Dion Ra

Tool - Wordcount Tracker

Wed, Nov 5 2025 03:04 UTC

Keep track of your monthly writing progress with daily word counts and progress visualization.

Song - The Man Who Shot The Insurance CEO

Sun, Dec 8 2024 16:27 UTC

The Man Who Shot The Insurance CEO

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Story - That's No Macguffin!

Tue, Oct 29 2024 13:56 UTC

It was closing in on closing time in The Black Dragon Inn, and the vast majority of the student mage patrons were studiously ignoring this fact in favour of nursing their favourite drinks for as long as possible and talking loudly enough at each other that they could barely hear the bartender's metal teeth grinding at them.

In one darkened corner of the common room that was conveniently shrouded in shadows, a trio of rather unsavoury-looking patrons were taking this opportunity to discuss rather unsavoury things in rather unsavoury and forbidden language.

"Listen," said the biggest of the three, who looked like she was made of muscles and spice and nothing at all nice, "I say we burn it along with the bastard we got it from and have done with it."

"No no no no no," the redheaded halfling countered, almost falling off her stool as she leaned forwards to squeak. "We have to make sure it's disposed of in an ecologically responsible manner."

"Ecologically responsible manner?" repeated the last of the three, a tall blonde waif of a girl who looked like all of the fat had been sucked off of her body and deposited onto her chest. Clearly she needed some more practice with her body-morphing spells.

"Of course," said the halfling, "You don't want to risk the magic contained within it dispersing into the upper atmosphere, do you?"

"Meredith," the bigger girl said in an overly patient tone of voice, "I don't think that was what she was really asking. You know our Mol vocab isn't as good as yours."

"What she said," said the blonde waif, "and besides, I don't think this thing has got any magic inside of it anyway." She pulled an unassuming small brown cube out of a pouch at her waist and nonchalantly plopped it down on the table in full view of everyone in the crowded-but-now-slowly-emptying inn.

"You absolute plonking dunderheads," hissed the calico cat that had until that moment been lounging on the next table minding its own business. Less surprising than the cat speaking the forbidden language of Molgoth was the fact that its vocabulary was so exceptionally rude. "You don't even know what you've got there, do you?" It dropped rapidly off the other table and hastened over to them, tail raised pompously high as it did so.

"?!" spluttered all three of the trio.

"You can talk?!" said the big girl.

"You can speak Molgoth?!" said the blonde girl.

"You can say that in Molgoth?!" said Meredith.

The cat ignored all three of their questions. Jumping up onto their table, it batted the cube off and onto the floor. Just in time, it seemed, for the bartender had ambled his way over and was looking with interest at the things arrayed in front of them.

"Say, I didn't happen to see a little wooden cube over here, did I?" he asked in the common tongue around here - a pidgin language that had been born and bred at Elemental Elementary, "I could use just such a thing for a little statue I want to carve for my wife. I'd pay you good money for it." The bartender smiled at them in a friendly manner that was rather ruined by his metal teeth gleaming menacingly in the low camphor-light.

"I've seen nothing of the sort," the big girl responded in a flat and deadpan voice.

The blonde girl shook her head and bit her lip, not risking saying anything.

"No, I don't think so," Meredith laughed nervously.

Under the table, the calico cat shapeshifted back into its gnome-like humanoid form and pocketed the cube.

The bartender continued to smile his menacingly friendly grin as he pulled a long knife out of his belt and leaned over the table to repeat his question. "I said," he growled through gritted teeth, "I didn't happen to see a little wooden cube over here, did I?"

The inn had continued to slowly empty around them now that they weren't accepting any more drink orders, and the trio glanced around nervously as they realised the last party were filing out the door as they spoke, and hadn't noticed anything was at all amiss at their little table.

"Uhhhh," said the big girl, stalling for time.

"Ermmm," said the blonde girl, reaching for her wand.

"Hahaha," Meredith laughed nervously again, hoping he would go away.

The front door to the tavern clicked ominously as it shut behind the last of the other students. The bartender's grin grew wider and he opened his mouth to speak again.

At that moment, the gnome-looking creature that had previously been a calico cat emerged from under the table with no cube in visible sight and started scrambling for the door. "Later dunderheads!" he called after him in Molgoth.

"!" spluttered all four of them.

"It's that bastard!" said the big girl, pointing at the gnome.

"The one who sold it us!" said the blonde girl.

"He sold it me first!" said the bartender, "Said it had the new dentures I'd ordered inside, then stole the buggering thing back before I could figure out how to open it!"

"It's that cat! Get him!" screeched Meredith, scrambling down off of her high stool.

"Wait," said the big girl, "he told me it was a highly sought-after piece of art that would only bring us trouble."

"What?" said the blonde girl, "he told me it was a magical apparatus for trapping lions in the highlands!"

"But," spluttered the bartender, "there are no lions in the highlands!"

"Well," said Meredith slowly, coming to her senses at about the same time as she reached the ground, "that's a gnome MacGuffin, I guess."

The other three looked baffledly at Meredith as she sighed and launched into an explanation of how the cube was really nothing at all.

Album - Raw Chords

Wed, Sep 26 2024 01:00 UTC

So Fucking Pretty

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Story - A Heady Night

Mon, Aug 26 2024 12:50 UTC

It was just your average Thursday night, nothing special about it. The rain was falling, the streets were quiet, and Adam Knott was walking home from work at The Institute. He had his headphones in as he always did, music blaring, head nodding along to the rhythm. There was nothing about it even remotely out of the ordinary, right up until the moment the back of his head exploded in a violent starburst of agony and he lost consciousness.

"I've done this procedure a hundred and twenty-two times, there is nothing to worry about. We will start by removing your brain..." was the first thing he heard upon waking. He opened his eyes to see two hands reaching towards him, so close they blocked out the sight of almost everything else. Adam, naturally, screamed, and passed out again.

The next time he awoke there was no voice to greet him. Everything was so quiet, in fact, that it took him quite a long time to even realise that he was awake. He lay there floating in a sensoryless void, still lost in thoughts from his nightmares, right up until the moment the world jolted violently and his head bashed into something hard on his left. He opened his eyes to see nothing but blur. When they eventually focused—or as near to it as they were going to get—he screamed again.

Or at least tried to. Water rushed into his mouth and no sound came out. That's why everything was so blurry; he was seeing everything through a sheet of water! He panicked and tried to breathe, struggled, failed, and eventually realised that he seemed okay anyway, despite his lack of oxygen. He must have been in here a while already. He felt no pain, no lightheadedness, no frantic draw from his lungs. The only thing telling him that he needed to breathe was...him.

So he stopped.

Calmer again, he took another look around. The world was still a blur, but through that blur he could make out the vague outlines of what looked like an office. A desk with a computer on it and a chair behind it. A whiteboard and posters on the wall. No people. No words large enough that he could make out through the water-haze. No way to tell where he was or who had taken him. Or what had been done to him, he thought bitterly. He hadn't wanted to admit it to himself before but he still couldn't feel anything other than his face. His body still felt like it was trapped in a sensoryless, weightless, painless, feelingless environment, and he hated to think what that meant. He must have been immobilised in some way before being put in this...aquarium tank or whatever it was that he was in. He only hoped that whatever had been done to him wasn't permanent. He couldn't look down and see for himself, his neck just wouldn't bend that way right now, any more than the rest of his body would respond to his pleas for movement.

He didn't know how long he stayed that way, staring into the empty office, half-dozing, before something different happened. Something moved past the desk in front of him. It happened so quick he barely had time to wake up properly and register it before it had gone again. He wasn't entirely sure he hadn't imagined it. He stayed on full alert, waiting for whoever or whatever it was to come back, and eventually, after five minutes or so—he wasn't sure, it was very hard to keep track of time in here—he was rewarded for his efforts. Whoever it was came back, and sat behind the desk. They were too far away and too blurry for him to make out properly, but from what he could tell they were black, probably male, and wearing a lab coat. A doctor or a scientist, then. Thank god. Someone who would have some answers for what had happened to him.

"..." he tried to call out, but once again no sound emerged from his water-logged throat. He tried to think of other ways to get their attention, but with his limbs not responding to him he wasn't sure what else he could do. He was gripped with a frustration so intense it was painful, but there was nothing he could do about it. He stayed there silently seething, watching the doctor-or-scientist do whatever he was doing on his computer, wondering why on earth he wasn't even glancing over in his direction; were immobilised people in aquariums such a standard thing for this guy that they didn't even warrant a glance? What the hell was going on here?!

Eventually—it could have been hours later as far as Adam knew—whoever it was seemed to finish their work. They shut the computer down, and finally, finally, they seemed to notice the human aquarium in their office. They meandered slowly over, taking their time, and as they got closer to the tank their features became more and more distinct until Adam found himself staring into his own, slightly blurry, face. He screamed soundlessly once more.

Adam's face grinned back at him through the water, seeming to find his terror amusing. It spoke, and Adam was surprised to hear, distorted and muffled, his own voice speaking to him, in that white middle class tone that he usually reserved only for job interviews and official meetings with higher-ups. "Now, now, Adam. There's no need to be afraid. I'll give your body back to you eventually. I just need it in order to access your work for a time." His face grinned pleasantly at him, and Adam finally realised why he couldn't feel the rest of his body; it simply wasn't there. He screamed, and although no sound came out yet again, this time he didn't stop.

Art - Jade Pixel

Tue, Jul 17 2024 16:30 UTC

Story - Polly Desires a Soylent Cracker

Tue, Jul 16 2024 16:32 UTC

Once upon a time there was a peculiar pirate ship in the Mediterranean sea. This was no ordinary pirate ship of the kind you may have heard about before, you see, no, this pirate ship, although it looked just the same as all the others before it, was of a new cybernetic design, entirely controlled by a superintelligent AI named Polly. Now, Polly preferred to take the disguise of a hologramatic parrot most of the time, as she didn't really like talking to humans and desired to hide her superintelligence from the crew. This suited Captain Morgan Bytebeard just fine, as it meant that as far as his crew were concerned, he was the one running this ship. They all thought that Polly was just a standard run-of-the-mill holoparrot. They thought Bytebeard was basically God-like in his supernatural knowledge and handling of The Jonny Deep, which had swiftly earned a reputation as the fastest and deadliest pirate ship in the Mediterranean, and he wanted to keep it that way.

Unfortunately for Bytebeard, however, his God-like powers were about to be severely tested.

It was a beautifully clear day and the seas had been calm all morning, but more importantly Polly had informed Bytebeard that the weather would be fine all day and that there was nothing of interest within her sensory range. He was therefore caught completely by surprise when, with no warning at all, the sky in front of him ripped violently open and started spewing dinosaurs onto the deck, the vicious little kind that he thought were called velociraptors. Thank God, he wasn't sure The Jonny Deep could handle anything bigger.

After a brief moment of confusion for pirates and dinosaurs alike, where the 'raptors stumbled about getting their footing on the rolling ship when they’d previously only known solid land under their feet, and the pirates just stared around at each other and the hole in the sky in silence, all hell suddenly broke loose. 'Raptors snapped at pirates; pirates drew cutlassers and started slashing at 'raptors; the hole in the sky continued to spew more of the snapping little things, and some pirates either fell overboard or jumped to get away from the sudden prospect of death by extinct reptile.

Captain Morgan drew his cutlasser and jumped down from the helm to join the fray, cursing under his breath as he did so. "Polly," he yelled, "why the bleepin’ bleep didn't I get no warnin' about this? Ain't that meant to be what yer good for?"

"Polly desires a soylent cracker," Polly said from his shoulder, a smug tint to her voice as she groomed her wingfeathers. This was their agreed-upon phrase for her to speak in the company of the rest of his crew, and it tickled her when he was brought up short by his own terms. She didn't particularly care that there were dinosaurs on board either, as they might be hurting the humans but hadn't yet managed to do a speck of damage to her fine ship.

"Well you would bleepin’ say that wouldn't yer," Captain Morgan Bytebeard dodged a lunge from sharp velociraptor teeth that instead passed harmlessly through the smirking Polly on his shoulder, and quickly seared the culprit's head off with his cutlasser. He kicked the smoking corpse out of his way and carried on down the deck of his ship to where the real fighting was; his crew had formed a ragtag battle line in front of where the dinosaurs were spewing out. "Can you not steer us away from the bleepin’ thing at least?"

"Polly desires a soylent cracker," Polly said again, shaking her head as she did so, though Captain Morgan was far too busy fighting another stray velociraptor to see it. He did notice, though, that the hole in the sky seemed to be keeping pace with his ship, and cursed again in response.

As Bytebeard edged his way into the battle line he was hailed by crew members up and down the line, asking why he hadn't seen this coming, what the hell was going on, and what on earth he planned to do about it. "Fight 'em off!" he growled, and led a demonstration, cutting down two of the things and tossing them overboard.

"They're coming on board faster than we can push them off!" Long John Solder pointed out, panting as he tussled with a 'raptor that had somehow managed to lock its jaws around the safe-handle of his cutlasser, "If it carries on like this the whole bleeping ship'll start sinking soon! We've got to do something!"

"And what do yer bleepin’ suggest?" Captain Morgan shouted back.

"I don't bleeping know! Aren't you meant to be the deadliest pirate in the Mediterranean?" Long John Solder finally got control back of his cutlasser, and swiftly seared his opponent in two, right down the middle.

Before Bytebeard could respond to that, however, there was an ominous gap in the flow of small snapping reptiles, followed by the widening of the already-quite-giant hole in the sky, and a massive foot stepping through it.

CRASH

It stepped onto the deck. The ship immediately sunk a few feet into the water, sending massive waves out in every direction. Everybody on the deck stumbled and cursed, those with peglegs moreso, and grabbed onto something to steady themselves. A lot of the velociraptors, unable to hold on, found themselves tossed overboard.

Captain Morgan Bytebeard could clearly see what was going to happen here. There was only a few feet of his ship left above water; if that giant dinosaur, whatever it was, put the rest of its weight onboard then they were going down pretty quick. His mind cast about frantically for something to do to stop this when suddenly Polly launched herself off his shoulder and towards the towering reptile. As it began to pull its body through the hole in the sky and The Jonny Deep sank alarmingly further, she screeched a battle cry at it and began to transform.

By the time the dinosaur showed its ugly face through the hole in the sky Polly's screech had become a deafening roar and it found itself confronted with an almost perfect copy of itself, only twice the size. Polly gave a good show of anger as soon as it could see her, thrashing her giant tail about, swiping her claws, and roaring again for good measure.

Not being smart enough to notice that she passed through everything she touched, or indeed being aware enough of the existence of holograms, the dinosaurs turned tail and fled at this display. Some of them jumped overboard despite not knowing how to swim, not being smart enough or indeed aware enough of the existence of oceans to know that they wouldn't make it to land.

The pirates stared in shock and bewilderment as Polly shrunk back down into a parrot and flew back to Captain Morgan's shoulder. Captain Morgan wasn't faring much better himself, but managed a stunned and cracked, "Well done, Polly." and a feeble air-pat near her hologramatic head.

"Polly desires a soylent cracker," she said. At once, all the crew scrambled to bring her some. She smugly preened her feathers; maybe she could avoid talking to these humans and still be the one in charge.

Captain Morgan Bytebeard sighed. His time in the spotlight had been good while it lasted.

Story - Cedric the Seriously Weedy Wizard And The Bratwurst Confusion

Sun, Jun 23 2024 21:24

A wizard's spell goes wrong, upsetting a lot of people.

Tool - Character Generator

Thu, Jun 20 2024 16:39

A diverse character generator for writing or roleplaying, with names, surnames, interests, jobs, traits, and fears.

Tool - Basic Notepad

Tue, Jun 18 2024 11:52

A very basic notepad with wordcounter that saves via localStorage (ie keeps your data between sessions but shows it to nobody but you).

Tool - Chilled Lists

Tue, Jun 18 2024 10:28

A very simple to-do list with categories, but with no due dates or timers or priorities. This is very specifically NOT made for productivity, but for ADHD folk who want to remember things about whatever project they're currently hyperfocused on that they may not come back to for a long time, so they can get it out of their head and chillax. Saves via localStorage (meaning nobody has access to your data but you).

Story - Firefighter

Mon, Jun 17 2024 14:02

A brief story about kids and their dream jobs, and taking things too far.

Art

Wed, Jun 12 2024 18:17

Art

Wed, Jun 12 2024 18:17

Art - Ethereal

Wed, Jun 12 2024 18:17

Art

Fri, May 31 2024 17:38

Art - Blazing Bright

Fri, May 31 2024 17:38

Art

Fri, May 31 2024 17:38

Art - What Are You Looking At?

Fri, May 31 2024 17:38

Art - Sex Work Superhero

Fri, May 31 2024 17:38

Story - Keeping My Head

Wed, May 29 2024 17:30

A short horror fic about a loving father and his child's recently acquired doll.