lost wings . . .
This story literally came from a dream, like so many of my inspirations do. It takes place in the same Post Apocalyptic future as Ravensblood, but several hundred years after the events of the original story. There is almost a pseudo-Victorian steampunk feel to the changing world, which is again making the mistake of wandering away from the powers of They of the Forest. (Yes, I know, I am so jumping on the steampunk bandwagon.)
There is the rise of alchemists, which means that the likes of the villainous house of Griffith are gaining power in dangerous new ways. Not all of them are evil, though, and there are also hedge magicians, those with the Sense- a less definable power than the high magic of alchemy. Some pose as alchemists and live lives as charlatans; others embrace their hedgecraft and seek to repair the breach between mortal and immortal powers. A few, like Dr. Argentine, are independent contractors, working for public or private benefactors in the growing cities to find sources of magic to rival the returning interest in mudane, potentially polluting sources of energy. The lengths they will go to in this pursuit, however, take them frighteningly close to amorality themselves.
Into the midst of this are thrust the desperate people of the towns and villages not unlike Verden, who are now cut off from the cities by being excluded from routes of the new road systems. As traders bringing necessary imports become rarer and education becomes a privilege of the wealthy and the metropolitan, village after village sells their land and manpower to mass production mills. These industrial titans can make their goods cheaper in the country and have the power to influence traders to visit the beleaguered hamlets once again; but in turn the villages become "company towns" dependent on their employers for every necessity. Most mills squeeze the inhabitants for every penny they can save, and the townspeople often find themselves party to other, less savory secondary employment opportunities.
In the case of the 12 individuals in this story, that includes being a part of Argentine's research into a burial mound near their villages. He hopes to find the source of the mound's awesome- and sinister- power to bring back to the cities, and is not above incurring collateral damage in the process. What no one counted on is Mauren Grim, a strange young woman sent by her mysterious godparents to observe the changing world and potentially avert the tragedy looming over the cemetery hill . . .
I. Cemetary
The valley dipped in the center, bowl-like, but it rose slightly steeper on the far side. The curvature there was like a bowl, too, cradling the depressed middle. A smooth carpet of ankle high grass covered the whole of both valley and rise, broken only by the barrows. But this was enough. They stood out against the green of life, ugly brown welts where nothing would grow. They looked as though the dead had been planted in the ground yesterday. But she knew that wasn’t so.
Thousands of years ago, when the world was climbing out of the chaos of the 2nd Dark Age, a people who had lived on these shores longer than any other tried to return to the ways of their ancestors. The blood and terror of the surrounding world found them eventually, and many of them met their end in these mountains. The survivors buried them here, among the very hills that they had loved, and the dead cursed these lands. The invaders would never have purchase. To this day, no one could disturb the mounds and live, or return from a night on the haunted hills.
But that was why the magician was here. The power buried within the seemingly simple shallow graves had protected these barrows for centuries now. Like so many other of his kind, the magician sought new sources of energy to bring back to the academies and the cities, clean magical sources that would help avoid another Dark Age brought on by the poison of purely mundane tech. The wind keened, low and ominous, over the broken hillside; but he was oblivious.
Mauren was not oblivious. This place hummed, vibrated with power- and a frighteningly intense desire to be left alone. She wondered if any of her fellow “volunteers” felt that way. There were twelve of them in all, most of her compatriots bearing the regional stamp upon their features, clothing, and complexion. She alone seemed to be far from home. The rest of these poor souls were locals, impoverished by the newly revived road systems making their towns and villages all but obsolete. Even if one among them might have the Sense, desperation could overpower almost anything.
Forest Gods save us all.
“Got the hunger young, eh ,hun?”
The woman speaking had a flaming mop of matted red hair, a compliment to the freckles dotting her eggshell pale skin. She was heavy, more a product of cheap food and a sedentary industrial job than any genuine excess. Mauren imagined she had been quite a country beauty before whatever mill became her town’s prime link to the outside world. Godfather spoke much about the destructive nature of too much mass production industry. He would know, too. He didn’t look it, but he was very old.
“Hunger?” she did not know this term.
“Ambition is the word they use in the cities. You want to make the money, get ahead of the gears.”
Mauren was afraid to inquire further. Something about the concept disturbed her. Such hungers never boded well for humankind.
“I’m not all that young,” she responded instead. It was a common confusion. She was, to the best of her knowledge, at least 24 turns of the wheel. Godfather and Godmother were never all that particular about those things. Her small stature and narrow face and tendency to don the conservative dresses and pinafores of much younger women and girls often left others in the dark in regards to her age.
“We all grow up faster these days,” the woman clucked. Mauren decided that she liked her. This lady was kind, in her own way. She decided to offer her name.
“I’m Mauren. Mauren Grim.”
“Delphia Kettering, and Grim’s a right good name for this place. You do know what you signed up for, don’t you?”
“We’re to spend several evenings here for Dr. Argentine’s experiment.”
Delphia scoffed.
“And you making it sound so ordinary! It’s the hunger in you, girl. They say you’ll go far with it, my children do. But I don’t know that it’s so.”
That’s wisdom.
“More that I’m a bit of an outsider. I have heard the legends of this place, though. I was sent by my . . .,” she searched for the regional term, “people. My godfather thought I might put my talents to good use here.”
“I suppose you’ll be going for the extra 40 piece, then?”
Mauren frowned. This she had heard nothing of. It must have been something foolhardy indeed, for the man to offer an extra 40 pieces of gold. Why the whole 3 night endeavor was only supposed to offer 20 pieces! She scowled up the hill, where their employer stood in his crisp white suit, tentatively prodding one of the graves with a lead capped cane. Bastard. Lead could silence the hum, divert the power of the curse. It was an alchemist trick. She doubted he would offer the same precious tool to her or any of the other volunteers. Delphia correctly took her scrutiny for its purpose, anger with the magician, but mistook her reasoning.
“Guess he’s got all the diggers he needs, if you’ve not been offered.”
“Diggers!” Mauren couldn’t even contain her horror this time. “You mean he’s- you’re-,”
“Going to try to crack open those graves? Yes’m. It’s a sorry thing to do, to be true, but they’ve been dead nigh 12 hundred years now an’ my boys will be hungry tomorrow. 40 piece will move a woman an’ her lads out of the boonies, I hear.”
All Mauren could do was stare at the pulsing, hating welts of earth and the gathering clouds piling above the hill and try to drive back the suffocating weight assaulting her lungs. The rage of those within the mound.
There is the rise of alchemists, which means that the likes of the villainous house of Griffith are gaining power in dangerous new ways. Not all of them are evil, though, and there are also hedge magicians, those with the Sense- a less definable power than the high magic of alchemy. Some pose as alchemists and live lives as charlatans; others embrace their hedgecraft and seek to repair the breach between mortal and immortal powers. A few, like Dr. Argentine, are independent contractors, working for public or private benefactors in the growing cities to find sources of magic to rival the returning interest in mudane, potentially polluting sources of energy. The lengths they will go to in this pursuit, however, take them frighteningly close to amorality themselves.
Into the midst of this are thrust the desperate people of the towns and villages not unlike Verden, who are now cut off from the cities by being excluded from routes of the new road systems. As traders bringing necessary imports become rarer and education becomes a privilege of the wealthy and the metropolitan, village after village sells their land and manpower to mass production mills. These industrial titans can make their goods cheaper in the country and have the power to influence traders to visit the beleaguered hamlets once again; but in turn the villages become "company towns" dependent on their employers for every necessity. Most mills squeeze the inhabitants for every penny they can save, and the townspeople often find themselves party to other, less savory secondary employment opportunities.
In the case of the 12 individuals in this story, that includes being a part of Argentine's research into a burial mound near their villages. He hopes to find the source of the mound's awesome- and sinister- power to bring back to the cities, and is not above incurring collateral damage in the process. What no one counted on is Mauren Grim, a strange young woman sent by her mysterious godparents to observe the changing world and potentially avert the tragedy looming over the cemetery hill . . .
I. Cemetary
The valley dipped in the center, bowl-like, but it rose slightly steeper on the far side. The curvature there was like a bowl, too, cradling the depressed middle. A smooth carpet of ankle high grass covered the whole of both valley and rise, broken only by the barrows. But this was enough. They stood out against the green of life, ugly brown welts where nothing would grow. They looked as though the dead had been planted in the ground yesterday. But she knew that wasn’t so.
Thousands of years ago, when the world was climbing out of the chaos of the 2nd Dark Age, a people who had lived on these shores longer than any other tried to return to the ways of their ancestors. The blood and terror of the surrounding world found them eventually, and many of them met their end in these mountains. The survivors buried them here, among the very hills that they had loved, and the dead cursed these lands. The invaders would never have purchase. To this day, no one could disturb the mounds and live, or return from a night on the haunted hills.
But that was why the magician was here. The power buried within the seemingly simple shallow graves had protected these barrows for centuries now. Like so many other of his kind, the magician sought new sources of energy to bring back to the academies and the cities, clean magical sources that would help avoid another Dark Age brought on by the poison of purely mundane tech. The wind keened, low and ominous, over the broken hillside; but he was oblivious.
Mauren was not oblivious. This place hummed, vibrated with power- and a frighteningly intense desire to be left alone. She wondered if any of her fellow “volunteers” felt that way. There were twelve of them in all, most of her compatriots bearing the regional stamp upon their features, clothing, and complexion. She alone seemed to be far from home. The rest of these poor souls were locals, impoverished by the newly revived road systems making their towns and villages all but obsolete. Even if one among them might have the Sense, desperation could overpower almost anything.
Forest Gods save us all.
“Got the hunger young, eh ,hun?”
The woman speaking had a flaming mop of matted red hair, a compliment to the freckles dotting her eggshell pale skin. She was heavy, more a product of cheap food and a sedentary industrial job than any genuine excess. Mauren imagined she had been quite a country beauty before whatever mill became her town’s prime link to the outside world. Godfather spoke much about the destructive nature of too much mass production industry. He would know, too. He didn’t look it, but he was very old.
“Hunger?” she did not know this term.
“Ambition is the word they use in the cities. You want to make the money, get ahead of the gears.”
Mauren was afraid to inquire further. Something about the concept disturbed her. Such hungers never boded well for humankind.
“I’m not all that young,” she responded instead. It was a common confusion. She was, to the best of her knowledge, at least 24 turns of the wheel. Godfather and Godmother were never all that particular about those things. Her small stature and narrow face and tendency to don the conservative dresses and pinafores of much younger women and girls often left others in the dark in regards to her age.
“We all grow up faster these days,” the woman clucked. Mauren decided that she liked her. This lady was kind, in her own way. She decided to offer her name.
“I’m Mauren. Mauren Grim.”
“Delphia Kettering, and Grim’s a right good name for this place. You do know what you signed up for, don’t you?”
“We’re to spend several evenings here for Dr. Argentine’s experiment.”
Delphia scoffed.
“And you making it sound so ordinary! It’s the hunger in you, girl. They say you’ll go far with it, my children do. But I don’t know that it’s so.”
That’s wisdom.
“More that I’m a bit of an outsider. I have heard the legends of this place, though. I was sent by my . . .,” she searched for the regional term, “people. My godfather thought I might put my talents to good use here.”
“I suppose you’ll be going for the extra 40 piece, then?”
Mauren frowned. This she had heard nothing of. It must have been something foolhardy indeed, for the man to offer an extra 40 pieces of gold. Why the whole 3 night endeavor was only supposed to offer 20 pieces! She scowled up the hill, where their employer stood in his crisp white suit, tentatively prodding one of the graves with a lead capped cane. Bastard. Lead could silence the hum, divert the power of the curse. It was an alchemist trick. She doubted he would offer the same precious tool to her or any of the other volunteers. Delphia correctly took her scrutiny for its purpose, anger with the magician, but mistook her reasoning.
“Guess he’s got all the diggers he needs, if you’ve not been offered.”
“Diggers!” Mauren couldn’t even contain her horror this time. “You mean he’s- you’re-,”
“Going to try to crack open those graves? Yes’m. It’s a sorry thing to do, to be true, but they’ve been dead nigh 12 hundred years now an’ my boys will be hungry tomorrow. 40 piece will move a woman an’ her lads out of the boonies, I hear.”
All Mauren could do was stare at the pulsing, hating welts of earth and the gathering clouds piling above the hill and try to drive back the suffocating weight assaulting her lungs. The rage of those within the mound.