Mrs. Shepar lay in bed, hoping that her charges were as well. Winter could be a depressing time - that was why it had been stuffed full of holidays. Heat, light, and togetherness as rebellion against a cold and uncaring universe. And here at the Greenridge orphanage, the outside world felt particularly hostile this year. If you only had the paperwork to go off of, one might mistake their situation for “business as usual” for a lean year. More orphans enrolled into the system, budg

 Tanya had had a lucky life. She was able to become a trainer at a very young age, with one of the cutest and best pokemon ever: an Eevee. True, they didn’t always win against other trainers, but the two of them had gotten in synch enough that no wild pokemon around could match them. When Eevee fell, that just meant a trip back to the pokemon center and a session of cuddling to make it up to her. Tanya had done her research about eevees, and the different ways they could adapt to their su

The shadows slowly pulled back from her eyes. “Ah, you’ve woken up,” said the being sitting across from her at the table. She couldn’t see them properly, it was still too dark.“Who are you? How did I get here?” For that matter, where was here? The table was wooden, the wall to her right was stone with some wooden shelves… the blanket draped around her was an old-fashioned weaving style…“You don’t remember much, do you?” the other being responded, “Well… take your time.

 “Because they both have inky quills.” “That…” the sphinx glanced aside at her weretiger companion, “...Seems appropriate. What do you think?” “Ah, let’s just give it to them,” Priscilla shrugged, “That’s an obscure one anyway. And this group seems serious enough.” “Why thank you ma’am. You’re sure you don’t need rescuing?” the answerer, a youthful bard, responded.  “Quit while you’re ahead, Sam,” the tigress said lightly, laughi

 “This can’t be happening,” Kayla moaned, as she was pushed forward. “Well, believe it,” said the muscular devil woman behind her, holding the half-elf’s arms tight. “Can’t afford to stop here. That helmet working? It’s true it’s not supposed to be survivable down here, but we do need you alive.” Kayla, daughter of Reshim, was not supposed to be in hell by any reasonable metric. It was metaphysically impossible to legitimately barter with another living perso

 Mercy was in a place she didn’t recognize. It was mostly made of metal and piping. Some of it used to move, she could tell, but now it was rusty and broken. Sunlight shone in through broken windows. ‘A “factory?”’ she thought, but she couldn’t imagine how anything could have been made here. The concept was alien enough to her - she only knew the word from knowledge she’d absorbed from someone else. ‘The layout makes little sense to me. There’s no order I can see.’&

 “What does not kill me makes me stronger, as they say,” the actor on stage continued their soliloquy. “The scales have fallen from my eyes. Indeed, I have been a fool. I bought that monster’s excuses too easily, turned a blind eye as my supporters vanished down her throat, til she was the only one left I could turn to. She gave me a victory against the horde, so that she could take it from me and leave me here… alone.” They looked about the empty stage, picking up a decorated p

 The first giant monster attack on Grasston was a Tyrannosaur that walked in on the main roads. After a bit over an hour, a giant woman with fox ears and two tails had broken out of a museum where a related exhibit was on display, and managed a mutual kill. Or so it seemed at the time. But while the citizens of the city were able to piece together where the kitsune emerged from, if not how, they didn’t have the time or resources to backtrace the dinosaur’s origins. The second giant