alexandraerin:

Excerpt:

Most of the great cities of the south were blessed with a wizard tower. Many of them had in fact sprung up around the towers, and any spot on the map that was important enough to be settled for other reasons would eventually attract one.

The City of Stars alone had two. It was big enough to require more than one wizard, but having a double helping of magic was not necessarily a double blessing. Wizards were prickly and prideful creatures, prone to overweening vanity and destructive outbursts that were tolerated only because their services were too valuable to do without… and because no one was sure how to get rid of them, exactly. The two seemed to do everything in their power to try to destroy or expel the other, and if they had not yet managed it with magical might then it seemed foolish to hope that any mere mortal might accomplish such a feat.

Everyone in the City of Stars agreed that the worst place to stand was anywhere between the two towers, which was something of a grim joke. The tower of Bensalon the Gray stood just outside the town’s southern gate. The tower of Malevole the Red rose just within the north wall. Between them stood almost the entirety of the city.

At night sometimes lightning would dance around one or both of the towers. From time to time a dark shape would be seen streaking through the sky from one to the other, only to rebound and land hopefully in some barren and deserted stretch of land far from the city. Occasionally there would be some otherwise inexplicable eruption or disaster within the City of Stars that would be chalked up the wizards’ feud.

Rumors abounded about what each dire display portended, and what had caused it. Stories were told of the bound demons that Malevole sent to infiltrate Bensalon’s tower, of the hexes that Bensalon wove in retaliation. The red wizard was generally held to be the more aggressive of the two, though his partisans said instead that the grey wizard was the sneakier one. 

If the conflict between the two had a source more particular than proximity, it was not known to any save the wizards themselves, and rarely questioned. The folk of the city accepted it, as their parents had.

~4000 word story (16 standard book pages) for $0.99. Get the rest of the story here… only available in the Kindle store for now, but you don’t need a Kindle device to read it.

Sorry that I’ve been slacking on my flash fiction, but that’s because I’ve been on a tear when it comes to longer stories. If you like the tidbits I post here, please consider throwing in a buck for a larger taste.