The Wedding of Ser Birchwood and Glaurhurion

My troops and I rode hard up the hill toward the chapel. The last of the cavalrymen of Grandolheim. 200 strong men on horseback. Purple and gold banners fluttering above our heads. The gleam of the setting sun reflecting off of our armor. Hooves pounding the dirt road like thunder. Now was the time to end this scourge, no matter what some errant knight had to say about it.

As we approached, a giant, green troll, seven-feet tall and just as wide, barreled out of the church toward us. I lowered my lance and urged my horse forward. My lance drove through the troll's chest and out its back. At the same time, it managed to smash its massive fist into my horse, sending me sprawling onto the grass. I got up quick and drew my sword. Next to my pulverized horse, however, lay the dead troll. I turned to the chapel to see a horde mixed with monsters and humans stream out of the building. The thunder of hooves came to a stop behind me.

"What the hell do you think you are doing, Ser Angelhand?" Ser Birchwood shouted as he burst forth from the crowd. His golden armor polished for the occasion, though he still carried a sword at his side as well as two strapped to his back.

"We, the last of the fighting men of Grandolheim, have been sent by King Morgangard of the kingdom of Grandolheim to slay the foul beast Glaurhurion, winged terror of the Eastern Mountains. Justice must be served, now stand aside."

Ser Berchwood stood steady, arms folded, even as I raised my blade. "I will not allow you to advance any further as long as you mean to do harm to my beloved. You and your men have already interrupted our most joyous ceremony and if a single man proceeds even a step further with ill will toward either my bride or any in our wedding party, I will dispatch them myself."

"What seems to be the matter, my knight?" A voice sang from inside the chapel. I looked from Ser Birchwood to the chapel door to see a maiden dressed in a simple, white gown step out into the sunlight. The world seemed to brighten with her presence. Her long, black hair hung to her waist, mysterious as midnight. Eyes that reflected everything good in this world. A simple white gown dressed her person, for no amount of diamonds or rubies could ever match her elegance. I lowered my sword, embarrassed to even have it out in front of such a fair maiden.

At her feet however, her shadow grew larger and larger. As if a force of evil on its own, it spread out further and further, circling the damsel in a twenty-foot circle or darkness. More than just a mere shadow, it wiggled as if alive, like worms or tentacles, grabbing at the ankles of those caught within it.

I raised my sword again. "Foul beast. How dare you hide your hideous nature behind such a beautiful creature. Show yourself in your true form so I may strike you down!"

The maiden cackled, her smile widening, teeth changing to fangs. "If you wish, though I'd hate to see you shit yourself again." She lifted almost thirty-feet into the air as if picked up my an unseen hand. She grew to the size of a small hut while her skin changed from milky-white flesh to red and black scales. An extra set of arms burst from her sides. Her mouth extended outward, filling with row after row of fangs. Every strand of hair thickened and sharpened to a point until a ridge of spikes ran down her back. Four giant, red, feathery wings grew from her back. A cloud of noxious, black gas swirled around her.

Without warning, an inky-black tendril dripping with sludge shot toward me from the miasma cloud. Before I could react, Ser Birchwood shoved me to the ground with one hand while drawing his broadsword with the other. He whipped the sword through the air, slicing the spike before pressing the tip to my throat.

"There will be no killing on our wedding day!" He roared. He withdrew his sword and helped me to my feet. "Now leave in peace."

I lowered my head. I knew there was no way to win this fight, but there was a matter of honor and justice to uphold. "I'm sorry, but restitution for all of the death and carnage done to Grandolheim must be made."

"Restitution? How much would it cost to settle the debt with your king and his subjects?"

I shook my head. "More gold than a landless knight and a savage beast have, I am sure."

Ser Birchwood placed one hand on my chest and leaned in close so only the two of us could hear. "More gold than perhaps the kingdom of Wrothlington has?" he asked, a slight smile dancing on his lips.

The kingdom of Wrothlington was our neighbor to the south. Its troops were known to sack small villages in our territory, at times burning whole crop fields and murdering entire villages. "There is no way the kingdom of Wrothlington would be willing to help you cover her debt, especially not to us."

He looked back to the monstrosity in the sky as she shot a pillar of fire into the air. Then he turned back to me, his smile even wider now. "Oh, I'm sure if Ser Birchwood, Champion of the Emerald Coast, and Glaurhurion, fiery winged terror of the Eastern Mountains, were to ask ever so politely, I'm sure they'd be more than willing to open up their treasury vaults. I'm sure my wife could even persuade them to stop raiding your borders. Politely as ever, of course."

I looked from his sly smile inches from my face to her demonic form hanging in the air and it all clicked. I smiled, possibly just as wide as Ser Birchwood's smile and clasped his shoulder. I turned to my troops. "Peace my brothers. Restitution has been promised. Let us return." I turned to monster in the air. "And peace to you Glaurhurion. May nothing further interrupt your joyous day."

She transformed once more into the maiden and sauntered back into the chapel, followed closely by the rest of the wedding party. Before Ser Birchwood could turn to go, however, there was just one more issue I needed resolved. "By the way, no hard feelings about killing the troll, right? I hope he wasn't one of your future in-laws or anything."

Ser Birchwood smiled wider than I thought possible before patting me on the shoulder. He motioned to the lifeless troll already rotting in the field. "Her ex-boyfriend. Just showed up right before you and challenged me to a dual. You actually saved me a load of trouble. After all, I gotta save my strength for the honeymoon, if you know what I mean." He gave me a friendly nudge with his elbow and a wink before walking back into the chapel.



This story was inspired by the reddit/writing prompts "You are cordially invited to the wedding of of Ser Birchwood, Champion of the Emerald Coast, and Glaurhurion, fiery winged terror of the Eastern Mountains".... I'm trying to think of something else to write here. Usually I have something to say about the process of writing this story or something like that, but this one was pretty straight forward. I knew how I wanted this one to go when I first read this prompt.  One thing that this has actually inspired is a series of events that typically happen before, during, and after the wedding of a stereotypical hero and monster. I'm not sure if I'll have time, but I've been thinking about writing about Ser Birchwood and Glaurhurion's first date, Ser Birchwood's bachelor party (monster strip club?), the wedding ceremony, etc. Also, I guess I should probably mention that poor excuse for a wedding invitation, well, I copied the invitation by typing "wedding invitations" into a Google image search. I think the site I got it from was invitationsbydawn.com. I think I also did a pretty good job of editing it with just the basic Paint program.

Trapped in Monster Hunter Generations ... demo

I opened my eyes to find myself standing in a circular room. Even more surprising, at least 2 tons of armor strapped itself to my body. Judging from the smell, it was probably made of something that recently had been alive, too. "What the fuck!" I tried to shout, but nothing came out except a short grunt.

A man appeared in front of me (at least I think he was a man, I couldn't tell because of weird mask). He? She? grunted a bunch of times and handed me a series of cards before disappearing.

"Wait, where the hell am I?" I again tried to yell but of course I just grunted again.

"Beat the game," said a voice. "Beat the game and you may leave."

Well, that's not helpful, I thought to myself. I decided to flip through the cards, looking for any information about what the hell was going on here. "Learning about weapons and Hunting Styles." "Advice section of the menu." "Hunt the Great Maccao."

Wait, the Great Maccao? Was this Monster Hunter? I looked around the stone room to see boxes of supplies and racks of weapons. This was Monster Hunter! I drew the long sword from my back and examined it as well as my armor. Weird. I didn't remember crafting any of these. Oh well, that wasn't important. If all I needed to do was defeat this monster to get home then so be it. After all, the Great Maccao was one of the weaker monsters. Plus, since this seemed to be a training mission, it would be even weaker.

Surprisingly, as heavy as the armor appeared, I was still able to move normally. I guess I was in the body of a Hunter as well. After emptying the supply box, I headed into the arena to get this over with.

The arena was huge. Just the scale of it was intimidating. You don't appreciate it when you're just playing the game, but when you're actually inside the thing, well, that's a whole different story. I don't think I'd seen anything in real life that big except for the one time my dad took me to see the Cowboys play. The entire field was covered with dirt, several tiers leading down into the main pit area. Right in the middle of the stadium was my opponent, the Great Maccao. It wandered on its two legs, covered in green and yellow feathers with a red mane. Then it spotted me.

Well, let's get this over with. I ran into the main area and, at the last second, drew the sword off my back. I landed my first slash and felt something grow inside me, an overwhelming feeling of warmth, the spirit of battle. A second slash made it grow even more. I smiled. This must be the spirit gauge associated with the long sword. I slashed once more, but this time it was ready and dodged out of the way.

It swiped me with one of its claws and I fell backward. The armor stopped it from cutting me in half, but I still took the force of the blow. Now, balancing on its tail, the Great Maccao kicked its powerful legs. I managed to roll out of the way of that attack as well as its lunge. Propelling itself with its tail, the creature launched itself 30ft passed me. Maybe this wasn't going to be as easy as I thought.

We traded blows like this for a while, each of us attacking and dodging, neither of us with a clear advantage. With another slash, though, I felt like I was going to burst with power. I sprinted away to get some distance. With all this power, I needed to be sure I was going to connect with every hit of this combo.

Finally, at the center of the arena, I pulled the Shock Trap from my supply pack and set it up. I could hear feet pounding behind me just as I finished. The Great Maccao lunged passed me as I rolled out of the way. It landed right as the Shock Trap activated, sending electricity surging throughout its body, paralyzing it. Now was my chance. I drew my sword and, using the energy surging through me, I began a series of spirit slashes. Each slash hit harder and stronger, finishing it with one final slash. Connecting with the final hit caused the blade to glow white.

The Great Maccao broke free from the trap and kicked me in the chest, sending me sliding through the dirt 10ft away. I struggled to my feet, the creature running toward me. It looked like we were both on our last legs now. As it got closer, I noticed a button floating to my right. A Hunting Art? Ahh, this must be Monster Hunter Generations. I pulled my now glowing white sword and hit the button. As if a mysterious hand guided me, I jumped backward, giving myself just enough room to avoid the monster's charge. Quickly, I followed up with 2 quick slashes, the white blade stronger than before, hitting harder and cutting deeper. And with that, the Great Maccao fell.

"Quest Complete" flashed in front of my face.

Time to go home.

I closed my eyes and when I opened them, I was back in the arena waiting area. "What the hell!" I grunted.

"Beat the game and you may leave," the voice said.

"But this is the demo! The real game doesn't even come out until the end of the week!" More grunting.

"Oh well."



So, back to writing. This one was based on the writing prompt from Reddit "Upon waking up , you realize you've been transported into the world of the last video game you played. A voice inside your head tells you to beat the game in order to escape. Unfortunately, the last one you played was..." The action scenes feel a little weak (which isn't good since it's half the piece), but it has been awhile since I've practiced. Plus I don't think a lot of stories go into that much detail with their fight scenes. It's really kind of hard to write an entertaining fight scene, you can't do as much as you could do with film, probably because of the visual aspect. Also, Monster Hunter-Generations just came out today so I'm pretty excited about that. I just need to keep from tweaking on it so I can keep up with my reading as well as all this writing. Also, in case you were wondering, I finished this piece earlier in the week but I waited to post it because I also wanted to show off this

I know I literally just said 2 sentences ago that I was going to try to regulate my playing, but just in case I break that promise, so long life

Yagami River Stories

Several hours ago, I was sitting at the Aiea Public Library (because they close at 8pm on Thursday) trying to remember why it was that I write. Recently, as it happens everytime, I've hit that point where writing just isn't as much fun as it was (probably because I was doing it constantly) and now I'm stuck wondering why it is I'm doing this writing-thing. As you may have noticed (though probably not), I haven't written a story for a couple of weeks. I brought a picture book I used before to help me practice and to even get inspiration for stories. You know, just flip to a random page and start writing about what you see on the page. Because I haven't actually looked through this book for years (it's been sitting in a shoebox under my bed), I started flipping through it, page by page and I came across this one:

Yagami River. Photo credit to Allison

And then I started thinking about how I used to write at that exact spot. How I would try to get out there whenever I felt that I'd been holed up in my room for too long. How quiet and relaxing it was. Mostly, though, about the stories I have associated with it. They say when you've forgotten how you got to where you are the best thing to do is remember where you started. No, that's not real. I think I made that up, but meh. Anyways, here's some stories from Yagami River, the place where I first started to write seriously.

Also, if you were wondering which picture book it was, well, it's the only one I own.

not sure if it's still for sale

I used to go writing down at Yagami River back when I was studying abroad in Japan. Yeah, I could just as easily write in my air-conditioned room but I thought it was still important to not spend the entire day in my room, even if it was just for a couple hours. I would typically take my notebook, a pen, bottle of coke, bag of chips, and a pack of Marlboros and just sit and write stories at the edge of the water. They all sucked back then too so it looks like nothing has really changed.

There was the cat incident. I was sitting at the river like I normally did and a cat started slinking its way toward me. Now, I don't have a very good relationship with cats so I was nervous by how close it was getting. Then it just started rubbing itself against me: my legs, my back, my arms. Petrified, I just sat as still as I could assuming that eventually it would strike and sink its claws into me. Eventually, I realized that this is what it probably does to the old guys who fish in the river so that they give it food. Well, the cat finally got bored and left. But the fun doesn't stop there. On my way back to the dorm, I ran into ... someone, crap I don't remember, anyways whoever it was pointed out that I had orange fur all over me, of course, easily visible on my white t-shirt. But that's not all. As we're dusting the orange fur off, there's these red dots that start moving. Yeah, so now I've got fleas on me. I dusted myself off as best I could before getting into the dorm and then immediately threw all my clothes into the washing machine. Fuck cats. Oh, and whoever that was on the bridge back to the dorm, thanks for the help.

Once, the dorm got busted for launching fireworks. I think at this point we'd been banned from using the dorm lounge after 10pm so that night we went down to the river to hang out. I don't even remember why we bought the fireworks. Either someone knew that the Lawson Hyaku-en sold them or else we just randomly saw them as we were buying beer. Either way, Jon and I were now standing at the check-out counter with a couple cans of beer and close to a dozen 100 yen aerial fireworks and now the clerk was looking at us very suspiciously. I don't remember it all in Japanese, but for the most part the conversation went something like this:

Clerk: "Where?"
Jon: "Yagami River."
C: "You can't use tonight."
J: "Tomorrow"

And then we finished paying and got out of there. Immediately, once we got to the river, we started lighting the fireworks, one at a time, two at a time. These were some quality aerials, especially for just 100 yen (like $1.50 at the time). I want to say we finished by firing off 6 at once. And that's when the police showed up. Luckily no one got arrested or in any serious trouble, at least from what I can remember. I do remember that a couple people who could speak fluent Japanese managed to run off. Also, a couple of fluent Japanese speakers were left to answer some questions while the rest of us just stood around.

It didn't happen at the river, but I did once tell Terry that I had been going down to the river to write. I don't exactly remember what we were talking about or why I brought it up, maybe we were talking about what we had been doing or something. the important thing is that it was probably the first time I told anyone outside of English class that I write stories in my free time. The story I was writing at the time (was crap) was about a world where people would receive mysterious red envelopes in the mail. No one knew where they came from but if you did receive one, it meant you were going to kill someone within the next 24 hours. What I mostly remember from all this was the priceless look of shock on Terry's face. I think when I said that I wrote stories down by the river, he assumed I was actually drawing inspiration from the peace and serenity and that I was writing poems or something like that.

I guess that's it for now. At least that's all the stories I could come up with involving Yagami-Kawa. Did writing any of this get me any closer to getting back into writing stories again? Maybe. Mostly it was just fun going through all those old memories again. But really, just by being fun again is definitely a step in the right direction. Hopefully I'll come up with something else soon.