Nicholas Prinzing

It’s been a long, rough year. It’s kind of unfortunate that one of the worst years yet for my free time coincided with one of the best years for games we’ve had in a long time. To start with, I want to mention a few things that I haven’t had the time to explore enough to talk about in depth, but that I don’t want to leave off the table completely. Undertale I spent a significant portion of my late childhood coming to terms with the mechanics of JRPGs. I always liked the idea of these grandiose experiences that take the time to develop rich characters and stories, in a way very unlike whatever shooters and platformers I was playing at the time. But it took me ages to acclimatize myself to the simplicity of the battle mechanics, to be okay with spending dozens of hours just picking options from menus. Even just from the hour I’ve played, I think that if I had been able to play Undertale back then - with its wit, its immediacy, and the freshness of its “combat” - I would not have had nearly the same struggle to see the good at the heart of the JRPG style.

Rise of the Tomb Raider My mom is pretty cool. She’s constantly finding new and interesting music, and she watches better TV than I do. (I only started watching Breaking Bad for real after walking by as she was watching the “Run” scene from season 3.) One particularly cool thing about my mom is that she loves adventure. When I was young we would love to just go on drives and explore, and even now that we don’t have the time (or the car) to do that anymore we still dream about travel and enjoy the international spectacle of Formula 1 races together. So, whenever a game like Tomb Raider or Far Cry comes out, we try to play it together. Now that I work evenings we haven’t had a lot of time together to play this new one but I love every moment when we do.

Soma All of the themes of this first person horror game from the Amnesia people, Frictional games, seem like 100% my jam. But I haven’t been able to get myself into a good setup to relax and manage my adrenaline levels while I play it so I haven’t given it the deep dive it deserves.

Life is Strange Despite the protestation of at least one good friend, I didn’t play any Life is Strange until all of the episodes were out, and by then there was so much else to play that I was swamped. That first episode was great, though! Even if every character but Max is terrible, they’re terrible in interesting and complex ways.

PC RPGs Welcome to 2015, where every game takes a million hours. I tried to get in time with as many as I could, but Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition, even the new episodes of Shadowrun I couldn’t make the time for. I’m hoping that the coming year will let me catch up.

Everything on Wii U Between Mario Maker, Xenoblade Chronicles X, and Splatoon, 2015 finally feels like a year where I’m significantly missing out by not owning the Nintendo console. Good for you, Nintendo!

Alright, now for the real list, in convenient top 5 format:

5. Until Dawn I alluded to my ritualistic approach to playing horror games earlier, but one easy way to bypass that is to just have someone along for the ride to anchor onto. My friend came over one night not long ago and it came to my attention that he hadn’t played Until Dawn yet. I had watched a few playthroughs and bought it on the strength of those, but hadn’t actually played more than the intro myself. Before we knew it, it was 6:00 AM and the credits were rolling. (We rather literally played it until dawn.) Strong acting performances and interesting elements of choice and personality with each of the characters made Until Dawn stick out in my mind as one of the greats this year.

4. Her Story I like a good investigation, but I’m so tired of the typical adventure game trappings that even something as good as Life Is Strange struggles to hold my attention when I’m moving through a world clicking on objects to mutter short phrases about them to myself. Her Story takes a drastically different, and seemingly more realistic, approach to investigative gameplay. You’re just sitting at an outdated computer poring over evidence and trying to muddle through lies and misdirections to decide what you think actually happened. Her Story would have had my attention from the concept alone, but it’s executed with grace and care. Viva Seifert’s performance accomplishes the impossible task of selling this entire story on its own, but the graphical treatment around it really sinks in the feeling of diving into the past to solve a years-old mystery. Bonus points for how carefully the script is designed around the gameplay, where you get to the story’s catharsis only when you truly understand the themes at play underneath the outward story.

3. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt I almost didn’t feel like I should put this on the list because I’m not far enough in. I’ve put about 40 hours into the game, maybe 50, but The Witcher 3 is so impossibly large that I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. There’s a lot to see in this grim but vibrant world, and it does so many things differently from your usual open world RPG that my interest isn’t exhausted quite so quickly. It feels deliberate and intelligent, simulating the research and preparation you could imagine it would actually require for a (mostly) human to take on such a grisly array of fantastical beasts and come out alive. Plus, hey, that card game is actually pretty good. I look forward to much more time with this in 2016, but even just what I’ve seen so far qualifies to make this list.

2. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Even more so than The Witcher 3, this was a slow burn for me. I love the Metal Gear series deeply, and after Ground Zeroes I was excited for the mechanical upgrades to the games I loved. It turns out that MGSV is not that game, and it took me getting over the fact that I’m not getting a real Metal Gear Solid 5 to appreciate what I did get for what it is. MGSV is a phenomenally open ended stealth action game with astonishing mechanical depth. I felt like I could “be myself” and customize my playstyle to a degree greater than I’ve ever seen in a Metal Gear Solid game, and I was constantly discovering new tricks and ways to deal with situations. The dramatic complexity and cinematic grandeur that brought me to the past entries in the series is lost, but as a game of its own, MGSV is stellar.

1. Bloodborne I have a lot of affection for the Souls series of games, which Bloodborne is basically a part of, but there was always something that felt like it was missing, emotionally, from the experience of those games. Fights were tense and combat was satisfying but the slow pace of those games always kept them from being legitimately exciting. Bloodborne fills in a lot of those gaps for me, just by being the Hyper Fighting version of what a Souls game is. The action is so much faster that combat has a flow and a rhythm unlike anything I’d felt in this series before - I feel like I’m actually reacting in a battle rather than just waiting out animation timers. Some of the Souls appeal has been lost in translation - gear is practically meaningless because the power curve is flat and weapons are so different from each other that you’re not going to “upgrade” to different gear, and the variety of possible builds isn’t nearly as diverse as in Souls. But even considering the restricted scope, what Bloodborne does have to offer is so much more interesting and comfortable to me, between the combat speed and the vivid gothic horror setting, that it’s my favorite Souls game and my favorite game this year.

You hit the R button. In an instant, everything resets. You move, careful, going room to room carefully executing your enemies. Nobody knows a thing until their final moment. And then - another mobster, on random patrol, walks into the room. You have approximately half a second to react, and after that half second you’re dead. Once more you hit R, once more it’s back to the start. This is the gameplay loop in Hotline Miami. As a raw video game, it’s great: fast-paced, fun, and difficult enough to be satisfying when you succeed. One thing it is not is relaxing. By design, Hotline Miami makes you nervous and tense. This loop happens so fast - often dying four or five times within the space of 30 seconds - that you are never out of action. There’s no downtime except the afterglow of the walk back to your car at the end of a mission. If you try to relax and take it easy in the middle of combat, you will be dead. Hit R, the level resets. In the end, it takes one particular thing to get good at Hotline Miami - especially in the sequel, which is even more difficult than the first. Most of the enemy placements and patrols are scripted, but not all of them. There’ll always be factors you’re not prepared for, and when they come up, what do you do? If you take even a fraction of a second to consider whether or not the human being approaching you is friendly, you are dead. Hit R, try again.

I suppose nobody actually cares about 2014 anymore, now that it's the grand new era of 2015, but it didn't feel right to sum up a year until it was over. 2014 was an interesting year for me. I did a lot of growing up, which sadly didn't leave as much time for games as I might have liked. I'm far from any reasonable standard that would let me write a "best games of the year" list with any kind of authority. In part, that's because it has become basically impossible to have a comprehensive understanding of current games anymore. That's great! Games as a medium are expanding at such an extreme rate that any one person can no longer keep up, and that one person might not want to. Not every game is for you anymore, white male 18-35 who likes soda and guns. Five years ago the primary conversation around Game of the Year time was "which shooter had the best shooting?" Now we see phone games about classic novels making nearly every top 10 list I've seen this year. One of the popular answers for the top slot has an incredibly diverse cast, including the first openly trans character I think I've ever seen in a game among myriad examples of minority representation and open minded writing. Diversity in games, both in concept and in character representation, is at an all time high.

Sadly, that scared some people. For some reason, a radical sect of traditionalist gamers decided that the existence of games like Gone Home somehow threatened the existence of games like Call of Duty. They then concluded that the optimal strategy for returning gaming to its predestined state was to launch systematic personal attacks on any member of the press or development community who seems even remotely feminist. I won't go much further into this - enough ink has been spilled about this putrid movement. I will say, however, that if anything is threatening the old way of making games, it's the games themselves. The old model just isn't interesting anymore - Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed aren't suffering declines because of some feminist cabal sacrificing white men to earn the favor of the sales gods. They're suffering because games have outgrown them, shown that there are more interesting experiences to be had than those at the end of a gun.

Even when you are playing within an established framework, you can do something more interesting. Destiny took Halo shooting and basically made World of Warcraft from there, earning the trophy for "best way for bros to vent their inner nerd since fantasy football". Shadow of Mordor made an Assassin's Creed game with a dynamically generated cast of villains, making sure that the best thing you'll see in that game is something completely unique to you (which, to be fair, is not hard - nearly everything in Shadow of Mordor that isn't the Nemesis system is completely uninteresting). Just making a cookie cutter design with mechanics that feel good doesn't cut it anymore.

I don't know what it was about last night, but my luck never seemed to run out! First of all, I chose Mardu, the aggressive clan. Khans being a three+ color set, and a morph set, means a lot of greedy late game decks and people not doing things until turn 3. So, to punish that, I wanted to kill people before they could cast anything.

I didn't think much about my pool as I was opening it, rather just sorted into colors and decided my Mardu was strong enough to stick with. (I noticed the foil Windswept Heath, but who wouldn't?) As I laid my cards out, though, I found that I had TEN two-power two drops in Mardu colors. Ten. Plus there are synergies with Outlast, somewhere around nine warriors for Raider's Spoils, and a fair amount of good removal that I actually didn't keep since it wasn't conducive to beating them faster. I cannot imagine this pool being much better. At the end of the night, here's what I ended up with:

The two Debilitating Injuries were added over the course of the night, replacing a second Act of Treason and the 2/3 vigilance flier, as I realized how useful it is to get a Morph blocker out of the way and just how awkward hands can be with two Acts and five four-drops.

The deck performed excellently all night. Oddly enough, Trumpet Blast ended up winning more games for me than almost any other card. I spent most of the night extolling its virtues and convincing people to run them, as did the opponent who took 15 damage in one turn, twice in a row, thanks to Trumpet Blast. The only cards I never cast were Ponyback Brigade and Mardu Warshrieker, but everything else did some amount of work.

The best openings this deck has are Mardu Hateblade into stream of raid creatures (which only happened once) or, more realistically, something like this:

Turn 1: dual/triland tapped Turn 2: basic land, Ainok Bond-Kin Turn 3: attack, War-Name Aspirant, dual/triland tapped

This way you have a 3/2 first strike that eats Morphs and can't be chumped, and you can go on to do silly things like play Abzan Falconer to give everyone flying, use Feat of Resistance to spread the love to some other creature...that opening puts you in the driver's seat, and that's exactly where aggro wants to be.

Technically, I ended the tournament undefeated, though I split with my finals opponent. I feel confident that I could have beaten him (and I did, quickly, in the single game we played to decide who'd get the win on the record) but I didn't feel like upsetting my opponent, or chancing the wrath of random chance. It was a fun, friendly night, talking and laughing with like-minded people, and it would have been a shame not to end it the same way just for four extra packs.

Decklist:

1 Mardu Hateblade 2 Ainok Bond-Kin 1 Master of Pearls 1 Jeering Instigator 1 Valley Dasher 2 War-Name Aspirant 3 Mardu Skullhunter 1 Hordeling Outburst 1 Abzan Falconer 1 Highspire Mantis 1 Timely Hordemate 1 Mardu Warshrieker 1 Unyeilding Krumar 1 Ponyback Brigade

1 Feat of Resistance 2 Debilitating Injury 1 Trumpet Blast 1 Act of Treason 1 Raider's Spoils

It was long enough ago that it's tough to remember, but when I made this blog the name really meant something. It was a project with a very specific goal: take my economics education and use it to analyze games. The timing of its creation led to many of the articles focusing on then-new Steam trading cards and the market for them, but I covered other topics from time to time. Three times a week, you could come to this blog and find something new.

Then I got a job, and went to school, and various things happened that made it very hard to find the time or energy to write here. I went silent, for a while, and when I came back I posted whatever I felt like. I tried to keep it related to games or economics, but lately I've even broken that.

I've been mulling over the issue of what this blog is for a while now, but what really catalyzed change was the massive awful "gamergate" debacle. I won't say much about it because there's not much that hasn't already been said, but it rattled me, deeply. All my life, since I picked up a Game Boy Advance on Christmas when I was just a kid, I've considered myself a "gamer" first and foremost, and maybe it wasn't cool but that's what I was.

When I take a step back and look at who I am, that's just not true anymore. I play games from time to time, but I read, and watch movies, and follow sports just the same. I don't have the time or interest to play everything anymore, so instead of spending 40 hours playing five different 8-hour games I spend it on sinking into one game I really love, like XCOM. Or catching a Gligar with a hidden ability and breeding to make a Togepi with Nasty Plot. I still enjoy games, but I don't have an opinion on everything, so by my personal standards I'm not comfortable using games as an identifier. It's just another complexity of my personality, another medium I'm open to in my search for great art, for things that inspire me.

Hey guys! I have some good news. I'm working on a longer form story than the short sketches I've been posting here. Sadly, this means that most of my focus will be turned to this new project, and less toward coming up with new short stories for here.

However, my attention span is very short, and I am happy to have new bite-size projects to work on. When I have the energy to come up with new ideas, I will be trying to focus that toward my main project, but ideas are the hardest part. So, what all this is building up to: I want you guys to send me requests. Anything works for me. Have a plot outline, a specific sentence, even just a mood you want me to write a story about? A game you want to see me review? Maybe you somehow have an economics question you'd like me to answer. (It is the sad, neglected half of my username.) Anything you'd like me to write, I'm happy to take up the challenge, within reason. Send it to me via Tumblr (there's a hyperlink to the right), Twitter (@nprinzing), or Facebook if you happen to know me personally.

How much of it is my own bad memory and how much of it is blocking out the hard parts, I'm not certain, but I don't remember as much as I'd like about my dad. Especially near the end, it's mostly a blur, punctuated by tiny vivid moments.

Was I 9? Maybe 10? I think 9. These are the things I'm not sure about. I remember little things about big events: the layout of the giant room in the library where he fell. The feel of the hard mesh on the mask that was somehow used in his treatment. The spot on the couch I was sitting on, paralyzed, surrounded by church members and family friends the morning he didn't wake up. Exactly where I was standing when my best friend came up to me after the funeral, and somehow my first thought was "I'd never seen him in a suit before." I have a clear image in my head of the layouts of both of the therapists' offices I visited for a while afterward, but I remember little of the treatment itself. There was a time when I could tell you what kinds of fish were in the fishtank in one of the lobbies, though.

Like I said, I was 9. (Maybe.) My memories of childhood don't have much clarity before about 12 or 13, so my dad is trapped in a realm of blurry, tonal recollections, old photos and videos, stories people tell me. From what I hear, he was a person who made quite an impression on every person he met, and I suppose I should be impressed that I still recall what I do.

What I do remember is in broad strokes. I remember his excitement, more than anything, his passion for the world around him. He would always be excited to play with me, and sometimes it felt like he enjoyed my toys more than I did. I received a rather generous allocation of Legos, in particular, and you'd be lying if you tried to tell me that they weren't for him as much as they were for me.

What impresses me most, at this stage in my life, is that he loved his work almost as much as he loved the rest of his life. Obviously, I wasn't an engineer at his firm so I don't know first hand, but by all accounts he had a lot of fun with what he did, and that's something I've always wanted to emulate. For a time, after reading The Fountainhead, that meant thinking about going into architectural/civil engineering too. In a more broad sense, it means that I'm not going to settle for doing something that I don't love. What I love right now is writing, but if that doesn't work out, I'm not going to settle for spending 8+ hours of my day on something that makes me miserable.

My dad, to me, is a legacy to live up to. He's a legend; I know there's a lot about him I'll never match, but I can only hope to channel his enthusiasm, his vigor, his vitality into the way I live my life.

I am a person who uses the term "best friend" somewhat loosely. At any given time I have two to five people with whom I feel close enough to call them my best friend, and this first anecdote concerns the one that has, thus far, lasted the longest.

We were both quick when we were growing up, with a particular drive for creativity. I, at least, had dabbled in writing for most of my life and he most likely had too, so it was inevitable that it would come up again. The sands of time have washed away most of the detail from this story, but I remember us each writing something, ostensibly to show to the other.

Sounds like a good way to bond, right? When he read what I wrote he told me he liked it. When I read what he wrote, I immediately lost my interest in writing. It was better than mine in every imaginable way, at least in my eyes, and I decided that my work has no place in a world that features his.

Looking back on it now, I realize that this little path of logic was probably an early sign of depression. In complete contrast, I had a long distance girlfriend for a lot of high school who was, effectively, a muse. How much of the inspiration was her, and how much was my frustration at the distance, isn't clear. But we emailed back and forth nearly every day, often with some scene or story or scrap of writing attached. She was a comfortable audience, to whom I could open up my heart and trust that she'd accept whatever I wrote. Hopefully she felt the same about the writing she sent to me.

The beauty of that situation, as a writer, is that it completely dodged the question that has plagued me through most of my life: "what do I have to offer the world?" I didn't stop thinking that my work wasn't worthwhile to society at large, but all that mattered to me back then was that it was worthwhile to her.

These days I can take a much healthier perspective on that question. I still think that best friend is a better writer than me, but instead of the competitive "he has defeated me and taken my place in the ranks of the writers" approach, I see it as proof that writing is not one of those theoretical things that happens behind closed doors by secret methods that are only known to those with "the gift". Writing is a thing that anyone can do, and do beautifully, even the people in my tiny sphere of influence.

I recently made another friend, who had just self-published her first book when I met her. A few years earlier and I would have taken this as just another blow to my hopes of writing something that holds up, but meeting her was actually one of the most significant catalysts of this surge of writing I've been on lately.

I notched another arrow and loosed it into the verdant wood, carrying with it a piece of my anger. I had no particular target, no fruit to knock free and no target set up. There was no time.

I shouldn't have even been out there, but in the chaos of the packing and moving I'd managed to escape my parents' eyesight long enough to snatch my bow and quiver and sneak out the back door. We didn't actually own any of the land past the treeline, they'd told me, but these woods still felt like mine.

Thinking about the move brought back some of the anger, so I pulled another arrow from the quiver. I took more care with this one, running my fingers through the bristles at the back and pressing the cold steel tip against my palm. Six identical carbon fiber siblings still sat sling against my back, waiting their turn. The bow and ten of these arrows had been a fifteenth birthday present a few months before. I'd already wasted ten through eight in blind rage, so these last few had to count. I could find the time.

I walked further into the forest before drawing Seven against the bowstring, finding something worthy on which to leave my mark. I held my breath and sent it to rest in the patch of wild strawberries I'd found as a little girl. They taste just like ice cream, I'd though, popping one into my mouth before my parents could insist I wash it first.

Six found itself stuck in the seat of a swing my dad built for me when I was young. His engineer's eye had caught on a particularly level branch during one of our family walks, and the next weekend he was out there all afternoon with tools and rope.

Five whistled through the air toward a piece of driftwood that had lodged itself against the rocks in a creek, making a bridge for anyone light enough not to sink it down into the water. That'd been me, until recent years. Now I would just get my feet wet.

Four landed in the mossy log I'd been sitting on when I had my first kiss. Laura, her name was, with red hair and skin as pale as bone. We were just 13, barely more than girls. I could still remember my nerves, how my hand was shaking as she took it in hers and leaned toward me. I shuddered, lost too deep in the memory.

Three was lodged carefully in the foothold, where a low branch met its towering parent tree, that I'd broken my arm falling out of. I looked down at the scar it had left on my forearm. For an instant, I was back lying in the dirt, watching my blood pour out onto the fallen leaves. Not a memory to linger on for long.

Two found a home by the mouth of the cave that had sheltered me one night when I decided to run away from home. I was 11, then. I couldn't even remember what the catalyst had been; homework, bullies, something. Whatever it was, I'd decided that I was done with civilized life, and I ran off into the forest to become a dryad. I'd started to question my decision when it started to rain. By the time I found this cave, the downpour had soaked through my jacket. Some time later, my parents' flashlights met the little cave and found me shivering inside.

I took the last arrow in my hand and walked back toward the house. I'd spent enough time lost in my memories that someone should have noticed my absence, if only to wonder why I wasn't helping. At the edge where the forest met the backyard, I stopped and planted the arrow firmly in the grass. Maybe the next kid who finds this forest will see this tiny metal flag and trace the path I'd laid.

I found my parents in the front yard, watching the movers load their truck. Dad's eyes widened when he saw me. "Shauna? Where have you been? We're about to leave!"

The rebellious grimace I gave as an answer can't have soothed him much, but it told my parents enough that they knew not to press it. Mom's gaze leapt to the empty quiver on my back, and she understood. Her face twisted into a half-frown as she put her hand on Dad's shoulder. "Let's just get her bow packed and get on our way."

I like to write about fantastical concepts and warped universes. This is my attempt at writing something a little more human.

Rain poured on the suburb streets, and it poured on James. The walk home from work was never easy, worst of all in storm season. But James kept smiling, as the rain streaked down his face and slowly soaked into his polo.

Work didn't mean that much to James. A paycheck was a paycheck, and the people he spent his days with were friendly enough. If asked what he'd done that day he probably wouldn't be able to say. He did as he was asked and he did what was needed, and at the end of the shift he hit the time clock and walked out, out into the cool night air.

It was about an hour's walk, time enough to listen to a favorite album and know, when it stopped, that he was almost home. Tonight, though, James didn't want music. He looked up into the torrent as he walked, letting it rinse his hair back along the side of his head. That night he didn't want distractions, he didn't want the walk home to go by as thoughtlessly as the eight hours prior had. Besides, the water might ruin his headphones.

James was not generally a thoughtful person anymore, more so easily distracted, but something about rain changed that. Rain washes away the distractions, someone once told him, and leaves behind only the details that matter.

What mattered to James, that night and most others, was who he was coming home to. His mind blank from the tedium of work, the first things that came to mind as he reset himself to normal weren't words but raw, jumbled emotions. Pride. Shame. Fear. Hope. All in one confused, swirling blend.

Things had not been perfect at home, lately. Working had twisted James into someone he hadn't been before, someone the people around him didn't much like. The everlasting routine, the subservience expected of you, the culture and community that teaches you to put your head down and just get by; James' personality and mood had always warped effortlessly, uncontrollably to his surroundings, and this new culture had dug into him deep.

Passion used to be the word people ascribed to James, who could scarcely even stop talking about whatever new thing had caught his attention. His eyes lit up at the mention of a favorite hobby. More than anything, his eyes lit up when he saw her. When he started working, his eyes didn't light up about much of anything.

It had only been the night before that James truly realized the extent of the damage. She dragged him to a party; "I have work tomorrow," he complained, "and I'll be the only guy there." She had none of it, and together they walked nervously toward their friend's apartment by the light of the setting sun.

When they arrived and settled in, it felt like taking a drug. The atmosphere was electric, intimate; even if it had been months since they'd seen each other, people treated James - and everyone, really - with the trust and intimacy of a best friend. The alcohol helped, of course, but didn't make that night have any less of an impact.

That night, James was shown what it looked like when the life that had been slowly draining out if him was refreshed. And it was beautiful. Enraptured in his memory, he almost walked straight past the stairs to his place. Their place. He grinned, resolute to make up for shell of a person he'd been.

When he walked in, she was waiting at the table. Her eyes were cold, cold as the rain outside, cold as his had been until the night before.

In honor of this weekend's events.

I opened my eyes for the first time, met by a vivid splash of greens and blacks and reds. As I drifted along the dirt with a sense of purpose too strong to be my own, I started to register the shapes of trees, blackened with age and corruption. I stopped in an enclosure, surrounded by slinking tan shapes with teeth gleaming in the sunlight. I felt the cold weight of steel in my hands, and I swung a few times at the nimble forms, nicking their hides as their claws tore gashes in my armor. I knew what would happen if I stayed, but I stood paralyzed to do anything but swing at them as they bit and clawed and tore at me until there was only darkness.

I opened my eyes again, unsure how much time had passed. I felt stronger, that much I knew, fleeter of foot and a surer strike with my blades. Moonlight beamed through the forest where there had been sun before as I coursed along a familiar path, unsure how I got this second chance but determined to avenge myself. I found my killers with their mouths still dripping with my blue blood. As they set upon me again, a rush of water washed over us all, and the wolves flinched. Their softened hides gave way to my blades like cloth, and in moments they all lay before me, broken and breathless. I reveled in my victory, but a rhythm like a drum ticked louder and louder in my head as I did. beat...Beat...BEAT...and darkness.

I opened my eyes, again and again, and grew used to the hunt. Each cycle I felt stronger than the last, and from time to time I was joined by a sister, sometimes even two. We grew together, as one. We learned, as one. We learned to see the world as it truly is, to burn with the radiance of the sun, to strike our foes with such force to drain their very essence. Cycle by cycle, we became an army of our own.

 I opened my eyes to the unfamiliar sight of true war. Soldiers with skin of green and red crashed against each other, wave by wave, with little purpose but to push through to the other side. My sisters and I, now five in all, marched into battle. We became one with these soldiers, in purpose and in mindset, as we rushed fearlessly at the gleaming white battlements and were struck down time and time again.

But little by little, the marble cracked and crumbled under our swords. Little by little, cycle by cycle, we did as we were told and fought this war. towers and homes and citadels fell to my sisters' blades, but all the while I could think of nothing but the innocence of the hunt.

Last week, a friend sent me a message, simply: "Writing prompt: 'She considered herself paralyzed - the cold tendrils of her heart had finally settled in the very marrow of her bones.'" The core concept came to me almost immediately. I warped it a little bit to fit my style, and it took me some time to put it all on the page, but a few days later I sent her this. Alice had known about the ritual for an entire year, but that didn’t calm her much when the day came along. At the end of last year’s harvest festival the elders came to her door, explained how she had been chosen and the year she had to prepare. It was a good life, that year. She had her pick of the hunt, and bread of the best grain, and she worked and went to classes only when she chose to.

It was a good year. But despite all that, nothing could quite make up for what was about to happen. She had considered running away. Her little sister had even started packing a bag for her; she was too young to know the details, but the worry that grew on Alice’s face as harvest drew closer was enough to convince her that Alice should go. But this was her duty, her parents had said, and it would be much worse for everyone if she refused.

It’s for your family. It’s for the village. It’s for your duty. It’s not for you, was all she could think as she walked through the village that was setting up a festival all around her. She opened the hide door to the elders’ hut and closed it on the setting sun.

In the glow of candlelight, she could make out the silhouettes of the village elders sitting around the council table, with one seat nearest the door for her. At the seat was a small bottle full of swirling, glowing smoke. She sat, and one of the elders solemnly nodded at her to do what she had to. Before she could think her way out of it, she took the bottle, uncorked it, and slammed it against her mouth. Before she had time to swallow, it rushed down her throat, filling and electrifying her lungs. The immediate pain nearly knocked her out, and she fell out of her chair choking, stiff with shock.

The bottle’s denizen decided to move on, then, and collapsed through her lungs to collect in her heart. Her pulse was not her own, now, but driven by the pulses of the substance’s energy. It mingled with her blood and rushed through her veins, spreading to every limb and leeching out into every muscle and bone with tingling jolts. Alice couldn’t even begin to think about the darkness searing through her every tissue, paralyzed in body and mind. Last of all, it ventured to her brain, as if it wanted her to feel everything it had done before it completely took over. Alice’s consciousness, tied down already, was thrown aside completely as the smoke took over and confirmed what she had already been told: this was a storm she’d just swallowed, its primal, natural instincts now controlling her every move.

It opened her eyes, irises burned to a pure white by the lightning. She felt her fingers flex, grasping at the dirt in the floor, feeling the world for the first time. This volatile presence was now driving the body she’d spent 19 years in alone. She felt it walk her back out into the village, now alight with the buzz of the harvest festival.

Alice sat back and let the storm ride out the night, dancing and singing and enjoying the sheer act of being alive. She mused at the reactions of her friends and acquaintances, unused to the idea that this gentle girl could have a bit of fun. That she could be interesting. She saw the warmth of their reactions to the new her and wished she’d never known how they felt about her real self. She was the life of the party, as much as you could call it her. After a while she hid in a corner of her mind, as best she could, and imagined being at home again to study and read by the fire.