Melodramatic Fantasy Short Stories & Karma Novels

I am the Oracle, the High Priestess who connects the divine realm to the mortal world. My daughter, however, was born with only a trace of divine power, leaving her little different from an ordinary human. I brought four orphans back from the beastman world and raised them myself. I gave them only one condition: protect my daughter from harm. For years, her four brothers shielded her, leaving her free to be as willful as she liked. Then, on the day of her coming-of-age rite, her prayer reached me. "Mother, my brothers are going to sacrifice me so Daisy can receive the Goddess's protection." By the time I got there, my daughter was bound to the altar. My four sons were busy preparing the altar. Daisy preened at their side. I was about to begin the chant that would punish them. Christopher, the serpent, pulled Daisy close and wrapped a protective arm around her. Gardner, the polar bear, talked back to me for the first time. "Mother, our little sister hurt Daisy first. "We only meant to frighten her. "The rite only takes away her ability to speak with the Goddess. She is useless anyway. She may as well be ordinary." I looked at the ingrates I had personally raised and scoffed. They had forgotten something. Every skill, every power, every title they held had come from me. I had made them. I could unmake them just as easily.

I was the most spoiled little princess in the shifter world, because I had four powerful daddies. Darius is the head of the Dragon clan, and the King who rules over the entire shifter world. The other three are the heads of the Lion clan, the Serpent clan, and the Eagle clan. Everyone fears their power. My mother was their childhood sweetheart. When she was killed by rogue wolves, they found me still barely breathing inside her, and saved my life. The four of them spoiled me rotten. Whatever I looked at twice, it would be sitting in front of me by the next morning. Every girl in the shifter world envied me. Until the year I turned sixteen, when Vivian came back. She was the daughter of their first love. From that day on, my four daddies were completely different. Vivian cried to Daddy Darius and said I'd pushed her down the stairs. Without a single question, he threw me in a cell, bound my wrists in silver chains, and made me kneel on broken silver shards for seven straight days. Then she went to Daddy Orion and said I'd stolen the necklace her mother left her. So Daddy Orion melted down the only ring my mother ever left me and had it remade into a necklace for her. The last time, Vivian stabbed herself and cried that I'd tried to kill her. Daddy Rex didn't even ask. He just sentenced me to four years in the silver prison. The silver prison holds the worst criminals in the shifter world. The guards whipped me with silver every day, forced me to wash everyone's clothes, and some weeks I went days without a bite of food. Today, when my door got kicked open again, I was huddled in the corner shaking. I hadn't eaten in two days. Then I heard the Moon Goddess's gentle voice. “Child, do you want to leave here and go back to your mother?”

I am the youngest daughter of the King of the Sea, the most beloved little mermaid princess. The man I married is the world's most brilliant marine biologist. He has a childhood sweetheart who grew up with him, a woman who knows everything about extracting ocean toxins. The two of them, her brewing poisons and him developing antidotes, spent over a decade happily doing research together. Until the day she injected that toxin into my body. I nearly died. When I came to, he was sitting at my bedside writing up a treatment plan. "Don't be mad at Vicky," he said, still writing, his voice impossibly gentle. "She's just immature. She didn't mean to hurt you." "She knows I can save you. She just wanted to get a rise out of me." The moment those words left his mouth, one of Vicky's people came to call for him. After he left, I looked down at the treatment plan. He had left out one key ingredient. He'd been in too much of a hurry. He hadn't even noticed. That was when the sprite, silent for so long, finally stirred. The glowing pearl that had traveled with me for over twenty years drifted out from my collar, floating lazily in a slow circle. "Your Highness, once your human-form energy is depleted on land, your soul will return to the sea, and you'll never be able to come ashore again. This treatment plan is missing deep-sea spirulina extract. Following it will drain your energy even faster. The choice is yours." I stared at that line for a long time. Then I passed the treatment plan to the caretaker and smiled. "Let's go with this."