#kharmic realignment

Challenge #04720-L336: Learned Something Yet?

It's been twenty and one years. Wraithvine comes to see if the little turd has finally learned some humility. The allied Duke, a peaceful, and honorable elf, joins hir to see his future son-in-law as well. He would never let his daughter wed one who would mistreat her.

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-04581-l197-attitudes-adjusted-while-you-wait -- Anon Guest

One can wander very far on assorted quests during twenty years. Especially if a few Dragons or deities decided to relocate Wraithvine to different continents. So it took hir a year to get back to Bytrador, where the young Lord Liacaryn was "enjoying her Majestrix's hospitality."

Wraithvine hoped that the lordling had learned his lesson, and was not still "enjoying her Majestrix's hospitality."

Challenge #03468-I180: Acts of Diminished Responsibility

A Knomira thinks they know better than the safety and security personnel, demanding they let her take her normal shortcut through the station to get back to her quarters. That area is blocked off due to upgrades being done. Long story short, Knomira forces her way in, refuses to acknowledge warning signs, and ends up in an ICU drawer.

Warning signs are there for a REASON people! -- Anon Guest

Floating on a cloud of really great painkillers. Watching friendly colourful blobs drift and collide on a screen a short distance from her face. This could not be real. That was the reasoning Valeska settled on by the time the colourful blobs faded into the face of someone in Medical Reds[1].

"You're a dream," she announced. "And kind'a dreamy. What'cha doin' this weekend?"

Doctor Imaginary was scowling and unhappy. "I am growing three new essential organs for you. While I'm at it, I might see about inserting some functional brain cells." A tap to a little badge on her chest that flashed like a mirror. "Do you even remember what you did to yourself?"

Challenge #04542-L158: All Due Respect

Careful to whom you speak, and the tone of use. Just remember insult is rarely forgotten, and not all retribution is swift. -- Anon Guest

Night Watch, ten years before the significant event...

Officer Druempf almost missed the moving shadow in the half-light of dawn. "Halt! Who goes there?"

The shadow slowed, sighed and straightened, revealing itself as that double-damned devilborn. The alleged lordling who was the most infamous student of that Elf's school in the landscaping place. "It's only me, Officer," said the Hellkin. "On my way out of Wolklippenstadt for good."

Challenge #04581-L197: Attitudes Adjusted While You Wait

Wraithvine {who may or may not have a companion} has found Hirself contractually obligated with escorting a truly wretched individual to safety. A Lordling who pisses on the common folk, believes himself superior, and is guilty of a few actual crimes no one dares arrest him for.

No locals, anyway, and while Wraithvine needs to bring the Lordling to a certain location…there’s nothing that says the journey must end there. Why not continue on to a jurisdiction where the Lordling can face arrest? Jail is quite safe, after all. -- Anon Guest

Sometimes, species of Alfarell have an easy time making enemies, whilst openly wondering if it was something they said. For most of recorded time, that species was the Elves. They entered the mortal plane and immediately took umbrage with Dragonkind. As other species evolved, either the Dragons or the Elves attempted to dominate them. Thus creating more umbrage all around.

You'd think that species that long-lived would learn more lessons in their lifetimes, but no. They kept repeating the mistakes they refused to learn from history.

Case in point, the Lordling Liacaryn, a mere septuagenarian[1] who had a checkered past since his Tormentious Twenties[2]. They were entitled, arrogant, openly disrespectful, and hornier than a Geep[3]. He'd already caused a lot of lawsuits and nearly triggered a few wars as a result of his neglected by-blows.

Challenge #04531-L147: Oh, the Deprivation!

Poor, poor, pitiful me. -- Anon Guest

This had to be the worst day. She couldn't find any of her servants. There was nobody to dress her and she'd been wearing the same nightgown all day. Nobody had fed her breakfast. None of her tutors had come to give her any of her lessons, and she was well overdue for Elementary Dressage.

She had had the rudest awakening with a slave grabbing her out of her bed and setting her loose -barefoot!- on the streets. Which were on fire. People were running everywhere and she had bounced off more than a few people before a complete stranger scooped her up and deposited her into a pen with a confused crowd of similarly underdressed children. Some were naked, and almost all of them were dirty. Many of them were crying.

When the grownups finally came to see to them, they came with shirts for the naked ones, washcloths for all of them, and made them sit at long benches with bowls of gruel instead of breakfast. Some had to be taught how to hold their spoons. This was not the fare she expected. A princess like her deserved far better than a bowl of gruel.

Challenge #03612-I324: Cirque de Sade

The child is found to have wandered off deep into the woods. The ones that had her held other intelligent beings, though these were mostly adults, in cages as a traveling freak show. They demand Wraithvine give their "exhibit" back. Wraithvine shows just how peeved off a parental, even if the child is still new to them, can get at such cruelty.

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-03514-i226-mine-now -- Anon Guest

The music lead Wraithvine to the carnival, but the very sight of the motley tents made little Adabaki whimper, cry, and cling to Wraithvine. There were large and muscular toughs prodding the bushes with staves. Not a sign of an anxious guardian calling for a missing babe.

There were too many cages with curtains. Too many hucksters promising the wandering traveler that they could see a real live freak of nature.

Wraithvine didn't need to ask if this was where hir Adabaki had come from. There was plenty of evidence. Ze soothed hir new adoptee and hid them in the folds of hir cloak. "It's all right, dear one. They won't harm you or anyone else ever again."

Challenge #03318-I030: A Dangerously Bold Sparkling White

An alcohol maker of great renown was kind and warm. They were also insanely skilled with their craft, being able to make any kind of drink imaginable, and without any use of magic at all. Of course, unfortunately, their reputation got around, so they did, sometimes, have to deal with very arrogant individuals demanding to know their secrets, demanding that they work for only one person or another and "not to share these drinks with the peasantry for they did not deserve them." Only to find out that, just because the person didn't use magic to make their drinks didn't mean they didn't know magic for use in defense of themselves and their home. -- Anon Guest

Glistablanc, the world's greatest brewer, spent a moment appreciating the dungeon cell. It was where, according to the Monarch Ysaben, he would be spending years if he didn't 'behave'.

Behave, from the tyrant's dictionary, meant, "Do what I tell you to do and be happy about it."

It was a fairly decent cell, as far as incarceration methods were concerned. Carved into the solid rock, there were no bricks or cobbles to loosen. The one crack in the flooring also served as the drainage and was barely wide enough for a mouse, let alone a full-grown humanoid. The rushes were changed once a month whether they needed it or not, the food wasn't spat in, and the bars were wrought iron. Seven tin cups out of a possible ten.

You'll need the wayback machine. A man stands in front of a door. It can lead anywhere. Dare you step through? -- Anon Guest

Presented for your approval, the image of a man in a grey suit. The man is also in tones of grey. To see him, and the door he offers you, is to see into different realities where anything from creeping horror to sublime delight awaits on the other side. It is, without a doubt, the trip of a lifetime. If you survive, it will be a life-altering experience.'

If you don't survive... well... people disappear all the time, don't they? The missing, the absent, the lost... those who are there one minute and gone the next. The shadows in the corner of your vision. The sensation of being followed, only to find no-one there. Those are the ones who failed to learn the lessons in the twilight lands, and are doomed to educate the others.

There's no name for the realm into which the grey door leads. Not one that can be spoken without sheer tonnage of cultural load crushing the reader with its impact. Call it what you please. The twilight realms, the kharma zone, the faewraith... what matters is that those who enter it are luckier than you may believe. Those who survive to come back are forever changed. Whether or not it is for the better is not for us to judge. The judges, after all, have already done their work.