April Fool's Story - House of Cool Swords

I've heard from several people now who didn't receive the mailing list story on April 1st, or who received an email with a dead link. If that was the case, your email is probably blocking all or part of the message. If you want to receive future mailing list stories, you should make sure your email isn't blocking any addresses @willwight.com, and that it isn't blocking links from unknown senders.

That said, this story is both silly and very short. So if you didn't receive it, rather than sending it out to you individually, I'll just post it here on the blog! (Click the "Read More" button below to read it)

Also, while I couldn't resist the lure of April 1st, I did promise you an actual story, and not just a joke. So I'll be writing an extra story, in addition to the April 1st story and the upcoming May 1st story, to be released on April 15th.

I wasn't planning on this one being Traveler's Gate, either, but since the April Fool's joke was...I guess I'll give you guys some more TGT.

Real story April 15th (just in time for taxes, if you're American), joke story below, new story May 1st, and in the meantime I'm still writing my books! Incidentally, I also just came back from a road trip to Maine...from Florida...so I drove up the entire east coast of the U.S. without stopping.

If you haven't heard back from me via email over the last few days, that's why. But it's back to business as usual this week, meaning you should have my responses in the next couple of days!

Thanks for reading!

​-Will

​P.S. All typos are intentional.

House of Cool Swords

The air beyond the Gate was warm and dry, and filled with smells. Lots of them. Something like…I don’t know, blood probably. Maybe fear.

The room was bigger than a slightly smaller room, and there were swords everywhere. Like, everywhere. And most of them were really big, and longer than you would expect from a sword. Like, if you’ve played Final Fantasy VII, at least that long.

And these were cool swords, too. Maybe some of them were red, or something, and they glowed, and one of them looked like a Chinese dragon. Not that China exists in this story, but you know what I’m saying.

Wooden racks on the walls held some more swords, but I think you’re getting the point by now.
“This place is called Valinhall,” Kai said. “That is the name of it.” The Gate closed behind him, and his sword had somehow vanished as he stepped through, because swords that vanish and appear on command are even cooler than swords that don’t do that.

“There’s a lot of stuff here,” Simon asked. “Did you get it on sale or something?” Simon said. “It must have cost a lot of whatever currency we spend in our country, probably gold,” he also said.

“It was all pretty much free, because we found it like this, and now we have interdimensional squatter’s rights.”

Simon set his short sword down because it wasn’t cool enough. “Are there other houses around here?”
Kai chuckled. “No, you stupid, stupid idiot. It’s a Territory.”

“Oh.” Simon glanced around and saw that it was true: the walls held only wood-framed mirrors. And the racks and stuff that I mentioned earlier. There was only one door, on the opposite wall, which led deeper into the House. No, like, windows or anything, so he was basically trapped in here with a strange old man who talks to dolls. Which is really creepy when you think about it.

 “Go take a bath,” Kai said, before quickly adding, “Not in a weird way. You smell bad.” Kai pointed him down the hall. “It’s at the end of the hall. The marble door that I think is second from the right, but sometimes it changes.”

“That sounds reasonable. Is there anything else I should know?”

“Certainly nothing will try and drown you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I was mainly asking about, like, soap.”

So Simon went into the bathroom on the say-so of the crazy hermit, because he clearly lacks judgment. Kids, if a white-haired stranger invites you into their home and then asks you to take a bath first thing, run away. Call the police.

But Simon didn’t do that. Don’t be like Simon.