FOG Writing Contest 6/13/12 *WINNER*

I will be happy to judge for the next contest.

That's great! We just need a moderator to volunteer. I'm sure one of them would be willing.... >.>

I really enjoyed being a Judge for the contest and everyone did a great job with their stories. I agree that this time around we need 3 dedicated judges before we start so that scoring will be more rounded.

As I have been getting into the Olympics I was thinking that would be a good theme, sports or Olympics. There are actually a lot of really good story ideas and I have been working on a flash fiction because I couldn't get this one idea out of my head.

Interesting idea. It's something you, ten, and third judge can discuss in the judging forum

Congratulations Ysopet! And the same to all the other contestants. I am sorry i was not able to judge this one.

I will volunteer as the moderator judge for this round, if no one else minds

And thanks for the congradulations, everyone! I honestly submitted my story with very little hope of winning, but it was one that I had been sitting on for a while. When Gadreille proposed the topic, it was perfect for the story I did rush it, overall, and there are a lot of things I could do better, I know.

As for the critiques, the only thing I would like to mention (that I don't agree with) is Sunwolf's comment that Alexander was not referred to as "The Great" until long after. However, the main character is obviously from the future, and is the only one who refers to him in that way. I skimmed through it again just to make sure no one else said it, and I didn't find anything.
Other than that, I found all of the critiques to be fair and constructive. My next task is to rewrite this thing, taking the critiques into consideration, and then post it back up!

Congrats to everyone who participated (including the judges!) and hopefully this next round will be even more successful!

Sweetness! So we've got our three judges for the next contest! Now we just have to decide when and what it'll be. =D

Oh whoa, second! Hurray! I started writing it way later than I should have, so I was afraid it would be too rushed. And actually, on reading it again after several days, it does indeed read way too fast.

If anyone was still trying to make sense of what was going on, I got the idea from the legend of Merlin falling in love with Morgan le Fay. That, coupled with a muse on how or why she had a sword to begin with, gave me the questions I wanted to answer. Merlin really was supposedly a half-demon, spawned by an incubus. With that, I had all I needed to retell the story as an unlikely romance set to the stage of an alternate path for Arthur.

There are some versions in which Mordred is Arthur's illegitimate son by Morgan le Fay, so I used that as well, turning the whole 'once and future king' on its ear.

I also worked in the sword in the stone, making it the site where Emrys (Merlin's other name) was sealed.

So here's an OOC version of the story.
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Whatever Emrys was or wasn't up to to cause then-not-yet-king Arthur to want to seal him away isn't stated. My idea was that it was part mischief on Emrys's side and part prejudice on Arthur's. Whatever the reason, Arthur needed a magic sword to accomplish the task, and he just so happened to know where to find one: where he'd sometime earlier run across and seduced a lake nymph.

He goes back to revisit the spot, intending to steal her sword. In the process, he sees there has been a child, so he takes everything--the magical sword and the magical heir--and leaves the nymph to her lake. And that's where we see her at the beginning, bereft of everything and crying endlessly, as only a magical water being could.

Now when Emrys was sealed and walled up, the sword--being part of the lady of the lake's power--produced a magical water that eventually filled what empty space was left in all the soil and rubble. Eventually a tree grows down and gets super-nourished by the magic water. Eventually, it grows down all the way to the sword, and the roots wrap around it, and the tree's growth from there is enough to pull the sword from Emrys.

At that point, Emrys's curse tries to activate, but goes awry because the tree is just a tree. The energy explodes, conveniently freeing Emrys of the keep.

Now the reason Emrys didn't immediately go after Arthur was because his curse said the one who pulled the sword and freed Emrys would be the one to accomplish that. So Emrys's first priority is dealing with what happened to his curse. While he's investigating, the magic sword appears to want to lead him to its source, apparently in response to his questioning.

Now, all this time, the water nymph has been crying herself out. Herself, the lake, her power. She's two-tone because she was partly out of the water when she broke down, and the process since then has drained every bit of moisture form her, leaving only dry flesh, but crystalized by the same process, tears being salty and all that. (pretend it's plausible, then apply magic to the gaps.)

The same process that converted the nymph has also been having an effect on the lake, so that the waters are something like the Dead Sea in the middle east, oversaturated and festering with salt and algae and rot or whatever.

Of course all this tends not to matter when, cue sappy sentiment, Emrys lays eyes on the nymph. Now an incubus is like a male succubus, that's part of what fueled the instant and insistent attraction. Luckily perhaps for the both of them, Emrys also had his human side.

An attempt at character description plus exposition ensues, cramped by the rush and the limited space. xD They join forces, and then the second half of the story begins.
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In short, they fight their way up to the boss, where it all goes down.
Emrys had the power to complete the nymph's transformation, so he had to be able to use magic of some sort beyond cursing. But indeed there was precious little provided background to the whole thing.

Mordred provides a little extra challenge, tension and tragedy, and we get a passable boss encounter followed by an admittedly cliche'd ending. (I even managed to take inspiration from a Star Wars line. xD)

Still, all in all, was fun to write.
Working the poetic language at the beginning, middle and end was a sort of happy accident that I rolled with. Obviously alternate legends are hard to pass off as alternate history, but at least there was England. ^^

The real challenge was trying not to use too large a scope, confined as we were to an even shorter word count. The challenge of the short story. How to tell everything without using so many words, yet still make it seamless and enjoyable.

Fun deal. ^_^

Congratulations, everyone!

I really like how the rubric worked to frame the feedback and provide a scoring system. Great feedback from the judges, too!

Applause is in order!

If I ever revisit this story, I'll be sure to flesh it out and provide plenty of background and character motivation. xD
Thanks again!

Looking forward to the next one.

Yay! 3 judges! Now we just need contestants. I will set up the Volunteer Judges. So they will have access to the forum.

The word limit bit me hard. There was so much more I wanted to describe and do, but I had to keep it focused or it would've never been close to the word limit. Perhaps some prior planning would've helped, but...I don't really do that, so yeah. I just sit down with an idea and get started.

Let me address a couple of things I saw in the critques. I'm a huge TNG fan. I've watched nearly every episode. I should've made it clearer that the ship was cramped as hell, but again, word limit. There other was that I didn't describe the Commander. That was on purpose. I wanted him to be kind of a Bioware protagonist, where what the reader decides what he looks like.