Flash Fiction Friday – The First Score

I postponed my Flash Fiction Friday post until today so that I’d be able to write a piece based on my first session of the RPG Blades in the Dark (by John Harper). It was a lot of fun even though the GM (read: I) hadn’t quite prepared enough. Here’s a little scene I wrote that took place just after the end of session, after the player characters finished their first score together as a unit:

Clarice looked down at the pendant in her hand. It felt heavier than she remembered, the colors duller then when she’d first presented it to Tyra in that little mahogany box. It had stood out so brilliantly against the black velvet. Now it seemed as if it had spent fifty years covered in the dust of the Deathlands, its luster worn away. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever designed and now it was nothing. At least it was back in her hands where it belonged… Tyra didn’t deserve it anymore. She’d shown her true colors when she sent back the engagement ring, without a letter or anything, but not the necklace. She wanted to keep the good parts of what they’d had but not the bad, not the stain or her reputation… Looking back she knew there had been signs all along that she was a true noble in that respect, but until her father had been disgraced, she’d never imagined actually needing a love that could survive being ostracized from society.

Clarice sighed and looked out the window again and saw the little band of scoundrels slip away across the street. The large Skovlander and the odd monocled Iruvian walked side by side, the woman a little in front of them. Clarice had liked her. She knew what it was like to have to leave the beautiful lights behind, to loose friends and home both and be forced out into the sprawling parts of this city. “It’s only Nightmarket” her father kept saying, but it could just as well be the slums or the middle of the Void Sea for how far away it had brought her from everything she loved. She wondered what the woman’s name was. She’d never asked, though now she regretted it. Maybe they could’ve been friends, maybe they could’ve… But it was what it was, now.

When she had asked them whether they took everything else, the woman had smile and said something convincingly vague, while the other two exchanged a smirk. She wished now that she’d asked them for details. No, she wished she’d had the guts to ask for more than the necklace, that she’d asked them to wreck the place, cover it in profanity, set it on fire… That the Redgraves would come back from their trip and find everything they knew and loved trashed to pieces.

She looked down at the necklace again. An hour ago it had been all she wanted in the world. Now it seemed like such scan compensation for her suffering. She opened a drawer and let go of the chain, letting the pendant hit the bottom of the drawer with a dull thunk. She’d never make anything so beautiful again.

For the first time since that night when they’d left Brightstone and life as she knew it, Clarice cried.

I really like writing in the world of Duskvol. The worldbuilding is just so tight for the game that it feels easy to get in the right mood for it. It’s funny, between this and my Critical Role fanscribbles, the only things I’ve done that’s sort of fanfiction has been for tabletop RPGs. I really look forward to our next session!

Good night, everyone!