Intent

As I pulled the sword out of the dragon's skull, and wiped blood and brain off it, I saw the young woman, standing nearby. I assumed she was one of the maidens the foul beast had captured, but before I could tell her thanks weren't necessary, she asked an odd question.

"Why did you kill this creature?"

I blinked a few times before I climbed down the corpse.

"I'd say it was to claim the reward, but to be honest, because it killed my father."

"Greed and Revenge. Not good enough."

She vanished, and the beast rose once more, healed...

A Chance

As the prisoner was being led to the gallows, he found himself stopped in front of a small table. He didn't recognise the man behind it until he turned to thank the guard, at which point he realised he'd seen that side of the face on coins for the last few years.

"Now then, I like to give a chance at freedom, so please, pick a number between 1 and 1000."

"Uh... 6742."

The King rolled for dice.

"6..7...4...2!"

The prisoner smiled.

"It's best 2 out of 3 though.

Actually an illusion of a chance, I suppose."

The King smiled.

Parasite Adam

The remnants of humanity were not prepared for the Parasites to be defeated by an alien ship arriving and somehow making all the infected bodies go dormant, but they were happy enough.

Until the aliens made contact and asked what had happened.

At first, the humans assumed that the Parasite's arrival was from an enemy of these nice aliens, until the scientists got talking.

Turns out the aliens dropped off the Parasite, which was designed to take over a few of the population and become the most native-like natives, so they could learn about us.

Both sides were somewhat horrified. 

Sir Determined

I watched him as he walked towards the gate.

Anyone else in that armor would have had an unnatural, forced gait, but of course with how much training he had, he walked just fine, unremarkably so.

But then again, considering what he was walking to, it was remarkable. There was no hesitation, no pausing, no taking a moment before meeting his almost certain death.

Maybe that was it, he was clinging to that last bit of hope that maybe he might survive-

As he opened the gate, I saw how he'd padded himself with black powder bags, and I understood.

Prey

I had just gotten comfortable in my hiding spot, rifle trained on the food pile in the clearing, when I heard it.

It was a growl, not one I recognised, and it sounded like it was to my right.

I weighed up the probably of alerting my prey vs my need to know, and after a second, I slowly turned my head to the right.

Nothing was there, or at least nothing I could see.

I slowly began to turn my head back to the front when I felt my rifle being pressed into the ground.

The fight was short.

Dead Last

By the time the virus had finished, there were eighteen of us left on the planet, at least that we knew of. Trying to reach each other through the sea of bots and glitching paywalls online to talk was a whole thing, and it ended up just confirming we were all far away from each other and not easily found.

But the few in North America began the quest to meet in New York, while the rest all decided on Istabul. I, as the sole Australian, wished them luck.

And apparently those numbers were enough to mutate the virus again.

Paper Work

The stack of paperwork was plonked down in front of me.

"Of course, we can handle that if you just give us permission."

The single page was placed beside it carefully. I looked it over briefly then cracked my knuckles.

"Nah, I'm good. I'll call you when I'm done."

I began the first page, as they spluttered a muttered threat of no takebacks before they walked out.

Which they probably shouldn't have done, since it gave me a chance to flick forward and realise it was 5 copies of the same form, and there was a photocopier in the room...