"I'm first!""I won!"Did they finish at the same time!? No way. She's sure she had it in the bag!"I finished fir-" *Hic* "-first Eremes!" The confident author proclaimed. "I saw you still chewing before-" *Hic* "-you shouted!" *Hic* It was so painful even to speak, her lungs set on fire as the hiccups continued to come in full force."You lie!" *Hic* "You can barely see any-" *Hic* "-thing!" Her opponent retorted. "I refuse to-" *Hic* "-pay for your drinks!" Come now.. Just accept defeat already."Uhmm.. If I may?" The waitress on-demand meekly interjected, catching both competitors' attention. "Judging from both of your performances, you both finished at the same time, in my opinion." Really? "But enough about that! Kudos for beating the first half of the challenge!" Wait...First half!? It's not over?!Here it comes~"It's not-" *Hic* "Over?!" The flabbergasted author can only fan at her mouth as Eremes barked at the waitress in disbelief. "Haven't you-" *Hic* "Tortured us enough?!

A small glimpse...⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛Deep beneath the ground floor of the Green Star Hotel, a beary, real estate tycoon sat comfortably in his upholstered seat, smoke-filled lungs exhaling with blissful satisfaction as he eyed his latest acquisition. It may have cost him a small fortune, but with the addition of the Macallan 64-Year-Old Scotch, his prized collection rare alcohols grew ever so closer to being complete. "So tantalizingly close..."The businessman will always remember the first-ever taste of alcohol he's ever had in his life. He was but a small child back then, merely at the tender age of ten when he first took a sip from the familiar green-tinged bottle that the young man always saw his father drink from. A curious child, he always wondered what his parents were always drinking whenever they looked sad or had what they called a 'rough day', so much as a sip being denied whenever he asked for a taste."I've come this far..." Tobacco smoke permeated the cool, musty air of the win

"I'm just excited to be back here." Athena retorted as she all but dragged him through the door and towards the main bar, her hooded figure leading him deeper into the room. "I haven't had alcohol in almost a year I think."The first thing that crossed Eremes's mind as they entered the bar was that the place looked too high brow for his simple tastes; the atmosphere feeling a tad bit more sophisticated than what the repairman was used to. The room sported ten open tables, a corner that looked like it was a lounge of some sort, and what seemed to be two private rooms hidden behind large blue curtains. At the center of it all hung a dazzling chandelier, giving the bar a mystical kind of feel to it. All in all, a very formidable establishment amidst the numerous bars scattered throughout Midas. And as the pair approached the main bar, there was just one thing that Eremes can comment about that he can maybe count as a negative.."This is a lot of blue in one place isn't it?" He joked as th

The girl he was with.. Athena? Seriously? How did that even relate to stuff like Midasean politics?"I know very little about her circumstances, but I do know that she'll need all the help she can get." Huh?"I-I don't understand.." Wasn't he doing that already? "Why her?""I don't know everything, sir Eremes... I wish I did." The bartender's eyes softened as they gazed over the novelist's sleeping form, a faint smile adorning her face as Athena quietly dozed off in her alcohol-induced slumber. "I remember the first time she ever came here.. alone, shaking, red-eyed, still wearing her college uniform... Her face showing so much fear and paranoia it was heartbreaking." The bartender recounted, opening another bottle of vodka as she continued. "She kept going on about the 'infernal voices in her head'.. or at least that's what my husband told me she kept screaming in Greek about."Empty drink forgotten, Eremes let his curiosity lead him. "When was this?" All this time..."If I recall cor

Time moves forward...⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛How's your chapters coming along?~Abysmal. She knew okay?! No need to remind her.Then why don't you remedy your dilemma, then?~"....Writing's hard..."Athena almost felt her eyes water as a blank word document laid unfilled in front of her eyes; her mind drawing up a startling blank even as she tried to wrack it for ideas."Why did I plot it out like this?!" The struggling novelist cursed as she opened up her previous chapters, a single vein throbbing in her head as she read over her previous work. "What was I thinking?!" She wrote herself into a literary dead end.Well you did write it out during an alcohol-induced episode~A whole week. A whole week's worth of progress made in the span of an afternoon, hangover induced writing spree. She didn't really put her mind into it, admittedly letting her instincts guide the plot of her work forward.And now you don't know how to follow up your own writing~She got it! Okay?! She knew writing off the seat of