​This reminds me of my first experience with an intranet at Baker & McKenzie Melbourne back in 1991. It was one of the first tech deployments of its kind for a law firm… of which fellow Articled Clerk Paul Talacko and I made full use to co-write an epic fantasy serial—Archie the Barbarian—one line at a time, just like this! ​

The rules are simple: the tagged person writes the next sentence. Jeremy handed me quite a challenge—the first few lines left a merchant and a boy poised for conflict, but Jeremy just gave that juvenile assassin such a deep backstory, I couldn’t simply "drop the orb" now.

The story so far:

The mud on the merchant's boots was older than the ruined bridge he now had to cross. With every step, the mud shook off like a protection spell fading away, as it was getting closer to him. The little boy observed all of this while tucked away in his hiding place in the alley. His eyes narrowed, calculating the distance between them, idly rolling the walnut-sized glowing orb between his fingers.A promise of war had been enough for him to take his first life, over a bushel of apples and a large cabbage; now that the boy had experienced more years of war than peace, he’d lost count of the lives he’d paid up for a chance to see another dawn.

My run-on line 6/10:

Seeing through the merchant’s disguise—betrayed by those centuries-old boots—the hunched boy darted a glance toward his escape route where his sightless mother sat astride their giant Starnose; then, charging the Orb in the way of the Ancient Ones by dripping a precious tear upon it, he whispered a prayer to each of the three Tiger deities, and lobbed the Dragonkiller.

Over to you for 7/10, Zerenner…

General rules can be found here: substack.com/@bhavanava…

(I couldn’t help the Ang Lee allusion!)