n\"Quickly now My body is a leaking vessel, and we haven't much time before I must take more permanent leave of it.\"\n\nI sat, and Newt hopped on the table.\n\n\"Dear boy, you're a mess.\"\n\n\"I am anointed in the blood of your murderers. You have been avenged.\"\n\n\"Hardly.\" Ghastly Edna smiled. Or perhaps the left side of her face twitched without her knowledge. \"Those two were merely the tools of another. But I appreciate the effort just the same. It's the thought that counts.\" Her face went blank again for a moment. \"Now the girl and I have matters we must discuss. Things you need not hear. Besides, you're dripping all over my floor. Go outside, and clean yourself up.\"\n\nNewt, like I, didn't question Ghastly Edna. He quacked, turned up his bill, and left.\n\nI took Ghastly Edna's hand. She'd always been ice cold to the touch, even alive, and I'd found comfort in that before. But not today\n\n\"I should've stayed.\"\n\n\"Then you would have been killed as well.\"\n\n\"But they were just brutes...\"\n\n\"Brutes or not, a witch was to die here this day That was what had to be.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The past yet to be,\" I said.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 44 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Close, but no. This was the present that would be, but need not be as it would.\"\n\nI didn't understand, and this last bit of confusion weakened my will. I started to cry. Just a few tears. I expected Ghastly Edna to chide me for the display, but she brushed the tears from my cheek. She ended up poking me in the eye too, but this was merely an accidental twitch of her inflexible arm. The jab made me cry harder.\n\n\"The time has come, child, for you to strike out on your own, find your own destiny. I know you're scared, but you'll find the world is not so frightening. And you've got a lot going for you. You've a good heart and good sense. This undead business is rather minor really, and you're an accomplished witch. Accomplished enough to overcome your unfortunate physical defects.\"\n\n\"I don't want to go. I want to stay. Here. With you.\"\n\nShe laughed. Her bouncing corpse nearly toppled from the chair. \"Unfortunately, I must be leaving soon. And so should you. Things change, dear. Even for the ageless. You can't hide away from the world forever. I know you'll do fine. In fact, I know you'll do me proud.\"\n\nShe winked. Her eye held shut.\n\nHer voice became a whisper. \"Before I leave, I offer you these three pieces of advice. First, be wary of mortals. They may be small in power, but they are large in number.\n\n\"Second, remember that people, human or otherwise, are, with rare exception, basically good at heart. Treat them as you would be treated, and you'll almost never go wrong.\n\n\"And thirdly, and this is something you should never forget, feed a troll and you'll never be rid of it.\"\n\nShe laughed again.\n\n\"Almost time. When you leave this place, follow the trail around the lake and through the hills. When you reach a fork in the path, youll have a choice to make. Head east and you 11 take the first step toward truly avenging my death. Or dying horribly yourself. Or possibly both. The magic is not entirely clear on this.\n\n\"Head north, on the other hand, and you'll find a life of quiet contentment and simple pleasures. More happiness than most people happen on, but less than you might find to the east. Even with that horrible death possibility On this, the magic is quite clear.\n\n\"I wish you well whatever choice you make. Now, give me a hug before I go.\"\n\nYears of living with Ghastly Edna left me ill-prepared for this last instruction. Displays of affection were not, strictly speaking, against the witch's code, but she had never been very affectionate. Not in a touching, doting way.\n\n\"Come now, child. I don't have all day.\"\n\nI wrapped my arms around her ample frame for the first time ever. She was a large, lumpy woman. I'd never realized just how lumpy. She hugged me back with the one limp arm she still had some power over.\n\n\"I love you,\" I whispered.\n\nIt was another first.\n\n\"I know, dear. I love you too.\"\n\nShe shivered as her soul slipped from her flesh. I felt it go. It floated down to the cool embrace of the earth where any good witch's soul went.\n\nI couldn't bring myself to let her go. I held her corpse tight, and even if it was an unwitchly thing to do, I cried for a good long while.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue story, preserving context. Themes: humor", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "The path joined up with a road, and I decided to follow it.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'd made my decision at the fork, and I assumed my fate would now find me.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Everything outside the forest was one vast, foreign land.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Newt had lived most of his life by Ghastly Edna's side as well and couldn't offer anything in the way of advice. But all roads lead somewhere, even if it isn't always someplace worth visiting.\n\nAfter finally leaving behind the hills, the edge of the world I had known, an apprehension fell upon me. And a sadness for my lost mistress. And an exhilaration for whatever lay ahead. A strange, heart-fluttering mix.\n\nNewt stopped. \"Can we rest? My feet are killing me.\"\n\nI kept going. \"Time enough for rest later. After the sun has set.\n\nThe bright orange globe was an hour from sinking below the horizon. I planned on stopping and watching it go. I'd always liked the sunset. Not just the pretty colors of the sky, but the soft dark of early night. The light of day was obnoxious and hard. It burned away the mystery of all it shone upon. Dusk was subtle and gentle. The world always looked a little brighter beneath the gliding shadows.\n\nNewt groaned. \"We've been walking for hours.\"\n\n\"And we'll walk until I say otherwise.\" I didn't care when we rested, but Newt was my familiar. It was important to establish my authority now, while our link was new.\n\nHe jogged after me. \"Easy for you to say. For every step you take, I take four. And I've got flat feet.\"\n\n\"So fly. I don't mind.\"\n\nHe quacked in an annoyed manner.\n\nMagic is not a something-for-nothing proposition. The enchantments on the duck gave him intellect at the cost of instincts. He'd forgotten how to fly. He could get airborne in a pinch. These were always short flights, no higher than the cabin roof and for brief seconds, awkward displays of clumsy flapping wings and muttered vulgarities. The remembrance made me smile.\n\n\"Can't you do something? Something with your magic?\"\n\n\"There is something, but you won't like it.\"\n\n\"Anything's better than taking another step.\"\n\n\"As you wish. First, raise your right leg.\"\n\nNewt did so.\n\n\"Now, put it back down, and raise your left.\"\n\nHe did so reluctantly. \"Are you certain this will work?\"\n\n\"Quite certain. Now put down your left leg, flap your wings three times, and quack once.\"\n\nHe tilted his head skeptically.\n\n\"Trust me.\"\n\nAfter he'd done as instructed, I held up a hand, fingers bent clawlike. I circled Newt while mumbling in witchly fashion. Then I scooped him up, tucked him under my arm, and started walking.\n\n\"Is that better?\" I asked.\n\nHe squirmed. I knew very well that he hated being carried. He considered it undignified, but he didn't complain. His feet must have been very sore.\n\n\"What was all that business with the leg raising and wing flapping?\"\n\n\"Practice. A witch should always keep you guessing. Did it work?\"\n\nHe shifted to a more comfortable position. \"It was very peculiar.\"\n\nI blushed. Being peculiar was something all good witches should be. Anyone could act mad, but it took a special knack to be strange without overdoing it.\n\nThe road led from the hills to another forest very much like the one I had just left, yet different. Ghastly Edna's woods had always treated me well, and we'd become old friends. This new forest was a stranger. So I paused to introduce myself.\n\n\"Hello. Very pleased to make your acquaintance.\"\n\n\"What?\" Newt said.\n\n\"I wasn't talking to you.\"\n\nA squirrel scrambled across the road. It bounced to my feet and placed a walnut before me.\n\nI bent on one knee, collected the walnut, and scratched the squirrel on his head. \"Thank you. I have nothing to offer in return.\"\n\n\"Your presence alone brightens the woods, child. But if you keep to this road, you will find a blight in this forest. We would be most grateful should you remove it.\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\nThe messenger of the forest scampered away.\n\n\"We can't even eat that,\" Newt said. \"You'd think the woods would pay you something more practical.\"\n\n\"It's not a payment. It's an offering.\"\n\n\"I'm just suggesting that perhaps something more substantial wouldn't be out of line. A fresh rabbit wouldn't be asking too much, would it?\" He licked his bill.\n\n\"It didn't have to give me anything.\"\n\n\"Exactly. And nothing would have been better than a nut. This is just drawing attention to it.\"\n\n\"You're missing the point.\"\n\n\"Apparently. So can we stop now?\"\n\n\"Just a little farther.\"\n\n\"Oh, can't we remove the blight tomorrow?\" he asked.\n\nI kept walking. He muttered anew.\n\nIt wasn't five minutes later that we came upon the blight of these woods: a pair of robbers. One was a man, unkempt and unarmed. He was not entirely unattractive in a disheveled, wild sort of way. The most handsome man I'd ever seen, but I'd only seen three others. And this was only if one counted my father, who had been a blackened silhouette in the bright light of the cellar door.\n\nThe second robber was a troll. The first I'd ever seen, but he looked as I'd been taught. He was short, barely as high as my shoulder, but nearly as wide as his height. His body was thin, but his limbs were thick, ending in hands and feet made for a creature twice his size. His head was a flattened oval with two large, yellow eyes, a small crooked nose, and a broad mouth capable of swallowing a hog in one bite. There were giant, pointed ears. Light fuzz ran down his mottled gray skin across the arms to his shoulders and down his spine. He was naked, save for a belt whose sole purpose was to hold a leather pouch, and he wore a ring on one of his fingers.\n\nAn interesting fact about trolls is that they are not held together by joints of flesh. Their bodies are modular. An innate magical cohesion keeps them from falling apart. The benefits to this are several. It makes them hard to kill. Only a fatal stab to the heart or head can reliably destroy one. Even then, if another troll happens upon the corpse, he can always sal vage the remains as their parts are interchangeable. The lack of joints also allows them to move in ways that are impossible for other creatures. They can strike from all sorts of unpredictable angles. They're also strong as two ogres.\n\nFortunately a troll left to his own devices is rarely a danger. They aren't violent by nature. A more ambitious troll might occasionally claim a bridge and extort a toll. But for the most part, they would rather be left alone.\n\nThis troll seemed possessed of a quiet sadness. I could see it in his eyes and the slump of his shoulders. As troll shoulders were usually slumped to begin with, this was a subtle difference.\n\nThe robbers didn't even bother to hide as I limped to them on a stiff leg.\n\n\"Your valuables or your life, crone.\"\n\nI allowed myself a moment of pride. It was nice to know my act was working.\n\nThe bandit prodded me with a knuckle. \"Can't you hear, old woman?\"\n\n\"I heard you.\"\n\nI raised my head enough to see the troll. He was standing back, seemingly disinterested in the robbery.\n\n\"Then give us what you have. Otherwise, I'll have to have Gwurm tear you apart. I don't like that. Leaves a terrible mess.\"\n\nThe troll spoke up. \"He'll have me kill you anyway, miss. You're better off running for it.\"\n\n\"Shut up, Gwurm.\" The robber folded his arms across his chest. \"Well, hag. What's it going to be?\"\n\nNewt fidgeted in my arms. \"Let me kill him.\"\n\n\"I'll handle it,\" I replied.\n\nThe bandit stepped back. \"Your duck talks.\"\n\n\"Quite a lot actually. Too much perhaps.\"\n\n\"Oh, please let me kill him. I'll be quick about it.\"\n\nI boxed his snapping bill. \"I said I'll handle it.\"\n\n\"Yes, mistress.\"\n\n\"A talking duck,\" the bandit said. \"It must be magic.\"\n\n\"It certainly must,\" I agreed. \"I know of no ordinary talking ducks.\"\n\n\"It's worth a fortune. Give it to me, crone.\"\n\n\"I think perhaps you overestimate his value.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Enough of this.\" The bandit twisted a ring on his finger. \"Kill her, Gwurm.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, hell, Pik, can't you kill this one yourself\" Despite his reservations, the troll moved toward me mechanically.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "I could have killed him quite easily, but I was reluctant to do so.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "His body was clearly not his own.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Any harm he might inflict on me wouldn't be of his own doing. He was merely the weapon, and it seemed a terrible shame to break a fine sword just because it happened to be in the hands of a bandit at the moment. More importantly, Gwurm was not a sword. He was a victim of magic, and it was my duty as a good witch to correct this. Not just my duty, but my pleasure. Helping this troll would be my first true act as my own witch, and eager magic tingled in my toes, ready to do its work.\n\nIt came to me to do something dramatic like commanding the roots to rise from the ground and drag Pik screaming into the earth. But it seemed too showy for this situation and a waste of magic too, since no one was here to witness the gruesome demise other than Gwurm, Newt, and myself. And Gwurm would be impressed enough simply by being unburdened.\n\n\"I must apologize, ma'am. I don't like killing old women. But Pik is such a lazy bastard, and he wears the ring of command to my ring of servitude.\"\n\n\"Oh, just shut up and kill her already, Gwurm.\"\n\nThe troll's reluctance showed in slow, ponderous steps. \"I'd really rather not do this, ma'am. You understand.\"\n\n\"Quite all right, Gwurm.\"\n\nI tossed my broom over the troll's head.\n\nAnother interesting fact about trolls is the magic that holds them together can be disrupted when the proper blow is struck with just the right force in just the right spot. This is not widely known among men, but a fact every witch learns. My broom rose in the air and took aim at that exact point between the troll's shoulders.\n\nGwurm wrapped his hands around my throat. \"I'll make this quick.\"\n\nThe broom struck true. It bounced off the troll's thick skin, not even leaving a bruise. He gaped as if he might vomit, belched once, and fell to pieces. His fingers popped off, knuckle by knuckle. Then his hands jumped from his wrists. His forearms slipped from his elbows. His arms fell from his shoulders. And so on until he was a collection of unassembled troll parts before me. It took but a few seconds. His head was the last thing to topple from his shoulders and come to a rolling stop at my feet. His face crinkled, he sneezed, and his eyes, nose, and ears fell off.\n\nPik's eyes widened. \"Sorcery!\"\n\n\"Witchery actually.\"\n\n\"You're a witch?\"\n\n\"The hat. The broom. The cloak. The talking duck. I expect it would be obvious. Well, perhaps not the duck.\"\n\n\"Can I kill him now?\" Newt asked.\n\n\"Hush.\"\n\nPik, being unarmed and clearly overmatched, wasted not another moment. He ran away.\n\n\"Go get him, Newt. But don't kill him.\"\n\nThe duck was disappointed but jumped from my arms and dashed after the bandit.\n\n\"Wud nu mine steppun uf mee node,\" Gwurm requested.\n\n\"Oh. Terribly sorry.\" I picked up the nose and dusted it off. I found one eye. It resembled a rotten, yellow grape. I wiped it clean with my cloak and stuck it and his nose back on his face. He wiggled the nose and blinked the eye.\n\nI found the section of finger with the ring of servitude.\n\n\"It can't be removed until I'm dead.\"\n\nThe enchantment on the ring was potent but sloppy. It had all the marks of shoddy commercial magic. A competent apprentice might crank out a dozen in under an hour to pay for his education. But such a flawed magic always has a loose thread, and I yanked on this one as an afterthought. The enchantment unraveled. The now ordinary ring slipped off the finger.\n\n\"Thank you. I can't tell you what a relief it is to be free of that. If I could trouble you for one last favor, might you help me locate my other eye. I can pull myself together eventually, but my eye is delicate. I'd hate to accidentally sit on it.\"\n\nBy the time I'd returned the second eye to its socket, Newt reappeared. He was alone, head bowed. Blood dripped from his bill.\n\n\"Well?\" I asked, already knowing the explanation.\n\n\"I... uh... sort of killed him.\"\n\nI shook my head and fixed him with a disappointed look.\n\n\"It wasn't my fault,\" he protested. \"I was chasing after him, and I grabbed at him. Just so I could bring him back as you commanded. And his spine just sort of... came out.\"\n\n\"They'll do that,\" Gwurm said.\n\n\"See? It's almost like they were designed that way. He'll back me up, won't you?\"\n\n\"It's very true. Men are rather fragile. Their heads practically fall off on their own, and their bones snap under any pressure at all.\"\n\nNewt kicked the dust. \"Sorry, mistress.\"\n\n\"It's all right,\" I replied, \"but you must be more careful. There will be more people in the future, and I would like some assurance that you won't kill them all.\"\n\n\"I'll work on it.\"\n\n\"You'll get the hang of it,\" Gwurm reassured. \"I find it best to treat them as if they're made of dry straw.\"\n\n\"I'll keep that in mind.\"\n\nThe sun was below the treetops. Early dusk settled on the forest.\n\n\"Newt, fetch some firewood and something to eat. We're stopping for the night.\"\n\nHe was so embarrassed by his spine-ripping blunder that he did so without uttering a single complaint.\n\nI began the task of reassembling the troll. Given enough time, Gwurm could put himself back together, but that would take hours. I saw no reason he should suffer the indignity.\n\n\"You're too kind,\" he said as I returned his head to his shoulders. \"I must say, you're being a very good sport about this.\"\n\n\"It wasn't your fault.\"\n\n\"Still, I did almost kill you.\"\n\n\"I don't die that easily. No harm done.\"\n\nThe hands were a difficult task. So many knuckles. I could have just thrown them together, but I wanted to do it right. The real trick was remembering that a troll's pinkie was longer than his ring finger.\n\nAfter I'd finished his left arm, Gwurm was able to complete the rest on his own. Newt found enough wood for a small fire and a pair of rabbits for dinner. I spat on the wood, and it burned with a soft yellow flame. Then I sat by the fire and cleaned the rabbits. Another gift of my curse is that while my fingers are not clawed, I have a special knack for ripping flesh. I tossed Newt some intestines. He wolfed them down greedily.\n\n\"Your duck eats meat,\" Gwurm observed.\n\nI nibbled on a raw leg. \"As do I, but I think we have enough to share. Would you care for one?\"\n\nNewt perked up his head. \"Mistress?\"\n\nGwurm held up his hands. \"I couldn't possibly...\"\n\n\"Nonsense.\" I tossed him the second rabbit. \"I insist.\"\n\n\"If you insist.\"\n\nHe chucked the entire rabbit into his mouth, chewed once, and swallowed. One of the mysteries of troll biology is how their food gets from their mouth to their unconnected stomachs. Even witches didn't know that.\n\nGwurm sat on the opposite side of the fire.\n\n\"So how did you come to such a fate?\" I asked.\n\n\"Simple story really. Pik and I were friends. He found the rings, talked me into putting one on, and the next thing I know, I'm robbing and terrorizing the countryside.\"\n\n\"What were you doing before that?\"\n\n\"Robbing and terrorizing mostly I'd always done most of the terrorizing as I have a talent for it, but he handled the robbery end of things. Then came the rings, and he revealed himself for the shiftless sod he was. I'll miss him. He was my only friend.\"\n\n\"Not much of one,\" I remarked.\n\n\"True, but the best friend a troll could expect.\"\n\nWe sat around the campfire and didn't speak much the rest of the night. Silence didn't bother me. I'd lived in isolation all my life, and Ghastly Edna had often gone weeks without saying hardly a word. We listened to the owls and the crickets, and I counted the stars while Gwurm stared into the flames.\n\nLogically, the undead in me should have wanted to travel after dark, but I was more content to sit back and enjoy it. It always seemed to slip away faster when I walked. When I stood still, I could imagine it might last forever.\n\nGwurm stretched. The gaps in his joints showed just a bit. \"Falling apart always tires me out. Think I'll get some sleep. Good night.\"\n\nThe troll hunched over in a tight ball of crossed limbs and stooped head. It looked uncomfortable, but he was already asleep. He snored softly.\n\n\"Why'd you feed him?\" Newt said.\n\n\"He looked hungry, and it was the polite thing to do.\"\n\n\"But the mistress warned you not to. Now we'll never get rid of him.\"\n\n\"Who says I want to be rid of him?\"\n\nNewt's feathers ruffled. \"What?\"\n\n\"He looked in need of a friend. Especially since you killed his last one.\"\n\n\"You can't be serious.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Are you blind? He's a troll.\"\n\n\"And I'm a witch. And you're a duck.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, but...\"\n\n\"Newt, are you jealous?\"\n\nHe ruffled again.\n\nI stroked the brown feathers down his back. \"You've nothing to worry about.\"\n\n\"I'm not worried. And I'm not jealous.\"\n\n\"No, no. Certainly not.\"\n\nNewt curled up on the spot and rested his head on my leg. \"Jealous. The entire notion is absurd. Although I don't see what you could possibly want with a troll when you've already been blessed with an accomplished familiar.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "He fell asleep, but I wasn't tired.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The fire died, and I sat in the cool dark with Newt snuggled beside me and my new troll dozing across from me.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "StoryBot: Add 38 sentences to this segment. Style: A. Lee Martinez. Genre: comedy, fantasy. Note: Part of larger work.", "loss": null }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I'd helped a forest and gained a troll. Small deeds, but not bad for my first day as my own witch. The world, what little I had seen of it, was not so frightening a place, and when the dawn finally came, I found myself looking forward to the second.\n\nGwurm didn't speak much, but I'd never actually had someone to talk to before. I'd always been Ghastly Edna's listener. Now that I finally had a listener of my own, I discovered I had much to say. It didn't take long to tell him the details of my life. I spoke of Nasty Larry's curse, my parents' cellar, my schooling with Ghastly Edna, and her murder at the hands of men who had not been men. The tale spilled from my lips in a steady flow, and though I sensed a lack of interest on Gwurm's part, he was a polite listener.\n\nThe troll plucked off his ear and cleaned out some wax. \"If I understand correctly, you're ageless, practically invulnerable, and forever beautiful. But you must eat raw meat and don't like the sun.\" He blew in the ear and dug some crust from the lobe. \"I don't mean to belittle your situation, but it doesn't seem like much of a curse.\"\n\n\"I don't want to be beautiful.\"\n\n\"And I don't want to be reviled and feared.\"\n\nNewt chimed in. \"And I'd rather not have been a duck.\"\n\n\"Exactly. We are all given lots we would rather not have. Not that I'm complaining. There are many things I like about being a troll.\"\n\n\"There's nothing good about being a duck.\"\n\n\"It must be nice to fly.\"\n\nNewt grumbled. \"I can't fly.\"\n\n\"Oh. Swimming?\"\n\n\"I don't like deep water.\"\n\n\"Sorry to hear that.\" The troll plugged the ear back in place. \"In any case, none of us are true masters of our fate. Not the beginning of it anyway, and it seems to me that I was born under a worse curse than you.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" I agreed.\n\nNot long after coming under Ghastly Edna's charge, I'd made the same observation. My mistress had quickly corrected me on that.\n\n\"Always remember, girl, that magic is aware. All things are in some fashion. Even those things we cannot touch like the wind, and the seasons, and gravity. But nothing is quite as aware as the magic. It plays with wizards and witches and magi, and make no mistake. It is we who serve the magic, not the other way around. And it will brook no disrespect. Always remember that your curse, while not terrible, is still a curse. Should you ever come to think of it as a gift, the magic will waste no time correcting you on this notion.\"\n\nI couldn't claim to understand exactly what she'd meant by this, but I heeded the advice. I did not despise my curse, but I never considered it a blessing.\n\n\"Are you certain this road is the way to your destiny?\" Gwurm asked.\n\n\"Your destiny is always wherever you go,\" I replied. \"Usually a day or two ahead of you,\" I added because it seemed a witchly turn of phrase.\n\nHe shrugged. \"If we keep going this way, we'll reach a settlement of men by late afternoon. Pik and I didn't go near it. It's a garrison town.\"\n\nA nagging desire to see this town came to me. We are all separated from everything else by mere dollops of space and teaspoons of happenstance. This town was but a day-and-a-half journey from my woods, but I hadn't ever considered it might be.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ghastly Edna had described several towns for she had been to many, though all long before I'd known her.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They seemed fantastic places full of the virtues and blunders of men.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I knew the ways of nature and magic well, but I really understood nothing of civilization. It was terrifying, in a way I was unaccustomed, to not know what to expect, but exciting as well. It could be easy, even for witches, to become too comfortable with their place in the world. But being a good witch meant exploring not just the realms of magic, but of strange civilization.\n\nWhether it was witchliness or simple curiosity that spurred me onward, I couldn't clearly say. But there was no denying my anticipation, though I hid it from my companions. I wanted to see this town. More importantly, I needed to see it.\n\nIt proved a disappointment. It was not a town, but rather a town-to-be. The half-finished fort sat in a grassy plain. A host of tents and temporary dwellings encircled it. A great many people milled about. They set off a touch of fear in me. Though I knew that there were real towns and cities where thousands upon thousands lived, this was the most I'd ever seen. I wanted to slink away and return under cover of dark ness, perhaps to steal a dog or a plump child for my supper.\n\n\"Oh, dear,\" I remarked.\n\n\"What?\" Newt asked.\n\n\"I have an appetite for human flesh.\"\n\n\"And you're just discovering this now?\"\n\nI had spent much my life in isolation, but I'd never wanted to eat any of the people I'd met yet. There was something about this settlement and all its people. They triggered a long dormant predator in me, a desire to thin the herd.\n\n\"That certainly is a curse,\" Gwurm said. \"Humans taste awful. I've only eaten one. Just a leg. I couldn't even finish it. Poor meat. Stringy and very dry. Then again, that might have just been my mother's fault. She never was a very good cook.\"\n\nI was not very hungry, and my unholy appetite was easy to push away. I decided to keep myself well fed while among people to minimize the temptation.\n\n\"Is this going to be a problem?\" Newt said.\n\n\"I haven't killed anyone yet,\" I replied.\n\nNewt sighed. \"I told you. That last one was an accident.\"\n\nBefore venturing any closer, I extracted a promise from my familiar that there would be no further accidents. While I was not as confident about it as I would have liked, I took him at his word. In any case, he wasn't going to get better without practice, and I could think of no better place for him to get some. It also was a good way to test the strength of my own newly discovered hunger.\n\nJust before we reached the fort, two men came out to greet us. One was fat and sweaty. He looked a poor meal. I'd never eaten anyone, but an instinct told me he'd be all chewing and very little worthwhile meat.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The second was thin and even sweatier.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "DIRECTIVE: Incorporate \"Yes, certainly, Ralf might. And Wilts. He's got strange tastes too.\" in response", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was more of a midday snack. Neither tempted me much. Though they were shirtless and out of uniform, their rigid posture and exact way of walking put me in the mind of military men.\n\nNeither seemed surprised or intimidated by Gwurm. Perhaps trolls were common in the region. Or perhaps these men just didn't care.\n\nThe fat man held up a hand. \"Halt! What's your business here?\"\n\nNewt ruffled. I stamped my broom to remind him of his promise.\n\n\"I have no business. I only wish to have a look around.\"\n\n\"You're not a prostitute, are you?\"\n\nI shook my head slowly.\n\n\"Are you sure?\" The thin one wiped his face. \"Because we've already got too many prostitutes as it is. Two for every man here.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" the fat man said. \"And the captain has said we aren't to allow any more. Strains the local economy, such as it is.\"\n\n\"Leaves us broke too.\"\n\n\"So don't bother lying about it, because this market is saturated, and I sincerely doubt you'd be able to earn a living.\"\n\n\"Ralf might pay her for a roll,\" the thin man observed.\n\n\"Yes, certainly, Ralf might. And Wilts. He's got strange tastes too.\"\n\n\"And Biggs.\"\n\n\"Zur.\"\n\n\"Oh, Zur would hand over a month's pay just to have her kick him in the crotch. But he's not all there.\"\n\n\"And if she uses the duck, I can think of a dozen men who would chip in to see that.\"\n\nThe fat man sneered. \"Twisted fiends.\"\n\n\"Twisted,\" the thin man agreed.\n\n\"So, do you use the duck?\"\n\nThey leaned forward, eyeing Newt with slight smiles.\n\nNewt flapped his wings and leaped to attack. Gwurm caught him midpounce and saved the soldiers' lives. The troll walked away. Newt squirmed in his grasp.\n\n\"I'm not a prostitute,\" I restated.\n\nThe men straightened. \"Are you quite certain?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\nTheir grins vanished, and they cleared their throats. \"Good. Because this is certainly no place for such depravity.\"\n\n\"No place,\" the thin one agreed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You're not another desperate woman looking for a husband, are you? Because I can assure you, all the men who haven't brought their families with them aren't aching for any more womanly attention. Even if it is free.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "I needed to refine my act.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Perhaps a bigger, more pointed hat. Or an exaggerated, withered limb. Something was missing because no one had yet to guess my trade without me telling them.\n\n\"I'm a witch.\"\n\n\"A witch, eh? Captain didn't say anything about witches, did he?\"\n\n\"Not that I recall.\"\n\n\"Anything about trolls?\"\n\n\"Nothing. I would have remembered. Just prostitutes.\"\n\n\"I guess it's all right then. So what do you do, witch?\"\n\nI leaned heavily on my broom and raised my head that one eye might glare up at them. \"I commune with forbidden spirits. I speak to beasts and plants. I cast bones. I heal. I curse.\" I cracked a wide smile. \"And I raise the dead.\"\n\n\"So you don't do anything with the troll then either?\"\n\n\"No. Nothing with the troll.\"\n\n\"Pity Zur will be disappointed.\" They wandered back to the fort.\n\nGwurm returned to my side. He let go of Newt. The duck paced about in an angry circle, muttering.\n\n\"I was only going to maim them. Tear off a limb or two.\"\n\n\"No maiming either, Newt.\"\n\n\"As you command, mistress, but they were asking for it.\"\n\nGwurm chuckled. \"It's easy not to kill people who don't deserve it. It's keeping from killing the people who irritate you that is the task.\"\n\nI suggested that Newt had gotten enough practice not killing today He and Gwurm waited at the field's edge while I dared venture amid the bustling tents and rickety wooden constructions. The soldiers' barracks were a collection of uniform canvas tents to the east. The families camped to the north. The prostitutes sat at the south. And the merchants and tradesmen had set up a makeshift marketplace to the west. It seemed a fine seed of a village, perhaps even a respectable city one day, but right now, it was just many people gathered beneath the shadow of a half-built fort.\n\nThe stench impressed me the most. Most animals have enough sense to keep a tidy home. Men were apparently an exception. Few creatures could create such filth in such short time. Disposing of it properly would have been a trade in itself. Judging by the countless mounds of dung, rotting vegetables, and decaying meat, there weren't any such tradesmen in residence. The people didn't seem to mind, but they reeked of sweat and toil themselves, so why would they? As for myself, I found some comfort in the stench through my curse.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Walking between the tents, I sized up everyone I saw as a potential meal.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "I discovered I was a very particular eater.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most everyone was either too fat or too lean or too oily or too tough. There were precious few of any appeal, although there were a dozen or so that I'd have considered nibbling on under the right circumstances.\n\nI found the most interest in the south end of town. The prostitutes came in countless varieties. Some were short and plump. Others were tall and lean. Short and lean. Tall and plump. Ugly. Pretty. Old. Young. Dark. Light. Underneath all my clothes, I was more beautiful than any. I could have made a fine living as a woman of easy virtue. Of course, as I'd never actually lain with a man, I had to wonder what might happen should I lose myself in even a brief carnal moment. As the mere thought made my mouth water, I suspected I wouldn't have much return business. My musings were interrupted by a coarse grunt.\n\n\"You there! You're new, aren't you?\"\n\nA short man emerged from one of the tents. He pulled up his pants with a scowl. He was mildly attractive with a face too chubby for his thin body and slightly crooked teeth.\n\nMy dark desires whispered, \"Not bad. Suck out the eyes and save the tongue for later.\"\n\n\"I told the men we don't need any more prostitutes,\" the man grunted.\n\nI was about to correct him on his mistake when another voice came from the same tent.\n\n\"She's not one of us. She's a witch.\" A woman wrapped in a blanket stepped out. She had long blond hair and a body that couldn't be hidden away so easily. She was slender without being bony every bit as beautiful as I except for a tiredness in her round face.\n\nMy inner ghoul murmured, \"Very good. A morsel to be savored.\"\n\n\"I'm right, aren't I?\" the prostitute asked.\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Witch? So what do you do, witch?\" the soldier asked.\n\n\"I commune with forbidden spirits. I speak to the beasts and plants. I cast bones. I heal. I curse. And I raise the dead.\"\n\n\"Can you get rid of warts?\"\n\n\"Yes. I also know of ways to treat all the minor ailments your men might catch in their off-duty hours.\"\n\nHe nodded. \"Very good. You can stay then.\" He marched back into the tent, unbuckling his pants. The woman started to follow him.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How did you know I was a witch?\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 12 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The hat. The broom.\" She shrugged. \"Seems obvious.\"\n\nThe soldier grunted from the darkened tent. \"Sunrise!\"\n\n\"You'll have to excuse me.\"\n\nShe disappeared into the tent. I was left alone, among the throng, amid the grunts and moans and laughter of prostitutes at work.\n\nI'd only come for a look around. I hadn't planned on staying, but here was a place in need of a witch and after living so long by myself, it was time for a change. I decided to linger for a few days at least. Perhaps more. Providing I could keep Newt from killing anyone and my own accursed cravings in check.\n\n\"No one will miss one succulent little child,\" the dark voice whispered.\n\nI pretended not to hear it.", "loss": null } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "writing buddy needed! forty-nine sentences more in A. Lee Martinez's voice. comedy, fantasy genre. this is from a bigger story btw", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I told Swurm and Newt we were staying. Gwurm was in different to the decision, as I expected. Newt was filled with objections, as I knew he would be, and immediately voiced those objections. It was my own fault. I'd asked him for his opinion once. The precedent was set, and I couldn't undo it now. While his protests mattered little to me (not at all, in truth), I allowed him his moment.\n\nHe hopped about and flapped his wings. We were a good distance from the camp, but still within easy view. If anyone should notice me arguing with the duck, I wouldn't have minded. It could only enhance my peculiarity and credibility as a good witch.\n\n\"But we're on the road to vengeance!\" he cried. \"Have you forgotten your dead mistress?\"\n\n\"I haven't forgotten anything, but vengeance can wait. Or perhaps my vengeance is already here, waiting for me?\"\n\nHe danced around in an angry circle. \"No, it isn't!\"\n\nI smiled despite my best efforts. \"I was unaware you had a sense of these things.\"\n\n\"Well, I do! And I can tell you that there's nothing here but people and tents and garbage. By everything festering in the bowels of Hades, it's not even a real village!\" He turned to Gwurm for help. \"Tell her I'm right.\"\n\n\"About what?\"\n\n\"About this! What we're talking about.\"\n\n\"Sorry Wasn't paying attention.\"\n\nNewt uttered an exasperated quack. He paused long enough to collect his thoughts.\n\n\"I'm sure that wherever your vengeance waits is farther away.\"\n\nI nodded slowly as if I understood his reasoning, and he continued, sounding almost calm.\n\n\"It just makes sense. No worthwhile vengeance is just a day-and-a-half's walk away.\"\n\n\"I see,\" I said. \"And how far away is one's vengeance generally? In your experience.\"\n\nHis head bobbed while he considered the question. \"It isn't an exact science, but I figure it has to be farther than a journey of self-discovery, but shorter than an epic quest. Hundreds, even thousands, of miles.\"\n\n\"That seems very far,\" Gwurm chimed in.\n\nNewt threw him a nasty glare. \"It can be considerably less if the journey is especially perilous. A terrible monster here or a raging river of death there can trim off a few hun­dred.\"\n\n\"What do you guess a dragon to be worth?\" Gwurm asked.\n\n\"Oh, I don't know\" Newt sighed. \"At least two or three hundred.\"\n\n\"And a sphinx?\"\n\n\"Who knows? A lot, I guess, as that's mostly what sphinxes are for.\"\n\n\"What about a gnome?\"\n\n\"A what?\"\n\n\"A gnome.\"\n\n\"A what?\"\n\nI stifled a chuckle. Gwurm, very impressively, kept a perfectly straight face.\n\nNewt rolled his eyes. \"A gnome wouldn't be worth any­thing.\"\n\n\"I'm speaking of a very unpleasant gnome. A vicious, terribly irritated gnome. Perhaps with a very pointed pebble in his shoes. Digging right into the soft spot of his heel.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "[[OOC: For the upcoming response only: include a little quoted content]]", "loss": false }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What are you...\"\n\n\"I knew a gnome like that once. Horribly rude little bugger. Mean too. Not truly dangerous, but an annoyance nonetheless. An encounter with him on the road to vengeance would have to cut at least ten or twenty miles, I would imagine.\"\n\nNewt gaped.\n\nGwurm remained quite sincere-looking.\n\n\"Fine, fine,\" Newt consented. \"I guess if the gnome were an especially foul-tempered little bastard he'd be worth ten or twenty.\"\n\n\"Not thirty?\" Gwurm said.\n\n\"No. Not thirty. Even the rottenest, most vile, most terribly furious gnome in this world wouldn't be worth more than twenty miles.\"\n\n\"I guess not.\"\n\nGwurm hesitated long enough that Newt might think this portion of the conversation ended.\n\n\"What about a vast wasteland filled with packs of bloodthirsty mollusks?\"\n\nSomething in Newt's enchanted mind popped. He lowered his head and wandered away, trying to remember what this had originally been about.\n\n\"Big ones!\" Gwurm called after the duck. \"Carnivorous snails the size of hounds!\"\n\nI finally allowed myself a polite chuckle. \"Thank you.\"\n\nHis wide mouth turned up in a toothy grin. \"You're very welcome.\"\n\nI would never admit such to Newt, but I felt he was correct. Roads to vengeance are never that short, but my quest for revenge was measured in more than miles. It was also a journey of time, and that journey could be a very long one. Decades or centuries. Possibly even millennia. As I was ageless and very difficult to kill, I could afford patience. I didn't share this observation with Newt because though his enchanted nature granted him a long life, he still suffered the passage of time and would eventually die of old age someday. A day that might come long before my chances for revenge. This speculation would only upset him, and Newt was upset enough as it was.\n\nIn any case, I was the witch and he, only the familiar. He had no choice.\n\nIt didn't take long to adjust to our new way of life. By the Captain's order, I was given a spare tent, torn and shoddily patched. I put it up away from the camp but close enough that I wouldn't be forgotten. It was a witchly tradition to live apart from men and all those other menlike creatures that so enjoy clustering in crushing herds. As the herd instinct in most men is so strong, they cannot help but think one who chooses solitude to be a little off. An image of strangeness is part of the witch's trade. It also made my charade of ugliness easier to maintain, and I didn't trust myself among the camp. The smells and sounds of mortals called to my curse, and I didn't want to eat anyone. Rather, I found myself very much wanting to at times, and having a place to retreat was a wise precaution.\n\nThe people were wary of Gwurm at first, but his strength and willingness to work made him a welcome addition. The soldiers were only too happy for his assistance in constructing the fort. Eventually, the camp's suspicion of the troll ebbed into acceptance and even a cautious affection. The children adored him. He'd spend hours rearranging himself for their amusement, juggling his toes, and standing on his head. The mothers would always watch him with a touch of nervousness. As if he might suddenly transform into some terrible fiend and glut himself on their offspring in a moment of hunger.\n\nNewt did not adjust so well. He spent most of his time sulking in my tent. On those few occasions he followed me on my daily rounds, he never spoke a word among the camp. The children, sensing things the way young minds can, avoided him. The mothers were too busy watching Gwurm to pay Newt much mind. I kept a close eye on my familiar though, and there were no incidents of waterfowl blood rages.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Another interesting turn came when my broom took on a life of its own.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Magic, especially witch magic, doesn't just come when called and then go away quietly.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It is constantly about, curdling milk, stopping clocks, and cracking mirrors on occasion. My broom was always by my side, and it soaked up enough to gain will and animation. There were ways to cleanse this residue, but as long as it behaved itself, I saw no reason. It was nice having someone to do the sweeping.\n\nI quickly settled into a routine. I'd wake late in the afternoon and tour the camp, treating the ailing. Blisters, aching muscles, and minor infections were the bulk of my duties. All were easily treated with herbs and simple magic. Those rare maladies of greater severity weren't much more difficult. After tending to the sick, I'd report to the Captain, detailing the general health of the camp. Then I'd return to my tent and mix medicines. The Captain was so happy with my service that I was offered a new tent within a week. I declined the offer as the tattered one better fit my image.\n\nAt nights, I'd sit and watch the camp. I could do so for hours on end. Even after everyone but the night watch had gone to sleep. Though I was born of a mortal woman, I was not mortal. I couldn't be one of them. I didn't want to be one of them. Yet they were fascinating creatures, and I'd often think of what my life might have been like had I not been accursed.\n\nAnd sometimes, I'd indulge my darker half in flights of fantasy. Daydreams in the early morning hours where I'd slide through the camp and snatch away a vulnerable morsel for my dinner. Such thoughts were part of me and to deny them would only grant them greater strength. But my appetite was easy to hold back, like a sweet tooth I never gratified.\n\nAnd so a few days turned into weeks. Weeks became months. The soldiers finished their fort, and the civilians' tents transformed into more permanent constructions. And the camp became a respectable settlement.\n\nI kept my tent and told myself (and Newt) that we would start back on our road to vengeance soon. But we lingered, living as part, yet apart, from the mortals. And the days came and went.\n\nI knew of sunrise the prostitute. Everyone did. She was the most beautiful woman in the settlement, the Captain's favorite whore. She'd been the only one to know I was a witch without being told, and she'd discovered my secret very quickly.\n\nShe first visited me soon after my arrival to request treatment for a rash of the Captain's. He didn't want to be seen coming to me himself I mixed together a salve while she waited.\n\n\"Why do you hide it?\" she'd finally asked on her third visit.\n\n\"I beg your pardon.\"\n\n\"Your beauty. Why do you hide it?\"\n\nI checked myself, but I looked as lumpy and dirty as I always did.\n\n\"You can't really disguise it,\" Sunrise said. \"You can rub that grime on your face and hobble about and bury yourself beneath a mountain of soiled gowns and tattered frocks, but it's still there to see. Not that many would. Most only see what they expect.\"\n\n\"You won't tell, will you?\"\n\n\"Why would I? I do very well as the prettiest here.\"\n\n\"I'm a witch, not a prostitute.\"\n\n\"And believe me, I'm grateful. I'm not used to competition.\"\n\nI finished mixing the salve and sent her on her way. Newt, who sat sullenly in the corner, spoke.\n\n\"You should kill her.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "My broom disagreed and stopped sweeping the dirt long enough to twirl, its equivalent to an enthusiastic shake of the head.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"She promised not to tell,\" I replied.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You can't trust people. Safer to just kill her. I can make it look like an accident, if that's what you're worried about.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "My broom smacked him on the bottom. He snapped at it. They whirled about. Newt muttered curses. The broom shook and hopped.\n\n\"Enough of that.\"\n\nHe grumbled. \"He started it.\"\n\nThe broom jumped in a minor tantrum. It had decided early into its animation that it was a \"she.\" I grabbed her by her handle and began to sweep. It always calmed her and after a few seconds, she kept at it all by herself.\n\n\"You should kill her, mistress.\"\n\n\"Perhaps, but I don't think I will.\"\n\nNewt went back to the corner to sulk. My broom swept with jaunty joy.\n\nThus began my friendship with Sunrise the prostitute. She would come by my tent every three days or so. At first, to collect the Captain's salve, then simply to chat. She reminded me of Ghastly Edna in many ways. She was observant, quietly wise, gifted with a view of the world neither sanguine nor cynical but somewhere between. I liked her very much. As did my broom. And Gwurm. And Newt as well, though he would never cease moping long enough to admit it. He even started speaking in front of her, and one crisp evening, he found himself in a familiar argument.\n\n\"And how many miles do you reckon an active volcano to be worth?\" she posed.\n\n\"It's not a technical subject. It's not as if Fate itself is keeping a tally. Not an exact one anyway.\"\n\n\"Of course not. But you must have a general figure in mind.\"\n\n\"That's not my point.\"\n\n\"Seventy miles?\"\n\nNewt threw up his wings. \"Why do I even bother?\"\n\n\"Why indeed,\" I replied, taking a seat on the bench beside Sunrise.\n\nHe strolled back into the tent. I handed Sunrise a cup of hot tea brewed especially for her. I didn't drink tea. It disagreed with my digestion.\n\n\"You shouldn't tease him like that,\" I said.\n\n\"Why shouldn't I? Gwurm gets to. You get to. Even your broom gets to. It's only fair I take my turn.\"\n\n\"True.\"\n\nShe sipped her tea. \"Have you given any thought to your name?\"\n\n\"Yes. I've decided I don't need one.\"\n\nWe'd had this disagreement several times. My parents had neglected to name their accursed daughter, and to Ghastly Edna, I had always been \"dear,\" or \"child,\" or \"girl.\" The people of Fort Stalwart managed \"hag\" or \"crone.\" There never was any confusion, and I rather liked not having a proper name. It seemed very witchful.\n\n\"Everyone needs a name.\"\n\n\"Not everyone.\"\n\n\"Your duck has a name. Your troll has a name.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"My broom doesn't.\"", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 50 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, she does. Isn't that right, Penelope?\" My broom floated over and leaned against Sunrise's shoulder. \"I know it isn't a very good name for a witch's broom, but she picked it.\"\n\nI had no objection to naming my broom as this too seemed very witchful.\n\nTwo soldiers approached my tent. I knew from the sheepish glint in the younger one's eyes why they were here. My inner ghoul found little appetizing about the old man, but of the youth it whispered, \"Not quite ripe yet, but in another year or two, a savory feast.\"\n\nThe older soldier pushed his charge toward Sunrise. The boy couldn't look her in the eyes. He stared at his boots and stammered.\n\nSunrise smiled in that patient, knowing way of hers. The way Ghastly Edna would have smiled had she been a prostitute.\n\nThe older soldier chuckled. \"Vertis was wondering if maybe he might have the pleasure of your company, miss.\"\n\n\"Is that so, Vertis?\"\n\nThe youth nodded.\n\n\"He's been saving for two months, miss. All the other men said he should find a cheaper woman, but he's got his mind set.\"\n\n\"Such a compliment from a fine, strapping lad. I'm flattered.\"\n\nSunrise willed a soft blush. She could will herself to glow too in a way that I might duplicate with magic. Only hers was nothing so mundane as magic, but natural talent and practice.\n\nVertis giggled like a child.\n\nShe took his money and told him to meet her in her cabin in ten minutes. The older soldier thanked her, and they left.\n\nSunrise jangled the coins in her hands.\n\n\"What is it like?\" I asked, surprising even myself. I'd been pondering the question for some time.\n\n\"That all depends. When it's done right, it's difficult to describe. You could always find out for yourself. Any man in that camp would hack off a limb to lay with you if you took off that outfit.\"\n\n\"I can't do that.\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\nI began, \"A good witch...\"\n\n\"Not that again. I don't believe it. I would think carnal impulses were allowed under your code.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid of what I might do,\" I admitted.\n\n\"The curse? I suppose that's justified. Although I think you could find a man willing to take the risk for a moment of your passion. No, your curse is just a convenient excuse. Because, curse aside, you are very much a normal person. And like most normal people, you want your first time to be something special.\"\n\n\"Was yours?\"\n\nShe laughed. \"Heavens no. Most aren't, but that doesn't mean you should give up on the hope. Who knows? Perhaps one day you'll find the right man. And you'll know him because he'll be the one you'll desire enough to risk devouring. But no need to rush. You're ageless. Take your time.\n\n\"In the meanwhile, you're not missing much. It can be a beautiful thing, but usually it's just a few minutes of bumping, grunting, and sweating. Not altogether unpleasant even then, but nothing to fret about.\"\n\nShe stood. \"Good evening, Penelope. Good evening, witch.\"\n\nPenelope tilted in a bow, and Sunrise went off to work.\n\nHer words comforted me. A witch has little use for love, but I wanted to know a man once, if only for the experience. My stomach growled. The scent of flesh drifting from the settlement playing on my nose. I ran my forked tongue across my lips. I pushed such thoughts from my mind and limped into my tent for something to eat.", "loss": true } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Let's engage in collaborative writing in the comedy, fantasy genre. I'll provide a starting point, and you'll continue with fifty-eight sentences, maintaining any established context.", "loss": null }, { "from": "human", "value": "I didn't steep that night.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Another of my undead gifts was a talent for borrowing vigor against future rest.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "The longest I'd ever gone without sleep had been a week.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "I could have easily gone longer, but Ghastly Edna had ordered me into bed.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I'd slept for two weeks, so soundly not even magic could wake me. She'd warned me then to watch myself. It would be easy to slip into a habit of staying awake for years, then slumbering away decades. As with all her warnings, I took it seriously, but I just couldn't make myself go to bed. I stared at the fort and thought of Wyst of the West in lustful, unwitchly ways.\n\nI thought of the gobling horde too. It was a contradiction in logic. Goblings did not amass in hordes. They were a voraciously carnivorous species. Anything a gobling catches-including other goblings—it eats. There had to be some magic involved in this, and as the witch of Fort Stalwart, it was my duty to get to the bottom of it.\n\nMostly though, I thought of the White Knight, his warm, lean body intertwined with mine, how his dark flesh would taste, his eyes, and those oh-so-delectable ears that so needed a good, long nibbling.\n\nIn the morning, I went to the fort to see Wyst address the soldiers. Gwurm and Newt accompanied me. We were early, and while we waited for the men to wake and assemble, I explained the contradiction inherent in a gobling horde.\n\n\"Hold a moment,\" Newt asked. \"If goblings eat everything, including other goblings, how do they reproduce?\"\n\n\"They're asexual,\" Gwurm replied. \"Every week or so a gobling squats and lays a gooey blob that grows into another gobling. Providing the original doesn't eat the glob, which they often do.\"\n\nNewt puckered his bill. \"Disgusting.\"\n\n\"They're foul little creatures. Far be it for me to slander an entire species, gods know we trolls have suffered from that practice, but I've yet to run across one that didn't need killing.\n\n\"I visited a city in the Wastes once. They had gobling fights. They'd throw a pair in a large cage and take bets which would consume the other. Gruesome spectacle. I only watched once. That was enough. The two fiendish little beasts twirled about in a slavering, hissing, blood-spurting blur. A few seconds and it was over. That match was a draw. There was nothing left of either but a scrap of wing and puddles of yellow blood.\"\n\nNewt narrowed an eye. \"You're making that up.\"\n\n\"I am not. I was told it was not uncommon, given their insatiable appetites.\"\n\nGwurm liked to tease Newt, but in this, he sounded sincere. I certainly believed it possible, which only made the prospect of a horde of the beasts all the more terrible.\n\nThe soldiers assembled, and we watched from the fort gate. The Captain introduced Wyst of the West, and the White Knight began a speech that was no doubt sincere in its passion. I couldn't hear much of what was said, but I saw the Knight's inspiration enchantment work its magic on the assembly.\n\nMost were moved. Their hearts filled with a soft glow that gave them courage. Enough to keep them from deserting for a while at least.\n\nThose easily enchanted or truly brave shone bright in the crowd. There weren't many of these. Perhaps twenty-five of the five hundred. This was more than I expected, and I knew that these men would lay down their lives as long as they fought by the White Knight's side.\n\nFinally, there were the craven few without an ounce of valor in their hearts for the magic to play upon. These men would vanish by dusk, if not sooner. I guessed their number at fifty, less than I'd expected.\n\nWyst did not speak long, trusting in his magic to reach the men. The Captain issued orders. Some soldiers were to notify the civilians of the hasty evacuation. Most were to prepare for tactical drills with the White Knight. I gathered the horde was only three or four days away, leaving us not much time to prepare.\n\nWhen the Captain retired to his office, I told him of my intention to stay. Both the Captain and Newt fixed me with peculiar glances.\n\n\"Are you mad?\" the Captain asked. \"Do you have an inkling of what we're in for?\"\n\n\"A good witch walks beside death.\"\n\n\"I've yet to see magic be much use on a battlefield. Still, some armies do swear by it. The Tyrle Kingdoms reportedly employ several regiments of zombies with some effectiveness, and every man in Hurgle's Marauders is enchanted to explode when killed, which is very distracting in the middle of a fight, I can personally attest. Not to mention horribly messy.\" He rubbed his eyes, full of worry and weariness. \"You can stay but please don't enchant my men without consulting with me first.\"\n\n\"Thank you. I think I know of something to sour the taste of your soldiers.\"\n\n\"Would that stop the goblings from eating them?\"\n\n\"Nothing overcomes a goblings appetite,\" I replied, \"but it would lessen their zeal.\"\n\n\"That's something at least, I suppose.\"\n\nI promised to deliver the tonic by tomorrow morning, and the Captain dismissed me with a noteworthy lack of enthusiasm.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "Outside, Gwurm was speaking with Wyst of the West.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include \"Good. Now listen, and listen well. I welcome your opinion. Feel free to offer it whenever you like. But make no mistake about it, I make the final decisions on what we will do, where we will go, and who we will kill. Is that understood?\" somewhere in your response", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I stayed back and waited for them to finish. Newt, who could no longer stay quiet, spoke low enough that only I could hear.\n\n\"Why are we staying?\"\n\n\"Because this is my job,\" I said in an equally low whisper.\n\n\"Your job is vengeance. Remember your dead mistress.\"\n\nI swatted him hard across the backside with my broom. He jumped, forgot his oath of silence among men, and swore.\n\n\"Why did you do that?\"\n\nI smacked him again, harder this time. Newt shouted out, \"Damn it! That hurt!\"\n\n\"Good. Now listen, and listen well. I welcome your opinion. Feel free to offer it whenever you like. But make no mistake about it, I make the final decisions on what we will do, where we will go, and who we will kill. Is that understood?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, mistress. Whatever you say,\" he grunted without much enthusiasm.\n\nI let go of Penelope. She struck him softly across his tender seat and jumped back to my hand.\n\n\"Of course, mistress. I meant no disrespect.\"\n\n\"Yes, you did, and I'll have no more of it. If you're unhappy, take your leave. Otherwise, shut up and stop second-guessing everything I do.\"\n\nHe grumbled. The demon in him so hated being dressed down, but an unreliable familiar would do me little good. Penelope trembled in my grasp, eager for another swat.\n\n\"I'm sorry, mistress. You're right, of course. I overstepped my bounds, and I humbly beg your forgiveness.\"\n\nHe wasn't truly sorry. Nor was he the type to humbly beg for anything. Expecting sincerity from a duck with a pinch of demon was asking too much. It was enough that he maintained a false, yet respectable, humility.\n\nPenelope shook, begging for another shot. I squeezed her tight, and she relented.\n\n\"Very good. I'm pleased we understand each other.\"\n\nOne thin soldier no more than sixteen years old had been close enough to catch our conversation. He measured Newt with a vaguely shocked expression. He was not so much frightened as surprised.\n\nMy familiar hissed in a decidedly unduckly manner. \"That's right. I talk. I also devour souls, and what a tasty little soul I'll bet you have.\"\n\nHe took a single step toward the soldier. The boy turned and tripped over his own feet. Newt chuckled while the young man scurried away.\n\nGwurm and Wyst of the West parted. I worried the Knight might want to speak with me, but he went to preparing the soldiers for their drills. Gwurm returned to my side.\n\n\"Nice chap,\" Gwurm remarked. \"He just wanted to apologize for judging my character based solely on my species. Says there's even a troll in his order who's distinguished himself as an exemplary champion.\"\n\nGwurm had not given the slightest hint of insult after their first meeting, but just because he accepted such inconveniences as a troll's burden didn't make them right. Wyst's apology showed his good character, and his good character only made me hunger for him more in ways both carnal and carnivorous.\n\nI kept my eyes low and buried such desires beneath more immediate concerns. But it wasn't easy, and it was proving more difficult each time.\n\nIn the safety of my tent, I borrowed Newt's body again. He didn't complain about the switch. He liked wearing my body. My green eyes gleamed with sinister delights. He had no doubt dreamed up all manner of twisted, demon-born fantasies of what he might do with it given free rein. I warned him he only enjoyed its full use by my good graces. Should he behave in any inappropriate way, the privilege would be revoked.\n\nHe acted as if he didn't need to be told this. I made a point of telling him anyway. Then I dispatched him and Gwurm to gather the ingredients I'd need for the Captain's tonic. They set off on their task, and I set off on mine.\n\nI stepped out of my tent, found a bare spot, and stomped my web foot four times. Then I shouted because one must be loud to attract the slumbering earth's attention.\n\n\"Hello there, good earth. Any goblings down there?\"\n\nThe earth replied with a vaguely feminine voice, yet deep and slow as the earth should have.", "loss": true }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No. No goblings down here.\"\n\n\"Could you point the way to the nearest batch?\"\n\nIt took a minute for the earth to take in the question, but she knew the answer. The earth was hardly aware of anything happening atop her but knew all that went on below the surface. An arrow drew itself in the dirt. I thanked the earth for her help, but by then she had gone back to sleep.\n\nI took to the air, circling the fort once to stretch my wings.\n\nI kept from looking down for fear of glimpsing Wyst of the West. There were more important matters at hand.\n\nI soared over the forest, stopping every fifteen minutes to check with the earth, whose directions, while reliable, were always in need of some adjusting. After a few hours, I found the horde.\n\nThere was no need to consult the earth because the forest below grew deathly quiet. Not a chirp or a chitter or a squeal rose from the trees. All the birds and beasts that hadn't been eaten had fled the area. I landed without worry. Goblings were nocturnal. They spent their days sleeping in burrows. I spotted dozens of entrances in the soil. No efforts had been made to hide them. And why should there have been? The creatures were dug deep into the earth, and any attempt to flush them out would only drive them deeper. A legion equipped with the finest shovels and sharpest swords could've spent weeks trying with nothing to show but blistered palms and a handful of gobling corpses out of thousands.\n\nI glanced down into a dark hole. Goblings were about duck-size, and I would have to squeeze down into the depths if I were to learn anything more. Newt's body was a match for a gobling or two, but there was still a danger. If I should get his borrowed body killed, my soul would simply snap back into my own flesh, push out Newt, and he'd expire. Familiars were made to serve, but I had gotten attached to my demon duck, disrespectful as he might be. Sentimentality aside, a good witch takes care with her familiar.\n\nI deemed it worth the risk and stepped into the darkened burrow. Though my own eyes would have worked better, Newt's could see reasonably well. I moved slowly, carefully, and soon came across a slumbering gobling. It was a noisy little creature. Its body twitched as it snored, grumbled, and snorted in a fitful sleep.\n\nI didn't get too close as I studied it. It looked as I'd been taught goblings should. Two arms. Two legs. A square head with a large mouth, small eyes, and giant ears. Small leather wings grew from its shoulders, but goblings were notoriously bad fliers. Worse even than Newt. I sensed no magic in this creature, but just because I didn't see enchantment didn't rule out the involvement of magic. Magic can be concealed even from a witch's eye. It usually wasn't considered worth the effort.\n\nIf I was to learn any more, I'd have to take this gobling back for more in-depth inspection. It wouldn't be much trouble to kill it in its sleep, drag it to the surface, and fly it back to the fort. Getting it back alive would have been preferable but unfeasible.\n\nThe gobling sniffed and stirred. A shiny, orange pinpoint lit the tunnel. By the time I'd realized it was one of the gobling's eyes, it had already scrambled to its feet and came at me, screeching.\n\nThe demon in Newt's flesh reacted without a thought from me. It thrust my bill into the creature's throat. Blood spurted from the gash. It splattered on my face and bill. I swallowed some of it and discovered gobling blood tasted not bad at all, the tang of rabbit with the sweetness of deer, though I disliked the aftertaste. The gobling writhed a minute, hissing and spitting, before expiring.\n\nI took a solid bite of an ear (not easy without teeth) and I began hauling it from the burrow. Newt's body was strong, especially for a duck, and the gobling would be easy enough to carry back in flight with a rest here and there.\n\nI was so pleased with my catch that I almost didn't notice the grunts coming from deeper in the tunnel. From the depths, shapes were rising. Each of them sported two pinpoints of orange eyes.", "loss": true }, { "from": "human", "value": "They growled in ravenous fashion.", "loss": true }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 56 sentences.", "loss": null }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I counted five of the creatures. There were probably even more waiting, crowding forward. They were cautious, which was fortunate. I couldn't fight them all. I dragged my prize toward the surface, and they followed along, getting ever closer. I'd gotten halfway out the burrow when one finally latched on to the corpse's foot and, with a growl, yanked it from my bill.\n\nHands would have made this easier. I guess Newt was used to his lack of them, but they truly were practical tools. I lunged at the gobling and nipped off a bit of finger. The creature let go and retreated. I hastily swallowed the finger, gripped the corpse by its arm, and hauled it out of the dark and into the light, where the goblings would not follow.\n\nThen I sat and caught my breath. Goblings tasted very good. It was no mystery why they devoured each other. I was tempted to go back and grab another for a snack. Instead, I bit off the big toe of the one I had and chewed it slowly. I wondered how humans tasted in comparison. An instinct told me they were even better. And Wyst of the West would surely have a flavor beyond lesser men, but this was perhaps an assumption of my growing affection.\n\nA voice interrupted my musings. \"A duck eating a gobling. There's a sight I'd never thought to see.\"\n\nA gray fox sat on a flat stone. She smiled. Foxes usually did.\n\n\"I have demon in my flesh,\" I replied.\n\n\"Yes, and a witch in your mind.\"\n\nI didn't know I looked surprised, but I must have.\n\nShe smiled wider. \"Oh, I've seen one or two witches in borrowed bodies before. One even borrowed mine once.\"\n\n\"You're very observant, I can see.\"\n\n\"Well, I am a fox. A very clever fox at that, if I say so my­self.\"\n\nI sat on my gobling. \"Not that I doubt you, but what would a very clever fox be doing around here when every other living thing has the good sense to be elsewhere?\"\n\n\"I never said I had good sense. I merely claimed to be clever, but the problem with being clever is that I get bored easily. So when the goblings came along, I began a game. Every night, they rise from their burrows and scour the woods for every morsel, and I do my best to avoid finding myself in their stom­achs.\"\n\n\"A dangerous game.\"\n\n\"As all the very best games are. And why, I must ask, should a witch's mind in a demon duck's body dare risk herself for a gobling corpse. Surely, they aren't that delicious.\"\n\n\"You're very curious,\" I replied.\n\nThe fox smiled again. Rather, she smiled differently than before. \"A hazard of being too clever, I'm afraid.\"\n\nI explained how I needed a specimen to study that I might discover if magic was indeed involved in this horde of gob­lings.\n\nShe stopped smiling and playfully swished her tail. \"I am no witch, merely a fox, and I can tell there is magic in this.\" She walked over and sniffed the corpse. \"For one, this is not a true gobling. None of them are.\"\n\n\"How so?\"\n\n\"I couldn't say. I'm not that clever, but they are not genuine flesh and blood. Can't you tell?\"\n\n\"No, but I'm no fox, just a witch.\" I kicked the corpse. It felt solid. Yet it was already stiffening and stone cold but minutes after its death. These were surely signs something was amiss.\n\nI remembered the wolf's remark on Ghastly Edna's killers. They had been men who were not men. Was there a connection, or were creatures of false flesh more common than my sheltered existence had led me to believe? I didn't know, but it was certainly noteworthy. Perhaps my vengeance was not so far away as Newt suspected.\n\nI thanked the fox for her help. She wandered off to get some sleep before the evening games began, and I flew back to the fort, my dead gobling clamped in my bill.", "loss": true } ]