Tag Spear Gate

Story — The Tiny Great Big One

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Zollo hadn’t exploded today, and for once, he was disappointed. It had taken him weeks to convince the rest of the council that it was a side effect of his magic. He had told them he had accidentally eaten something with a glyph on it, and instead of digesting it it just kept making him explode. No big deal. The Athaxi are a resilient race. Very good at unexploding. “The explodings will stop eventually,” he assured them.

Athaxi were dumb. It was a good thing that Zollo wasn’t dumb. Like the other Athaxi.

But what he didn’t plan for was the Ritual of Bigness. With the other council members convinced he wouldn’t explode, and with Zollo being one of the most bestest glyph-ers in the tribe, he was obligated to attend. It was a stupid, boring ritual, really. The entire council had to stand on some pillars watching the entire tribe give offerings to the Great Big One. One by one, in the hopes that they, too, might become the next Great Big One.

Zollo knew the truth now. The Athaxi didn’t ever get Big. He knew because he had a Great Big One. Only, it wasn’t Big. Or Great, for that matter. Even now he could feel it on his waist, tucked away just above his tail. It was sleeping, but warm. Zollo’s secret, Tiny Great Big One.

That was where the explodings came from, of course. Sometimes convenient, but more often than not, exploding was unpleasant. Often he considered telling the council the truth. But no, he had no idea how they would react. Or how his Tiny Great Big One would react, for that matter. It exploded Zollo often enough, after all, and it liked him. The council would surely all get exploded if they were introduced.

And so, he was stuck here, standing on the pillar as his legs ached, pretending to vary his interest in each of the mundane offerings. A couple of squibs here, a collection of very shiny rocks there. Zollo had to admit the rocks piqued his interest a bit. They were quite shiny.

But every time he found himself a little distracted, the Tiny Great Big One would shift around in its slumber, reminding Zollo how much he wanted to explode right now, just so he could be excused from the ritual.

An elbow to the side startled him, and he looked to Negs, who was vaguely gesturing to the offering table. Oh, right. Zollo nodded and joined the other council members as they all used the glyphs they had carved into the offering slab to set all of the offerings ablaze. Soon, the pit had grown into an inferno, growing higher and higher as the offerings lit.

This was everyone’s favorite part of the Ritual of Bigness. All the Athaxi in the tribe were cheering and dancing at the sight of such a Big, strong fire. It was like one one of the Great Big Ones could make. Impressive, Zollo had to admit, but fire didn’t entrance him as it had since he had discovered his Tiny Great Big One. It seemed silly to love fire when you had access to its true source. Even if it exploded you a lot.

An echoing wave broke the festivities. The distant roar of a Great Big One, the tribe knew all too well. Even if they hadn’t seen a Great Big One in years, the Bigness of its sound was unmistakable. In the wake of Big beats of its wings, soon the Athaxi were cheering even louder. Maybe it would choose one of them to be the next Great Big One, they were all whispering.

Zollo tapped an idle claw against where he kept his Tiny Great Big One. Maybe he would be exploding today after all.

Me — June ’18 Update

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Well, here we are. I’d like to thank the academy for this astounding accomplishment. Spring 2018 semester is over. The Summer (and hopefully my penultimate) semester is fast approaching. I have big news (for me), too. As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in my friend’s apartment in Oregon, after having flown for the first time in seven-ish years. This is the first “vacation” I’ve ever had to myself, but I’ll get to that.

So as always, here’s the Monthly Update Topic Order™: blog, writing plans, video games, reading/listening, school, and other things.

Alright, I finally have some blog news: I will be resuming the weekly fiction portion of my blog! Every Sunday I’ll be posting a flash fiction based on an image writing prompt. I intend to also record them and upload these videos to YouTube around the same time they post to my blog, but we’ll see. I don’t intend to be posting chapter excerpts of anything, though. Just the weekly flash fiction. Plus, that way, you won’t need to have read anything else of mine to enjoy them.

As for writing plans, well… that’s why I’m only posting one thing of fiction a week. I’m still not really devoting any effort to any larger project. Lisa Stenton has once again found herself in a muck of irreconcilable conflicts too large for me to enjoy writing her stories. I just… don’t know how to make technology and urban fantasy marry without copying other writers or making it stupid, and frankly it’s hard to hit the exact right chord I was going for with her stories. I think “The Last Laugh at the Lake of Lava” was pretty good, though. Spear Gate’s new outline is still on the to-do list, but it’s honestly not that interesting to me anymore. ‘Cause, you know, that’s what new writers do. We love something until it’s hard and then find a new passion project. So, as for now, still no bigger project. Oh well.

Lately I’ve been playing almost exclusively Heroes of the Storm and World of Warcraft. Less so HotS because I’m kind of burnt out on it, but I did calculate that in about 600 games (or about 200 hours) I’ll have reached level 10 with every hero in the game. Problem is, all the heroes that are under that cap are because I don’t enjoy them much. So instead I’ve been playing WoW, mostly as a way to pass the time while I listen to podcasts.

Speaking of podcasts, I’ve finally caught up on Story Break! This means I’m caught up on six of the eight podcasts I’m interested in. After that I intend to listen to podcasts I have no hope of being caught up on. Ones that have hundreds upon hundreds of hours of content. I also have some unread audiobooks on my phone, so I still need to dive into those.

As I said, the Spring semester is over. I’m almost done getting two Associate’s Degree’s though. I just need about six classes total, so that’ll be great. I have tentative plans for what I’m going to do after, but nothing concrete. So after the Summer and Fall, I should be done… ish.

Okay, so Oregon. I’ve only been here for about 18 hours as I’m writing this, and roughly half of that has been asleep, but oh my gosh. So many trees. Living in So Cal means that I’m used to sky lines being rocky mounds of… you know, rock. But Oregon is swarmed with trees, I’ve never seen so much green in my life. There’s just… so much. It’s honestly pretty much the same (it’s less than a thousand miles, after all), but at the same time, so different. I’ll talk about it more later.

One thing I didn’t account for on this trip is the fact that I’m introverted. Being around friends for nearly 72 hours straight is… well, let’s just say I’m tired and it’s taking a lot out of me. I want to have fun, but it’ll be a struggle to keep my mental energy running for that long without burning out.

Also, the Tuesday and Wednesday blog posts will be late. I won’t be back home until late Tuesday night.

Me — March ’18 Update

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I’ve been pretty swamped with work lately. The last few weeks I’ve kept a notepad near my desk with a to-do list, because I’ve been having trouble keeping track of everything that needs doing. Because of that, the list always seems to be disappointingly long. I’ve been managing, though, and while I’ve run the risk of burning out and crashing a few times, I’ve managed to teeter on the edge quite well so far.

And as always, here’s the Monthly Update Topic Order™: blog, writing plans, video games, reading/listening, school, and other things.

Like last month, no blog changes are planned. I feel as though I’ve found a schedule that works really well with my school semester and work load. I’ve been posting “Me” posts pretty much every Wednesday even though they’re freebies, but that’s mostly because not a whole lot of “different” things have happened lately. I haven’t been playing D&D the last two months, for instance. I also don’t know what I’m going to do about Sunday posts. I’m not ready to dive back into Spear Gate. In fact, I’m writing this before Sunday’s post. I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do (or what I will have done, as you would see it). I’ll figure something out, obviously. I don’t want to just not publish on Sundays. Wait, I’ve got an idea. More on that later… Well, I mean yesterday, for you.

Which leads me to my writing plans. They’re pretty short and simple. I plan on outlining Part One of Spear Gate soon, and then going back to work on it. Lots of stuff will be different. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to rewrite it from scratch for the most part. Lisa Stenton is doing pretty well. The second story was hard to write, and I’m hoping March’s won’t be so difficult. They also obviously need work, and if I’m going to publish twelve as a short story collection, they’ll need some serious edits. But as of now I’m still enjoying it and I think I’m certainly up to the task.

Video games. Not a whole lot to say, actually. I’m still mostly playing Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone. I’m eagerly awaiting the next expansion for the latter, because I’ve got a bunch of in-game money saved up for card packs. I’ve also been playing Dungeon of the Endless, but less so the last few days. It takes a big time commitment to play properly.

In conjunction with whenever I’m playing games, I’ve also had the time to (finally) relax and listen to podcasts, too. I’ve caught up on Writing Excuses, and I’ve also been listening to Julian Smith’s new podcast: Spellbound. Each episode is basically an in-depth discussion about a different topic such as space, psychology, technology, etc. The content isn’t out of the park amazing, but since I could start with Episode One as it aired, I’ve been keeping up. It’s nice to not have to play catch-up, like I’m still doing with Voice Acting Mastery. I’m still about two dozen hours away from being up-to-date with that one, as I’m at December of 2015 at the moment. Luckily that one doesn’t post a whole lot of new content. I’m not reading anything physically at the moment. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have the time, but reading has always felt like a chore, and with how busy I am, I just need to relax with my free time.

School has been fine. Actually, most of my classes allow me to express myself alongside peers in different ways, so that’s interesting. I have a writing class, an acting class, and a costume design class. None of them are as high maintenance as my classes were last semester, so I’m not stressing out over it. Being at school literally all day two days a week is exhausting, but it could be worse, of course.

Just as a parting thing, I just want to mention how much can change for me in the next few months. If everything goes exactly how I want it to, I’ll be travelling no less than three times this year, and that alone has me excited. I want to start doing more and seeing more, and just generally getting more out of life. I still like video games, but sitting at home and playing them all day makes me uneasy now, even if I have a day off. I have no news to report for now, but hopefully the May and June 2018 updates will be fun.

 

Me — Losing Interest in Bigger Projects

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For the last two years I’ve noticed I have a problem with staying interested in longer projects. I tried writing a shorter work, Dreamscape, intended to be about 40k words. I liked the idea, but wasn’t satisfied with how it turned out, so as I stopped enjoying it, I would skip chapters I didn’t want to write. I got through pretty much all of it, but missing about 8 chapters it ended up being about 25k words long.

So I rethought my approach. I noticed that I started getting bored 10k words in. So I tried writing an anthology that takes place in Nacre Then: Rise of the Riftguard. A series of seven 10k word novelettes, each tied loosely around the impact of one major event but ultimately unrelated to one another. I ran into a very specific problem on that one, because I didn’t like how the third novelette was going. So 25k words in, I pretty much stopped that one, too. (I do intend to come back to it, though… Eventually. Unlike Dreamscape for which I have almost zero interest in at this point.)

A few muddled attempts at other, lesser projects in between, and eventually we come to Spear Gate. For this, I set out to do something entirely different. Originally, it would simply be a web series. No obligation to turn it into a novel, and no forward planning, either. I didn’t — and still don’t — have an outline for the story. But then I ran into the same problem I had with my original attempt at Lisa Stenton: I didn’t have an answer for the conflict I was foreshadowing. It hasn’t stopped me from writing Spear Gate, but it has led me to be a little wary, and though I resolved to finish it until I finished this “story” (however long it happened to be), it got tough.

So, Spear Gate is in an unprecedented situation as far as my writing projects go. I’m still interested in this story. I have lots more things that I want to explore, and several more that I’ve only touched on. But this current story has gotten too slow for my liking. So I’ve devised a plan. I’m going to write three 25k word “books” (which will really just be parts 1-3), and then squish them together into one genuine novel. Basically, imagine the three act structure only it’s considered to be standalone novels rather than the parts of a single book. (That’s pretty much how the Stormlight Archive works, anyway.) So that’s the explanation for the ending of yesterday’s post. The end of Part/Book One.

But Part One needs a lot of work. Esmina isn’t where I want her to be, for one. I have a plan, she just hasn’t had enough screen time to get that far. I want to rework Rozire a little bit. He’s not changing, really, but I want to do a better job establishing his relationship to Maelys. The fact that he’s a major character until Chapter 3 and then is never seen again seems odd, and I know that. And Xan is also referenced a lot, but the only time you see them is in one chapter. So I need to make Xan more important.

So, as daunting as it is, I’m going to keep working on Book One before I jump into Book Two. Things just need to be set up more clearly. This means an outline. I don’t know if this means I’ll have to write it from scratch or if I can get away with heavily editing the first draft. I suppose it depends on how different the outline looks by the time I’m done with it.

I’ll be honest. I’m a little scared. I don’t want to start over, see how much work it is, then lose steam because I’ll decide to put my focus on schoolwork or other projects. I don’t know how well it will work. But this is the best solution I’ve come up with.

Prompt — Orn’s Legacy

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(I couldn’t decide which of two prompts to use for this week’s story. I set up a Facebook poll, but then ended up using both. Whoops.)

 

Civet lowered her hood as she stared in admiration at the armor. Even with so many years of disuse, it didn’t have any trace of rust on it. The same couldn’t be said for the spare parts and scrap lying forgotten around the rest of the warehouse. Orn’s masterpiece: the Heaven’s Lock. The armor sat on a pedestal near the far wall, its wings extending outwards as it yearned to be free of its worldly tethers. It beckoned her to remove the tubes and pipes that anchored it down, for its original bearer was gone…

But his legacy lived on.

She removed her backpack, trying to imagine the last time the legendary ‘Defender of the Spear Gate’ had worn the famous armor. Photos and special events required him to wear it for publicity’s sake, but the last time it had truly tasted battle had to have been the final closing the of the Gate. At least, that was the last time all of it had been used together. This was just the chest piece. Orn had apparently given the vambraces and greaves to his daughter in his will. His only daughter. Civet grimaced.

She walked over to the pedestal and began unlatching the life support that fed the Heaven’s Lock. “We’re going to find out what you’re really capable of today,” she muttered, voice hushed as she spoke with eyes closed, petting the metal plating. It was hard to keep the anticipation from her voice, but then, why should she? This would be a day to remember.

“No. You aren’t.”

Civet opened her eyes, expression dark. She stood behind the pedestal, and the newcomer had entered the warehouse from the main hall. Civet couldn’t see her, but she didn’t need to. Didn’t want to.

“I’ve been hunting you all across the city, you know,” the woman’s voice said. “I’m authorized to execute you here and now, but if you come quietly I’ll consider mercy. I’m impressed at your audacity. A petty thief trying to steal the Heaven’s Lock? Who do you think you are?”

Civet took a deep breath. Then, she stepped out from behind the pedestal. “The rightful owner,” she said, fists clenched.

Tora’s eyes widened, her hand raising to her mouth as her posture lost all authority it once held. “Civet…” she gasped. “You’ve… you’ve dyed your hair.”

Civet inspected her sister, scanning her body up and down. She wore the familiar gauntlets on her arm, and though her long coat covered much of her form, there was a distinct glint of metal about her shins, as well. She stared Tora in the eyes. “Are you going to kill me?” There was no joviality in her tone.

“What? We haven’t spoken in years and… this is how we find each other?” She gestured around the warehouse and behind Civet.

“You’re the one that found me,” Civet replied. “It would have been better if you had stayed out of it.” She turned back to the Heaven’s Lock. “All of this.”

“Sister…”

“Oh, now you call me that?” she spun back around. “You have some nerve. You wanted nothing to do with me after Orn disowned me.”

Tora glanced to the ground. Then to the Heaven’s Lock, the backpack, and finally Civet. Her voice was quiet, but firm. “He had good reason to, sister.”

“You just wanted the Heaven’s Lock for yourself,” Civet crossed her arms.

“That’s ridiculous. I just wanted to uphold the truth of this city. The truth father worked so hard to protect.”

“There is no truth!” Civet yelled. “Working in the police force should have taught you at least that much. How much has crime increased since dear old Dad died?”

“That’s not fai—”

“How much? Tell me.”

Tora bit her lip as she stared at her sister. She didn’t like the answer, but she couldn’t lie, either. “Thirty percent.”

Civet sighed. “People were scared of the ‘Defender of the Spear Gate’. A real life superhero who saved us all from the monsters of that other world. But now that he’s gone, there’s nobody to save us from the monsters of our world.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Tora put a hand on her chest. “We help people every day, Civet. Not all fighting is blood and war.”

“How did Orn die?” Civet asked.

Tora froze, taken aback by the question. “What do you mean?”

Civet shrugged. “He was barely over fifty years old, and even in retirement he was in better shape than most people ever achieve. So how did he die?”

“You’re going to tell me you know?”

“I know a good deal more than you, for all you claim to uphold the truth. Tell me, how many people have you killed with those?” Civet asked, pointing to her arm.

Tora looked down, holding her arm out as she inspected the metal gauntlet. “None. It’s the symbol that’s important.”

Civet shook her head. “You’re just like Orn. Results are the only important thing.”

Tora stared at her feet for a while. When she looked back up at Civet, her eyes were glistening, though her voice did not betray her. “I’m not going to get my sister back, am I?”

“You have no sister.” Civet looked over her shoulder to the armor, then back at Tora. “Are you going to stop me?”

A tear fell down Tora’s cheek. “If I have to.”

Civet nodded as she crouched down and unzipped her pack.

In one swift motion, she pulled the gun out and shot two of the nearby tubes that spanned the floor.

Immediately, they broke apart and flailed madly into the air, spewing gas into the room as Civet threw her pack on and slipped into the rapidly spreading smoke.

~

Tora tried to follow her movement, but it was no use. She stepped away from the smoke, backing into a more spacious portion of the warehouse. She was exposed now, but Civet wouldn’t shoot her. She wouldn’t dare.

Would she?

Wiping away the tears, she thought about pulling out the Voice device from her pocket. She should call for backup. Civet was a wanted criminal. A vigilante at best. Even if she only had the wings of the Heaven’s Lock, she would be an enormous threat.

But even as she considered it, she found the thought ebbing away. She could handle this alone. She could prove to her sister that violence wasn’t the answer. Barring that, wearing the limbs of her father’s armor gave Tora the upper hand.

She glanced about her, watching for any signs of movement or sound that could clue her in to Civet’s location. The whole time, though, she kept an eye on the wings.

Something metal slammed against the ground behind her. Tora swiveled around to see Civet glance back at her, more annoyance than anything else written on her face. She rose the gun towards Tora’s chest.

Tora’s breath caught. She took a stance and engaged the greaves.

Just as the gun fired, Tora was pushed sideways in a flash of blue energy, out of harm’s way.

In a flash of anger, she engaged the greaves again, launching herself forwards towards her sister.

She closed the gap instantly, and grabbed Civet by the scruff of her jacket. With the enhanced strength of the vambraces, Tora heaved her up and threw her back.

Civet was thrown across the room and landed with a loud crash in a forgotten pile of what might have been a recycled generator. An involuntary gasp of pain accompanied the impact.

Tora clenched her jaw as she approached, walking with purpose.

“I’m glad you’re not afraid to use it, then,” Civet choked as she got to her feet. She dropped the gun, and Tora sighed in relief.

But that relief faded when she noticed that her sister didn’t quite seem to be surrendering. Instead, she was taking her backpack off.

“Here,” Civet said. She zipped the backpack up and tossed it to Tora. It bounced more than slid across the cement floor, and Tora glanced up in suspicion.

And engaged her greaves immediately when she saw the detonator in Civet’s hands.

~

The room exploded with raw power, enhanced by the flammable gas Civet had released earlier. Tora always was the clumsy one. Slow to react in a fight. This had been her plan all along, of course. Misleading her to think that releasing the gas was to conceal an escape was an obvious ruse.

Tora wasn’t dead. Civet had to trust she wasn’t that slow.

So Civet used the rising flames as cover as she ran to the Heaven’s Lock.

Unlatching the lock on the breastplate, she heaved it up and climbed inside, pulling her arms out the sides and clamping it back down over her own body.

As soon as it locked, she felt two drills bore into her back, cutting through the jacket. She screamed in sudden agony. The drills were thick, and were actively removing her flesh as it dug into her skin, right where Tora had thrown her against the generator. For what felt like an eternity, she forgot the roaring flames, her sister, and everything else.

Eventually, the drilling subsided, and even though her back still ached. She clenched her fists…

And felt her metal wings retract at the same time.

As soon as she thought about it, she realized that she could move the wings on her armor as if they were actually a part of her, like extra limbs. She flexed them, stretching them outwards, then inwards.

With a smile, she got off the pedestal.

“You’re not going to leave with that, Civet,” Tora said, projecting her voice over the flames that were slowly consuming the entire building. “I’m sorry, but I’m not the scared little sister you grew up with. I have a duty to uphold.”

Civet nodded. “I suppose I would think less of you if you let me go now.”

Tora rose her vambrace in a defensive posture, and a long blade shot out of it. “I don’t want to kill you,” she said.

“I don’t want to kill you, either.”

Civet launched herself forward using the power of the wings. Tora extended the blade on her second vambrace as well, crossing them in a block.

The momentum carried Civet right into her sister and the two flew backwards into the flames.

Tora grabbed her by the shoulders and swung around, then used the greaves to propel herself away from the fire.

Civet crashed into the debris, but used her wings to push herself up and out. She rose above the flames and glided up into the air. The smoke obscured her vision, but she could see her sister starting to get her bearings as she recalibrated.

This felt natural. She felt like she was floating above all the troubles of the world. The wings of the Heaven’s Lock didn’t need to flutter like the wings of a bird, so she just hovered there. “You know,” she called down. “If you had been willing to kill me, you might have won.”

She watched as Tora turned into a flash of light, jumping straight up at her sister with blinding speed.

Civet glided out of the path of her blades and caught her by the throat, holding her up with an unexpected ease as the wings helped shoulder the added weight.

“You’re… so easily provoked,” she said with an air of disappointment. “It must be nice to be an only child. I bet it would suck to be on the losing end of a sibling rivalry.”

Tora choked, her vitality fading as the combination of the smoke and Civet’s grasp on her neck proved too much. Civet watched as the expression in her sister’s eyes shifted from rage, to sorrow, and finally… to fear.

Civet looked away. She knew she wouldn’t be able to do it. Was that weakness or strength? She curled an arm around her sister to ease the pressure on her neck, then lowered herself to the ground and laid her down on the floor. The flames rolled about with a vicious hunger, but this particular spot was safe. For now. Civet rose back into the air and started to make her way to the exit as Tora tried heaving air back into her lungs.

“So what happens now?” Tora called after her, voice weak.

“Now I’ll seek my own truths. On my own terms, and uphold Orn’s legacy as I see fit, not as he would have wanted me to,” Civet replied. This, of course, meant recovering the rest of the Heaven’s Lock from Tora, but she could wait. She would need time to get used to her new… heights. “But if you can make your way out of here without dying, I suggest you quit your job. You’ll be humiliated after today. And Tora.” She looked back down at the girl laying in defeat amidst the curling flames. “Consider today a mercy. Don’t cross me again.”

 

 

 

 

Prompts:

https://snatti89.deviantart.com/art/150-365-Wings-580004065

Wings Art

https://snatti89.deviantart.com/art/75-365-Duel-565387921

Duel Art

Spear Gate — Chapter 10, Pt. 2

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The mind cloud ascended the stairs, approaching another door near the top. Light peeked out a little through the cracks, far too dim to be direct sunlight. As Maelys had practiced, he unconsciously formed a structure of what might be on the other side. This technique had to be based in reality, and it wouldn’t work otherwise, even if a few details were wrong.

The cloud passed through the door again, and this time was met with a wider chamber lit by metal lanterns mounted on the wall. Throughout the room were about a dozen wooden tables, placed atop well-worn cobblestone. There were multiple doors on each side of the room, and the only defining feature of any of them was that the floor beneath the one he had entered from was slightly lowered from the rest of the ground; one had to step down to the door for the dungeons. Most of the walls were decorated with banners and weapons, portraits and crests. Near a few of the doors were also racks of standard issue blades. It seemed that this room was a gathering hall of some kind, too, because far off on the opposite side was a raised, concrete platform.

The room wasn’t empty, either. There were several soldiers, most wearing the uniform of the Upper Terrace guard, but a few wore civilian clothes. He also recognized the group of guards that had come to pay him and Varra a visit a few hours ago. They were chatting back and forth, but of course, Maelys’ mind projection was completely silent. What’s more, Rozire had explained that seeing people was an unreliable source of information. Apparently, they were nearly impossible to predict, so any words being said were useless. You couldn’t accurately predict a conversation you weren’t a part of, after all. The best intel the mind projection could give you was the general number of people within the vicinity, but beyond that there was no way to really know. Instead, he focused on more identifiable details as he floated. In, then out. In, then out.

He milled about the room, trying to discern which door might lead outside. The cobblestone was worn everywhere, impossible to tell which parts had the most foot traffic. The weapon racks were definitely positioned closer to specific doors than others, but was that because it was outside the living quarters or because it was the door to outside?

The mind projection technique was useful, but its imaginary world was based on logic. It built itself based on the guesses and knowledge of the user, so when that failed, its usefulness wavered. Beyond that, the mind cloud had a range limit. The further one strayed from the origin, the more difficult it was to make concrete predictions, though Rozire had never explained why that might be.

Maelys was just about to guess and pass through one of the clouds when something caught his attention. He sent his cloud out to it, and identified it as a litter. It seemed to have… char marks on the wood?

And then he remembered the Meadows. Drinking the Red Teeth and falling unconscious. Being found by the Maker himself. Aenias, carrying him on his back… only, it couldn’t have been Aenias, right? Maelys wasn’t dead. He remembered being surrounded by stone, and words being shouted, and he was holding Rozire’s staff.

And it had been aflame. Men were drawing weapons.

He had been lying on that litter when it had happened. Had he really used magic? That sounded insane.

He opened his eyes as his concentration broke. He found himself in the position he had remembered being in in that whimsical memory, sitting upright with arms outstretched as he held the staff forward defensively. He carried no staff now, of course, and the memory faded like he had woken up from a terrible nightmare, breathing hard. In, then out. In, then out.

Spear Gate — Power Core

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Tasina stood at the edge of the skydock, staring out into the fog below that always crept up when it started getting late. In the distance, just at the edge of the horizon, she could make out the few hazy spires that marked the Needled Flats. Lex and Neda had left just after sunrise, and there had been no word. Neda was only supposed to borrow her son for a few hours, yet the entire day had passed. Some time ago, a hulking mass of a Third Empire battleship flew overhead, straight for the Needled Flats. It would have cast an enormous shadow if there were no clouds, but there were always clouds. She just hoped that it didn’t signify anything bad for the two of them.

“Hey, Booker,” she called, glancing into the power core that functioned as a house. Where was he? “Booker?”

“Optimal Efficiency, ma’am!” The robot’s voice startled her as he replied from directly behind her. She held a hand to her chest to catch her breath.

“You really have to stop doing that.”

“[STOP]. Command received. Powering down.” Booker’s arms tucked into his chest as he bent down, collapsing into a ball.

“Gods above, Neda said she fixed that,” she muttered as she manually turned the robot back on. A few small blue flashes of the systems rebooting as Booker’s limbs extended once more, his headpiece scanning the immediate area.

“Greetings, friend Tasina. How may I be of service?”

“I need you to run diagnostics on Tink. Neda’s scanning drone. Designation M-80.”

“[RUN DIAGNOSTICS]. Command received. System link initiated. Would you like me to send it’s compacted data?”

“Just the most recent two hours. But I’d like the audio, too.”

“Affirmative.”

Tasina climbed into the power core and turned on the water heater. She had barely gotten anything done today. With the combination of the expedition Neda and Lex went out on this morning and the ship that had flown over head, it was hard to stay focused. Besides, she needed Booker for her current project, but he wasn’t as reliable as he used to be. Maybe all that rust was finally getting into his head. Neda was supposed to fix all that. She was much better at programming than Tasina, anyway.

As the water heated up, she started brewing coffee, then ascended the stairs to the second level and laid onto the bed. The reactor at the core’s center gave a soft orange light as it hummed and warmed the room. That was one perk to the tiny room, at least. You were never cold. She smiled as she remembered the time when she told Lex what the power cores really were: the dead hearts of Centurions, the first generation mech to be mass produced in the Third Empire’s army. As much as Lex hated the scrapyard, that had brought a smile to his face. They quite literally slept in the hearts of giants.

A harsh explosion came from outside. Tasina bolted up. No time to think, just move.

She vaulted over the ledge and onto the first floor of the re-purposed core. Rushing outside, she saw Booker standing stock still. Another explosion sounded, but its source was much closer than she had expected.

It was the sound of the audio file Tink had recorded. A sigh of relief was followed by an immediate inhale of panic. Tink? Explosions? What of Neda and Lex? Were they alright?

“Pull up a visual of Tink’s data storage from today.”

Booker didn’t respond, as it would disrupt the audio feed, which was mostly static and more explosions. Occasionally, though, a human shout could be heart saying something indistinguishable. At recognition of her command, a blue, holographic screen appeared before him. There was a short list of data samples. It didn’t take long for Tasina to find it. The answer she was looking for.

A confirmed reading of a specimen that weighed over 700 cubens. 96% of it was aenendium.

At least she had some answers. But the fact that she now knew exactly where that behemoth of a battleship was headed was no comfort.

“Booker, stop the audio file.”

The sound cut out. “[STOP]. Command received.” Again, Booker folded back into a ball with little ceremony. Tasina scooped him up and headed towards their spare hoverbike.

 

Prompt:

Life — Spear Gate Web Series

Kasey-Rayn 4 Comments

I’ve recently changed my website up a little bit, rearranging the categories in the sidebar. Most importantly, I’ve given the Spear Gate story it’s own category, because I update it at least once a week. I’ve also made the change because I’ve started thinking about the story in a new light.

I don’t really know what I find so appealing about considering the Spear Gate universe a constantly updated “web story” rather than a book. Maybe it’s the implied lack of editing. Maybe it’s the distinctive lack of a conclusion, and therefore no pressure to constantly increase the tension. Whatever the reason, my handling of the story has been much more conducive to periodic increments anyway, since a lot of webcomics don’t necessarily have an ending in mind, and therefore the artists get to tackle things in the moment.

The best thing about this is that it doesn’t actually change anything, really. I’m still writing it on a chapter by chapter basis, and if it gets long enough, nothing is stopping me from shuffling some words around and publishing it as a book (series?) anyway. If that happens, I wouldn’t even take down the original chapters, because the ones in the book are bound to be a different read anyway. If that’s the case, somebody can enjoy the Spear Gate story, then buy the book for a new experience because the story will be slightly different.

Here’s pretty much the only con I can think of about this process. It means if I did eventually put it into a book, I would be hard-pressed to make big edits, because I would want the book to be an enhanced experience rather than a fundamentally different one. I’m not sure how webcomics get turned into published books, but I can’t imagine it’s all that different. But really, regardless of what happens, this isn’t even something I would have to worry about until at least a year down the line, so there’s no point in dwelling on it!

As a side note, I started this blog to get more writing done. I’ve more than achieved that goal. I can always get more writing in, of course, but I think at this point I should start trying to bring in more people. Everyone that’s been keeping up with Spear Gate has told me how much they love it, and it makes me wish that more people kept up with it. It’s barely 1,000 words a week, but I can definitely see how webcomics would inherently be more appealing than walls of text. That said, I’m not sure how to go about gaining more of a following. It’s not like art where you get following from being awesome. For me, that’s how I’d retain audience, but that person has to to take a leap of faith and trust I won’t waste their time on their first read-through. Maybe if I get somebody to work on the art for the universe I can draw more people in…

Life — Struggling With Writing

Kasey-Rayn 1 Comment

I’m starting to find myself in that position again: the one where I just have this underlying feeling of exhaustion. The one where sleep isn’t a factor, or if it is, it’s where you feel even more tired because you’re sleeping too much. As a writer, it’s a feeling I’m very familiar with.

It’s the first red flag that says my writing isn’t getting anywhere.

So far, the Spear Gate project has been going swimmingly. I started back in May and as my main focus of fiction writing, I’ve already put nearly 20,000 words into the universe. This isn’t a huge amount by any margin, but for me, it’s pretty rare to be that focused on any one thing. Even Dreamscape, my latest attempt at a novel before this one, took five months to hit that many words. It’s mostly because I’m always doing a myriad of other things simultaneously.

I’ve had a blast writing the Spear Gate book. But this past week, I’ve been having a really tough time pressing onward. Between rewriting a big chunk of Chapter Four, and starting off Chapter Five with a slow opening, it hasn’t written itself like previous chapters have.

Usually, this just means I’m getting bored of the project. Things aren’t turning out how I want to, and so it gets harder and harder to write until one day that threshold of “Achieve Writing” is too high for me to hit.

But this time, it’s not because I’m bored. It’s because two things are happening right now. First and foremost, the Fall semester started. I’m taking more classes right now than I have in years, and all told, I am at the school for nearly twenty hours a week. (For the sake of simplicity, let’s also pretend that the amount of time spent doing “homework” is zero hours.) Add to that my time spent at the high school teaching improv (another six hours), subtract an hour every day (minus one) for writing these blog posts, three hours dedicated to my writer’s group, and on average six hours a week set aside for Dungeons & Dragons related activity, and that’s over forty hours of time that isn’t really mine. Now, you could make the argument that D&D and the writer’s group is my time, but I really do consider that “Hobby/Personal Improvement Time”, where I socialize and practice bettering myself as a person. Either way, it is definitely not time spent relaxing and recharging.

Add to this a messy pile of things I need to do. Coordinate with people about future plans, arrange dates, schedule and organize personal matters and goals, help out friends with personal projects, etc.

I realize this sounds like whining compared to people that work a tough job sixty hours a week, so let me amend this. I salute anyone that works harder than me, which I imagine is well over half the working class. I do consider myself hard working, as I’d guess probably most people think that about themselves, but I can safely say one thing: I feel my writing is suffering because of it.

But I mentioned two things happening, and only brought up one: a lack of time. The second thing is an elephant I don’t even like to acknowledge, and it’s something I realized very recently. The Spear Gate book is still being written. I’m not even close to being done with the first draft. That means that literally any feedback I get on the book right now is useless.

I came up with this analogy the other day. Somebody reading my story might finish a chapter and say “Huh, this doesn’t look right. You kind of threw this out of the blue.” or “I don’t see why X character would jump to this conclusion. This conversation doesn’t flow right.”

Imagine my book is a person. running, leaping, sitting, whatever. The sort of critiques I mentioned would be equivalent to saying “This person is running weird. They aren’t bending their knees enough.”

But here’s the thing. I’m still drawing the skeleton. If anything, I’ve barely made a rough framework of where the knees would even go on this picture. It’s not fair to say the picture doesn’t look right when the artist isn’t even done drawing it. At the same time, it’s not fair to have somebody look at it and expect them to give feedback that works. In this analogy, I need a reader to tell me if I correctly drew a skeleton, not whether or not the picture looks good.

This leads me to conclude that nobody should look at the Spear Gate book until I’ve written the ending. People can help me draw the muscles as I’m working on major rewrites for the second draft, but before that, I’m just getting disheartened. And I don’t know if that’s healthy for the book.

I’ve been thinking lately that all of this is too much, and I should just take a break from writing, to focus on school. But that leads me to consider: I recently became the leader of my writer’s group. I need to bring them something. I can show them several months worth of short stories, but what good would that do me?

Answer? I don’t know. I’m a thinker. I can identify the problems, and I’ve gotten really good at that over the years. But historically I’ve been awful at finding solutions that actually work, so I really don’t know.

Life — One Year Ago (450)

Kasey-Rayn Leave a comment

When a lot of people look back one year, they don’t see a lot of changes. For the most part, life rumbles on slowly. Usually only one or two big things will have happened throughout the year to make it memorable, and often one can’t say how a year really went without first coming up with a general emotion to describe it. In my experience, a lot of people will say they had “a bad 201X”. It could, of course, be boiled down to universal culprits, such as the bad economy, or a number of other issues many of us have to deal with.

But when I look back at my year, I try to look specifically at where I used to be and who I am now. Especially with my blog, I can now precisely track where I was in life at specific dates.

365 days ago, the blog was sort of a mess. It was organized, but it was mostly compiled into a lot of information that nobody cared about, not even me. Two reviews, two ‘Me’ posts, and two ‘Life’ posts every single week, wrapped up by a segment of Dreamscape, my second serious attempt at long form fiction. I remember back then I would occasionally write useless blurbs just to get my five hundred words in, and while I tried to avoid it, this ended up happening a lot. (You can only talk about yourself so much before you can’t even think about what to talk about anymore.) A lot of those older posts are thinly veiled vats of useless information, and while that is infinitely better than my zero writing output the year prior, I’ve grown a lot since.

Now, my blog is more refined. I’m down from four Me & Life posts a week to one, giving me much more breathing room to talk about life events that are more substantial. I introduced the Improv 101 and Learning! posts to add more variety. I also added a second fiction day, which is always great.

I think it’s important to look back constantly to make sure you’re going in the right direction. A year ago, I was super proud of the writer I had become. I was finally somebody that wasn’t afraid of putting the ideas on the page, and even when I inevitably got bored of them (as seems to be my curse with longer works,) I still stuck with it for months. A year before that I couldn’t even rely on myself to write five hundred words a week, let alone per day.

So while that jump was about changing the person I was to better fit the writer I wanted to be, the jump from this past year is more about sacrificing quantity for quality. I still have quite a long way to go before I hit that million word wall, but these days I’m not worrying about that as much as I am enjoying the words that I’m putting on the page. I was afraid to give up on Dreamscape because I wanted to at least finish the first draft, but if I’m going to be honest with myself, there were road bumps from the beginning. Problems I ignored because I couldn’t find solutions. I ended up spending the next few weeks being uncomfortable with what I was writing because I knew there were issues with the piece. I told myself it was just to get my “trunk novels” done before I work on real pieces of art.

But really, the art comes first. The very first step on the writer’s journey is to enjoy what you write, and while I’ve known this for several years, it’s a lesson that must be learned and relearned, at least for me.

I’m not the best writer in the world. The stuff I’m working on now probably doesn’t have the most interesting characters, or the most cohesive plot. But you know what?

It’s fun to write. And that’s all that really matters.