Yet another Avatar Spirit Drabble Contest entry. I'll hold my personal comments until after, so as not to ruin the surprise, and also get an unbiased reaction to the reason it was only a general runner-up. The criteria was as follows:
Bad Fanfiction cliches- Oh you know the type, the Maru-Sues, the high school settings, the "Zuko captures Katara and they romance". From the high to the low, everyone has their pet cliche that drives them up a wall, now's your chance to use it.
Emotion- Not the piece itself, but me. Make me laugh, make me cry. It doesn't have to even be what people normally think of as an "emotion" making me think about or contemplate something works just as well. Just get a reaction.
Creativity- This doesn't just mean being creative about the cliche you use (though using one that I've never thought of before is worth bonus points) But also in how you do it. Yes you can do a parody of the cliche, and if it's funny you might win, but I'd prefer something else. Deconstruct it, play it straight and show what would really happen if Zuko captured Katara to use as bait for Aang. Or show how it can be done well. Whatever, surprise me.
Logic - This ones a bit odd and hard to describe (and hence why I'm putting it last.) But try to have the drabble makes sense. Don't have the Mary-Sue be crushed by a random boulder, have her sparkles blind Appa as he comes in for a landing, crushing her. Obviously you get a free pass on the initial cliche, but once you start it, weather it be serious or funny, don't have things just come out of nowhere for no reason.
Afraid of the Dark
Night has fallen.
You race to light the torches, giving no heed to restraint or safety. A thrust of your fist throws the comforting flames into the pan, and glorious light fills the room. For a moment, you feel safe, but only for that brief second. It's not enough to cower in here and depend on the light to keep it at bay; you must build a fortress of light to keep the creature far away. A wall of light, like the barriers that protected Ba Sing Se.
Yet, even the walls of Ba Sing Se eventually fell.
You move forward from room to room, lighting all the torches in each. You dread every step you take into the darkening temple. Though your eyes are open, darkness stands before you and comes closer with every step. It's not the featureless plane of shadow that unsettles you, but the things that may lurk within. With every breath, you feel your horror growing, that a shape may be forming from the night and approaching you.
Then the new torchlight chases the darkness away, for one more room.
Every time you face the darkness, it grows harder, despite the increasing amount of light filling the temple. You're tempted to turn around, relieve your eyes from the horrific possibilities, but the idea of not seeing what's hunting you is somehow even worse. Doubts begin to afflict you. Is it as vulnerable to the light as you believe? Or is it lurking behind you, its every horrible feature visible, amusement shining through its unearthly eyes at your false sense of security?
You've let your gaze linger on this room's torches too long. After-images in the shape of flames- ior is that a face?/i- flicker in the darkness. You hurry.
At last, the final room is lit. The whole temple is filled with saving light. You breathe a sigh of profound relief, the weight of fear falling from your back and shoulders. You look out the window, across the courtyard, and draw comfort form the sight of every window in the temple glowing in contrast with the black night sky.
One of the windows goes dark.
Your skin crawls, and your ears prickle in some kind of instinctive alertness. Could that just be an accident? A gust of wind through an unsecured portal?
The next window in line goes dark.
Then the next.
Then the next.
Then the next.
It's drawing closer.
You run. Your courage has run out, and the only reason you don't scream as you flee is that you can't summon the breath. The darkness approaches, gliding smoothly through each of the temple's rooms. It follows you. You throw fireballs as you pass through each of the chambers you had visited before, burning anything and everything in hope that enough light will finally halt the menace.
Your hope is in vain. Each room darkens with the same ease.
At last, you arrive in the final lit chamber, a small empty space where citizens once came to pray to Agni. You find that your faith has utterly deserted you. You glance around desperately, but you can find nothing to ease your fear. You open a door, but find only blanket shadow. Just as summon the will to raise your hands and attempt some Firebending, a pale face flickers into view, eyes locked on yours, and you lose the breath that would have fueled your fire in a scream. You shut the door in a panic. The door on the opposite side of the room, where you entered from, is still closed, but the light that leaked through the crack at the bottom slowly fades into nothing. You are in the last lit room of the whole temple.
You scramble next to the large torch-pans, close enough that the heat of the flames is painful, even for a Firebender. The far door creaks open, but nothing is visible, only shadow. You pant, waiting. Nothing happens.
Then the light moves.
You've never seen anything like it before. You can't even figure out what you're seeing. The light in the room somehow becomes less substantial, even though the fires are not at all diminished. Your eyes can see less and less detail; the wooden planks of the floor become a single surface, and the glossy seal becomes dull and opaque. At last, the room is almost completely obscured in shadow, the dancing flames alone standing as useless beacons.
Then you feel a wave of cold. You catch a glimpse of the white face again, staring at you, before the flames go out and darkness reigns.
You panic. You scream, you scramble, you run. You feel something hard hit against your head, then give way and shatter, and realize you've thrown yourself out the window and into the courtyard. You don't even feel the bleeding cuts that must have been scratched into your skin. You crawl across the stone ground, and look up at the one source of light left. The moon's pale glow is your one hope.
You hear footsteps on the ground behind you.
You turn, and find the pale face just inches from your own. Its eyes flicker briefly like torchlight, and you quickly raise your hands to summon your inner fire.
Too slow.
Its hands grab your wrists. Inhuman strength locks your limbs into place. You are pushed down to the ground, your knees popping as they hinge in ways they weren't designed for. The whole time, your gaze is fixed on the face in front of you, that of a pale young woman, wearing shadow the way a courtesan would wear makeup. Her expression is so animalistic, the shadows so disfiguring, that you recognize the creature as being utterly inhuman.
She pins you, and the wave of cold tickles you again. It seeps into your muscles, then bones, and you catch the glimpse of frost growing across your whitening skin, barely visible in the waning moonlight.
You are losing your bodyheat. The Shadowbender is feeding.
As the final darkness overtakes you, you struggle to remember the feel of having Fire at your beck and call.
You fail.
END
So, basically, the reason this story lost was the 2nd-person perspective. It was said to have killed the sense of immersion in the same viscous and bloody manner as a pack of half-starved velociraptors. Feel free to explain if you agree or not. I admit, I chose it as a gimmick because I doubted my own ability make my readers feel fear.
Also, something interesting to note- I've been sitting on this idea for implementing "Shadowbenders" as reversed Firebenders for a while now. I have a plot outline for a horror story sitting on my hard-drive, that I may eventually actually write someday in a few years.
