Dustwalker

I wrote a thing! Holy balls. I actually wrote it quite a while ago and then forgot about it, but I was cleaning out my computer today, found it by accident, did a couple quick edits, and decided it was good enough to post.

“Well, folks,” says Rosie, slinging her pack over her shoulder, rattling the fresh shells in their cardboard box, “hinges fixed up good as new. Thanks for everything. Probably won’t be seeing you around, but you got enough water for a while yet, you’ll be fine. Keep an eye on that head wound.”

            “You be careful now,” the husband calls from the back room. His voice is thin with pain, dry with dust.

            Rosie tips her wide-brimmed hat, though she knows the couple in the back bedroom can’t see her, and reaches for the doorknob.

            From outside, something slams into the door. The sun-blistered boards, warped by the Arizona heat, crack like gunpowder.

            “Aw, you’re kidding me,” says Rosie, bolting the door shut.

            A leathery dried hand punches through the wood just to the left of Rosie’s head.

            In a series of movements smooth from repeated practice, Rosie takes a step back, swings her rifle up against her shoulder, sights down the barrel for an instant and fires.

            A howl from outside. The hand retracts abruptly.

            “Goddammit, Jerky, I just went and fixed this door!” Rosie yells. To be fair, she’s the one who kicked it down to begin with, but she fixed it up good after, so that’s all fine.

            There’s a bit of shuffling on the other side of the door. A stray beam of late afternoon sunlight slants in through the jagged hole in the boards. The light cuts into segments as more of them – how many more, Rosie can’t say – pass back and forth between the sun and the hole. In the back bedroom, the Japanese woman is sobbing quietly. Glass shatters. The woman’s sobs spike into screams.

            “Get in here, both of you!” Rosie calls without taking her eyes off the hole in the door. Funny how that late golden sun can still remind her of drinking sweet tea on the porch with her husband at a time like this. Maybe it’s his jacket, too, that calls up the memory. It’s big on her, the sleeves almost covering her fingertips unless she rolls them up, but the cracked tan leather is shiny with age and infused with the musk of his favorite tobacco. He’d have one of those fat cigars dangling from his lips in the late afternoon, the smoke shot through with gold as it ringed his head. She’d hated that smell, partly because it was vile, partly because she knew those damn cigars were killing him. But the smell is comfortable to her in its familiarity.

            Thank the Lord the cancer got him before the leathers came.

            The young couple stumbles into the front room, supporting each other. The husband cradles his bandaged head with one hand and rubs his wife’s shoulder with the other, trying to quiet her. She’s crying breathlessly, thick dark hair clinging to her wet cheeks, gasping over and over in lilting English, “We going to die, we going to die, we going to die…” over the sound of more breaking glass in the other room.

            “Jesus Christ,” mutters the husband, sinking into a chair at the kitchen table.

            Rosie lines up another shot and squeezes the trigger just before a shadow blocks that lonely beam of sun. A short, rage-distorted cry. “Reload this,” she says, tossing the rifle to the bewildered woman, who fumbles and drops it. Rosie strides past her and hauls the man upright by the arm. “Help me with the table. Lean it right up against the doorway – come on – and brace it with the chairs – come on!”

            He’s backing away, holding his sobbing wife, watching Rosie get a shoulder under the heavy kitchen table and wrestle it up on end. “Don’t bother,” he says, toneless, staring.

            She glances back at him, exasperated. “The hell d’you mean, don’t bother?”

“They’re coming in. There’s no stopping them.”

She sees another hand worming in through the hole in the front door. “Then reload my gun.” She can’t fortify this room on her own, not fast enough to save them. If they can just get both doors solidly blocked, they stand a chance. She starts shoving chairs against the table, but they’re spindly and don’t weigh much and the table still wants to lean inward. Someone’s gonna have to hold it.

“There’s no point,” says the husband quietly.

Rosie whirls on him, seizes him by the upper arm, and thrusts him bodily against the table, his back hitting the wood. She’s a good head and a half shorter than him, but he’s weak. Starving. “Goddammit, man, shut your mouth! You’re scaring the missus. Now make yourself useful and hold that table steady.”

The woman’s trembling and weeping in the center of the room, hugging herself, the empty rifle at her feet. Rosie sweeps it up, jams fresh shells into it from the cardboard box. “What is y’all’s problem?” she says, disgusted. These people are young and strong. They should be the optimistic ones in this situation. They have a hell of a lot of living to do. Here she is, a stumpy old lady in her late sixties, the dark skin of her face lined deeply with sun creases around the eyes and mouth, hair gone white and frizzy, pink palms rough with farm callouses. Her friends her age are all moving in with their kids or being shipped off to retirement homes. And here she is, tromping around the valley, apparently the only person with enough balls to beat off the leathers. She fires twice through the hole in the door, reloads, moving automatically around the crying woman in the middle of the room.

Here she is, trying to save lives because these are lives that can be saved.

She’d walked into the hospital in broad daylight with the rifle tucked under her husband’s duster. The dispassionate metal was a long bar of cold that chilled her through her clothes. She made it halfway down the cancer ward before an orderly noticed the gun barrel poking out the bottom of her coat and called security. They tackled her right outside her husband’s room. “Can’t you see he’s suffering?” she’d bellowed, swinging the rifle butt blindly and with such ferocity that they two burly security guards had been forced to duck out of the way. “Can’t you see he’s ready to go to the Lord?” She’d imagined she could hear him calling out for her from inside the sterile gray room – Rosie, save me, Rosie, set me free, it hurts, I can’t breathe, Rosie, I want to go home – and it made her furious. How dare they stop her from ending his pain? He’d asked her to. He was ready. He’d suffered enough.

In the end, it didn’t matter because he died later that night while she was in jail. The hospital called the warden, who sent the tiny town jail’s only guard down the short hallway to tell her, through the bars of her cell, that her husband had passed away about half an hour before. She’d said nothing, only rolled over on her creaky narrow cot to face the weeping cement wall.

Another hand claws its way through the widening hole in the door. Rosie slings her rifle strap over her shoulder, reaches out, grips the grasping hand above and below the wrist. She twists, quickly and hard. The wrist snaps. She lets it dangle by the tendons. “Well, if y’all ain’t planning on helping, at least shut the door behind me. And seal it up from inside. Block that hole with something. Bye now.”

“They’ll kill you,” the husband says flatly. “They’ll kill us all.”

She heaves back the bolt and flings the door wide, yanking the creature with its arm still stuck through the hole into the waiting butt of her rifle. She smashes its skull against the doorframe three or four times, until the weathered wood is stained gray with old brain matter, then kicks the twitching corpse down the porch steps. Steps outside. Glances over her shoulder. Neither of the young couple have moved, the man still slumped in his chair, the woman hugging herself in the middle of the room. With an irritated sigh, Rosie shuts the door firmly behind her.

She makes it almost to the front gate, striding through the fine shifting dust, blasting two more leathers on her way, before a shaky voice cries after her, “Wait!”

Rosie turns, one hand on the gate latch. The young woman hurries down the steps, clutching a broad kitchen knife in her white-knuckled fist, and skirts around the two half-decayed bodies in the yard. “I come with you. My husband, he not protect me.” Her cheeks are still wet, but her mouth is set and determined. Dust clings to her eyelashes.

Studying the woman’s face, Rosie hitches her pack higher and unlatches the gate. It swings open with the shriek of rusted metal, carving a quarter circle into the loose dust on the ground. “What’s your name, honey?”

A hoarse scream from inside the house. Wood shattering.

 The woman’s voice is firm even as her lip trembles. “Aiko.”

 “Well, Aiko,” Rosie says, leading her out of the yard. “I can teach you how to survive, but I can’t hold the knife for you, understand? You’re the one protecting you now.”

She nods, once, with a little affirmative noise. “Hm.”

Rosie tugs her bandanna up around her nose and mouth, partly to block the blowing grit, partly to hide her smile.

- KP


Quote of the Day: "If the foot goes, it goes. There are more important things than an old man's feet."

MSG is actually a crippling guilt party

Storytime! 

Ian and I have been doing a side thread in Magical Steampunk Gypsies detailing the first meeting of Marcus and Suvoi, seven years before the current storyline. They're both trying to steal these plans for magic suppressants from a drug megacorp, and once they've made their daring escape with the plans, they're attacked by a Crimson Hand-employed freelancer who tries to steal their hard-won spoils. They knock his ship out of the air and bring him aboard. Turns out he's just trying to save enough money to retire and find his two daughters, who he left alone in the Ratways almost ten years ago. He's a reasonably nice guy, not to mention a passable pilot and a very good shot. Everybody, meet Enderos Thorn. 

 Marcus and Suvoi agree to help him find his daughters, and the party begins their search in a classy piloteer tavern in the Ratways. Enderos discovers that his younger daughter, Kaly, broke into a research facility several years ago, but that no one has heard anything about his eldest, Terissa. Moments later, his informer is quietly murdered by a hooded stranger. They flee the tavern, only for Suvoi to be stopped at knifepoint by the hooded stranger in the alleyway. As the two men bargain for Suvoi's safe release, the stranger lowers her hood and claims to be Kaly Thorn. Surprise - she's become a huge badass in her father's absence.

Kaly takes them back to her hidey hole in the basement of a hookah bar/brothel on the Promenade, a crowded strip mall and open air market in the Ratways. Despite Suvoi's repeated insistence that they're walking into a trap, they follow the girl inside, where they find a gangly young man who introduces himself as Teris, Enderos Thorn's transgender eldest child. As the hookah brothel floods with Crimson Hand mercenaries, the Thorn family, along with Marcus and Suvoi, make a spectacular escape that involves ziplines, hookers, electrocution, and the spur-of-the-moment theft of a Crimson Hand drop tank. Marcus leaps overboard to fetch the Composer, and the Thorn children confront their father about his whereabouts for the past ten years while Kaly evades fire, wrestling with the controls. They also fill him in on their backstory, including a bad experience with a gang of hired thugs that led to Teris's guilt over his failure to protect his younger sister and his subsequent gender change. That was why Kaly broke into the research facility; to steal the hormones Teris needed to make the switch. Teris aptly sums up the narrative with, "Now she's got skills and I'm a dude." Next on the docket - a spontaneous break-in at the Crimson Hand base in order to switch out the clunky (not to mention bugged) drop tank for Thorn's personal gunship, followed by some hiding out in the Grey while things quiet down.

So there's those guys. I'm really enjoying their group dynamic, because Kaly's all serious and badass and Teris is floppy and mildly sarcastic and Thorn's just shaking his head, all world-weary, and going what have I gotten myself into. It's a good time.

And continuing with our theme of crippling guilt, I did a doodle page of younger Verdigris and little fabrant Chiara on the back of a recital program the other day.

I wrote an excerpt for this scene quite a while ago cuz I needed something that would flesh out Verdigris's backstory and personality in as few words as possible, so Chiara (Ashes's older sister) became Verdy's reason to quit the Morfstarn.

“No, Chiara, you mustn’t bite,” she said, taking the four-year-old by the shoulders. “It will be over in just a moment.”

The girl’s teeth had grown needle-sharp since her second round of chemical alteration, and she bared them at Verdigris now, emitting a low, furious snarl. The heavy, curling ram’s horns on her head made her neck look spindly, like a dandelion stem. She snapped at Verdigris’s arm, strings of saliva flying from her teeth.

“Enough,” said Bastian, pulling on a long black glove made of thick, supple leather. “Hold her down. I’ve seen enough.” He picked up a syringe full of a bright blue liquid that glowed with internal luminescence.  “Verdigris? Hold her!”

But Verdigris had looked into the child’s eyes and seen the emptiness there, the animal absence of conscious thought. Chiara was lost, and Verdigris knew it well. They’d pushed too far. They’d broken her. She released the girl’s arms and stepped aside, knowing that she could never take back this choice. “No,” she said.

Chiara screamed, a high, feral howl, and sprang off the waist-high stone table. Bastian swore and brought the syringe to bear, like a weapon, but the tiny blonde girl’s leap carried her far enough to latch onto Bastian’s lapels, evading the syringe. She clung to the front of his bloodstained grey coat, snarling into his face with those awful teeth. Verdigris stood frozen beside the table, unable to stop herself from watching as Chiara angled her head and ripped out Bastian’s throat in one sharp yank. She rode the gurgling corpse to the floor and landed lightly on its chest, perched on all fours, wearing Bastian’s blood like a mask over her nose and mouth. Her eyes, black and hollow, showed no sign of recognition, though she looked Verdigris full in the face.

Sinking down against the edge of the table, Verdigris hugged her knees to her chest as Chiara scampered out through the open door. A scream rang the length of the hallway, then another, then many, and Verdigris sat and stared at the spreading pool of crimson under Bastian’s body.

Back to real things now. Oh, by the way, we had a proper blizzard here over the weekend. Like, a foot of snow overnight. And then we went romping in the Natural Lands where the snow had accumulated to our knees and there were sixteen-foot drifts just lying around. It was way too epic. We tromped around and visited the windmill and looked at the stars and got very cold and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Commander Kip
Bees?
Normal is overrated!

winter in the Surlinds

We haven't really planned out the seasons in the Surlinds at all, but it is certainly feasible that the nuclear destruction of the Mer could have an effect on the weather. Actually, I just wanted an excuse to draw Suvoi in the snow.

 

The loose panels on Suvoi’s copperwain clattered in the sharp wind. Clumps of snow mixed with grey ash whirled around Suvoi as she perched on the high driver’s bench, squinting into the unfamiliar white world. Her unbound hair tore about her head like a lick of dark flame. Weather’s all knackered. Snow in the Grey – there’s something I’ve never seen. Huiva, clinging to the low back of the bench, looked positively grouchy, the feathers around his neck and shoulders fluffed up against the cold. Suvoi felt much the same, tucking her chin deep into the thick scarf swaddling her neck. Neither of them had ever liked the cold, and now their home was a frozen wasteland instead of just a wasteland.

The front end of the wagon lurched down, throwing Suvoi forward almost off the bench. She threw the brake lever, gripping the long handle with numb fingers for balance as the wagon shuddered and teetered to a stop. Swinging down from the bench, Suvoi landed with a crunch in a mess of ashy snow that had melted and refrozen multiple times. The copperwain had tipped over the edge of a sudden but shallow slope. Suvoi held her hat onto her head and narrowed her eyes, trying to determine how far the slope went. It grew gradually steeper before disappearing into the whorls of snow. Ice stung Suvoi’s cheeks and brow; she could feel her eyelashes stiffening with it. This is the blast crater, she realized. The outermost edge of it, anyway. Stretching into my Grey. Those bastards.

She began picking her way down the slope, her boots punching through the crust of ice, dust, and ash, leaving her copperwain half-lodged in the raised lip of the crater. She didn’t call Huiva. He wouldn’t go anywhere near the Silver Forest. 

So yeah, no one has talked about developing that part of the story, but that doesn't mean I can't play around a bit outside of canon, right?

New Sherlock up online!! *freaking out*

Commander Kip
"Why are you being so nice to me?" "I can be nice. Sometimes."
Normal is overrated!

Houston...

... we have a problem.

*shoos alligators off of landing strip*

No, actually, I have a problem. I cannot currently upload pictures to the Internet from my laptop, or the Internet browser crashes. I do not know why I am having this problem, or how to stop having it, but until I get it figured out, I will have to find time to post from my mom's computer. Ugh. Such a pain.

This makes me sad, because I have drawrings for you. But I guess they'll have to wait. Meanwhile, working furiously on OYAN stuff! Writing like mad, putting costumes together, etc. In absence of pictures, perhaps you'd like an excerpt?

I reentered the cupboard and reached down into the tunnel, feeling the unwelcome heat pass close to my palm. Gripping the cloth-wrapped handle, I raised the torch out of the hole, keeping the flame well away from my body. Luca wriggled up beside me. A bit of dirt tumbled out of his spiky hair. “Well? Is there anything here?”

I ignored him, examining the cupboard walls by the wavering light of the torch. Many, many sharp things. Knives. Saws. Meathooks. Several pairs of shears. Drills. Long, thick nails, like the ones used by the Rumeni to stake down their tents in the summer. Every blade shone clean and silver in the torchlight. For a moment, I entertained the notion of taking one of the knives to replace my confiscated dagger. But they looked too long, the blades too wide or too curved, to fit in my sheath. I squashed down a shiver of discomfort and exited the cupboard.

The dim pool of light fell upon a low trestle table a few yards away. Very long, extending past the reach of the torch. Thick, dark wood. I approached it with caution, hearing Luca’s short breaths close behind me. The tabletop gleamed, polished from countless scrubbings. The smooth, shining surface broken only by the occasional gouge, scratch, or scar. Here and there, an irregular glint-gold stain.

Gold?

Memoria’s blood, a fine golden mist. Staining Fabello’s white shirt. Gold.

“Luca,” I said, low and even, “go back to the tunnel.”

“Why?”

His voice rang in the vast stone chamber, too loud, too high. “Go back to the tunnel,” I repeated. “Now.”

There. Satisfied? Even if not, that's all I can give you at the moment. *sings quietly to self* Se-cret-laboratory... se-cret-laboratory... through the mountain... se-cret-laboratory...

Oh oh oh, and I finally saw the new Star Trek and HOLY CRAP IT WAS AWESOME. Now I'm so glad I watched Wrath of Kahn with my parents all those years ago so I got the references. Now I need to watch Wrath of Kahn again. And then Into Darkness again. So I can drool over Kahnberbatch some more. GOD THAT MAN IS HOT. But anyway. Now every time I hear him talk, all I can think is Angel Islington. Oh well.

Also, I got some new boots. To replace the ones that exploded. And they are pretty sweeeeet.

Commander Kip
"Whoa, are you guys fighting?" "I don't want to talk about it." "What is that even like?"
Normal is overrated!

the MPE Homeschool Graduates of 2011 tell a story

This is kind of an excerpt from a longer account, but anyway.

THE RULES: Tell part of a story including you and the person to your left. Nothing raunchy. Other than that, anything goes.

There was this magic wand, you see, and it was totally all over the place.

My end of the table sounded something like this:

Jacob: After being mauled by the bear, I magically didn't die because the magic wand beamed me aboard the Enterprise, where I met the captain, John, who shot me with a phaser-

All: *roars of laughter and applause*

Jacob: - which made me drop the wand.

John: I went to pick up the wand, stepping over the dead body of Jacob -

Jacob: Dude, you phasered me. There would BE no body.

John: - stepping over... whatever was left of Jacob -

Me: Ashes. Or atoms.

John: - the ashes of -

Me: Remains!

John: - of Jacob's... remains, and picked up the wand. But then my backstabbing first officer attacked me because she wanted the power of the wand for herself... uh, yeah. That would be Kasha.

Me: *mutters to self* Hmm, I would do that. *out loud* So I wanted this magic wand in order to take over the universe and crap, so I stabbed John in the back with a giant knife. But he didn't die, because Peter intercepted the knife! Like, whooooo - squelch, gak - *demonstrates*

Peter: *whispering aside* Whoa, so you stabbed me and it went all the way THROUGH my body and stabbed John, or something?

Me: *whispers back* Yeah, it's a really long knife.

Peter: *aloud* So I'm mortally wounded and bleeding everywhere, and then Kasha spontaneously combusts because that's how things roll in this story -

Me: Hey now. What'd you do that for?

Peter: - Kasha spontaneously combusts and drops the magic wand on me. But then the wand heals me -

Me: - Dangit.

Peter: - and also transports me to a beach in Costa Rica where I run into...

You get the idea. IT WAS SO FREAKING INCREDIBLE. And then after it was over John goes, "I should have made you a Klingon," and I was all like, "Dude, yeah, I would be an awesome Klingon!" and then that whole end of the table got all distracted talking about Star Trek.

I love homeschoolers.

Yay.

Commander Kip
"French maidens drive Dodge trucks." - a Calebism
Normal is overrated!

Kipin's getting better at this whole 'grief' thing

You guys who have known me forever and read my stuff, know that I used to suck at it. Epically. After writing most of my original adventure novel, I'm finally getting the hang of portraying grief. You know how your first instinct as a writer is to make your character cry when sad things happen? Don't do it, I tell you. Resist the urge! *glomps Magnus* Don't let your character cry! At least, not too much. It's way more effective, when hugely awful things happen, to hide them behind a mask, or send them into shock, or make them lash out in a fury, or whatever we DON'T expect them to do. So, from that space, read this and tell me how I did.

I shoved past a pair of soldiers with their blades locked together at the hilt, each straining to best the other. My boot snagged on someone’s discarded quarterstaff, and I went down on my hands and knees in the muddy snow. As I lifted my head, my eyes refocused on the body stretched out in front of me.
He lay on his back, arms flung out to either side. A sword stood upright in his chest, a sword with a smooth black stone set into the crosshilt. The general roar of battle dropped away, leaving behind a numb silence. Violence swirled around me, men from both baronies fought and died, but I couldn’t hear them. Only the hushed murmur of heavy, wet snowflakes striking the ground.
Get up, my mind told me. Get up and keep moving. You don’t know this boy. You’re making a mistake. He’s not who you think. Just leave him. Get up. Get up!
But the spiked, tawny hair told me otherwise. I only knew one person with hair like that.
My hand moved as if it belonged to someone else. When my fingers brushed the frozen stream of blood at the corner of his mouth, I felt nothing. I watched, impassive, as the hand that was not mine traced the frost on his closed eyelids, skimmed his pale jaw, and waited at his neck for a pulse. Why couldn’t I feel his heart beating? Why couldn’t I feel?
“He’s quite dead, I’m afraid,” said a gentle voice by my ear. “Pity that stupid Dawnbridge brat can’t seem to follow orders. That is his sword, I take it?”
I turned my head. Fable crouched beside me, wearing a sorrowful expression that didn’t match the hard gleam in his eyes. I stared at the sharpness of him, of his nose and chin and cheekbones. His green cat’s eyes. I wondered why he didn’t cut people simply by looking at them.
“Yes.”
Peering at me, he lifted a few sodden black strands away from my face with his callous-tipped fingers. “I believe you’ve gone into shock.”
I didn’t move.
He jerked me upright by my hair. “Andra, do you know where your mother is now?”
That question didn’t make sense. “My mother?”
“There is no need,” he snarled, “to repeat everything I say. Do you know where she is?” Holding me by a fistful of hair, he yanked my head back, forcing me to look him in the face. I blinked as he shifted in and out of focus. Even his teeth are sharp.
“No.”
A smirk thinned his lips. “I thought not. She happens to be at the Gypsy’s Bramble just now, suffering from an extremely high fever. My sources tell me she’s not expected to last the night.”
Another piece of information that didn’t make sense. I tried to think. I don’t know for sure where the Baroness is, but I can only think of so many places she might be, and the Gypsy’s Bramble isn’t one. “She can’t be there. She hates gypsies,” I mumbled.
“Not the Baroness, silly girl,” Fable said, rolling his eyes, “I’m talking about your biological mother. Alice, or Eris…”
“Aurice.”
“Yes, Aurice. That’s her name. In any case, I would hurry if I were you. It would be such a terrible pity if you were to miss her.”
With a short laugh, he flung me down beside my friend’s body and strode off, the purple lining of his half-cloak the only color in a world washed gray.

Gah! I miss Kaden already. You guys could tell it was him, right?

Anyway, Andra is a complete mess in this scene. Normally, she wouldn't begin to put up with Fable jerking her around like that. *swats Fable*

Commander Kip
Hey look, a ring! But I can't see it through all the spam...
Normal is overrated!

an extra credit thingy

Yeah. Fun.

He isn’t evil.

I believe this fully. He’s volatile, yes. Unpredictable, troubled, scarred, betrayed, yes. But not evil.

When I found him, he was lying in an alley, bleeding on the cobblestones. He had just suffered a horrendous beating. His dirt-stained tunic was in ribbons, and so was the skin of his back. I looked at him, and saw pain. I saw anger. But mostly, his eyes screamed of betrayal, louder than words. He didn’t trust me, at the beginning. He watched me with those sharp green eyes, watched my every move like a bird watches a cat. He didn’t trust me, but he wasn’t afraid of me either, and there was a spark of something in him that couldn’t be beaten out.
It was a miracle Mirano let me keep him. He didn’t like the looks of the boy, he said. Something off about his face. Sneaky. Sharp. Too clever for his own good. I defended him from Mirano and the other skeptical members of the Council, gave him time to heal, and began teaching him. He was a slow healer, but a very quick learner. He had never been taught to read, write, or do mathematics. We started from the ground and worked our way up. He was like an empty pit that was never filled. I threw knowledge at him, enough to drown any other human or Mast-angel without a Mindgift. He drank everything in and still hungered for more. He caught up with other boys his age, and I watched him grow from a scrawny, beaten boy into a young man who was confident to a fault. During this period of growth, Mirano worried. And sometimes, so did I.

“What?” I asked him one day. “What are you worried about? He’s progressing wonderfully. He’s very quick.”

Mirano sighed through his nose, watching Briar engage in swordplay with a Mast-angel twice his height. “I worry about him because he’s quick. Too quick for my liking.”

The arena behind the Sanctum was hardly ever empty, but today it was only Briar and his opponent on the ground, Mirano and I in the balcony. I kept an eye on my pupil as the dust swirled up around the two of them. “He’ll turn out. You’ll see. He’ll turn out fine.”

“As long as he doesn’t kill us all in our beds first,” Mirano muttered with an uneasy shuffle of his wings.

I arched an eyebrow in his direction. “Beg pardon?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed. There’s a lot of anger locked away inside that boy. Mark me, Memory, it’s there. It manifests itself in small amounts, and you don’t notice or choose not to notice. But he’s bottling everything up within himself. He was betrayed as a child and he’s just waiting for it to happen again. He hasn’t forgiven Mourn for turning on him, beating him. His scars aren’t healing. You know all this, but you don’t acknowledge it. You just put the sword into his hands and hope he doesn’t know what to do with it.”

Put the sword in his hands…

“Don’t tell me what to do, Memory! I know! I know enough to make my own decisions! Don’t try to stop me!”

His face is contorted as he screams at me. I’ve never seen him so angry. “You will not learn killing arts from me, Briar. Drop the sword. Now.”

“No! I’m tired of being defenseless. I need to learn this! If you won’t teach me, I’ll find someone else. But I am going to learn!” His fist clenches on the hilt of the deadly weapon. I think of the scars across his back. “You can’t stop me from learning!”

He is only fourteen years old, but the hatred in his eyes makes him look far older. “Briar. Put the sword down. I forbid you to wield it.”

“You can’t forbid me!” He screams. “You don’t control me! I hate you, I hate you!”

Another memory surfaced as I staggered against the balcony railing.

Briar wraps his arms around me as I stand before my desk, weeping. “Don’t cry. It isn’t real. It isn’t happening.”

I’m watching my sister die again. Images and voices crash together in my head. I can’t feel Briar’s sleeve on my face, drying my tears. I can’t feel anything. There is only my mother’s scream as Kindred’s wings fold and she plummets from the top of the wall
into the roiling sea. The blaze of lightning over the water. The tearing of fabric as my mother and I run through the bramble thicket at the foot of the wall. We leap in, ripped cloaks billowing around us. Salt water, everywhere, in my eyes, in my ears, up my nose. I wrench my eyes open underwater and search the murk for Kindred’s pale hair, her white dress, her gleaming bronze wings. But she isn’t there.

Then the study swims back into focus and I notice Briar hugging me. His little brow is crinkled as he looks up at me, green eyes bright with concern. “Memory? Are you all right?”

“He’s a good boy,” I said, steadying myself on the railing. “I know he is. He’s rough about the edges, perhaps, but there’s good in him.”


When Andra came to me and spoke of Fable, my head told me at once who he was, and what he’d done. But my heart rebelled. I cannot believe this. I will not.

I didn’t tell her that Fable used to be known by another name. I didn’t let myself flinch as she described the face of the man I trained from boyhood, the man who murdered the first friend he ever had. The man who wouldn’t drop his sword and let go of his hurts.

I looked Andra in the eyes and lied.

“Fable? I don’t know this Fable. You’d best do as Mirano says and start with him, if he’s acting so suspicious.”

“He tried to kill Flavius! He burned the library to ash! If that’s not suspicious, I’m sure I don’t know what is.”

I knew only what Briar told me about Mourn, and I’d seen him just once, at his Council trial, but I saw him in her, the clenching of her fists, the posture, the sparks flying from her green eyes, the black in her hair.

I didn’t tell her that. I also didn’t tell her Fable killed her father in cold blood thirteen years ago. She hates it when I don’t tell her things, but in this case I thought it the best way. If she found out Fable’s past, I couldn’t be sure what she would do.

In that sense she reminded me of my poor old apprentice. Scarred and unpredictable, with a bit of betrayal thrown in. A loose end. But still a good person, inside where it matters.

I didn’t tell her that, either.


Yay for extra credit. We were supposed to write a short biography thing on our villain from the viewpoint of someone who sees him as a real human being with real human feelings. How did I do?

Commander Kip
I WANT YOUR EYES!!!!1!!!!11!!! O.o
Normal is overrated!

Claptrap the creeper

Scribble-scratch map of the Central Province minus the river, right there, people. Whoa yes. I didn't know there was a river when I drew this.

“Hey, is that guy following us?” Kaden whispered, nudging me.
I hoisted my bundle of purchases higher on my hip and glanced back. The streets of Amren were clogged with vendors, shoppers and entertainers, and it took me a moment to see the man Kaden had indicated. He wore a cloak that failed to conceal the hunch of his shoulders and was keeping close to the edge of the street, in the shadows of the shops and houses.
I nudged Nath, who looked. Arkady and Flavius, both laden with packages, were oblivious. Nath’s forehead ceased in a frown as he muttered, “Claptrap.”
Kaden nodded, sidestepping a gaggle of women carrying shopping baskets. “You know what? That guy’s really starting to creep me out. D’you think Fable sent him?”
It was barely past noon and the sun was glaring overhead, but a shiver tickled my spine all the same. “Of course. Fable sent him to spy on us. Time to lose him, boys.”
We pushed through the throng and caught up with Flavius and Arkady, who were loading their armfuls of gear into the back of a cart. “The driver’s going up to hill to deliver the post,” Arkady told us, waving a hand at the man holding the reins, “and he doesn’t mind taking our bundles up with him so we won’t have to carry them on the return trip.”
I could feel Claptrap’s eyes on us as I hefted my baggage into the cart, but stopped myself from looking back. “Listen, guys, Claptrap’s over there spying on us, and we need to get rid of him. No – don’t turn around – let’s take the long way home, all right?”
Making an effort to keep his eyes fixed on the cart, Arkady replied, “You mean, the long way that consists of us taking every back alley we can find and leaving by the southwest gate and sneaking through the forest?”
“Yes,” I murmured, rolling my eyes. “That long way.”
After Flavius had paid the cart driver for his trouble, we plunged into the stream of bodies and let it carry us down the main road in the direction of the Sanctum. The domed structure loomed overhead as we ducked into a side street festooned with washing lines and started running. I dodged around and under billows of cloth that were people’s nightgowns, sheets and tablecloths. The others stayed close behind me as we skidded around a corner and took off down a different alley. Arkady, I saw, was wearing someone’s long underwear about his shoulders. My feet pounded through puddles and potholes, mud spattering my shins, and then the alley ran out and we turned another corner, and another. The others puffed with exertion, and my own ragged breathing was loud in my ears, but we didn’t stop running, and we didn’t look back.
After a few more turns and backtracks, I no longer knew where we were. The buildings in this part of town were tall and unsteady, swaying into one another like men who have had too much to drink, and their rooftops hid the Sanctum from our sight. I slowed to a jog, then stopped altogether, doubled over and gulping down air. Flavius sagged against a wall, and Kaden sat where he was, laughing so hard that tears rolled down his cheeks.
“What’s... so... funny?” Arkady panted, trying to untangle himself from the underwear wound around his torso.
Kaden laughed harder, and even Nath grinned as he stood with his hands behind his head, catching his breath. “You should leave it on,” Kaden wheezed. “It becomes you!”
I took the opportunity to look back the way we had come while Arkady was busy throttling him with the garment. At first, I saw only strips of sunlight hitting the paving stones, but between one blink and the next, I saw something else. Something that stole away all that breath I had just worked so hard to get. “Hey, guys,” I said.
They were laughing too loudly to hear me, even Flavius. I elbowed Nath in the ribs. “Guys!”
“What?” they chorused, and turned.
Everyone went still. Everyone, that is, except the dozen or so burly men stalking towards us from the other end of the alley. Sword blades glinted in shafts of sunlight as they moved forward, leering.
In the confusion that followed, I think I might have been the one who shouted, “RUN!”

Claptrap is such a creeper. *smites*

Workin' on Chapter Three!

Commander Kip

We're gonna explode? I don't wanna explode!

Normal is overrated!

happy birthday, Nath

Yes, his birthday is on Winter Solstice. It was terribly conveniant for the plot, you see. XD The funny thing is, it's his birthday but he's not turning any older, because he needs to stay seventeen for most of the book.

Here comes Ezroth to eat your face! Too much to do, and I can’t be in three places at once. The street was in tumult. Mothers screamed for their children, chickens squawked underfoot, and the road was clogged with carts, carrying the people of Amren to Birchwall and safety with all possible speed.
It wasn’t enough.
I can’t do this, I thought again, picking up another child and putting her in the cart. The girl’s eyes were wide with fear, her face tinged red in the glow of torchlight. I cast a glance over my shoulder, towards the mountains. The sky in the east was stained with soot and flames. I want to help these people... but Alethia needs me too... and Nath...
As I thought his name, Nath came running up with two children in his arms. “This isn’t working,” he muttered as he handed his charges up to a woman in the cart bed. “The carts aren’t moving fast enough. I sent out a couple families by way of the river, but we only have a few boats. I don’t see how we can possibly get everyone out of Amren in the next three hours.”
“We can try,” I growled as the cart drove away, laden with townsfolk and chickens. “We’ll save as many as we can.”
Nath’s face was drawn. He grabbed my arms, forcing me to look at him. “Andra, I’ll be eighteen at dawn.”
I locked my gaze on him. There was fear in his eyes, the same fear I had seen in the face of the child, but he wasn’t afraid of Ezroth. He thought he was going to lose his sight.
“I know,” I said, and turned away, gritting my teeth. “Better work faster.”

Something like this will be happening in Chapter Ten, which falls between the Black Moment and the Showdown on the story line. There's supposed to be some sort of 'tension clock' in this chapter that's kind of like a time bomb. You know how they always do it in movies, where there's an explosive device with a digital timer in red numbers on it that's counting backwards really fast, and the camera keeps cutting back and forth between close-ups of the timer and the hero trying to get to the timer/take out the bad guy/save the pretty girl? It's like that. But different, because there's no such thing as time bombs in Wrothmore. XD Instead, I have a rampaging pyrodemon and a dude who's going to go blind if they can't break his curse in the next few hours.

Happy Birthday, Nath! *glomps him* Sorry for everything I do to you...

Commander Kip

We must spank the children immediately, before they try to KILL you again!

Normal is overrated!

this cursed darkness

Flame it, I knew this was going to happen. Nath is one of those characters that's perfectly clear in your head but DOWNRIGHT IMPOSSIBLE to draw! Hold still, blast you!!

Yeah, he's blind in this pic. Before that, his eyes looked more... normal. Yeah.

Anyway, I finally got caught up on all those piles and piles of OYAN I was behind on, so now I have like five scenes to show you guys. Speaking of which, we're reading parts of our novels ALOUD IN CLASS next semester, and I am SO going to die. I get terribly embarrassed reading my own stuff aloud.

This scene happens at the end of my Showdown. I had a blast writing it. Blood! *squees*

I slumped in the doorway of the Sanctum, watching Ezroth disintegrate into a cloud of steam. My shoulder throbbed, and I could feel blood soaking into my tunic beneath my hand, but I was too tired to care. Tired and pained and sad.
My gypsy charm is gone. The only thing I had to remember my mother by. Gone.
A thought struck me with the force of a thunderbolt. Fable and... “Nath!” I gasped aloud. What happened... Nath’s blind...
Lurching to my feet, I staggered down the corridor. How could I have forgotten about them, even for a second? Don’t be dead, Nath, don’t... Drops of blood splashed the tiles as I picked up speed. I was almost running by the time I burst into the Inner Sanctum, out of breath and clutching my shoulder. Half-wild with fear, I cast about for Fable and Nath... and when I saw them, I couldn’t hold back the scream.
Two bodies lay facedown in a crimson pool, neither moving, not three feet away from each other.
I ran past Alethia, still tangled in the net, and dropped to all fours beside Nath. It was hard to tell whose blood was on whom. They were both covered in it. I forgot my own wound as I rolled him over and pressed a hand to the side of his neck, feeling for a pulse. It was there under my fingers, but his eyes were wide and staring at nothing. “Nath! Can you hear me? Say something!” My voice was thick with tears. “Wake up!”
He shuddered, gasped in a breath. I put a hand behind his back and leaned him upright, questions and sobs of relief crowding out of my mouth. “What happened? Why is there blood everywhere? Did Fable stab you or something? Talk to me, Nath!”
“I’m... not hurt,” he mumbled. A few droplets of blood fell from his curls. “But I think I...”
I looked at the other body again, and this time I saw the dagger hilt sticking out of the back of its neck.
He pressed a fist to his mouth and closed his eyes. His shoulders shook. “I think I killed Fable.”

Sorry for the slight goriness. Can't be helped when peoples are getting stabbed in the back of the neck, you know? But I love Nath's reaction in this. Epic. Apparently, killing someone really messes with your brain. *glomps poor Nath* I love him, really I do! And I show it by torturing the crud out of him, lol.

Commander Kip
Don't say that. Every time someone says that, a fairy somewhere drops down dead. And I shall never find her if she's dead!
Normal is overrated!

the epic guts-spilling dialogue

Mah OYAN homework this week. Way too much fun. XD

“So... why?” I asked Fable, keeping one eye on Alethia as we circled around her. The net Fable had thrown over her shimmered with magic sparks. “Why did you kill Kaden? What did he ever do to you?”
His face was twisted in an expression that was part sneer and part scowl. “I killed him because I knew it would hurt you.”
It hurt, all right. The pain was like a hot poker in my chest. I felt tight, stretched, burned. “Okay, so you wanted to hurt me. Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he spat, hatred smoldering in his eyes. “It isn’t just about you, it was never just about you! I wanted to hurt you in order to hurt Memory. She was far too easy on Mourn, who ruined me. It’s her fault he survived that Council meeting! She was given the chance to finish him, and she chose mercy! Mercy, for the one who should have had none!” The heels of his boots clicked on the tiles as he prowled around the edge of the Inner Sanctum.
Mourn. He always came back to Mourn, even though it was Memory he was after. “Mourn didn’t survive the meeting,” I pointed out. “You killed him.”
“Yes, I killed him, but only because Memory would not! She tried to stop me, you know.” A bitter laugh fell from his lips with the weight of a stone. “She tried to save your father. But I beat her to him, and he finally got the end he deserved.”
Alethia stood, paralyzed, between us as I moved to stay opposite Fable, glancing at the sword he held. Eran’s sword. The sword that stole Kaden’s life. “I still don’t understand what you had against my father,” I said, fighting back the anger that wanted to come broiling out. “What did he ever do to you? From what I can tell, you hated him more than you hate Memory.”
Fable’s eyebrows crashed together as he shouted, “I have everything to hold against Mourn! He beat me! He stole from me! He betrayed me! How could I do else but hate him?”
“I said the same of you, once,” I said. “You’ve done terrible things to me, Fable. Horrible, unforgivable things. But I’m still trying my hardest to forgive you, though I think it might kill me to do it. I think you had a pretty messed-up childhood, but there are better ways to deal with that than revenge. Lashing out probably feels like the natural path to take, but it certainly isn’t the best, or only, one.”
Fable’s snarl rang loud in the vaulted space. “Don’t lecture me!” He looked like he might leap at me and tear me apart.
My knuckles whitened on the hilt of my dagger as I shouted, “Just forgive Mourn already! He’s dead! Why do you go on hating him?”
“I hate him because hate is all I have.” Fable’s voice dropped to a low growl. “I can’t forgive him. And I’m willing to bet that you can’t either.”
“I already did,” I retorted, standing up straight on my once-twisted leg, imagining the scar fading. “It took me long enough, but I did it. We’ve both been hurt by Mourn. I forgave him. Can you?”
He staggered back as if struck. “You’re – you’re not limping,” he whispered. “Why aren’t you limping?”
“I don’t have to. The weight that was crippling me is gone.”
Eran’s sword clattered to the tiles. I felt a flash of compassion for Fable as he slumped to his knees. He looked weak. Weak and alone, and crushed by his own hatred. His brow was knotted in pain. He closed his eyes. “So now it is my turn to ask, ‘Why?’ Why did you try to stop me?”
I still held my dagger, but I feared little from Fable at this point. “Stop you from turning Alethia to stone, like all those other poor Leondreans? I did it because Mirano asked me to... but more than that, it was the right thing to do.”
The laughter was bitter even now. “The right thing? Don’t tell me that was your only motivation, Andra. There must have been something driving you, something inside yourself that kept you after me, even as I stacked up the odds against you. What was it?”
I thought about this as I crossed the Inner Sanctum to stand before Alethia, still frozen in the net. “You might say it was a need to prove a point to myself. I needed to know that I was capable of doing good, and that my father’s evil had not touched me. That was what pushed me out the door in the first place, more than any obligation, although obligation was a part of it.” I knelt and began untangling Alethia from the magic net. “I think I’ve sufficiently proven that point.”
Fable bowed his head. “You have.”
Alethia squirmed in my arms as I tossed Fable’s net away and got to my feet. “All right then. Now that we have that settled, I’m taking Alethia back to her parents. I think they will be very happy to see her.”

Fable be pwnd. I like him more and more as I get to know him, isn't that weird? I keep finding out all these interesting things about him, like the fact that he knew Andra's father when he was a child on the streets of Amren, and killed him later, and was Memory's apprentice for a while, and used to be called Briar... all sorts of interesting stuff.

Commander Kip
Missed it by THAT much...
Normal is overrated!

Savvy, Part Five (at long last. Yeesh.)

Yes, I finally sat down and finished this. It's... long. Very long. And it was going to be even LONGER, but then I realized that I had three pages and counting and I was like O.o... never mind.

This time: We get to follow Timo as he demonstrates his ninja skillz and saves Baeli from Certain Death! Muaa. And then Baeli, being her awesome self, turns around and saves his butt right back.

Part Five: Timo
Disclaimer: Derek, Timo, Jakky, Baeli and Cricket (and the briefly mentioned front desk lady) are mine... but nothing else is.

Even though I ran all the way from my cube in Data Central, I barely made it into the Hub ahead of the lockdown sequence. By the time I got there, slightly out of breath, the doors were closing. Drat. In an unorthodox maneuver that I hadn’t had the chance to rehearse previously, I completely skipped the authorization phase and dove over the door, rolling into a crouch on the other side. Behind me, I heard the whistle and bang of the sleeper cannons firing. I ignored them and made for Baeli’s station, grinning to myself. Ha. Missed me, cannons.
Derec had miraculously beaten me there. He was already peering at Baeli’s computer screen, head cocked in confusion.
I jogged up and peered with him. “Hey, guys, find anything?”
Baeli scrunched her nose up in a frustrated scowl, fingers flying over the keys. “No. Derec was just asking me the same thing. And the answer, unfortunately, is the same.”
“Where’s Jakky?” Derec asked suddenly, twisting in his seat to look at me. “Last thing I heard, he was still in the chem lab with the Professeur. Did he get here or no?”
I conducted a quick visual scan of the Hub. Nowhere in the confusion of technicians and agents and humming machinery did I see my friend or his mentor. “Guess not. I don’t see him.”
Derec made a face. “Darn. I thought he could’ve made it. The chem lab is pretty close to here.”
“Well, I don’t see him,” I repeated. He must not have made it in. I frowned, worried. “Maybe I should go look for him.”
S.P. Onage jogged up to us, his new cadet trailing behind him. “Timo, do me a favor and keep an eye on Cricket for me. Show her the Hub. Don’t let her get into trouble.”
The cadet pouted and crossed her arms. “Trouble? Me? Since when do I get in trouble?”
I rolled my eyes at Derek behind the cadet’s back. This was not going to be fun. “Sure. Stick close to me, Cadet, and I’ll show you around.” I am definitely going to regret this.
Onage strode away, barking orders to various technicians and the more lowly agents. I got the feeling he was glad to be rid of his new cadet for a while. Blowing out a sigh, I beckoned Cricket toward Baeli’s tech station. Derek scootched his chair over so she could see the screen. Baeli ignored us all, clacking keys at a furious speed.
“Cadet, this is Derek Andy and Baeli Jones. I’m Timo,” I said. “Baeli’s our software specialist. Find anything, Bae?”
“Actually… yes,” she said slowly. Her eyes grew wide behind her glasses. “The one place I didn’t think to check…”
“Guys! G-guys!” Jakky ran up to us, puffing for breath and waving his arms. “Get under the d-desk! L-like, n-n-n-now!”
The cadet gave him a critical once-over. “Who’s the nutcase?”
“That’s Jakky.” I flapped a distracted hand in the cadet’s direction, then addressed Jakky with some concern. “What’s up? We didn’t see you and the Professeur come in. What kept you?”
Jakky’s eyes were even wider than Baeli’s. He stuffed the cadet under Baeli’s desk, stuttering, “W-we ran into the f-front desk lady on the w-way h-h-here –“
“The ceiling!” Baeli screamed. “They’re coming in through the –“
All of a sudden, the Hub exploded.
The ceiling fractured into a zillion pieces that began to fall the dozens of feet to the floor. The world shook. I was hurled onto my face. People were screaming as large chunks of ceiling came hurtling down towards us, along with a swarm of men in black jumpsuits on rappelling cables. I rolled onto my back in time to see the giant slab of concrete that was about to land on top of me.
Acting on instinct, I reached out and grabbed Baeli, who had landed near me, and hurled both of us out of the way. The debris crashed down behind us, the shockwave of its impact knocking us flat again. I lurched to my feet, Baeli’s stiff, frightened body clutched to my chest. The long row of desks, just a few feet away, was largely buried under ceiling detritus, but I staggered to it anyway and crawled under Baeli’s cubicle. Cricket was there, cowering back into the cramped space, her small face pale. I set Baeli down.
“Baeli, are you okay? Baeli!”
Her glasses were broken. A shallow cut scored one cheekbone. She wiped away the trickle of blood with a shaking hand. “I… yeah. I’m okay. Where are the others?”
Another explosion rocked the Hub as damaged electronic equipment blew. On the desk above us, the computer monitor sparked out with a startling bang. The cadet jumped and screamed, high and shrill. “I’ll be back,” I said, and ducked out into the chaos again. Immediately, I dove for the nearest pile of shattered concrete as a Nastonian in a black jumpsuit aimed a projectile weapon at me. I heard the bullet slam into the other side of the pile, and dashed towards the center of the Hub. The six-foot holographic globe that normally dominated the space was flickering precariously, sparks flying from the projectors beneath it. A hand clamped down on my arm and yanked me down beside the projector base.
“What’s going on? Where’s my cadet?” Onage demanded, crushing my upper arm in his steely grip. “Is she safe?”
“For now, sir,” I replied, trying not to wince. “She and Baeli are under Baeli’s desk. I don’t get how all these Nasties –“
Onage jerked me to the side as another bullet shattered the plastoid next to my head. Chips of it stung my face. “The roof,” Onage said briefly. The robot half of his face looked no different than normal, but his human eyebrow was hooded in a fierce scowl of… pain?
I noticed the dark bloodstain marring the leg of his pants. “Sir, you’re injured…”
“Same darned leg,” he grunted with the barest trace of humor. “Now get on back there and keep Cricket safe. Go!”
He hurled me away from him, out into the melee. Glancing over my shoulder as I dodged flying bullets and broken concrete, I saw Onage grappling with a Nastie, the two of them rolling over each other in the mess of papers and debris that blanketed the floor. I debated for a split second, then decided that Onage could handle himself. I turned back around and ran smack into a Nastonian.
The man grunted and swung the butt of his tri-mode rifle at me as he stumbled back. I ducked under the swing and knife-kicked him in the knee, then flipped out of the way as he toppled with another grunt. “You Nasties don’t have a very big vocabulary, do you?” I said, relieving him of his gun.
As I ran back to the desk, I fiddled with the Nastie weapon and set it to sleeper mode. The next Nastie that took aim at me was gonna get knocked into next week.
Baeli had gotten hold of a laptop somehow and was clacking away at it with a fury. Cricket peered over her shoulder. I slid into the space beside them, still clutching the rifle. “S.P. wanted me to come back here, so I didn’t get the chance to look for Jak and Rex. You two okay?”
“Fine, thanks,” Baeli replied, squinting through her cracked glasses at the screen. “I’m trying to get the internal sleepers online… but the password’s changing every thirty seconds… so every time I’m close to cracking it –“
“Whoa, every how many seconds?”
“Thirty. It’s security protocol.”
A spray of bullets hammered into the side of the desk. “Just a sec,” I said, and crawled out of the space.
A pair of Nasties were firing slugs into the desk frame. I nailed one with a sleeper burst from my rifle and sailed into the other feet first. He went down with me standing on his chest. The first guy snored beside him.
I was so busy feeling good about myself that I failed to notice the gun barrel poking me in the back of the head for a good five seconds. “Where is it?” demanded the Nastie standing behind me. “Tell me where it is, or I’ll shoot!”
I may have some skills, but I’m not stupid. I dropped my rifle and watched it clatter on the floor. “Where’s what?”
“The Specimen!” the guy shouted. “Where is the Specimen?”
I wondered if I was going to get any help getting this guy off me. Glancing around, I realized that the fight was as good as over. Black suits were everywhere, herding our people into groups, gesturing with rifle barrels. I was very conscious of the barrel jammed to the base of my neck as I carefully answered, “I have no clue what you’re talking about, I swear. Seriously. I’ve never heard of this Specimen thing.”
I heard a click. “Tell me where it is NOW.”
Oh, crap. Clicking is usually not good. It usually means a weapon is being cocked, or something equally frightening. I felt my shoulders tense.
The next thing I knew, there was a whistle and a bang behind me. The Nastie grunted, and the cold metal of the gun barrel fell away from my neck. I twisted around in time to see the black suit slump to the floor, unconscious. Confused, I scanned the rest of the Hub… and watched in complete disbelief as every single Nastie on the premises crumpled to the ground.
Baelie scrambled out from under her mangled desk with Cricket on her heels. The cadet punched a fist into the air. “Yeah, take that, stinking Nasties!”
Ah. That explained things. “I take it you got the internal sleepers working,” I remarked to Baeli, prodding the senseless black suit at my feet with a toe. She nodded, straight-faced, pushing a few strands of hair out of her eyes. “How’d you guess?”

*danves* Go Baeli, go Baeli, uh-huh, what now! Does she not pwn you all with her madskillz? Anyway, this is only a slight cliffie. What Specimen was that Nastie yammering about, I wonder?

Yo, Lady Arin... would you happen to know when Miss Jasper's birthday is?

Commander Kip
We're gonna need a bigger jail...
Normal is overrated!

Ashes

Aaaand it's done!! This pic has been eating my life for the last few days. I was gonna put Tears in there too, but he's eluding me at the moment. Picture-shy. I'll keep working on him to cooperate. Ashes is my current favorite character. I just love her attitude. Here's the latest bit from the rp:

The cell door clanged shut. “And stay there!” the guard groused, and turned to leave.
With an unconcerned shrug, Ashes produced an eyepatch from her shirt pocket. It was a black, piratical number equiped with a cord for tying it around one’s head. Ashes fitted the patch over her left eye and leaned back against the dingy stone wall, crossing her clawed feet out in front of her.
Tears shot her a miffed glnace as he used his sleeve to dab at the blood on his forehead. “Seriously, Ashes, why do you wear that thing?”
“It makes me feel cool.” Ashes wiggled her uncovered eyebrow at him. “You should try it sometime.”
“What, feeling cool?” Tears shook his head and winced. “Overrated.”
Ashes laughed.
Glaring at her, Tears kicked out at the bars of the cell. “I fail to see the humor in this situation. We’re stuck in a crusty old jail cell under the city with no mist in sight. You lost the gate key, and those guards could be back to drag us to our deaths any minute. I can’t believe you’re not worried.”
“Why should I be?” Ashes retorted, closing her eyes. “This isn’t bad. At least we don’t have to spend the night in the marsh. And if you’re serious about kicking those bars out, I’ll have you know that you’re going about it the completely wrong way.”
Tears grunted and gave the bars another solid kick. “And how would you go about it, O Mighty Mentor?”
“I would kick the door, for one, not the bars; and I would use my heel and kick it in the middle, where there’s the least resistance,” Ashes drawled without opening her eyes.
Sitting back with an irritated flick of his forelock, Tears gestured to the metal mesh that made up the cell door. “Care to demonstrate?”
Ashes rose in a fluid motion and grinned. “Thought you’d never ask.” Her bare foot shot out, clawed heel connecting powerfully with the center of the mesh. Tears leaped to his feet as the door ripped free of its hinges and clattered to the stone floor.
“Okey dokey, time to go.” Ashes pulled a speechless Tears out of the cell. “Everybody in the building must have heard the clang.”

Uh-huh. FTW. Pwned. And all those other cool words. XD

Commander Kip
Funny... but not okay.
Normal is overrated!

Black Ribbons, part 3

Part Three! Wasn't that fast? Be proud of Kippy and her increasing mad typing skillz.

When Juniper woke, she immediately wished she hadn’t. Her shoulder was throbbing fiercely and she was sore from head to foot. Groaning, she rolled from her side onto her back and stared up at a moist, rocky ceiling. Cave, her mind told her. I’m in a cave.
Where’s Jasmine?
“Jasmine?” Juniper mumbled, and sat up. Or tried to. The pain in her shoulder and the pounding in her head quickly convinced her to lie back down with a sharp intake of breath.
“They got you too, huh.”
Juniper almost sat up again, but settled for lifting her head to cast about for the owner of the voice. He was sitting against the cave wall with his arms crossed over his bare chest. Ragged, straw-colored hair nearly obscured his red eyes.
Tainted. Just like Jasmine and me.
“I’m Draith,” said the boy, shuffling his wings behind him. A curving pair of horns, much longer and thicker than Jasmine’s, gleamed in the light of a torch mounted on the wall. “What’s your name?”
“Juniper,” Juniper said, craning her neck to look for Jasmine. “Where’s my sister? Have you seen her?”
The boy called Draith gave an apologetic shrug. “They always separate the new arrivals. She’s probably in a different chamber, if she’s still alive.”
“You don’t think they killed her?” Juniper really did sit up this time, shocked and horrified. Her shoulder gave a forceful twinge.
“Auhh –”
Draith was beside her, catching her head as she fell back. She hadn’t even seen him move. “You might want to wait another few hours before you try sitting up again. And no, I’m pretty sure you’re sister’s fine.”
Juniper’s hand went to her shoulder. “Another few hours? How long have I been here?” She was expecting to feel a mess of broken bones, but nothing felt broken. The shoulder was stiff and sported a large, tender bruise that showed through the thin cloth of her nightgown, but that was all. “I know I was injured worse than this.”
“You were,” said Draith, setting her head down gently on the rough stone of the floor. “You got here last night. But Tainted heal fast. You’ll be fine by tomorrow morning, just like nothing ever happened.”
Juniper processed that for a moment, thinking back a few years to when she had sliced her little finger chopping vegetables. The wound had healed within the hour.
“It’s a good thing, too,” Draith continued, “because tomorrow night, we’re busting out of here.”
What? Why? Are they going to kill us after tomorrow night? Juniper’s head was spinning. “We are? What about Jasmine? I won’t leave without her.”
“Of course we won’t leave without her,” said Draith, leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed. “I’ll just find out which cavern she’s in, and we’ll grab her on our way out. Don’t worry, I’ve been planning this for a while now. Nothing will go wrong.”
“And now that you’ve jinxed us, everything will go wrong,” Juniper grumbled. She wrapped her wings around herself as a shiver of cold rattled her jaw.
Draith’s eyes opened. He shot her an amused glance. “Cold?”
“Yeah.” Juniper saw no reason to be sarcastic with him, like she was with the other humans in the village. Draith was Tainted, like her. She was fairly sure she could trust him. “Aren’t you?”
“Nah. I’ve been down here for ages,” he said. “I’m used to it.”
Juniper was quiet for a minute, listening to the clacking of a Darkling’s claws somewhere outside the cavern. She noticed that the only entrance was blocked with thick vertical bars made of some kind of dark metal. “So, why tomorrow night? Why haven’t you broken out already?”
“Never had the proper motivation.” He shrugged. “They haven’t seen fit to tie a black ribbon on me yet, so… I haven’t felt the need to escape yet either.”
“What’s so bad about a black ribbon?” Juniper twisted her neck to look at him. “As far as I know, there’s nothing horrible about those.”
“The ribbon means that the Tainted who bears it is marked for death.” Draith’s gaze grew unfocused as he stared at the opposite wall. “My father had one. The Darklings tied it around his ankle and turned him loose in the outskirts of the nearest town. Then the humans ripped him apart.”
Juniper frowned. “Oh. I’m… sorry.”
“Don’t be. I hated my father.”
Funny… sometimes, I think I hate my father, too. “Fine. So… why tomorrow night?”
“Because I get my ribbon the day after next,” Draith said heavily. “And I don’t want one.”

Muaa. Bit grisly, I know... but... DRAITH!! *muffled squeeing*

Commander Kip
I just love scanning for life forms...
Normal is overrated!

oh noes...

... I really really wanna go back and save my buddies but then the baddie will get away and it'll be all my fault! Heroism is overrated.

... says Andra. Poor dear. A snowflake landed on my cheek. I glanced up at the sky, which was crowded with thick thunderheads the color of soot. More snowflakes flurried around us. “Lovely,” I muttered.
“Don’t you think we should wait this out?” Arkady said, cresting the rise behind me. Nath turned to wait for us at the mouth of the pass, his eyebrows raised in a silent question.
Fable could be getting away as we speak. If we stop, we could lose him – and Alethia. “We have to keep going,” I said, wrapping my cloak tighter around myself. I almost had to shout over the whistling wind. “Surprise and speed are our only weapons at the moment.”
Kaden came up behind Arkady with our meager supplies. “It ought to be less gusty in there anyway,” he said, gesturing to the pass ahead. “We’ll make good time.”
“If you say so,” I grumbled, eyeing the narrow pass. I didn’t like the way the boulders hung over the sides, throwing shadows on the rocky ground. The whole thing looked like it could cave in any second. Taking a deep breath, I hoisted my pack and followed Nath into the shadows.
Before long, we were struggling to see our hands in front of our faces as the blizzard began in earnest. Wind and snow howled through the rocky corridor, slamming into us with enough force to knock me back into Arkady every other step. We ended up shoving on each other’s shoulders, moving forward one collective step at a time. Less gusty, my foot. “Nath, check the map!” I yelled over the storm. “How far until the end of the pass?”
Nath had a hard time keeping hold of the map as the wind tried to tear it out of his hands. He squinted at it, blinking melted snow out of his eyes. “Not long now,” he shouted. “Just a few more minutes and –”
Something rumbled. The ground vibrated under my feet. I cast an uneasy glance back the way we had come. “Did... anybody else feel that?” I asked.
My friends nodded.
I was starting to feel claustrophobic. The walls of the pass were closing in on me. The stones balanced overhead pressed down with a physical weight. “Guys...” I started to say. Just then, the world caved in.
A pile of rocks and snow thundered down on us. I opened my mouth to scream and got a mouthful of ice crystals instead. I was crushed to my knees, then my hands, by the weight of the onslaught. A stone struck my shoulder, and I yelped. Everything shook and rumbled. Panic seized me by the throat, stealing my breath. I was going to be smothered to death. Tucking my head, I did my best to keep breathing as the walls of the pass collapsed on top of me.
After a few endless seconds, there was no more rumbling. All was still and silent under the mound of icy rubble. I clawed the snow away from my face burst up out of the pile, gasping in the frigid air. Arkady’s head popped up beside me, and then Nath surfaced as well. “Everyone all right?” he asked as Arkady spat out a pebble. “Where’s Kaden?”
We looked at each other in dismay. Kaden did not appear. I reached down and started digging, scrabbling in the rubble with frantic hands. They helped me, and after a moment Arkady shouted, “I got him!”
He held up a limp hand. We kept digging until we had unearthed the rest of Kaden’s arm and his head. His eyes were closed. The snow around his face was stained crimson from a gash on his scalp. His spiky hair was sticky with blood.
“Kaden!” I shouted. “Kaden!” He did not open his eyes.
Arkady looked up from a boulder he was trying to shift. “He’s stuck,” he announced, pointing to the spot where the lower half of Kaden’s body disappeared under the boulder. “I’ll stay here and dig him out. You two go ahead and catch Fable.”
And leave Kaden here to die? “I want to stay,” I whispered, knowing full well that I could do no such thing. Alethia was the priority here. But Kaden...
“Let’s go,” Nath said, and pulled me to my feet. I steeled myself against the ripping wind and said to Arkady, “Please, get him out.” Arkady nodded, putting his shoulder to the stone. I turned away and followed Nath out of the pass, trying to put Kaden’s bloodless face out of my mind.
We weren’t two yards out of the corridor when the ground shook and a thundering rumble rent the air. Not again! We spun around in time to see the entire pass collapse in on itself. A great wall of ice and rock crashed down to bury the two figures within.
“No!” I screamed, and ran towards the collapse, heedless of the ice shards that stung my cheeks. Kaden and Arkady were in there somewhere, and Kaden wasn’t even conscious. I had to find them.
“Andra, wait!” Nath’s arms wrapped around me, holding me back. I struggled in his grip, frantic screams tearing out of my chest. Nath pinned me to him and shouted, “They’ll be all right! We have to go after Fable!”
I was utterly torn. My friends were buried under tons of snow and rock, and I was to leave them to their deaths to chase after Fable. I wanted so badly to go back, to rip away boulders with my bare hands, to save my friends. But Nath was there, whispering in my ear, convincing me. “Andra. We have to go on. We have to.”
Snow swirled around us in a sudden gust. The buried pass was hidden in a rushing wall of white. Taking a shuddering breath, I brushed the tears from my cheeks before they could freeze and let Nath tow me away.

Aww. Sad. You know what I noticed, after writing both my scenes last week? They both end with Andra getting dragged away. Oops. XD

Commander Kip

Over there, behind that sofa!

Normal is overrated!