McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Writers round table
Qualapec:
--- Quote ---Then, well frankly, I fainted and the pain did stop. At least I hoped I fainted, as I slipped into unconsciousness I had the unpleasant thought that maybe I was dying. 'Great' twice in one day. That's probably a record.
--- End quote ---
I drifted in that haze for a while. When I finally came back to reality everything, and I mean everything hurt. I hurt in places that I didn't even know could hurt. My hurts had hurts. I dragged in a few shaky breaths and tried to open my eyes. This time they both opened. It seemed as though someone had been nice enough to release the pressure in my swollen eye.
A fire was cracking at the air not too far from me. Beyond that Andre was leaning against a large tree trunk. He might have been sleeping, but based off what I'd seen the last 24 hours I doubted he ever slept. "Andre...Hey! Andre." The words came out of my sore throat and brought with them their own discomforts. "Andre?"
"Don't move," He commanded lazily from under his hat. "The poison will spread quicker."
My heart rate quickened, "WHAT!!!"
"You've been poisoned. Don't move. Is that a hard concept for you to grasp?" He sat up and one of his bones popped. "A Wraith Spider attacked you because you have higher levels of spiritual energy than I do. It poisoned you to break down the bonds between body and soul."
At my questioning look he continued.
"It means 'kill you' in dummy talk. Essencially...only worse then death. The spider eats your soul after the deterioration of your body, so you don't have to worry about the afterlife."
Upon hearing this I forced myself perfectly still, "So what do we do?"
He grabbed a stick and poked the fire. A log fell from the top, sending a flurry of sparks into the dark sky. "We, or more acurately, I have two choices. I could either make the one-day trek to the King's palace," he motioned with his hand, "That way. Which would provide you with immediate healer attention, but not so healthy for me. Or I could make a break for the small town of Marshwood in that direction. It's four days away and by then your brain would be equal to swiss cheese or you'd be dead. Their healer isn't worth much either. But my life would extend beyond the next couple of days."
A classic him or me situation, huh? I had no illusions of surviving on my own in this forest in my current state, and from the way he was talking it seemed it was only going to get worse. I couldn't navigate this place for the life of me. My survival depended almost entirely on him and whether or not he wanted to take the plunge. Literally. "Can't you just drop me off?" I asked, "You have some magic. Can't you just...fly away?"
He pulled back his sleeve. A ruby bracelette glinted in the firelight. "Because of this. Once I get within 30 feet our dear friend Reza or the King's guards it activates and my magic is useless."
So that's why he hadn't lifted a metaphysical finger to stop me when I tried to kill him. So, that wasn't an option for him either. He sat there, on the other side of our make-shift camp and I couldn't tell which direction the gears in that blond head were turning. It seemed as though he was actually considering both options. Why? How could my survival be more beneficial to him than his own survival? Did it have to do with his wife? The Emporor's New Concubine? Then again, who knew except Andre and the hat?
GWiz:
--- Quote from: meg_evonne on March 01, 2008, 06:33:23 PM ---BTW--do we have a title Virgin King of the Universe? ;D
--- End quote ---
Like "Grand Poobah of the Multiverse", "His Imminently Imminent Imminence", and "His Royal High-Handedness", "Virgin King of the Universe" is a title only in Joey's mind..........
GWiz:
--- Quote from: Qualapec on March 01, 2008, 08:08:55 PM --- How could my survival be more beneficial to him than his own survival? Did it have to do with his wife? The Emporor's New Concubine? Then again, who knew except Andre and the hat?
--- End quote ---
“Does it come off?”
Andre did not reply. He was staring off into the distance to the left, as if listening intently. I didn’t turn my head and look; it hurt too much. I asked the question again.
“What?” he replied as his reverie broke. He scowled down at me like I’d interrupted something important.
“I said, ‘does it come off’?”
“Does what come off?”
“The bracelet, you imbecile! Can you get it off somehow?” I managed to check my rising impatience. So far, rash action and heated words hadn’t really done me much good. See? I was learning.
“If I could get it off, don’t you think I’d have done so by now?” His head swiveled to the left again. I could see him getting tense as his hands clenched until his fingertips turned white.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Quiet, you fool!” he whispered out of the side of his mouth. “Someone’s coming.” He slowly backed up until he was out of my sight. My eyes roamed my immediate surroundings; purple, green, and brown trees and grass, a hodgepodge of color set against what seemed to be a fairly normal sky. I heard something or someone off to the left, but again winced in pain as I tried to turn my head to follow the sound. I gotta say, I was scared; Andre, pain in the patookus he might be, was at least companionship and I wasn’t exactly at my fighting best here. I sat there shivering with fear when the bushes just above my head parted, and Debbie’s smiling face appeared.
“Well, hello there, handsome! You look a little….” The happy expression on her face faded to one of concern. “What’s happened?”
“Spider bite.” I replied.
“That sucks.” She said with a grin. “Lookee what I found.” She was waving my lightsaber over my face.
meg_evonne:
"Great." Even as I uttered the sarcastic words, I felt the warmth of peace and lack of pain settling on my body. The lightsabre, the key, whatever was making me feel better. I vowed it would never leave my side again. i reached out for it and drew it down under the blanket with me as I lay near the fire. Andre was watching me closely and he must have seen the pain leave my body. He shook his head back and forth in the negative and threw a stick he had been holding into the fire.
"Debbie, have you see evidence of Reza?" he asked.
"No father, I have not."
Qualapec:
--- Quote ---"No father, I have not."
--- End quote ---
Okay, I'll admit it, I've choked on a lot of things. Brocholii when I was little, a TV dinner when I was ten, brocholii again when I was fifteen closely followed by roast beef a couple months later (a very bad choking year for me), and on the night I turned 21 I inhaled some vodka which limited my breathing and hurt like Dante's inferno.
I have never, I repeat, never, choked on my own tongue. Hearing Debbie proclaim the obnoxious man in a hat her father made me inhale so fast that the sudden rush of air pulled my tongue along for the ride, effectively blocking my airway. I lay there a little bit and coughed really hard. The harsh movements sent new flows of hurt through me, which quickly vanished under the painkilling spell of the lightsabre. All of this before I very eloquently said, "You're his! So...the concubine in the palace is your mom. But...he's not that much older than me, and I'm thirty and you're thirty...so how?" I blathered on uncontrollably for a few moments.
Debbie sighed, "We're magic touched. Mages. It's what makes us not human enough to wield the Wildflower. And our lifespans and appearence of youth are enhanced according to our power. I'm actually closer to 70. Andre's almost 200."
I noticed that she tended to call him Andre instead of proclaiming him her sperm doner. Why had she bothered to tell me now?
The answer came simply, to prevent a repeat of the incident on the helicopter. Oops.
Andre was looking at her as if annoyed. It was odd. They acted more like partners in crime then father and daughter. Yet again he fiddled with his hat, "The Wildflower has power. It can take his pain away but it won't stop the poison."
Debbie glanced at me, then back at Andre, "So it was a wraith spider?" After Andre nodded she swore something in another language that I was certain one would not utter in a friendly setting. "He needs a healer."
"I know, Debyone. But in case you haven't noticed a stroll into the King's palace will be very, very short. For us. He gets to be the King's little lapdog. We get a vertical drop to the spiritual plain!"
Debbie looked away, then back at me. "Andre, if he dies there will be nothing to stop the Emperor. He's just going to continue to advance, and rape and pillage and control. Did you see those people in prison outpost? What the Imperial Guard did to them? It's going to be like that until someone has the power to stand up to him." She motioned to me, "Unfortunately this weak willed, simple minded, pasty skinned jerk is probably the only one who has the power."
I wasn't even going to reward that with a response...mostly because most of it was true. I had not had a tan in a very long time and I was admittedly weak willed. And based off my actions in the helecopter I was a bit of a jerk. But I was most certainly not simple minded.
Andre leaned against the tree as he contemplated what Debbie had said. "Fine. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to take the simpleton to the King's palace. You're going to flee to Marshwood before we run into Reza again. I have a friend there who can take the shackle off. After that just lay low in some backwater world until the heats off. That way your little hero here survives and there's someone to go on if this all blows up in our faces, think you can handle that?"
He spoke of it so cavalierly. You'd think he was organizing a family camping trip rather than offering up his life. The true weight of what he said showed only in the way Debbie responded to it. Her face twisted into a shape somewhere between sadness, amazement and anguish. They stayed like that, staring at each other for a long time.
"Hey, don't I have a say in this?" I called up.
"No!" They both snapped, breaking their eye contact. When Debbie's face turned to me I saw fresh streaks of wet down to her jawline.
Damnit.
I always hated to see her cry.
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