Pentober 2026 - Day 15: Swords

Ok so, what is Pentober? Promptober? It's a writing tradition that's been around the web for a while where you write up a short story every day in October based on prompts. Some go for pen and paper, some digital; everyone has their own style. I'll be posting here, and I'll be using the prompts from https://www.topinfiction.com/p/pentober-2026 

House rules are that I vomit-write the story; no planning, just taka taka taka on the keys. I get ONE edit at the end of the draft (if I even have time, lol), then we post it. House rules also say that I get to play catch up and do multiple days separately on one day or combined if work gets wild and I can't write. Get it? Got it? Good! Here we go.

---

All of the likely faces were assembled deep within the mountain bunker in New Zealand. Formally, it was called S.W.O.R.D.; the Station for Withstanding the Orderly Recession of Democracy. It had been built by a trillionaire decades ago as a place for them, their wealthy friends, and bought off stooges in the government, military, and media to ride out what they had been conspiring on for years: the slow squeezing of resources and information such that democracy and currency ruptured.

There would be food riots, authoritarian resurgence, and mass unemployment. Their drone and robot armies would manage the worst of the chaos and suppresses and corral and organized faction into a neopeasantry. Then, once the dust was settled, each stakeholder would be given a fiefdom in accordance to their net worth.

That was the plan, at least. The likely faces were caked in sweat, ash, and tiers. They were deep within the bottom layer of the mountain bunker. In their acquisition of wealth and power, they had lost their humanity. They had lost their understanding of how humans behave. In staying at SWORD, they forgot the sword of Damocles hanging above their own heads.

When the resources got scarce enough, people walked off the job. They stopped working. Sure, many started fighting for scarce resources, but many more just bound together. Many of these people were the same people that built the infrastructure the residents of SWORD had designed to manage their global coup for them. The people outside the base turned that infrastructure off relatively quickly. They found the various bunkers quickly, too. No hired sword was going to stand their post against hordes of thousands of angry individuals, armed or not.

SWORD was the last bunker standing, the most remote bunker. It wasn't to far from Mount Ngauruhoe. Its exterior had been breached weeks ago, and the masses had been making their way through the base systematically. They only had one or two rooms left before finding the bottom.

The tired, unwashed faces turned to look at each other. They began to blame each other, try to find some scapegoat, some sacrificial lamb to offer up; they looked to SWORDs owner to fall on their sword to save them all. Instead, the sword above them all would fall.