Progress and an Epiphany
Where do ideas come from?
Hi friends. If you’re new here, this is The 200 Word Novel, where I’m writing a novel roughly 200 words at a time, and sharing the raw, largely unedited results here. You can find the start of the adventure (and the story) here. Stick around to the end for a sneak peek at a little revelation I had about where I think I’d like to take this story, and a thought on where fun story thoughts come from.
The hare’s eyes glanced around the ship. Gruber couldn’t tell if he was looking for sympathy, or merely any kind of way out. “I say anything, and I’m good as dead,” he muttered.
“You don’t, and you’re certainly dead,” Basil promised.
The hare chewed his lip, biting so hard as to draw blood. His hand drifted towards his face and Basil and Ren simultaneously pressed their weapons against him further in warning. The hare froze, with even his nose stopping its quivering.
“I can’t. Say. Nothing,” he emphasized, his paw drifting towards his lip. He wiped a small smear of blood from his face, then reached down towards the deck of the ship.
Gruber drew his crossbow and also aimed his sights on the enemy captain. “I’d give him some space,” Gruber called out to Basil and Ren. The two glanced at the frog with quizzical looks but listened to their guide, backing away slowly while keeping their weapons also trained on the hare. Gruber tightened his grip as the hare brought his bloodied paw to the ground. Either he was trying to write something on the deck… or he was a blood mage scribing some kind of rune or glyph that could likely eviscerate everyone within a 10 paw radius. Risky to let him continue, but Gruber decided curiosity could cook the frog in this case. He wanted to know the identity of their assailant—and what could make a clearly skilled mercenary band of assassins this terrified to even utter a few words out loud.
The hare scoffed, an ounce of swagger and pride edging back into his voice at the reaction of the others. “I ain’t no stinkin’ blood mage, if that’s what you’re worried abou—“
The words caught in his throat as he coughed, then choked. The bolt had already left Gruber’s weapon as the hare looked up, eyes bulging in terror, gurgling some lost word that turned into a spray of blood bursting forth from his lips. The arrow hit true, plunging into the hare’s jugular—but the poor buck was already dead. The blood mist he expelled hung in the air, globules wobbling like red berries in the moonlight, as more blood drew forward from every orifice, pulled from eyes and nose and ears as the body convulsed, held rigid by some unseen force, crimson rivulets then gushing streams of copper-scented wet wending and weaving out of it and congealing into the unmistakable shape of some unreadable, unholy script hanging in the air.
All this happened in an instant. The span of a singular breath. A Gruber-length blink.
Then, the body erupted.
Gruber didn’t see the explosion, as he had turned to dive behind a stack of barrels the moment his bolt left his crossbow. But he heard the peppering of bone and viscera hitting his impromptu cover, winced at the splintering of wood as fragments of corpse-turned-projectile smashed into and through the barrels with unnatural force, felt the streams of burning blood and sharp chips of osseous material scald and cut through skin.
As he crouched, taking stock of what blood on him was splatters of hare and what was his own, the wet squelch of more explosions burst out across the ship.
Chapter 3
It’s gonna take Orion some time to clean all this up.
Gruber surveyed the grisly scene before him. Blood, body parts, and innards painted the burned, splintered, and pockmarked deck of the Duskhawk. Fragments of bone and numerous arrows and bolts studded various surfaces. A large crater smoldered where Odo had gathered the captives, the force of the blasts having smashed clear through the deck in parts, revealing the hold below. The main mast of the ship still stood, but a precarious and sizable crack ran all the way up its length. In the distance, the last visible bits of the assailant ship slowly sank into the waters, emberstone flames sizzling as the burning vessel submerged below, the orange glow of fire dampened by the thick, black smoke that rose in plumes.
All around, Gruber heard the groans and murmurs of the surviving crew. A few seemed relatively unscathed, but many more clutched arms and tails, trying to stem various stages of bleeding. Gruber watched a young mouse pluck bone shards from her leg, grimacing with each tug.
“All crew on deck,” a beleaguered Basil called out. “Healers, hold your spells for triage. Reserve for the gravely wounded first.” The last sentence was shouted as a command for all, but Gruber watched as Basil gently pushed Ren’s glowing paw away from the stake-sized chunk of wood lodged in Basil’s shoulder. Ren’s mouth pulled into an unhappy line, but she acquiesced, turning her attention instead towards the others emerging from various points of cover.
“Any attackers left alive?” Basil asked Odo as the crew began to gather. The otter shook his head. Gruber was impressed to note Odo looked completely unscathed.
“They all popped,” the otter said. “Like grapes in the sun.” Presumably to help, he then made a series of little mouth noise popping sounds.
“If grapes detonated with overwhelming force via more blood magic than I’ve ever seen in my entire life, then sure,” Ren scoffed as she pulled the arrow from the gut of the lynx that was steering the ship. He gave a pained yowl, dulled as Ren poured a green tincture onto the wound, her other hand glowing as she sped through various druidic signs. The wound closed with a sizzle as new flesh grew at an accelerated pace. “Exactly like grapes.”
“Each of them were marked.” Heads swiveled to watch Orion land back on the deck of the ship. The last remnants of moonlight and glow faded from his eyes, and he looked… exhausted. Mundane. Almost humble—or at the least, too tired to put on his usual airs. “Blood runes, from what I could see. Etched on skin.”
“I saw it too,” Odo offered. “Lacerations and wounds splitting open in rune-shaped patterns, on foreheads and arms and chests, right before they burst. Many of them seemed surprised,” he added, scratching his ear. “Well, terrified, more accurately,” he amended.
“So some blood mage somewhere pulled the trigger to silence them all the moment it looked like they were defeated,” Ren said.
Orion shook his head. “Must have been more than one. For so many spells to go off simultaneously… if one mage did all that, well. I’m torn between wanting to meet them immediately and hoping I never meet them in all my remaining years.”
“How many have we lost?” Basil asked.
Odo ran through a list of names. It went on far longer than Gruber liked. Doing a quick mental count, that left just under half the crew that set sail two days ago.
“Barely enough to sail the ship,” Odo said, stating the conclusion Gruber had just arrived at.
“What’s left of her, anyway,” Orion agreed.
Basil took a deep breath, exhaling through her nose slits. “Gather the bodies,” she said. “We give our shipmates an ocean’s burial at dawn. Ren, lead any who are trained in the healing arts to patch the injured up best we can. I want to hoist sails to leave in 10.”
“Not you. You go rest below deck,” Ren said to the lynx trying to stand. “The potion and my magic staunched the worst of the wound, but I cannot replace the blood you lost. Last thing we need is you tearing your stomach open again or passing out while trying to steer. Odo will help you to my quarters.” She waved off his feeble attempts at protestations, turning instead to Basil. “I’ll do my best to ready the crew, but I think we could all use more than 10 before—”
“An assassin ship full of sharpshooters and mages found us when no one was even supposed to know we had set sail,” Basil replied. “Now there’s a smoke cloud still billowing up from the remains of their ship visible for miles around. I’d love to put some distance between us and our currently known location as quickly as possible, before we’re all receiving instead of administering an ocean’s burial.”
🐸
I had a sudden idea hit me this week as I was walking around Seattle late at night. I had just finished holding initial auditions for Annie, a show I’m music directing for Renton Civic Theatre (longer story to share another time), and had a few spare moments to wander before catching a ride home from my partner, who attended another event that evening.
I found myself walking up the hill to Kerry Park, a tiny sliver of green in the first neighborhood I lived in when I moved to Seattle. It’s a charming little park, and has a stunning view of the Seattle skyline.
It was in that small interlude of boredom that a thought popped into my head about this story I’m writing. I realized there was a whole other party of animals, another protagonist in a very different part of this world, that would become tied into the present action and adventure. It was a sudden and unshakeable thought that I want to interweave chapters of Gruber’s story with this new character—which means when I get around to editing, I’ll be threading a storyline I’ll write later in with the present action.
Folks often ask where ideas come from, and the answer always is ephemeral. Some ideas percolate for a long time; others pop up seemingly whole. But the best incubator I’ve found to create a rich environment for ideas to pop up is just the right amount of boredom. Just enough space for your mind to wander. For unexpected connections to snap into place. In a world of smart phones and packed schedules, it can be hard to find time and space to be bored. But if I can carve out time to write just 200 words a day, I can make room for a few minutes of downtime and night walks with just a touch of boredom. 💙