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The Howl in the Dark · Original Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
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The Dark Hungers
Wind screamed like a chorus of banshees as the bay doors cranked open, revealing inky abyss above and a sea of storms below. His visor flickered to life; GPS, vitals, ammo, proximity sensors, and the all-important timer. With a Pop-Hiss the exosuit disengaged from its wall moorings. “Package is secured, ready for drop on your mark,” he said after fastening the straps to the saucer-like container on his back.

“T-minus twenty and counting, Reg. Chop put us behind schedule so you’ll need to make up for it on the dive. Try not to leave a crater.”

“Your recommendation is noted.” Numbers ticked down. “See you in five,” Reg promised before leaping from the prop-driven beast’s belly into the maw of charged clouds. They accepted the offering eagerly, rain and fog enveloping his vision while electricity danced across the suit’s nanofibers. More screaming, this time with an ectoplasm concentration warning rune appearing on his display; the sound in the plane hadn’t been like banshees, unfortunately.

Safeties disengaged as the suit’s integrated plasma cannon began charging with the abundant ambient power coursing through his exo. “Engaging.” A brilliant blue beam seared the sky and the wailing ghast that had been following his gravitic rainbow, dissolving it into unstable motes, soon followed by utter nothingness.

“Your lightshow got the attention of something big, keep an eye out on your six.”

A blip appeared on his proxy sensor; not only was it solid, unlike his previous pursuer, it was also larger. Much larger. “Varghoul?” he asked as the cannon cycled its ammunition to something more mass-centric.

“Likely.”

He burst from the cloud cover, rain spitting against the cherry-red gun barrel as it swung back and forth looking for a target.

It didn’t have to search for long as the Varghoul followed in his wake, trailing wisps of cloud from its leathery wings.

Gruesome and ungodly, as if man and vampire bat had their worst aspects merged together and then been draped in mottled, decaying flesh. The new, steaming hole in its stomach was an improvement, although its roar of anguish and fury suggested the feeling wasn’t mutual. A clunk reverberated through his arms as the spent shell was ejected and a new solid-silver 30mm round took its place.

“Thirty seconds until you’re at minimum safe deployment.”

“I know. Shit.” The second round went wild as Reg was rocked by a crosswind, allowing the monstrosity to draw in closer as bits of viscera and guts left the wind-whipped wound. The third grazed its leg, drawing a snarl, and then the thing was upon him.

Clumsy weightless swings with the retractable silver blade cut the monster, but not nearly as much as its wicked talons and claws cut him as it scoured Reg's body for the container on his back. Disemboweling was staved off by the suit’s plating, but it wouldn’t last forever. He dropped his guard, allowing the beast to score a vicious slice across his chest that rent the armor and grew warm with blood. In return the knife swept cleanly through the wing membrane before slowing momentarily on the bone, then biting into open air once more.

They came apart as he kicked away from the Varghoul trying in vain to fly with two-thirds less wing than usual. He brought his legs and arms together for a moment, then spread them out in his own facsimile of flight as the exo deployed its wingsuit fabric. He allowed himself a brief smile at the hybrid crunching into the earth below before his attention turned back to his own landing.

Reg yawed up and flared his limbs to catch the air and slow down, although it wasn’t quite enough to keep himself from going into a clumsy roll upon landing. The wingsuit retracted as he did his best to maintain the momentum into a sprint, the timer ticking into the single-digits. Time was of the essence; even a second too late and this would have all been for nothing, an empty gesture in exchange for a full stomach. He slid the package from his back and dove for it.

His finger met the doorbell and the clock stopped on [00:02].

The door opened. “Hey, guys, pizza’s here!”
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#1 · 2
· · >>Ion-Sturm
This is my only reaction.

I say that because, well, the things I would say are obvious to the author. They have to be.

Yeah, the non-sequitur has no build-up. Sure, the ending is a complete betrayal of the tone that the story was going for. And the only other critique I had for this story up until the ending was, What the hell is going on? I was all ready to talk about how writing something so intensely sci-fi in 750 words maximum is a fool's errand. I need me some exposition, man. But apparently I'm not supposed to take that part of the story seriously. Which the author knows! Curses! Foiled again!

Honestly? This reads like a pizza commercial. And that isn't something I think I've ever enjoyed :/
#2 · 1
· · >>Ion-Sturm
I shouldn’t like this story as much as I do, Writer.

I should be confused by how the arcanotech babble doesn’t feel very consistent throughout the piece.

I should be annoyed at how Reg never actually shoots the varghoul at the start of their wrestling match. The hole just appears in its stomach, and it feels cheap to not even address it in the narrative when the recoil from a 30mm round is not something you just gloss over while in flight, I don’t care how good the suit is at remaining stable mid-air.

I should remember that I spent the entire middle of the story utterly convinced there would not be a satisfying ending, with so much space taken up by what amounts to a high production value fistfight.

But then I got to the end, and it’s like you’re playing a board game, and one of your friends pulls some crazy nonsense out of left field and destroys all of your hopes and dreams in one go, and you should feel frustrated, but all you can do is snap-to-finger-gun at them and go, “that was good,” as you quietly nod and accept your new place in the universe as someone who got “got”.

I’m not even mad. I should be, but I’m not.


Best of luck, Writer!
#3 · 3
· · >>Ion-Sturm
Alternate Title: Extreme Pizza Time

Yes, it's that time of the month again, folks. Time for me to review all the entries in a minific round, and I like to think I learned a lot as a critic from my last time doing this. It's been a few days, and I've read all the entries at least once, with each review warranting a second (or sometimes third) look-through.

As before, we're going from top to bottom, so I'm starting with this.

I'll say upfront that when I first read The Dark Hungers I thought the ending came out of nowhere, a sentiment a few commentators have, and not without good reason: it's a weird fucking ending for your sci-fi action story.

The descriptions of the exosuit and Reg's weaponry had me wondering if this was just going to be some fetishistic military material, and even after re-reading it I still think it's unnecessary for the reader to know the bullets are 30mm.

But the detail of them being silver is a nice touch, though, and this is where I get into stuff I like.

In hindsight, really thinking about it, this has one of the most clever endings of any entry this round, by a rather comfortable margin. If you think the pizza delivery reveal came out of nowhere, go back and read again. Reg has an exosuit, a gun, a GPS, a timer, and a package. Now, those last three items might seem a little conspicuous, but you probably assumed it was a "normal" delivery mission.

WELL YOU'RE WRONG!

I've come to realize the author played us like a goddamn fiddle. He bamboozled us real good, ladies and gents.

The fight with the Varghoul (a kind of werewolf but also not) is perhaps overly detailed, but fun. Gory fun, but fun. I also like how this sort of thing would happen in a world where these creatures exist and Domino's really had to change with the times. It doesn't take itself too seriously, at least for me.

Even so, this is by no means a great story, although I don't think it was intended to be a masterpiece or anything, and it's far better than a couple shitposty entries that I'll get to later.

It's a decent read, breh.
#4 · 2
·
>>Miller Minus
Every time I write a story like this I wrestle with the thought of, "Am I being too obvious in the foreshadowing? This is a group of dedicated writers I'm catering to, after all." I suppose I simply haven't learned my lesson yet. I know I didn't fail to leave enough clues because others picked up on it. I even decided to describe his package as 'saucer'-like rather than pie-shaped because pie felt too on the nose (and saucer has 'sauce' in the word so it felt more clever in the endgame reveal). I guess he was delivering one with jalapeno peppers on it because you could say I'm spicy.

In the end though, the main body wasn't strong enough to stand on its own two feet to mitigate the possibility of the ending falling flat for some people. I'll have to refine my reveals, and maybe make them a little more apparent.

>>Icenrose
Reg surprises the Varghoul with his shot, ergo the exposition makes it a surprise too; by the time he pulls the trigger it's effectively already hit the creature. It's like when two swordfighters are locked together face to face in a movie, then one of them gets a surprised look and the camera slowly pans down to reveal a hand that, one presumes, is no longer holding the dagger embedded in their stomach.

The archanotech was undeveloped in its flavor, unfortunately. I should have cut out the runes bit so it could be more grounded in sci-fi, rather than trying to add a dash of fantasy when I lacked the wordcount to worldbuild such an amalgamation.

Thank you for the praise on the ending, though.

>>No_Raisin
30 minutes or it's free, Parker.

I went with 30mm because that's the ammunition type of a Thunderbolt II Jet's GAU cannon, which is a sexy T H I C C gun the size of a Volkswagon. I knew adding it was excessive, but I do ever so love the BRRRRRTTTT. It also gives the reader some indication of the size of hole it puts into things. The silver was part of the worldbuilding I tried to slot in. I was planning on having a mention of something along the lines of "Everything went to shit when those archeologists opened The Crypt" but I couldn't find a suitable place for it and was running out of both time and words.

Googling Varghoul brings up a wide variety of creatures, only a few of which I could hesitantly describe as being wolf-like. I was personally just appropriating Vargeist but didn't want to use the term since "Original minific" and all.

Yeah, there's pretty much two ways to read the story that I've been told of: Either it's the most extreme pizza delivery (my intention), or some pimply teenager trying to imagine their job being actually interesting (I only wish this had been my intention).

Hope you enjoyed the realization. In a world gone mad, one of the few solaces people can find is pizza, truly the greatest of all these parts of a complete breakfast.