Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Excerpt Time!

One of the things I'd hoped to do with this blog is share my writing. So, today, I bring you the first of, I hope, many excerpts.

This is from my published novel, "Falling Into Fate." It's from an early chapter, and it really starts in motion the mission my little band of characters undertakes. Any questions, feel free to ask!

I'd love comments and/or followers!


From Chapter Three ...


The town, West Serra Land, had been decimated by a band of marauders. I’d read in history books about the raping and pillaging that was supposed to have gone on in medieval times, but I’d never imagined I’d end up seeing what the results looked like firsthand. Flames chewed up rickety wooden structures, and bloodied bodies, some with weeping relatives crouched around them, darkened the landscape. Up to this point I can tell you I’d been somewhat nonchalant about my transformation and adventure—I wasn’t sure yet whether to believe it was really happening or that it was some sort of psychotic episode, but somehow it hadn’t turned me into a quivering jellyfish. Now, as I saw what looked, smelled, and felt like real death for the first time, I began to truly know fear.
 

The others moved about in the ashes, turning over body after body and swearing. Domitrus was administering some sort of liquid to a wounded man, who convulsed, wracked with pain, and spit it up. Orlacc and Therra began questioning the cowering locals about the identity of the invaders and the whereabouts of the Sage. Parkel, like me, stood and surveyed the carnage with a look of uncertainty wafting with the smoke across his boyish face. His frustration over Therra and Orlacc had been momentarily forgotten. After a while, Orlacc beckoned us together.
 

“My friends, fear not,” he said. “We shall avenge this good village of the deeds perpetrated by those bastards my stepfather sent. But in the meantime, we have been given the location of the Sage’s den. I suggest we find him immediately.”
 

We all agreed to that pretty quickly! Anything had to be better than standing around, surrounded by the dead and dying. We followed Orlacc down a few of the village’s dirt roads, and soon we arrived at a stone hut. Water dripped from the thatched roof, and tiny trails of smoke from the recently extinguished fires rose into the air. The wooden door had been battered in, and it was half off its hinges. We all looked at each other, and, seeing nothing better to do, we pushed the door open and entered. It was pitch dark inside the hut, and I couldn’t make out any people or furniture.
 

“Maybe he left?” I asked.
 

“Quiet, Morrela—!”
 

Suddenly, from out of the darkness, someone leapt on Orlacc’s back before he could finish yelling at me. A silver knife blade caught the light. There were sounds of scuffling, and then, apparently, Orlacc pinned his attacker.
 

“Unhand me! Unhand me!” a shrill voice cried. “Haven’t you monsters done enough damage for one day?”
 

Orlacc’s voice growled out of the blackness. “Listen, you little old pip-squeak! We’ve come for your help—not to harm you!”
 

All at once, a sizzling ball of luminescence appeared in the middle of the room, flooding it with a watery green light. Orlacc was on the floor on top of a little old Chinese guy in a robe. The skin of the man’s face, hands, and feet was spotted with brown and folded into hundreds of intricate wrinkles, and his long ponytail was the color of rock salt, but even with these cues, I was hard-pressed to guess his age—he could have been 65 or 99. His features seemed to shift a bit in the unearthly light.
 

The rest of us were arrayed about the room. A bloodied dagger lay on the ground.
 

“Well then,” the little old man started, “let me up and tell me who you are.”


- End Excerpt -

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