Short Story Front Runners

I've started work on four short stories. If you haven't been keeping up, I've had a poll up to help me decide which of ten stories I should write. They're generally my normal fare, fantasy with some medieval elements, but there's a few that really stand out as different.

The four front runners are all ones I like (I mean, I wanted to write all ten, so I hope I like the top four) and I'm excited to write a little bit for each. Once I do, I'll share the snippets with you guys here and let you decide which one I should finish.

Allow me to share a little bit about the top four here. All titles are very tentative. Very.

1. The Man Who Talked to Himself
I wanted to challenge myself with this one. The idea is that a warrior dies and his soul is bonded to that of a common criminal. When one sleeps or loses consciousness, the other takes over. I wanted to explore the idea of trying to communicate with someone that you can't actually talk directly to, exacerbating the situation with one party being illiterate. 

There's some fighting and some soul-searching, but really I wanted to focus on that communication. 

2. A Fractured Fairytale
Think The Hobbit meets Three Amigos! Are you still with me? Okay, let me try to elaborate. A feudal lord in a land that recently lost it's king is trying to unite the nobility to hold the kingdom together during a time of war. Barraged by requests for help and receiving none in return, he eventually snaps.

When a tiny village of no consequence comes to him for aid, he sends his childhood friend, a fool and entertainer, to help. Thinking he's been sent there on a real mission, the jester uses draws from stories, myths, and legends that he learned to entertain his master in order to save the village.

3. Spirit of the Vixen
A young woman awakes in her own grave. She's been pulled back from the edge of the next world by a creature of otherworldly power. But wearing the taint of dark magic, she questions what she can do know. Everyone that knew her knew she died. Can she return? Are any of them alive? What kind of life can she even live as a spirit inhabiting her own corpse?

4. TIED - I want to be fair since technically these two have the same amount of votes.
4a. Fallen
An unborn spirit, neither demon nor angel, that stood against the Christian God in the War in Heaven now wanders the Earth, awaiting the end of days. She waits, decade after decade, century after century, for the day when her love, a spirit that stayed true, is born.
Her story is told through encounters with humans she's interacted with over the years.
4b. Untitled Sword and Planet 
If you're not aware of the genre, Sword and Planet is like He-Man or She-Ra. Magic and Technology, a Sci-Fantasy. 
In this story a young page longs to leave the barbaric world she lives on in the service of the great knight and hero Lady Arwana. She hopes to return to their people's native planet, a technological jewel and center of culture and civility in the galaxy, but interplanetary travel is restricted only to the nobility.

I'm about four pages deep into the first one. I figure I'll knock out a chapter for each, just enough that I think the story is going, that the hero has "crossed the threshold," and then I'll move on to the next. Each one I'll put up for you guys to check out and, more than likely, vote on.

DFTBA 

PS. You can still vote in the survey below!

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