Edgar reached down, picked up a bone, examined it. Eyed it. Sniffed it. Considered licking it. Set it back down. Picked it back up. Considered licking it again. Set it aside from the other bones. Then moved on to a different bone and repeated the process. He did this several times before finally settling on a thick bone riddled with clinging frost that was nearly the length of his arm. He dusted some of the frost off with his glove-covered hand, flipped it over a few times, rolled it around in his hands and sniffed it like the others before finally raising it to his mouth, tongue outstretched.
A hand yanked at the base of Edgar's long brown
Barbarian Edgar
3
Nozaki
5
Giant by ikazon, literature
Literature
Giant
It had taken him a year to traverse the Desolate Continent, his rucksack getting smaller and smaller as his supplies ran out. He might have been able to get to his destination sooner with help, but he knew he had to make this journey alone. A clear map, a course plotted on paper, anything more concrete than the fleeting memories of the stories he'd been told as a child would have helped. But he had to make do. The world was at an impasse. No one was happy, but no one had an edge, either. His goal was to turn the tide in favor of his people. Of his history. Of the very power they once possessed. When he finally crossed the tundra and could see the skeletal remains of the giant—of the mythical force he'd spent his childhood dreaming of—even his shock that the being had been real couldn't overtake the awe of discovering an entire body. Though he was tired from his travels and exhaustion threatened to kick in, he was calculated. This one was stabbed clean through, both weapons present
Toward the end, Taku was hardly there. Physically, he was present, but Tobias didn’t know the man in front of him beyond knowing who he once was.
Tobias could tell at a glance when Taku was there and when he wasn’t. The only part of him that remained consistent was the marble eye, the cloudy gray anchor that at times seemed dull in comparison to his large personality, and at others seemed to hold his head in the realm of the living as the rest of his body tried to revolt. He’d fall into fits of rage, periods where anything and everything he could keep hold of long enough would get thrown across the room and left wher
Tobias could feel the fire in his feet the first time he walked across the tightrope, the way it felt that surely meant the tiny string would give way to the landscape he knew was somewhere far beneath him—Taku insisted that Tobias shouldn’t look down until he’d gotten the hang of it a few times first—the way it felt that surely meant gravity would win out in the end, the way gravity always won out in the end—
But there he was, one foot in front of the next, treading steady, steady as he went until he found himself standing on a balcony of the apartment building clear across the street as though he hadn’t
Bringing homework to absent nerds wasn’t Will Oxman’s style. He had a reputation to keep. But despite his complaints and arguments against the biology teacher that he and Thornton Wilson shared, he couldn’t deny that he lived the closest. Following that failed conversation, Will decided to accidentally forget to stop by Thornton’s house. He let slip at lunch that he was going to accidentally forget, and was met with approval and a small sense of reassurance. The Ox, as he was known to the football team, wasn’t a delivery boy for a nerd.
Four hours later, Will stood—som
Somewhere outside the window, the ocean rushed along the coast, waves breaking as fishing boats cut between them, creating new crests on the water in the push to reach the fish. Seafoam scattered in the air, a flash of white among the marine layer, before dissolving in the in between, not quite water, not quite sky. On the other side of the window, in a small room of a small home in Urayasu, Torumaru rolled over and fell out of his bed. Stunned into awareness, he stood up and jerked his head about, blearily taking in his room. His gray eyes rested on his own reflection, and he noticed his black hair hanging in a mess just abov
“We’ve got about half an hour until daybreak. The light panel is up and running, so you can begin, lightbringer!”
Kenta closed his eyes to the stars and breathed in through his nose before exhaling sharply out of his mouth. His hands were trembling. When he breathed in next, the stars came with it, pinpricks of light jumping to his fingers, toes, arms, legs, and even his face and hair. Every part of his body seemed to be engulfed in blue light, except his closed eyes. Once the light had gathered, he exhaled through his mouth once again, and the light throughout his body shifted to his left arm until it was contained be
On the way home from work, he pushed a child into the street as a car passed. When questioned as to why he did it, he replied, "no one did anything good today. It's like they needed a reason. So I gave them someone to help and a reason why."