Something Witty

The dagger pressed smartly against the side of her neck.

“Coming in here to gander and kill a few rebels on your lonesome, guard?” whispered a familiar voice in her ear. “Or is it to rescue a bunch of crying babes and their noble mam?” Lomadia felt the blade shift as the person behind her shrugged. “Either way, it’s too bad for you, eh? Got caught with your drawers down.”

Chaos erupted in the courtyard

almost immediately as the Ebony Eagles engaged the limited forces of the guard in combat. It was quickly apparent that the guard were outnumbered nearly two to one, even with the assistance of Edmund, the queen, and the three mages at her side.

Raulin set to work at the first flash of steel, running faster than a man of his age had any right to. Lomadia almost caught a glance of a grin on his face as he distracted several mercenaries away from the guards and into several runic traps he must have set on one of the bridges across the waterway beforehand. The traps shocked, paralyzed, disarmed, or otherwise debilitated the unlucky men who stumbled in their way. No deaths by his hand, though the guard often finished off any left standing.

As bad as it had seemed from the inner circle, the city streets looked even worse this close up.

The sky was scarlet with flame and ash scattered through the occasional breeze like grey snow. Clouds boiled overhead with the promise of rain - a promise Lomadia knew it would never give up. Such promises had come often in the last few years, and few had answered the desperate pleas for rain.

Looters had already hit the major stores along Sunrise road, the major street that separated the merchant and noble quarter. The food was best here because of the wealthy customers, and she wouldn’t be surprised if this was the first place the opportunists hit.

Focus, now.

One of the challenges that I faced when writing the Silver History was that I was constantly discovering new subplots and such that I wanted to focus on, but didn’t integrate well into the story itself. A few made it in, if only as rushed, pale imitations of what I dreamed they could be. Others didn’t. Others made it half-way in only to be swept under the rug by the main plot.

And with most things I write - especially NaNo novels - I tend to do dream of doing a full rewrite. I’ve gotten psyched for some reason to start doing that for the Silver History, so here is a list, of sorts, of what plots I would really like to cover. Some will be character arcs, and others will be related to the main plot, but I hope to be able to tie them all together.

Of course, this doesn’t mean I’m putting off doing the end to the current draft of the Silver History. I’m really hoping I can get it in me to do the last two/three chapters ~~this week~~ month.

The road was devoid of people as they left the temple.

It was a strange feeling. The city she had spent most of her life in was in the process of being demolished, and there was little she alone could do anything about it. Lomadia had always had dreams of being the city’s protector, one of the great mages of old that could command forces beyond mortal comprehension.

But now? Now she had to walk carefully through the streets lit with the inferno growing in the Outer Circle. She could exhaust her energy trying to extinguish the fire and do little more than pause it.

It was frustrating, to put it lightly.