Tag: fiction
Bard’s Gate notes.
[Working on expanding a setting, just collecting a bunch of bits of description in once place for convenience. Thanks to Carina, for helping me lay the foundation of this city.]
Surrounding the ship are towers of light. Tall buildings, solidly built from stone and amberloc — a thousand thousand windows, each giving a uniform blaze of chilly blue light. Bard’s Gate is reknowned for its tall buildings, Echo can see from her vantage point many other tall buildings, each with different colors of light beaming out into the warm darkness. On the edge of her vision she can see a deeper darkness to the north, the ocean. Her home.
A thousand gems blaze with light, a thousand shattered rainbows held in place by stone and the will of men.
“What a delight! You must take the time to take in some shows — the dramatic performances in Sloetown are not to be missed. The dancing halls, the singers, the wandering troupes of tumblers and acrobats. In a city where the sun never shines, there’s plenty of time to have a pleasant evening on the town.” Enton chuckled again, at his weak attempt at humor.
The snow-haired mage leads the way down the gangplank, into the hangar proper. The vast iron doors leading to the neon-lit night beyond. Winter makes a beeline for some small vehicles, made from blue steel and fashioned into stylized representations of horses with long legs and fixed wings.
The culvert opens up into another world — the darkness gives way to a massive golden light, shot through with orange and purples. A whole street is nestled away down here, a brass band plays on the roof of the building closest to the entrance. Literally, a band made up of brass automatons play trumpets and cornets — reminding Echo eerily of the guardians of the Vault of Flaubert I.
It takes a moment for Echo’s eyes to adjust to the barrage of colors and lights that hit her as they walk inside. The first thing she notices is the sea elves. There are four of them, younger, casually chatting and drinking throughout the bar. It takes her a moment to realize how close this place is to her home city. One of the elves even looks familiar.
The bar is dead center of the relatively small venue. It’s made of reflective material that throws colorful light in all directions. The bars tools seem to be run on some sort of railroad track. She sees a few patrons slide back and forth around the bar. The rest of the tables in the joint are tall, and made of glass. Echo is suddenly glad that none of her shipmates are here—it would be all complaining and bull-in-a-china-shop like behavior.
A stage curls around 3/4ths of the walls, backed by lush curtains and elegant staircases in each corner. There were no performers, but it looked promising.
The walls were perhaps the most fascinating part of the whole place. Atop peeling wallpaper of golden trees, hung skeletons in various pieces. All the bones were decorated with some sort of feminine accoutrement—the skulls wore big, pink bows; the hand bones wore bracelets and rings; even the rib cages were laced with ribbon.
Unknowingly, Winter led the elf through the room, up to the bar. The bartender was nowhere to be found.
[Author – C. McGeehin]
Winter rapped her knuckles on the bar, and looked around.
“Horace? Has he wandered…”
Sliding from around from behind a rack of bottles, an elegant skeleton pirouettes into view holding two cocktail glasses in one bony hand and dark red bottle in the other. He wears no clothing, but his bones give off a faint glow, and show signs of constant cleaning and care. A pinprick of blue light hovers in each eye cavity, and he gives Echo a rakish grin.
“Ah, who’s your friend Winter? A new plaything..or something saucier?”
Winter shrugs and orders another round.
The drinks this time are purple, wreathed with a salt-like mineral that gives off an ethereal green glow. Horace taps a bone finger on the bar next to the glasses, then points towards the stage.
The magenta curtains are being drawn back, revealing a smiling halfing. He has bright green hair, and a tunic embroidered with the sigil of a radish impaled on a lance. A disembodied goblin head droops from the ceiling, and squawks in a squawky sort of voice.
“Creatures and cravens — the Jade Harpy is proud to present, the world-renowned Bard of Wonder, Radd Plateglass!!!”
The bard, Plateglass bows floridly his blue cape billowing. He snaps his fingers, and a viola appears from nowhere. Without further ado, he begins to play. The song is old, but richer for its age — a song that finds its way into the dens and castles of most races on the globe.
The halfling hums, warming the strings of his voice, then sings:
Walk through the sorrows, of coal-black night
sing of the morrows, when all is light.
the gate is closed, and the beast is sleeping
quietly past see my true love creeping.
Winter rolls her eyes.
“I hate this song.”
The two step out into the garish light of Tunneltown. The night is young.
Five minutes and thirteen seconds later, Echo sat on a ledge next to a particularly sad-faced gargoyle. The thousands lights of Bard’s Gate twinkled in the eternal night. The streets were busy with denizens of Forever Night seeking their odd pleasures and secret agendas, all bathed in a rainbow of artificial light.
The druid glanced to the west, seeing the tail feathers of a seagull disappearing behind the curve of the city. Brand hadn’t been particularly thrilled about the animal shape she’d chosen for him, but he hadn’t wasted time arguing. Echo wondered if he’d remember to land before the spell ran its course.
Many stories below she also spotted the bald head of Kit, and his bedraggled performers. Their performance riot had done it’s job, and now they were limping their way to Tunneltown.
“So, why’d you want to meet here?” a voice asked. Echo glanced at the gargoyle, then turned left to see Winter, levitating next to the ledge. The snow-haired mage sat down next to the mage with an inquiring look.
The Sonic Bomb erupted. The 25th Floor erupted outwards, stone and steel flung hundreds of feet. Then, like a felled tree the upper floors slowly spun, then began to topple. The howl of bending girders hang loud in the air.
Seafoam Headquarters goes dark, the lights flickering off as the tower begins its seeming-slow descent into rubble.
Winter watched the carnage wordlessly, then turned back to Echo – hair whipping in the wind. Her hand snakes out and tugs at the druid’s ear. She pulls insistently until the sea elf’s face is inches from her own. The mage plants a chaste kiss on Echo’s brow.
“That was …. impressive. Do you think Seafoam got the message?”
From the outside, it’s hard to tell if the place is a theatre or a strip club. The burnt out light bulbs and neon would suggest a seedy venue. You’d think one would take better care of light sources in the city of eternal night. Perhaps the hooker-vibe is one cause of their financial trouble.
The inside doesn’t look much better than the out. Plaster crumbles above Echo’s head as she steps through the doorway, and the whole place smells musty. A single flickering bulb lights the lobby, throwing just enough light to lead Echo toward the stage.
[Author – C. McGeehin]
Levels and Blech
I’m temporarily finished with my short story, Star Prophet. I’m really ambivalent about it — part of it I like, parts of it I don’t — but I’m trying something really outside of my comfort zone/style. I have lost all perspective on how well it’s working.
Looking for some feedback, follow the link for the full text, so you don’t need to read it piecemeal on the blog. Comments here, or on the page itself would be much appreciated!
Star Prophet V
Bite and tear,tears and bytes and the constellation Sagittarius. Will I ever be okay, like the fat children tumbling down the Sunday School Steps? The funeral limo smelled of peanuts, and I was empty as a comet — ice and light and empty black hurled tennis-ball across the net. The edge of a floppy disk in my bag, I stole it from Enrichment even though my uncle’s house has no computer. Just to hold it, just to slide it between my hands and think about the little packets of numbers, the glowing green lines of longitude — the way they formed lego-stout another planet.
Everything’s all mixed up. Everything happens at the same time.
Star Prophet flopped down on a dune, and skimmed a coke can across a few waves. He was pretty good. My uncle’s fist slams into my face again and again, and I’m full of waves, salt water in a ziplock bag full, fuller — then burst. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. The boy, and his fingers and the moons, and the rocket ships burning , solid state fuel of pain. My uncle’s hand on my chest, and I’m glad I’m still flat but it won’t be long. Star Prophet’s red goggles are fogged up , and he pushes them up his face and leans in close and plants a graveside kiss on my brow.
“It’s all still out there. Waiting for you. For all of us. It was promised.” There’s snot on his nose, it’s November, white star peeling on his head like a crown of lilies. “Don’t forget.”
“What?”
“Don’t forget the Cheetos.”
The bones.
I might’ve started very, very preliminary editing on the book.
Maybe.
And IF I did, it’s only a first read through — just getting a feel for the bones, and making tiny little notes at the most egregious things I notice.
Like the name of the town changing three times.
One character’s hair color changed RADICALLY from the beginning of the book to the end.
And so many adverbs…so many adverbs.
And things that are confusing.
But, the bones are there.
The bones are there.
You know, maybe.
Hunter in the Dark I
–th of Handspan, 11–
I write these words carefully.
Quill in my right hand, nib pressing against my left hand’s fingertips. I don’t know why it concerns me to write these sentences evenly, as I will never read them – and I have no plans to share these words with another soul.
From what my new companions tell me, it has been over ten years since my sight was taken from me. I was an old man even before my time in Dra’Lusair, many lives and turns of the road — but in my favorite I was a scholar. I find comfort in the scratch of the ink on the page. The words slide through my mind, then disappear into the dark.
The only candle I have left is my imagination and my memory –and oh, how they flicker.
Maybe after all the years in the dark it is a comfort to put my words somewhere, instead of them endlessly whirling around in my tiny teardrop cell. Or perhaps because there has been little opportunity for conversation since my … release? Deliverance?
My new companions are an interesting group. A master swordsman, a cultured riflewoman, a cowardly wizard, a reckless gladiator, a driven soldier, and their leader, Simon. A paradox — he seems the most carefree and feckless of them all, but each of them follows him without question. He is a man who laughs first and often, but I can hear a familiar sound in his voice. The breaking sound.
And of course, my closest shadow — the Tyr-Elf exile. Stone is cruel, and the stone elves of Iax proved it on her flesh in the stagnant dark of their underground city. As the only one who can speak her people’s brutal tongue, she has taken on the duty of shepherding the old blind man, she is never far if I require anything. She speaks little of her imprisonment, or the source of her people’s disgust for her — I would not dream to pry further.Nyver is the name she uses, the Tyr-Elf word translated simply as “exile”, but more fluently as “Die Under The Sun”.
Ah — my new companions have completed their preparations, and we make haste for the edge of the Stone Elves’ caverns. To the surface, then across the savannah to where Simon has hidden his ship, that will bear us all across the sea.
Across the sea, to find the scent of my quarry.
You should have killed me, Rime. I know you could have found a way. I swear you will regret the elegance of my destruction.
[From the journals of Linus, last Falcon of the Hunt. Found after his death.]
Star Prophet IV
Star Prophet sits cross-legged, and levitates above a green hill. I’m doing jumping jacks and thinking about what that boy said in class. About my hair, and how it smelled good. He was half asleep behind me, arm catty-corner on the desk. His fingers brushed the bottom edge of my hair, and it was a ripple down my spine. Index, middle finger, thumb – he held the tip of my hair. A LaGrange point. Straight ahead, no ripples of gravity, my eyes are moons. He said it, then let go.
Star Prophet quirks an eyebrow, and detonates a small plateau with his mind. He is displeased that I am distracted from my training.
I kick off into the air, and lightning crackles in my fist.
My fist that holds the toothbrush.
And I’m in the dark with my uncle. He slobbers and moans his way through the night, a rip red of pain in the air, dying with each bellows-breath.
I hate him like gravity. I hate him like the sun.
I stand over him, and my fist comes down.
Star Prophet III
Maybe I’m dreaming.
Star Prophet and I stand on a beach at sunset. The sun is too big, half the sky is red fire. Solar flares curl and destabilize the ionosphere and the sand is too large, like grains of rice between my toes. I slip my fingers into the band of my shorts, it’s cold. There is no sound, the waves do not crash.
The blue star-hood turns and I see that his right eye is bleeding.
“Who did that to you?”
“You did.” he said.
I touch his face, then I touch my face. My fingers feel strange in the empty cavity where my left eye used to be. There is no pain, just an odd sticky feeling of pressure.
“Want to go for a walk?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I get up and go to the bathroom, and brush my teeth. Ultra-Brite is red already, so my toothbrush doesn’t look strange. The pads of my fingers are yellow-white as I press them against the mirror. Hand bone, and wrist bone, and arm bone all connected. Broken-glass joints. The rice-sand titters away from my feet.
“It pushes, it pushes, it pushes us..us! It pushes us, child, child, sweet child of mine.” Star Prophet said. “Humans are so blessed, so special in the cosmos. The line of our bones running all the way back to the Tigris, throwing ourselves out there — up there! More to see, and more to know and more to go. Heh-heh.”
“Heh.”
“To stand on a street corner, and feel the heat of the pavement through your shoes and the wind of a car and feel it all stretching out, backwards and forwards — the wolves howling at the tent flap and the burst of nebulae off the port bow.”
The carpet, the thick carpet — the steep walls of the hall, my uncle snoring. I slammed the flat of my fist against the wall, but he didn’t wake up. I was still holding my toothbrush.
[Still not happy, but getting there. Maybe once I ‘finish’ this can be a good practice revision piece before diving into That Thing.]
Eyes in the Wood
The old knight raised his hand in caution. “These wood elves are stranger than you have encountered — of all the descendents, they trace their lineage pure and fine back to the High Elves of old. Their sight is a dangerous thing — the future, the present, the past. All laid bare. Stay focused –be sure you are ready to receive their words.”
Quintus turned and eyeballed his hand on the lightning scarred tree. His right-ring cuticle needed some attention. A few minutes passed, and the duelist fought to stifle a yawn. A leaf fell spinning from a nearby tree, and landed lightly on his wrist.
A tidal wave. The hooves of deer, the wings of the bluejay, a song his lover sang in the autumn moonlight- black, white, then red. A snail crawled across a stone and a symphony of marigold frostbite. A green hand slid up the side of a gray castle like a creeping vine. A small girl played a trumpet in the fronds of a palm tree, a red haired youth strummed his lute beneath a pear tree. The earth crumbled beneath Quintus’ feet and he fell into darkness.
A slender hand curled around her wrist, a long face framed in silver and leaf-green. The wood elf kissed Quintus’ lips, his golden eyes wide and overflowing with tears.
Simon. Simon on an exhausted horse. Simon wearing a red scarf, ragged and trailing. Simon riding into the teeth of a storm, black and sure.
Mara’s knees gave way, falling into an ungainly crouch. The elf spoke, quiet as the lark before the hurricane.
“These words we have for you and no more. We cannot deny the river.”
The wood elf dashed the tears from his eyes.
“Your leader rides to his doom. If you do not save him, he will fall like all of his brothers. Ride, ride to Gilead if you be true companions. As for the cage of souls…”
He steepled his hands, then let them fall to his side.
“It is beyond our power. An unknown magic, an unknown craft — we wonder why you seek our knowledge of this device, when a servant of the Smith-God stands at your heels.”
Kelvin waved, uncertainly.
“Now — words for each of you.”
The golden eyes burned and he moved from one to one, whispering in each traveler’s ear. Quintus was close enough to the old knight, Linus, to see the hungry set of his jaw — but couldn’t make out a word, nor see the lips of the wood elf move as he whispered. The duelist’s eyes widened as the wood elf came close, and kept his face impassive as he heard the seer’s words.
The wood elf turned away from the group, and gave a weak smile. He seemed to consider his words, then shrugged ruefully.
Leaves fell on the travelers heads.
—-
The Ghosts found themselves walking out of Seroholm forest, with the outskirts of Pennytown in view. None of them could remember the trip back from the tree, only the wood elf’s prophecy …and the secret words he had lodged in each heart. They walked silently back into town, and were surprised to find the town bustling with activity – amid the sounds of a hammer on metal.
Several dozen men and women were moving through the streets, bearing oddly wrought rods and flanges of adamantine and steel. A few called out to greet the travelers — Drover put down his load and waved them over. “Where have you been? — it’s been almost four days since you left us with that ticking time bomb. Good thing that other smith showed up yesterday, set right to work dismantling that monstrosity.”
Alarmed, the travelers hurried to the town square and the forge. The Gargantuan had been reduced to a third of its original size, legs and the bottom part of its torso. The Ghosts were relieved to see the chambers that had once gleamed with green soul energy lined up next to the forge, cold and empty. A tall, burly man was bent over the right ankle of the machine hammering away with his head down. As the travelers approached he stood up — a tightly cropped black beard shot through with silver and a blue bandanna to hold back the sweat. He was shirtless, old tattoos and scars running down the length of his chest. He took a long drag on the cigar stub he held clamped in his teeth, and grinned.
“Deus ex machina, baby.” he said.
“Master!” Kelvin cried with excitement and rushed forward to give his god a hug.
Star Prophet II
Cold walk, warm house. My uncle’s third knuckle on the right, potato-sack lumpy and his red voice and the fall of the Roman Empire. The stars were out, but I was in.
Humans do these things. They do these things to each other every day.
My face was bent. I rolled next to the couch and waited, while meteors impacted on the surface of Mars.
The press of headphones, the music and the moon – I lay with the sheet over my head and lost myself. The rhymes, the words – the quick symmetry of the drum and the strange keen of the electronic flute.
I think about Star Prophet’s planets — about the songs he hears. The whirling slide of space and time, the spaces, empty – now full. Jupiter turns his face, and Saturn hula-hoops across the dance floor. The blood on my pillow is red. The rains of Mercury and Venus, the broken canyons hidden beneath the cotton-wool cloud.
[I’m really not happy with this section. I’m used to bla-bla-blahing my way, spitting out a few hundred words like it was nothing. This sucker’s fighting me. I’m going to keep working on SP in dribs and drabs, then do a massive revision when it’s all done. This is what I get for actually thinking about a story.]
spell-sword.com 