When I was a teenager, I wrote a lot. I started a lot of stories and
finished very few of them. Some of them were awful. Just bad.
Some of them,
however, I think had promise. I had big ideas for a series of novels that would
all interlink at various points in time, space, and character and be part prose,
part graphic novel.
For some reason, I was reminded of this one the other day -
one that was meant to start such a series that would have one story now, and
then pick up the themes and maybe some characters or places much later.This is
the start of a story that I started when I was 17 and I added to it periodically
until I was about 19 and discovered going out and girls, and then university. I
got as far in as writing about 50 A4 pages before I added no more, so as it
stands, the story is incomplete but I thought I'd share the intro, the first 2
pages of it, here.
This is about 12 years old, so please be gentle with it. I
haven't altered so much as a punctuation mark from when this was last saved to my old laptop in
2002.What do you reckon? Should I pick this up again?
This is the beginning of,
"Where's a Warrior Without Her Pride".
There she stood, stripped to the waist, waiting. Silence pressed down,
heavy as a wet pelt rug spread over the scene. The quick, tight pat of the drums
had long faded and the chants had reached their high fevered climax moments ago
giving way to the soft voice of the wind.
Crushing terror beat about her like an enormous winged thing, threatening to
capture her, but she instead caught it and leashed it and brought it under her
control until its only freedom was in the sweat that broke out over the girl’s
tanned exposed skin.
The chattering of the crowd at her back dulled to a murmur as the shaman and
Gaideon, the leader of the warriormages, stepped to behind her. Area tightened
her grip on the stakes. A drop of blood appeared below her palm and hung for a
moment before dropping into the dust. Swallowing despite her dry mouth and
ever-present threat of vomit, she closed her eyes tightly, shutting out her town
which rose before her. She concentrated on sensing nothing; not the sun searing
her bare back, not the low murmurs of the watchers she could not see, not the
agony that was now almost upon her. For long moments, silence reigned.
Making formal declarations in the Old Tongue that Area would have understood
if she’d been concentrating on them, the two highly respected men took their
positions, beside each other, directly behind the girl. Area heard the curt
scuff of their footsteps coming to a stop on the dirt. The time had come. Her
breathing became quick and shallow and the sweat ran down her body in glistening
rivulets. She adjusted her weight on her feet a little and braced herself.
Still murmuring in the Old Tongue, both men linked hands then extended their
free arms towards Area. There was a static hum, then suddenly, flashes of
blue-white, buzzing energy issued forth from their hands like Lightning, as he
impels his awesome chariot through the clouds. The blasts lashed into the girl’s
shoulder blades, charring her skin. She stiffened her back as an instant
response, arching in throes as the twin blasts streamed into her, burning her
back, but she did not release her grip. The energy was not just burning her.
Aside from the consuming agony, she could feel the crude energy coursing into
her and through her, probing her. Testing her. She could feel it racing through
her veins into every part of her and it made her shiver and sweat and it made
her feel ill. The smell of her flesh burning drifted to her nostrils. Fixed at
their source and fixed at their target, the intense bolts whipped and snapped,
playfully interacting with each other, twining lustfully round each other in one
instant and repelling each other with the violence of a lightning strike in the
next. The assembled audience of townspeople could hear the buzz and crack but
they could barely see anything; so blindingly bright was the light from the
fitful energy streams.
As she grunted in pain, all thoughts paled into obscurity, then were seared
from the girl’s mind; all except the purifying agent of those blasts of pain.
Blue-white pain-flash was all she could see, all she could hear, all she could
taste; sour and bitter on her tongue. Still she held her arms out and gripped
the stakes. Now, she could not even think about her arms. She had overcome the
initial urge to snap them down protectively but then any thought of moving them
had been blown away and she could only tighten her grip ever more. Radiant pain
grew ever more in her mind until its intense brilliance threatened to blind her
consciousness and shatter her mind. She could feel every part of her part of her
body resonating a scream of torment that grew louder like the wail of so many
trapped spirits suffering in turmoil and it joined with the throbbing pulse in
her ears, and it climaxed and it felt to the girl as if she were about to rip
and release the horrible pain from her body and the blasts stopped.
Every person in the crowd remained squinting, transfixed. It was now to them
as if they had come into a dark room after staring at the sun. Every single
person could, however, feel the charge now in the air.
Silence.
Her jaw was clenched tight, the muscles bulging beneath her cheeks. Some
moments later, Area’s raw and aching hands released the stakes. She barely
winced as muscles rubbed beneath dual symbols newly burnt into her back.
Area stands motionless between the stakes for a long while, hanging like a
ball thrown up at the peak of its ascent, in the instant just before it falls.
She opens her eyes wide, takes a deep gasp of air, and slumps, but immediately
catches herself on her knee and with weary determination, she stands.
The shaman and Gaideon come to her side. They do not help to support her. The
shaman drapes a dark robe about her shoulders. Slowly, Area turns to face the
audience. She is smiling.
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