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Hello everyone, I'm a longtime lurker who has taken up writing again after a long hiatus. Here are two chapters from what I expect will turn out to be a novella. If possible, please tell me what you guys think and don't stint on the harshness. The text is below, but I'll link the blog I've put this on anyway: http://bugsturd.tumblr.com/ In any case, if you do read through this, thank you so much for your time, and I hope it gave you at least a moment of satisfaction. Chapter 1: After the Destroyer He was standing beside the grave when the Soul Stealer found him. His dark hair hung in disheveled clumps around his youthful but scarred face. He was still wearing his tattered war harness. An empty scabbard hung from his belt. The blade had broken during the battle, and at this moment, right now, he could not care less about getting a replacement. He gazed at the small gravestone at his feet as he had been doing for the last three days. It stared silently, stubbornly back. It was blank, little more than a broken slab of rock that marked where a corpse had been buried under a tree. "I'm looking for the Destroyer," the Soul Stealer said. The man turned his head slowly to look at him. Beneath his traveling robes, the Soul Stealer was clad in his warplate, the holy symbols that once adorned it defiled and unconsecrated with runes of dark sorcery. At his waist, he wore his rune-sword and his pistol. Both weapons had been blessed and anointed with heartsblood drawn from six hundred and sixty-six children. Still, the Soul Stealer felt a chill run down his spine when the unarmed, haggard, and wounded man's gaze fell upon him. When he spoke, his voice was dull and lifeless. The man gestured at the grave. "You've found him." "I see." The Soul Stealer sighed. "I'm too late." "If you had business with him, yes, you are." The man looked away to continue his study of the blank tombstone. "I assume I'm now addressing the newly-ascended Shura the Destroyer?" the Soul Stealer pressed. "My name is Shura now." A bitter smile creased the man's face. "But I'm not the Destroyer. He's dead. I killed him. His body lies rotting right here." "Congratulations on your victory, Master Shura. I'm very disappointed, though. I had the most interesting proposition for your predecessor." "Feel free to tell it to his corpse." "I was wondering if you would be interested in my offer instead," the Soul Stealer said. He pushed back his traveling robes to reveal his defiled armor. Shura raised an eyebrow at the sight, his curiosity piqued for the first time in days. "I know who you are," he said. "You're the one the priests have been talking about. They all want to burn you at the stake or break you upon the wheel. There are a few melodramatic names they call you." Shura turned back to the gravestone. "Just like they did with him." "My name is Arthorias. I am known as the Arch-heretic, the Prime Apostate, or the Soul Stealer." "Pleased to meet you, Arthorias. Have a nice day." Shura waved dismissively over his shoulder. "Are you not interested in hearing my offer?" the Soul Stealer asked, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. His psychic senses scrabbled around Shura's mind, finding no grasp or leverage. He sighed. That was how the enigmatic warriors who called themselves martial scientists were: their minds were locked behind fortresses of towering will. They were a diverse fellowship that cared about nothing beyond their rivalries and the refinement of their battle-skills. The apex predator in the world of martial science was the warrior called Shura. After a lifetime of bloodshed and warfare, the current Shura would be killed by his or her apprentice, who would then assume the name and all the strife it entailed. Arthorias did not know whether he was fortunate or unfortunate to have found this particular incarnation instead of the one known as the Destroyer. "I'm listening," Shura said. "I need a warrior of superlative skill. At the behest of General Maximus, I travel to exterminate the Ironskin tribe so their lands might be claimed by his people. Join my warband, and you will have a fifth of the pillage." "General Maximus? Another warlord? I'm sick of fighting under their banners. I've done so all my life with him." Shura gestured at the grave again. "No, I will not serve another warlord. No man will ever again pay me to kill people so that he can have a bit more land or command more slaves. You can go ahead and do that by yourself, Soul Stealer." There was more than a hint of contempt in the way Shura enunciated the title. "Maximus is but another murderous buffoon with too much wealth and power, and I have no intention of serving his interests." Arthorias's eyes flashed. "He dies at the end of this enterprise. I will eat his soul and ritually mutilate his body." "Why don't you do that now? If half of the rumors out there about you are true, murdering him would be a trifle." "Travel with me, and you will find out." Shura undid his tattered cloak, picked up a length of dark metal from the dirt, and wrapped it in the torn cloth. He brushed a stray leaf away from the gravestone, almost tenderly. "Why not?" he said. ** The Soul Stealer had already enlisted others to his cause, and they turned to him as he and Shura stepped into the inn's common room. "Greetings, everyone." Arthorias smiled widely. "Meet our newest comrade-in-arms!" "We meet again, Raksha," one of them said, rising to her feet. She wore violet robes, open in the front, over a battle harness similar to Shura's. The woman drew the short sword sheathed at her belt. "I said I'd kill you the next time I saw you." The martial scientist grinned. "You're most certainly welcome to try, Ko'ais, but my name is now Shura." Ko'ais was momentarily lost for words, her hazel eyes wide with surprise. When she spoke, her voice was incredulous. "He has fallen?" "By my hand. Keep that in mind when you try to kill me. I will feed you your eyes." Arthorias cut off Ko'ais's angry retort. "Come now, murder must be productive and profitable. A battle between the two of you would be neither." "I once saw Ko'ais skin a newborn child in front of its parents. You keep inspiring company, Soul Stealer," Shura said. "I have a feeling we are all kindred spirits here," Arthorias replied. "As the disciple and heir of the Destroyer, you must have butchered countless souls before your ascension." Shura could not refute that statement. He shrugged. "He is soft, brother. The Destroyer would have been an asset in the battles to come, but this fool is a weakling and a disgrace to martial science," Ko'ais said. "This weakling killed the Destroyer, dear sister," Arthorias pointed out. "You are siblings?" Shura asked. "Sworn siblings, my disheveled friend. I saved her from her enemies, and she did the same for me. She insisted on adopting me as her brother. Apparently, it's a common custom among you martial scientists, is it not?" Arthorias put his hand on Ko'ais's shoulder and firmly pressed her back into her seat. With a disgruntled growl, she sheathed her sword. The next member of Arthorias's group came forward. He wore grey military fatigues underneath a dark stormcoat. Doffing his black beret, he stuck out his hand to Shura. "My name is Captain Hengist, General Maximus's liaison with any irregular forces under his command. Pleased to meet you, sir." Surprise flickered over Shura's face as he shook the soldier's hand. The limb was metallic, yet limber and animated to an extent beyond even the most cunningly-wrought prosthetics he had ever seen. Hengist grinned, showing a mouthful of iron-hued teeth. "I came from the Ironskin tribe; they cast me out, but if the Soul Stealer's plan comes to fruition, I will slaughter many of my former kin." "We also plan to kill your commanding officer," Shura said evenly, looking at Arthorias as he did so. "Ah well, never did like that son of a bitch anyway." Hengist looked the martial scientist over, taking in his tattered clothes and half-healed wounds. "So you're the new Shura? It'll be interesting working with you, I'm sure. I've heard so much about the last one. What do you think, professor?" The man Hengist was addressing adjusted the goggles that obscured his emaciated face. He wore a thick, utilitarian gray robe for traveling. A cotton skullcap adorned his bald pate. "I fail to see why our warband needs another martial scientist. Ko'ais is a potent combatant, and though she is a murderous psychopath, her loyalty to the Soul Stealer is unshakeable," he said. "Thank you, Kalvairn." Ko'ais rolled her eyes as she spoke. "You definitely know how to flatter a lady." "I am physiologically incapable of flattery. I speak mere fact," Kalvairn replied. He continued speaking over her snort of disgust, directing his goggled gaze at Shura. "I also objected to the Destroyer's recruitment. By all accounts, he was a bloodthirsty madman who killed for the sake of killing and who was notorious for butchering his own allies." "You are absolutely correct. That is why he's dead now," Shura said. "No. He is dead because you killed him. Now, you stand among us in his place, an unknown variable unlike your predecessor, whose exploits were well-documented and studied and whose prowess and inclinations could therefore be optimally directed during this operation." "You'd better hope I do not disappoint, then, professor Kalvairn." "Hope is the domain of the uneducated and unintelligent." "If he keeps talking like that, I'll kill him one day, brother, I promise," Ko'ais snarled. Kalvairn was about to reply but Arthorias held up a hand and shook his head. The professor shrugged and returned to scribbling in his notebook. "You've met all of us, Shura. What do you think?" Arthorias asked. "I think you're all scum." The martial scientist took a deep breath. "Thus, like you just said, I'm among kindred spirits. Count me in. I will kill for your profit and mine." "Good to hear that! Welcome aboard, my friend." Arthorias clapped Shura on the back, ignoring the martial scientist's baleful glare. "You should acquire some supplies and perhaps a weapon, since at dawn tomorrow, we travel to meet the General. Do you require funds to do so?" Shura shook his head. "I will be here when you depart. Farewell until then." ** "I'm leaving, master," Shura said to the gravestone. The moon hung high in the sky, its light glinting off the small pond nearby. Night birds and crickets played their song softly. Shura had never known a place with such serenity. Perhaps this was why the master had chosen to die here, after a lifetime of death and destruction. He had acquired clean traveling robes, filled a knapsack with dried rations, and patched up his battle harness as best he could. He had also finally stitched the barely-healed gashes and lacerations across his torso and reset his fractured right ulna. There was not much he could do about the two cracked ribs; with his martial science, they would heal swiftly enough. "I hope you're not suffering anymore." Shura wanted to say more, but he could not find the words. There was an uncomfortable lump in his throat. He turned to leave, but then he noticed that the night had fallen deathly still. Ko'ais emerged from the darkness. Her sword was drawn. The air around her hummed in resonance with her internal energy. "Hello, Shura," she said. And then he was leaning away from a stroke that would have torn out his throat. He stopped Ko'ais's backswing with a palm on her forearm. She brought up her other hand and hurled a volley of envenomed needles at his eyes. He swatted them out of the air, careful to not let the poisoned tips break through his leather bracer, and drove a clenched fist at her face. His knuckles slammed into the flat of her sword, driving her back a few paces. Shura pursued. He struck out with his palm. Ko'ais slipped away from the blow, but it was merely a feint. Shura snapped his palm back, turning his elbow out, which he drove into Ko'ais's chest, the impact blasting her off her feet. "You haven't improved much," he said, dusting off his shoulder guard. Ko'ais cursed as she struggled to stand. Blood leaked from the corner of her mouth. "You've not seen my true power yet!" she spat. A vein pulsed on her forehead as she drew upon her internal energy once more and forced it down the Path of the Scarlet Thorn. It flooded her spinal channels, fortifying her sinews and heightening her senses. When she spoke, her voice was distorted by the changes wrought upon her vocal cords by her internal energy. "Come, Shura, show me the power of the Stormbringer once again!" "I have given it up. It brings only madness. So will the Scarlet Thorn you favor. You know how the Forbidden Paths are," Shura said softly. "Their power comes at a heavy price. The Scarlet Thorn will destroy you." "Shut up and fight!" Ko'ais charged. The ground cratered at every step she made. The air around her thrummed and crackled in her wake. Shura opened his solar gates, calling upon the Path he'd forged through a decade of experimentation, study, and battle. The Conflagration burned in his veins and behind his eyes. He met Ko'ais palm to palm, their internal energies clashing with a terrific roar. Both martial scientists were hurled back. Shura's heels dug furrows in the packed dirt before he came to a halt. Ko'ais let the impact take her into the air, expelling the momentum through a series of airborne twirls. She was smiling as she landed. "What was that? It is far weaker than the Stormbringer you showed me four years ago." "It is a new Path I am forging," Shura told her. "Upon completion, it will be much more stable than the Stormbringer." "You're what?" Ko'ais could not help laughing in disbelief. "You're forging a new Path at your age and at your level of inner cultivation? The Stormbringer has been the legacy of Shura for countless generations, and you're throwing it away for such madness? Tell me now, how did you manage to kill the Destroyer? With his mastery of the Stormbringer, he would have crushed you like an insect!" "And yet, I still prevailed," Shura said. "I won because I was stronger. I overpowered him and struck him down." Ko'ais snorted. "Now that I think about it, the Destroyer must have been at least in his seventies. He would have been a pathetic echo of a man by then. All you killed was a senile and crippled husk." "Believe what you will. I have no more time to waste on you." He turned to leave. "Oh, I believe we will have a lot of time together," she called after him. "I hope you're looking forward to it as much as I am." ** The Soul Stealer was standing by the carriage, a huge wooden box laced with reinforced steel plates, when Shura found him at dawn. He greeted the martial scientist with a bright smile. "There you are! All ready for our big adventure?" "We travel to exterminate an entire people," Shura said. "That's what I'm ready for." "My friend, we must surely do something about your dour attitude. How will you ever impress the ladies like this?" Arthorias sighed. From within the confines of the carriage, Kalvairn chimed in. "As a young male endowed with such physical prowess, Mister Shura will have little difficulty attracting potential reproductive partners. Neither will you, Arthorias, even with your... modifications." Arthorias shook his head and sighed again. Shura gave both of them a deadpan stare. "Not to worry, my lords!" Hengist called from the front of the carriage. "Where we're going, there will be plenty of whores!" "Men!" Ko'ais muttered. She had been dozing in a corner of the carriage. "Let's just go," Shura said. He looked at the black horses hitched to the carriage. They were cadaverously thin. The sickly sweet of decaying flesh wafted from them. With a start, Shura realized that the horses were dead. "Reanimations," Arthorias explained. "They will require no rest or food, and with Professor Kalvairn's augmentations, they will run like the wind. We will make our rendezvous with the General in two days." Shura nodded and was about to climb into the carriage when the Soul Stealer spoke again. "Have you no weapon, my friend? I'm sure Hengist can lend you a spare blade or even a rifle, if you want." The martial scientist pulled out the tattered package he had slung across his back. He opened it. Within was a shard of blackened steel. It was about two feet long, and it was all that was left of the Destroyer's broken axe. Shura selected a protruding segment of the shard long enough to be grasped. He wound the remnants of his tattered cloak tightly around it, tied the fabric off with a simple knot, and hefted the makeshift blade. Its edge was unreliable, and it had no balance to speak of. It was the perfect weapon. "I do now," he said. Chapter 2: The Warband Shura the Destroyer never fought silently. He slavered and shrieked as he cut about with his axe. Raksha caught his master's down-stroke on his broad saber and locked blades with the Destroyer. Their internal energies roiled and clashed. Shura's hair and beard, now holding more silver than black when Raksha had last seen him, whipped wildly about his weathered face, caught in the fury of the Stormbringer's aegis. Both men were covered in gashes. Blood flowed freely from their wounds. "To have stood against me for so long with an unknown Path!" Shura cried, a grin spreading across his scarred features. He was forcing Raksha slowly to his knees. "Such magnificence!" "I will do more than stand against you!" Raksha forced the words out between clenched teeth. "I will destroy you!" Shura broke the clinch between their blades with almost casual ease and seized his apprentice by the collar. He brought Raksha in for a devastating head-butt, mashing the younger man's nose across face, before hurling him away. Raksha's body skipped across the dirt twice before it plunged into the shallow stream. Shura roared with laughter and exhilaration. "Yes!" he screamed as Raksha surged to his feet. "Destroy me!" Shura walked forwards. The ground broke apart beneath his thunderous tread. The air around him crackled and hummed, beaten into tortured submission by the Stormbringer. "Destroy me!" He raised his axe to deliver a mighty two-handed stroke. Raksha let the Conflagration explode in his nexus. Its power surged through the eighty-fifth meridian and the ninety-sixth spinal channel. He exhaled super-heated air. Steam rose from the knee-deep water in which he was standing. Shura stepped into the stream. The Stormbringer blasted the water away, leaving the two men standing in roiling mud. Raksha raised his blade as well. The Conflagration's might hummed across its chipped and cracked length, causing it to rattle within its poorly-fitted hilt. The saber was a mediocre weapon, hastily forged by an indifferent and reluctant village smith. Shura's axe was a marvel of metallurgy and engineering. Its haft was a reinforced and spring-tensioned alloy column molded to fit the Destroyer's grip. Its spiked pommel was a perfectly-balanced counterweight to its blade, a single massive half-moon arc of black steel. Shura's lips were peeled back in a berserker rictus-grin. His eyes gleamed with blood madness. Raksha met his master's insane gaze. Both men were still, holding their weapons high. The Stormbringer's aegis clashed and buffeted against the Conflagration's. "Death comes," Shura said, his voice a harsh whisper. "Yes," Raksha replied. They struck. Their blades met again. The axe shattered into a thousand pieces. The saber cleaved into Shura's collarbone, slicing through his ribs before coming to a halt in his heart. The battered blade broke off at the hilt. Blood burst from Shura's nose and mouth. "Master!" Raksha cried. Shura woke up. The carriage had come to a halt. Kalvairn was still scribbling in his notebook. Ko'ais was emerging from a meditative trance. Arthorias was looking at him, a carefully neutral expression on his face. "Welcome back to the waking world, my friend," the Soul Stealer said. Shura nodded silently. The journey had been swift and uneventful, with only a swift stop for Hengist to replace a snapped rein. The Ironskin soldier did not seem to require sleep, which meant that he had kept up a ceaseless tirade of tasteless jokes and rambling anecdotes, despite Ko'ais's snarled threats. He stepped out of the carriage after Arthorias, to find that they now stood in the middle of fire support base. The sun already hung low in the sky, but soldiers swarmed everywhere, hoisting supply crates, cleaning their rifles, embarking or returning from patrols, or slumped near their tents, their eyes looking emptily at nothing a thousand miles away. A flag flying Maximus's colors fluttered weakly in the frigid air. "Welcome to Fire Base Eighty-Six!" Hengist cried, slapping Shura heartily on the back as he did so. The martial scientist glared balefully at the soldier. "You'll love it here! Women to poke and people to kill are all within easy reach!" An officer dressed in a dark stormcoat approached them as Ko'ais and Kalvairn were emerging from the carriage. Hengist saluted him. "Ready to report, Major Celsus," Hengist said. "At ease, captain." Celsus turned to Arthorias. "It is good to see you again, sir. The General is eager to speak to you." "Lead on, my friend. We have much to discuss." As Celsus brought the warband through the base, Shura caught Ko'ais's gaze. She grinned and let her fingers play over the hilt of her sword. The gleam in her eyes was part invitation and part challenge. Shura looked away. Maximus was in his command bunker, poring over a battered and caffeine-stained map stretched across a field desk. He looked up as Arthorias stepped through the entrance. "There you are, Soul Stealer!" The General's gaze fell across Shura, Kalvairn, and Ko'ais as they entered. He was a powerfully-built man, with shoulders that strained the fabric of his uniform. Like Celsus, he wore a green beret on his head and a battered pistol in a shoulder holster. "You have gathered your warband, I see." "Indeed, sir. You already know Ko'ais, my lovely sister." Maximus bowed to the martial scientist. "You grow more beautiful with each passing day, lady." Ko'ais laughed softly. "It's good to see you too, General. I will kill your enemies." Arthorias swept his hand in Kalvairn's direction. "This is Professor Levensrau. He is a renowned biologist and chemist." "At your service, sir," Kalvairn said with a curt nod. "I will kill your enemies." "Very well, professor. We will have much need of your knowledge and expertise in the days to come," the General replied. He turned to Shura. "This man's name is Shura," Arthorias began. "That is a dangerous name to have," Maximus broke in, frowning as he did so. "That is my concern," Shura said evenly, his arms folded across his chest. "I will kill your enemies." "As long as you do so, you may call yourself whatever you wish." Maximus turned to Arthorias, who smiled and saluted the General. "And I am Arthorias. I lead this warband. I will kill your enemies." "Good! Very good!" Maximus slapped Arthorias on the shoulder. "With your help, we'll wipe out these filthy Ironskin savages!" ** Night fell, and with it, came the icy bite of the northern winds. Maximus's domain bordered the Frost Fells, a region as yet unclaimed by any Hegemonic warlord and not for any want of trying. Entire armies had fallen to the might of the Ironskin tribe. Their cold remains lay mummified beneath the brittle permafrost. In the carriage, Arthorias reached out with his mind again after briefing his warband. The professor was a latent psychic who possessed a mediocre talent. He sensed Arthorias's mental regard and pulsed his acknowledgment. +I understand your strategy. It is risky, but we face reasonable odds of success.+ Kalvairn's eldritch voice was a harsh, whispery version of his fleshly one. +Good.+ Arthorias responded. Hengist's mind was an open book. The soldier was completely oblivious to the psychic tendrils picking at his consciousness. He was tired, hungry, and itching to pay a visit to one of the whores at the base, but he was completely aware of his role in the days to come. "Hengist?" Arthorias asked, using his fleshly voice. "Do you have any questions?" "No, sir. I know the plan." The soldier grinned. He flexed his metallic hand. "I can already hear the screams of my people and taste their blood." Arthorias smiled and moved on. Ko'ais's and Shura's minds were unreadable opaque screens. The Soul Stealer had an inkling of their surface emotions, but their thoughts and intents eluded his sixth sense. It seemed that their peculiar disciplines restructured their thought patterns in a way that rendered them, for all intents and purposes, psychically inert. +Are you trying to read my mind again, brother?+ Ko'ais thought at him. The Soul Stealer smiled, shaking his head slightly. He had encountered anathemas before, entities that simply swallowed and negated all psychic energy in their immediate presence. Martial scientists like Ko'ais and Shura were not anathemas. Their minds were unreceptive to telepathy, but with a little effort, they could bring their thoughts to the forefront of their psyches, like Ko'ais had just done. The martial scientist grinned at her sworn brother. She nudged Shura with her elbow. He glared witheringly at her in response. "Do you know what you have to do?" Ko'ais asked. "I know my place in the slaughter to come," Shura said, with more than a hint of irritation in his voice. Arthorias held up a hand. "Peace, my friend. I have every confidence in your attentiveness and professionalism." He leaned forward. "I look forward to seeing your prowess in battle." "And that is something I've wanted to talk to you about as well," Shura said. "How do you justify your confidence in my prowess? You have never seen me upon the battlefield. How are you so sure I will contribute to your success in this campaign?" "My sister attests to your mastery of martial science. She tells me the two of you were comrades-in-arms in the past, and I witnessed your little sparring session with my mind's eye." Arthorias tapped his temple with a gauntleted finger and smiled. "As far as I can tell, you are as potent a warrior as my sister, and you are very capable of reaping an unholy tally upon our foes." "Is that so? In that case, I too will look forward to seeing your... sorcery unleashed upon the battlefield. Hopefully, it's good for more than spying." "Mind that tone, or I'll cut out your tongue," Ko'ais snarled, reaching for her blade. "Arthorias is more powerful than any foe you've encountered." "That is not true," Shura replied. Kalvairn coughed. "Oh poo poo," Hengist muttered. Ko'ais's sword left its sheath with a steely whisper. "Our friend is correct, sister," Arthorias said quickly and evenly. He let a wave of calmness pulse from his aura to hers. It shattered uselessly against her psyche, but it was enough to convey his desire for her to stay her sword. "You would trounce me quite handily in open battle. Neither would I favor my odds were I to battle the Destroyer, who fell by Shura's hand." Ko'ais settled down, folding her arms with a disgruntled sigh. She sheathed her sword. "Tell him what you saw, brother." "I agree, Arthorias," Kalvairn chimed in. "Doing so might help focus our newest comrade's sense of purpose." "What are you talking about?" Shura asked. Arthorias sighed. "I did not wish to bring this up so early before I'd had a chance to earn your trust, my friend. In truth, I wonder if you'd ever be receptive to the concept." "Explain yourself." "About a year ago, I cast my consciousness into the Ether of Causality, hoping to glean wisdom that would be pertinent in our quest. I saw a massive beast of gleaming fang and claw that awaited us at the threshold of victory. Beside the Soul Stealer stood the Bloody Rose, the Iron Traitor, the Fleshsmith, and an entity that the Ether of Causality could only conceptualize as the Blade." "I do not understand," Shura said. "I know nothing about sorcery except that I have slain many who use it." "That was not sorcery!" For the first time since Shura had met Arthorias, there was a tinge of impatience in the Soul Stealer's voice. He took a deep breath before continuing. "I apologize, my friend. I forget that psy-craft is a deeply technical field, and trying to explain it to the ungifted is like trying to describe colors to a blind man." "To use the language of my people, Shura, our leader saw a prophecy," Hengist said. "Many of our shamans can look into the immaterial and beseech answers from the spirits. Arthorias can do the same. The gods speak only in symbols, vague ideas if you will, that us mortals have to decipher." The soldier pointed to Ko'ais. "The Bloody Rose can only be our beautiful lady, for is she not the sole surviving practitioner of the Scarlet Thorn Path?" Ko'ais smiled radiantly. "Professor Levensrau is the Fleshsmith, for he was the one responsible for the Fleshtearing Holocaust, where his conjured spirits caused the people of an entire city to rip, tear, and devour one another until none were left," Hengist went on. "It was an experimental virus for a bio-organic weapons trial," Kalvairn said, shrugging dismissively as he did so. "And it was mostly a waste of my precious time." "For his desecration of the Grand Cathedral, Arthorias has been known as the Soul Stealer for almost a decade now, and how could I be anything but the Iron Traitor?" Hengist said. His grin pulled at the scars on his face. "And you, Shura, are the Blade." Shura threw his head back and laughed. It was a bitter, hopeless laughter. The warband stared at him as he vented his amusement. It took several moments before he was done. "A prophecy! Gods and Spirits! Cryptic titles!" The martial scientist glared at the Soul Stealer. "I'd expected much better than such superstition from you, Arthorias." "Hengist has a rather... rustic understanding of the psychic arts, but his explanation is nevertheless a colorful and vivid one," Arthorias said. "My vision led me to seek out my sister and the professor. I'd campaigned with Hengist before and thus knew how to reach him, but the Blade eluded me. The Ethereal tides could only tell me that the Blade was a warrior of overwhelmingly lethality, and then one day, they cast me near the village where I found you." "Go on." "The villagers there were terrified. Apparently, the Destroyer had instructed them to tell anyone who might ask that he would be waiting by the stream a mile away." "That was how I knew where to find him," Shura said quietly. "Indeed, and at that moment, I was convinced that your predecessor was the Blade, that I would be campaigning alongside the Destroyer himself." "He was too far gone for campaigns by then. If you'd found him instead, he would have slaughtered you." "But there you were, and when you told me your name, I knew you were the Blade. Without you, without any one of us here, there can be no hope of victory in this campaign," Arthorias said. "We have been brought together by the Ether of Causality. We are bound by Destiny." "Destiny brought us, a band of murderers and despoilers, together to exterminate an innocent people whose way of life is centuries-old?" Shura chuckled. He shook his head. "It is true, then. There is one God, and He hates humanity." "I know that for a fact, my friend." This time it was Arthorias's turn to laugh. Like Shura's, it was a dark, bitter laughter that went on for many moments. A brief empathic wave pulsed from the Soul Stealer. Kalvairn flinched visibly at it, his unease evident on his emaciated features. Hengist found a tear welling up at the corner of his eye. The martial scientists were unaffected, though even in the carriage's dim lighting, Ko'ais saw her brother's expression. She reached out, but before her fingertips could touch his vambrace, the Soul Stealer's face fell back into its mask of placid geniality. He nodded briefly at her, and she leaned back in her seat. "It is up to you to believe in Destiny, but the Ethereal tides do not lie, my friend," Arthorias said. "Would you turn your back on us and leave now? Warbands dissolve all the time, and no one here will try, or even be able, to stop you." "I will stay and fight." "Why?" "I have nothing better to do." Arthorias smiled at the response. "Is that not Destiny?"
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Apr 23, 2015 22:58
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Is this Dark Souls fan fiction because Artorias isn't like this at all, he had a pet dog called Sif and was a time traveller
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Apr 24, 2015 15:37
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LotsBread posted:Is this Dark Souls fan fiction because Artorias isn't like this at all, he had a pet dog called Sif and was a time traveller I had to google that since I don't play Dark Souls at all, but no, this isn't Dark Souls fan fiction 
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Apr 24, 2015 15:57
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Here's another chapter. If posting these is annoying, let me know and I'll stop. Thanks for reading. Chapter 3: Storming Fjorlag Keep On the 144th day of the northern campaign, General Maximus launched a full-scale assault against Fjorlag Keep. Set in a pass amidst the towering northern mountains and boasting reinforced walls sixty feet high, it was the sole fortification that barred his troops’ entry into Ironskin territory. Eight thousand men marched in columns towards the keep’s barred gates, seeking what cover they could from the hundreds of armored carriages that preceded their passage. Undead horses - reanimated by Kalvairn and Arthorias - drew the carriages. Their freeze-dried carcasses trudged uncomplainingly through the snow. The Ironskin tribesmen loosed their arrows as soon as Maximus’s men entered the killing ground before the gates. Many of the black shafts fell uselessly upon the unfeeling abominations that pulled the carriages; some bounced off the carriages’ armored surfaces; more punched right through. Hundreds of soldiers fell during the advance, skewered by four-foot-long arrows launched from the mighty greatbows that only the Ironskins, with their metallic musculature, could wield. Maximus had forbidden the deployment of his mortar teams. It was imperative that they seize Fjorlag Keep with its walls mostly intact. His men had orders to storm its walls with ladders and fragmentation grenades. Infrastructure is precious, he had written in his renowned tactical manual (still studied by warlords across the Hegemony), and lives are cheap: spend the latter to secure the former. The General watched the battle from his command carriage nearly a mile away; spyglass in hand, he rattled off orders to Arthorias, who stood by his side. The Soul Stealer pulsed the General’s commands directly to the minds of the captains leading the assault upon Fjorlag Keep. Kalvairn, Shura, Hengist, and Ko'ais advanced alongside the eight thousand men dying and bleeding upon the snow. ** Naked above the waist, Hengist stood atop an armored carriage, laughing wildly amidst the descending black arrows. His former kinsmen held true to the ancient ways of flesh and iron. For almost a thousand years, the Ironskins had slain their enemies thus. Their way of life was coming to an end. The soldier looked down the sights of his heavily-modified rifle. Its pistol grip melded seamlessly into his hand. Its wire stock melted into his exposed shoulder. Its firing mechanism interfaced directly with his nervous system. Twin prongs of ironflesh sprouted from beneath its barrel and latched onto the top of the carriage to form a bipod. The rifle’s barrel was as long as he was tall. Hengist lovingly called his weapon the Executioner. With a synaptic flex, he pulled back the bolt and chambered an armor-piercing explosive round. A tribesman filled his sights. Streaked in war-paint, he looked every bit the heroic defender of his people. Hengist fired. The bullet shrieked as it sliced across the air and disintegrated the Ironskin’s head. Hengist snarled in triumph. He would bring death and destruction to those who had cast him out. He would slaughter their women and children. He would feast upon their gray hearts and bathe in their coppery blood. The next bullet blasted through the torsos of two tribesmen. They fell from the ramparts in pieces. The one after that decapitated a shaman who had been trying and failing to cast a wyrd upon Maximus’s soldiers. No sorcery could prevail against Arthorias’s psychic wards. A dozen arrows slashed towards him: he had been noticed by the defenders. And suddenly Ko'ais was standing before him. She held a length of spiked chain in her hand like a whip. With her steely lash, the martial scientist smashed the black arrows out of the air. The resulting shrapnel sliced into the soldiers beneath them; they shrieked as their viscera misted the carriage’s sides. “Good killing,” Ko'ais said. “Yes, very good killing. So much death! Delicious death!” Hengist could see that she was deep in the aegis of the Scarlet Thorn. Her eyes were filled with blood, and her words, spoken in a voice lower by a full octave than it usually was, were slurred. Black veins pulsed across her pale cheeks. “We’ve not even started yet, sweet beauty!” Hengist eviscerated another tribesman with his next shot. The leading carriages were almost at the walls. Men died as they tried to raise ladders or sought to flee. Black arrows slew those who did the first; morale sergeants in dark stormcoats and red helmets shot those who attempted the second. “The professor and Shura make their move,” Ko'ais pointed out. Acknowledged,“ Hengist said. "Providing covering fire.” ** Though he would never openly admit it, Kalvairn was eager to dive into combat situations. Battle was always a savage affair: limbs would be cut off; organs would liberate themselves from bodies; and spilled entrails would fill the air with their stink. People would scream, weep, and beg as they died. It was so messy, so unrefined. The professor never felt more alive when he faced death and inflicted it in return. Still, he was uncertain as he walked behind the martial scientist who had been so recently recruited to their cause. He detested dealing with individuals whose minds were closed to his psychic sense, modest as it was compared to Arthorias’s. Also, though Shura may not be as openly murderous and psychotic as Ko'ais, he was certainly as belligerent as her, if not more so. Worse, the martial scientist seemed to have a sentimental streak and a suicidal inclination. As he advanced, he cut down the Ironskin arrows with a fragment of cloth-wrapped black steel instead of a real weapon. He held the improvised blade tightly, almost as if he were afraid to lose it. Kalvairn did not wish to die here, under the walls of Fjorlag Keep. There were so many experiments to carry out and so many specimens to collect. There was so much flesh to cut and twist. He sighed as Shura turned to face him. “Let us go,” the martial scientist said. Kalvairn’s goggles fed him a stream of biometric data as he conducted a reflexive scan of Shura’s vitals. His body temperature was elevated, as was his heart rate. His nervous system pulsed with a hundred times more synaptic activity than that which belonged to the typical healthy adult male did. He must be holding the aegis of some internal energy configuration. Shura put an arm around Kalvairn’s narrow shoulders, took a deep breath, and began running up the wall. His feat did not go unnoticed by the Ironskin tribesmen. They cried out in alarm and disbelief. Arrows slashed towards the ascending scientists, but Shura swatted them aside in midair. They cleared the sixty feet in two heartbeats, and Kalvairn got his first close look at their enemies as Shura placed him gently down atop the ramparts. The Ironskin warriors wore segmented plate armor over their heavily-muscled frames. Their exposed flesh bore the hue of dull metal. The nearest Ironskins dropped their bows as they closed in on Shura and Kalvairn. Blades and spikes emerged from their massive fists. Kalvairn pulled a pair of slim pistols from within his robes. He took aim and fired a needle directly into the eye of a tribesman with bladed hands. The toxin in the needle took effect almost immediately. The Ironskin foamed at the mouth, his body going into spasms until it twisted in on itself with the crisp finality of a snapping spine. The professor smoothed over a satisfied smile. It would be very unbecoming if he started howling and shrieking in battle like Ko'ais did. He had even less inclination to emulate Hengist, who cursed, swore, and questioned his enemies’ parentage even as he killed them. Such behavior was so… unrefined and inefficient. This was when he gained a slight appreciation for the newest member of their warband. Shura fought in stoic silence as he cut down the Ironskin tribesmen. His scarred features showed nothing but focused will. He parried or slipped past a dozen heavy blades and spikes; the jagged piece of steel in his hands opened throats, lopped off limbs, and cleaved open armored torsos. Kalvairn knew little of martial science - that was not his area of professional expertise - but he recognized battle prowess when he saw it. Coldly, and more importantly, efficiently, the martial scientist painted the rampart floor slick with the blood and spilled intestines of his enemies. Truly, this was a commendable display of professionalism. He shot down another two tribesmen, and for a heartbeat, the area around them was clear of enemies. They had acquired a foothold on the ramparts. Kalvairn slipped a filter-mask over his nose and mouth. Shura nodded and leapt off into the Keep’s courtyard to land in the midst of a dozen screaming tribesmen. Kalvairn fished out a small glass sphere from the bandolier across his chest. He tossed it along the ramparts, and it broke against an Ironskin’s armored shoulder. A cream-colored fog began to emerge. It filled the nostrils and throats of the tribesmen in the broken sphere’s immediate vicinity. They dropped their bows and clutched their throats. Their eyes bulged from their sockets. The gas was a derivative of the toxin Kalvairn used in his needle-pistols, and its effects were predictive enough. He turned and lobbed another glass sphere along the ramparts. More tribesmen died in agony and terror. More bows fell silent. Ladders slammed against the walls, their spiked handles biting deeply into the stone. A ragged cheer rose from the massed ranks of Maximus’s soldiers as the first of them began to ascend. +We will have the walls soon,+ he pulsed to Arthorias. Kalvairn looked down at the courtyard and nodded appreciatively. +It also seems as if Shura has opened the gates.+ +Well done, my friends, the both of you,+ the Soul Stealer responded. ** The Ironskins were fearsome warriors. They possessed the strength of ten men, and they moved with a liquid, animal grace despite the heavy armor they wore. Shura cut them down like dogs. The blade in his hand was completely unbalanced and had an irregular edge. Its crude handle - little more than wrapped cloth over bare steel - had a tendency to twist in his grasp. Even with the Conflagration’s aegis extended through the weapon, he tore throats out instead of severing them; blows to the heart turned into disembowelments; limbs took multiple hacks to remove from torsos. The massive bolt across the gates took a few moments of frantic hewing to sever. No sooner was he done when the gates flew apart and Ko'ais burst through, shrieking in joyous bloodlust. She plunged into the ranks of an Ironskin phalanx that sought to flank Shura and began tearing them apart with her sword in one hand and her whirling spiked chain in another. “And there she goes,” Hengist said as he trotted up to Shura. He had folded up his rifle and slung it across his back. “All in all, a good day’s work, I’d say.” Three fire-teams of Maximus’s soldiers advanced behind him. They formed firing lines in the courtyard while Ko'ais butchered and terrorized the tribesmen on their flank. More Ironskins had massed in the center of the courtyard. With a roar, they charged. A soldier wearing a captain’s epaulets slashed his saber down. “Three-round bursts! Fire till empty!” The close-range volley scythed down the front ranks of the charging tribesmen. The survivors hurled a ragged host of javelins and throwing axes in retaliation. Soldiers died, screaming. “Keep firing!” the captain shrieked, bringing up his pistol in a wavering hand as the Ironskins closed the distance. He managed to squeeze off a single shot before a tribesman with a fistful of steely talons decapitated him. And then the Ironskins were amidst the soldiers, cutting them to pieces. Bayonets and rifle butts fared poorly against heavy blades swung by iron muscles. The entire firing line collapsed into a screaming sea of blood and scattering body parts. A severed head rolled to a stop at Shura’s feet. “We’re not done yet,” he said to Hengist. The soldier nodded and drew a heavy pistol from his shoulder holster. His metallic fingers sunk into its grip, melding the weapon’s mechanisms with his nervous system. His other hand sprouted a curved, hacking blade. Together, they began walking towards the melee that was quickly descending into a one-sided massacre. “Death to the invaders!” a tribesman shrieked. Shura cut his head off and kicked his massive corpse into the path of an Ironskin. He split another skull and cleaved open another torso. He stamped down to crush a larynx. Soon, he was ankle-deep in spilled viscera. The cold air did nothing to lessen the stench. Bullets rained down on the tribesmen from above. Kalvairn had managed to rally the soldiers climbing the wall into firing positions. A grenade exploded amongst the Ironskin ranks, pulping eyes and tearing limbs off. The Ironskins, already faltering under Shura’s countercharge, broke ranks. The tribesmen turned their backs and began to flee, only to be gunned down from behind by Maximus’s soldiers on the ramparts. Armored carriages rumbled in through the open gates. Soldiers spilled out from them. Major Celsus was among their number. On the right flank, Shura saw Ko'ais tear off a tribesman’s head with her bare hands. The rest of the Ironskins were falling back, seeking to retreat through the Keep’s rear gates and towards the safety of their ancestral lands. “Men of the 33rd Division!” Major Celsus cried, drawing his saber as he did so. “Our enemies have been routed! Advance and destroy them!” As the soldiers marched past him in massed ranks, Shura flicked off the meat gobbets and bone fragments clinging to his weapon’s ragged edge. Hengist walked up and slapped him on the back again, much to his annoyance. “This time, I’d say our work is done.” The soldier’s cheerful grin pulled at the scars across his cheek. “Nothing like a good bit of killing to work up a thirst, eh? Drinks are on me tonight! What’d you say?” Shura tried to form a sharp retort. No suitable words came to mind. He sighed and slumped his shoulders. “Just make sure it’s none of that watered-down stuff, please.”
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Apr 26, 2015 02:21
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Here's the next one, for any interested.  Chapter 4: Silver Raid Arthorias opened the cell door with a telekinetic nudge. Its rusted hinges squealed, and Kalvairn looked up from his work. +You are just in time. I will be ready to report momentarily,+ the professor pulsed. He wore a blood-streaked apron and held a bone-saw in one hand and a set of pliers in another. An Ironskin’s dissected cadaver lay on a stone slab before him. Similarly-disassembled corpses were strewn around the dimly-lit stone chamber. A psy-scope and a rack of glass tubes had been set up on the professor’s foldable desk in the corner. The stench of decay hung heavily in the air. The Soul Stealer nodded. Kalvairn was efficiency personified. Barely two days had passed since the Keep had fallen to Maximus’s forces, but the professor had already conducted several dozen autopsies and collated his findings with his previous data. Several moments passed as Kalvairn stripped off his operating gloves and apron, rinsed the blood off his face, and produced his notebook. +What do your findings say, my friend?+ Arthorias said. He gestured to the cadavers. +How can these serve my goals?+ +The news is not promising. We already tried infecting many specimens with genetic material drawn from Hengist, remember? As we suspected, the Ironskins possess a specific mutation that allows them to react thus to the virus their culture is named after. Individuals who do not share their bloodline are simply incompatible with the Iron Virus. However, I have reason to suspect that there are variations even within their genetic commonalities.+ The professor walked to a stone slab upon which lay a severed head. Its cranium had been cracked open, and its brain was exposed. +This one, for example, is considerably different from the others. Observe how the Iron Virus has caused significant deformations to the frontal lobe. If you extend your ethereal touch, you would also sense that this specimen had at least a Class Four psychic capacity in life.+ Arthorias did as the professor instructed. It was true. The tribesman had indeed been a powerful psychic, definitely much more so than Kalvairn, who was a Class Seven even on the best of days. +This must have been the shaman that was battering against my Purification Wards,+ the Soul Stealer mused. He looked up as he sensed a rare empathic flicker from the professor. +My apologies. I still find it somewhat troubling when you bring up the trappings of your… former calling.+ +That was another life. I am the Soul Stealer now.+ +Very true.+ Kalvairn inclined his head briefly and then moved on to another cadaver. +This specimen differs much more from the shaman than it does from all the others. I suspect what we have here is an example of a line warrior, an average Ironskin combatant, part of their soldier caste, if you would.+ +Like Hengist?+ +Negative. Hengist was in the line of succession to the throne of the High King before he was cast out. + The professor adjusted his goggles. +I believe him, since he has neither reason nor ability to lie to us.+ +If we cannot replicate the Ironskin in men south of these mountains, then perhaps we should move ahead with our original plans.+ +The Forsaken? Hmmm. Risky. Perhaps if I could dissect some Ironskin children instead…+ +That would cause Maximus to start asking questions we don’t want to answer. You still have to give him something useful for all this.+ +I have already sent him charts indicating weak points in the enemy’s anatomy and armor, along with recommendations for the most effective bacterial strains should he wish to deploy his gas mortars.+ +You never disappoint, my friend. What would I ever do without you?+ A rare smile flickered over the professor’s face. +Function with much less efficiency, I’m certain.+ Arthorias was about to reply when the Ethereal Tides pushed against his soul with such force that he staggered, clutching his temple. +What is it?+ A rare trace of alarm flowed into Kalvairn’s mind-voice. +She comes! Shining like a star in the darkness! Righteous wrath in her eyes!+ The Soul Stealer fell to his knees, gasping. Cold sweat ran down his cheeks. He wept ectoplasmic tears. +Who? Why has this entity come?+ The professor’s Class Seven senses reached out feebly and futilely. Arthorias clenched his gauntleted fist. He had a grim smile upon his face. +What do you think, my friend?+ ** Shura pushed aside his tankard. Across the table, Hengist lay face-down, deep in drunken slumber. The soldier hadn’t stopped drinking since they had discovered the mead hall and the untapped casks in its cellar, and Shura had done his best to keep up, managing one tankard for every five that Hengist had polished off. He wavered as he got to his feet. The mead had been strong, and Shura had not drunk so much in years. Hengist’s head lolled as he snored. With a sigh, Shura picked up the soldier’s discarded stormcoat and draped it across Hengist’s shoulders. The soldier had spent two days alternately sharing why he had been banished from his people and raving about how much more of their blood he would spill. Now, as he lay unconscious upon an ancient wooden table, muttering the occasional feverish, incoherent phrase in his tribal tongue. “We will kill them all, Hengist,” Shura promised softly, aware his words were slightly slurred. “Or we will die here. Either way, our problems are solved.” “Death is only the beginning of one’s torment, if my brother is to be believed,” Ko'ais said as she stepped from the shadows. Shura cursed inwardly and sat down again. He had known this moment was coming. “At a loss for words?” she asked. She still had the same crooked smile he remembered from years ago. He looked away from her face as she continued speaking. “Then again, you were never much of a talker, could never spin a sweet turn of phrase to save your life.” “Just say your piece.” “So cold to your old battle companion, even when we are now bound by the Ethereal Tides themselves?” “Do you seriously believe that superstitious nonsense? You of all people should know better than that.” “Faith is for the weak-minded and the cowardly,” Ko'ais quoted the tenets of her mistress, the woman who had raised her and taught her martial science. “Sometimes, I still think of how the bitch screamed as we cut her into pieces. It is a happy memory I have of you, along with several others.” “Our alliance was a thing of the past, and I am no longer Raksha, the foolish youth that you remember. My name is now Shura.” “You’ve grown a bit taller and your arms have grown thicker, but not much else has changed,” Ko'ais began. She held up a hand as Shura opened his mouth to retort. “Yes, you fight differently now - so coldly like Kalvairn - but there are still those split-second hesitations, those moments of uncertainty. Were you and I to battle in earnest, I would rip out your throat during one such moment.” “What is your point?” “Unleash the Stormbringer! Let the Destroyer live once more through the slaughter you will unleash upon our enemies!” Ko'ais’s eyes flashed in the flickering lamplight. “I will tolerate none of your typical halfhearted efforts in this campaign! Arthorias must succeed, and you will bleed every last ounce of your strength for his cause!” “I am part of your warband. His enemies are mine, and I will kill until I breathe my last.” Shura chuckled suddenly. “And maybe after that happens, your brother and the professor might be able to reanimate whatever’s left of my corpse and put it to use somehow.” “I’m sure they will think of something if that comes to pass,” Ko'ais said. “But the longer you live, the more killing you’ll do. Unleash the Stormbringer alongside my Scarlet Thorn. Then we can laugh and murder together, like we did all those years ago.” “Never.” The single word dripped with finality. Ko'ais let a frustrated hiss escape from between her clenched teeth. For many moments, both martial scientists glared at each other. Ko'ais looked away first, her gaze falling upon Hengist’s slumbering form and the stormcoat across his shoulders. “You used to do that for me,” she said. “Yes, yes, I did.” She spoke again as he opened the mead hall’s heavy wooden doors. “Would you still do that for me?” Shura sighed. “Yes.” He walked out into the frigid night, only to be confronted by blaring sirens and cries of alarm. ** She streaked across the snow, running just beneath the speed of sound. Segmented silver armor covered her powerful limbs, and she wore a cunningly-wrought breastplate across her mighty torso. She held a heavy greatsword in her right fist. The blade was five feet long and weighed more than anything a strong man could wield. In her left fist, she wielded an enchanted battleaxe. Emeralds adorned its shaft, and its pommel was a diamond spike. Eldritch lightning danced across its sapphire butterfly blades. Her armored tread left not a single footprint in the snow, so graceful and measured it was. A Baresark Ironskin pack followed in her wake. Their breath left trails of steam in the cold air as their massive, heavily-armored forms powered across the frozen plains of their ancestral lands, churning the snow into mush with every mighty step. Their hands were spikes, blades, and mauls. Their faces were inhuman masks of sharpened fangs and tusks. As the rear fortifications of Fjorlag Keep came within eyeshot, sirens and alarm bells sang their cacophony into the darkness. Mortar-fired flares climbed into the sky, their greenish radiance stealing the night away. There was no hope of stealth, but surprise could also be won by swiftness and brutality. There was a sonic boom as she increased her speed. She covered a thousand yards of killing ground in the blink of an eye. The reinforced gates shattered underneath her heel, turning into a cloud of shrapnel that shredded all of the uniformed invaders within reach. They screamed, wept, and died. She was Gittan the Mighty, and she had come to bring death to those who sought to defile her home and slaughter her people. ** Hengist came roaring out of his drunken stupor, his skull throbbing in time with the hundred-fifty-decibel sirens. A fistful of steely talons streaked at his face only to be dashed aside in a shower of sparks. Shura stood between him and a trio of Berserkers, his shoddy weapon held high. “Stand and fight!” the martial scientist said. He parried another swipe and lashed his riposte across his attacker’s shoulder. The uneven blade scraped harmlessly against the Berserker’s armored torso, and then Shura had to brace his weapon between the jaws of another Berserker that sought to tear his throat out. Ko'ais held the flank. Her spiked chain was wrapped around a Berserker’s massive neck. With a snarl, she heaved on the chain and swung the Ironskin into a cluster of his brethren, bowling all of them over. They scrambled to their feet with fluid, feral swiftness. Their blood-filled eyes were crimson dots in the mead hall’s flickering firelight. Ko'ais decapitated the Berserker caught on her chain with a flick of her wrist. The warrior’s lifeblood splattered across her face and chest. Her teeth were bared in the ghoulish grin she always wore in the throes of battle. “Blood… blood sweeter than wine,” she said, licking the grey fluid from her lips. Dark veins laced her cheeks. “They’re Berserkers, the elite warriors of my kinsmen!” Hengist cried, drawing his pistol and forming his left hand into an axe blade. He emptied his firearm into an Ironskin’s head. Many rounds glanced off the Berserker’s reinforced skull before one finally tumbled into an eye socket and scrambled the warrior’s brain. Beside him, Shura was on his back, but before falling, he had finally managed to dismember another Berserker, leaving on the ancient tiles of the mead hall a limbless, bleeding torso that thrashed and snapped at him with metal fangs. Hengist rammed his bladed arm into the spinal nerve cluster of another Berserker that loomed over the martial scientist. As the Ironskin’s massive frame went into spasms, Hengist hacked off his head with a series of careful, measured strokes. “Behead them if possible,” Hengist told Shura. The martial scientist nodded grimly. “I saw what you did. They seem particularly vulnerable to attacks on their nerves,” he said. “Indeed.” Hengist let the axe blade fade from his hand and offered it to Shura. The martial scientist clasped it, and Hengist hoisted him to his feet. The soldier looked critically at Shura’s blade. “You need a real weapon.” Shura tucked the shard of metal into his belt. He held out his hands and stiffened the first two fingers extending from each palm. “I am a weapon.” The martial scientist streaked towards where Ko'ais was rummaging through a Berserker’s opened ribcage and tearing out fistfuls of viscera. The dying Ironskin held her in a bear-hug; another Berserker whose legs had been severed reached for the back of Ko'ais’s neck. Shura drove the stiffened fingers of his right hand underneath the Berserker’s shoulder blade. The Ironskin’s body began convulsing so powerfully and rapidly that his spine snapped. Even as Hengist reloaded his pistol, Ko'ais finally finished disemboweling the Berserker that had been holding her. She held up his heart in a gore-slicked fist and was about to take a bite from it, but Hengist stopped her. “You don’t want to do that, sweet beauty. Their blood and flesh is rich with the transformative elixirs of the Silver Bitch. They’ll poison even one as lovely and as mighty as you,” he said. Ko'ais looked blankly at him for a moment before recognition of his presence and his words flickered in her eyes. She nodded and tossed aside the scrap of flesh. “We had better join the battle outside. Much more fighting awaits us there, I’m sure,” Shura said. Hengist looked around the mead hall. The three of them had slain about ten Berserkers, with Ko'ais doing the majority of the killing. He shook his head. He thought about how his people made war. “My elite kinsmen knew where we were, likely thanks to the Silver Bitch’s accursed sorcery. This was a precision raid.” Hengist turned abruptly to the martial scientists. “Arthorias! We must aid him!” ** The first thing the Soul Stealer did upon sensing the attack was to cast a psychic shroud across himself and Kalvairn. The second thing he did was to pulse a message to Maximus, telling the General to evacuate. The third thing he did was to link minds with the captains commanding the Keep’s garrison. Through a series of mentally-transmitted orders, Arthorias coordinated the counterattack. Maximus’s captains were mere men, but most of them were brave and seasoned veterans who had lived through the horrors of countless battlefields, and many of them had fought beside Arthorias in previous campaigns. They responded swiftly to the Soul Stealer’s commands, as did their platoons. Now, he crouched in a shadowed alcove, his brow furrowed in concentration. His mind’s eye saw fire-teams maneuver and encircle the elite Ironskin warriors. Overlapping volleys of coordinated fire brought down each of the armored behemoths piece by painstaking piece. They slew as they died. Every Berserker that fell was ringed by the eviscerated corpses of several dozen soldiers. The Keep’s courtyard was once again splattered with blood and strewn with severed limbs and spilled organs. Nevertheless, Maximus’s men would prevail, albeit at a great loss of life. Still, Arthorias knew that the death toll would have been larger still if the many of the Berserkers had not seemed like they were distracted. They were searching for him, he sensed. A powerful mind had been scouring the Keep. It was an ancient, inhuman presence, canny in the ways and mysteries of the Ether, and the Soul Stealer knew that sooner or later, it would peel away his psychic shroud and perceive his presence. It had already found Ko'ais and the rest of the warband, but just as the slightest tendril of concern began to weave its way past his concentration, he heard her mental cry. +We have destroyed ten of the enemy, brother! We move to fight by your side!+ He smiled grimly. His sworn sister never failed to disappoint. No psychic message would get through her inherent mental defenses, but he pulsed an empathic acknowledgement towards her anyway, one of pride and gratitude. +I will find them and bring them here,+ Kalvairn thought. +Perhaps we should regroup.+ +No. Stay within the range of my shroud,+ Arthorias replied. +I would not risk the enemy detecting you. You are not well-matched against these foes, my friend.+ The professor nodded and fell silent. The Soul Stealer sent his mind out once more, doing his best to evade the alien presence that searched for him through the Ether. Maximus’s soldiers were doing as fine a job as could be expected from unarmored men with rifles. They were dying in droves, but before long, the last Berserker fell, riddled with bullets. It was the warrior in silver armor that worried him the most. Already, she had cut through two entire platoons of men. She had dodged endless streams of bullets and had even walked, slightly singed but utterly unharmed, through a barrage of fragmentation grenades. Even as he watched through his mind’s eye, the silver warrior impaled a morale sergeant upon her broadsword. The fanatical soldier dragged himself down on her blade with one hand and rammed a bayonet against her abdomen. The blade snapped uselessly. With a flick of her wrist, she bisected the sergeant and continued walking through the sea of corpses she had created. “Where are you, Soul Stealer?” she cried. Her powerful voice burst the eardrums of the closest fire-team. The men fell, writhing in agony. “Face me in battle, coward!” The enemy already knew who he was. Arthorias reached out psychically to the silver warrior. Perhaps he could enslave her mind - he doubted she was that weak-willed - or at least sap her resolve and stoke any of her hidden fears. The human soul was inherently fragile and prone to thousands of terrors and defilements. He knew most of them intimately. His mental grasp was rebuffed with an almost casual ease, and Arthorias felt the first tendrils of nervousness creep down his spine. The silver warrior was not psychically-gifted; neither was she shielded by that looming, inhuman presence that had cast itself into the Ether around the Keep. She was a martial scientist like Ko'ais and Shura. Their minds were categorically impervious to his. And then his psychic shroud was torn aside and flung into the Ether. He had been found by the alien presence. His mind’s saw an ectoplasmic figure coalesce into being beside the silver warrior. It took the form of a tall, silver-haired woman clad in regal robes the hue of fresh snow. Astral projection, Arthorias knew, was already a difficult and draining discipline. To be able to perform Ectoplasmic Manifestation at such a range and with such vividness took god-like power. Arthorias sensed Kalvairn’s awe at the enemy’s psychic might. “The Soul Stealer skulks in the shadows in that direction,” the Manifestation said. A mocking smile flickered across her flawlessly beautiful features. The silver warrior nodded and began walking towards where Arthorias and Kalvairn hid. +This could be… non-optimal. Shall we flee?+ Kalvairn asked. Before Arthorias could reply, Ko'ais’s spiked chain streaked through the night. The silver warrior caught it in her gauntleted fist.
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May 6, 2015 18:33
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Here we go again. If any readers have the time, please let me know what you think, even if it's as simple a statement as "it sucks." I'd really appreciate any feedback. If not, thank you for reading anyway! Chapter 5: Gittan the Mighty Shura leapt to the attack alongside Ko'ais. The ghostly apparition had already dissipated into the night, but he could feel the sheer power radiating from the warrior in silver armor. He drew deeply upon the Conflagration, letting its strength surge through his limbs. His aegis swirled alongside Ko'ais’s. Even held tightly by the Scarlet Thorn, she still flashed him her crooked smile. Shura fought down an unexpected surge of emotion. Now was not the time for nostalgia. The silver warrior moved with dazzling speed. She parried Ko'ais’s short sword with her much heavier one. All in the same motion, she hurled her enchanted axe at Shura before bringing her gauntlet back across her chest to block a trio of bullets from Hengist’s pistol. Shura ducked underneath the spinning blade, letting it pass by his neck by a hairsbreadth. A crackling shower of electricity burst from the axe; blue lightning danced across Shura’s chest and arms, setting his clothes ablaze and singeing his flesh. Only the Conflagration’s aegis kept his muscles from ripping themselves apart from the electrically-induced convulsions. He gritted his teeth and tore off his traveling robes and his tunic. His battle harness, already battered and haphazardly repaired, fell off his body in leathery strips. He was just in time to see Ko'ais smashed from her feet. The silver warrior loomed over her, greatsword held high. Shura streaked forwards, stepping into what he realized was the silver warrior’s aegis. Their enemy was a martial scientist as well, and one of staggering prowess; her aegis was an overpowering, suffocating presence that threatened to drown out and flatten both the Conflagration and Scarlet Thorn. With a shriek of effort, he threw his entire bodyweight against the silver warrior’s forearm, deflecting her falling sword by a fraction of an inch. The heavy blade cleaved into the cracked stone right beside Ko'ais’s face. The silver warrior batted Shura aside with a contemptuous backhand, sending him sprawling, but she had to take a step back and slice another hail of bullets out of the air instead of pressing the attack on his prone form. Shura saw Hengist toss aside his empty pistol. He stood amidst a carpet of corpses and discarded rifles. The soldier roared and spread his metal arms. Iron-hued tendrils sprouted from his limbs and punched into the weapons lying at his feet. He grinned as a dozen firing mechanisms were cocked and set to full-auto simultaneously. Six rifles ringed each of Hengist’s arms, held aloft by steely extensions from his flesh. “Die, bitch!” he screamed. A dozen rifles vented their remaining ammunition upon the silver warrior. She spun her sword across to shield her torso and midriff. Her free hand went up to shield her helmed head. Bullets crashed upon the silver warrior’s armored frame, the sheer volume of fire leaving blemishes across gleaming pauldrons, knee guards, and vambraces and even knocking off one of the intricately-fashioned tusks upon the silver helm. As each rifle fell empty, Hengist flung it aside with a flick of a tendril and whipped another discarded weapon into his grasp. He poured a storm of lead upon the silver warrior, forcing her to her knees. She reached out with her free hand. Shura opened his mouth to shout a warning, but it was Ko'ais who acted first. The martial scientist smashed her spiked chain against the enchanted axe as it flew, evidently summoned by the silver warrior, towards Hengist’s back. Another shower of lightning burst from the spinning axe. Ko'ais snarled. The Scarlet Thorn’s aegis shielded her from the worst of the ravening energies, but Hengist had no such protection. The soldier shrieked in agony as electricity danced through his nervous system. His limbs went into bone-breaking spasms. The rifles under his thrall came apart in a shower of fused and broken metal. He fell, but before his face could smash into the stone at his feet, Shura caught him. “Thanks,” Hengist stammered. Blood leaked from his eyes and mouth. He tried to lift his arms but failed to do so. “I… I think I need a moment to catch my breath.” “Take as much time as you need,” Shura said as he placed Hengist gently on the ground. He clenched his fists as the silver warrior snatched her axe out the air and began walking forwards again. “Leave the rest to me.” “You don’t get to have all the fun,” Ko'ais said, moving to stand beside him. Her blood-filled eyes met his. “Just like the old days, isn’t it?” Despite everything, Shura couldn’t suppress a chuckle. A memory flashed by, unbidden; it was an image of a pair of teenagers, apprentices still in the ways of martial science, standing in desperate unison against a mighty enemy. Shura hefted his makeshift weapon. “Yes, yes it is.” But he had left the Stormbringer far behind. It no longer tugged at his nerves even as it filled his limbs with its elemental strength; it no longer told him to kill everything within reach. He no longer had to fight it while it sought to drive him to the same madness that had consumed his master. In its place burned the Conflagration, newly forged and uncertain, but loyal and strong. Shura fell into a combat stance, blade held high above his head. Ko'ais assumed a feral-seeming crouch, her sword in her left hand and her spiked chain dangling loosely in her right. The silver warrior halted in her tracks. She lifted the visor of her helm, revealing the scarred yet powerful features of a woman seemingly in her late-thirties, but Shura knew better than to judge her age by her appearance. The masterful manipulation of potent internal energy virtually halted the aging process of a martial scientist’s body, and Shura had seen enough to know that the silver warrior was more than capable of such a feat. “It pains me to see two young and promising followers of the Paths fight for the Soul Stealer’s cause, but I will show no mercy, especially not after the carnage you have wrought upon my people,” the silver warrior said. She leveled her sword at Shura and Ko'ais. “Prepare yourselves! I am Gittan of the Diamond Heart! Death or victory!” “I will wear your entrails as a necklace, you bitch!” Ko'ais snarled. “I am Ko'ais of the Scarlet Thorn! Death or victory!” “It is an honor to meet you, Elder Gittan the Mighty. All who follow the Paths know of your legend and the foes who have fallen before you.” Shura flipped his blade around and saluted her, clenched fist against open palm. “I am Shura of the Conflagration!” “Shura?” Gittan frowned. “You are much too young to be the Destroyer, and I have never heard of the Conflagration. Do not mock me, child. Even in battle, decorum should be observed.” “The Destroyer has perished by my hand, Elder Gittan. I am his successor, and the Conflagration is the Path I forge!” Shura said, twirling his weapon and resuming his stance. “Death or victory!” Ko'ais smashed her spiked chain into one of the courtyard’s ancient flagstones. With a roar of effort, she tore the flagstone from the ground and sent it hurtling towards Gittan. The silver warrior cleaved the boulder in half with her crackling axe, only to find Ko'ais’s chain wrapped around its haft. Before Gittan could command the weapon to unleash its electrical wrath, Shura seized the chain. He felt the Scarlet Thorn surge along with the Conflagration; with a sudden, tremendous effort, Shura and Ko'ais tore the axe from Gittan’s grasp. The enchanted weapon clattered across the courtyard. “Die!” Ko'ais shrieked. She whipped the spiked chain at Gittan’s head. The silver warrior dashed it aside with her sword, but Shura had already closed the distance. He struck out at Gittan’s knee, seeking to pierce the thinner armor at the joint. Gittan hopped above the arc of his swing and kicked out at his face. Shura evaded the bone-breaking blow by a hairsbreadth. He leaned away into a backflip as the silver warrior’s massive sword cleaved the space he had been occupying a split-second ago. Ko'ais charged forwards, her blade weaving intricate patterns in the air as it sought to tear out Gittan’s throat. It was the first form of the Nine Bleeding Petals, Shura thought, as he swept his own weapon around and brought it into the Raging Claw. The silver warrior parried all of their blows, catching their blades on her much heavier one or sweeping it aside with her vambrace. “You children are skilled but unrefined,” Gittan said. She flicked aside Ko'ais’s sword, seized her by the collar, and tossed her into Shura. The two younger martial scientists fell, momentarily entangled. The silver warrior loomed over them, sword held high. “It is almost a pity your Paths end here. So much potential wasted in the pursuit of evil.” Shura brought his blade up in a parry as Gittan struck. The greatsword smashed the jagged weapon into shards. Before it could cleave his skull, Ko'ais flipped her spiked chain across the blade and pulled with all the might of the Scarlet Thorn. Careening off its intended descent, the silver warrior’s sword cratered more of the courtyard’s ancient flagstones, but it remained firmly in her grasp. Gittan backhanded Ko'ais across the face and yanked her weapon free, only to have Shura clasp it between his palms, locking it in place. “You would challenge my internal strength?” the silver warrior growled. “So be it.” Immediately he felt the aegis of the Diamond Heart surging down the blade, seeking to push its way into his system, where it would then rupture his meridians and crush his nexus. He cried out as the Conflagration surged within him, fighting back against a force that was immensely superior. Ko'ais placed her palm upon his fourth lunar gate. He felt the Scarlet Thorn’s strength flow into his system, as heady and maddening as it had been the last time he had merged his aegis with hers years ago. “You idiot!” he cried, his jaw tight with strain. “Now she’ll crush us both! You should have attacked her instead!” “By the time I struck a single blow, she would have imploded your heart,” Ko'ais spat in reply. “Now shut up and focus!” “A valiant effort,” Gittan said grudgingly. “But your Paths are not compatible; the Scarlet Thorn is a forbidden Path practiced only by the vile and deranged. Your…Conflagration, boy, seems to be a haphazard disaster.” Shura opened his mouth to reply but found himself coughing blood instead. His arms wavered as they held Gittan’s sword in place. Beside him, Ko'ais stifled a pained groan; blood leaked from the corners of her mouth. Soon, the Diamond Heart would destroy them both through its sheer power. He then heard Arthorias’s voice. “I am His Hatred of the unclean! I am His Contempt for the unworthy!” the Soul Stealer cried. He was striding towards Gittan, glowing rune-sword in hand. His eyes were ablaze with eldritch fire. The air stank of ozone and copper. Arthorias locked gazes with the silver warrior as he brought his free hand up, his armored fingers pointing directly at her face. “I am His Genocide upon the impure!” A column of fire fell upon Gittan. ** Arthorias almost immediately regretted unleashing the Pyrokinesis. It was an extremely draining discipline, especially without his cerebral-amplification implants, his psy-active marrow and spinal fluid, and the fortification runes upon his armor. The implants had been surgically removed by Kalvairn. The professor had also replaced his marrow and spinal fluid with synthetic equivalents that were far inferior to those of a normal, unenhanced man. He himself had marred and defiled the once holy runes upon his armor with knife that had been used in the ritual sacrifice of six children. He now possessed the merest fraction of his old strength, and though he nearly swooned from the exertion, it was still gratifying to set the silver warrior ablaze, hear her pained roar, and see her roll upon the bloody slush that now carpeted the courtyard as she sought to smother the flames. It was less gratifying to hear Shura and Ko'ais cry out in agony as well. The two martial scientists were hurled backwards by what seemed to be a resonant backlash from their abruptly-interrupted contest with Gittan. They fell at his feet. “Can the two of you still fight?” Arthorias asked, leaning heavily on his rune-sword. Ko'ais struggled to rise. Blood flowed freely from her nose and mouth. “I will… always be ready to fight, brother,” she said, her words slurred with pain. Shura managed to pull himself to his knees. He was bleeding like Ko'ais. “She has a ruptured liver and at least five torn meridians,” he said, ignoring her defiant snarl. “I’m in better shape, but only slightly.” +I have stabilized Hengist,+ Kalvairn pulsed. +He will live to fight another day, unless you wish me to kill him now and reanimate his corpse.+ +Keep our friend alive, professor. He is a valued member of our warband,+ Arthorias replied. +When you can, see what you can do for my sister and Shura as well.+ +Acknowledged.+ “I’ll distract her. Try to set her on fire again with your sorcery,” Shura said. The martial scientist had now struggled to his feet. His face was pale. Empathic waves of pain rolled off of him. Gittan had smothered the flames several moments ago. She was standing tall, her silver armor chipped and singed. She held up her left hand. Her enchanted axe flew back into her grasp. Lightning began to dance across its blade and haft. “Well, this definitely looks bad.” Shura wiped the back of his hand across his bloody mouth. Arthorias reached out towards the axe and Dampened it, calling upon the deepest reserves upon his soul to do so. Cold sweat ran down his cheeks. His spine trembled from the effort. The coruscating field of energy upon the weapon fizzled and died out, leaving it nothing more than a finely-crafted axe… wielded by a warrior of immense prowess. “Fine. That’s still bad, but less so,” Shura said. Arthorias turned and looked at the martial scientist. “You’re remarkably talkative today, my friend,” he observed. “I’d even say you’re almost cheerful, despite our current difficulties.” “It feels right…” Shura smiled suddenly. “All of this… fighting beside all of you… killing our enemies while they try to kill us. It all feels right, somehow. I can’t explain it.” “The Ethereal Tides beckon,” Arthorias said, smiling as well when Shura scoffed. “Believe what you will, my friend, but I too, am happy we fight together.” “You show yourself at last, Soul Stealer!” Gittan cried as she charged. “Now you will die for all the evil you have wrought upon the world!” Arthorias drew his pistol and fired a trio of bullets at the silver warrior. She swatted them out of the air without breaking her stride. Shura met her charge, but instead of pitting his empty hands against Gittan’s lethal weapons, he crouched low and broke into a tackle, seizing her by the waist. Before the silver warrior could react to the unexpected maneuver, Shura lifted her and brought her down into suplex, slamming her armored form against ancient stone. Gittan roared, almost as if she outraged at the indignity. She surged to her feet and hurled Shura aside. Arthorias smashed a bullet against her armored right wrist before she could bring her sword to bear upon the fallen martial scientist, and then he bounced another off her helm. As she staggered back, the Soul Stealer lunged forwards with his rune-sword. He felt the silver warrior’s massive boot slam into his breastplate before his sword could even touch her. The segmented plates of his armor stiffened against the impact, but with their psychic conduits inactive, they were unable to cushion as much of the blow as they once would have. Arthorias felt a rib snap, and he gasped in pain. Gritting his teeth, the Soul Stealer shot Gittan in the foot, and as she stumbled, momentarily off-balance, he emptied the rest of his pistol into her torso. Gittan reeled from the close-range impact of the high-caliber rounds. Arthorias punctuated the barrage with a hammer of telekinetic force to her face, breaking her proud nose with a wet crunch. “You will suffer for this, Soul Stealer!” she snarled. Arthorias dropped his pistol, knowing that he would have no time to reload, and took his sword in a two-handed grip. “I have heard that line too many times,” he retorted. “You self-proclaimed heroes need to show some imagination.” “Set her on fire again,” Shura called as he struggled to his feet once more. “That might not be necessary,” Arthorias said with a cold smile. “Look around you, Gittan the Mighty.” The silver warrior stopped in her tracks, instantly aware that she was within the overlapping fields of fire of ten heavy machineguns. A hundred soldiers trained their rifles upon her from elevated positions. The Soul Stealer had coordinated the deployment of Maximus’s troops before joining the fray against Gittan to buy the necessary time for the soldiers to complete their maneuvers. “Kill her!” he ordered. Gunfire raked the silver warrior, blasting chunks from her armor. She stumbled, cursed, and bled as the occasional bullet punched through a weakened spot. With a mighty leap, she hurled herself from the courtyard and sped towards the rear gates, cutting down any soldiers in her way. Within seconds, her battered form was disappearing into the night. Bullets chased her until Arthorias gave the mental command for the soldiers to cease fire. Arthorias sank to his haunches, wincing at the pain from his broken rib. Shura crouched beside him. Behind, he sensed that Kalvairn had reached Ko'ais and was already fussing over her injuries, much to her annoyance. “I’ve had duller evenings,” Arthorias said. Shura sighed and shook his head. “I expect there will be many more like these to come,” he said.
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May 9, 2015 10:15
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I've actually been reading this on and off the past few days, so here are some random, general notes: This is oddly compelling, even though it's not the sort of thing I'd buy a whole book for, ya dig? Like, it's one big over-the-top video game or anime sequence. I'm wondering if you ever read the Malazan series? It's like that, but with less agonizing over potsherds and glottal stops. Some of your characters are kind of memorable. The professor guy and the lady come to mind, though the rest of the characters run together in my memory a little bit because they're all kind of rrrr grizzled badass. Shura is memorable in that he tells everyone who he is once a chapter, it feels like. The writing is serviceable. You have some good passages. You have some clunky passages. I felt like, because this has a ton of action, that you were reaching for ways to not repeat yourself too much. It's hard to write smooth action and blocking when everyone is constantly moving around, swinging swords, shooting projectiles, and using kind of abstract magic. You've got your whole martial science thing going on, but like I said it's a very abstract sort of power. I've read enough fantasy with crazy, hard-to-describe magic systems, so I was more or less able to visualize what these guys are doing. These characters are kind of too badass. It's a little hard to care about them, since I'm not really worried about their safety. All the tension is derived from "how are they going to use their awesome powers to defeat the hordes of fodder and/or mini boss?" I'm torn on that, actually. I can kind of see how this is reminiscent of old space opera or cheesy adventure novels, only aimed at kids who grew up with anime/video games instead of old detective comics and flash gordon. So it's not all bad, but you're at risk of getting formulaic. edit: one more thought, the setting is kind of anonymous. I know there are some tribal dudes who are The Enemy, and I know there is some terrain and at least one fort, but that's about it. There are some issues that I'd need to crit at the line-by-line level, but I don't know that a longer story really needs that until it's done. I welcome you to come on over to the flash fiction Thunderdome, however. You'll get more specific critiques, and it might help you spot some bad habits that are hard to see when you're elbow deep in writing a novel. Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 22:57 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 22:52
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Sitting Here posted:I've actually been reading this on and off the past few days, so here are some random, general notes: Hey, thanks for reading and commenting! I've actually never gotten around to reading the Malazan series before. Maybe I'll go check it out. Regarding the characters: I noticed that myself. I've been wondering how I can make the characters more realized without resorting to long passages of exposition or flashbacks within flashbacks. I felt that the old tenet of "show, don't tell" would apply here, and the characters will become more defined as they take actions and make decisions as the story progresses. For example, Shura needs to tell others who he is because he took his master's name after killing him, and his master had quite the reputation. But I'm sure there's a much more elegant way to convey that; I just have to think about it. I'd originally intended Hengist to drop out of the story a few chapters ago, but I found him necessary as a plot device and fun to write as a character. I'll think about how I can make him more defined/memorable. I admit I got carried away with all the over-the-top action . Maybe it's because I feel that I need to keep the story engaging and exciting or maybe I just lack the attention span to have long, introspective sections. Also, almost all of the main characters are fixated on fighting. I'll see what I can do to tone it down and spread it out a bit. The same goes for the whole risk of getting formulaic as well. The setting is difficult to convey. It's pretty much a vast landlocked continent dominated by feudal warlords and populated by a staggering variety of cultures/people; again, I'm not sure how to define the setting without long passages of exposition. I'm hoping that the setting will come into realization as the story progresses. Again, thanks for reading and commenting. I'll head on over and check out Thunderdome, but I'm not sure I'll be able to churn out much short fiction when I'm working on this story. I'm very aware that my writing is very rough, and I totally intend to smoothen it out once I'm done with the story.
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May 11, 2015 23:42
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Thanks for taking the time to read my stuff. I don't have any reason not to keep posting, so I will. Chapter 6: Repairs and recovery In the heart of Ironskin lands, the Silver Queen dwelled deep within the depths of a massive palace carved from permafrost, reinforced by steel pillars, and buttressed by iron arches. Copper reliefs entwined every pillar; every relief was an elaborately crafted celebration of the Silver Queen’s divinity and majesty. Furs and tapestries lined the walls of her throne room, tribute from a people that adored and worshipped her. The chamber could hold a hundred jarls and their huscarls, and it was here where she projected her consciousness, willing it to take ectoplasmic form atop a throne of white gold, as she spoke with her champion, Gittan the Mighty. “It is good to see you here, dearest Gittan,” the Silver Queen said. “Do not be overly-troubled by the southerners. They will perish soon enough.” “Aye, great lady,” Gittan replied, nodding as she did so. She had reset her broken nose. Her battered armor had been sent to the Royal Forges for repairs, but she still carried her weapons: the axe strapped to her thigh and the greatsword sheathed across her back. Underneath her simple tunic and thick fur cloak, the martial scientist nursed a collection of bruises all over her heavily-muscled frame. And possibly one cracked rib, she thought. The Diamond Heart’s aegis was nigh-impenetrable, and its defensive strength was quadrupled by the wondrous silver armor she wore, but few things across the length and breadth of the Hegemony could withstand the sustained firepower of more than a hundred fully-automatic weapons for more than a few seconds. She had been lucky to escape alive. “Still, I thought I would never see you so hard-pressed.” The Silver Queen frowned slightly, her inhumanly beautiful features unmarred by the expression. “Are the southern champions so powerful that they pose a challenge to even you?” “The Soul Stealer’s fell reputation spans at least a century,” Gittan said. “I knew of him long before I retired to your glorious domain. Rumors across the Hegemony whisper that he has murdered millions and committed the vilest atrocities; I do not know how much these rumors can be believed, but having faced him, I do know that he is a cunning and deadly foe.” “The Ethereal Tides sing his name to all who would listen,” the Silver Queen said. “Yet my Divinations reveal little of his past and his destiny. Who, exactly, is he? He is remarkably Gifted for a mortal, but not much more. Why would he move the Ethereal Tides so?” “The Hegemony is a vast land populated by untold trillions. All I can glean from the tavern whispers I’ve heard over the years is that he was a former champion of the Hegemonic Church, but he betrayed his masters and went on to carve a swath of death and terror through all the people he had once sworn to defend.” “He turned his back on the Death God worshipped in the south?” “Aye, great lady. The fact that he survived the Church’s retribution for so long tells us that first, he is something more… or less than a human being, and second, he must not be underestimated.” “He will not be.” The Silver Queen’s ectoplasmic form began to grow faint. “Now leave me, dearest Gittan. I would consult the Ethereal Tides.” The martial scientist bowed and turned to leave. Behind her, the Silver Queen’s manifestation dissipated into emptiness. A massive scaled form stirred uneasily deep within the palace. ** Hrothgar was waiting for her outside the throne room. The jarl was clad in his ceremonial armor and furs, and a massive black bow was strapped across his broad back. “Have you been to the healers?” he demanded, his thick arms folded across his chest. Gittan caught him by the ear and began dragging him down a lavish hallway, ignoring his yelps and protests. Several of the Silver Queen’s Einherjar, her elite guard, glanced curiously as Gittan and Hrothgar passed; they chuckled, shook their heads, and went about their duties. “Is that how you talk to your grandmother?” Gittan snapped. She released Hrothgar only after they were both standing outside the palace gates. “And no, I have no need of the healers. My wounds are already healing.” Hrothgar rubbed his throbbing ear as he spoke. “I was just worried about you.” “I am fine. The Diamond Heart is peerless.” Gittan’s eyes narrowed as she directed a baleful glare at her grandson. “Speaking of which, you have not been keeping up with your Cultivation. Your internal energy is raw and unfocused, and there is noticeable interference in your meridians. Have you been drinking heavily again? How will you ever grasp the Diamond Heart like this?” “Bah! Ironskin blood flows true in my veins! That and the warcraft of my people will make me an unrivaled warrior!” Hrothgar flexed his right arm, putting his thick biceps on display. Gittan slapped him over the back of his head. “Don’t get too full of yourself, child,” she said. “You will need every ounce of strength in the days to come, and the last thing I want is to lose you to recklessness and overconfidence.” “Are the invaders that strong?” Hrothgar asked, his eyes wide. Gittan smiled. Even though the jarl was already twenty-nine, she still saw him as the bright-eyed, rambunctious boy whose diapers she had changed. “We face the Soul Stealer, child. He has already taken Fjorlag Keep, and his allies are strong enough to prevail over twenty of our blessed baresarks.” “The men say that the Traitor fights by his side.” Hrothgar’s features were grim underneath his thick red beard. “Aye, I have seen him, and I would have killed him if not for two martial scientists among the Soul Stealer’s warband,” Gittan said. “It always saddens me to see martial science corrupted and bent to evil ways.” Gittan sighed and shook her head. The young woman called Ko'ais was evidently an acolyte from the Temple of Razors and a disciple of the dread Blade Mistress; she wielded the weapons favored by the followers of the Scarlet Thorn, a forbidden Path. In her youth, Gittan had battled Razor Acolytes many times, and on each occasion, the Diamond Heart had never failed to crush the Scarlet Thorn. At the age of forty, she had even fought the Blade Mistress herself to a draw in a formal duel upon Mount Hua. Ko'ais’s prowess far exceeded that of the Blade Mistress Gittan had battled, and the young woman was nowhere close to her full potential. Who knew what terrible heights to which she would bring the Scarlet Thorn? The young man claimed to be the Destroyer’s successor. The Destroyer! She had only encountered the legendary Shura once, almost thirty years ago. From atop a cliff, she had seen the Destroyer butcher the Eighteen Tao Scions of Mount Wu Dang. When Shura had turned his blood-crazed glare upon her, she had simply fled, her mind blank with terror. The young man possessed a mere fraction of the Destroyer’s sheer power, but his unknown Path had surprised her numerous times in their battle with its resilient and versatile aegis. The… Conflagration was a Path that required immense talent and willpower to forge, and the newest incarnation of Shura did not seem to be lacking in either quality. Gittan thought back upon a lifetime of battle. For decades she had wandered the Hegemony defending the weak, toppling tyrants, and confronting evil wherever it chose to rear its head. But the weak were often ungrateful, tyrants never failed to succeed tyrants, and evil was an inherent human trait, as the Hegemonic Church preached. One cool summer night, as she sat amidst the corpses of a slaver band she had destroyed, she had picked up a discarded pistol, let go of the Diamond Heart, and placed the barrel against her temple. But then a frail voice had called out to her. She had not been too late for one child, an Ironskin boy who would grow to become a strong but gentle man and who would come to call her his mother. That man had long since passed into oblivion, but he had left behind sons and daughters. One of them was now standing beside her with a worried look in his eyes. “Come back to my hall, gran,” Hrothgar said. His voice broke her from her reverie. The jarl took his grandmother’s arm. “Gretta should already have prepared dinner, and my boy will surely be happy to see his great-gran!” Gittan smiled as she allowed herself to be led down the winding path that would take her to Hrothgar’s hearth, but foreboding weighed heavily on her heart. ** Sometimes in his dreams, his armor would be white. His skin would bear a healthy bronze tan; his posture would be proud, his head held high. Sometimes in his dreams, he would be sitting with his brothers, laughing at Gareth’s jokes or debating scripture with Perceval. Sometimes in his dreams, he would be kneeling in prayer, basking in the glory of God. Sometimes in his dreams, he would still be a child, and he would be tending the chapel’s small garden with Father Lazarus. There would be ripened tomatoes gleaming in the soft evening sun. This time in his dreams, he was standing in front of her. She burned before his eyes. She screamed as her flesh melted off her bones, and so did he. +Arthorias!+ Kalvarin’s mental voice was tinged with concern. The professor’s gloved hand was outstretched, almost as if he had been about to shake Arthorias awake. The Soul Stealer blinked, banishing the nightmare vestiges of despair to the darkest corners of his mind. He was lying upon a stone slab in one of the Keep’s dungeon cells. His eyes felt heavy and sticky. He brought up a pale hand to his face and felt dampness. Arthorias sighed softly. He had been weeping blood again. +I am fine, my friend,+ he pulsed. +Report, if you would.+ +Very well. Hengist has made a full recovery within a day. His regenerative abilities are truly marvelous. Your sister and Shura are healing well too.+ Kalvairn adjusted his goggles; it was a nervous tic the professor would never notice he had. +However, my biometric scans indicate that your condition is deteriorating even more swiftly than we had expected. We must obtain the necessary… surgical components as soon as possible. Necro-restoration is meant for the reanimation of corpses. I cannot recommend its application upon your body many more times.+ +I will succeed or I will die.+ Arthorias smiled. +That is all I need to know.+ +Let us strive for the former rather than the latter.+ The Soul Stealer looked around the cell. It was brightly-lit, and it had been painstakingly scrubbed to sterility. Given what he knew of the professor, such a task was not one that Kalvairn would have willingly entrusted to any medical orderly in Maximus’s army. His armor was neatly laid out upon a metal tray in the corner, every piece cleaned and sterilized. +Thank you, my friend,+ Arthorias pulsed. The professor waved dismissively. +You should put on your armor as soon as you can. Its life-support systems should sustain you for the time being.+ The Soul Stealer chuckled as he walked over to his armor. A shiver of pain flickered across his consciousness as he slid his gauntlet on and felt its interface spikes plunge into the neural sockets on his palm and forearm. The pain was greater when he put on his breastplate and felt the cold metallic clicks that signaled the engagement of the neural sockets across his torso. It got easier as he proceeded, though. By the time he had secured his greaves, he had managed to mute the agony to a dull, discomforting throb. The last piece was a segmented strip of dark metal; a series of interface spikes glinted slickly from its concaved length. The neural sockets running down his spinal column still gaped emptily at open air. Arthorias lifted the final piece of armor with subtle telekinetic pulses. He did not gasp in pain as the first socket was engaged, but by the time the last spike slid home into the base of his skull, he was trembling and weeping blood once more. With a thought, he activated his armor. Its psy-active muscle fibers flexed in time with his natural ones. He felt his vitality return. +We must find what we have been searching for soon,+ Kalvairn said. The professor’s emaciated face was composed and expressionless, as always, but Arthorias could sense the anxiety radiating from him. +If we don’t succeed, the next time I take off my armor will be the last,+ the Soul Stealer said. He smiled as Kalvairn shook his head. +I know my own body, and you of all people should know that it is useless to lie to me.+ Kalvairn’s psyche shone with grim resolve as he spoke. +Then we must succeed, and woe betide any who stand in our way.+
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May 14, 2015 08:12
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Here's the next chapter. If you can spare the time, do let me know if you like it or think it's awful. Bonus points if you can also say what I need to improve on. I know the prose is a bit rough, but I definitely intend to go back and touch up on it once the whole story is done. Thanks for reading, in any case! Chapter 7: Killing in style Conversation died in his wake as Shura made his way through the soldiers dining in the mess area. Though he was clad in the same grey-white winter fatigues they wore, his hair was an unruly, tangled mess several inches longer than regulation haircuts, and his black stormcoat featured no officer rank pins or sergeant chevrons. He stopped at a field table and set down his bowl of rehydrated stew and mug of caffeine. The soldiers at the other end of the table hurriedly vacated their seats. One of them, a corporal, bowed awkwardly to him before scrambling away, his scarred features pale with fright. The martial scientist shrugged and began eating. The stew tasted mostly of synthetic flavoring, but, having been raised on a diet comprised almost exclusively of military rations, he knew that it was nutritious enough for a fighting man. As the Destroyer’s apprentice, he had followed his master from one army camp to another, fighting under the banners of countless different warlords. He had grown up among soldiers, and he had watched too many of them die to bother attaching names to their faces anymore. Such was the lot of a soldier in the Hegemony: to die horribly in battle or to survive and then be thrown into the next meat grinder. Hegemonic soldiers hated and feared warband mercenaries - irregular specialists in military lingo - like him. After all, what chance did a man with a rifle have against a martial scientist or sorcerer of even mediocre talent? The mercenary who fought on their side might very well be their killer upon the next battlefield several days - or even several hours - later. By the time he was ten, Shura had already murdered two hundred former allies. Some of them had been fellow mercenaries; most of them had been the uniformed men whose sole apparent purpose in life was to die in droves to enrich their commanding officers. Maximus was an exceptionally powerful and influential warlord, Shura thought as he took a sip of bitter caffeine. According to the Soul Stealer, Arthorias had fought under Maximus’s banner for nearly a decade and had won for the General many campaigns against his rivals. The General’s domain was vast, as the situation map pinned up in Kalvairn’s carriage showed. He commanded several million soldiers and held the power of life and death over at least a billion people. Shura pushed his bowl aside, his appetite suddenly lost. He recalled how, a year before he and his master had been separated, he had seen an entire family disemboweled and crucified for a warlord’s amusement. His name was Colonel Atticus, Shura thought, as he also recalled how he had then strangled the warlord with his own entrails. The Destroyer had stood by and brayed with laughter then, his eyes gleaming with pride at his apprentice’s murderous actions. “Why did you kill Atticus?” “Because he was a bastard.” “A poor answer. Think! Why did you do what you just did?” “I killed him… because I could. Because I was stronger.” “Better. Now, proceed with your afternoon drills.” And then Hengist was there, slamming a jug of mead and a pair of tankards down onto the table. Shura raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you be eating instead of drinking?” he asked. The soldier laughed and sat down as well. “Ironskin mead is a meal in itself!” Hengist filled one tankard and took a hearty swig. “Truly, the nectar of the gods!” “How are your wounds?” Hengist casually turned the fingers on his free hand into a lethal blade and swept it through the air. He grinned. “I’m ready for more killing. What about you?” “I have mostly recovered. Ko'ais took the brunt of the beating we received from Gittan. I should check on her later,” Shura said. He took a look at Hengist’s widening grin and sighed. “She’s right behind me, isn’t she?” Ko'ais reached over Shura’s shoulder and poured herself a tankard of mead. With a grunt and a nudging elbow, she squeezed into a seat at the table beside Shura, much to his irritation. She took a deep swallow of the golden liquid and said, “I’m strong enough to give both of you a sound thrashing.” “Of that, I have no doubt, sweet beauty,” Hengist replied, holding his hands up in a placatory fashion. “I’m sure Shura agrees as well, eh?” Instead of replying, Shura reached out, placed two fingers against Ko'ais’s throat, and sent out a subtle pulse of internal energy into her system. Hengist flinched at the gesture, his features paling visibly beneath his thick beard. Ko'ais’s eyes widened, as if in surprise, but she did not sweep Shura’s hand aside. Neither did she try to stab him. “Your thirtieth meridian is still damaged, as is your fourth… no fifth lunar gate,” he said, taking another sip from his mug of caffeine in his other hand. “How does your nexus feel when you move your internal energy through the eighty-fifth cluster?” “There is some tightness,” she replied evenly. Shura placed his palm under her ear so it seemed as if he were stroking her cheek. His internal energy pulsed again, and he frowned. “Interference in the ninth medulla channel. That must be because of the Scarlet Thorn.” Shura turned to meet Ko'ais’s hazel-hued gaze. “If you don’t stop wearing its aegis…” Ko'ais caught his hand in hers momentarily before pushing it away from her face. Her crooked smile flashed and was gone in a fraction of a heartbeat. “I have no choice. It is my inheritance. I did not win this from the Temple of Razors only to throw it away,” she said, her voice softer than he had ever remembered it being. “I need its power and fury if we are to prevail.” “I could teach you the Conflagration,” Shura said. “It would help stabilize and perhaps reverse any cerebral interference…” “Your silly, unfocused Path?” Ko'ais drained her tankard and set it down before Hengist’s nervous face. She got to her feet. “Don’t worry. If you will not call upon the Stormbringer again, I’ll just have to be strong enough for the both of us, to compensate for your… inadequacies.” Shura opened his mouth for a retort, but Ko'ais placed a finger on his lips in a shushing gesture. “I didn’t come here to argue with you. In fact, I brought a present for you.” She placed a cloth bundle upon the table and unwrapped it. Within was a sword sheathed in a scabbard of soft copper-lined leather. Its hilt was a handspan of carved bone, reinforced by silver rivets. Ko'ais drew the sword with a flick of her wrist, baring its three-foot blade to the frigid air. Sunlight glinted off its razor-keen length. “A fine blade, a very fine blade indeed,” Hengist said, with more than a tinge of awe in his voice. Though Shura could not disagree, he had seen the sword before. “Is this…?” Ko'ais patted the short sword buckled at her belt. It was the truncated twin of the longer blade. “The bitch used both of these swords together at once, one in each hand, but we cut her hands off and made her beg for her life, remember?” Shura nodded, numbly recalling the night the two of them had killed every single acolyte - Ko'ais’s fellow disciples - in the Temple of Razors before butchering the Blade Mistress. Ko'ais passed him the sword, hilt-first, and he could not help sighing in awed appreciation at its perfect balance. Shura got to his feet and moved the blade slowly through the first form of the Raging Claw and then for good measure, the thirteenth form of Wu Dang’s Stalwart Blade, the latter earning an annoyed grunt from Ko'ais as she recognized the Orthodox swordplay. The last movement of the thirteenth form was a delicate one, called Stirring the Stream. Shura chose to replace it with a sudden lunge that thrust the sword flawlessly into its scabbard upon the table. He picked up the sheathed blade and buckled it to his belt. It hung comfortably by his side. “You’ve picked up some useless techniques in the years we’ve been apart,” Ko'ais said critically. “And you’re welcome to the sword, by the way. I couldn’t stand the sight of you fighting with that ridiculous length of scrap metal you were waving about. Wait. You’ve left its broken pieces in the snow, haven’t you? Don’t tell me you’ve been thinking of soldering or stapling the whole mess back together.” With a flick of his wrist, Shura produced a sliver of black metal slightly longer than the breadth of his palm. He tossed it casually into the air before catching it again. The length of sharpened steel had been tucked into his sleeve. “This can still be used as a dagger,” he told her. And then he had to catch the blade of an actual dagger between the first two fingers of his free hand. Ko'ais had drawn the weapon from the shoulder sheath of her battle harness and hurled it at his head. “Hey! What’re you trying to do?” he demanded, more than a little annoyed at Ko'ais’s most recent attempted murder. “You’re an idiot, Shura. An unbelievable idiot,” Ko'ais snapped. She turned and stalked away, her boots crunching through the slush. Hengist chuckled, looking appreciatively at the martial scientist’s departing form. “I definitely agree with the sweet beauty this time.” When Shura turned to glare at him, the soldier shrugged. “If you’ve got to ask, my friend, I definitely don’t know how or, indeed, what to tell you, but you might as well keep that dagger.” Shura sighed and pocketed the blade that had nearly ended up between his eyes. Hengist frowned at the sight. He shook his head, picked up the jug of mead and the empty flagons, and got to his feet. “You’d better come with me. Arthorias told me to prepare our equipment for the next operation, and I suppose part of that is making sure you’ve got the proper gear, at least.” The soldier began walking away, and Shura, more out of bemusement than any real desire to follow, trailed after Hengist. He patted the hilt of his new sword as they made their way through the Keep. “I am more than adequately armed.” “You’re wearing torn fatigues, a slashed-up stormcoat, and mismatched boots, all obviously looted from some dead soldiers. You’re part of the Soul Stealer’s warband, but you look like a battlefield ghoul. That’s no good for morale among the men.” Hengist nodded in response to salutes from a pair of soldiers who had been hauling a pallet of crates. “Carry on, troopers.” They continued walking in silence for a few moments before Shura spoke again. “Hmm. I suppose that explains all the strange looks I’ve been getting after I replaced my ruined clothes. But I’ve always dressed like this in my mercenary days, as did my master; we took whatever we needed from the corpses on the battlefield, yet no soldiers ever said anything.” “Imagine this: you’re a rifleman. You’ve just seen the Destroyer butcher a few thousand enemies. Would you then tell him he looks like a beggar?” “Point taken.” Hengist cast Shura a curious glance over his shoulder. “I know you spent some time traveling with the sweet beauty before you left her. How did you keep yourself equipped and fed, then?” “People kept attacking me because I was the Destroyer’s apprentice. I killed them and took what I needed from their bodies. Sometimes, they would have coin that I could spend in towns or villages.” “By the spirits of Hel, who were these poor bastards?” Shura shrugged. “Most were martial scientists from the Orthodox Traditions. Tao Swordsmen from Wu Dang, Warrior Monks from the Dharumic Monastery, Bladedancers from E'Mei, to name several. Some were bounty-hunting sorcerers, while the rest were starving, desperate farmers or factory workers turned bandits.” Hengist and Shura walked through the Keep’s eastern wing. The soldier elbowed open an ancient wooden door. Beyond it was a small yard, open to the sky. Kalvairn’s carriage sat in the middle, hitched to a quartet of reanimated horse cadavers. Iron plates had been riveted to the flanks of the undead animals, and when Shura took a closer look, he saw that entire chunks of their limb musculature had been replaced by lattices of copper wire and… “Yes, the flesh of my kinsmen,” Hengist confirmed cheerfully. “Waste not, want not, after all. Kalvairn’s a genius when it comes to fleshcraft.” “These… modifications will serve us well in the next phase of our campaign, I suppose?” “Make the dead beasts stronger and even more unkillable than they already are.” Hengist set the jug of mead and the flagons down upon a field table set up in the corner of the yard. “I’ve always hated horses, you know? Stupid, worthless animals. They’re much better after you shoot them in the head and bring them back with dark sorcery.” “You seem to be applying some metalwork to the carriage as well,” Shura pointed out. “Some additional armor plating and a mount for my precious darling over here,” Hengist said as he pulled aside a tarpaulin sheet. Underneath was a massive belt-fed rotator cannon. Its septuple barrels were five feet long, but it did not have an obvious trigger mechanism. It was evidently a weapon tailored to Hengist’s ability to link his neural system with firearms. The soldier bared his teeth in a delighted grin. “Say hello to Milady Devastator and her three thousand armor-piercing explosive rounds a minute! I set this lady up and sight down the silver bitch, she’ll become meat soup, that fancy armor of hers or not.” “Devastator? What happened to Executioner?” “Oh, don’t mistake me for a man of fickle heart. She’s coming along too. Milady Executioner can cut off heads a thousand yards away, but Devastator can lay down a murder zone like none other.” Hengist replaced the tarpaulin almost reverently. “But enough of my girls. We must get you sorted out.” “Like I said, I don’t need any more weapons or armor.” “Bah! I don’t have anything fancy to give you anyway. I know my way around a forge and can hurl a welding torch around well enough, but I’m not Archimedes,” Hengist said as he began rummaging through a crate. “Still, I should have something for you.” “Who’s Archimedes?” “He used to be part of this warband, but a few years ago, the Central Engineering Guild sent him a letter. Apparently, he would be welcomed back to their fold and put to task upon some grand project. And so he left, with Arthorias’s blessing. Haven’t heard from him since. He was the one who helped me put together Executioner and Devastator. Kalvairn’s needle and gas weapons were also designed by him.” “He is a master craftsman, then.” “He knows his way around steel and fire like the professor does around flesh and blood. Maybe we’ll pay him a visit once we finish up here. Aha! Here it is. I knew I held onto this for a reason.” Hengist hauled out a canvas sack from the crate. He undid its drawstring and emptied its contents upon the ground. “An ablative carapace suit, what the General’s stormtroopers wear. I murdered their captain a few years ago because the bastard was hogging one of the regimental whores all to himself and took this off his corpse. Try it on. See how you like it.” Shura picked up a gauntlet and slid it on. It fit well enough, and it did not seem too encumbering. He began sifting through the other armor components. After a few moments, he set aside the shoulder guards, breastplate, arm protectors, and greaves and said, “I won’t need the helm.” Hengist picked up the stormtrooper helm and rapped a knuckle across its faceless, mirrored visor. “Hmm. Fair enough. We’ve got to make sure the enemy can see your ugly face and be distracted by it. And then I’ll shoot them.” “A fine strategy. Truly, you are a master tactician. I am in constant awe of your brilliance.” “You… you’re not very good at this, aren’t you? Either that, or you have the strangest sense of humor.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shura said, his voice deadpan. Hengist threw up his hands and poured himself another flagon of mead. Within five minutes, the martial scientist was clad in stormtrooper armor. Hengist passed him a set of webbing, and he clipped it on. It was not the battle harness Ko'ais had fashioned for him all those years ago, but it would suffice. He retrieved her dagger from his pocket and buckled it to the webbing’s thigh strap. On a sudden impulse, he drew his sword and twirled it around languidly in the air before sheathing it again in a single fluid motion. A grin came unbidden to his face. “I’ve seen you kill, my friend,” Hengist said. “And you’re more lethal than a thousand sons of bitches, but now… now you get to kill in style.”
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May 19, 2015 08:10
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And here's another, because why not. Chapter 8: Pit of the Forsaken The 33rd Division completed the fortification of Fjorlag Keep by the 165th day of the northern campaign: the main gates had been replaced and reinforced, the ramparts had been repositioned, and heavy weapon and mortar positions facing into Ironskin territory had been established. With reinforcements from the 42nd and 58th, the 33rd Division was also able to launch offensive patrols into enemy heartlands. Due to Professor Kalvairn’s charts on Ironskin anatomy, our forces enjoyed much more success against the enemy than they did in the initial engagements. The General’s orders were clear: the Ironskins were to be utterly exterminated rather than enslaved, as standard procedure would otherwise dictate. Thus, reserve fire-teams were reorganized into death squads. They were responsible for processing the non-combatant populations of every village or settlement our main forces managed to take from the enemy. Popular practice was to compel the non-combatants to dig and then stand inside a mass grave. Several fragmentation grenades would then be tossed into the grave. Sometimes, the non-combatants chose to resist, but as they were mostly comprised of elders and children, such resistance was always swiftly overcome, often with little more than the application of bayonets and entrenchment tools. On the 167th day of the northern campaign, General Maximus had to withdraw from this theater of operations. Colonels Caius and Brutus had begun an insurrection in the eastern territories of the General’s domain. The eastern territories contained several large-scale manufactories of absolute strategic value; thus the General felt compelled to quash Caius’s and Brutus’s insurrection personally. Before he left, he gave me a field promotion to the rank of Colonel and appointed me the commanding officer of the northern campaign. However, my orders came from the Soul Stealer, which were to hold Keep Fjorlag, continue with the offensive patrols, but avoid full-scale conflicts against any large concentrations of enemy forces, at least until he returned from the commando mission upon which he led his team of irregular specialists. - Excerpt from the journal of Colonel Marcus Junius Celsus, Operations Commander of the 33rd Division ** According to Hengist, the goddess-queen known as Sylvira made herself known to the Ironskins thousands of years ago. She had then established a covenant with them: in return for their worship, this entity would bestow upon the tribesmen many blessings. The Ice Walk, a series of subterranean tunnels that spanned the entirety of the Frost Fells, was one of these blessings. The Ice Walk was accessible only through the Crystal Gates, which in turn could only be opened by one of royal blood and with a shaman’s sanction. Shura recalled how they had come across one of these portals several days ago. The Crystal Gate was a pristine silver archway over twin slabs of glacial ice. The entire thing had been constructed and held together through some eldritch process that he did not understand. Hengist had stood before the alien rune that adorned the archway, suffused in the bluish glow emanating from between the ice slabs. “I curse you, bitch goddess! I will kill your slaves and feast upon your flesh, and the Soul Stealer will inflict upon your soul a thousand defilements!” the soldier had snarled. “That I will, my friend,” Arthorias had said, before firing an enchanted bullet directly at the rune. The ice slabs had then burst apart, opening the way into the Ice Walk for the warband. Now, as he sat atop Kalvairn’s newly-modified carriage, he could not help but cast his gaze around in wonder. The Ice Walk was constantly bathed in a soft sapphire glow, which meant that the warband did not need to light any of the lanterns they had brought along. Veins of silver and copper ore streaked across the tunnel walls not at random, but in intricate patterns that portrayed Ironskin folk living, playing, rejoicing, and loving. Here there was a scene of farmers harvesting kettan, an arctic crop that flourished amidst ice and which tasted much like corn. A few yards later, men and women depicted in silver and copper danced in what appeared to be a lunar festival. Shura had heard and read of such gatherings but had never witnessed one. He saw pictures of children chasing a ball across a snowy field, not slitting each other’s throats in fighting pits. He saw them picked up and embraced, not driven across shrapnel minefields. All of a sudden, he could not quite identify the strange sensation of warmth that rose in his chest. “Yet, we have come to destroy this all,” Arthorias said, as he moved to sit beside Shura. The Soul Stealer had evidently emerged from the carriage a moment ago, but engrossed by the scenes upon the tunnel walls, Shura had not heard him. “Don’t read my mind.” “I couldn’t even if I wanted to, my friend, but your thoughts are all over your face.” The Soul Stealer smiled as he adjusted the grey cloak that had replaced his traveling robes. He looked up at the tunnel walls and sighed. “It’s truly wondrous, isn’t it? Against all odds, the Ironskins have created a culture and maintained a way of life that trillions in the Hegemony would give anything to have. Does it bother you that our victory will see all this in ashes?” “It does, but you’ve got nothing to worry about. I will fight by your side until we destroy the enemy.” Shura shrugged. “After that, who knows?” “Could you imagine yourself living among them, as one of them? Keeping a farm? Perhaps coming home to a wife? A child, maybe two, running up to you to be held?” the Soul Stealer asked. “Could you see yourself living apart from all this death and horror, even for a little bit?” Shura thought for a moment. He then chuckled and said, “No, no. I’m very certain I couldn’t.” Arthorias’s pale features wore an unreadable expression as he spoke. “I couldn’t as well, but I don’t know if I can laugh about it.” The two men sat in silence as the carriage rumbled on. The reanimated horses clopped along, dragging the sledded carriage in its wake. Shura suddenly reached over and smacked Arthorias across the back of the head. The Soul Stealer grunted in surprise and glared at him, but the martial scientist shrugged. “I’m no sorcerer, so I can’t read minds, but to use your words, your thoughts are all over your face,” he said. “Pull yourself together. I promise you’ll be feeling much better when it’s time to kill once more.” Arthorias opened his mouth, as if to retort, but then he shook his head and smiled instead. “As far as that last statement goes, you are absolutely right, my friend.” ** Hengist sighed in satisfaction as he flipped the final fastening catch of Milady Executioner’s chamber into place with a dull click. His webbing lay before him upon an oiled leather sheet with its ammo pouches open and emptied, along with a dozen fully-loaded magazines. Humming softly to himself, he began unloading the magazines, carefully thumbing the armor-piercing rounds out into a small metal box one at a time. Upon emptying the last magazine, Hengist retrieved a thin brush and a slender vial of gun oil. He began the delicate process of easing and oiling the springs of each magazine. It was a nightly ritual that he’d been performing for the last decade, ever since getting Milady Executioner. Hengist needed little more than a synaptic flex to clear any stoppages, but he also knew that every split-second counted when murdering. Across this evening’s campsite, Ko'ais was tossing snowballs at Shura. The young man - so young but so grim and serious sometimes - took a snowball squarely in the face. Hengist laughed. “Very nice, sweet beauty!” he called. Ko'ais flashed him one of her radiant smiles. She was truly beautiful, her skin the hue of smooth white jade and the single blade-scar across the bridge of her nose accentuating instead of marring her loveliness. Her short dark hair shone in the pale blue light of the Ice Walk. Hengist liked women. In fact, he liked them so much he’d already worked his way through almost every single whore that serviced the 33rd Division and at least half of those that serviced the 42th. But the moment he’d first seen the Soul Stealer’s sworn sister, he’d known that there was something extremely wrong with her. There was a gleam in her hazel eyes and a twist in her smile that repulsed him on a primal level, and he’d realized right away that embracing her meant certain, horrific death. Now Shura was shouting at her, calling her an idiot to be indulging in such frivolity deep within enemy lines. Ko'ais stuck her tongue out at him and yelled an obscenity regarding Shura’s mother. Hengist had to chuckle at her inventiveness. The martial scientists evidently shared a past before being drawn into Arthorias’s designs, one that was doubtless mired in blood and death. And then Professor Kalvairn joined in the fray, shrilly berating both Shura and Ko'ais for raising their voices. For his troubles, the professor received a snowball against his goggles that toppled him head over heels. This time, Hengist could not help roaring with laughter, even as he finished preparing the last magazine for reloading. But then again, which member of the warband was not the spawn of horror and murder? Hengist picked up a rifle round and spun it in his metallic fingers. An image of Runa, her cheeks streaked with tears, flashed unbidden across his memory, and Hengist had to put the bullet down carefully before he crushed it in his grip. She should have been his, along with the throne of the High King, but instead, they had betrayed him. They had all betrayed him. The Silver Queen was to blame. He slammed a fully-loaded magazine into Milady Executioner and sighted down its crystal scope at empty air. Hengist grinned. He could no longer have what should have been rightfully his, but with Arthorias’s help, he would ensure that none of his people ever had anything, ever again. As if - no, undoubtedly - reading his thoughts, the Soul Stealer strode towards him, his grey cape billowing out behind him in his wake. Hengist hailed him. “Ho, fearless leader! We are safe from prying eyes, yes?” “She has been scouring the Ice Walk with her mind’s eye ever since we desecrated the warding rune on that Crystal Gate, but I’m wise to her ways now. I’ll be able to keep us shrouded indefinitely, or at least until we strike tomorrow,” Arthorias said. “You are certain we’ll emerge beside the Pit of Penitence?” “I know the Ice Walk like the back of my hand,” Hengist replied. “We’ll be right where we planned. Truthfully, hey, I’m more worried about how we’re going to free the Forsaken. Let’s hope things go according to design, or we’ll all be traveling to Hel before the sun sets tomorrow.” “Have faith, my friend,” Arthorias intoned. His gauntleted fingers moved through the benedictory motions of the Hegemonic Church. Whether the gesture was an ironic or unconscious one arising from Arthorias’s former vocation, Hengist did not know, but he looked Arthorias straight in the eye. “My faith in you is boundless,” he said. Hengist placed his right fist against his chest in the ancient warrior’s salute of his people. “You are the Soul Stealer, and with your might joined to my hate, let us bathe the Frost Fells in rivers of Ironskin blood.” ** The warband emerged from the Ice Walk shortly after dawn and hid the carriage beside a snowdrift. Arthorias loosed his mind’s eye, sending his consciousness soaring into the crisp, amber morning air above the Pit of Penitence. His astral form immediately saw how it was a subterranean prison complex stretching almost a mile deep underground. A wide but short fortification of stone and steel squatted over the spiraling stairwell that led into its depths. Several dozen Ironskin wardens, each armed with a greatbow, patrolled the fortification’s outer walls, but there were likely many more garrisoned within. This was where the Ironskin criminals were incarcerated. Petty thieves and miscreants were held on the higher levels and carted off to do hard labor everyday for the duration of their sentence. Rapists and murderers dwelled a few levels lower, condemned to darkness until their executions. The Forsaken were at the bottom of the Pit. That was where Hengist had escaped from almost two decades ago. +All seems in line with Hengist’s reports,+ Kalvairn pulsed. The professor was scanning with his mind’s eye as well, though his astral vision was far less potent than Arthorias’s. +Indeed,+ Arthorias replied. He drew his consciousness back to his physical shell, feeling Kalvairn do the same. Hengist held his massive rifle in his hands, an eager grin on his face. Ko'ais was casually twirling her spiked chain. Her psyche stank of murderlust. Shura was standing with his arms folded across his chest. Arthorias did not even want to think about how the martial scientist had acquired a set of stormtrooper armor. They were all looking at him expectantly. Just like Perceval, Roland, Tristan, and Gareth did. They were not Holy Knights, and he was not their Archon. He was the Soul Stealer, and this was his warband. Arthorias smiled. “Get in position, Hengist. Ko'ais, you know what you must do. Shura and Kalvairn, you’re with me,” he said. Hengist pulled the bolt on his rifle and chambered an armor-piercing round. Without another word, he began clambering up a crag that would allow him to overlook the prison’s surface fortifications. Ko'ais grinned as the Scarlet Thorn draped its aegis over her, filling her eyes with blood and lacing her cheeks with black veins. Still twirling her spiked chain - except that it now thrummed through the air with lethal force - she began walking directly towards the Pit’s main gates. Arthorias turned and set off at a jog. His armor could still provide him with that level of vitality, at the very least. Kalvairn and Shura fell in behind. As he ran, he loosed his mind’s eye again. It was difficult to maintain both physical and ethereal perceptions, but he had the training, discipline, and sheer psychic might to do so. The professor, for all his intellectual brilliance, would have suffered a fatal aneurysm if he attempted a similar feat. +In position,+ Hengist cried mentally. +I’m ready, brother.+ Ko'ais’s mental voice was a shrill shriek, laced with rage and pain, whenever she called upon the Scarlet Thorn. She had gotten worse with each passing year. Just the previous night, when the warband had gone to sleep, all Arthorias could sense from the surface of her psyche were suffocating tendrils of agony and terror. +Proceed,+ he pulsed to Hengist. A moment later, an Ironskin warden lost his head to Milady Executioner. His decapitated corpse hurtled into a cluster of his comrades, and they all went down, cursing and shouting in horrified surprise. Brass bells began to ring all across the fortification. “Let’s go,” Arthorias said. Calling upon the dwindling strength of his soul, he dropped a shroud of inattentiveness upon himself, Kalvairn, and Shura. Any individual casting a casual glance in their direction would be subtly inclined to look elsewhere. The trio began an awkward crouching shuffle towards the side of the fortification, trying to keep their profiles as low and inconspicuous as possible. His mind’s eye saw that Ko'ais had already reached the main gate. Ironskin wardens were pointing and yelling at her. Within moments, they had unleashed a cloud of black arrows upon her. Shrieking with rage, she swept them aside with her spiked chain and hopped onto the fortification’s walls in a single bound. With Hengist’s marksmanship covering her rear and flanks, she then began to dismember every Ironskin warrior that came within reach. Soon, the entire Ironskin garrison was swarming the main gates, seeking to pull down the martial scientist. Arriving at an untended section of the fortification’s walls, Arthorias ran his gauntleted fingertips across its surface. He found a section where the stone was slightly thinner and the steel reinforcements were at their most awkward angle. “Here,” he said to Kalvairn. The professor produced a small glass vial from his robes and tossed it against the wall. Its vitriolic contents ate through the stone swiftly, allowing a subsequent telekinetic pulse from Arthorias to create a hole just large enough for them to walk through. An Ironskin warden was standing on the other side of the hole, his eyes wide with surprise at the sudden breach in the wall. Before he could bring his bow to bear, Shura leaped forward, rolled through the hole, and plunged his sword into the tribesman’s eye. Arthorias swept through the breach, his cloak flowing out behind him as he drew his own pistol in one hand and a short carbine Hengist had procured for him in the other. Both weapons sported suppressors upon their muzzles. In relative silence, he gunned down a cluster of Ironskins that had their backs turned to him and continued walking. Shura and Kalvairn followed in his wake. The professor also cradled a suppressed carbine in his arms, opting for the increased firepower the automatic weapon would give him over the subtle lethality of his needle pistols. Shura overtook him as they arrived at the main guardhouse from which the depths of the Pit could be reached. The martial scientist kicked down the guardhouse’s reinforced steel door, charged into a group of frantic tribesmen, and butchered them within the span of a few heartbeats. Kalvairn found a brass lever and pulled down on it. The heavy double doors of the Pit swung open. +We’re in,+ Arthorias pulsed to Hengist. +Get ready for phase two.+ +Acknowledged,+ came Hengist’s crudely-formed thought. In his mind’s eye, Arthorias saw Hengist eviscerate two Ironskin warriors at once with a single bullet. Covered in blood, Ko'ais was still tearing the tribesmen to pieces. Her thigh had been clipped by a black arrow, however, and she moved with a visible limp even as she danced and slew among her enemies. +Look after her,+ Arthorias added. +Aye. Fight well, Soul Stealer,+ Hengist replied. “We have little time,” Kalvairn said, aiming his carbine down into the Pit’s darkness. Shura twirled his sword lightly and nodded. The martial scientist’s face was grim and pale. Even he, ungifted as he was, must somehow be sensing the maelstrom of emotions that roared from the Pit’s prisoners. To Arthorias, the Pit was a thunderous well from which pain, fear, and despair cascaded, threatening to overwhelm and burn out his sixth sense. The three of them would have to climb to its lowest depths if they wanted to find the Forsaken. “Well, here we are, my friends,” he said. “After you.”
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May 26, 2015 04:52
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Had a bit of a hiatus, but here's a short chapter. It's pretty rough but I definitely intend to review/add to this later. Chapter 9: Divine Nature Down the spiral staircase that led into the depths of the Pit, Shura fought and killed everything in his way, be they Ironskin warden or inmate. His new sword sang in his grasp, its lethal edge a wonder in dismemberment and decapitation. Limbs flew as he cut them from torsos. Viscera clung to his ankles as he ran. Brain matter and spinal fluid matted his carapace armor. He smashed a black arrow out of the air with the back of his fist, careening the massive projectile against the Pit’s steel walls. It disintegrated into a shrapnel shower that rained down upon him and the dozen wardens trying to drag him down with iron talons. They shrieked and bled, their mouths and eyes suddenly sprouting shards of metal, but Shura stood tall amidst the falling steel, shrouded in the aegis of the Conflagration. He had reached new heights of martial science since his battle with Gittan the Mighty. He could now channel his internal energy through the seventh solar gate, where previously he could only manage to transcend the fourth. The Conflagration now burned even more fiercely, its strength filling his limbs and its aegis fortifying his cells with greater readiness. Even in the dim light afforded by the Pit’s flickering wall-mounted torches, he could see every drop of blood or sweat that hung in the air, every whisker on an Ironskin’s face, every layer of lacerated skin and flesh. He could hear every nuance of their foreign speech and their agonized cries. His flesh burned with power, but his vision was clear. His mind was focused, and his resolve was radiant. Where the Stormbringer was maddened thunder and the Scarlet Thorn was intoxicating hunger, the Conflagration was roaring fire beneath crystalline ice: it was power and purity. How would it be when he brought it to the ninth and final solar gate? Would it be even mightier than the Diamond Heart? The Stormbringer? He decapitated another Ironskin warden before hurling himself forward onto his knees into a slide amidst a cluster of archers. Shura swept his sword clockwise across his body, severing knees and spilling intestines. Ironskin limbs and organs rained down the spiral stairwell, thumping off into the darkness below, where the Forsaken were imprisoned. More wardens surged forth to meet him. Shura dove into them, sword-first. ** Arthorias and Kalvairn jogged briskly down the stairs in Shura’s wake. The professor swept his carbine to and fro, but Arthorias knew that it was a wasted gesture. Their martial scientist companion had left nothing alive in his wake except for the inmates lucky enough to have remained within their cells. Even now, he was about ten floors ahead of them. Arthorias could hear the faint sounds of battle and see the soul-fires of the Ironskins being rapidly extinguished beneath him. His sixth sense struggled with the agony, terror, and misery that suffused the Pit. The tendrils of ambient emotion had only been heightened by the carnage Shura had visited upon its wardens. Despite the strain on his mental strength, Arthorias smiled at the thought of how the Ironskin wardens’ empathic suffering now joined that of the inmates. After a few more floors, Kalvairn finally slung his carbine and concentrated on the task of picking his way through the corpses and organs that littered the narrow stairwell. +Very efficient,+ the professor pulsed. +This operation is proceeding much more smoothly than planned.+ +Indeed,+ Arthorias replied. If he had given the task of clearing the way to Ko'ais instead, he would likely have caught up with her much earlier to find her mutilating or eating the corpses of their enemies. He would then have to expend much of his mental strength tapping at her empathic centers, hoping to eventually bypass the oft-infuriating psychic immunity all martial scientists enjoyed and thereby nudge her psyche back into clarity. It was a psychic technique that he had been practicing on her for years, and it had paid off in her undying loyalty and devotion to his cause. Her crumbling sanity had also made the process easier. Perhaps once he refined the technique, it would also be effective on Shura. The Destroyer’s heir was far less volatile and unreliable than his sworn sister, whose increasing degeneracy and bloodlust would soon render her more of a liability than an asset. The sounds of battle died away. Kalvairn glanced at Arthorias, but the Soul Stealer shook his head slightly. He could sense Shura’s presence and soul-fire with his mind’s eye easily. The martial scientist had merely arrived at the Vault of the Forsaken and was holding his position, as he had been instructed to do so. As far as Arthorias could tell, the martial scientist had several minor scrapes and bruises but was otherwise completely unharmed and not the least bit exhausted. That was good. Shura would need all his strength for the battle to come. As would he. ** “Well done, my friend,” Shura heard Arthorias call from behind. He turned to see the Soul Stealer and Kalvairn jog into the massive stone chamber that lay at the bottom of the Pit. The professor seemed slightly winded, while Arthorias’s eyes were tight with strain. “I can’t open this door.” Shura gestured at the towering portal of steel that barred their way into the Vault of the Forsaken. “We’ll need more of your sorcery again, Arthorias.” “This is a three-fold pentagrammatic seal,” Kalvairn said as he adjusted his goggles. “We will need a level eighteen ritual of desecration at least.” With a sweep of his hand, Arthorias hurled a cluster of corpses into a corner, clearing an open space upon the blood-streaked floor. Blood streamed from the dead Ironskins in grayish trails that hung in the air. As Shura watched, the blood fell upon the ground to form a pentagram laced with a series of arcane runes. When he leaned down to take a closer look at the runes, he felt a stab of pain behind his eyes. He reeled and clutched his head, feeling something warm running from his nose and down his face. He reached up, smelt its coppery tang: it was blood. “I wouldn’t advise doing that, my friend,” Arthorias said. “Certain words are not meant to be read by eyes uninitiated to the ways of the Ethereal Tides.” “Powdered bone harvested from Ironskin children,” Kalvairn said as he passed a small satchel to the Soul Stealer. “This much should be enough.” “It would be better if I had living sacrifices instead, or at least some of their spinal fluid,” the Arthorias muttered. “But this will have to do.” “You might want to take a step back, Shura,” the professor said. Shura readily obliged, giving a wide berth to the sorcerous symbol Arthorias had traced on the floor. Kalvairn began lighting black candles and placing them at the corners of the pentagram. “Those human tallow candles are old,” Arthorias said critically. The professor shrugged. “I didn’t have the time to extract new ones from our enemies,” Kalvairn replied. “You know how long it takes to melt a human body down while keeping it alive and excoriated throughout the process, so I just packed some of our leftovers from our previous campaign.” The Soul Stealer sighed. He drew a small, ornate dagger from his belt. Shura found that his eyes could not quite focus on the short blade. His flesh crawled at its sight, and he felt a chill run down his spine, despite the Conflagration’s blazing aegis. Arthorias raised a gauntleted fist. One of its armored segments folded in on itself to reveal a small patch of the Soul Stealer’s pallid, vein-streaked flesh. Arthorias cut himself with the dagger, and thin, black blood oozed from the small wound. He dribbled several drops of the liquid into the center of the pentagram. Shura immediately felt the temperature within the chamber fall. The room suddenly seemed darker and full of whispers, though he knew that the three of them were the only ones there. Kalvairn began a chant that Arthorias took up a heartbeat later. Although Shura could not understand them, the words they said made him feel progressively uneasy with each syllable. He felt as if… space was folding in on itself… that an opening was being made… and that something was looking through that opening. He found himself clutching his sword in a white-knuckled grip. Cold sweat rolled down his face as Arthorias and Kalvairn continued their sorcery. The Soul Stealer had begun to chant a single multi-syllabic word over and over again. BELIAL. BELIAL. BELIAL. And then there was the sudden but certain sensation that something was in there with them. It was everywhere and nowhere, and it saw all of them: Arthorias, Kalvairn, and Shura. Every one of his warrior instincts told him to lash out, to cut, to slice, to make his enemies bleed… But he was not amongst enemies. The Conflagration burned within him, steeling his nerves and focusing his senses. He stopped trembling. His vision cleared. The apparent darkness within the chamber fell away. As a child, he and his master had fought alongside and against numerous sorcerers. He told himself that sorcery was but another craft, just like martial science and marksmanship were. Arthorias and Kalvairn were simply more proficient practitioners of this craft. The Soul Stealer’s chant reached a feverish pitch, and with a final shouted syllable, Arthorias hurled the box of powdered bone at the vault door. A tortured groan of bending metal emanated from the steel portal. Flecks of rust and corruption began to spread rapidly over its once-pristine surface. Arthorias punched the air with a clenched fist, grunting with effort as he did so. The massive doors burst apart into a shower of powdery rust, leaving the way open into the vault. “Now, for the Forsaken,” the Soul Stealer gasped as he fell to his knees. He trembled as he tried to stand. His pale features were twisted with fatigue and agony. Shura walked over to him and hoisted him to his feet. Arthorias hissed in pain. “Let’s go,” Shura said. “There’s still fighting to be done.” Kalvairn opened his mouth, likely to berate Shura, but Arthorias raised a hand to silence the professor. “You’re right, my friend,” he said. “We’re not done here, not by far.” “I have something to take away your pain,” Kalvairn broke in. The professor was holding a syringe in his hands. A drop of amber fluid leaked from its tip. Arthorias shook his head. “I’ll need a clear mind. The pain is inconsequential.” “Pain is for the weak.” Shura began walking into the vault. “At least, that’s what my master always used to say.” “Your master was a wise man,” Arthorias agreed. “Now yes, let’s go. More death and horror await. Always more death and horror.” “When has it ever been anything else?” Shura called over his shoulder. ** As they walked, and as the strain and agony began to subside, Arthorias marveled at how Shura had not been affected by the residual energies of the desecration ritual. Martial scientists were truly resistant to the Ethereal tides, but Ko'ais, unhinged as she already was, would have gone off into a feral killing frenzy while Hengist would have been reduced to a mewling crippled wreck if either of them had been present. +His biometric readings are truly astounding, so much unlike Ko'ais’s,+ Kalvairn pulsed. The professor was adjusting a knob on his goggles. +After this campaign, I must really devote some time to studying martial science… or martial scientists.+ +A worthy pursuit, my friend,+ Arthorias replied. +But we must focus on the task ahead. Are you ready?+ +Yes.+ The Soul Stealer merely nodded. Empathic waves of terror and agony flooded the vault of the Forsaken. He was feeling the merest fraction of their suffering, and it was already making him faint and lightheaded. Sometimes, he envied Kalvairn’s empathic deadness. Arthorias had looked into the professor’s soul many times, easily bypassing his psychic defenses, and saw how there was room only for curiosity, anger, and fear in its inky depths. In this aspect, the professor was even blanker and more inscrutable than either of the martial scientists. Shura came to a dead halt in front of them, his surface emotions broiling with horrified awe, and Arthorias could see why. They now stood in the heart of the vault. Thousands of stone sarcophagi lined its walls in a nightmarish formation that stretched deep into the looming darkness. Each sarcophagus was capped with psy-active crystal, a substance with which Arthorias was very intimately familiar. There was an Ironskin tribesman in each sarcophagus, living out his deepest and darkest nightmares, horrors, and agonies repeatedly in an psychically-induced dream state. These were the Forsaken, sentenced to suffer for eternity within the Pit. “What is this?” Shura asked. “Why are these men kept like this?” “Do you believe in God, my friend?” “What does that have to do with anything? I know Hegemonic priests say a lot and they really like burning people, but I’ve never paid much attention to them.” “God is real, my friend,” Arthorias said. “I say this not upon faith but as a matter of fact. I’ve seen Him. I’ve been in His presence, and a lifetime ago, His will was my strength.” “I assume you’re getting to the point within this lifetime?” “This entity, ‘God’, that has claimed dominion over the Hegemony and mankind feeds upon psychic energy,” Kalvairn interjected. “It is sustained by belief and nourished through praise and worship. The countless trillions of the Hegemony pray to and believe in 'God’, and in doing so, give it unimaginable power and virtual omnipotence over almost every aspect of reality.” “Our enemy is similar, though where God is already the lord of heaven and earth, the Silver Queen is an aspirant to divinity. You’ve already seen how the Ironskins pray to her. Their prayers give her strength and grant her mastery over this domain, the Frost Fells,” Arthorias said. “Anything that lives can be killed, divine or not,” Shura said, twirling his sword as he did so. “But nothing the both of you have said answers my question. What is going on here?” “These men are being kept alive to be psychically tortured for eternity. They are here to feel pain and terror until their very souls dwindle into oblivion,” Arthorias told him. There was a grim, bitter smile on the Soul Stealer’s face. “Why?” “Because divine entities, aspirant or actual, feed upon both suffering and worship. They need praise and pain from their supplicants,” Kalvairn said. “Think of the endless wars and genocides throughout the Hegemony. We kill and torture each other, but the Church does not care. God does not care, as long as it is all done in His name, hymns and horrors alike,” Arthorias said. “But the Silver Queen cannot yet afford to butcher and agonize her worshippers, so she feeds upon their praise and the suffering of their worst criminals.” “Well, we’re here to free them, so let’s do what we came here for,” Shura replied. He looked around in puzzlement. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin, though.” “That’s what I’m here for,” Kalvairn said. The professor was already rummaging through his satchel. “Leave the dismantling and liberating process to me.” “Then what are we here for?” Shura asked. Arthorias smiled. He pointed to the massive figure that was emerging from the shadows. It was a tall white-bearded Ironskin warrior, clad in rune-encrusted armor that was crystalline across the shoulders and vambraces but metallic across the chest and abdominal plates. His silver helmet was adorned with copper wiring and featured two long horns of bluish crystal. He wielded a greatsword that crackled with the same energy that had wreathed Gittan’s axe, and his eyes were orbs of eldritch fire. “Oh,” Shura said. “I promise you swift deaths, interlopers,” the Ironskin warrior declared. His voice was a resonant bass that hummed with otherworldly power. “I could promise you the same,” Arthorias replied, drawing his pistol and carbine. His eyes blazed with ethereal flames as well. “But that would be a lie.”
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Jun 18, 2015 03:00
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Here's another, because why not. Chapter 10: Ragnar Hellsong What is the Ether of Causality, you ask? It is the ocean of souls. It is our face, screaming at us through a cracked mirror for our blood, our terror, the deepest, darkest tendrils of hunger in our minds. It is our lord and master. It is our tyrant, and we are its slaves. And… and it calls us to feast upon the eyes and hearts of our victims. It tells us to kill! To maim! It is the song of God! It is the song of His hate! It is savagery! It is mindless purity! God hates! Kill in His name! Burn in His glory! Bleed for Him! Blood and death! God hates! God hates! God hates! [incoherent screaming] - final confession of Lazarus, former Hegemonic Bishop from the [redacted] diocese ** Kalvairn ducked into the shadows as soon as the battle began. Murdering and dissecting peasants was one thing; killing mundane Ironskin tribesmen was another. Fighting a warrior who had at least a Class One psychic capacity was something he absolutely wanted no part of. That was chore he would leave to Shura (an acceptably competent grunt) and Arthorias, his leader. His own task was far less risky, but just as complex, if not more so. He had to free the Forsaken, but more importantly, he had to bind their loyalties to the Soul Stealer. Thanks to genetic material harvested from Hengist (in whose veins flowed the blood of Ironskin royalty), Arthorias’s encyclopedic knowledge of dark rituals, and his own scientific and chemical expertise, this was an entirely feasible course of action. A staggering amount of empathic energy was being drawn from the Forsaken, amplified by the psy-active crystal network that laced the vault’s interior, before being siphoned off into the Ether to feed their enemy. The heads-up display on his goggles flickered intermittently from the ambient psychic interference, a phenomenon that was only worsened by the battle going on between his companions and the Ironskin champion. There had to be a central psychic locus for such an elaborate setup to function. Kalvairn was adequately familiar with these arrangements. After all, every Hegemonic cathedral, chapel, and excoriation chamber functioned in a similar way, and he had desecrated at least a dozen of them since his alliance with the Soul Stealer. Kalvairn was neither stupid nor imperceptive. He was keenly aware that Arthorias had delved deep within his soul many years ago, and that all his sensibilities had been subtly altered to ensure that his loyalty was absolute. The professor would sooner put a bullet in his own head first before pointing a weapon at Arthorias. What Arthorias did not know, however, that such psychic conditioning was utterly unnecessary. Kalvairn would never contemplate betrayal. The Soul Stealer was a fascinating specimen, and his very existence cast the Ethereal Tides into turmoil. A time of great upheaval and chaos was coming, and Arthorias would be at the center of it all. Kalvairn could barely wait for that to unfold, come what may. If the Soul Stealer triumphed, the professor knew that he would luxuriate in a world beset by new phenomena to be taken apart and studied. If, however, the Soul Stealer did fall, his corpse would still be prime dissection and research material. There it was! A counter in Kalvairn’s heads-up display flashed in affirmation as his goggles locked onto a small crystal sphere embedded within the vault’s innermost wall. That was where he could perform the series of rituals that would corrupt, enslave, and subsequently unleash the Forsaken. However, the Ironskin champion was near it, snarling as he exchanged sword strokes with Shura while shrugging off a hail of bullets from Arthorias. Kalvairn almost reached out with his mind to tell his companions to draw the battle elsewhere before realizing that the Ironskin champion would easily pick up any telepathic communication, reach back across its channels, and crush the professor’s soul with a single thought. Kalvairn would have to achieve his goals through stealth and subtlety, as he had done so as a street child among the rubbish-choked alleys of the megapolis in which he was born. He moved through the shadows, keeping a psychic shroud pulled tightly over his mind. It was nowhere as powerful as one that Arthorias could manifest, but it was sufficient to keep him hidden from the senses of the distracted Ironskin champion. A deflected bullet ricocheted off the ancient stone floor of the vault a hairsbreadth away from him, but the professor kept his composure. He had kept his composure when he slit his mother’s throat a lifetime ago. He had kept his composure when Dr. Magellan strapped him, still fully conscious, onto a steel operating table and began cutting and digging into his flesh. He would not fail the Soul Stealer. ** There was a lull in the battle. Shura had just been hurled against a steel pillar, and the martial scientist was getting to his feet, a trickle of blood welling from his lips. His eyes were focused, however, and Arthorias could feel his resolve burning from the inscrutable core of his psyche. The Ironskin champion was virtually unscathed. Thanks to his marvelous swordsmanship, his runic armor, and his Ethereal mastery, all that Arthorias’s bullets and Shura’s sword had managed to accomplish was a slight bruise on his strong, broad face and a small nick upon his breastplate. “It is good to see you again, Ragnar Hellsong,” Arthorias said, as he ejected the empty magazine from his carbine and slammed home a fresh one. “You have become much stronger since we last met.” “I remember you, Soul Stealer,” the Ironskin champion rumbled. “You were the one who sacrificed a dozen children in a horrific ritual just beyond eyeshot of the Pit twenty years ago. You disrupted the wards placed on this holy place, and while your Ethereal form clashed against mine, one of my prisoners escaped.” “He has returned for retribution, Hellsong.” Arthorias reloaded his pistol in a single practiced motion. “Soon, you will all get what you deserve.” “The wicked will always fall before the righteous. Even now, an Einherjar contingent and Gittan the Mighty are en route to the Pit. Whatever your foul schemes are, you have no hope of success.” “The both of you talk a lot,” Shura broke in. He brandished his sword. “Let’s fight if we’re going to fight.” Shura charged at Ragnar again, and in the blink of an eye, the two swordsmen had already exchanged a dozen blows and were locked within a storm of swords. Arthorias circled the combatants. Ragnar’s psychic might was truly immense; he could sense that the Ironskin champion was manifesting Fortification, Alacrity, and Thundering simultaneously all the while fending off Shura’s flickering blade. Ragnar’s flesh was harder than the finest-forged steel, his reflexes and movements were near super-sonic, and as his crackling blade clashed against Shura’s, each impact sent a resounding shockwave of force that rattled Arthorias’s teeth in his skull. The Soul Stealer strafed Ragnar with a volley of gunfire upon his exposed flank. The bullets bounced ineffectually off his armor and flesh but one left a minor welt upon his neck. Ragnar snarled and raised his hand, pointing an open palm at Arthorias. A bolt of ectoplasmic lightning streaked forth. Frantically, Arthorias brought forth the Dampening, stealing the Ethereal strength from the ravening projectile that would have reduced him to a charred streak upon the floor. He tapped into a portion of Ragnar’s unleashed power, feeling it flow into and vitalize his soul. Cold sweat streaked his face, but Arthorias smiled, making sure to let Ragnar see more than a hint of smugness in the expression. “Hey!” Shura cried at the distracted Ironskin. Before Ragnar could refocus his attention fully on the martial scientist who had locked blades with him, Shura leaped up and slammed his forehead into Ragnar’s nose, sending him staggering. As Arthorias watched, Shura then kicked Ragnar between the legs and drove the pommel of his sword into the Ironskin’s temple as the larger warrior keeled over. Choking in pain, Ragnar swept his forearm across so that it smashed against Shura’s face with such force that the martial scientist was sent spinning headfirst into the stone. The Ironskin lifted a massive boot to stomp down, only to have his foot impaled upon Shura’s sword. Ragnar roared in anger and agony and blasted Shura away with a telekinetic pulse. +Faltering already, Ironskin?+ the Soul Stealer pulsed, lacing his thoughts with psychic energy. +Between you and Gittan, your people have few heroes indeed. How will your tribe fare against the encroachments of the Hegemony?+ +I have more than enough power to crush you and your minions, Soul Stealer!+ Ragnar replied. +You are a worm, insidious and treacherous, but ultimately, your kind is destined only to be dragged out into the light for extermination!+ Shura spun to his feet and charged back in, holding his sword in a two-handed grip. +You may very well prevail this day, Hellsong. But what about the next? And the decade after? What will become of the Ironskins as the centuries roll by?+ +Your words are worthless! Stay out of my head!+ The Ironskin warrior barely managed to parry a sword stroke from Shura that would have opened his jugular vein. +The Hegemony will come, year after year, decade after decade, for lives are cheap and plentiful across its length and breadth. Your lands will be drowned in the blood of its men, choked by its gunpowder, and annihilated by its hatred.+ Arthorias felt a thin, brackish liquid trickling down his cheeks. He was weeping blood. The Serpent Tongue was a difficult and draining discipline to manifest and maintain. Ragnar roared. Shura had managed to land a deep cut on his forearm that caused him to drop his greatsword. The Ironskin champion kicked out, knocking the martial scientist’s weapon out of his grasp as well. Shura thundered a solid right cross into Ragnar’s face. The Ironskin champion countered with a body blow that bent Shura over, followed by an elbow drop to the back of his head, driving him to his knees. Shura reached out and grasped the back of Ragnar’s ankle. Shrieking from the effort, Shura pulled the Ironskin champion off his feet, dropping him onto his back with a resounding crash of plate against stone. +Hatred is infinite, Hellsong. Can the same be said of your strength and resolve?+ +Silence, worm! I will not deign to debate with one as foul as you!+ Shura was astride Ragnar’s chest, punching the Ironskin repeatedly in the face. Ragnar’s left cheekbone shattered under the onslaught. Arthorias saw a broken tooth fly free in a spray of blood. Ragnar hurled Shura away with another telekinetic pulse, but Arthorias sensed that this psychic manifestation was already much weaker than the previous one, which had literally skipped the martial scientist’s body across the vault’s stone floor. +Perhaps your people will triumph in the long run, after all. Perhaps the Ironskins will swell forth from the Frost Fells to bring death and destruction upon the Hegemony. Your people will enslave or exterminate mine. Your men will rape our women and kill our children. That may very well come to pass.+ +My people are above such depravities! We follow the wisdom of the great lady and are graced with her divine adoration!+ Ragnar was exchanging haymakers with Shura, and the much-smaller and lighter martial scientist was coming off the worse from the contest. Shura staggered from a left hook that had fallen across his jaw, only to be smashed upwards by an uppercut from Ragnar. But even as he reeled, Shura twirled and hammered an elbow into Ragnar’s liver. The Ironskin groaned and clutched his side. +Would you say your goddess is nobler than the Hegemonic God, then?+ +Of course! The southern Death God is an eldritch abomination responsible for the horrors that plague the Hegemony!+ +Look at what you’ve been doing, Hellsong! Look at how these men are tormented! Your goddess is sustained by human suffering, just as God is! What difference is there?+ +These men are filth! They’re scum! They have committed unthinkable atrocities, some of which rival even yours, Soul Stealer!+ +And yet they’re Ironskins, true in blood and flesh.+ +No! No!+ Shura was driving Ragnar back now, landing one heavy punch after another, denting the Ironskin’s armor beneath his fists. The fingers on Ragnar’s right hand flowed together to form a blade. He swept it across, slicing through the shoulder guard on Shura’s armor and scoring the flesh beneath. The martial scientist staggered back. With the flick of a wrist, he produced a short length of sharpened black steel. With his other hand, he drew a dagger that Arthorias knew once belonged to Ko’ais. +And so in the end, your people will triumph, achieving dominion over the Hegemony. Your goddess will devour its God and hold supremacy over all existence,+ Arthorias persisted. Ragnar and Shura were locked in a close-quarters struggle at this point, each man seeking to impale his opponent. The Ironskin’s psychic strength was faltering, though, and his muscles quivered as they strove against Shura’s martial science. +The cycle will then begin anew, with a new Hegemony, only this time with a Goddess instead of a God. Blood will flow, trillions will suffer, and all of existence will feed divine hunger, as it always has.+ +Silence! I know now what you’re trying to do!+ Ragnar shrieked mentally. +I will remain untainted by your evil! I will be pure! I will be true! I…!+ Shura drove Ko’ais’s dagger into Ragnar’s belly, the force of the blow breaking through the psychically-enhanced armor and flesh. He rammed the other blade into the side of the Ironskin’s neck. Grayish blood burst from Ragnar’s mouth. He went into a frenzy, slashing to and fro with his bladed hand. The martial scientist leaned away from the cuts and hopped backwards, putting himself out of range of Ragnar’s flailing limb. At that moment, Arthorias reached an ethereal tendril into Ragnar’s soul, found purchase on something within its depths, and pulled. Ragnar’s eyes burst from their sockets in crimson, jellied showers. Blood gushed from his ears. The Ironskin fell to his knees with a terrible, unhinged scream that signaled the complete, irrevocable disintegration of his mind. Arthorias walked up as Ragnar gurgled and bled. “But do not fear, Hellsong,” the Soul Stealer said with his fleshly voice. “The vision I spoke of will not come to pass. There will be no Ironskin dominion, no silver goddess divinely ascendant over existence. Your people will die by my hand, and I will eat your goddess’s soul after I have visited upon it every horror and defilement I know.” The only response that came from the Ironskin champion was a pathetic mewling. Arthorias holstered his weapons and seized Ragnar’s skull in his gauntleted fists. Calling upon the Devouring, he drained the Ironskin’s residual psychic energy and fed it into his own dwindling soul. All of Ragnar’s memories, skills, and knowledge flooded his mind, but with disciplined and practiced ease, Arthorias funneled them away into the recesses of his consciousness, to be called upon and consulted when necessary. When he was done, he released the husk that had been Ragnar Hellsong, letting the massive, still-breathing body crash limply upon the stone. Shura had retrieved his sword by then. He was also hefting Ragnar’s enchanted greatsword, wielding one blade in each hand. “The spoils of battle, my friend?” “Waste not, want not, like my master always used to say,” the martial scientist replied with a shrug. His face was covered in bruises, his nose was broken, and one of his eyes was rapidly swelling shut. Arthorias suspected that Shura had several broken ribs as well, along with at least some degree of intestinal rupturing. “Again, I must say that your master was a very wise man.” Arthorias glanced down at the catatonic mound of flesh and armor at his feet. “We’re done here. Let’s see how the professor is faring.” “What about him?” Shura nodded at Ragnar. “Kill him,” Arthorias said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. As he turned to walk away, he saw Shura raise the enchanted greatsword and bring it down on Ragnar’s neck. ** Kalvairn poured a vial of Hengist’s blood across the psychic control locus’s spherical, crystalline surface. He followed this with a vial of Arthorias’s plasma, chanting the third and final litany of the enslavement ritual as he did so. The corruption ritual was next. The professor unfurled a small scroll cut and rolled from human skin. A single arcane glyph had been written on its cured surface in blood. It was the symbol of Belial, the Ethereal Entity with which Arthorias had painstakingly come to an accord several years ago. Kalvairn still remembered that particular summoning. Belial had very peculiar and specific tastes, usually involving a great deal of flaying and many, many children who had to be just the right skin tone, stand below a very exact height, and possess a whole myriad of nonsensical qualities that the professor could not bother to recall. If not for Maximus’s wealth and influence, the professor doubted whether he and Arthorias would ever have been able to procure the… materials necessary for the ritual that would evoke an audience with Belial. Apparently, Arthorias and Belial had shared a longstanding professional relationship that had begun decades before Kalvairn’s first meeting with the Soul Stealer. Recognizing who had summoned him upon materializing from the Ethereal Tides, the Entity had raged and struck out immediately, but Kalvairn was ever, if nothing else, a professional: his summoning circle had been flawless, and for all his wrath, Belial had been unable to consume his and Arthorias’s souls. However, after calming down, the Entity had listened intently to Arthorias’s proposal and then laughed. A bargain had then been struck, and now Kalvairn held the embodiment of one of its terms. The corruption ritual, with Belial’s blessing, would warp and mutate the flesh of the Forsaken, magnifying their strength at least by a tenfold factor. The resulting physiological trauma would shatter whatever remained of their tormented minds, further complementing the effects of the enslavement ritual. The Ironskin’s peculiar caste structure would allow Kalvairn to bind their allegiance first to Hengist, their true-blooded prince, and by extension to Arthorias, whose psychic domination of the outcast had been completed a long time ago. The Soul Stealer would then have the seed of his army. Kalvairn placed Belial’s glyph over the psychic locus and began to chant the first litany of the corruption ritual.
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Jun 22, 2015 06:37
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After reading most of your first chapter my impression of your story would: really bad, but not incompetent. At a basic technical level you seem to have a handle on things, but your plotting, description and characterization are really weak. I may not be your target audience because I was immediately turned off by the presence of a bunch of Proper Noun characters talking who clearly embodied cliche High Fantasy / Anime stereotypes. And they proceed to have a really cliched and dull conversation about a bunch of things that I as a reader have no relationship to except that I can already imagine what they are based on the laundry list of cliches they appear to be checking off. Stuff like "the ultimate badass who is eventually killed by their apprentice" or characters going "I swore I'd kill you the next time we met!" being deployed with no sense of irony really killed any interest I would have had. If you're going to recycle these extremely venerable tropes then either do something different with them or at least ease the reader in rather than just bludgeoning me over the head in the very first paragraphs of the tale. While you aren't bogged down by overly long sentences or purple prose your writing felt really flat and sterile. I would highlight this line as particularly bad: quote:His psychic senses scrabbled around Shura's mind, finding no grasp or leverage. This feels like a D&D Dungeon Master describing the effect that a player character's spell just had (or failed to have): "You cast psychic senses but Shura's saving throw is too high." Was there really no way for you to describe this psychic battle without literally just telling the reader that it's taking place? Is there any way you can convey to use what it actually feels like to try and exercise your psychic powers, only to have them blocked by a stronger mind? Some of your other action descriptions are better than this particular line but a lot of your descriptions suffer from this common flaw: at most, you tell us what the action looks like, but you don't do much to involve our other visual senses. Also, your action scenes come off like you've watched too much anime: characters trading the occasional awesomely powerful blow, then pausing to gloat to each other, then exchanging another powerful blow, kinda sucks when you're just reading about it rather than watching it. And that sort of sums up my main objection to your piece (other than not particularly liking the plot or setting): it doesn't really feel like you value the written word very much. Instead it feels like this is really supposed to be an anime or manga. Mostly we just get a lot of expository dialogue and descriptions that feel more like instructions for the director or artist. To my mind, enjoyable prose fiction is not interchangeable with visual story telling. The strengths of prose fiction are specifically in its ability to draw the reader's imagination into the scene, to really make them feel what is happening on a visceral level. This is the essence of the "show, don't tell" mantra that is driven into writer's heads. So reading a line like "His psychic senses scrabbled around Shura's mind, finding no grasp or leverage" just kills the story as far as I'm concerned. It's 100% telling rather than showing, and because it describes a completely fantastical event I can't even plug in my own sensory experience here. I have no real frame of reference for what is happening so I'm immediately ripped right out of the scene at exactly the moment I should be getting into it. I would ask yourself to be honest here: do you really enjoy reading, or do you find that you mostly consume comic books, TV and movies? Because no offense but this came off as the work of somebody who wants to tell a story, but who isn't necessarily committed to that story being a work of prose fiction. If you're just using your story to tell a story that deep down you think should be an anime then why even bother writing it down? If you're gonna write, take advantage of the things that writing is good at rather than poorly imitating a different medium. I apologize if this comes off as harsh. You seem like you would have the capacity to be a decent writer if you put your mind to it and you avoid a lot of common mistakes so I'm absolutely not telling you to give up, but I also know from personal experience that sometimes it's important to get harsh feedback.
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Jun 22, 2015 22:32
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Helsing posted:After reading most of your first chapter my impression of your story would: really bad, but not incompetent. At a basic technical level you seem to have a handle on things, but your plotting, description and characterization are really weak. Hi, thanks for taking the time to read and comment. I really appreciate your honest feedback. I realize that there're many things that I can improve on my writing, and you've pointed out many problems with my story. I totally agree that prose is not interchangeable with visual story telling; I was just hoping that I could effectively pull off some amalgam of the two mediums, but evidently, I need to try harder. I also need to see how I can be more effective at showing than telling, especially with your point about sensory engagement. I'll likely revisit large portions of my story and definitely keep this concept firmly in mind when/if I ever do write other stuff. You're absolutely right regarding the strengths of prose fiction; I suppose I must have forgotten about what you said somewhere along the way and over the years. You're spot on regarding the 'wanting to tell a story' part too. I used to read a lot of prose fiction, but due to life, my attention span has shrunk so much I can pretty much only take in really flashy, over-the-top, and brief media these days, such as anime/manga/action movies, when and if I have the time or energy to do so. I should take the oft-given advice in this forum and go back to reading more if I ever hope to write seriously. Again, thank you so much.
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Jun 23, 2015 18:50
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