Tag: Drafts

Drafts – The Abysswalker

It was the steed of a dead god.

Cel had always been told as much, but seeing the Abysswalker up close for the first time made it undeniable.

Even though it wasn’t a horse or any other beast of burden. Within seconds of seeing the large hump of it’s back, covered with metallic feathers that rippled over its body, it was obvious it wasn’t a larger version of any animal she knew. It’s head, vaguely shaped like a horse’s, only had calm, black eyes–at least from what she could see with the rest of its face covered by a golden helmet of gently swaying chain. On its side, what looked like a strange, vestigial arm–curled forward over the strap of its saddle–became a wing, at complete odds with its impossible legs.

They were the detail you always heard about when anyone spoke of the Abysswalker. The parts of its body responsible for its name. From her spot on the far side of the Walker’s boarding platform, she could only see the tops of them–long muscle corded in a way that made them look like tree trunks. But as she walked to the edge of the platform and looked down over the cliff’s edge, she saw them arching down an unknowable distance–a mile or more into misty nothing below them. One of the legs was straight, wooden muscles tight. The other curved, slack in a way that somehow didn’t demonstrate where its knees or ankles were.

Both legs stemmed from the Walker’s hind quarters.

“It really only has two legs?”

Its keeper chuckled. “Everyone always asks that. You pilgrims come here ready to let the Abysswalker carry you off into the unknown, but you’re all worried it’ll fall before you get there.”

Sacrificing your mundane life to ride the steed of a dead god into the Abyss, knowing that at some point, the Walker would return without you–that you’d be lost in another realm you couldn’t possibly imagine–was one thing. Having that steed stumble so you plummet to an early death in a mile-long pratfall was something else entirely.

“It’s surprisingly intimidating,” Cel said. “That’s all.”

A grunted chuckle as the keeper walked up and patted the Walker’s side. Cel heard it growl low before releasing a short cry. A trumpeted pop that echoed across the edge of the Abyss–the sound disappearing into its maelstrom of gentle, pearlescent clouds.

The Walker lifted its wings, exposing the rope ladder to its saddle.

“You sure you’re ready?” the keeper asked.

Cel looked at that ladder. Fidgeted with the straps of her travel pack, stuffed heavy and high over her back, but suddenly feeling too light.

Trying to keep her breathing steady, she looked back over Ashaiden–the immediate villages of Northwatch that she’d only just experienced, and the lands beyond, unseeable, where she’d grown up.

“Sure,” she said, because in that moment, no word could possibly be more decisive.

~~~

I woke up today with half of a post already written, but I decided I didn’t want to publish it. It was about my writing process and it felt a little too much like the last three months of my content, so I decided, “How about a Draft instead?”

With absolutely no idea what I’d write about, I looked at old, half-finished short stories from my discovery writing days and found a document titled “The Abysswalker,” which, when opened, turned out to actually be called “The Voidbeast” (because I’d been switching names for the story’s titular monster).

Seeing that “Abysswalker” was free though, I thought, “What would an Abysswalker actually be?” and that became the challenge for this Draft. Halfway through, I added on a secondary challenge of making this a “Megapremise” (a type of premise that I wrote a post about back in June) which worked out well enough that I kinda want to write more for this?

At any rate, thanks for reading. If you’re new here, I post every Sunday/Monday. If you liked this Draft, there’s a link to more of them on the left sidebar. But you can also find the Follow button there (on PC at least; on mobile, it’s in the top-right drop down menu) if you want to give my blog a follow. If you liked this post, please give it a Like so I can gauge how much all of you liked this content. It helps steer the ship when it comes to future posts.

All of that said, take care, stay safe, and Civ 6 is amazing. If you find it on sale or free on the Epic Game Store, it’s absolutely worth it. Unless you hate micromanaging the growth of a civilization for literally hundreds of turns. To each their own, I guess.

Drafts – “The Tome”

Elise was mid-joke when the flaming bolt raged out of the dark.

She and Gwin were in a temple ruin underground, so you had to expect that sort of thing, but the townsfolk had hired them to investigate increased seismic activity, not to fight–

“Wizards?”

“I fucking hate wizards,” Gwin said. He was still covering her with one of his wings, its plate armor smoking where the bolt hit. His head was snapping, eyes darting to the extremes of the dining hall they’d just entered. “Nothing, but–“

A bolt of lightning arced at his head, so fast even he barely ducked it.

“Stop!” Elise was shouting, her ears still ringing. “Whoever you are, just stop!”

And, somewhere, someone snickered. “A voice changing spell? Really, Rutherford? Pathetic.”

“Rutherford?” Gwin asked, head tilting.

Elise shrugged. “Sir, we have no idea what you’re talking about, okay?”

“Still your foolsome tongue! You’re trying to get to the tome again! I know your patterns!”

“‘Foolsome tongue’?” Gwin asked, brow furrowed.

“I . . . am not Rutherford!” Elise shouted back. “And I can prove it if you’d just let me and my partner stand up!”

Silence from the other end of the hall as up echoed off the stone walls.

Finally, a weary, “Very well.” And, of course, an, “I’ll play your game.”

Elise nodded at Gwin, and together, they stood, her hands up, his wings poised to block another shot if one flared out of the dark.

At the other end of the hall, a dirty, old wizard blinked. “Oh shit. You aren’t Rutherford.”

“Nope. We’re goddamn wayfarers.”

The wizard cracked a gummy smile. “Of course, of course. Come to, eh, investigate the seismic activity, yes?”

“Right,” Elise said, heart already sunk. “Which I’m guessing you’re responsible for–“

The darkness on the balcony erupted in a wash of angry red. Fire pouring down on the wizard so hot Elise had to shield her eyes.

When it was over, another wizard was dancing on that balcony–a gangly shape in purple robes, kicking in the after image of the flame. “Yes! Fuck you, Tamsus!”

And the place that should’ve been a puddle–the spot where the first wizard, Tamsus, had been standing–rose from the floor. “Gods damn you, Rutherford! I am trying to get the food!”

Before anyone could speak–before Elise or Gwin could ask what was happening–Rutherford was hit from another corner of the room by spears of ice, fired from the wand of another wizard. Rutherford was pinned to the wall, absolutely dead until the spot where he’d been impaled blossomed with purple light–a chain that whipped to Tamsus, and then to the new wizard, each one of them screaming in pain before the tether passed to the next.

And, when it was done–when Elise and Gwin opened their mouths to shout questions over each other–someone else exploded (but then was whole). And then Tamsus melted in a rush of burning acid (but didn’t really). Each time, a new robed wizard jumped out of the darkness to drop stone spikes from the ceiling or cleave another in half with wheels of pure, furious light. And, each time, the death hit every single one of them in the same sequence, raging through them all so each of them felt it, but none of them died.

“They’re all tethered together with some kind of magic?” Elise whispered, but it was during the first lull in explosions and screaming–a full ten minutes since the last time she’d spoken.

One of them, (Archimestites?) grumbled. “Chain of Woe: a spell that deflects the vast majority of any injuries you suffer to the person you cast it on.”

“Unless that person cast it on someone else,” another wizard jumped in. “Then they only get a tiny fraction of the harm before it gets passed on! So I cast it on Dilamitrix!”

“And I cast it on Borf.”

“And I cast it on Marthes.”

“Yeah, and so on until Humphrey cast it on me and now we have a perfect loop where no one dies,” Archimestites cut back in. “I knew when I cast it that these sheep would do the same damn thing, but it was the only way I could be sure I didn’t die. The only way I could get that tome!”

“You?” Rutherford panted, “You’ll never get it you sack of shit! Rah!” and the explosions started again, only this time with more dodging and shouting: “You’ll never make it past my incantations anyway!” and “You’re not a real wizard!” and “Fuck you, Tamsus!”

Elise let them get into the thick of it before she slowly started to back out of the room, pulling Gwin with her.

But they only managed a few steps before the explosions stopped.

“Hey!” one of the wizards shouted. And then, when Elise and Gwin stopped: “Leave . . . the food!”

In jarringly dead silence, she and Gwin pulled whatever food they had out of their knapsacks, leaving it in a neat pile on the floor with movements that were as precise as possible.

“And don’t tell anyone in that town about this, you hear? Go back, say there was another, eh, giant mole or something, and get your pay!”

“Do it, or we’ll know!”

Elise wanted to ask how long they’d been doing this, remembering that the people in town said there were spikes in seismic activity around the temple every few weeks . . .

But then one of them said, “And say it was a worm, cause a giant mole is a stupid idea!”

And, just like that, they were back to screaming and hurling deadly forces of nature at each other like the wayfarers weren’t still there.

Elise and Gwin hurried back out of the ruined, subterranean temple.

And when they got to fresh air, Gwin sighed.

“I fucking hate wizards.”

~~~

I thought it was high time for another Draft, and, when this idea came to me (essentially an RPG side quest), I thought it was the perfect candidate for a creative writing session. It wound up being a more comical than the stuff I usually write, but that made it so much more fun to work on. Seriously, I needed to snicker like an idiot at my writing desk for a bit.

Also, I just wanted to bring back Elise and Gwin, the Red Markison, from an earlier draft. I am definitely still operating under the assumption that I won’t write a full story about them . . . but . . . man, I really love the idea of insane, overpowered wizards just being a problem in a fantasy world. Are they all like this? Do normal people seek them out for power, but the learning just drives them mad, and thus new wizards are born?

Goddammit. I have so many projects already.

Anyway, if you enjoyed this post and you want to be notified when I post again, you can follow my blog in the field on the left side of your screen (on PC), or via the hamburger menu on the upper right of your screen on mobile.

As always, thank you for passing by and take care!