The Defiant Quill Competition thread

[Pyra Ilver]

8 days left on our primary competition!

[graec]

Just letting everyone know that the primary competition has ended. I am also bumping this thread, as it has been inactive for over a week.

[Pyra Ilver]

Winner of primary is Navy Blue, a new one will be up in a few days.

[Pyra Ilver]

Christmas draw winner is honey!

[SnowyAshes]

This was supposed to be in the style of a traditional Chinese folktale. I hope it's still acceptable this close to the deadline.
Secondary competition entry:


Image edited for the story by me

Snake was an excellent swimmer and everyone knew it. She could glide through the water as gracefully and swiftly as any fish, surely more so, for she successfully hunted them in their environment many a time. So why had she come sixth in the grand race of the zodiacs? Why had she resorted to using Horse to her own advantage and stealing his place by startling him so? Enigmatic as she was, surely no-one would ever know. No-one, that is, including Snake herself.
It was this that Snake was pondering now, as she slithered between the slimy river reeds, never allowing herself the relief of the cool waters, nor the pleasant touch of drier ground. Other animals had their reasons for placing as they did – her two dear friends, the rabbit and the dragon had both places just before her, and Rabbit couldn’t swim! She had moved from stone to stone, and when she could go no further, travelled to shore on a log pushed by Dragon! This being only after Dragon had saved an entire village from drought part way through the race by bringing them water, and despite this, Snake had still come after them, and through dishonourable methods no less.
She paused in her musings to see an old fisherman weeping by the riverside. Now, Snake may not be one to appreciate interruptions to her line of thought, but neither is she one to ignore someone who is crying. Curious and apprehensive, she approaches, calling out to discover what the matter is. “Old man,” says Snake, “Why do you weep?”
“Oh Snake, I am sorry you must see me in this state!” The old man exclaims, bowing to the famous zodiac. “You see, my daughter is sick and my boat is broken, and I cannot even seem to catch a single fish to feed her. I cannot travel to find medicine without my boat, and I fear the hunger will kill her before her sickness does!” He began weeping again, and it was such a pitiful sight that Snake could surely do nothing else but offer to help.
“Old man, I may not be as strong as the ox, as powerful as the dragon or as fast as the tiger, but tell me what direction the nearest village is, and I will swim there to get medicine for your daughter. I shall prove I deserve my place amongst the twelve animals of the Chinese Zodiac.”
“Kind Snake, how can I ever repay you? The village is not far up the river, but be warned – this being a mountainous region, the terrain is treacherous.” The old man bowed again as Snake slipped into the water for the first time since that fateful race instigated by the Jade Emperor. This time, there was far more on the line than merely a place amongst the zodiac.
~
Snake darted through the waters, straining against the current. She was determined to keep her promise to the old fisherman. Dragon was always saving people, bringing good luck and helping wherever needed. Surely it couldn’t be so difficult for Snake to just this once do the same? Further upriver the rocks were more jagged, less smoothed by years of being caressed by the endless cycle of water surging from the Earth down to the sea. Snake had to be careful her soft underbelly wasn’t cut into by the unforgiving landscape. Finally, she reached the village, and slithered to the nearest person.
“I need a doctor. Fetch one, and tell them that Snake, Sixth of the Chinese Zodiac requests that they come immediately to treat a very important patient.” She drew herself up as she spoke this, hoping to sound authoritative. The villager scurried away, returning shortly with a smartly dressed man in a hanfu with a traditional medicine pack on his shoulders. Snake briefly explained the situation and they travelled together back down the river in a boat.
~
“You are just in time!” The old man says when he sees the pair. “Please hurry, my daughter is inside, she is very weak.” He ushers them towards the house, where the doctor swiftly gets to work. After a few hours of anxious waiting, he emerges, and informs Snake and the old man that the young girl will live. Snake and the old man both sigh with relief.
“I am glad this had such a happy ending,” Snake remarks, “This New Year, I resolve not to doubt my own ability, and instead to use it to help others as I did just now.” With that, she bids the old man goodbye, and slides off into the river to swim amongst the fishes once more.

[Pyra Ilver]

Due to a lack of entries, the deadline for the secondary competition has been extended until the tenth of January.

[gansey]

primary competition entry

This was not how it was supposed to end.
Henry had not woken up prepared to be caught by the Necromancers. No, the most he had been prepared for was a fight with Martha, the owner of the bar that he lived above.
He was twenty-four years old and had spent thirteen of those on the run, but only eleven of those he'd been prepared to take on the most notorious gang in Kermanova.
What had he done at the young, innocent age of eleven, to be sought after by an organization so deadly that even the police would turn a blind eye to their doings, you may ask? He hadn't done anything, he just was. His existence was a threat to the Necromancers, as Henry was a three-of-a-kind wizard that can bring back the dead and steal the soul of a person just by mere will. The Necromancers had the other two of Henry's kind in their league, and him not being one with the party did not give him an advantage to use his powers--it made him a target for capture. A wanted man. Martha was the only person that didn't fear Henry or what might happen to her if she was caught as being his landlady, and was the only person that knew what he could do and didn't turn him in. At least, not yet.
The only way out of his demise was to give in, but Henry was much too prideful for that. The Necromancers would treat him as some kind of pet, send him out to do their dirty work. To put life back into whatever it had leaked out of that the Necromancers deemed wasn't ready to have its life leak out of.
Henry did not agree with his power, nor did he want it. To Henry, if someone died, they died. The past is not meant to be tampered with, but the Necromancers didn't care.
So there they stood before him, three figures cloaked in crimson. They wore the color of blood like a chic new trend, calling attention wherever they went that they were unkillable.
"Top of the morning, gents," Henry said with a smile. His charm could woo any lady--or man--but, unfortunately, not these men. "And where might you be headed, dressed so solemn."
"Cut the crap, Owl," snapped the one on the far right. Before Henry's identity was discovered, he was nicknamed the Owl. As ravens and crows are symbols of death, so are owls, but, like Henry and his talent, are seen scarcely. "You know why we're here."
"Because you all missed my pretty face so much that you couldn't bear to be without it?" Henry shot back, his mind speeding faster than light to try to find a way out.
"Looks like all those spells you used to cover your trail didn't do ya' no good in the end, Henry." Lyle Peterson. He was the only one of the Necromancers to call Henry by his name. The name Lyle gave to him when he found Henry as a child on the streets, abandoned.
Henry had been abandoned once as a child and would've preferred to be abandoned a second time rather than suffer through what had actually happened. The day Henry raised a bunny from the grave was the day Lyle tried to sell him out to the Necromancers.
"You're correct, the spells I put on myself did serve me well in the end, if it's taken you thirteen years to find me. And if you'll excuse me, I think I might leave for thirteen more," Henry said, just as he cast a teleportation spell. Well, tried to cast a teleportation spell. The first Necromancer that had spoken sprang forward with a dagger, aiming for Henry's face--his one weakness. Henry stepped to the side just in time, or he might've lost an eye.
Lyle predicted his movement, and grabbed Henry by the arm and forced him to the ground.
"What a shame," Lyle said with false sorrow. He brought out a blade the size of his palm, one to carve a rune into flesh. "Such a waste of potential. I thought I raised you better to respect yer elders and obey 'em, but I guess you youngsters just don't care no more." Lyle the smooth side of the knife down the side of Henry's face, humming a little tune, trying to decide the best place to put a mark that would bind Henry to the Necromancers' service.
"I think you mean what a waste of beauty," Henry sang, still trying to devise a plan to stop the end of his future as a free man. "This gorgeous face doesn't come often, and carving one of those bloody runes into me would be so drab."
"Don't worry, the dead don't care about looks; they jus' care about bein' not dead."
"After all these years, you still have a way with words, Father."
Henry thought he had made the right move to call Lyle his father, but he was wrong. Anger flashed in Lyle's eyes as he finally decided where to put the rune.
He lifted up the knife and was about to bring it down on Henry's cheek when a door banged open and a small, wrinkled woman stepped out into the daylight, holding a double barreled shotgun.
"You keep your hands off of that boy or else," growled Martha.
This was enough to catch Lyle's attention. "And just who do you think you are?" Martha walked down from the door and took three steps closer, but said nothing. "Or else what? You'll bake me a sour apple pie?"
"I'll make sure no one finds your body so your 'lil pets can't bring you back," Martha said, too calmly.
Lyle stood up tall, but did not release Henry from his grasp. He looked Martha in the eyes and saw she wasn't kidding.
"Well, well, well, fellas, looks like we gots ourselves two prizes tonight," Lyle whistled, too confidently. That was his mistake. As Henry's beauty was his weakness, confidence was what would be Lyle's downfall. He let go of Henry and strode to Martha. Although Henry wasn't completely unguarded, he no longer had anyone holding onto him. This led to an opening that, not Henry, but Martha saw and took advantage of.
She was a skilled witch in her golden days but claimed that now it took too much out of her to do more than a cleaning spell, which meant either two things: That she lied about magic draining her too much, or that she was willing to risk her life to save Henry from his end.
"Abscedere!" Like lightning, Martha whipped out her wand, pointed it at Henry and shouted.
"No!" Henry screamed back, but Martha would never hear him. She had teleported him to an unknown destination, but a safe one. Left with nothing but the clothes on his back and sadness in his heart, he would have to start another new life.
That shouldn't have bothered him, as he'd done it eight times before.
Starting over was what Henry did best, so he naturally should have been unaffected.
But he wasn't unaffected.
He liked who he was in that life, and for as much as they bickered, Henry loved Martha like a grandmother, and he knew that deep down, Martha loved him too.
But the past was the past, and it was not meant to be tampered with.

heck i'm so sorry if this is too long or too violent, i've never written here before and got a bit carried away and also nervous, but i hope you all enjoy it at least a little bit, also if this isn't where you're supposed to post your entries someone please tell me

[Pyra Ilver]

Extension until the twentieth for the primary competition.

Extension for the secondary until the fifteenth since there are two entries only.

[gansey]

secondary competition entry

His name was Silas Cooper, and he was not the same.
Not to those around him, at least.
You and I would glance at Silas and think he was the same--even a thorough look at him would still lead us to believe that he was the same. His paleness and too-slim frame would be a mere afterthought. Aside from his stark white hair, nothing about him was out of the ordinary. But we are not those around him.
In the realm of Every Yesterday, Silas is just as us. He looks like us, talks like us, and held an affinity for dogs, as the majority of us do.
But in the realm of All Tomorrows, that was not good enough. Silas may have spoken their language and walked their streets and spent with their currency and obeyed their laws, but he was not the same.
Silas was shorter than them and paler than them and incredibly more thin and less talented than them, but he was only human.
And though many stories follow and say that the parents had either abandoned their child or shunned him for his differences, Silas's did not. His parents loved him for all he was and all he wasn't, and treated him just as any other parent, and raised him as if he were the same. Despite what his society had implied all his life that he was no one, his parents told him that he was someone.
And this is where our story leads us.
The one thing that even a thorough look from us could not identify about Silas was the he liked to play with fire, both literally and metaphorically. Which was fitting, because it matched his personality perfectly.
"Burning another student," said his father, Quentin, as they drove home. "How many times has it been now? Four? Five? I can't keep leaving work early to take you home, Silas. Money doesn't grow on trees." He paused, waiting for Silas to reply--a reply that he wasn't going to get. "You can't ignore me forever. We have to talk about this sometime."
Silas remained silent. He stared out the window, watching the houses pass by. The mailboxes, the trees, the lamp posts. He tried to tune out his father's voice and the low buzz of the radio, spewing some kind of warning about avoiding certain areas.
"If you're having problems at school--" Quentin began, but then stopped. "Your mother and I got a call the other day about your attendance habits. We know you've been skipping."
"Well, maybe if everyone didn't treat me like such--" Silas stopped himself; he knew how his father felt about swear words. "Like such crap, then school would be a more enjoyable place."
"Silas," Quentin sighed. "It's your senior year. You need to take your future into consideration; you can't just leave whenever you--"
"My future? What future do I have when I can barely even summon enough flame to light a cigarette? What future do I have when even my teacher see me as different, and not in a good way? It doesn't matter whether or not you and mom believe that I can be better. There are people out there that can stop a dragon from destroying a town with a single word, and I can't even keep a room lit for more than thirty minutes," he had to take a pause from his rant, his heart was racing and his vision swam.
"I'm going to go ahead and ignore what you said about the cigarettes," Quentin cut in. "You're never going to be better if you don't try. I know that I don't understand your powerlessness and pain, but I do know that if you keep telling yourself that you won't succeed, you're not only going to end up hurting yourself, but also the people that love you." Quentin had a hard time connecting with his son, but he tried to understand as much as he could about Silas. "Besides, the last Tamer died fifty years ago." Tamers were one of the rarest abilities any kind of mage could have--the ability to not only speak to, but to control nature.
"And by the way, I don't want you skipping class anymore, okay? You've heard the news lately, right?" Silas nodded.
Every Yesterday's California had wild fires caused by droughts, but All Tomorrows's North Dakota had wildfires caused by dragons. The rare, uncontrollable beasts were generally not found in the United States, but sometimes they made their way down from Canada if the weather was unpleasant. Although unable to be tamed by any mage, dragons were naturally peaceful creatures. They only went on rampages if aggravated.
"Word on the street is," Quentin sometimes used what he thought to be 'youngster slang' to amuse Silas, but his attempt was futile. "There might be some group of punks that are purposely getting those dragons all riled up. If the hundred-foot-long flaming reptile isn't enough to scare you into staying in school, maybe gang activity will."
Silas tried his best not to get angry. There Quentin went again--always trying to turn something into a lesson.
"I just want you to stay safe, okay? I love you, you know that, right?"
They were silent the rest of the ride home.
-
"Cooper?" the instructor called Silas's name for attendance. Too bad he wasn't there to keep from being marked absent.
Instead of in class, Silas was in the park for a nice Thursday afternoon stroll. You had to hand it to him--he left school the second the bell for lunch rang, meaning that he had remained there for an entire four and a half hours.
It was unnaturally warm for a day in early autumn, but Silas didn't mind. He loved being outdoors--especially when he was supposed to be indoors. Being with nature calmed Silas down better than anything else could. He almost always went to the park when he skipped class, mostly to say hello to his friends Betty and Betty.
"Hello Betty," Silas greeted her. "And where might Betty be?"
Betty barked in response. She was a majestic dog with a thick coat of fur.
"Why aren't you learning?" Betty came up behind him. For an old woman, she was awfully quick and quiet. "Does your father know you're here?"
"If he knew I came here when I skip, then I wouldn't be here, now would I?" Silas avoided eye contact with Betty by focusing on petting Betty.
"You have all your mother's attitude yet all of your father's care. I've never seen anything like it," Betty said, sitting down on one of the benches.
"That's because you've never seen anything like me," Silas said with a smile. Though it was only a joke, there was a painful truth to it. Betty had never seen anything like him because there was nothing in the realm of All Tomorrows that was as useless as Silas felt.
They all were silent for what seemed like a short time, yet long enough for Betty to fall asleep and for Silas to think Betty had fallen asleep.
Silas knew it was almost time to get back to school. His leg had fallen asleep because Betty had laid her head on his knee, and he was trying to gently move the snoozing canine's head when a scream broke out from the other side of the park.
Normally, Silas would have ran the other direction and not looked back, but the scream had come from the only park exit, and he needed to be at school in time for his mother to pick him up. So, hesitantly, Silas said his goodbyes to Bettys and prayed that the scream was nothing.
Unfortunately, it was not.
Silas had been walking for about ten minutes, and was almost out of the park when a shadow blocked out the sunshine from behind. Still, Silas kept walking. Ignore it. It's just a cloud, he told himself.
It was most definitely not just a cloud.
Silas heard a low rumble, and he knew it was too late.
He turned around in time to see the glow of the dragon's belly, immediately followed by the sight of its gaping jaws and a steady stream of flames protruding from it, aimed at him.
Silas did not have time to run. He did not have time to scream. He felt the heat for a long few seconds, and then it was over.
Silas was no longer on fire, but his school uniform was. He sprinted towards the fountain at the park exit, and jumped in.
Why had he not burned to a crisp? Why was he not ashes? How had he survived? Silas's mind was racing with these questions, and he barely noticed a second scream.
The dragon had found a couple with their small children and was preparing to do to them what it had done to Silas.
Glow of the belly.
Silas knew he had to do something, but what?
Open the jaws.
What kind of distraction could he make before it was too late?
Rumble.
"No!" Silas screamed.
And the dragon obeyed.
The dragon then turned on Silas.
Silas flinched and covered his face. This is it. This is the end.
But it did not turn on Silas, but towards him. Waiting for its next command.
Silas uncovered his face and looked upon the dragon both in fear and in awe.
Silas was not powerless, but one of the most powerful mages currently thriving. He was a Tamer.
And had he not skipped school and been at the park to make this discovery, he may never had found out.
He couldn't wait to rub it in his father's face.

it's super late and I didn't proof read so so sorry about any grammatical or spelling errors, I haven't had time to do this but wanted to get one in still. chinese zodiac is dragon, if you can't tell.

[Pyra Ilver]

Winners have been announced, prizes sent out and new prizes up on the front! Well done to Snowy for winning our first round.