Late Night Dungeons Volume 1: Blood of the Black Queen's Court

Late Night Dungeons Volume 1

Published by Nicholas Morine at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Nicholas Morine

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

Table of Contents

In Order of Appearance

Non-fiction and fiction alternating

Stories hyperlinked for your convenience, simply click back to the top following each story to return here, to the table of contents!

Editor's Note

Jasper Fforde – Shades of Grey … Tanya Nielsen

A Rogue Storm … Justin Boudreau

Remembering the Food Fighters … Matthew Doucet

Showdown at the Cactus's Prick … David Reynolds

Platformance, The Best NES Platform Games … Natsume Murakami

Blood of the Black Queen's Court … Nicholas Morine

Editor's Note

Thank you for taking the time to read the inaugural issue of Late Night Dungeons, a short publication dedicated to serving up an eclectic mix of fiction and non-fiction drawn from the dark corners and digital displays. Cyberpunk, steampunk, sword and sorcery, retro gaming, supernatural magic, the occult, the esoteric – the initial goal of this magazine is to reach out to various communities of interest and to display facets of each.

Late Night Dungeons is a fledgling eBook venture currently seeking to deliver high-quality action to fans of wild and creative genre fiction at an inexpensive cost. Initially conceived in early 2011, Late Night Dungeons seeks to publish volumes of short fiction, eccentric non-fiction (and promising novellas) regularly. If you write about orcs, elves, squid, street punks, ecoterrorists, pompadours, homeless people with improvised weapons doing battle in a causeway, rickety buildings and urban decay, drugs and death metal, sex in so many words, starships, alien races and places -- we welcome your most challenging material.

In this, our first issue, we are introduced to a number of interesting material. Tanya Nielsen gives us a brief taste of a book that I'm sure most of us can appreciate – I mean, come on – bloodthirsty swans! Justin Boudreau from the shores of Cape Breton offers the reader a wintry taste of battle in an epic tone. Matthew Doucet takes us all back to the 1980s when toys were cool and so were video arcades, while David Reynolds spins an oriental tale of resistance against authoritarian oppression (and Fat Pint!). My own contribution to this volume closes out the proceedings, a novella of action and intrigue that I hope will bring the magical city of Moribund alive in your mind.

Late Night Dungeons will continue to produce editions on a quarterly basis and will always be 99 cents; I believe that pulp fiction and realms of imagination should be widely available while still showing some respect towards the writerly craft and the effort it takes to bring these stories to you. Vampires, cyborgs, vikings, dragons, talking hamburgers, or killer swans – we don't draw boundaries and we don't expect you too, either.

Thank you so much for supporting the first issue of what is sure to be a beautiful adventure.

-Nicholas Morine

Jasper Fforde – Shades of Grey

Review by Tanya Nielsen

Jasper Fforde has the merit of not being an author who has billions of fans, but having the kind of fans that will truly love his works until the end of days. Falling in love with his books is like discovering some relatively unknown secret that makes the readers feel they are the only ones capable of appreciating the genius of his works. He pulls it off with his Thursday Next series, he pulls it off with his Nursery Crimes series and he does it again with Shades of Grey.

In a post-catastrophic world where people are categorized by the colors they are capable of seeing, Eddie Russett wants nothing more than marry an Oxblood to raise his status and one day manage her father’s string factory. Through some seemingly insignificant events in his life, he ends up heavily wrapped up in a conspiracy in the outer fringes, fending for his life against man-eating plants, vicious attacking swans and people from all colors of the spectrum.

Jasper Fforde writes this story in a way that makes me think that this is what it would have been like if Douglas Adams wrote 1984. Eddie Russett bumbles his way towards enlightenment in a style reminiscent of Arthur Dent being pulled in different directions by people who are well more informed about the way this world works. As such, the reader is constantly learning more information about Chromatacia as the protagonist opens his eyes to the situation at hand. Fforde does an excellent job of setting up the story for the next two books in the series, which I am eagerly awaiting.

(… back to the table of contents)

A Rogue Storm

By Justin Boudreau

The cold clawed at his lungs and throat as he laboured through the thigh deep snow drifts. His coat covered his slender but sturdy body, keeping him safe from the icy clutches of hypothermia. His hood was barely enough to keep his face from freezing solid as stone. Even the hair from his beard had become like one thousand frosted needles stabbing into his skin. He often struggled to keep his left eye open as the wind howled through the surrounding pines, causing it to water up and almost freeze shut.

No time to complain, he thought, no time to stop. He had to find her before they did. He had to stop her from becoming another victim of their brutal acts... no, he thought, she would not die in the frozen wasteland... he would not let her die.

He waded forward, through the snow, against the wind, opposing the elements. The storm around him was a mere shower compared to the hate he felt in his heart for the Bragnee. They were mindless, heartless, power hungry fanatics who used other men and creatures to do their dirty work. Mercenaries without any sense of decency or honour, he thought, as he clenched his fist tightly on the side of his hood, holding it in place to block more wind from his face.

The path was starting to become more sheltered by the trees, although it didn't seem to be making the snow any easier to walk through. At least the wind is slightly calmer he thought. He had left the town's inn nearly one hour earlier and was starting to feel the effects of the storm. His rage kept him thawed, his hate kept him focused, his anger kept him strong and his love kept him moving. Not this time, he assured himself... not her.

His concentration was suddenly broken by a strange mark in the snow by his feet. He squinted in the snowy wind to scan for any more tracks in the snow ahead of him. After inspecting it closely he knew it had to be a foot print, weathered by the storm and almost completely filled in. Ahead three distinct tracks seemed to make their way through the snow. To the side of those, two barely visible but much smaller tracks. Finally, a third set of tracks off to the right, much larger than the others.

Good, he thought, I'm not that far behind them. In this storm, those tracks would be covered in ten minutes. His resolve strengthened and he began to push his way through the snow at a quickened pace.

The howling wind whipping through the trees was almost deafening, but it would serve as an excellent cover to drown out his approach. He continued his advance, like a drone, his mind still stuck on Mae-Sheeg. She was a very strong woman, but even she would not be able to defend herself against 6 attackers. He even wondered if he himself could even help her once he arrived. With the white cloak of this storm shrouding my position I should be able to get in close unnoticed and unharmed, he thought. Then I just need to strategically chose my targets and I should have the upper hand... or at least the element of surprise.

He himself had recently felt surprise as the Bragnee had somehow gotten past him when he stopped in the Inn earlier that day. I could have stopped them back there, he thought, when I had backup...

The tracks were starting to become more visible ahead of him so he knew he must be getting close to his prey. He was hoping that the density of the trees would maintain so that he could use them to sneak as close as possible without giving up his position. It is the only would be able to succeed. There will be no mercy even if I arrive in time to save her, he thought. The Bragnee were not even men in his eyes, and we was going to kill them as if they were animals.

He finally arrived to the pathway leading towards Mae-Sheeg's house. The tracks in the snow all continued down it and his heart began to sink into his stomach. He knew he was to late and they must already have found her. The tracks were very fresh which gave him hope that perhaps they had not arrived long before he had... perhaps she would still be alive.

Instead of taking the path directly, he stuck to his plan and approached the house through the cover of the forest. His memory has served him well, the trees were indeed quite thick in the part of the woods. He walked swiftly but stealthily as he approached the house going into the wind to mask the sound of his movements. He had also realized by the tracks that this group was riding with two worg so he needed to make sure they didn't catch his scent.

As he walked closer the house began to take form through the trees and blowing snow. His suspicions were confirmed; there were two men standing guard outside the door of the house, each of them next to a massive wolf worg. He hid behind a large tree and surveyed the situation. He had been lucky enough that the worgs didn't see or hear him. One was licking some snow off it's fur while the other was content to sit quietly and still, it's breath steaming in the cold wind.

The men were even more oblivious to his presence as they huddled in their cloaks trying to keep warm. The cold had frosted the windows of the house making it impossible to see what was going on inside. He could only see a slight flicker of light through the icy glass panes.

At thirty paces away going into the wind, he thought, I will have to make a dash before I can even get close enough to the nearest pair to be effective. They will be dead before the other two