Hello Steemiterung,
I have got the highfalutin notion that I might write a fantasy novel. This all comes from an, now expanding, idea that I've gottten from having done a character icon illustration for an online role-playing "virtual-tabletop" website called Roll20.net, which you can see here.
It's the image of (copyright, all rights reserved, as they say, for both the images and the foregoing fantasy novel idea) "Intolass the Mad" that I'm, specifically, referring to.
While I was drawing, even while doing loose sketches, the idea of this character began to gain momentum with me.
I'd be curious to know if anyone finds the below writing sample of how I think this character's novel might take form seems to you. Real talk though, if this notion were fleshed out with some "reasonable skill", do you think you, personally, might be interested in reading something, more long-form, like this?
This post, is more angled toward genuine "fantasy fans" of course, but feel free to chime in though. I'd really like to know before I dive in, what the Steemiterung might think. At any rate, thank you for taking a look, and here it is. This was to be the opening chapter to start, but I'm discovering contemporary fantasy fans feel opening with a battle scene is especially trite, but anyway:
Note: Steemit editor seems to be interpreting the first several paragraphs as "Markdown" in a way that I don't understand. So, also, if anyone has any ideas about that... Pardon, if you would... ;)
Intolass The Mad
by
Allen Rees
Chapter One
It seems as though the sky no longer exists. It is mostly clear, a little hazy and still bright, perhaps a bit after midday. Very few take note though, most eyes, minds and arms are fixed to their immediate surroundings in the broad Brinum Plain. The risen temperature, normally so welcome in every burgeoning spring, is forgotten now beneath the thrum and horror of battle. The very wildflowers now are churned and buried in the muddy tumult of war.
There is very little time to gaze skyward, and only those who have the keen sense of perhaps becoming prey dare to even snatch a glance.
The pooling and languorous flocks of carrion birds out at the edges of vision, where the plain begins to give way to the rising foothills of the Crescent range. They dare not approach yet, as far more fearsome things are alight. As all know, battle in the open plain cannot protect one from being plucked from the field by winged, and otherwise aloft, foes. Yet, one must never forget the dangers right on the ground before you.
She can’t see. Her eyes are smeared across with blood, clay and sod. She pauses, and though air vexes like fire in her chest to get immediately in, and then again to escape, she willfully slows her breathing, almost to a stop. She plants both feet widely, allows a wary flexibility in her knees, and listens.
There are no enemies within ten strides of her that she can tell, after just having speared the nearest. The shaft, stuck between her enemy’s ribs, snaps against his slumping bulk while she’s still trying to pry it out. He slings a fistful of soil – mineral-like, blood-like – into her helm and face and mouth as a, final, feint. She has a moment. Clawing furiously to clear her visor, her entire helmet comes spiraling away. The release sweeps some of the muck from her eyes and streaks it through her already heavy and matted hair.
When the helm comes clear of her skull, her rusty auburn braids loose their tie and fall out, two banded rivers , the color of fresh blood on old iron. She pivots toward where she hears the most recent clatter of engagement.
Upon beholding the shear wickedness of intent on her face at the moment of her rearing about, one foe tries to come up short. He fails, in a miserable, heel-first skid. He hisses,
“Wait...”
Her own boot’s heel crashes into his chest, even through his poor, provincial, armor she feels the flex and give of his breastbone, satisfying. She follows with a second crisp heel to the nose. His fellows are too close for her to waste a spare moment to take him now, priorities.
Another enemy has already flanked her and she can hear his charging howl, she now heaves an inward breath, turns back to the breath and the heart, a beat. His compatriot also lunges, swinging, seems like...a mace? She drops the broken spear haft, pulls a long knife from her belt and rushes forward square toward the center of his chest. It is desperate. It is close. She arrives inside his reach and punches him just back of the elbow of his weapon arm. The weapon snaps past her ear with a confirmational wet punch into the head of the second attacker. Her long knife finds its way, even in her haste, into his
armpit. He is certainly surprised, but it does not put him down. The fight though, is definitely out of him. She, whips the knife back out and rolls away a few lengths, ready to finish the second.
She rears up drawing her palm down over her heated face, clearing the most of the remaining muck from her eyes. The second’s skull has been caved at the right eye socket, she whirls about as he topples. Amidst the horror, she finds a small eye of calm.
She sees across the field, in the center of the great battle, the Praetors of Elk’Tahs, ringed about him. They bristle with weapons and the reek of old powers. Their very presence seems to waver and fluctuate in the contorting air about them. Elk’Tahs himself, a shadow creature, once a seeming figment of her imagination seems now, all too real. He wears a great iron bound club at his waist, though he has not deigned to wield it, as his two great hands, whirl fiercely above, astride and before him. In an almost beguiling contortion, drawing bright eddies within the very air about him, those hands marshal immense powers all their own.
Her skin becomes cold. The breath is easier now. The coolness of her skin drains, slowly, into her gut. The battering pulse and thrum of the punishing crafts of Elk’Tahs and his minions, at first, tears at her. She breaths, acrid air full of the scent life and newly taken life. Then the pulsations batter her, and she breaths. The withering onslaught of energy she now tunes, it no longer pushes, or oppresses, it now is merely felt. It begins to swim over her. It’s oscillations come to feel synchronous, even harmonic, a struck chord on a lyre. Even despite the metallic flavors in her nose and in her mouth, she can begin to taste it, and she begins to stalk forth.
The vanguard of her allies strive against the praetors, only the strongest in will can manage to even strike a blow. Full on a third, though enraged and straining, seem slowed and diminished, so darkly wrought are the energies pouring forth upon them.
One warrior of the alliance, releases a cry. He wields a glimmering axe with both hands. He seems to put his very being into the stroke and the blade bites into shoulder of one of the praetors and he falls.
There is a ripple in the whirling energies, a break in the circle. She can feel it. She picks up her pace, now a dead run, she can no longer feel the straps and studs of her normally confining armor. With each footfall, her focus keens. She slows her heart, sucks in an immense breath, then a shattering exhale and flings herself into the cleft in the energy attacking the next foes in the infernal wall.
Her own battle cries seem distant and far from her now. She leaves the long knife embedded in the neck of a praetor and, whip-like, draws a broad short blade that she knows is good this close in. Her host of allies begin to press more forcefully in after her, feeling the waining of the powers. Great creatures and men and women of the alliance, wielding great powers, stewarding arrays of summoned creatures, their weapons of legend and all manner of arcana, working the breach.
The breath is now like a continuous circle, an effortless loop. She feels her song rising, and she is gone.
There is a misted red haze. There is a high ringing vibration. She realizes this knell is within her own mind. It feels as though her joints may tear or snap in her body’s eagerness to whip out in any direction, at the next successive foe.
Her lungs are burning. She spits, once, twice. Blood and ichor dribble from her lips and chin. She is faintly aware that she is surrounded. Voices, not violent, but cautious and hailing call her back. She makes an animal pirouette, releasing a bellowing cry, ready to strike. Her short blade hanging, now weakly from her hand, quivering with exhaustion.
“Intolass, it is done.”
“Elk’Tahs is fled, come back to us.”
The red misted haze subsides. She finds she can no longer stand. First to her knees and then fully side-ward, she falls.
The breath is ragged in her chest now, arrhythmic and clawing.
A face begins to come into focus before her. Her sword arm instinctively whips up to strike, fumbling the blade. There is less strength in it now than a child’s and it is easily and firmly caught about the wrist.
She focuses. An elderly woman leans closer into her vision. She feels a new warm wetness upon her face. The woman is crying and whispering soothingly to her. Her head lolls in her exhaustion and she can now see the charred and blackened ground where Elk’Tahs had stood, now silent.
“Elk...”, she struggles
“We have broken them child.
“He is fled.
“Our day, at least, is won, your day is won.
“Now sleep.”
The elderly woman slowly brings down her caught risen arm and gently folds it across her raggedly heaving breast. The elderly woman whispers sacred things, old things. As her warm and flowing tears, wash Intolass’ face, the woman softly touches her gore spattered cheek and whispers again.
“Sleep.”
Chapter Two
It is warmer this morning. The chill of winter is winding away. The new buds are forming on the barren limbs of the trees...
Thanks again for taking a peek!
Best,
A
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