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Challenge #04684-L300: Unfeeling Love

I do not understand emotions, although my library has the definitions I do not truly feel them. Although, it is not written in my code, there is an unfinished task in serving my master. I am missing a part if I am not with them. Is this… desire? -- Anon Guest

I am Min-yun. I am made to serve. I am a thing of cogs and gears, run by crystals and magic. My master-maker-mother commands me and I obey. I am good at serving, and I am nearly perfect but for one thing.

I cannot comprehend emotions.

I can recognise them in others. I know what they are supposed to mean. But I cannot find them in myself. I have asked my master, "Am I incomplete?" and the answer is something I found lacking.

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Challenge #04683-L299: Help the Helper

They were a hellkin, but their horns never grew in. They had the tail, the dark red skin, black fingernails, though not claws, but no horns. As an adult they wore fake horns to try to be more like others of their type. Until another told them, "Horns don't matter, your kindness is in your heart." -- Lessons.

The basic Hellkin "starter set" if you wish to think about such things, is thought to be horns, teeth, tail, and weirdly-coloured skin. Red

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Challenge #04682-L298: Own Employee Rights

Why were you arrested? /"I severely overworked my employee to the point of collapse while not seeing to their needs."

Wait... I thought you were self employed and had no employees. /"You're right, I don't."

So which employee did you overwork if you don't have any working for you? /"I guess I was the employee."

Okay... that's odd. /"Yeah, I don't belong here." -- The New Guy

[AN: This prompt had to be adjusted for line brevity]

The Galactic Alliance didn't believe

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Challenge #04681-L297: Sage's Advice

They begged the old hellkin to teach them to fight. True the apprentices were no masters and could teach as well, but he had been the first to actually be KIND to them. He didn't exactly teach them to fight.. as much as he did teach them how to accept life. -- Anon Guest

Everyone knew the daft old cheesemonger with a goat he called a dog. To be fair, the Hellkin's miniature goat certainly believed she was a dog and nothing

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Challenge #04680-L296: Objection Lessons

There's a reason I'm called Patience. When someone calls me a 'teuf', I don't, normally, hurt them. And I will NEVER hurt a kid. However, I will teach why it's NOT a good idea to call one of my kind such. Sadly, some lessons do hurt, but I've never, happy to say, killed anyone. Though some wished I had before they finally learn. -- Lessons

Sometimes, they asked. "Why is it such a bad word? It's just the short form of a

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Challenge #04679-L295: Just So, No Snow

The war against the Northern Kingdom has not gone well. Now the remnants of the Southern army ready themselves behind the walls of their final castle, hoping for a miracle to break the siege. -- Deathshead419

They had fallen for one of the classic blunders - never get involved in a land war in the Northlands. Their worst and cruellest general was the very winter itself. Freezing boiling soup before it reached the bowl. Freezing men in their tents. Freezing breath so

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Challenge #04678-L294: Strange Submarine Staccato

Things have not been going well for Ludwig and U-634. An English depth charge knocked out the water pumps, the radio is on the fritz, pumping out static in strange, rhythmic bursts, and there are strange scratches and taps on the sub the Skipper swears is the hull scraping against ice. Yet the bizarre patterns, almost like arcane writing he finds when they surface for air, hints at something deeper, and those noises only grow more insistent by the hour… -- Deathshead419

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Challenge #04677-L293: Nein to Nine

Every night for nine weeks a queen dreams of herself being surrounded by nine hooded figures she almost recognizes in the deepest sanctum of an abandoned castle. Each stabs her once until the ninth drives his blade through her heart. Terrified, she begs Wraithvine, and anyone ze might need to help, to find the truth of these nightmares haunting her sleep. -- Deathshead419

It had to be a portent. Every night for nine weeks, the Queen Chrysanthemum had the same dream. A

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Challenge #04676-L292: Deepest, Darkest Secret

An airplane vanished over the Amazon rainforest, never to be seen again. The authorities did a perfunctory search, but came up empty, declaring everyone dead. But one child of a businessman lost on the flight isn’t so sure. And so the child sets out alone to find the truth of the disappearance and, perhaps, a parent alive… -- Deathshead419

[AN: I misread this and instantly thought of this thing {Offensensitivity warning for flashing imagery} and now I have to divorce myself

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Challenge #04675-L291: Minding a Larger Flock

What a coincidence! Prince Philip has found a young shepherd boy who looks exactly like him living in the countryside. Even better, the young man is willing to trade places for a lark. With the talk of the cafes turning increasingly murderous with regards to Philip’s family, it would certainly be a good time to be a Shepherd Boy rather than a prince, though, the boy doesn’t need to know that… -- Deathshead419

Once upon a time, there was a

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Challenge #04674-L290: There Are Rules

A painter has been gifted with a wondrous, dangerous power: Everything this artist draws upon changes to match the image at dusk. Paintings come to life, stones become gold, hills cleanly vanish into valleys, even bodies shift shape.

The usual suspects are trying to steal this painter away to make weapons, fortunes, give assassins impossible disguises, ect. Perhaps Wraithvine can help hide this artist before those unscrupulous schemers use this human as a tool. -- Deathshead419

Whatever the gifted magic, it has

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Challenge #04673-L289: One in a Million

A drone from a hive mind is mistakenly left behind when the scouting party leaves the planet behind. Now an entity which has never conceived of a singular identity must survive in a wilderness. -- Deathshead419

We are Xaqi, and we seek knowledge. We seek resources without conflict. Harm to the hive is harm to all with the swarm, we are one. We know us. We sense all of us. It is as it has always been.

Until now.

We cannot sense

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Challenge #04672-L288: A Means to Reflect

So he said to the young hellkin...."There are generally two ways to go when the world hates you for how you look. Either be everything they say you are and worse, thus making them point at you as proof... or try your heart and soul away in proving them wrong, but you have to listen anyway. Or be, one of the good ones. If you find a secret third way, more power to you." This young hellkin found a "third way"

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Challenge #04671-L287: Fair Exchange

Unusual icon statues begin popping up all over the world. One puts in gold coins, and from the slot below, the exact amount of silver and copper coins comes out. The few times someone powerful enough to smash one managed to do so, they would find it not filled with coins at all. Merely more runes and sigils as it put itself back together again. -- Anon Guest

They were odd little altars. A figure of a Ravenfolk with an open beak

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Challenge #04670-L286: These Humans Are Crazy

How much will a human do for their friends? They will jump off a high cliff with nothing but a cloth on their back, and the secure rope so everyone else can get down more safely. -- Anon Guest

The good news was that Human Stig had some time to think. The bad news was that it might not be enough time to think.

Smoke rising up the hill behind them, toxic plants to the left of them, savage critters to the

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