📚 Short Stories From The Immortal Quill – Issue #23
Buckle your corset and grab your enchanted pens - we're back at The Immortal Quill, where the ink flows, the sass bites, and the immortals are barely holding it together under one chaotic quill-roof.
A Bloodthorn Publishing™ Original | World of 4EverMore™ • The Immortal Quill Studio Short Stories
🖋️🔥
Another Day, Another Immortal Meltdown
The studio of The Immortal Quill was unreasonably loud for a place where “writing” was supposedly happening.
Quills clattered. Teacups clinked with suspicious liquid. Somewhere in the rafters, a disembodied shadow tried to spell its name in cursive smoke. And in the heart of it all, the immortal misfits were already in full-scale war over who left glitter in the ink again.
“It was not me!” Tink screeched from the chandelier, dangling upside down and positively fuming. “I use shimmer, not basic craft glitter!”
Snow White narrowed her eyes. “You’re the only one with iridescent fingerprints, you sparkle-cursed menace.”
“Ladies,” Cinderella said with a dangerous calm, setting down her bone china teacup, “I swear on my glass stilettos, if one more manuscript comes out looking like a unicorn exploded on it - ”
“Then you can help fix the magical copier spell!” Rapunzel shouted from under a mound of scrolls. “It keeps printing everything backwards! I look like I wrote my last piece in Ancient Troll Latin!”
“I told you not to let the copier drink the leftover witch’s brew!” Goldi chimed in from her beanbag throne in the corner. “It’s still drunk!”
“And what exactly is this?!” Red barked, slamming a scroll onto the center table. “This says I’m not approved for next week’s feature! I literally told my life story yesterday!”
“You hijacked the studio feed mid-argument,” Snow said. “There were claws involved, Red.”
“I was born with those! Don’t blame me for being fierce and functional!”
“Functional?” Tink scoffed. “You decimated half the snack closet and told our enchanted broom to ‘come at you, bro.’”
Red grinned. “It came at me.”
“And you bit it!”
“I. Am. A. Lycan.”
“And I,” Tink said dramatically, fluttering down to strike a dramatic pose atop the couch, “am going to turn this entire room into a pile of cursed feathers if you all don’t stop pretending I’m the problem.”
“Oh, you are the problem,” said a dry, male voice from the corner.
All heads snapped toward the newly arrived shadow in the doorway, lounging like he’d invented sarcasm.
Rumplestiltskin.
“Did I miss the apocalypse planning meeting, or are we just tearing each other apart for fun today?”
“You don’t even work here,” Snow snapped.
“Incorrect, your dramatic iciness - I’m the designated ‘Chaos Consultant.’”
“You gave yourself that title,” Cinderella muttered.
“And it sparkles, doesn’t it?” Rumple purred, tossing an enchanted feather quill onto the table like a mic drop.
“I swear, I’m the only sane one here,” Rapunzel groaned.
“Oh really?” Red asked, eyes glinting. “Didn’t you adopt a kraken for emotional support last week?”
“He was going through something!” she snapped. “And his name is Kevin!”
There was a pause. Tink blinked. “Wait. Kevin the Kraken is here?”
A low, gurgling growl rumbled from the drain in the corner.
“Oh gods,” Goldi whispered. “We are so banned from the Ink Lounge upstairs.”
Rumple stretched like a smug housecat and winked. “Well, I see everyone’s properly unhinged. Shall we get on with the next lore drop before Kevin eats the intern again?”
Red growled. “Fine. But Tink doesn’t go next. I vote for Snow. She's overdue for a dramatic heartbreak monologue.”
Snow rolled her eyes. “Like yours wasn’t a full musical number with howling.”
“I had a theme song!”
“You sang it twice.”
Cinderella stood up and clapped her hands with terrifying elegance. “Enough! One story, one queen, one cursed quill per day!”
The enchanted quill floated into the air, glowed dramatically, and hovered over the table, pulsing like it was choosing the next speaker.
Everyone leaned in.
Even Kevin made a hopeful burble.
The quill spun once, twice...
Then stabbed dramatically into Snow White’s nameplate.
Snow sighed. “Fine. But I’m telling my version. Not the sweet, simpering nonsense they’ve been feeding children for centuries.”
Goldi cheered and flung marshmallows at her in celebration. “YES! Dead queens and poisoned apples, baby! LET’S GO!”
Tink just whispered under her breath, “If she sings, I swear I’m hexing her mirror.”
Goldi Has Had Enough
The enchanted quill was still dramatically humming above Snow White’s nameplate when -
“OH, FOR THE LOVE OF INK!” Goldi leapt up from her marshmallow-strewn beanbag throne, hands in the air like she was about to hex everyone into paper dolls. “We already did Snow’s story!”
Snow blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me, Ice Queen Extra. You had your moment. You sobbed, you slayed, you threw your poisoned apple metaphors at everyone like they were party favors. It was great. I cried. We moved on.”
Red snorted. “Barely.”
Goldi turned to the room like a tiny golden thunderstorm wrapped in sass and glitter.
“We all already told our origin stories, okay? That was Season One! Now it’s time for original legends, people! Made up lore! Grand epic tales of doom, glory, magical heartbreak, enchanted kitchen appliances - whatever! But we gotta create something new. That’s the rule!”
Cinderella leaned in, blinking. “Wait, we have rules?”
“Yes!” Goldi snapped. “Rule one: No reboots. Rule two: Come prepared. Rule three: Don’t let Kevin into the ink wells again.”
The kraken burbled innocently from the shadows.
“I knew someone was making the scrolls smell like fish guts,” Tink muttered, side-eyeing the nearest inkwell.
“And another thing,” Goldi said, planting her hands on her hips, “none of y’all are coming in prepared! You’re just showing up and winging it like it’s some enchanted improv show! This is The Immortal Quill, not Hot Mess Hour with Sassy Ghosts!”
“That was one time,” Rapunzel hissed, rubbing her temples.
“And a classic,” Rumple added, leaning against the bookshelf with all the casual menace of a storm in a velvet jacket.
Except… he wasn’t quite the same.
Red narrowed her eyes. “Rumple…”
“Ohhh yeahhh,” Goldi said with a smirk. “Y’all didn’t notice?”
Rumplestiltskin, usually the wiry gremlin of the crew, now stood tall - like, actually tall - with a lanky, gothic-glam aura that screamed “modeling dark magic for a fall fashion line.”
His black boots were cursed leather. His coat billowed when there was no wind. His hair was short and tousled, jet black with green streaks curling like emerald smoke around his temples. And his arms? Tattooed. Inked with runes that shifted when you weren’t looking. Dragons, moons, the occasional smirking skull.
“New look?” Snow asked dryly.
Rumple grinned, fangs just peeking through. “New era. The World of 4EverMore changes you.”
Red whistled. “Lookin’ good, chaos daddy.”
“I hate everything about this,” Tink mumbled, arms crossed, glaring from her floating throne of pixie dust and disdain.
“Oh come now, Tink,” Rumple said, pushing off the wall, voice smooth like a curse wrapped in velvet. “We all got our little transformations. You just turned into an even bigger control freak.”
Tink gasped. “I am not! I’m an organized visionary!”
“You tried to trademark the phrase ‘Fairy’s Gonna Slay.’”
“AND I WILL!” she shrieked, flinging glittery death from her fingertips.
“Anyway!” Goldi cut in, clapping her hands like the immortal mom-friend everyone feared. “If no one came with a fresh story, then I’m picking who goes next. And they better deliver something original and legendary, or I’m feeding their plotlines to Kevin!
She continued, "oh and sorry, not sorry but yeah I already marked it Tink! People be out here hearing cool sayings other people are always using and running on over to the Inkbound trademark office and pretending they came up with these fancy sayings everyone has been using and pretending it's theirs because no one paid off the Inkbound office AND then running around creating bad business models based on trying to sue everyone who have been using those sayings and names for centuries as a freaking business model, it's pathetic.”
Kevin gurgled ominously.
"See... Kevin agrees.
Everyone looked at each other.
No one volunteered.
Not even Snow. She just wanted to talk about herself again.
Then -
“…Fine,” Tink said through gritted teeth. “I’ll go next. And I do have a story. An epic, thank-you-very-much. Full of betrayal, forbidden magic, lost crowns, and - ” she shot a look at the rest of them - “not one single damsel. I’m the villain. I like it that way.”
Goldi grinned. “Now that’s the energy we need. Hit us, sparkle menace.”
Rumple cackled and conjured a fresh scroll out of thin air. “This ought to be entertaining.”
The quill hovered.
Everyone leaned in.
And the studio lights dimmed as the magic began to stir.
World of 4EverMore | Bloodthorn Publishing | Short Stories
🩸✨ A Bloodthorn Publishing™ Original
From the twistedly magical minds of the Immortal Quill™ Storytellers, welcome to the World of 4EverMore™ - where fractured fairytales wear combat boots, myths misbehave, tea spills itself, and chaos is couture. ☕️
Featuring your immortally iconic favorites:
• Goldilocks (paranoid and perfect)
• CindaSpy™ (that’s Cinderella with a security clearance)
• Red (badass in boots)
• Snow (soft goth apple queen)
• Dorothy (click it and rip it)
• Beauty (rose-stem sharp)
• Wendy (shadow-slick rebel)
• Alice – Queen of Ink & Lore™ herself
• Loki (divine trickster snack, taken 😘)
• Ivy (Rumple’s sister, lethal in Louboutins)
• and Rumplestiltskin (unhinged, unmatched, unstoppable)
✨ Guest appearances may include sentient teacups, tragic ballgowns, questionable prophecy scrolls, and one flirty, possibly dangerous Elven stranger...
🪄 Storytime just got a whole lot more immortal.
Bloodthorn Publishing™ • The Immortal Quill™ • World of 4EverMore™ Universe 💋🔥
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