i wrote then i got sidetracked by weapons on wikipedia
SO. Im writing. Somewhat. Even though Im not sure I know what Im doing even half the time. Also, keep getting lost in wikipedia's lords, lady, viscounts, earls, courtesy titles & etc pages. One day my brain will have soaked this up and I will be very worried for my skull filler.
But yes. Tentatively the start of A Fantasy Novel.
CORPS
Long haired sailors bustle around him; going about their tasks with a dedicated ease that came from years of proud tradition. Upon this ship, or any ship like it, they were the masters of their own futures, the ship's every movement expected. These People held their own against whatever the Seas threw at them with practised skill.
Once Raithan knew what that felt like.
The thin man shoves that thought away, pushes it down to sit in the dark depths of his mind where he locks memories of his past. Memories of an old friend threaten to rise, Sunsa had come from the same stock as these sailors.
No, he thinks, I will not think of that.
Those days were long gone. Besides, he was someone different now; a remade man with a flawlessly fabricated past. The lordling Viscount Raithan Menoir, Count Menoir's foundling son of little influence and less land but with the uncanny knack of amassing a great deal of wealth.
It feels strange to have done so well for himself when his previous - past - employ had not been the sort that allowed for success in other pursuits, nor was one ever actually meant to leave and attempt to change professions. Or, at least, it hadn't.
No matter, he had gotten bored of playing the successful merchant lordling, just like, he suspects, he would tire of any endeavour that was not the one he was currently undertaking.
He taps the rhythm of an unheard tune upon the wooden railing and stares out over the turquoise waves, imaging he can already see the spires of the glorious coastal city Sarendael. Capital of COUNTRY, seat of the crown bloodline and his destination.
The coast can't be far off now, he thinks, anticipation raising his heartbeat. That would do him no good, now more than ever he needs a cool head and a calm mind. Raithan blanks his mind, clearing it of the turmoil of thoughts and memories that clutter it. He holds onto that emptiness. With eyes on the ocean, Raithan contemplates the murder he's planning to commit.
"You ever see something so grand, Viscount?" The small bells in the Captain's hair tinkle gently in the breeze contrasting against the boom of his voice and his heavy hand slapping down on the rail beside Raithon's. Raithan tears his eyes away from the horizon where Sarendael's spires are slowly coming closer and looks at the man.
"No." He lies. In truth the city does not seem so grand to him. The last time he had seen this view it had been through lightning and torrential rain. Stowed away on a barely sea-faring boat he had been feverish, scared and soaked to the bone, unable to guess whether his end would come from the rough seas threatening to drown him or from the blood that turned the water around him a rusty red. Back then, he remembered thinking that dry ground had become a forgotten fantasy never to be seen again.
Those memories would sour the view for him, even if the circumstances of his leaving hadn't been as they were.
The Captain gazes at the distant city, dark spires jutting from white cliffs, with a fondness in his eyes that surprises Raithan.
"Ah, I forget, you're an Island-bound, you've not yet seen our Capital, have ye lad?"
"No," he lies again, because Viscount Menoir had lived his entire boring life on the Islands and this would be his first outing onto the war driven mainland.
I recently made this, like, monday night. I am really not sure where shes going, but so far the world building has certainly been entertaining. Even if the writing isnt strictly traditional fantasy.
Shadows
Okay, so Jack doesn't like knives. Back when Jack was small in both size and years and had been named something else he hadn't liked knives. Back when Jack had been made nameless and dressed in the heavy dark weight of Shadows he had defied decades of traditon by refusing to use curved saber offered to him.
That needs to be said.
So if you hear a story, if the drunk beside you tells of the money you can make by finding a wayward Shadow, it might be best remembered that Jack, with a loathed blade, took the King's Lead Shadow's head.
And that story will be told.
Of course, they will miss bits out. Like how at the time Jack had been the Shadow's Second In Command. Or how the Lead - Elantu - had been his brother.
But that story is not this story. Nor is it the start of this one.
The start isn't when Elantu-that-wasn't-Elantu and Jack-that-wasn't-Jack first became shadows; tiny boys with stick thin limbs, hungry eyes and only each other.
Isn't before that either, isn't the before that none of thm really remembered, not really. Not after the heavy medallion was hung around their necks, or after their screams died in bloody throats and they were welcomed into the Shadow.
The start was maybe further before that, before even the foggy, vague memories of before, just as maybe the end will only come after dust has long settled on the last pages of this one story.
But this story, for all it's not-starts and never-ends, begins after Jack had taken his brother's head. When his face is plastered on every wanted poster from the seas to the Pires, and for the first time since it happened Jack is glad that his face is no longer as smooth and young as the image depicts him.
"You are in a spot of trouble, little brother." The voice of his brother is grating despite all it's politeness. Jack can not remember him being so damned affable when he had been alive.
"Shut up." Jack has very little money and this inn is likely the only one in which he will be able to afford a pallet to sleep on out of the rain. He needs to be not acting like a mad man in front of the innkeeper. Talking to people no one can see does not help him in the slightest.
"Just stating the obvious. I would have thought you would appreciate the gesture," Jack can see him. Inspecting his nails like the dead could actually get dirt under them. Jack maybe hates him now; that's a little unsettling, he had never hated his brother when he was alive.
"Be quiet, this is all your doing anyway." Jack whispers as soon as the innkeeper is out of earshot.
"Oh yes, this is all on me." Eyes roll as sarcasm drips from his words. "Especially the part where you, you know, cut my head off. Did you really think that one through, little brother?"
"Shut up, you're dead."
"Yes, as you did make quite sure with the whole sticking my head on a spike. In front of the Shadow Gate no less." The shade leans against table, pale elbows jutting out from the blackest of black robes, and he looks so damned alive. "I have got to ask, was that fuck you to me, or to everyone else?"
Jack eyes him. For a moment he imagines he can see those little girls again. Jack's weapon of choice has always been sovnya, just as his brother's had been the elegantly curved kilij. But that day Elantu had weilded a hatchet and, after the witch's curse had sunk deep into Jack's very self, he woke to see what a grown man could do with that small axe.
"You're dead." He whispers again, feeling eyes of the inn's patrons upon him.
"I thought you liked to speak to the dead, little brother." His voice is sickly sweet and bitterly sharp. "Isn't that why you're here?"
"You should've just let me go."
"I couldn't do that. No Shadow has deserted in the eighty seven years it has served. I couldn't allow that to happen while I was in Lead."
"How is this any better?" Jack snarls. He has to be out of sight soon, his head is aching and eyes are beginning to water. Whether it be the witch's touch or that he had taken his brother's - his blood's - life, he knows enough to know that something inside him is broken. At the very least he can wait to be weak where no one can see.
"I am sorry about your face." Elantu's voice actually sounds sincere. Somehow even the shade knows that Jack is teetering on an edge. "I was always jealous of you being the pretty one."
The man who calls himself Jack glares at him through watery eyes.
"I was not the pretty one."
.
But yes. Tentatively the start of A Fantasy Novel.
CORPS
Long haired sailors bustle around him; going about their tasks with a dedicated ease that came from years of proud tradition. Upon this ship, or any ship like it, they were the masters of their own futures, the ship's every movement expected. These People held their own against whatever the Seas threw at them with practised skill.
Once Raithan knew what that felt like.
The thin man shoves that thought away, pushes it down to sit in the dark depths of his mind where he locks memories of his past. Memories of an old friend threaten to rise, Sunsa had come from the same stock as these sailors.
No, he thinks, I will not think of that.
Those days were long gone. Besides, he was someone different now; a remade man with a flawlessly fabricated past. The lordling Viscount Raithan Menoir, Count Menoir's foundling son of little influence and less land but with the uncanny knack of amassing a great deal of wealth.
It feels strange to have done so well for himself when his previous - past - employ had not been the sort that allowed for success in other pursuits, nor was one ever actually meant to leave and attempt to change professions. Or, at least, it hadn't.
No matter, he had gotten bored of playing the successful merchant lordling, just like, he suspects, he would tire of any endeavour that was not the one he was currently undertaking.
He taps the rhythm of an unheard tune upon the wooden railing and stares out over the turquoise waves, imaging he can already see the spires of the glorious coastal city Sarendael. Capital of COUNTRY, seat of the crown bloodline and his destination.
The coast can't be far off now, he thinks, anticipation raising his heartbeat. That would do him no good, now more than ever he needs a cool head and a calm mind. Raithan blanks his mind, clearing it of the turmoil of thoughts and memories that clutter it. He holds onto that emptiness. With eyes on the ocean, Raithan contemplates the murder he's planning to commit.
"You ever see something so grand, Viscount?" The small bells in the Captain's hair tinkle gently in the breeze contrasting against the boom of his voice and his heavy hand slapping down on the rail beside Raithon's. Raithan tears his eyes away from the horizon where Sarendael's spires are slowly coming closer and looks at the man.
"No." He lies. In truth the city does not seem so grand to him. The last time he had seen this view it had been through lightning and torrential rain. Stowed away on a barely sea-faring boat he had been feverish, scared and soaked to the bone, unable to guess whether his end would come from the rough seas threatening to drown him or from the blood that turned the water around him a rusty red. Back then, he remembered thinking that dry ground had become a forgotten fantasy never to be seen again.
Those memories would sour the view for him, even if the circumstances of his leaving hadn't been as they were.
The Captain gazes at the distant city, dark spires jutting from white cliffs, with a fondness in his eyes that surprises Raithan.
"Ah, I forget, you're an Island-bound, you've not yet seen our Capital, have ye lad?"
"No," he lies again, because Viscount Menoir had lived his entire boring life on the Islands and this would be his first outing onto the war driven mainland.
I recently made this, like, monday night. I am really not sure where shes going, but so far the world building has certainly been entertaining. Even if the writing isnt strictly traditional fantasy.
Shadows
Okay, so Jack doesn't like knives. Back when Jack was small in both size and years and had been named something else he hadn't liked knives. Back when Jack had been made nameless and dressed in the heavy dark weight of Shadows he had defied decades of traditon by refusing to use curved saber offered to him.
That needs to be said.
So if you hear a story, if the drunk beside you tells of the money you can make by finding a wayward Shadow, it might be best remembered that Jack, with a loathed blade, took the King's Lead Shadow's head.
And that story will be told.
Of course, they will miss bits out. Like how at the time Jack had been the Shadow's Second In Command. Or how the Lead - Elantu - had been his brother.
But that story is not this story. Nor is it the start of this one.
The start isn't when Elantu-that-wasn't-Elantu and Jack-that-wasn't-Jack first became shadows; tiny boys with stick thin limbs, hungry eyes and only each other.
Isn't before that either, isn't the before that none of thm really remembered, not really. Not after the heavy medallion was hung around their necks, or after their screams died in bloody throats and they were welcomed into the Shadow.
The start was maybe further before that, before even the foggy, vague memories of before, just as maybe the end will only come after dust has long settled on the last pages of this one story.
But this story, for all it's not-starts and never-ends, begins after Jack had taken his brother's head. When his face is plastered on every wanted poster from the seas to the Pires, and for the first time since it happened Jack is glad that his face is no longer as smooth and young as the image depicts him.
"You are in a spot of trouble, little brother." The voice of his brother is grating despite all it's politeness. Jack can not remember him being so damned affable when he had been alive.
"Shut up." Jack has very little money and this inn is likely the only one in which he will be able to afford a pallet to sleep on out of the rain. He needs to be not acting like a mad man in front of the innkeeper. Talking to people no one can see does not help him in the slightest.
"Just stating the obvious. I would have thought you would appreciate the gesture," Jack can see him. Inspecting his nails like the dead could actually get dirt under them. Jack maybe hates him now; that's a little unsettling, he had never hated his brother when he was alive.
"Be quiet, this is all your doing anyway." Jack whispers as soon as the innkeeper is out of earshot.
"Oh yes, this is all on me." Eyes roll as sarcasm drips from his words. "Especially the part where you, you know, cut my head off. Did you really think that one through, little brother?"
"Shut up, you're dead."
"Yes, as you did make quite sure with the whole sticking my head on a spike. In front of the Shadow Gate no less." The shade leans against table, pale elbows jutting out from the blackest of black robes, and he looks so damned alive. "I have got to ask, was that fuck you to me, or to everyone else?"
Jack eyes him. For a moment he imagines he can see those little girls again. Jack's weapon of choice has always been sovnya, just as his brother's had been the elegantly curved kilij. But that day Elantu had weilded a hatchet and, after the witch's curse had sunk deep into Jack's very self, he woke to see what a grown man could do with that small axe.
"You're dead." He whispers again, feeling eyes of the inn's patrons upon him.
"I thought you liked to speak to the dead, little brother." His voice is sickly sweet and bitterly sharp. "Isn't that why you're here?"
"You should've just let me go."
"I couldn't do that. No Shadow has deserted in the eighty seven years it has served. I couldn't allow that to happen while I was in Lead."
"How is this any better?" Jack snarls. He has to be out of sight soon, his head is aching and eyes are beginning to water. Whether it be the witch's touch or that he had taken his brother's - his blood's - life, he knows enough to know that something inside him is broken. At the very least he can wait to be weak where no one can see.
"I am sorry about your face." Elantu's voice actually sounds sincere. Somehow even the shade knows that Jack is teetering on an edge. "I was always jealous of you being the pretty one."
The man who calls himself Jack glares at him through watery eyes.
"I was not the pretty one."
.