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Cur Chapter 6 ‘Hammer to fall’

Good morrow gentle folk,
Gonna keep this super short and sweet because I sort of lost yesterday in the best way possible so had to cram everything I had to do then into today so lots of editing spamming, procrastinating, all packed into today haha.
So yeah that’s it, see really short right haha? But that haiku yesterday was cool right? Right?

See you…
*spoilers*
This chapter is really spicy haha.
–
 
A crow perched atop the highest stone structure of Tallaght. It watched as Birog of the Tuatha De’ descended her horse and cautiously entered the walls of the cursed city.
 
She stopped in the entryway and seemed to sniff the air taken by a familiar scent. She dropped to one knee taking off one of her gloves and touched the ground with her bare hands.
 
She rubbed some sort of substance between her fingers before cautiously putting it in her mouth to taste it. She instantly spat it out and said “Sea salt, how odd.”
 
She rose from the ground and put her glove back and mused to herself “All their salt is surely mined, why would sea water be here, inland of all places? When a fresh water river runs but a stones throw.”
 
She stopped and straightened rigidly as she craned her neck trying to listen for people or animals but not even the crow cawed. Just dead silence and the calm creaking of the empty houses echoing the empty streets.
 
“The village is abandoned, but I was sure they were here, perhaps they camped here and then moved on, maybe I can find something in one of these houses”
 
She tied her horse up at the gates. Briefly she glanced at the standing stone with alien symbols not of her people, she assumed it must have been left from the Firbolg.
 
She entered the small round house tucked closely by the outer fence which was a stone layered daub and thatch wall. Similar to most perimeter construction in villages at the time.
 
On the surface the house was fairly unremarkable. A simple stone and clay hut with the standard spiral thicket inlays and a thatched conical roof. The village had seemed strange to her but she had assumed the village had been abandoned but the inside of the hut seemed to tell a different story.
 
One where food was left to spoil in the pot and a table was lain ready for it to be served. A number of sets of simple hide and leather shoes left untouched and clothes slowly being devoured by all manner of insects.
 
Conclusion could only be that they fled in a hurry or they hadn’t fled at all.
 
The same strange smell of sea spray and the salt hanging in the air, so odd for it to be here as well. The building was a very simple dwelling with the fire pit in the centre and the beds on one side and a simple table for eating on the other. The beds looked slept in but untouched, a thick layer of dust covering them. One adult sized and two small wooden frame bed with hide and fur bedding drawn up.
 
A strange feeling gripped her and she took to looking at the ceiling and the inner thatch working. Staring at the elaborate patterns of cobwebs that had collected there.
 
She paused breathing in through her nostrils and closing her eyes. Then swallowing her fear and trepidation she marched over to the adult bed and drew back the covers swiftly.
 
As she feared underneath the remains of a couple clinging to each other, their expressions of horrifying finality. They had no eyes or tongues or lips but there was something there, something that struck a terrible enervation in them. Skin, what little was left was drawn and yellow and putrified. The smell of the sea salt must have masked it or else there was nothing left to rot. The beetles taking all the flesh for their own and leaving naught but cold off white bone.
 
“They must have been preparing food and then hid here” She remarked to herself. “What could have scared them so?”
 
She shuddered and covered them up again and looked over at the children’s beds.
 
“Oh goddess no”
 
She slowly walked around the adult bed and approached the children’s small simple beds. She took another deep inhale of salty air and turned over their covers.
 
She sighed in relief to see them empty.
 
“Empty?” she ground her teeth “Where are the children?”
 
A noise outside, the clopping of an unfamiliar horse on hard stone, a heavy harsh whinnying that sounded like a howl of a man pained.
 
She took to the small shuttered windows. She got low and peeped out at the cluttered claustrophobic streets seeing nothing. Only hearing the distant closing sound of devil hooves.
 
Then suddenly a black horse’s head appeared close to the window too close, the sound of the hooves completely divorced from its distance. She shrunk back into the hut stupidly trying to avoid the gaze of a dumb horse and reaching for a sword that wasn’t there. Terrifying as it was looming over her.
 
The horse passed by the window and she caught a glimpse of the rider. He was enormous, much larger than any tuatha she’d ever seen. Black armor that looked like bones and a skull death mask with gleaming red jeweled eyes. The black rider silently seemed to throb with breath. His armor rising and falling heavily, making a terrible noise like ribs being scraped with a knife. The plates rattling and shifting as the horse jossled.
 
The mysterious knight scanned the area, what was he looking for? Why here? Why now?
 
After a moment, he whipped the reigns as if angry at the air, spurred the horse and disappeared from the frame of the window.
 
She left it a moment, holding her breathe as she listened to the horses hooves get further away and it’s terrible cries cease.
 
Cautiously she approached the entrance to the round house, taking careful quiet steps on the earthen floor covered in loose straw.
 
She swallowed and listened and when she was satisfied stepped out of the small building and looked around. Without warning a tight gripping sensation around her heart told there was strong magic trained on her. She froze looking at the ground and a huge shadow growing at her feet.
 
She turned and saw the black knight on horseback standing on the thatched roof of the hut looking down at her. The horse scrapping at the straw and snorting breathing heavily.
 
“Hello girl, I’ve been looking for you!”
 
–
 
Head on over to inkitt to get the rest of the chapter right here.
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Gage Chapter 12 ‘Passover’

Hello hello again,

Greetings on this fine tuesday coming from my shack in the middle of murky nowhere to bring you more weird stories and general musings on life (or the lack thereof).

Been getting on with some decent writing and a lot of slacking off, still trying to get back into the swing of things with the 2k a day word count, not quite managing it but saying that the stuff I’ve been putting out imo isn’t too bad. It’s taking shape, it’s getting there.
Is it as good as the start, I don’t but I’m reaching the tipping point now, the story is peaking and I like the way it’s shaping up.

And tbh I’m looking forward to doing something more silly and fun again, so as soon as I’m done here gonna get straight back into 3 ring for the next instalment of that and then maybe start thinking about a sequel to Diana after dark if the time is ready for that. Been wanting to write that one for a while.

But the moon and the stars have to be aligned for that, it has to be perfect and if you’ve read the book you’d know that is pretty topical haha.

Not that I don’t love writing serious stuff and intense stuff, it’s just a little draining being in that head space constantly, you have no idea how worked up I have to get to write stuff like this. It’s like I meditate but not to get calm and serene but to get the complete opposite. I get so worked up it’s like I’m trying to rip the keys out of my laptop haha.

It just takes up a lot of energy to run that hot, I’m literally trying to make myself feel like I’m in battle flinging a battleaxe into someone’s face haha.

Talking about battleaxes in the faces I haven’t been reading or listening to the witcher much, I just don’t care enough to follow the story honestly, the characters are boring and unlikable and I feel like I was cheated out of the witcher series I should’ve have gotten. I keep lamenting to my polish buddy at work that if the series had been like the first story it would have been perfect. If Sapkowksi had kept it a tight almost pulpy action packed terse tense fantasy thriller it would have been my favourite fantasy series hands down.

But it just gets lost in the weeds with this generic crap and shitty characters I just lost interest. I mean most of the books are just about Ciri and completely unrelated stuff honestly. For a series about a monster slayer it just uses his monster slaying as like a character trait, it’s not what the story is about at all and plays no part in the narrative whatsoever.

Geralt being a witcher is just something he likes to tell people like he’s on a speed date but he never actually does any ‘witching’. It’s just astounding that CD projekt red can get it so right with the games but the creator of the character can get it so wrong. It’s weird because it’s usually the opposite for adaptations like it’s the total reverse with Dexter. Sure they hired a great actor to play Dexter but they completely fluffed the story and the character after season one. If the show had followed the books religiously it would have been amazing.

But it’s equally amazing that CD projekt red (jesus I sound like I’m doing marketing for these guys haha) could turn a cool shorty story (which could be a rip off of elric, I need to read elric) and turn it into one of the biggest game franchises in history.

I also finished that Parker book it was taking me ages to get through and yeah it kinda goes nowhere like I thought it might. They kill the only interesting villain off halfway through and replace him with an old guy on a golf cart who doesn’t do anything except shout at people. And the whole book is about Parker trying to escape this amusement park while getting besieged by this criminal organisation and spoilers yeah at the end he escapes and then goes home and makes himself a sandwich. That’s literally the end, I’m not making that up. The last line is him eating the sandwich and then thinking about getting the money he left there.

He doesn’t even get the money, or even try for it there’s no tension at all. He just escapes and thats it, no epic show down because the person he would have had the showdown with he already killed, he was literally the first guy he killed, it was pathetic. I mean why the fuck couldn’t you just have killed off the guys buddy and continued the story with the interesting villain instead?

That tiny change would have changed the entire plot and made it ten times more interesting and it would have been so easy to do. You just have the other guy walk into the hall of mirrors. Why would this smart villain be the first to walk into a trap like that? It made no sense and basically destroyed all the tension in the book.

I complained that the last book was kind of small and uninteresting and the heist was a little boring because everything went right. But that still had tension and interesting characters and a more dynamic story, it had legs. This book is just lazy and hacky honestly.

But still this is like I dunno the 14th book in the series and it’s the first real stinker, so that’s amazing. I’ve been burning through these books and loving each one more than the last. I just hope the next one returns to form a little.
Oh and I’m really excited because I just found out that someone turned all Stark’s books into graphic novels so that’ll give me a reason to read them all again which is great. I can’t wait for that.

I didn’t think the book was shit, I think if it had a few tweaks it would have been decent. Just have that interesting villain you spent all that time building up live til the end and have this awesome battle of wits of which I expected. And maybe have a little more set up to the actual job and the park itself. Just to give the story a little more breathing room and not be this claustrophobic almost like stage play set in one room.

Yeah so that’s my rant for the day probably be back for a poem tomorrow, I don’t know yet, been feeling a little up and down about that. I definitely have material let’s leave it at that.

Oh that reminds me I finally got to the part of the story where my bardic poem is used in Cur, so that’s cool. It is kind of a pivotal point in the story and the lore, the celtic mythology. Bards are held in high regard in that culture, their power to influence people is quite literally seen as a form of powerful magic and curses.

Anyway gotta go and do some proof reading as usual, finished the Diana pitch chapters but I’m gonna start working on the whole book soon enough. But I will put out another Cur chapter soon enough.

See you…

–

They came for us at night.

Me and my friends watched from our rooftops as they snaked through the back alleys. That bookish one with the moustache behind them fiddling with a tiny pencil and paper trying to write in some kind of journal.

They crept quickly and quietly to the centre of town. The town was so quiet you could hear the sand moving in their boots. A ghost town silently watching as they worked their way closer to the saloon they hoped Gage was sleeping in.

I could see on the hill where they set up camp, those weird pods were still there closed up and not moving, just sitting there like warts on a frogs ass.

They had strange weaponry and stalked the alleys ways watching every corner as they went. Feeling the eyes on them, slits of boarded windows following them as they passed holding their breath.

They must have felt us watching, the big one with the beard looked up at us but we ducked too quickly for him to see. They hurried along passing us off as curious birds.

He was waiting for them.

Just standing so tall, alone in the centre of main street, a cold wind blowing. His shotgun hanging loose at his side.

The men fanned out in formation and surrounded Gage in a semi circle in front of the saloon.

The man with the moustache shouted and tried to push past the men.

“Ryan, we have to take him alive.” He shouted as he approached the man with the white hair.

The man at the front said nothing, he just spun around and hit the pudgy moustache guy in the guts dropping him flat to his knees. Then he turned back to Gage and shrugged his shoulders.

The man on his knees tried to get up as the other men attempted to keep him down.

“If you kill him and others hear about it, he’ll become a martyr”

The man with the white hair, he must have been the leader turned to each of his men and he pointed, first at the woman. He said “Are you gonna tell anyone about this?”

She shook her head.

Then to the large man with the beard “You?”

“Not a soul.”

Then to the mexican.

“De nada”

“You?” He said to the younger man.

“No sir” he grinned.

“Well that’s everyone.” He said looking at the man with the mustache and quickly shooting him in the head with his strange alien weapon. There was just a quick flash of light and a strange noise and the man’s head was gone and his body became dead weight in the arms of the men carrying. Stained as they were with a light dusting of pink mist.

Disgusted, they threw his body down like a sack of potatoes in the dry loose top soil.

Gage watched the dust settle around it as it stopped being a person and just became scenery.

Ryan stopped and looked Gage up and down and scoffed. “We travelled all this way for this” He sniffed and spat on the dirt next to the mustache man’s body and said “I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to do that.” He smirked and put his e-cigar in his mouth and sucked on it looking at Gage. “I know you” He said.

Gage tossed his gun out in front of him on the ground. It landed with a heavy thudding noise.

Ryan let out a laugh and said “Well that was easy.”

Gage didn’t move or say a word, his one eye burning staring through Ryan who tried too hard to hide a boiling fear in his gut. Destiny staring him right in the face, looking at the bare pit where his soul was supposed to reside.

Gage took his duster off of his shoulders revealing a mountain of man in a stained grey longsleeved under shirt that was once white. Ripped and torn and bitten and stretched with the sinewy muscles underneath forged through nothing but hard work and sweat and toil. The work horse bitten and turned sour and vicious and lame biting back at the hand of his master and running madly and wild and free to it’s own doom.

He took his suspenders off his shoulders and clenched his fists.

Ryan scoffed again “Oh so you wanna do it the old fashioned way.” He took another suck on his e-cigar and put it back in his pocket. He took his gun out of it’s holster and lifted it over his shoulder at which point the younger guy with the shaved head took it off of him.

He was wearing some kind of weird skeleton suit over his body that went over his arms and legs and connected at the hips. Under it he was just wearing a fitted shirt and a pair of pants.

Ryan didn’t take a stance he just smiled with his cocky smile and said “Well what are you waiting for?”

He let out a mocking breathy laughter and said “Ok, I guess I’ll be the one to lead”

He moved so fast I thought I was dreaming at first. I’d never seen a human move like that, it was like he was there one minute and then there was just dust and dirt and he was barrelling at Gage. He didn’t throw a punch he just launched himself right into him like a cannonball and swept him off his feet with enough force to kill a horse.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. He couldn’t have been more than six foot nothing this guy but one minute he was standing there the next he was on top of Gage. He toppled the gigantic man in two seconds flat, felled him like a great oak tree in a single strike.

–

Check out the rest of the chapter on inkitt.

Passover

–

0

Cur Chapter 4 ‘Devil Knows’

Hi there, just drinking some green tea struggling to give a fuck.

Gonna keep this short for an intro because I have a headache and I generally feel like shit and I have lots of day job to contend with. Also there isn’t gonna be a huge chunk of witcher bitching because I’ve been finishing up that Parker novel. I think I’m gonna read the next witcher book and if it’s not significantly better I’ll abandon the whole series. None of the characters really grab me, the story is sort of a generic nothing burger, the action is phenomenal but there just isn’t enough of it.

The Parker novel is definitely the worst, it was just kind of small scale in comparison to the others and for me the fun and anticipation comes from them planning and planning around the job. Like my favourite part of I think it was the second book is where they all plan the robbery and then in the next scene Parker is planning how to stop the play of the other two in the job. Because almost every job involves an outsider who is trying to steal the lot and Parker has to plan the job and around them so it’s this really exciting chase between Parker and the money and the other players.
And while this is happening you’re getting to know all the characters and it’s really fun. This one was a bit of a let down because the actual heist part is sort of boring and goes too well and is just shoved off to the start and then on top of that the people who become the antagonists just seem like random guys and they’re not really that interesting, they were just kind of punks. Although I did like how Parker dispatched them both, that was great, grade A Parker.
I still enjoyed the book, it’s just not the top of the series but I’ve already read the first I think this was the thirteenth and I have ten to go so I’m loving that, thirteenth books in and this is the first one to fall a little flat. That is a damn good track record. I’m three books into the witcher and I wanted to quit it a book ago haha.

It goes without saying if you’re into pulp, Raymond Chandler or Dashell Hammett you’ll love these books. It’s like a classic detective novel from the perspective of the bad guy haha.

That’s about all, wanna start going over my agent pitch stuff for Diana again today and maybe do some more Cur proofreading if I feel up to it. Noticed I stop talking about my love life? That’s because it’s far worse haha.

Anyway.

See you…

 

Devil Knows

–

“She marked you.” A voice said above him, the voice was unlike any human voice and resonated as if a combination of bird tweets and bear growls mimicking human tongue. “I guess you think you’re special” The voice mocked.

 

The sound of real birds were happily chirping. He could feel moist and verdant foliage underneath him, a slight breeze and the shadow of a large tree. A break of bright beautiful daylight through a crack in the sky that was just his eyes opening anew.

 

Above him looking down the figure of a man’s head wearing a large ornate headdress with deer antlers protruding out covered in leaves and moss. And although his face could not be seen through the bright sunlight he blocked, he knew the man was smiling.

 

Cur awoke from his trance flailing wildly with a sharp inhale of breath. He grasped greedily and vociferously at the face leaning over him and he squeezed it.

 

“Would you stop that now?” An unfamiliar voice barked. “She saved your life and you’d treat her like?” The dog laughed.

 

“I’m already dead” Cur growled as he continued to squeeze the neck of the pretty young woman standing over him.

 

“You’re gonna break yer stitches and your head is just gonna roll off!” The old man said still with the needle in his hand.

 

“Who are you?” Cur asked the woman turning blue in his hand.

 

“She needs air to talk Firbolg” The dog said.

 

Cur took a moment and sneered into the face of the Tuatha woman and tossed her aside like a used rag.

 

Birog coughed and spluttered hungrily trying to force air into her lungs.

 

Cur felt at his neck and tugged at a loose piece of twine hanging from the stitching and ripped it off. His neck slowly healed over. He stood and went over to the young woman as she doubled over gasping for air.

 

He picked her up like a cruel toddler with a ragdoll, by the hair so he could get a good look at her face. Barely conscious the look in her eye was far away and glassy.

 

“Answer me” He growled.

 

“Birog, I’m just a druid.”

 

“Just a druid” Cur laughed low and menacing. “Then you can die”

 

“Now what cause do you have to do that?” The dog asked. “She dug you out herself.”

 

“She did your job for you mutt” Cur bellowed.

 

In an instant the dog took the form of a man of average height with light red hair and a dull pale complexion.

 

“Sure she has other assets you could get more than just the pleasure of killing her from” The man smirked.

 

Cur laughed. “I think she liked you more as a stinking dog, Tuan.”

 

Cur looked her up and down and found no fault. “So be it, she will be mine tonight and tomorrow, she may live.” He laughed and let her head loll back down on the ground.

 

“Wait” The girl strained to talk the dirt shifting under her. “I’ll give myself willingly if you’ll listen to my plea”

 

Cur took her by the nape of the neck, his hand large enough to wrap all the way around it. He picked her off the ground and looked into her eyes. “Talk if it amuses you.”

 

Her own feet under her now she shrugged off Cur’s hand defiantly and dusted herself off. “I helped you bec-“

 

“-You didn’t help me”

 

“Then you planned on being decapitated and buried upside down?” She sneered.

 

“No one looks for a dead man.” He croaked, a wicked smile crossing his cracked lips.

 

Tuan smiled as he span the chieftain’s gold torque on his finger. “You throw in a flashy execution and no one notices a little mouse or a cat scurrying into their houses and robbing them blind.” He laughed.

 

“You only saved this lazy dog a time digging and carrying.” Cur jabbed, a large wicked grin on his face.

 

She looked over at former dog Tuan who smiled shyly tipping his head. “I see, so you’re a shape shifter and a thief” She said scornfully.

 

“Something like that.” Tuan shrugged. “Tuan mac Cairill.” He said as he nodded “You’ve already met ‘Fintan the wise’” He said with a smirk bobbing his head towards the old man who sat silently. The old man was back to silently prodding the fire with the blackened branch and paying no mind to goings on.

 

“And you?” She said looking at Cur.

 

“I have no name” He growled as if that was somehow directly her fault.

 

 

 

 

 

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Cur Chapter 3 ‘A kind of magic’

Hello there dudes and dudettes,

Ok sliding in another Cur chapter because I realised I wanted to release a chapter a week and I kind of fucked that up so I’m gonna release two chapters this week to get back on track haha.

Pretty decent week of writing, I’m cutting out filler left and right which is great, really getting into the meat of the story and riding that wave, some things I need to change but I’m really liking where it was taking me. I kind of felt for a little bit that I was going with the motions and not feeling too inspired or if I was tired or fucked, my new sleep routine puts a lot of strain on my eyes because I’m just literally using them more.
My general philosophy when I feel kind of uninspired is just to keep going and go over it later, which I find works for me because I always write detailed synopsises of my work so I never get stuck looking at a blank page, I always have the next thing to go to. I always have something I can refer to if I get stuck.
I know there are lots of writers who don’t use plans and just go at with a blank page and their balls in their hands haha. I have no idea how they do it, to me that’s like fighting a fucking dragon with a toothbrush haha.
I always like to have a plan and a detailed structure at my back so I’m not stuck looking at a blank page with just my dick in my hand. I can always keep my flow going and if I hit a bump I can just take a break and sip some tea and come back to it.

But I was looking back at it and I was pleasantly surprised, it needs work but there’s something there, I won’t be polishing a turd just clearing away the crap on an unfettered gem.

Now for some witcher hate haha. I just don’t care about any of the characters honestly, not one of them, I just can’t care about them, I dunno, I just don’t think I’d get on with any of them and I don’t know what this author’s life is like but he must have some really complicated relationships with women. Every female character he writes is more obnoxious than the last.
Not saying women can’t be obnoxious but it’s every one of them, there’s maybe one woman in any of his stories that isn’t Ciri that has any redeeming qualities at all and even then it’s kind of only in comparison to the others who are awful.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not some rabid feminist by any means haha, I get that women can be assholes but when it’s literally every one of them it just gets tedious and loses all it’s power.
I mean the queen of brokilon was just an endless stream of unfettered cuntiness that I could barely stand. You could replace her dialogue with just farting noises and it would have been less obnoxious and tedious haha. It just reaches a point of parody and I can’t take it seriously and I never thought I’d actually be clambering for a likeable/identifiable female character.
Even in my work I don’t want to put women on a pedestal but represent them as they are warts and all but I also want them to be likeable enough to care about even a little bit and honestly when you find yourself rooting for the people that might rape and murder a character in a book you’ve done something wrong haha.

The Parker novel is pretty good, definitely one of Stark’s weaker ones, but the whole series is the perfect example of unsubverted expectations still being excellent. The witcher is so preoccupied with subverting expectations it forgets to be entertaining. Whereas in the Parker novels you know exactly whats going to happen and you can’t wait to read it haha.
Someone fucks over Parker and you know he’s going to track them down and curb stomp them and you’re tearing through chapters to get to it haha. The mystery comes into play when the why and who and the how are revealed. You what’s going to happen because you know Parker and what happens to people that cross him but you don’t know how he’s going to do it and who he’s going to do it to and that’s why you keep reading for that glorious catharsis that is nowhere to be found in the witcher books, the stories generally go nowhere or full circle, just generally unsatisfying.

Anyway enough of that I need to get proofreading the next chapter of Cur or I won’t have anything to post on thursday haha.

See you…

Ooh almost forgot, The One That Came Back for whatever reason has become super popular on inkitt so I thought fuck it, I uploaded the full edited version to inkitt so if you don’t want to download it you can just read it there.

A kind of magic

–

That night a dense bluish fog came low over the village. The calls of hounds barking filled the silence as the moon rode high on the crest and half full overhead as the village slept all, all but one.

 

Some form of morbid curiosity and fascination drew her to the empty mucky bog that would be the stranger’s grave. As proclaimed, no markings but a heavy stone pressed down on the grave. The grave that lay far from the town.

 

What she was going to do not even she knew herself but the druiddess felt some unearthly pull to the spot. Maybe a morbid trophy would belay her curiosity maybe not.

 

She approached the grave with trepidation, as if it were the steps to a grand and foreboding house. With no torch whatsoever and the necessity arising. The young girl tutting pulled her sleeve back revealing a gold half torgue around her wrist, with which she gave three quick taps.

 

On the third tap the torque began to give off an errie glow almost like a will-o-the-whisp. A slightly greenish hue that gave her all the light she needed to see the grave clearly.

 

“I have to know” She told herself “I just need to see the body for a moment, I can’t let this opportunity pass me by.”

 

Her curiosity had betrayed her as she was not alone. Too late she noticed the noise, a slight drawn out scratching noise and veiled breathing sniffing sounds and a low growl or whine or whistle.

 

“Who is that?” She called out but no one answered.

 

The scratching sounds got louder and the breathing deeper and faster as she approached the grave. Her footfalls sinking into the loose wet earth of the bog.

 

“I warn you, I have a weapon!” The druiddess swallowed her fear as she approached fumbling her small hands over the clasps. Moving her robes awkwardly to reach the handle of the strange sword she had found herself the owner of.

 

The druiddess drew closer to the noise. Her and on the hilt of the sword and her other on the oddly designed scabbard but she did not draw the blade as she feared to do so. The blade it seemed to her analysis had some magical properties but to the nature of which she had hitherto not discerned. Drawing it in anger could have unforseen consequences.

 

“I have use of magic” She croaked, her voice breaking as she said it, casting the light from her torque over the grave. A dark small dark figure hunched over the grave was digging in the loose earth around the stone.

 

The druiddess forgot to breath, she tensed her cheeks as she tried to swallow the lump of fear in her throat. Having no choice but to pass the light of her torque over the squat stygian figure scrabbling in the muck.

 

To her relief, the light revealed little more than a shaggy mutt. A dog of an indetterminent breed was digging and scratching at the freshly laid grave of the stranger from a by gone age.

 

“Shoo!” she cried. Feelings of anger and relief washing over her. Anger more at herself for being scared of something so pathetic looking.

 

She assumed the beast was just after the freshly planted dead flesh as a not so easy meal beneath the heavy stone.

 

“Away with you!” She swiped her hand in the air but the dog took no notice, continuing to paw and scratch at the soft earth.

 

Birog looked around her feet and found a small piece of sandstone and hucked it at the beast landing a few feet away from it. The creature lifted it’s head to growl and bear it’s teeth briefly before skulking away into the mist again.

 

 

 

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Cur Chapter 2 ‘The executioner’s song’

Oh my god, I wasted so much time writing a really savage review of this story on inkitt. Another salty exchange, one of many on inkitt haha.
I just logged in to find a three star review on inkitt from someone who had a weird name and no avatar and the review basically consisted of “Hur durr, the characters are mean, too much violence”. Then I was like ‘seriously a three star review because you thought the characters weren’t nice’
Then he’s like “Hurr durr, I like to give constructive criticism and harsh reviews” And me not knowing I was dealing with the Rodger Ebert of inkitt deigned to read his abortion of a story which literally reads like it was written by the Isla vista shooter. This is literally what Elliot Rodger would write if he wanted to write a sci-fi fantasy mash up story instead of being a weird incel spree killer.
The story is basically all about sci-fi rape and it’s- I can’t find any other word to describe it but as Todd Howard would say; ‘Degenerate’ haha.
But the difference is I actually gave constructive criticism in my review instead of just saying ‘the characters are too mean’.
I mean honestly I don’t care about the reviews on inkitt, really I just put it up there for ease of reading and general feedback but you’re not gonna get a good critique from that page. But when someone just pops up out of nowhere to shit on you it pisses me off. And it pisses me off even more so that the critique isn’t even good. There’s nothing he said that was constructive criticism, I literally can’t make my characters nicer because they’re supposed to evil and cruel because of what happened to them. And then on top of that his story is a steaming pile of literal garbage that is literally like Tommy Wiseau wrote a sci-fi novel haha,
Anyway, I’ll post that next week or you can go on my inkitt page and read it and his review if you give a shit, which I suspect most people don’t haha.
No bitching about the witcher today because I haven’t read any this week because I don’t fucking want to haha. I’ll probably read more tomorrow. But I’m really into the Parker novel I’m reading and it’s getting to the good bit.
So that’s about it, woke up with butthurt in my heart and needed to vent and fuck a schedule for chapter releases I’m planning to release a Cur chapter a week for my one fan haha.
Other than that I’ve wasted too much time already and I need to do some spamming or proofreading or quit drinking coffee haha.

See you…

The executioner’s song

–

Cur awoke with a bucket of water in his face, locked in a pig pen for a day and a half, stinking as he was. They only let him out once to torture him but too little avail. The pigs snorted and snuffled him as he sat shirtless and dirty as one of them. His head down, suspended by his one arm tightly wrapped with a piece of fibrous twine to the thicket fence.

The dwarves cut him loose and he grinned at them as they shuddered, shrinking behind their pikes at the sight of him.

They lifted him to his feet but he could stand on his own well and they walked him at pike point to the large round house on the hill.

The chieftain of Killaloe sat cross legged on a beautifully decorated hide rug. An ash wood tray with clay pots on it and a large ornately decorated axe at his feet. The hut itself was not anymore grand than the one used as a tavern but it smelled less of piss and old mead.

“Leave us” He said waving his hand.

“Sir he-“

“I know, I said leave us”

The chieftain was a wide portly clean shaven dwarf, only a few tufts of hair on his face he’d missed. He was wearing a gold trimmed tunic that still smelt of smoke and pig shit like everything in this village did. A gold torque around his neck and a conical cap made of birch bark on his head symbolized his status. “Please sit” He said pointing at the rug on the floor.

Cur sat crossed legged with one knee raised.

“Do you know me?” The dwarf’s face was sallow and looked slick to the touch, bouncing up and down as he spoke and dropping when he stopped.

Cur looked through him with a set of icy blue eyes. “I know your name” He hissed.

“Good” He had a pot of some liquid in front of him that he poured out into round clay mugs. “Are you really of the Firbolg?” He said without looking up.

“The Firbolg are dead”.

“I see.” He handed one of the cups to Cur. His down turned face unchanged and grim.

Cur batted it out of his hand letting it roll around on the deer hide rug. The chieftain’s face didn’t move, it stayed perfectly still as if numbed by snake venom.

He cleared his throat.

“We hear many rumors here as you may imagine, a small village like this, all we have are rumors” He tried to smile shyly but his face seemed almost too heavy. “Two in particular interest me, one of a strange series of attacks by blood suckers or ‘Dearg due’ as they call it. Whole villages are slaughtered for not adhering to some elder god or some such triviality. And another about a wandering mercenary that kills for coin and cheaply at that who lacks the good grace to die.” The dwarf managed a pinching at the side of his mouth that might have been a smile.

“Perhaps those rumors are much the same” Cur grinned speaking from his throat.

“We face hard times, some love Bres for his beauty, the fools, women mostly, others.” He paused and breathed out letting his face sag even further “Loathe him for the unfair taxes he levies. A third of our corn and of our milk, its extortion, I and a few others outright refuse to pay it.”

“This doesn’t concern me”

“You’re right of course, but I’m a farmer, it concerns me and that’s why I didn’t deliver you directly to the gallows.”

“Your point?”

“Very well, you’re very skilled and are attached to no clan as no clan alive would have you because of- well look at you.” He scratched his sagging jowl and tipped his head as if to speak to his own round gut. “Kill Abartach of Slaverghty. Do this and you walk free.”

“I walk free now”

“Hard times make desperate men Firbolg.” He sighed deeply and lifted his eyes a little looking for mercy in the man before him and found none. “I see a deadly pattern emerging, the Offaly villages of Annally and Lusmagh were hit first. Formally parts of Connacht as I remember.” His sharp eyes darted to the Firbolg for confirmation and found none. “All their people scattered or dead never heard from again.”

“Then how do you know it?”

“Travellers pass through, say the villages are deserted, all their livestock taken or dead. Not a man woman or child alive, almost no signs of struggle at all, no weapons, no survivors, no witnesses.” He narrowed his eyes to scrutinize the stranger yet again and found only a scornful calm.

“This Abartach?”

“He is the one profiting from their deaths.”

“How?”

“Abartach moves illicit goods from ports in Munster up and down the Shannon river from Slaverghty. Forbidden items smuggled out of the cities of knowledge and other such places. all the villages along the river know of this as it’s safer to transport them by water. Bandits can’t swim. As those villages are aware of this practice they expect tribute for silence. I suspect Annally and Lusmagh got too greedy.”

“How does he do it?”

“That’s what I hope you will find out for me, your freedom and a weight silver.”

“Petty squabbles between dwarves don’t interest me.”

“Well surely your freedom and your life interest you.” He tone shifted became faster and more breathy. This is more than just petty squabbles this is conspiracy, this fratricide.” His face was red and his eyes began to bulge out of their socket, spitting as he spoke. He may well be working for Bres himself!” His face was hot, a bead of sweat trickled down his cheek and then he paused for a moment “How did you know he was a dwarf?” He said as his blood rain cold.

Cur smirked wickedly.

The chieftain’s face became drawn and white and he coughed. “You’re an assassin then?”

“Sometimes”

The chieftain’s face drained of color as he looked at the ghostly white visage of the man before him. “Then the scene in the tavern, just so you could be before me – How much is he paying you? I’ll double it, triple it!”

“He offers me more than mere silver.” He croaked ominously in his gravelly voice.

“What then? Land? His ugly daughter? Spit it out!”

Cur breathed in deeply, his eyes wide and manic as he smiled like a ghoul. “A future!” He said stonily.

“Ahhhhhhh!” The chieftain wailed his flabby face rippled as his ornate axe leapt into his hand. He swung at Cur’s neck getting one good but shallow whack in it at the base of his neck.

No blood just a gaping wound like a notch in a tree. Cur’s head tilted to one side with that manic insane smile on his face still, laughing low and menacing like a demon.

The chieftain crying out pulled his hand back for another strike to free the monster’s head from its shoulders.

Cur caught the little man’s stubby hand in his gargantuan fist with a hard sapping sound. He squeezed the dwarf’s hand letting the heavy axe drop on the hide rug.

“What now dead ma- ahhhhh!” The chieftain cried as Cur pulled him by the arm like a tavern strumpet and lunged forward to rip out his throat with his front teeth.

–

 

 

0

Diana After Dark Chapter 16 ‘Dark Descendants’

Yoyoyo- and that’s enough of that.
Gonna keep this one terse because I want to get right into more proofreading and editing, had a bit of a weird week. I dunno, I finally got all my day job work stuff and Diana editing out of the way and then I sat down to write Cur and I was just fucking braindead haha. Isn’t that always the way, fucking sods law. 

I dunno, I just felt sort of tired and run down and it was like getting blood out of a stone, nothing like the first week. Writing is weird like that, it’s like the weather, there are good days (in this case weeks) and bad. But I had to write something so I stayed the course telling myself that today I would fix all the lazy bullshit haha. I met a nice quota just barely hammering out the plot. I made a few hotfixes I think help the story a long and I’m feeling my villain. I’m worried he might be more sympathetic than my hero now but that might be exactly what I want haha.

So I’m gonna keep on trucking with that, I just sent out my mailing list newsletter with the freebies so that should find it’s way to you if you’re reading this. I meant to send it out last week but I was busy and it just fell out of my head, better late than never though. No updates really beside that I watched war for the planet of the apes and it really rustled me so I might do a review on that just to get it out haha.

That’s about all.

See you…

–

I just sat there for a moment looking down at it, turning it in my hand, getting a feel for the weight. The weight of his words swishing around in my head. I didn’t have to ask if they were true, it just made some sort of insane sense, a puzzle piece falling into place, this was what I waiting for.

“What do I do?”

“Whatever you want.” He smiled.

A lapping feeling of dark waves pouring over me, covering me, feet first. It was like a dream, like a wish. A whole dark world opened up before me, welcoming me in like some returning hero from long exile. I was home, whatever that meant. I went from a sad emo only child with a serial killer blog to Dark Diana mistress of the damned with not one but two siblings of the night at her side, more or less.

“Oh yeah” He said suddenly raising to a mid-crouch, the ceiling being far too low for his stature. He leaned over Wendy and opened each eye and then gave her a few little love taps to bring her just to the brink of consciousness. “I gave them just a little more than you to keep them under. I didn’t know whether you wanted them to talk, sometimes I like them to talk, confess, scream, spit.” He paused and looked down at her like she was Christmas ham and then looked back up at me and smiled that plastic smile. “It seems necessary sometimes but it’s up to you. I think she’s passed a confession at this point.”

“I know all I need to.” I said stonily.

“I figured as much.” He smirked.

Wendy’s head rolled back and forth and her eyes fluttered open and she looked around confused. Unable to move her head as it was pinned with plastic wrap across her forehead. She saw me and her eyes got hot and spicy, I could almost see blood squirting out of them.

I could feel it then, my heart pounding, the dark dancer gripping the knife, moving my hand, my feet moving on their own, letting go, letting it take me as it purred incessantly in my ears. I stood like someone yanked my strings and glided over by her side and looked down at her. She was beautiful, a perfect specimen really, it was a shame. A beautiful tragedy.

She was my friend, kind of. That’s what made it special I guess, the setting, the night, the company. She looked up at me with wide terrified eyes now, she saw the knife, she could feel the squashing pressure of it now. The helplessness, the hopelessness. The cornered animal anger leaving and being replaced with a dreadful solipsism. She could feel it now, see it in my empty eyes, she knew she was about to be swallowed, there was no other way. Not a muscle she could move, not a penny she could spend, not an eyelid she could flutter. Nothing would spare her this, this was fate, this was the end, her end and it was as beautiful and poetic one as I could ever hope to see.

Only one question savaged me; Where to start?

–

For the rest of the chapter and to read the others head on over to inkitt.
Dark Descendants

 

0

Cur Chapter one ‘Who wants to live forever?’

Well would you look at that, is there anything sweeter than a first chapter?

It’s a really good feeling, a feeling I thought I’d lost but then came back stronger than ever and just completely reinvigorated me body and soul. I was kind of stewing after Diana, waiting for the next wave of creative euphoria to hit me and boy did it hit me. I was just kind of going through the motions filling quotas with Gage and 3 Ring, just fun distractions this is the meat, this is heart and soul fire this is what I was born for.

You can tell I don’t really give a shit about Gage an 3 Ring because I really don’t care what people think about them and I haven’t asked for reviews, whereas with this I want people to review the first chapter now goddamit haha. But I think it’s good to keep your pen moving, keep your stick on the ice even if you aren’t feeling it. Just to keep yourself in top form ready for the big game haha. Analogy salad.

The greatest advice I could give another writer if I were asked to do so is just to keep writing, keep practising and keep doing what you love until that one day lightning strikes. Because as long as you are doing what you love it will.

But if you’re not it wont.

Ok so quickly I’m not going to rag on the witcher today, there was actually a decent fight scene in blood of elves, it lasted like two pages but it was ok, then straight back to talking and Ciri taking a bath. I will do an amazon review when I finish it, just for my own sanity, just to get all the salt out of me head haha.

Ok now back to the important shit, so this chapter is basically a character hook so I can unload a lot of backstory in the huge next chapter which still isn’t finished haha (sorry). But the second chapter is really cool and ends in a couple of really awesome fight scenes some of the best I’ve ever written. I kind of glossed over the big battles as exposition because I mean shit, how do you write big battles as compelling? Is that even possible? I mean to me as someone who was a fighter, a fight is more than just swords clanging it’s about personalities clashing ans when you just have these waves of faceless people smashing against eachother it just seems like a sex scene with two blow up dolls, there’s no fun for me there. It was a videogame I’d feel totally different but its not so :P.

I took a lot of inspiration from The Witcher which I suspect takes a lot of inspiration from the Berserk series which I absolutely adore, it’s probably the only fantasy series I follow religiously. A lot of my inspiration especially later on in the book and somewhat for Cur as a character comes from that.

Ok so enough waffling (now I’m hungry) this chapter is going live on inkitt today gonna get writing a blurb and a teaser for it after I transfer from coffee to green tea (he says as he spills coffee all over himself, fuck my life. It was just a flesh wound.

Yeah then I’m gonna try and get some first chapter reviews and get my buddies at work to read it and tell me it’s better than the witcher all they’re all fired haha.

Still proofreading chapter two which is a bit overlong and a bit of a mess and wrestling with some plot changes I made later on that I’m ironing out.

But other than it’s full steam ahead and check out that dank cover art I found haha.

If you want to read it in a mobile format without all my waffling head on over to inkitt right here.

Cur: Blood and Soil

 

–

The fire pit popped and cracked in the center of the round house. The farmers gathered close with their mead and whiskey to wait as the bard Coirpre tuned his lute. Breathing in and out deeply as he plucked each string in turn. Sitting with his back to the daub wall, where finger marks could be seen in the crudely layered earthen clay.

The ridges of the branch frame sticking out in places like the ribs of a starved horse. A facsimile of the Leinster cote of arms; that of the golden harp hung above the hearth.

A mouse ran along the beams as the wind howled outside. The cold seeping through the thatching making a terrible ghostly whistling noise and disturbing the fire.

 

The bard doffed his grouse feathered cap and smiled as he rested the lute in his lap and started to play.

 

“This poem, I have affectionately dubbed; ‘Bres the bastard’” The poet smiled glancing around the room for a covered smile but found naught but dead silence.

 

“What?!” A woman cawed at once.

 

A man in green tunic leapt from his stool “We feed you and give you a bed and you insult our king?!”

 

“Good people, it’s merely satire; you wouldn’t criticize my work before even hearing it would you?

 

“That you may die roarin like Doran’s arse we would aye!” A broad bearded man said.

 

“Please there’s no need for this, another ballad perchance, I have many”.

 

“Many a time a man’s mouth broke his nose” The bearded man spat.

 

“What’s a ‘bastard’, grandfather?” A little girl asked as she bounced on the old man’s knee twiddling her braided hair tween her finger and thumb.

 

The old grey haired man in the grey woolen cloak looked down at her and sighed “Well it’s a man ere not knowing who his father be.”

 

The little girl scrunched up her freckled face “How could he not know that?”

 

“Well ya see-“ The old man turned his long grey face to the banging shutters. Then glanced over and the small crowd gathered around the poet shouting and heckling and pulling at him.

 

“Grandfather, can you tell me the story of the other king instead?” She said swinging her blond plaited hair about her bonny face unable to keep still.

 

“Child, I’ve told you that story so many times you should be able to recite it by rote”

 

“And I could that” The little girl pouted and preened.

 

“Well go on with yourself then”

 

“I will” The little girl put her hands on her hips and tipped her head back putting her finger to her lips. “Mmm well there once was these men”

 

“Were they just men were they?” Her grandfather jested.

 

“There once were these people, mmm and they were called the Nemedians, and this was their land and they called it, erm… Inish Alga, which means; ‘the noble isle.’”

 

“Yes”

 

“But then they got sick and there was a big wave and legends say these mean monsters called the Fomori came and chased them all away. But… they didn’t all go to the same place.”

 

“No, where did they go child?”

 

“Half went north to the cities of knowledge.” The little girl’s voice droned a little as if she were reading the names. ”Falias, Gorias, Murias and…. erm…. Finias!” He caught her breathe and swallowed. “-To be with the gods and most importantly the mother god Danu. She bathed them in light and knowledge and shared with them her blood and they became the children of Danu. The Tuatha De Danann, which is you and me” She smiled.

 

Her grandfather nodded “Go on child”.

 

“The other Nemedians weren’t as lucky. They went south and were slaved and treated very badly by the dwellers of that land for hundreds of years. Those mean people made them carry huge sacks of dirt on their back from morning until night. Made to eat the worst food and live in the most horrible conditions.

 

But like the winter makes the tree bark gnarled and like iron; the children of Nemed became savage by nature. As soon as a male child was born he was thrown in a pit with hungry dogs and if the boy child didn’t kill the dogs with his bare hands, it would surely kill him.

 

Soon they became so strong growing to the size of giants they broke free of their slave masters and slaughtered them. Carrying sacks of dirt on their backs twice the size of them all the way through the desert and across the sea to the land they knew as their home Inish Alga.

 

They called themselves ‘The Firbolg’ the people of the bag after the earth that shaped this land.

 

The earth they took from that harsh realm transformed this land from craggy cliffs to a rich farmland. For a long time they cultivating the land endlessly warring amongst themselves for control of the island.

 

“Then what happened” Her grandfather smirked.

 

“Then we came” She chirped. “Although grateful to Danu for sheltering them, the Tuatha de’ never felt truly at home and longed to return to the island they left so many years ago. With the knowledge and magic given to them by Danu they set out to return to their ancestral homeland.

 

But when they got to the shore in their great flying ships the Firbolg were not happy to see them. The Tuatha pleaded that they might have only a fifth of the island to call home but the cruel king Eoichid the Prideful rejected them as he only knew war. The Firbolg didn’t know how to share the land. They didn’t know how to live in tune with nature like the Tuatha de’, seeking only to bend it to their will.

 

The Tuatha pleaded for peace with their long lost brothers but the Firbolg denied them time and time again and before long war was their only option.

 

The Tuatha were not afraid of war, they had mastered the magic of the gods and were skilled warriors. But the Firbolg were a formidable foe and they outnumbered the Tuatha ten to one. Each Firbolg almost double the size of any Tuatha de’.

 

Still they met on the field of battle and the Firbolg even with their superior numbers and even with their size and strength could not beat the Tuatha de Danann.

 

The high king Eoichid angered by this challenged Nuada king of the Tuatha to a duel to decide the fate of the isle. Knowing that he could kill Nuada with one blow. Nuada accepted and with one vicious blow Eoichid cut Nuada’s shield in half and took his arm at the root. But Nuada with the last of his strength bested the wicked high king.

 

Without their leader all the Firbolg knew was to fight and they would fight without end until they were all wiped out. In Nuada’s mercy he offered them a province all of their own so they might live. As a reward for their bravery and martial valor. They accepted and retreated to Connacht, never to be seen again. Some say a plague took them or they fled under the hills but Connacht is a strange and haunted place to this day where no Tuatha de’ dare tread.

 

King Nuada in his victory renamed the isle Inish Vale ‘The island of Destiny’ after the stone they brought with them from Finias. But Nuada could not be king because a king must be perfect and without his arm he was not fit to rule. So the crown fell to Bres the bas- the Bres the Beautiful and everyone lived happily ever after.”

 

The old man smiled and clapped his young prodigy “Well done lass, well done.”

 

She smiled and tussled her hair to take a small bow.

 

Then there was the sharp sound of fist thumping a table rife with malice.

 

“Liar” A scarred voice said.

 

“I beg your pardon?” The old man rose defiantly from his bench to scan the round house.

 

All the men were at one side of the round house pommeling and kicking the poet. The women too crowded round to geer and throw pieces of mead wet bread and cabbage at him as he lay on the sodden earthen floor in the fetal position. One of the wenches taken to wearing his grouse feather cap in jest.

 

The only other figure was a stooped cripple dressed like a druid with a long dark hood and cloak.

 

“Identify yourself stranger, who is it that calls this innocent girl a liar?”

 

“I do” A cold gravelly voice said.

 

The figure sat alone unmoving on a small round table to himself, almost unnoticeable in the darkness of the round house until now. For that was his wish.

 

The old man stood and drew a slim short sword pointing the tip down.

 

“The crows curse on you! You will stand; show me the face of the man who would call!”

 

The man didn’t move from his seat.

 

The old man angered by his silence took to his side and slammed his hand flat on the table in front of the stranger.

 

“Briseadh agus brú ar do chnámha! You will rise and give me your name cur!”

 

“Cur will do” The man said, his voice sending a chill down the spine of the old man.

 

Without cause the stranger moved like water. Without thought or pause he pinned the old man’s hand to the table with a wide oddly shaped javelin head crudely fashioned into a sword or cleaver. The head of the javelin having a rounded point like a shovel which curved into two hooking spikes. Which then recurved inward on each side creating a harsh biting cutting edge like snakes fang.

 

The blade rounded shovel point was so wide it cut right through the old man’s hand and into the table. Cutting off all his fingers above the knuckle and the tip of his thumb. His white blood poured over the ash table and over the bench and on the floor.

 

The old man staggered back wordlessly clutching his bloody hand under his armpit. The sound of his light sword dropping on the floor draw the attention of the hecklers.

 

“What’s going on here?” The man in the green tunic said.

 

The old man swallowed and tried not to vomit or pass out “Call the chieftain” He huffed.

 

“What’s this?” The man said confusedly, then he saw the blood and drew a wide broadsword in one hand.

 

“What did he do?” The stranger in the cloak asked pointing at the crowd around the poet, kicking and jeering at him.

 

The man in the green tunic tightened his jaw and flared his nostrils looking back for a moment and then back at the stranger.

 

“He insulted our kings, what of it”

 

The stranger uncovered his long sinewy arm it bulged with a vicious vile intense hatred. He squeezed his fist and the room became hot with the beating of his blood. “Give me your kings!” He said in his low gravelly scarred voice. “-Let me squeeze them in my hand!”

 

“He’s mad”

 

The old man vomited and passed out, his granddaughter loudly sobbing over him as she tried to rouse him. “Grandfather!” She cried.

 

“Here” The man in the green tunic barked at the men crowded around the poet.

 

The men craned their necks trying to see by the light of the fire pit what he was jabbering about.

 

The stooped stranger stood to his full height then, a full two feet above every man in the round house.

 

With the same hand he took his hood down and a tuathan wench turning at the wrong moment bobbed her eyes at him and let out a horrifying shriek.

 

He was completely bald, his head and eyebrows cleanly shaven. One side of his face covered in strange markings that looked like scars but seemed all too deliberate and esoteric.

 

But the thing they noticed most of all was his ears.

 

They were rounded.

 

“He’s- he’s a human!”

 

“I thought they were all dead!”

 

“You missed one” The man raised an ominous smirk.

 

The little girl lunged at the stranger with the short sword and thrust it into his gut. Half blinded by her tears she didn’t miss her mark burying the blade up to the hilt.

 

He looked down at the girl and smiled and smacked his lips kissing at her mockingly.

 

She shook letting go of the sword and stumbling backwards.

 

He laughed maniacally and pulled it out covered in his hot red blood and tossed it on the ground at the onlooker’s feet.

 

“Red”

 

“Is he a monster?“

 

“Firbolg!”

 

“Dear Deugh!”

 

“Vampire!”

 

“He should be dead!”

 

The man in the green tunic swallowed his cold feeling of dread as he watched the stab wound close by itself. The elven young lad flung himself as if dragged by the tip of his sword at the giant.

 

Cur turned faster than his size would deem possible and corked his blade from table and found it a new home in the lad’s soft skull. His face cleaved open by the wide spiked tip. His white blood and brain matter showering his kinfolk.

 

And the women wailed so.

 

The blade still buried in the lad’s face he tossed the lad like an empty sack of grain and tore his cloak from his shoulders. The man was large even for a human and was built of sinew and limestone and held together by bile and hatred. His chest heaved and his shoulders hawed but only one arm held a sword. The other was gone. Replaced only by more of the hideous scarification.

 

“He’s a cripple – all at once!” The crowd turned from the battered poet who lay bruised and bloodied and covered in piss.

 

The stranger laughed and let his tongue roll out of his mouth lapping at the air madly like a dog or a viper hungry for their blood.

 

One lurched out of the stolid pack raising a sword above his head. The odd shaped chopper swung under him fast and light and delivered a deep gaping hungry dull chop across his gut. The sound it made like an oar cutting through a wave sent shivers through the hecklers and tossed their bellies. The elf doubled over heaving, a ghastly wheezing sound coming out of his side.

 

The woman in the grouse feather cap lunged at him with a pitchfork pinning the Firbolg against the daub wall, he smiled at her with blood in his teeth. Cur snapped the haft with one powerful strike and with another he split her down the middle.

 

The other peasants dropped everything they had and ran at the sight of her bisected body.

 

“What is this?”

 

“Halt!”

 

Cur turned to the entrance and saw two heavily armored dwarves with long pikes and iron shields ready to greet him. He pulled the pitch fork head out of his guts and dropped it.

 

“You’ll come with us now!” They ordered.

 

The Firbolg threw his javelin head sword into a table. He stooped with a mocking grin and put out his one hand for them to shackle.

 

“Did I do something wrong?”

 

The one that shackled him walked him out in front of the round house; the other went inside to retrieve his strange weapon. Admiring it quizzically.

 

They walked him through the tiny village. Consisting of a smattering of stone and clay round houses surrounded by a thatched branch fence next to the Dobber river. The large round hut was communal and the smaller ones were where the families lived. The biggest round house at the fair side of the fence was where the chieftain of Tallaght lived and held court.

 

Around the village the trees and hills were a deep emerald and sparkled with dew as the sun on occasion broke through the dense grey clouds. The wind and the rain a constant steady and gentle metronome.

 

Cur smirked at a woman feeding pigs knee deep in shit. She looked up at him with abstract horror in her face. They walked him on towards the large round house, his wicked mad laughter carrying over the trees as he went.

–

0

3 Ring Samurai Chapter 4 ‘Take the sword Part 1’

Good morrow fine folk, it is I your humble bard..

And that’s enough of that. Ok so updates; I fucking did it and it turned out pretty damn great. I wasn’t really intending to do my standard 2k a day word count challenge thing but I was just so fucking eager I start an hour earlier than I usually do and spent like the next four or five hours just bounding around this fictional world I was creating like a dog with a ball it it’s mouth. And before I knew it I’d written way too much and that’s pretty much how it went for the last four days but it did work out to a nice neat round a bout 8k.

So that right now shapes up to about a chapter and a half because I got a little carried away and the flashback chapter is like a short story in itself so I may have to break it down a little bit but it turned out really cool and it has one of the best (and shortest) fight scenes I’ve ever written, just the level of gravity and intensity really swept me away and I hope that goes the same for anyone reading it. If people have a tenth of the fun and excitement I got from just writing it then I’m on to a winner.

I almost couldn’t wait to get up this morning and write about and go over, this is the first time I’ve been this excited about proofreading and putting something on inkitt.

I think the first chapter is great, I had my baby mama go over it and she made me rethink the whole chapter and I’m so glad she did because I love the changes I made to it. I think the chapter really nails the character hook, she even compared him to Alucard from Hellsing, which was a character I wasn’t even thinking of but it was music to my ears. Although I hate that anime (Not so much hate it, I just found it underwhelming), Alucard is the only reason its worth watching.

Well anyway wanna keep this terse so I can actually do the proofreading I just mentioned so just want to mention inkitt a bit and then get on to some Blood and Elves hate which I find more and more of the more I read it.

I dunno, it’s weird ‘The One that Came Back’ is really popular on inkitt, it’s nearly surpassing Green Sunday which has been on way longer and I spammed the living hell out of and everytime I go on inkitt someone has added it to a list or saved it but I get new reads constantly when I never spam it at all and I literally give it away for free now haha. So that’s cool, I mean what are the odds that that is the first book I get legit published haha, that would be great but also suck since I wrote it in literally thirty days and lots of it is me just transcribing a documentary haha. 

Ok so I realise why the witcher Blood of Elves sucks so much and it does suck, it was a meme at first, when I was like halfway through but I’m near the end now and I swear this book is like 95% really boring conversations about nothing. It’s literally just conversation after conversation and any action or interesting thing that happens in like a page or two then the conversation will just be the rest of the chapter and then it’ll cut away to another completely different conversation in another part of the world and it may or may not be related. That’s the whole book. And the chapters are stupidly fucking long, it’s a three hundred plus page long book and it has eight chapters, so you just have these bloated chapters full of pointless dialogue most of which could be shortened to a sentence at most. And what’s more is the chapters don’t really need to be that bloated, the chapter breaks seem arbitrary since there are constant cutaways without transition to other conversations entirely. It almost seems like chapters are there just as a formality.

So anyway, why it sucks. It sucks sort of for the same reason The last wish fell short. The last wish is just a series of short stories not connected except that they involve Geralt, that’s it. But it’s a series of fun and action packed short stories that are interesting and varied and have lots of subtle nods. 

The problem with Blood of Elves is it’s not a novel, it’s a short story or two short stories that have been stretched out to be the length of a novel and packed with filler conversation and political commentary. That’s literally all it is. Because the main plot begins at the start to try and hook us then it’s filler city for the next hundred odd pages then there’s a smidgeon of action in the middle then the story is sort of coming back around at the end. Some people say the filler is like character fill but I don’t think so, the characters still seem really generic, I don’t feel like I know anymore about Geralt or Ciri and all I learnt about Triss is she can’t drink potions, maybe she’s lactose intolerant haha.

And it occurred to me last night that I gloss over romances in my stories because they don’t interest me. But I sort of pay some lip service to them but I make a point that it is lip service.

In this book he’s in love with a woman he literally forced to love him with magic genie powers and now they’re apart in this book but their epic romance is sort of just hinted at. So essentially *insert epic romance here*, it just struck me as really lazy having like a time jump to say they had a really great romance but now they’re avoiding eachother like the plague. 

Anyway really didn’t meet my goal of being quick and concise but I will have the first chapter of Cur: Blood and Soil (working title) up on inkitt by the end of the week probably sooner. I really can’t wait to hear people’s opinion on it, although I probably wont source reviews on inkitt until I have more done, I’ll just poll the poles at work haha. My biggest fan is a polish guy I work with who got me into the witcher and now I hate it haha.

Ok must do actual work now gah!

See you…

 

–

“Morning Ethel, hows tricks?” Deputy Pete said, a cheeky grin painted on his wooden boyish face.

“Aint run tricks in here for years, ever since that damn circus came, snatched up all the good whores from here to the crater” Ethel stated.

“It’s just an expression-“ He smiled awkwardly taking stock of the bar with a quick side eye glance. He got a weird feeling all of a sudden but couldn’t explain it, like he walked into an animal cage and found it empty. Like something was looking at him deciding which part to pull off and eat first.

He swallowed but kept smiling as he tried to be as inconspicuous as possible sizing up the strangers in the bar. So far there were only two he could see, they were sat at a booth in the corner, the same one the clown was sitting in the day before but they weren’t clowns. Nevertheless they looked strange, the one facing his way was around thirty with dark receding hair and a grotesque scar on his neck that made the skin look pale and flabby. The one with his back turned was a giant with arms as thick as barrels, he was pretty hard to miss.

There were more in the back standing around the pool table. They were playing pool but there was something off about it. Their movements looked practised and robotic like they were playing pool in a stage play. Like no one was really interested in winning. Three guys, one a short jittery guy with spikey hair and beady eyes. A thin guy who was all angles with long hair tied back, and a tall guy with broad shoulders with his back turned.

“Ethel-I-err”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing- I just gotta check something.” Pete said not looking at her.

He hitched up his gun belt, took a deep breath and approached the two sitting at the booth. He walked slow and deliberately but neither of the stranger decided to notice him. Or his heavy footfalls on the loose wooden floor.

He cleared his throat and put on his best shit eating grin. “Anything I can help you folks with?” His feet betrayed him with the sound of boot leather tensing.

The one with the scar turned his eyes slowly up to look at the deputy, one of them was milky and probably blind. He cut a weird grin that made him look like a shark. It was the kind of face someone might make if they’d never seen their face in a mirror.

“No officer” he said in a soft mocking tone with a gravelly voice.

The large man let out a grunt or a groan and Pete tried not to stare at him.

“You folks staying long, it’s just we don’t get too many strangers out here.”

“We’re not strangers” the strange man smiled again.

“Is that right?” The deputy tensed his jaw and swallowed. “You mind telling me what your business is here?”

“Just passing through” He said.

“Just passing through” Pete nodded, tapping his feet nervously.

“Is that a crime officer?”

“No-“

“You wanna ask me how I got these scars?” he smirked.

“Uh”

“Cooking fried chicken” he laughed “That hot oil does get everywhere.” He grinned at the deputy.

“Is that right- you folks wouldn’t be carrying any weapons would you?” He let his hand fall onto his holster.

“Me? Not a one sir.” He said.

Pete took a look at the large man who didn’t say anything. Hulking arms framed a large gut and barrel chest with a small head on top.

“Does he look like he needs a weapon?” The man smiled again and let out a breathy laugh. “I’m just foolin’ around, he’s harmless, got the mind of a child- wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He smirked.

“I used to pull the wings off flies when I was a child” The deputy said.

“Is that right? – well I’ll bare that mind.”

“You do that” He said. “You folks have a nice day.” He stood there for a moment trying to think of something else to say tapping his gun belt. After a moment he turned and gave Ethel a worried look trying to signal with his head as he walked out of the saloon.

He walked out into the street looking back still feeling those predator eyes on him. A cold shiver like a knife playfully dragged down his back. His fingers drumming on the wooden handle of his colt. Trying to shake the feeling that it really wouldn’t do any good.

The deputy walked at a quick clip to get back to the sheriff’s station. He entered quickly looking at his gun rack silently thinking.

“H-hey you said you’d get me outta here! A strained nasally whining voice said.

Deputy Pete turned to the source of the noise absent mindedly, it was Bull with his head still stuck in the door of the jail cell.

“Oh right, I was going to see if Ethel had any butter or cooking grease or something- slipped my mind, sorry about that” He smiled sadly.

“S-Sorry?” Bull whined incredulous with his shiny bowling ball head unable to turn and look at him.

The rest of his crew were awake but in varying states of disrepair, battered and bruised all crushed up one side of the cell. As far as they could get away from the clown who lay on his back on the floor looking up at the ceiling fan spinning.

“Well good morning!” Deputy Pete said to the clown. He opened the cell slowly edging around Bully as he was dragged around by it having his head stuck in it.

“N-not so fast!”

“I’m being as gentle as I can be”. He said still looking at the clown “Hey you, you’re released, you can go, preferably as far away from here as possible.”

The clown got to his feet and walked towards the deputy. “The sword”.

“Oh that’s right-“ He stepped out of his way letting him step around Bull before shutting and locking the cell again. Everyone else inside seemed to breathe a sigh of relief seeing the clown go.

“Here take the damn thing” The deputy said letting a little of his nerves show as he took the sword out from under his desk and tossed it on the counter top.

Pookie readjusted his pants and slid the sword into his string belt. “Who took a crap in your cornflakes?”

“You did, you took a crap in my cornflakes- and what in the hell are cornflakes anyway?” The deputy snapped. He breathed out through his nose pressing his lips together “Your buddies showed up.”

“Well why don’t you just shoot’em” Pookie smiled.

“I’d love to but they haven’t done anything yet and I don’t wanna give’em the chance, that’s why you’re getting your clown ass outta town right now!”

“Wasn’t I promised a plate of beans?”

“That was yesterday, this is today.”

“I don’t even know where I’m going, I need a map, supplies a real bed for the night would be good.”

“I can throw you back in the cell if you want, tell your buddies to come right here.”

“NO!” the other men in the cell shouted in unison.

The deputy stopped to look out of the window. “You got any tickets?”

Pookie’s stomach growled.

“I’ll take that as a no- but none of that is my problem and if you’re not outta town by sundown I’ll run you out myself strapped to a mule.”

Pookie nodded and walked out of the jail into the morning sun, struck then realising he had no idea where he was going or what he was going to do. This world was entirely alien to him.

“Hey mister” A high pitched voice said.

Pookie turned shielding his eyes. A tall kid with milk bottle top glasses hopped off the bench outside of the jail licking an icecream cone.

The kid came up to him smiling his freckled face, he had light blonde hair pushed forward on his head. And he was wearing a set of coveralls with an anime robot over the breast pocket. Despite his voice and age he was just a little shorter than Pookie although he couldn’t seem to stand up straight. A chronic sloucher who nevertheless carried himself with an optimistic child-like bounce in his step.

“You’re from the circus right?” The boy gestured with the icecream cone.

“…”

“Wooooww! I know you, what’s your name? Pokey? Banjo? Poopy?”

“Pookie”

“Yeah that’s right, Pookie- I’m like your biggest fan, the name’s Donny.” The boy smirked holding out his hand for Pookie to stare at. “-I watch all your shows when you come to town. I watched the one where you did the thing and you were like …- ya know” He started miming sword strikes with his icecream “And they were like bleurgh, ow my guts haha!” Donny smiled miming being disembowled and catching drips from his melting icecream. “My mom tries to stop me from going but I’ve got my own money” He winked.

“That’s great” Pookie said as he continued to walk on.

“Hey wait, I heard what the deputy said, you need tickets right?”

“Yep”

“What if I brought you breakfast at the saloon- and you can tell me all your cool stories?” He screeched in an unbroken line of dialogue gasping for breath between each word. “Like like like- you could tell me your cool backstory.” He said chasing after the clown trying not to drop his quickly melting icecream.. “Like maybe your whole family was killed by mutant wolves but one of the wolves raised you as their own and then you joined the circus. Or like your parents were from a rival tribe and clowns killed them but one of them couldn’t bring themselves to kill you. So raised you as their own living with the shame to one day have to reveal it in an emotional confrontation.” He paused thinking “Wait that’s pretty much the same story- I guess I’m not a good writer but I bet the real story is much cooler.” Taking a bite out of his icecream and in his excitement instantly regretting it “Brainfreeze!”

Pookie turned.

“So you’ll tell me?”

Pookie’s stomach growled even louder “Sure”

“Awesome!” The kid screamed chasing after the strange clown.

~

Pookie entered the saloon for the second time but this time the air was very different.

“Oh it’s you again- didn’t Pete lock you up?” Ethel said.

“No that was a different clown with a sword.”

“Oh” Ethel gaped.

“Morning Ethel!” The kid chirped excitedly wafting his icream around before letting a malformed blob of it fall onto the saloon floor. “My you’re looking lovely today”

“Err thanks”

“Can we get two plates of the house special for me and my new pal?”

“Sure thing kid”

The old bint disappeared into the back and Donny excitedly lead Pookie to a booth just to the left of the one he sat at when he first got there.

The kid was practically dragging the clown as he tried to get his bearings in this new ecosystem he’d stumbled into. He looked over in the back where the old men were still dozing and attempting to play some card game. The pool players replaced by the cardboard cutouts of generic pool players laughing and hitting balls at seemingly random intervals.

Excitedly the kid ushered Pookie into his seat which was facing out towards the bar and the exit adjacent to it.

Pookie was a little annoyed by the kids youthful exuberance but he promised to fill his belly so he could hardly protest too harshly. Then as if out of nowhere Pookie felt a sudden crushing feeling, the air in the room getting ten times heavier almost soupy. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck raising up as if someone or something was sharpening their fangs waiting to pounce. More than that, straining to stop itself from doing exactly that. Every ounce of willpower holding it back from running its necessary course and ripping him apart.

Then there was a sinking feeling and an odd warmth at his back, a cloud moved out of the way of the sun and it cast a huge shadow over his table. A giant humanoid shape.

There was an itching scratching sound and a distinct whispering.

“…not yet… patience”

A low rumbling groan.

The old woman came back with their food and it looked like that might be the cause of the distress. The smell from the kitchen causing some form of mild epilepsy. The kid looked happy enough with whatever it was, possibly roadkill or the road itself. Pookie couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It looked almost like a plate full of yellow congealed earwax. Some hitherto unknown animal species roasted beyond all recognition lying next to it.

Pookie ate with long teeth but only a few bites in there came a hideous snapping sound that he hoped wasn’t anything vital in his intestinal lining. A scraping screeching noise followed, a cold chill swept through as a huge shadow fell like a curtain over the table.

Pookie turned his head leaning over his food to see a giant figure standing over him with a broken table leg in his hand and a cracked penguin mask on his face.

The giant swung with an intense speed and ferocity aiming to pin and obliterate his head against the table.

Pookie leaned back and let the blow annihilate the table leaving only splinters. Acting on instinct alone he pulled the draw string on his scabbard making that odd winding kazoo noise. The blade launched the handle of his sword past the giant’s face. The eyes in the pommel lit up letting out that tinny cringey laugh as the bottom of the blade sliced the side of the penguins neck open.

The clown tried to hop out of his seat holding his sword only partially out of the scabbard in his off hand.

Penguin stumbled, holding onto his neck with his other hand to stop the bleeding. He lifted his enormous arm up for another strike coming down just as hard and fast as before almost as an unbroken chain of attacks.

Pookie swiftly ducked under his large arm and with his sword and sheath fully out of his belt he lifted the bottom end of the scabbard. Tilting the scabbard up allowing the gravity to empty his sword into his hand.

He took it and it laughed again as he jammed it into the Penguin’s chest. Not smoothly but with a ratcheting wrenching motion as he tried to lever the point through layers of muscle and sinew and bone. Going as deep as it possibly could.

The giant didn’t make a sound other than a low heavy breathing as it looked down at the sword sticking out of it’s chest. It dropped the chair leg on the ground with a hollow sound and took a step forward before wrapping both it’s hands around Pookie’s neck. Lifting him off of the ground.

Without his hand there the cut on his neck sprayed vital fluid on Pookie and all over the saloon floor but it didn’t seem to phase him as he kept applying more and more pressure to Pookie’s neck. His hands were so large it seemed like he might just pop Pookie’s head off like toothpaste cap.

Pookie could do nothing but wriggled like a frog pinned to a dissection table. His legs flailing and kicking as he tried to free himself, his hands occupied with trying feebly to remove the hands of the giant around his neck. In the futility of it he let go of the giants wrist and put both hands around the handle of his sword and started to try and wiggle it free.

The giant penguin let out an echoing moan and Pookie felt his grip slackening but still he couldn’t breathe and he was starting to see spots.

He wriggled it harder but it wouldn’t budge, it wasn’t coming out, at least not the way it came in.

Pookie started to wrench it and pull it like it was an awe on a rowing boat. And he was churning up really choppy water full of meat and bones cracking and shifting.

The penguin moaned louder and his grip slackened a little more but still Pookie couldn’t breathe. In his desperation he started to knee the handle and hammer the pommel with his heel driving the sword deeper into the wound. By the time the guard was all the way in his chest cavity was when the penguin finally moaned like an oxen and let Pookie flop to the floor. Coughing and gasping for breath.

Pookie put his legs under him as soon as he had a lungful. The Penguin stood like a statue, his chest heaving, that stupid clown face pommel sticking out of it.

The penguin swayed thoughtfully and put his hands out for the clown. But Pookie wasn’t about to let himself get wrung out like a dirty dish clothe again. He ducked, dipping under one of his arms and turning into a sweeping heel kick hitting the clown face pommel driving it further towards it’s target.

Penguin tilted and swept around with his other hand but he’d become slow, his movements were like he was swimming through molasses. Pookie ducked the swipe again delivered a tight donkey kick on the clown faced pommel driving it further still.

The tip was now protruding all the way out of the giant’s back. He heaved and wheezed like a dog who swallowed a squeaky chew toy. His head hanging low, a light coloured blood bubbling up from under his mask.

But Pookie wasn’t done. He stepped forward quickly sweeping his front leg and spinning in the air to deliver a powerful turning kick to the pommel. Striking it like a soccer ball and launching it all the way through the monster and out the other side. It’s final destination the mirror above the bar, it wobbled spattered blood and other such liquids in all directions as the mirror spiderwebbed on impact. That dumb clown face lighting up and laughing as it shook.

The giant groaned and stumbled and looked down at the hole in it’s chest.

Pookie stooped to peek through at the terrified Ethel who was cowering behind the bar.

“Peekaboo”. He waved through the sizeable cavity in the giant’s chest.

Ethel ducked under the counter.

Penguin fell slow and it almost looked like he was shattering under his own weight, the colossus of Rhodes made grotesque flesh. Falling piece by piece with heavy deliberate sounds like it was raining whole sides of beef for a moment. And then came the silence.

Pookie looked around, covered head to toe in blood. The old coots were continuing their card game under the table. Ethel was peaking up from the bar and the pool players were looking over. The larger one with the broad shoulders just chalking the end of the cue and blowing it over and over.

Pookie mounted the bar and ripped his sword out of the mirror completely shattering it and almost raining ethel in shards of broken glass.

Donny popped up as if from nowhere. “Holy crap that was awesome!” He looked down at Ethel over the bar “Don’t worry old gal, I’ll cover all the damages, I promise. He looked back at Pookie as he cleaned the blood and guts off his sword with a bar mat. “Are you ok? I mean it looked like he almost ripped your head off.”

“Just peachy” Pookie grinned.

He let out a sharp gasp and clung to his side falling off the bar quite spectacularly landing face first onto a bar stool, his sword clanging by his side.

“Holy crap!- Quick, help me get-im to a bed” Donny yelped.

The young lad helped the clown to his feet, and lead by the old woman he helped the dazed man up the ramshackle wood stairs of the saloon. The construction of which was almost that of a tree house, barely holding together with tape and happy thoughts. The walls a bare unvarnished wood patched with rusty sheet steel.

Ethel opened a door to one of the rooms, it was small with only enough room for the bed with a deeply sweat stained mattress. A single chair and a closet at the end of the bed. The floor was bare floorboards with a thin hide rug of some unidentifiable grey animal with six legs.

“Lay him down here”

“Yeah I know how a bed works” The kid smirked as he gradually lowered Pookie onto the mattress.

“This room aint free kid.”

Donny smiled “I’ll cover it.”

“You better” Ethel waddled over to the door “What are you doing all this for, he a friend of yours?”

“I’m his biggest fan” He smirked.

“Uh huh, I’ll be back with some linen and hot towels” She quipped as she waddled down the hall.

Despite her surliness Ethel did return with some sheets but no hot towels or happy ending was to be had at this time.

Donny had some food brought up to him but the clown slept most of the day away in a near comatose state as his body tried to repair itself.

As the sun went down patience started to wear thin. There was a tapping on the metallic roof of the saloon with steel toes. And at the window; a nervous rapping on the glass slipped into the background as a dull metronome. A claw scraped the glass and a hushed voice repeated over and over at a manic pace.

“I can’t wait! I can’t wait! I can’t wait! I c-c-ccan’t wait!”

–

Like this? Wanna read more head on over to inkitt boiiii!

Take the sword part 1

0

Gage Chapter 8 ‘Day of Lords’

Blah blah blah Redania, blah blah blah, temeria, blah blah blah nilfgard, blah blah blah ciri- oh shit this isn’t the Witcher, stuff actually happens in this.

Yeah I was telling my brother about the Witcher books and he was like “Wait- you’re telling me the books came before the games?” because he likes to read books that are made as companions to games and I started to think how fucking disappointed someone who liked the games would be if they read these books, then I realised ‘oh wait, that is me’. I played the game first and fell in love with the card game and now am thoroughly bored by the book.

I’m already two thirds of the way through it and the first two thirds build up to one fight with some elves where I think Geralt kills all of one of them and then it just cuts to him on a boat hunting a sea monster which involves shitloads of exposition for a fight that lasts like a page.

It’s like this books thinks monster hunting will cramp it’s style, it just needs to use monster hunting as a plot point to spring into more boring conversations about nilfgards trade policy and temerian embargo on goods, I wish I was kidding. This book is so far up it’s own arse worldbuilding it forgot to have a plot or interesting/likeable characters. I don’t care if the kaedweni economy is suffering, I want to see Geralt kill monsters, is that too much to ask in a book about a professional monster slayer?

It sets up all these characters to ultimately do nothing with them, it’s so tedious and the conversation go on so much longer than they have to, a sentence is never enough, the characters swap huge paragraphs of dialogue and it still doesn’t seem to progress.

Ok enough of that, I was just reading it this morning and I was really excited by the sea monster fight only for it to ultimately let me down, both the fight with the elves and the sea monster fight pale in comparison to what I came to expect from the first book. The fights in that were so well detailed, frenetic but gruesomely precise, that’s what really grabbed me about the first book. A good story(despite ripping off faerie tales left and right) and strong characters punctuated by visceral action.

Any so yeah I hope you liked my first attempt bardic poetry, only took me all fucking day for four poxy stanzas haha.

I just recently stumbled on a pivotal character I was missing so I decided to do some research on celtic bards and poetry styles and bash up a poem to make a tyrant kings face red. I didn’t want to cop out like the witcher and just have everyone react to the poem or describe it vaguely but not actually have a poem in it. Well looking it over now it just sort of describes what happens and then transitions as if it was all a song sung by Dandelion the bard but it was never introduced as such and it has no rhythm or timbre and none of it rhymes or sounds like a song. So it’s like straight up prose that someone just says ‘well that was a song guise’ at the end, but it wasn’t though.

I didn’t really think of it at the time but it was kind of lazy and I was tempted to do the same thing and just say “The bard did a bad poem, made the king mad” but I just thought it would be more authentic and more fun to actually write a fucking poem haha, I mean I’m a writer right? That’s what I do. And sometimes things present themselves, you have the easy way or the right way and at every turn I’ve taken the hard road and felt better for it.

So hopefully today I can finish the chapter breakdown and actually start this bad boy tomorrow, I’m so fucking nervous and excited. I can’t wait and I’m dreading getting out of bed haha. I must have played the first scene out in my head a million times and each time it gets better and better and I can feel it like I’m in the room but I know when I start I’m going to have to do more research as I go and choose a location because I haven’t mapped the story out yet in terms of it’s geography (always sucked at geography, and grammar). I have a map, I have the rough story outline so tomorrow I’ll start thinking about locations and scenery and stuff like that to set it and then keep and start it off right.

Ok so enough waffling, got a chapter breakdown to finish and a lawn to mow haha.

See you…

–

A crack of thunder shook the whole house to its foundation, the sound of breaking glass and splintering wood. The yelping of inhuman creatures, their tongues clacking dry. Then another volt from the heavens and another and the scratching footsteps stopped. Only the creaking remained and a quiet mewling yelping noise and the sounds of heavy feet stomping down on the thin wooden boards.

The boys were frozen, scared stiff staring up at the ceiling their guns shaking in their hands. Then the footsteps started up again and the floor boards creaked again and the boys tensed up aiming their weapons at the boards.

The footsteps got closer to the trapdoor now and it was suddenly flung open. The boys shook training their weapons on the opening as a shaft of light and dust billowed in. But no form came through the opening just the light and the dust and every nature sound that could fill a godlessly long minute.

Then something was tossed like a sack down the stairs and the trap door was closed up again with a slamming force plunging the boys back into darkness. The boys almost fell over themselves to see what it was and then it move a little and they thought to fire but it was too dark. Jameson lit the lamp again and it was some odd mass of something, dark mat hair.

Then the thing uncoiled and sprang away from the light like a huge rat and the boys shrunk away terrified.

“Ya killed ma paw and ma maw and all my brothers.” The voice was a vicious and guttural whisper like it was pushed passed the tusks of a boar. “Now imma kill you dead”.

The thing was fast and it leapt out of the shadows and swept a clawed hand at the lamp knocking it into the dirt plunging them back into the darkness.

The eyesight of the lug akin to a beasts made darkness little more than an obstacle to them, whats more their other senses were much keener than a humans.

“Jaysus” Shaun sputtered.

“Shhh” Clarke cautioned.

The cellar was black as pitch and quiet as a graveyard, then there was a scratching noise. The sound of tendons coiling and then it leapt out of the dark and attached itself to McDonald. He swung it around with his mighty arms and pinned it to the wall of the cellar with his forearm. And he went to work on it’s underbelly with the brass knuckles keeping it’s jaws away from his face. “Sunovabitch” He shouted.

The things arms and legs were pressed by McDonalds body. But his wriggling was vicious and he cut and clawed and pawed at McDonalds arms and legs biting into his flesh but Mcdonald held him there. “Would someone please shoot this bastard?”

“Sure” Clarke said as he pressed the barrel of his rifle under it’s chin and fired. The flash lit the floor of the cellar up for a brief second before plunging it into darkness again and filling it with the smell of gunpowder.

The boys gathered themselves and slowly and cautiously made their way to the trapdoor. After at least ten or twenty minutes of listening to the still silence upstairs. They finally decided they’d face whatever was up there waiting for them rather than be starved out.

Jameson was first, he tossed the trapdoor aside with one hand. He steadied himself against the floor aiming the schofield around the room and back at the entrance to the store but both were clear.

He climbed all the way out followed by the others who filled the room slowly and quietly. He quickly threw open the doors to the bed room and tossed the schofield around the corners finding nothing.

He came away from there as they stood in the kitchen “It’s clear” He whispered.

Shaun made a little whistling noise and pointed at the door into the store front. Clarke sidled along against the door jam and nudged the door open with the barrel of his rifle.

McDonald came in low with his revolver and angled himself around the door so he could see what was there.

“You can come on out on now” They heard a familiar voice boom in the store front. “They’re all dead.”

Jameson gripped his schofield tighter and bounced into the storefront and stopped dead. As he saw Gage standing there covered in blood and fur below the waist. Some scratches on his face and hands, teethmarks on his boots.

The bodies of the other three half-lugs lay strewn around the store like some macabre tableau. One bent over one of the racks with all his spine showing. Another collapsed in the corner turned on his side allowing his brains to tumble out. And the other cut clean in half below the waist and looked like it crawled aways before it died leaving a clawed bloody trail.

“Let’s go” He said.

The boys took whatever they could carry and brought it back to stash it at the whorehouse with plans to come back for the rest later. Once they found a place to put it all.

They eventually had to bury a lot of it to retrieve later, that way it couldn’t be found if any convoys came idly by.

The food they found wasn’t much but the old man had suggested that there was a town nearby. Where he most likely got the bulk of his food.

The boys went back to that outpost and burnt it to the ground with some lamp oil. They burnt all the bodies separately on a pire until there was no trace left of them. Any passing convoys would just see a burnt out building and think it was struck my lightning or a gang of luggers that had somehow discovered fire.

After some preparation and some advanced scouting by O’Shaughnesy and Clarke. Clarke spotting from the outside and O’Shaugnesy talking to some of the locals they learnt everything they needed to know about the town and more. The power and comms that was the first thing they’d strike, crippling the towns infrastructure was the first step to taking it.

If they could shut off the tubescope delivering those pleasing numbing theta waves. They had a chance of convincing the people or failing that using force. Gage had absolutely no qualms at this point about killing his own people or forcing them to save themselves.

He was more than aware that humans hadn’t the faintest idea what was best for them and had been subverted far beyond the means for rational discussion. If he had to he’d use terror and violence to save them from themselves and he’d kill those that refused to fight at his side to save the human race.

“You’re out of your mind Gage, you know that?” Doctor Westwood spat, his face drenched in sweat his voice cutting through thick silence of McClusky’s bar. “You’d replace tyranny with tyranny where there is none. In your vision you’d tear this world apart just to be rid of a race that bares you no ill will, do you not see that this is the product of a sick mind?” Westwood was shaking as he spoke “Come with me and you have a chance at having a normal life, we can help yo-“.

Gage fired at the tubescope hanging over the bar blowing it to smithereens.

Westwood froze in terror grabbing his ears. Then scuttling his fat hands for his pistol on the table holding it low looking at Gage with wide eyes “You’re out!” He said almost like he was asking permission.

He got cooler and calmer and smiled and said “Destroying those will do no good. There’s a hundred more where they came from even if they did what you claimed they do.” As he said it the power went out, the loud tubescopes and their megaphones outside shut off and the streets were silent. “Cute trick, but you can’t save this town from itself” He said reclaiming some of his confidence as he fingered his gun with his sweaty palm. “Not by yourself”

“I’m not by myself”

Westwood swallowed “You’re out, you fired three times now, I have you, you’re coming with me!”

“I’m not going with you” Gage said as he raised his gun to Westwood’s head.

“You think I’m stupid, you want me to kill you where you sit, is that it?” He sputtered, his vision narrowing and focusing on the three barrels of the gun pointed at him. And then he focused hard on it and noticed something strange in the middle of the three wide shotgun barrels.

“Not today.”

Westwood squinted as it caught the light and he shuddered at the realisation of what it was – another barrel.

 

–

Continued here

Day of Lords

 

 

 

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