Lyse’s Last Stand

Lyse sprinted into the library, slammed the steel door shut, and leaned against it, heaving for breath.. Blood ran from a dozen wounds. Her familiar, Daffodil, swooped in through a skylight, his rotors whining.”Hurry”, he buzzed through the headlink. “Three more Hoodoo Hounds headed in. Plus the Handler.”

She nodded, exhausted, and reached out her mind to tap the magic of the Well. She could take them with a rechar–

She gasped. There was no magic. Finally, she saw the decaying books and rotting shelves and groaned. The library was dead, the Well impossibly empty.

Outside, the hounds howled.

I will be perfectly honest with you. When I picked this picture for the Phantom Sway Friday Fiction prompt, I thought the story would flow right out of it.

Boy oh boy was I wrong.

Writing this story was like wrestling an engaged piglet in a vat of oil while wearing slippery mittens. And the piglet bites.

Still, here it is, a good scene, if not a good story. It takes place in a world that creeps in to my imagination from time to time. I think it wants me to tell more of its stories. We shall see.