Winner: Literary Game No. 11

Two Fathers

Three riders trotted out from the rebel host, halting at the rivulet.

"They mean to try this the old way, with a challenge to a duel. Three on one." The King laughed grimly, and waved for archers to chase the emissaries away.

When he turned back, something caught his eye. "Hey, I know that armour. Is that you Ralf ? I said you shouldn't be here. And what's that you've got on your arm ?"

Ralf lifted his visor, and held up his freshly painted shield. The arms of Narheim, with the royal crown replaced by a golden mullet of cadency.

"You made me your son, Sire. This is my place," was all Ralf said, his voice high and clear. A murmur of appreciation rippled around the nearby knights.

I encourage you to check out the story "Two Fathers". Congratulations to @alonicus for winning this week's literary game. He will receive 2 HBD.

Now, A Sad Announcement

Unfortunately, I'll have to suspend the games for a short time. In fact, I'm suspending my posting on Hive momentarily to focus on high-paying client work. For much of this year, I've been working as a data analyst and prompt engineer for company that trains AI models. The work has been good but not altogether steady as I must claim tasks when they have them. As it is, they've recently rolled out a buttload of tasks that are higher paying than usual and I want to spend as much time as I can right now working on these in order to maximize my income. If I don't, I could lose the opportunity to work on these tasks at all. It's not the way I'd like to approach it, but it seems the wisest way.

How long will this last? It's hard to say. It could be a week or three months. Based on the current pace of task depletion, I'd say it will be at least a month, but that could change any moment. When the work slows down, I'll be back to posting on Hive again.

Thanks for understanding. And thanks to all who have played the literary games. I'll resume them again when I can. :-)