Chapter 1: Shadow Man (Part 2)

Find Samuel Matthews

The screen went dark and the door behind the boy whisked open. He spun around just as three men came rushing through the door, each of them holding small silver rods; the ends point at the boy glowed red, and the rods made a low buzzing noise that grew louder and higher until the whole room was filled with a piercing whine so awful the boy covered his ears almost without meaning too. The men in white spread out as they piled into the room, their dark eyes focused on him, and the boy stepped back, pressing his bare back against the smooth, cold surface of the pedestal.

More men in white crowded the corridor outside the door, he could see them milling about and shouting at one another, and at the three men already inside the room. Why didn’t they all come in to catch him? He’d never be able to escape so many. They must think three men more than enough to corner him. Even if he made it past these three, he’d never get past the others.

The door slammed shut behind the three men—one of them cursed under his breath but none made a move towards the boy. Which was good, because the whine from the three red-tipped rods was making it hard for him to focus on anything. The sound was beyond painful, it felt like a pair of the sharp needles the Watchers used to poke and prod him during examinations were being pushed into his ears. He couldn’t move . . . he could hardly breath. The whining buzz rose even higher, and the boy fell to his knees. His vision blurred and doubled as he gasped for air, but still the men stayed back, huddling close to the wall. Why didn’t they come and take him? At least that would stop the noise.

The man standing between the other to pointed at the boy and shouted, “Get him! Get him now!” He sounded so scared that the boy would have laughed had he been able to breath. The other two men glanced at each other, one of them shaking his head. Neither moved. Red in the face like he’d been running all day, the first man grabbed the one on his right by the shoulder and pushed him forward. “Take him now, dammit! That’s an order! Hurry before something happens!”

The man he’d pushed muttered some word the boy hadn’t ever heard before and took another step forward. His partner on the left glanced one more time at the first man, the followed the other man towards the boy. When they were two steps away their rods clicked loudly, and the pulsing red light at their tips flashed to bright blue. The piercing noise vanished with the red light, and the boy gasped in relief, falling forward on his hands. The blue light coming from the two rods grew brighter and brighter and began to crackle and pop, tiny flashes of light leaping from the tip and snapping in the air.

“All right you little freak,” one of the men said, “Don’t move.”

The other man reached out slowly with a trembling hand, moving to grab the boy by the back of his neck. He didn’t understand what was happening—too many weird things had happened today for him to understand any of it—but the boy did understand one thing: if the men caught him, if they even managed to touch him, they’d put him back in his tube. He’d be stared at and pocked and prodded and cut by the Watchers, and he’d never be free again.

He couldn’t let that happen.

The man’s fingers were inches from his skin when the boy jerked back, rolling up onto his feet faster even than he would have thought possible.

He’d never spoken to another person before, not that he could remember, but he put all his strenght into one word, one sound that he screamed as loud and as long as he could:

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

The room exploded. The banks of screens running the perimeter of the room shattered, jagged shards of glass and metal ripping through the air. The computer pedestals dotting the floor burst open, sparks racing across their bent and twisted surfaces, monitors and screens flipping through the air, crashing and rupturing against the walls and ceiling and floor. Fire, smoke and steam boiled out of the broken pedestals and gaping lines of missing screens, throwing the whole room into an even deeper darkness. The two men who’d approached the boy barely had time to scream before they were blown away, caught up in the rain of glass and heat. Then, almost faster than it had started, the storm was over.

The boy stood alone in the middle of the room, heart thumping so hard it felt ready to jump out of his chest, bits of glass that lodged in the ceiling tinkling down through the smoke aorund him. A screen that had somehow remained upright during the explosion crashed to the floor behind him and the boy jumped with a strangled shriek, hurriedly stepping down from the raised pedestal, bare feet crunching painfully across chips of broken glass.

The room was a disaster, every monitor blown, every light out. The four walls bowed outward, like a giant or something had pounded them out of shape. Smoke still swirled in the air, lit now and then by the harsh glare of sparks leaping from exposed wires. Alarms were blaring again, but they sounded thin and hollow, like they were far away. Air hissed loudly somewhere off to the right and the boy shivered. He could feel it getting colder. There were three limp shapes huddled against the walls, two to the boy’s left and right that he tried not to look at, and one slumpled against the door.

As for himself, the boy thought he was okay. His arms and legs were trembling, his feet hurt where the glass had cut him, his chest was still heaving, but other than that he was fine. Something, a quiet voice in the back of his head, whispered that this wasn’t right, that the glass and fire should have cut and burned him, that he should have been thrown from his feet like the three men where weren’t moving anymore. He shouldn’t just be . . . well, fine.

The man crumpled against the bottom of the door didn’t move when the boy tapped him on the shoulder, but the door behind him tried to slide open. It got caught less than half way open, and when the boy bent closer to investigate, he saw that it had been bent outwards somehow, like something had hit it. With a squeal of gears the door tried to open again. There was a grinding sound from inside the wall and then a shower of sparks rained down around the boy and the door ground to a halt. It was stuck.

There should be just enough room to squeeze through, the boy decided, after studying the thin opening for a moment. Just one problem: the man was still laying in the way; one of his arms had flopped out into the hallway.

He tried pushing the man through the opening first, but his stomach was too big, so he settled on dragging the man by his thick wrists. Being so close to the man was unnerving, and as he pulled and tugged the body across the floor, the boy tried to keep most of his body as far away as possible. The man was heavy, and despite the chill that seemed to be creeping into the room from all sides, the boy soon worked up a sweat. To make things worse, the man smelled strange. The boy didn’t recognize the odor, but whatever it was it was strongest near the man’s face, and it made the boy’s stomach growl.

By the time he managed to get the big man away from the door the boy was shivering, despite the slick of sweat on his skin. His breath steamed in small white puffs in front of his eyes as he picked his way carefully through the glass back to the door. Unlike the man’s fat stomach, the boy slid through the opening without a problem.

Outside the room the hallway had gone dark, save for the still-flickering light directly above. He could see the nearest tubes on either side, but beyond them everything was shrouded in darkness. The alarms that had been blaring right after the explosion had been silenced, and the only sound the boy could hear was the faint sigh of air rushing past him into the room, nice and warm on his chilled skin. He frowned. There hadn’t been a wind before. At least it was warmer in the hall.

Not only was the hallway dark, it was empty too. The crowd of men he’d seen through the doorway was nowhere to be seen. He tried to peer throught he darkness to either side, hoping to find some sign of where the men had gone, but he couldn’t see anything. It was too dark, and he didn’t want to step out of the dim light. Not at all.

The light flickered again, and something moved in the darkness beyond the tubes to the boy’s right. He gasped, spinning around to face the motion. He couldn’t see anything but the pitch blackness. Eyes wide, the boy kept watching, heart pounding in his throat.

Something moved again, a shape so inky black it made the shadows around it seem bright. The shape slid forward towards the boy, sucking in the shadows around it. The boy should have been able to see it better as it came closer to the light. Instead, the pale light seemed to retreat from the oncoming shadow. A wave of solid darkness rolled towards the boy, who scrambled backwards until he was hugging the far edge of the small circle of light.

Only once it was so close the boy could have reached out and touched it did the shadow stop, rearing up until it filled the hallway from one wall to the other, so dense and dark that the boy couldn’t even see the nearest tubes anymore. The shadow moved like steam, rolling and boiling inside of itself, thin tendrils like black fog waving gently in the air.

His eyes must have still been adjusting, because the boy suddenly realized he could see a person inside the black cloud. At least, it was a shape like a person. Only it looked too tall and too thin, with long arms and legs bent at odd angles. He could see eyes too, two points of light that glowed a sickly green-and-white deep inside the cloud of darkness. The sound of breathing filled the hallway, a long slow sighing that rattled the boy’s chest, and the Shadow Man took another step forward.

The boy was afraid. More afraid than he’d ever been in his entire life. Even the Watchers and their helpers in white uniforms hadn’t terrified him like this. He tried to scream, but his throat locked. He couldn’t run . . . he was surprised his legs hadn’t collapsed alread. The chill that had filled the room seeped out into the hallway, and his teeth started chattering, the snot in his nose froze and the sweat on his skin turned to ice.

Again the Shadow Man moved closer, leaning down to stare at the boy. Icey fingers that he couldn’t see ran over his bare scalp and then the boy’s throat unlocked and he screamed as those invisible fingers dug into his brain. He could feel the Shadow Man digging through his mind, searching, hunting. Hunting for what? The boy cried out again and fell to his knees as his mind was turned inside out.

The boy realized he was going to die.

And then the Shadow Man disappeared

The lights in the hallway switched on one by one, racing away from the boy on either side, bathing the tubes in their harsh white glare, and the boy squeezed his eyelids shut against the too-bright light. The air was warm again, so warm that it almost felt hot, and the frozen sweat on his arms and legs melted, running down his body and pattering on the metal beneath his feet.

When he finally opened his eyes, the hallway was empty except for the his brothers and sisters in their tubes, and himself.

Somehow, that didn’t make the boy feel any better.

Apologies, I know this is two posts in a week, but I wrote this out today and wanted to get some feedback.

Questons:

1) I'm trying to keep the writing a lot more simple in this book than in Spear of the Ancients. How does it read to ya'll?

2) are there any parts you got confused with?

3) How is my description of the surroundings? Confusing at any point?

4) Suggestions?

Chapter One: Storms from the North (Part 3)

“And you expect the boy to believe that, Uthar?” Danel interjected, “Even a man as . . . eloquent as yourself may find it hard to explain eighteen years of secrets and lies.”

If Uthar’s face had been a thundercloud before, now it was a firestorm, staining his face red as he whirled back and forth between Ethyn and Danel like a cornered polecat, first shaking a fist at Danel with a strangled, “Get out of here. Now!” then spreading upturned palms towards Ethyn and—in a pleading tone that was somehow worse than the unrestrained rage directed at Danel—said, “Ethyn, please. Don’t pay this fool any mind. I will explain everything.”

“There is no time to explain anyting.” Danel cut in smoothly again, taking a bold step back towards Ethyn—which conveniently put him a little further away from Uthar. “I understand your mistrust of me. Yes, I even your hate. The Ward alone knows you have a good enough cause for it. If it was in my power to bring your father back I would. But that authority is not given me, and you’ll have to resign yourself to that truth another time. Tonight you have a decision to make. If you value your son’s life, you must put your feelings aside and do as I say. The Enemy has found you out.”

The color drained from Uthar’s face and he glanced over his shoulder, back towards the house and the road to Grand Crossing. When he turned back, however, his features may as well have been etched from the steel he worked with.

“Leave now.”

Danel grunted. “Didn’t you hear me? Your secret is lost, Uthar, your precious Family located.” One frail hand pointed west, towards the village proper. “The darkspawn will descend on this village just as they did on Mattham.” The light from the forge sputtered, flashing like blood on Uthar’s suddenly drawn face.

For his part, Ethyn could only gawk, his mind reeling with each new word. Each new word spawned a thousand questions, but the Ward ban him, the only question he could focus on was: Mattham? Who was Mattham?

Danel’s voice drove forward, relentless as a pounding hammer. “Your friends and neighbors will be slaughtered, farms and buildings burned, just as it was in the north. With luck you and some few of your Family will escape with your lives, the pitiful remnant of a bloodline hunted since the end, five thousand years ago, a diminished remnant of a promise broken long ago.”

As he spoke, Danel seemed to regain some of the confidence he had exuded back when he’d first appeared, voice gaining strength and shoulders squaring back. For his part, Uthar shrank in on himself. Danel’s words were a knife in the blacksmith’s gut, and the old man just kept twisting the blade deeper.

“You’ve played the fool for the better part of twenty years, man,” Danel growled. “Don’t make your son suffer for your mistakes.” To that, Uthar said nothing, and Danel pressed on, real emotion lacing his ragged deep voice for the first time. Hope. Hope and something else. Could it be excitement? “Let me take Ethyn. Let me take your son away where the Shadow will never find him. With him gone, you and the Family will be forgotten. You’ll be free. Free to live out your life in peace and plenty with your wife and daughters at your side. Free, Uthar. What more can a man ask for?”

The flow of words ended, Danel pressed his parchement lips closed, and still Uthar said nothing.

“Da?” Alarm fluttered in Ethyn’s voice, but he barely noticed. Was Uthar actually listening to the old man? Did he believe Danel’s wild tale? Darker questions lurked deeper, ice on his spine, but try as he might Ethyn could not ignore them. Would Uthar really trade Ethyn for a promise of peace?

Seconds—less than two heartbeats—passed before Uthar gathered himself, but it felt like an eternity to Ethyn. His da shook his head and rolled his great shoulders, lips writhing in an argument only he could hear. Then deep sea gray eyes met Ethyn’s, and his da smiled gently.

Striding past Danel, Uthar ducked into the smithy only to return and plant himself alongside Ethyn. His da wrapped one heavy arm around Ethyn’s shoulders, pulling him close, and a flood of relief so strong it set Ethyn’s knees trembling and his eyes stinging. He barely noticed the horn Uthar held up in his other hand, waving the old battered instrument under Danel’s nose. The old man must have smelled the dust and old metal—Ethyn had never seen the hunting horn taken down from its pegs on the wall, not in all his life—because Danel stifferend, his mouth turning down in a deep frown.

“Uthar, don’t be rash.”

Uthar’s voice made ice seem hot. “You’re a bigger fool than I ever guessed, Danel Terram, if you think I’d ever let my son walk away with you. My father would rise from the dead to stop my own heart if I ever let that happen, and I’d welcome him to it with open arms.” He jabbed Danel in the chest with the flaring mouth of th horn, forcing the old man back a step. “I’d tell you that ten of my kin live within the earshot of this place, but no doubt you already know that. Walk away right now Danel, and there’ll be no more trouble between us. But this is your last chance. Say one more word and I’ll call the Family down on your head, and mark my words, there will be a hanging tonight.”

Ethyn stiffened, pulling away just far enough to turn and stare incredulously at his da. Hang the old man? This was a side of Uthar Hardric he’d never seen, never would have guessed existed. Anxiously he searched his da’s blocky face for some sign that the older Hardric man was bluffing. He found none. If Uthar’s deep-set eyes had been swords, Danel would have already been dead.

Danel, too, seemed to sense that there was no lie in Uthar’s threat. The old man swallowed once, then swallowed again, nervously fingering the last remaining button on his threadbare coat. Any man facing two hundred pounds of murderous blacksmith would have run—should have run—and Ethyn wouldn’t have thought any less of them. Faith, he would have died of fright had his da even been a quarter so angry with him. But Danel Terram’s spine must have been slow-forged twice over, because the man didn’t move. The opposite, in fact. With a deep breath that sounded like it might be his last, Danel actually took two measured steps forward and leaned in until he was almost nose to nose with Uthar.

“I ran once, Uthar Hardrc,” the old man whispered, and his voice chilled Ethyn to the bone. Faith. How could a man sound so . . . so empty? “I ran once and have paid for it a thousand times over since then. I think, shoudl it come it, I would welcome death now. But I have a work to do, one chance to redeem myself.” Danel leaned back and squared his shoulders, a man ready to die. “I cannot leave. Ethyn must come with me, and he must come now.”

For a moment, Uthar just stood there, mouth hanging open, eyes wide. Then he growled, a feral rumble deep in his throat. Ethyn closed his eyes and whispered a silent prayer for Danel’s soul. Danel and Uthar’s souls.

Then Uthar blew the horn.

Ok, my main question is: how is the thread of the story developing? Too fast, too slow, or just right? Are you interested in what's happening? Does this post alter your perception of any of the characters? How is the dialogue? Does it seem like Danel is revealing enough of his purpose to you, or too much or too little?

Danel's Theme

So, continuing with out little inspiration thread, here's a link to a song that--to me, at least-- really seemed to capture Danel's character (if you don't remember who he is, check out my last post labeled under Spear of the Ancients.

After you've listened to it, tell me if this seems like a good fit or not . . . I'd be interested to know. Of course, I know the entire story and you don't, so its a bit unfair.

Later . . .

The Clouds Over Mel Bay: Prologue Part II

August 12, Mel Bay, Oregon

Black.

Black slacks.

Black suit jacket.
Shiny black buttons on a faded black button up shirt perfectly pressed.
Black pin stripes and black tie with the first hint of light from diagonal white stripes. The tie covering his heart. Ira Conrad imagined his heart was pumping dark blood through his veins. Blood that was perhaps a crimson so deep it was a shade of black as well. Ira imagined the blackness seeping through limbs and erupting from his chest—the pain was so real that it was hard to believe it was an emotion and not a physical or literal ailment.

Ira suppressed a hiccup and gripped his shirt with a fist.
Ira stared down at the closed casket. More black; a shimmering darkness that reflected Ira’s own image on its smooth glossy surface. He naturally laid his other hand against the box. He could barely hear others in mourning passing behind him, sniffling, or weeping. Some sighed heavily as they passed. Ira could see their faint reflection in the casket’s mirror like surface; holding white handkerchiefs. Ira wondered why they weren’t black.
He wanted to cry too. He wanted to let it all drain out like a pressure cooker that’s lost its seal. It would relieve a certain amount of agony, but he couldn’t do it. It was almost like he wanted to cling to the agony. To make sure he paid for the loss—paid for it a thousand times over.

Ira was sitting in a pew with his mom, Stephanie Conrad. She wiped tears from her eyes with a white handkerchief as well. Everything seemed to echo in the Cathedral. There seemed to be so many shadows, and the only light was filtered by stained glass windows, depicting Saints with curled fingers and bowed heads. Ira noted the blaze of light surrounding each of their heads like a halo. Their long red garments bathed the light and turned it a transparent red, like Christmas lights. Much of the Cathedral reminded Ira of Christmas. He supposed that made sense.
The Cathedral smelled old. It smelled of dust and wood. It smelled of death.
One by one speakers mounted the pulpit. Ira recognized them but was in no hurry to recall their relation to Cole. They became a rumbling in the back of his mind; a mind tossed to and fro. Guilt to agony and back again.
The memories crashed into his cranium. Ira leaned forward and held his head in his hands. No. You don’t have to gruel over this again!!! But the memories only came with more fury. The phone in his hand.
“…Are you busy tonight?”
The lie.
The stupid girl. The distraction. The stupor of thought.
Ira held his face. The first tears wetted his palms. They smelled of salt. They didn’t solve anything. Ira sat wondering if he would ever be whole again. He didn’t want to be—he wanted to pay for this. Pay for it a thousand times over.

Ira gripped the casket once more; this time accompanied by several others whom Ira recognized but could not put a name to. The bulky box was heavy even with 6 men lifting. Ira fought back more tears as they hauled the box from the hearse to a perfectly rectangular hole cut out of the grassy hillside.
There was a gusting wind whipping through the cemetery. It seemed to ripple off headstones and crash into the mourning procession. Women’s hats were thrown off, and men’s ties flapped like kite tales. There was sun too; a bright glowing sort of summer sun. It was a happy sun.
What inconvenient weather. It should have rained.
Ira turned his back as the first shovels of dirt and pebbles were tossed back into the hole. He shut his eyes and tried to disappear, but the sound of mud and rock on the hollow casket beat like a drum in his mind—thump.
He wanted to cover his ears. Panic seemed to well up in his throat—thump.
Each crumbling thump seemed to shake Ira to the core. Tears were streaming again. His feet were moving. The tree, he stumbled behind it. Coming to his knees he gripped a handful of grass and set his head against the tree’s trunk.
Guilt! Loss! Guilt! Loss! Thump thump thump. Wind.
Thump. The wind seemed to convey the sound of his lost friend’s last existence as it was suppressed by dirt and mire—thump.
Or was he imagining the sound—thump.
You will not be forgotten. THUMP!
I will pay for this a thousand times over. THUMP!

Specters of the Night

Summary - Aryel, a girl living a miserable life finds some interesting tracks. Blah blah blah

Questions
1 Does it still sound like a 19th century setting?
2 Does it feel slightly suspenseful?
3 How is the imagery?
4. How about show versus tell?

Still, cautiousness would not go amiss here. She increased the pace once she was satisfied that her footsteps were making barely any noise. On the other hand… If it was a keyl, then she should be moving loudly and make as much noise as she could rather than silently sneaking into the area. No! There isn’t anything here! She wanted to believe that but part of her doubted it.

She had heard the big predators did not take too kindly to being startled, and were just as prone to attack and defend themselves when startled as they would run away when startled. And that was one reason keyls were dangerous. Aside from being easily half again as large as a cow, they had massive crescent shaped heads, the sides of which were razor sharp, and used when the animal was hunting. A single swipe of that head could rip through the flesh of most creatures out there and put the animal down permanently. Then the beast would just insert its trunk like mouth into the massive slash, and start secreting acids into the wound and drink the liquefied remains.

At least that was what Wyllyam said. He claimed he had heard it from a CEC official all the way in Kyl’s Wells. She partially doubted that he had even met anyone from the mythical CEC, the so called human government all the way from Earth that were trying to reconstruct their human alliance that was long since shattered. Shattered since the time of the Martyr some four or five hundred years back. Her father remained quite tight lipped about it, but she could tell he thought CEC was laughable. Not that they didn’t exist of course, just that their mission and purpose was ridiculous.

Still, the explanation for the way a keyl fed seemed likely similar to what Wyllyam said as she had seen the kills of makys before, and much of their kills had been turned into some disgusting ooze that seeped out of the gashes left by the animals.
Relieved that she was alone, she took several steps forward into the trees, scanning the ground for any sort of footprints that might reveal the identity of the maky’s unknown stalker. It only took a few moments until she saw a place where the brush and leaves had been obviously disturbed.

She puzzled over the displaced brush until its purpose became obvious. It was a bed. Something had lay here for several moments but probably not too long. Maybe an hour or three and then it had gotten up and headed off elsewhere. Where exactly it had headed to eluded her. The ground here even with all the leaves didn’t seem to hold the tracks very well. Leaves had already started falling and had covered much of the existing trackway even given the few hours between her arrival here and the beast’s presence here.

Still she was curious. Now she knew it hadn’t been hunters, it must have been a keyl. At least, she figured it couldn’t be hunters. Why would anyone just randomly lie down on a bed of leaves? No, given the time frame, the keyl had probably hidden during the hotter sun of the day and moved on since then. That had probably been at noon or so. It wasn’t incredibly hot in the afternoon, but it was still warm enough that the animal would seek shelter for the moment.

She looked around the area, watching for any sort of telltale sign of the animal that hadn’t been obliterated by the falling vegetation. She remembered in the back of her mind that she still had chores to do, so she occasionally grabbed a large stick or two that they could use, but for the most part, she continued looking for the trackway the animal had made when it had left.

A male keyl this close to her house could be a problem. Wyllyam Korgan had said they sometimes preyed on cattle, and she didn’t want to risk thinking of that as being one of his many falsehoods. If there was one in the area, pa’s herd might not be safe. He would probably find some way of blaming the death of a cow by the hands of this keyl on her as well. Everything that went wrong seemed to have been caused by her.

But first she wanted to see where the keyl was head to. Had the maky and the keyl come across each other coming from different directions? Or had they both been heading in the same direction? Finding where the tracks became visible took probably an hour or two and the sun was starting to head down the horizon. Aryel hadn’t even noticed a glow of its fall as she continued through the area with her gaze locked on the ground.

She let out a squeal of excitement when she finally saw the large pugmarks of the animal further into the forest. The vegetation was less dense here which mean better conditions for finding pugmarks, and she had found several. These were similar to the maky pug-marks, but were even larger and broader. Each mark from the two feet on each leg was probably about the size of her hand fully spread open.

This was a big animal unless she missed her guess gauging by the size of the marks. And the marks indicated that the keyl was heading in the same direction the maky patrol had. Most likely the maky patrol had seen the keyl and skirted around the bigger animal before heading off as fast as they could. The keyl had probably left a bit after that, heading off in search of food somewhere else.

Aryel started following the trail for almost a mile or so. From the way that its pug-marks were spread out she determined it was moving at a slow pace, the movement of an animal that wasn’t in any sort of hurry. The marks gave her goose bumps all over, as she had never been so close to any sort of large predator. It was exciting and exhilarating.

A sudden thought came into her mind. The tracks were heading in the general direction of her families cabin. She paused. The sticks! She looked up towards the sky and realized that the sun was almost down. There wasn’t anything out in these woods at night that she needed to fear, but that didn’t mean the darkness still didn’t set her nerves on edge. And she had left all those sticks behind on the ground and had wandered off after animal tracks.

She would have needed to start hauling her finds back to the house hours ago if she had planned on finishing in a reasonable time. As it was, it would take probably well into the night to get them all. She cursed to herself and turned and ran towards the valley where she had left her pile behind.

It took maybe twenty minutes to reach her pile and she began scrambling to grab as many as she could before setting off towards the cabin as fast as she could. Aryel stumbled more than once in the failing light, but she stopped and managed to retrieve every fallen stick and branch that lay on the ground. She wasn’t going to mess up now.

As she ran, she wondered if the keyl would come close to their cabin. That would certainly give the cattle a fright. Maybe the animal would even go in after them for an easy meal. She partially wished the animal would maul some of the cattle just to cause her father grief. She didn’t care if he took it out on her. He would take it out on her. The maiming of the cattle would be her fault somehow and if he didn’t find some way to punish her for that, he’d find some other excuse. That was just the way he was. He was just a mean old man who had never shown her much of a shred of love in her life.

Sometimes she dreamed what life would be like if she just ran away and lived off the land. She had heard tales of people doing that but she had never actually met one. Another of Wyllyam’s tales. I could do it. And she really knew she could. But always her thoughts returned to home. She really couldn’t leave there. Even though her father seemed to not give a shred of care for her, he hadn’t thrown her out like he had often said he would. Maybe he did love her. He just had an odd way of showing it. Yeah… that must be it, she thought.

She knew she had to be close now, but it was becoming rather dark and she had to watch her steps. She knew the direction back to the cabin even in darkness, but the terrain could always hide deadfalls or rocks that one could trip over. Up until now she had not tripped and injured herself and she had no intention of that happening now

The trees of lion’s manes and copper barks covered the hillside behind their cabin that was located maybe ten or twenty yards from the tree line. The cabin was in a wide meadow with plenty of room for them to have set up a fence that contained their livestock, as well as space for their vegetable gardens. Some of the vegetables were native plants; others like the cattle as well as herself were descendants from the original settlers.

A few more steps and the view of the cabin came into sight. And just in time as well. The sun had almost completely passed over the horizon off in the direction that the ocean laid. She had never traveled that far but one day she wanted to. Her gaze lingered there for a moment and she continued on to the cabin. She would have to make several more trips to get all of the branches back and she was only wasting time by watching things off in the distance.

That was something she had always wanted to do. Go to the ocean. Go to Wyldnys, the major continent on Ryzel. To be able to wander the world and see the sights. Travel to the ancient ruins of Robyn and see the monument to the Martyr. See the large port cities of Korwood and Tel Ryo. But part of her knew she never would.

She had been resigned to her fate for a long time since. Her dreams still spurned her on as she looked for a better life than what she was, but it would never come. Her father had promised that as soon as she became eighteen, he would find some man gullible enough to marry her and get rid of her. “Gullible” had actually been the word he used. She supposed the only thing she could hope for was that her husband would be a decent and kind man. Someone not like her father.

As she took several steps forward towards the cabin, another primal sense of unease gripped over her and she felt the hairs stand on the back of her neck. But when she craned her neck around, she saw nothing out of the ordinary that might give rise to such a sense of caution.

But still, she knew something was wrong here, and she paused in her steps about a hundred or so yards from the house. Something is wrong… she thought. A moment later she realized what it was. The sun had faded beyond the horizon and shrouded the entire meadow where her house lay in twilight. Barely enough light lingered that she could see the house, but darkness was closing in quickly and in fifteen or so minutes, she wouldn’t be able to see beyond what the starlight showed.

A note for Colton

So, I was reading Illusions of Control on google docs, and I had a comment. I was reading the part that is from the Game Master Pulram's POV, right after the invasion of Earth has begun. The Game Master is kind of mentally reviewing the troops he has at his disposal: Morarchs, Zarma, the psionic guys, etc. Anyways, I found myself wishing that instead of eloquantly describing each of the troop types like does, I wish he would have acted more like a true gamer, and just listed out their stats. You know, Power 12, Agility 15, Speed 7, etc. To me, this would be both humorous, and also more true to the nature of the Game Masters.

Just a thought.

The Specters of Night

There, I got a title. Rejoice.

Recap: We got some insight into a monster's mind in the last post as it slowly was hunting someone or something. The animal was wounded, which prevented it from hunting its normal game. Then it killed someone. OoooOOooo

Questions for discussion

1. How is Aryel as a character? What are her qualities from what you saw so far?
2. What about your perspective of her father? Abusive, strict, or what?
3. What are your views on the setting? Does it need to be described more?
4. How does it read? Are there any confusing parts in the story? Specify where they are if you would be so kind
5. Anything else you saw? Contradictions, telling versus showing, etc.
6. How are the descriptions of the animals?

Little bit longer post this time


Aryel Korbat glumly stared down from the mountain side towards the small area where her family’s cabin lay. It wasn’t my fault! It really hadn’t been. She had only been doing what she needed to earlier this morning and she certainly couldn’t be blamed for every little mishap. Her morning chores for the day had consisted of going out and gathering newly fallen sticks off the surrounding trees in the nearby valley that was maybe two or three miles from her family’s cabin.

On her way out, she had jumped over her father’s fence that kept the cows tethered up near the barn. Evidently in her haste to get over the fence she had somehow knocked the padlock open and several of the cows had managed to escape. Maybe if Pa secured the locks better, she glowered.

The animals were nothing special, but they were descendants from the cattle of the first settlers to Ryzel, much like Aryel herself was. She had hear Pa mention once how lucky they were that the cattle could eat the vegetation on this world, and that Serenity had to import all of its foodstuffs from offworld. She couldn’t imagine why that planet should be any different from this one.

Kyl alone knows why they would be different, she thought, uttering the name of the Martyr of Ryzel in wordless prayer. The Martyr had long been dead for many centuries, but her parents had taught her, just like the Lord would answer her prayers, Kyl Barlowe, the Martyr of Ryzel would as well. Certainly he at least would have seen the harmless mishap that had occurred with the cows.

But her father had seen it as nothing more than carelessness. He claimed that at fifteen years of age, she should be more aware and less flowerheaded about her chores. Then he had grabbed her younger brother and stormed off out into the fields to gather up the cattle that had gotten out. Martyn was her father’s light and joy, the son he had always wanted, and whom he kept close constantly, grooming his “heir” as it were. Pa held a much different attitude about his “unneeded” and “unwanted” daughter, two descriptions she had heard him callously throw out even when he knew she could hear him.

Pa had only needed an hour to venture out and gather the wayward cattle and during that time she had busied herself with feeding the chickens. Evidently the cows had given him more trouble than she had thought they might, for he was certainly in a terrible rage when he arrived back. Without breaking stride, he had grabbed her and paddled her bottom until she screamed and howled for the entire valley to hear.

Afterwards he had told her to go out and gather as many sticks as she could find for the fires and that if he wasn’t satisfied with the end result, he’d give her more of the same. The only relief was that he didn’t act that way to just her. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” her father had said more than once. If her brother messed up, pa would be sure to exact the same punishments on him as well. But he always seemed to find more excuses to get mad at her as opposed to Martyn. It was almost as if punishing her was almost akin to not having her around.

Winter was coming fast, and the nights around here during fall weren’t the hottest to begin with. Gathering the plentiful vegetation that fell off of the copper-bark trees would at least manage to help them with fires. As much as she disliked her father and the attitude he had towards her, she didn’t much like being cold either, so she continued to gather the sticks in a large pile down in the middle of a valley.

Her appointed gathering spot for the fallen timber was right near the banks of a small stream which had no name she was aware of. The valley and the stream had been her place to come when she needed time alone from dealing with her family. From her mean father, her apathetic mother, and her snobbish brother, this was one of the few areas that when her chores were done, she could escape out into.

Many a spring and summer afternoon had been spent out in this valley, as she sat underneath the copper barks trees and basking foliage in the warm sun. The flocks of prysmaflies darted overhead as both predator and prey pursued their own interests in glittering aerial dogfights. The dazzling four winged creatures darted here and there with an unnatural agility and grace.

As Aryel looked up, a blue chromatic falcon zipped overhead, in hot pursuit of some smaller creature that raced along on its rapidly four beating wings. The dashed all over the meadow, but the smaller creature evidently made it through the trees, for the falcon banked on its wings and headed up to a higher altitude far up in the sky. She watched for several moments longer and then continued her search.

More than once her boots sank into the mud of the swampy part of this valley. Streams flowed down out of the mountains and hills, feeding into the one that winded through here. She was relieved for what wasn’t the first time that she didn’t have to wear the dresses that many of the other girls she had seen wear around. Her britches and shirt did well enough for her, and a dress would have gotten in the way out here anyway. She had once dreamt of wearing one, but when the chance had finally come, she had found the piece of clothing so unwieldy, she had refused to wear it again. Pa hadn’t been much pleased with that.

She absent mindedly hummed some song she had once heard played at the saloon back at the town. She didn’t know many pieces of music because chance rarely found her in the proximity of Kyl’s Wells, the town that lay closest to her family’s small homestead. The village was too far to walk in a single day, and whenever her father went to trade the crops he grew for other necessities, she was never brought along except on the rare chance that her father was in a charitable mood.

“And that’s not often,” she spoke aloud. There was no one here close enough to hear her speak, and the animals that did hear evidently gave no care. At least she thought they heard. She had never heard any animals native to this area make any sounds. Her father had brushed her comments off that maybe they did make sounds and they just couldn’t hear them as being fool-talk and rubbish.

Walking down one of the hills, she carried a bundle of sticks close to her to keep any of them from falling out. As she moved through the marshy mud an odd mark on the ground caught her eye. She knelt down and saw the obvious pug-mark that lay in the mud near the stream. She mentally stored the location of the mark in her memory and half-ran towards her pile of sticks to drop the bundle off before she could come back and investigate.

She rarely saw animal tracks beyond the smaller shield-backs that roamed occasionally through the valley. The light gangly marks of the prysmaflies could be found when they came down from their flights to stumble about awkwardly on the ground while they sought a drink. She tossed the sticks into the pile and turned to run back to the mark, not even checking to see if she got them all in the general location.

Carefully stumbling through the mud, she pulled her pants up to avoid getting them caught in the swampy parts of the marsh. A lot of drainage came in off the mountains and that made this place both an ideal location for spotting wildlife, as well as a wet swamp for much of the year. She cautiously looked down at the tracks and tried to puzzle them out.

She knew a fair bit of tracking, but most of her knowledge had been picked up from other encounters with pathways of animals rather than any formal training. The majority of that knowledge had been garnered here in this very valley and she was familiar with all the animals that passed through.

Each footmark was actually a double print. The predators that made their homes in the surrounding mountains had elongated toes that branched into two separate feet. Each foot then led into three toes, a central digit and one to the side. To call it a hoof wasn’t completely accurate, but it was the best description that Areyl could think of. The marks were maybe a few inches thick, but at least for or so deep. The feet gave the animal good footing, but made it sink like a stone in mud and snow.

But this animal had not been hunting, judging by the distance from print to print. The entire span of the creature was maybe a little less than she was tall. Had the stride distance been more, she could have seen it was running, and the way that the feet lined up with each other likewise gave clues to the animals movement. No, this animal had simply been strolling.

“If this is what I think…” she muttered to herself as she scanned the nearby muddy area for more prints.

She found the multitude of tracks almost immediately. About ten or so feet away from her current position she found another set of prints from the same sort of animal. These ones were more slimmer and longer while the first group had been bulkier and wider.

“A male and a female,” she said out loud. She wasn’t certainly an expert when it came to pug-marks, but she knew enough to tell the different between an animal’s genders by its tracks. Males were larger and thusly had bigger tracks while the females had slimmer feet. These were the tracks of a patrol of makys. Evidently the patrol that lived around here had come down into the valley, probably three or four hours previously.

She knew if she looked around she could find more of the tracks of the dozen or so individuals that made up the patrol. They would probably be looking for some of the larger animals in the area.

“Probably an aegysback,” she figured. The massive animals were occasionally seen in this area. Each was probably three or four times as tall as she was, and several times as bulky. The massive plant eaters were generally solitary creatures and very often favored prey of the maky patrols. They were a tough kill to be sure unless the maky patrol played smart.

An aegysback had massive tree trunk-like limbs, and a massive saucer shaped head. It didn’t have keen senses, but if it figured out something was there, a slam of its broad head could crush a person’s ribcage, and outright kill a maky. They hadn’t been domesticated for obvious reasons.

The maky was a smaller predator, probably about half the size of a cow. It had a completely featherless and furless skin that from a glance looked more like a hard leathery substance than anything else. The four legs all ended in those double feet and were jointed with a high knee and a long ankle. Their head was slim and arrow like, but two jagged barbs on the side of the head. They had no eyes as far as she could tell, and only two holes punctured right through the end of that head as well as the mouth were the only features the animal had.

Still, she was slightly interested to see that the patrol was down here, and without another glance, she started following the tracks. Once they exited the muddy areas a few hundred feet further, the tracks became harder to find, and several times she had to double back and recheck for the subtle marks that showed the passage of the animals through the dry terrain. Were it not for the presence of so many, she thought she might have been able to follow them at all.

As it was, a stone that had been knocked out of its resting place, a trail through the grass, leaves scattered and branches broken easily pointed in the direction that the patrol was heading. They were obviously making no effort to hide their presence which meant they weren’t on the hunt. She had heard her pa say once that some earth animals made permanent homes and then only left them when they went hunting. Here on Ryzel that wasn’t the case, and the animals were all semi-nomadic.

For what reason she had no clue. She certainly wasn’t smart enough to think why animals did or didn’t do things. She just knew they did. The maky patrol would only stop to settle down when they were laying offspring, and as soon as the offspring were old enough, they’d continue on what seemed like an endless journey through the highlands of Kemland, the Eastern continent of Ryzel.

They would constantly be on the move, looking for game along their migration paths to hunt down. This patrol must have fed long before they came through here, and were now just shifting their area of operation. That was something she was sure of. The animals kept on the move so that they would never overhunt any single area. Animals would become acclimated to their presence and finding food would be much harder on the maky patrol.

She brushed off the concern of actually meeting the maky patrol as nothing of importance or worth worrying about. For starters, she was probably an hour or two behind the animals and it would require her sprinting at full speed to come upon them in any decent amount of time.

Nor did she worry what would happen if she did come upon them. They were often more afraid of people than people were of them. If she came upon the pack, and didn’t do anything obviously aggressive, they would probably give her blank looks and continue on their way.

Even the big kyels were much the same way. Whereas a maky was a small pack hunting animal, the kyel was a much larger predator that needed no pack to hunt. Generally solitary and found farther up in the highlands, kyels were just as shy around people as makys were. She had only ever seen one once in the forests and it had observed her with that big eyeless crescent-shaped head until it got bored and moved on.

She checked up at the passage of the sun overhead, making sure that she still had time to follow the patrol around and then get back to her chores. The sun had barely hit the apex of its height over the sky, so she knew she had several hours yet until she was expected back at her cabin. The tracks from the maky patrol continued through the valley, until they came up against the treeline of the hillside.
She stumbled almost to a start as she saw that the maky patrol suddenly seemed to go all over the area at odd angles here. She had difficulty in keeping the many different tracks straight from one another.

It took several moments for her to finally discern the different tracks from each other. Some thought that one animal track was no different from another, and at first she would have agreed. But a little bit of investigation and one could find the pugmark of an animal was as unique as a face was to another person.

She turned towards the treeline and then back to the tracks. Her first instinct had said that the makys had seen something in the trees and they were stumbling around either trying to get a better look or intimidate whatever they were looking at.
Aryel looked for the tracks that marked the departure of the makys from this area and as she suspected, the tracks showed what had to be the animals moving at a very fast rate away from there. Had something in the trees startled them? The questions popped into her head, and she remained at the edge of the treeline, looking cautiously up towards the hillside.

There was no place in this valley that she hadn’t been to at least once and as she recalled there was nothing special up in that area to draw attention. Few trees sprung up from this hillside, just enough to create a canopy, and the slight twinge of fear that had pierced through her slowly faded away. Very few things could put fear into makys and make them bunch together for protection. Hunters and kyels were about the only things she could imagine. And maybe an enraged aegysback bull could do it as well.

She looked up towards the hill and shifted back and forth in her position until she was satisfied that whatever had made the maky patrol so startled and scared had long since gone. As far as she could see, the hillside was barren, save for a few prysmaflys that flitted about the canopy of the trees and occasionally landed to pick up the golden colored seeds that fell to the ground.

The trees that grew here were the copper-barks and lion’s manes. The former being large trees with a slightly metallic brass colar that was incredibly strong and resilient. Her cabin was made of that material. Lion manes were a darker color, and were topped by long narrow leaves that were supposedly reminiscent of some Earth animal.

The more she watched, the more convinced she became that the coast was clear and her fear was nothing more than her imagination. She started forward at what she thought was a slow pace. Each step that she took, she looked down to check and make sure she didn’t step on any sort of branch or twig. Of the two different things that could scare a patrol of makys, the hunters and poachers were probably the more dangerous to her at least

She had heard of such people, but had never actually seen them. Wild men and women that stalked all through the wilds of the planet, searching for game to hunt and sell to traders were not something she wanted to associate with. The area she was in now constituted one of the more wild areas of the wilderness, where the only law was what you made.

Finding hunters and poachers could end badly if the stories she had heard were to be believed. Wyllyam Korgan, the boy at the next farm over may not be the most trustworthy sort, but if his stories were remotely correct, then she would be right to fear poachers. Part of her told her that her wariness was unwarranted, and what whatever had been here and startled the patrol was long since gone.

Along the lines of inspiration...

Hey kids! I don't have a story to post yet, but I thought I'd try something new. In the same spirit of Landon's "inspiration" thread, I thought it might be good just to swap ideas about the writing process as well.

Where do you get ideas for characters?

As for me, music helps get me in the zone sometimes, and if a song has thoughtful lyrics, I often find myself expanding the songwriter's thought and developing it into a character or a plot point. Generally speaking, the mood means more than the literal words, but I find lyrics stimulate my thoughts better than just music. For example, when I was thinking about a story in which someone decides to leave his society, which doesn't want to leave its generation ship, a couple of songs by Arcade Fire got me into the "disaffected rebel" mood (No Cars Go and Windowsill in particular) to which I still go back when I'm trying to evoke that character.

I also get a lot from philosophical or ethical questions, often from the news. "If I were those guys, what would I think?" The story I'm working on right now, about changing pathological behaviors in violent convicts, was inspired by a neuroscientist who, while being interviewed, stated that his goal was essentially to prove that there is no such thing as a soul by manipulating the brain's moral functioning. "That's an interesting fellow," I thought, and I developed a whole story around a scientist being able to do just that.

What do you do to think of character ideas? What other media influences your writing process?

Chapter One: Storms from the North (Part 2)

“My name is Danel Terram boy,” he said, taking another step into the smithy, “And I’ve come to save your life.”

The words hung in the air for one long moment, so that Ethyn could almost feel them, like charged air during a thunderstorm, or the faintest odor of smoke after a summer wildfire. His mind kept turning the stranger’s words over and over, like some kind of puzzle that just needed enough working to be made plain. Save his life? From what? The notion was ridiculous—mad, really—and a detatched part of Ethyn felt like chuckling at the thought; no, more like doubling over with laughter.

What he said was, “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, sir.” Everything fell into place then, and he realized the poor ancient was some sort of beggar, likely up from Bartrime and the highroad in the south. He hadn’t a even a half-penny on him, but not wanting to seem rude, he added, “Are you lost? I can point you to village and the inn, if you’d like. Grand Crossing isn’t more than an hour’s walk from here.” He frowned. “But then, you must have passed through the village on your way”—

“I am not lost, Ethyn Hardric.” For all his frail appearance, the stranger’s voice boomed like spring thunder, filling the smithy with its broad sound. Taking another step closer—Ethyn tried to back away, but was stopped short by the hard angle of the anvil pressing against the small of his back—the old man, or Danel Terram, if he could be believed, parted his lips in a broad smile that was as hard and cold as ice. “Though I’ve not seen the light of day for some years now, I walk by a different light. It has guided me here, to you, so that I might save you from the Shadow that is coming.”

They were nose to nose now, Ethyn trying to sink into the anvil and Danel grinning at him like a loon. Were it not for the scum-crusted bandages covering the upper half of the old man’s face, they would have been staring eye-to-eye. Ethyn’s throat had gone so dry that it took two tries to swallow, and even then, he could only manage a scratchy whisper.

“You’re mad.”

He instantly regretted speaking, for his words wiped Danel’s cold smile away so fast that Ethyn almost thought he’d imagined it, replacing it with a face that was a blank slab of angles and deep furrows, harshly lit from one side by the fire. He loomed over Ethyn, though only seconds earlier Ethyn would have sworn he’d had a good hand and a half on the old man. The fire in the forge sputtered, then gained in intensity, peppering Ethyn’s brow with fresh beads of perspiration.

Chest heaving, Danel spoke, and seemed to fight for every word like it was his last. “I . . . I—am—not—m-mad.” Without warning the beggar shrunk back in on himself, trembling, one long-fingered hand reaching up to press at the bandages covering his temples. He was panting like a man who’d just run the length of the township and back, but when he spoke, his voice was as strong—and as empty—as ever. “I am not mad, boy, and you are in very great danger. If you hope to survive the night, you must leave with me. Now. This very instance.”

Ethyn hadn’t even realized his mouth was hanging open until he snapped it shut. “Leave Grand Crossing? Tonight? You really are crazy.” Danel harrumphed loudly, drawing himself up angrily, and Ethyn used the momentary break to slip out from between the anvil and the beggar and put some distance between himself and the old man. “I’m not going anywhere,” he repeated, jabbing a finger at Danel. “And you’d best be on your way. My da will be checking in any time now and he doesn’t take well to strangers poking about.”

For the first time Danel looked nervous, aiming his covered eyes over one shoulder—a habit he must have clung onto—and licking his parchment-dry lips with a bruise colored tongue. When he turned back to Ethyn, his lips were bending in what must have been an attempt at a placating smile.

“Now, now,” he said, patting the air soothingly with both hands, “There’s no need to rouse your family.”

“Then leave.”

“I can’t boy!” the old man hissed, leaning in close again and grasping one of Ethyn’s wrists. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve been saying? You are in danger, more danger than you could possibly imagine. I’ve come to save you, to snatch out of the wolf’s mouth, and not a moment too soon.”

Something in Danel’s voice gave Ethyn pause. However crazed the man sounded, he honestly believed what he was saying. That hesitation was all the old man needed.

“Dark things—creatures more evil than you can imagine—are prowling the bounds of this township; they may already have crossed its borders. They are coming for you, Ethyn, and they will kill anyone who stands in their way.”

“Dark things? What things? Why would they be hunting me?”

Danel snorted through the wirey tails of his mustache and gave his wrappings a sharp tug. “Bah! Don’t play the fool with me boy. Darkspawn have been hunting you and your kin from the beginning. They nearly caught your father and the rest of your pitiful Family”—the sarcasm the old man invested in that single word brought Ethyn’s hackles up and he opened his mouth to give the beggar as good as he gave, but being blind, the man just went on talking—“nearly killed all of them eighteen years ago, the night you were born. Now they’ve returned to finish what they failed to do then: kill you and yours.”

For a moment all Ethyn could do was stare in slack-jawed astonishment at Danel. Then, coming to himself, he shook his head and brushed past Danel, angling for the wide smithy door as fast as he could and holding up one hand to forestall anymore idiocy from the old man.

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Danel Terram—if thats truly your right name. My da has lived in Grand Crossing from the day he was born, and the only family he has are the four other folk that live in our house—me, my ma and my sisters. Good night and good riddance.”

He was halfway across the yard, hens and chicks scattering around his ankles and the sun’s last light bathing his shoulders, when Danel finally spoke, a whisper so low Ethyn almost didn’t catch it.

“Uthar never told you?”

The question—and the dishonesty it implied on Ethyn’s da’s part—hung in the air for what felt like forever; it felt like it took even longer for Ethyn to gather himself enough to round on Danel, and when he did, he was actually trembling with rage, fingers flexing like the claws on a cat. What gave this old beggar more covered in mud than clothes the right to wander into his family’s yard and slander Ethyn’s da, a man who had never given Ethyn even a penny-weight of cause to doubt him?

When his voice did come, it was a growl so low and . . . and so feral, even Ethyn was taken aback.

“You get out of here. Get out of here right—”

Uthar rounded the west corner of the house, the merry tune he’d been whistling freezing on his lips and a half-dozen logs of firewood tumbling from his suddenly lifeless hands, and the rest of the tirade died in Ethyn’s throat. Across the yard, Danel gathered his cloak more tightly about his frail shoulders and took a single step backwards, further into the smithy and the shadows, almost visibly seeking comfort from the shed’s close walls.

“Da,” Ethyn began, moving towards his father, “I was just—”

Uthar help up a his hand, bringing Ethyn to a jerking halt. “Stay back boy.” The words were cold, harder than Ethyn could ever remember hearing from his da, but they were like sunlight at midsummer next to those Uthar proceeded to direct toward Danel.

“Get out of here, Terram.”

Grand Crossing’s chief blacksmith was a mountain of a man—one of the few features Ethyn and his da did not have in common—twice as wide as most men at the shoulders and after a lifetime of working the forge, half again as strong. Sea-gray eyes, a matching pair to Ethyn’s own, were set deep in a bluff face that was framed above by short-cropped hair the color of brushed steel and below by a flairing beard that only served to accentuate his lantern-jaw and bold, twice-broken nose. There wasn’t a man in the township that Uthar didn’t tower over, but he nearly always compensated for his looming presence with a ready smile and rough laugh that seemed to come to him more easily than breathing.

But not now. Now the man was more a growing thundercloud—lightning fit to spit from his eyes—than a mountain, a great storm that threatened to vent all its fury on the frail man who was now visibly cringing away from Uthar.

Ethyn moved to gather up the fallen timber, but Uthar brought him up short with a second jerk of his hand. The blacksmith took another step towards Danel.

“I thought I’d made myself clear the last time we met,” Uthar said, jabbing a finger at Danel. “You—are—not—welcome—here. Ever.”

Tugging at his cloak in a vain attempt to gather himself, Danel drew himself up and said, “There is no time for this, Uthar Hardric. I remember our last meeting—you saw to that yourself—but my business here now goes beyond any ill will we might bare each other.”

“Ill will?” Uthar repeated Danel’s words slowly,face set like he was chewing on nails. “Ill will?” He took yet another step forward, balled-fists trembling and the veins on his neck standing clear like knotted cords. “You led my father and a dozen men to their deaths, and you call it ill will?”

Uthar was on the point of throwing himself at the old man—who, to his credit, hadn’t turned and fled before the human avalanche staulking towards him—when Ethyn finally managed to unroot himself from the ground and launch himself between the two men, spreading his arms wide and puting his back to Danel.

“You know him?” he demanded, half-shouted really, eyes boring into his da’s face.

Uthar reeled back as if slapped, and immediately began studying the ground between his feet. “Ethyn, I—I’ll”—he stopped and drew in a deep breath and gestured to Danel, “I’ll explain everything once he’s gone. I promise you that.”

Questions:

1) How is the dialogue? Does it feel natural, or are there problems with it?

2) How is the introduction of Uthar? Does it change how your perception about him in any way?

3) Does it move too fast? Too slow?

Unnamed Novel

Alright, here is the new novel. I haven't decided on a name just yet, so I'll figure that out later. As previously stated, if you want access to the last one, just let me know.

You were already given a bit of an intro into the world in a previous post, so I'll assume you at least looked over it. It may make things clearer for you I hope.

Questions to be answered

1. Can you tell this section is done from the PoV from a predator? What are you feelings on that, as far as a non-"sophant" perspective?

2. How about the way it goes along? Does it seem to sound like coming from the PoV of a predatory animal? If not, what can be improved or changed?

3. How about the animal itself? Can you gather a decent picture in your mind of what it is or what it looks like? What can't you picture about it?

4. Any other observations? This is relatively short for a normal piece (around 1600 words).

Chapter 1

At that time, I wasn’t aware that the creature that had been dubbed the Byzarch Man-eater was anywhere in the proximity of my home. We were living in a very remote cabin at the time, easily ten or so miles away from the nearest large village, a small place called Kyl’s Wells. Pa rarely headed into town, and any news he picked up, he kept to himself. I sometimes wonder if he had known about the presence of the beast at all beforehand.

The animal crept through the dense undergrowth that covered all of this section of the mountainside. Each step that the animal took sent a lance of pain through its body but was strongest in its rear left leg. The animal knew something was wrong with that limb, as if a foreign presence had been introduced to the leg that even now bit and slashed at his limb with determined ferocity. But many inspections on previous occasions had turned up nothing there. The beast recalled a time previous when the pain had first appeared many darknesses ago.

Lying after taking a kill down, the beast had been resting in the shade that provided such a pleasant distraction from the otherwise intense heat of the day. There had been a loud crack off in the distance, like that of when one of the great trees fell to the ground. A lancing pain had shot through that same limb, and he had bolted away from the area in fright.

Now, the pain still lingered, and had become such a problem that the old male could no longer hunt the prey that he once had feasted on. To take down one of the larger beasts, the ones with the great shields on their heads and backs required speed, agility, and strength. He had all but the first, and that was enough to have spelt his doom.

The old male had been around for a long time, and many passages of the great freezes stuck in his mind of the ages that he had wandered this land. He had ran with the packs, and mated and produced many offspring. Now he was well past the prime of his life but for all his many weathered years, he still considered himself top dog and any of his brothers or sisters that encountered him knew that. He was far larger than the others of his kind and age had only given him a grizzled determination. He knew were it not for that pain in his rear left leg, he could still easily take down any beast of the forests that he came across.

He crept forward again through the dense brush of the forest. Each step was cautiously measured so as to not startle his prey, nor give them any warning that he was even in the area. Hundreds of kills over the many long seasons had imbued him with a perfect sense of how to stalk prey, and he rarely if ever missed a kill.

His limbs were lithe and muscular, and each of his legs branched off into a two pronged foot and each foot ended in a softly padded “hoof”. The digits gave him unparreled balance, especially when he was forced into the mountains, or the great sharp bush forests that lay farther up the mountain sides. He levered his long flat tail to the ground, keeping it low to the ground. The tail allowed him incredibly power when he came to the great waters, and it allowed him great balance as well when he moved through the mountains. The females of his kind likewise were attracted to those who had such great plumed tails and he was well aware of the magnificence of his.

His large crescent shaped head kept low to the ground, and he listened for the motions of his prey. Each sonar ping bounced back to the affirmation that his prey had not moved. Their obliviousness was the strange thing about these targets, but was one that he had quickly taken advantage of.

The great hard-shell herds, and their smaller cousins would have noticed the pings that he now boomed out to gain a clearer view of his prey and would have either scattered or formed their great circles around their young, and prevented him from acquiring a kill. But these ones seemed to be completely oblivious to his presence and his calls. Still he watched. Simply because the last few hadn’t noticed him was still not merit to remain unwary.

His prey was dangerous. Far more dangerous than the hard shells were even though the hard shells were much more massive. These two-legs were smaller than him, easily half his size, but they carried sticks around that made loud noises. But if they weren’t aware of his presence then they became the easiest prey he had ever stalked and feasted on. Even given his injured state, he could run them down without difficulty, and once he was close enough, a quick flick of his head would impale them squarely on the great spikes that marked the edges of his crescent shaped head. One sweep and they were down, never to give him trouble again.

But their small size meant they didn’t offer as much nutrition as he preferred in his prey. A single hard-shell would feed him for several darknesses, but each of these lasted maybe a single darkness at most before he needed to hunt again.

His prey still remained motionless out of its large shelter down below him. The shelter was of odd construction, like the trees around the male, but it wasn’t. He had tried his hardest to break into many in darknesses past, but found them semi-impossible to get inside. No, he would have to wait until they were outside like this one and their guard was down.

He had just moved across country during the early morning light, passing through the field that others of his species made their homes. Each kill would sometimes require the long movements across the land, because the others of his prey would inevitably leave their surroundings and flee for safety with others. He may have been strong, but he knew enough not to risk attacking many of them at once. There was too much of a chance of getting injured there. A break in one of the impaling horns on the side of his head would mean his death.

He stalked forward another pace, keeping low to the ground again. The prey looked up, and for a moment, the beast tensed where he lay, thinking his prey had spotted him and his cover was blown. If that was the case, he would have to just bet his luck and charge in after them, hoping to still be able to overbear the prey before they managed to get inside their shelter.

He relaxed his muscles, when the prey looked away, knowing that the prey may have heard something, but had just passed it off as one of the annoying little fliers that flew around the jungle. Many of them lay perched in the trees, crying out their own little pings of sound at his presence which was obvious to them. However his prey must not have heard their calls at all, or if it did hear them, had disregarded them.

He was lucky these beings existed in such amble supply. He had nearly starved to death those freezes previously, when he was unable to kill any of the hard shells and had been forced into scavenging the unliquefied remains of those kills left behind by his uninjured brothers and sisters. It had been quite by accident that one of the smaller beings he now preyed on had come up on him and startled him while he slept.

He rarely had approached them previous to that and this encounter certainly hadn’t happened as a result of his own choosing. Ever since he had come out of the hard shell, his mother had taught him to avoid them. They did not have much food on them, and they were just as liable to attack you as you were them. But when the one in the false skin that these creatures wore stumbled over him, he had leapt to defend himself and impaled it right through the chest. The being had given a loud scream that he felt more than heard, and in a panic he had ran away, leaving the corpse still impaled on the horn.

After he had calmed, he became aware of the limp corpse hanging off the horn, and let it slide off. He had almost left it there, for where there was one, there could be others, but the rumble in his stomach and the smell of the corpse enticed him further. After liquefying part of the corpse he had eaten. It had a bizarre taste, stranger than anything else he had preyed on, but he had at least found nourishment off this being.

That had been the first, and he had since started hunting them exclusively, except where he was able to bully kills off the much more nourishing hard shells that his brothers and sisters brought down. Against the odds, he had managed to survive, and now he was still able to hunt.

He crept forward on his haunches right to the edge of the forest where the tall plants still covered his body adequately enough. His muscles tensed and adrenaline flooded his bloodstream and he pounced forward at the prey, bursting out of the vegetation like a boulder rolling down a hillside. A moment later it was over. Another kill down, and food guaranteed for the rest of the day.