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Post by James on Jan 7, 2015 4:34:27 GMT -5
At the Forest of Faerie
Waking to the semi-coherent ramblings of James Brown, I heard a solitary splash break through the rhythm.
I expected to be rushed by a surge of light as my eyes opened. There was nothingness. My body surged forward and I felt around blindly, sucking in short, shallow breaths. A hint of déjà vu clung around me, shrouding me even deeper in the darkness. Some moment long ago came back to my mind, some brief terror drowned out with the reassuring chuckle of my father. When I was eight, there had been a power cut during the night. Without the street lights that were my guardian angels, I thought I'd gone blind and ran screaming to my parents' bedroom. I took a deep breath as James Brown told me how much it cost to be the boss. Night and blindness were easily confusable concepts to a child, but in the twenty years since then, I should have known better.
Leaning back into the leather of my chair, letting my heartbeat return to normal, my eyes slowly danced with the moon and stars until I could see out past the car windscreen. A shadow moved back and forth, carrying various bags from the car to the bank of a small, blue-green river. The reflection of the full moon rippled across its surface as James Brown continued to sing. I hated early mornings ever since a sergeant would scream bloody murder at my “piss weak female body” until I was out of my bunk and running across several miles of Welsh countryside. Incoherent singing didn't make the ride go any better. I reached down for the iPhone and aimed for where the random button was.
Get up, get on up, get up, get on up.
The back of my head sunk deeper into the headrest. Great. Next time, we were plugging in my music, rank and seniority regardless. Allowing several more seconds of rest, I pushed open the door and slipped out of the car as gracefully as someone could with half-asleep legs. Standing in jeans, a shirt and a fading coat, I gave a silent thanks to summer. My black hair was already shortened for the rising temperature. Any winter weight had been shed months ago, leaving a short, athletic frame behind. Yawning, arms above my head like a rugby goalpost, I wandered over to the river's edge.
“Sleeping beauty's awake at last.” The voice was low and smooth, a refined whisky.
“That's sexual harassment.”
Collingwood didn't even bother to reply. He continued to trek back and forth, a pyramid of supplies settled by the river. I'd heard the stories. Collingwood was the boy scout of the Bureau of Supernatural Investigations, always prepared for any situation. No one said that to his face, of course. Collingwood was the BSI, its founding member and head honcho. There was a reverence coupled with the mockery. Hell, when I was told Collingwood was coming along to finish my latest job, I nearly squealed. I'm not sure we needed several army packs for one Faerie expedition, though.
“What have you got in here anyway?” I took the torch from the top of the pile. Collingwood grunted the word 'supplies' as I opened one bag and was greeted with two pistols and several boxes of Henderson & Sons' Iron Fay Bullets. Another bag had a set of knives. The third consisted of nothing more than a loosely collective herd of explosives. “Are we going into Faerie or Syria, Thomas?”
“You ever been to Faerie, Lydia?” he said, my own name a clear note. He was aware I had first-named him and he was unamused. I shook my head; a knot in my stomach twisted. “Trust me, I'm travelling light.”
He threw me a small backpack, something rattling as it flew through the air. “What's in here? An IKEA halberd?”
“Sandwiches.”
James Brown died into silence and the BMW's central locking clicked into life. Sunlight's opening foray was breaking across the horizon and for the first time I could catch sight of the countryside around me. River Stour, Kent. When Collingwood first suggested it as our entrance way into Faerie, I imagined slipping under one of the low-lying bridges of Canterbury, appearing at the other end in an altogether different place. I was not expecting this. We stood in a deserted field. To the left, pasture farmland stretched as far as the eye could see, all character and history stripped away for the sake of a few more acres of grass. Across the water was the subtle hint of an industrial complex, a nub upon the horizon. Even the River Stour was disappointing here, barely more than a stream trickling past us.
“Hop in,” Collingwood said, loading the bags onto the boat. A metal container, hardly bigger than a shoebox joined them.
It was a tiny thing, a few planks of wood instantly urging me to make some sort of 'row, row, row your boat' joke. Dara O'Briain would have never fitted in it; the dog would have been thrown overboard. I could just see a set of oars, buried beneath the mounting bags. “Couldn't have used anything a little more, umm, seaworthy?”
“Don't want to draw attention to ourselves.”
Raising an eyebrow, I clicked the torch on. The meagre light beam illuminated the row-boat and then the man beside me, flicking back and forth. First, the small vessel, filled to the brim with bags of various sizes and colours. Then the tall, suited, black man next to it, his head hairless except from a salt and pepper circle beard. We weren't exactly inconspicuous.
“I don't mean here,” Collingwood said, holding the boat steady so I could climb in. My knees tucked underneath my chin as I sat down. “There's always the Misters for that. I was meaning once we've made the crossing. A big old motorboat might draw the attention of a species which still needs to invent the internal combustion engine.”
Collingwood clambered into the boat with the freedom of a geriatric pulling himself onto a horse. Rocking upon the water, feeling the river ripple in expectation, I clung to the sides around me. My arms weren't even outstretched. Grabbing one of the oars, Collingwood pushed us off the bank and into the River Stour proper. A gentle current took hold, our boat drifting downstream, toward where I imagined a wide river mouth flowed out into the freezing water of the North Sea. Tucking the oar back into the boat, Collingwood leant back in his chair, looking up at the slowly brightening sky.
“Want to explain why we're returning this thing then?” I said, reaching for the small metal container underneath my feet. Inside it was a perfectly formed cube, as black as the BMW we were leaving behind in the field. I had packed it into the box myself after finishing my ninth case. The black arts smuggler was still in hospital after I upended him in the middle of Manchester. “Whatever this thing is in the first place.”
“You sure you want to know?”
I nodded, battling back the urge to roll my eyes. Ever since I walked back into the partially built headquarters of the BSI in London, people gave me the same response. Shrugs, nervous scratching, questions of whether I wanted to hand over the final part of the mission onto a more senior agent. It was as if Sandhurst, a year in the 904 Expeditionary Air Wing, BSI Intensive Training, and not to mention five years at an all girl's boarding school counted for nothing. Well, I was able to handle whatever some two-bit peddler of magical wares was happy to cart around in a backpack.
“It's a Skeleton Key.” I stared blankly at Collingwood. “It literally unlocks bodies. You press the cube against the area you want and it peels away skin and bone until you can reach in and take whatever you were after, all while keeping the owner of said body alive. You've heard stories about how fairies would abduct babies, right? Yeah, that's how they do it. Use the Skeleton Key, open up the mother, scoop out the nearly born kid, stuff in their imposter, and then that little cube does the rest.”
“Okay,” I said after several seconds, my hand rubbing my stomach. The water around the boat continued to ripple lazily. “That is both incredibly disgusting and insanely useful. Why are we giving it back?”
“It's powerful and rare. They'll notice it's missing and we really don't want a fairie coming over to get it.”
“But they do that all the time.”
Collingwood sighed, checking his watch and then the rising sun in the sky. It still wasn't quite free of the horizon. “We get minor fairies. What medieval Europe got were first year uni kids on a dare for freshers’ week. If they sense the power of the Skeleton Key over here, we won't get those fairies. We'll get the fairie equivalent of General Patton and an armoured regiment. We really, really don't want that.”
I turned, squinting as the sun finally climbed free and began its ascent into the sky. The river still looked as non-magical as Richard Dawkins on a high horse. Clumps of reed swayed along the side, patches of hair on an otherwise bald head. The industrial complex had vanished and now empty pastures filled both sides. The only hint of rural beauty was the sunlight dancing upon the calm waters of the River Stour, the yellow light slipping in and out of the ripples and weaving between the reeds. There was something soothing about the whole thing, as if the clutter of a more idyllic scene would drown out the simple beauty of the sunlight. My eyes grew heavy watching it twist and turn, slowly forming into a perfect spiral. Green vapours floated off the surface of the water, patterns forming, filling the river with stories of clashing swords, of horses and kings, castles and mountains. I forgot everything else: the river, the boat, and Collingwood all disappeared into a veil of white noise, lost within the swirling vapours. I closed my eyes.
When they opened again, my breath stalled deep within my throat. The boat still floated down the river, but the surface was as black as coal. There were no ripples. Around me, the empty pastures had vanished to be replaced with a thick, sleeping forest filled with trees like ancient oaks, except as tall as the Shard. The leaves formed wispy clouds high above. They couldn't be real; they looked as if time itself fathered them from acorns millennia ago. Neck cracking, I turned left to right, spying the vast wood on either side, impenetrable, the last shield of Faerie. The air itself was green, tinted like coloured contact lens. Everywhere smelled of freshly cut grass.
“Don't stare,” Collingwood's voice broke the stillness.
“What?”
“You can look, but don't stare. Don't look at one spot for too long.”
I nodded despite the sudden urge to pick one spot of landscape and stare at it until my eyes dried up. Collingwood said nothing, leaning back, sat like a man with a newspaper he didn't want to read. Perhaps he had packed the Daily Mail in his supplies.
I asked where we were going and Collingwood grunted he didn't know. Apparently the river was different with each trip, snaking off into different directions and new territories. We couldn't be sure where we were going, only that sooner or later, Collingwood would spot a place to dump the Skeleton Key and then aim for the nearest gate back into the real world. It was easy to think that way, the real world. River Stour, dull pastures, industrial complexes and James Brown, that was so obviously real compared to the black river and green air. Collingwood snorted when I said as much to him, saying I didn't know the half of it.
It was only when I closed my mouth for a few seconds, leaving Collingwood like an old man resting after a heavy meal, that I noticed the complete and utter silence. You could hear a pin drop, though I honestly wasn't sure if the pin would even make a sound here. If it wasn't for our conversation, it seemed possible there was no noise at all in Faerie. A realm defined by silence. Goosebumps shifted constantly around my body, refusing to let up as my eyes flicked to every corner, drinking in as much as I could while never letting my gaze linger too long on one spot. Forests churned and shifted, growing larger then smaller until finally the trees became so tiny a vast mountainous landscape opened up in front of me. Forcing myself to blink, to look back at the dozing-like posture of Collingwood, I managed to keep myself steady until the man appeared upon the riverbank.
Upon second glance, I reconsidered my assessment. This was something other than a man. It was as if you'd asked a solitary vampire to draw what he remembered to be his reflection. The result was a man who was tall yet had neither long legs nor a large torso. His hair was a little too sleek, his eyes slightly too green. A flowing, white robe fanned out behind him as he followed our boat from the shore. There was something about his expression which made my stomach churn, a creeping sensation rising up and over me like a wave. His mouth parted and then slithered, the top lip divorcing the bottom.
A hand covered my eyes. “Don't stare,” Collingwood said into the blackness. Someone using my voice asked why.
“What does this place look like?” Collingwood's hand slipped down, his fingers digging into my jaw. My face was kept in one place: eye contact with him.
“Faerie.”
“You haven't been here before, how could you know?”
My forehead furrowed. Surely Collingwood didn't think so little of me to expect I hadn't read a single book. “It's just like how Spenser or Tennyson described it.”
Collingwood asked me if I thought Lord Tennyson was a frequent Faerie tourist. My lips parted in reply, unaware there were no words ready. Blue eyes bored into mine. “Isn't it funny how Faerie is exactly what you think it would be? Exactly how the stories go? Come on, Lydia, you know better than that. Magic is strange and terrible and often beyond our wildest dreams. And there's no place stranger or more terrible than Faerie.”
“Then what is this?”
“A self-defence mechanism,” Collingwood said. The hairs on my neck stood at attention under the gaze of the not-quite-a-man upon the riverbank. “Your brain is working overtime, pumping out a construct for you to survive in. We're pretty strange things ourselves. We know by instinct that to see this place properly would send us spiralling over the edge and so we trick our eyes, create a world we know to exist from stories and poems.”
“And the man?”
“Don't look at him. Right now, he can feel that your little brain is making a little illusion for you. Why? Because you're scared. And if you're scared, you're not a threat. You're not interesting; you're a fly across the room. The moment you see him for what he actually is, you see his real form, then you're not scared anymore. And if you're not scared, he is.”
Collingwood moved his hand from my face, his nails gently scraping the skin. There was a faint wetness against my jaw, the after touch of a kiss or a raindrop. Watching Collingwood's eyes, slightly wider than they had ever been back at HQ, I didn't mention the man's lips had already begun to change. It was probably nothing; most of the illusion was still in place. My breathing grew quicker and shallower. Everything was fine. Agents venture in and out of Faerie every now and then, hardly anyone fails to come back and I had the Big Chief himself with me. Just put your hands on your knees. Now close your eyes. Even the voice inside my head shook with every instruction as I sat in darkness, unable to tell if we were still moving.
“Why didn't you say anything earlier?” I breathed.
“Because it's harder to maintain an illusion when you know it's there.”
He was right. Every time the urge to open my eyes became too much, I glanced at the mountains, the river, and the green-tinted sky and wondered what lay beyond my own brushwork. What could be so bad I’d warp my mind to hide it? Questions swirled around like the vapours had done when we first entered Faerie. Were the mountains still mountains? I could faintly imagine some twisted husk of a skeleton, fifty times larger than a dragon sprawled across the landscape. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind, a mountain began to pulsate. My chest heaved and my eyelids flew shut. The voice inside my head leapt up another octave. Just distract yourself, Lydia. Stay calm.
“You can stop humming Take That now,” Collingwood said after several minutes. I thought the music had just been inside my head.
Slowly opening my eyes, an oar sat balanced across Collingwood’s knees. A row of white teeth stared back at me, offering a pretty good attempt at a comforting smile. I wasn’t entirely convinced; I could still feel his sweaty palm on my jaw. His chest moved with deep, long breaths. Fingertips tapped the end of the wooden oar. Faerie was clearly never a walk in the park, no matter how many times you might venture into it. Looking over my shoulder for the shortest second of my life, I spied an empty shoreline and sighed, slumping as much as I could within the small boat.
“I think we’re far enough away from the gate to dump the cargo and head home,” Collingwood said, dipping an oar in the still stagnant, placid, black water. There was not even a tremor as the wood pierced the surface and the boat began to turn toward the bank. “Don’t know about you, but I could sure go for some chips right about now.”
I nodded, not remotely hungry. The idea of food just made my stomach churn more. Thoughts of illusions drifted deeper into my brain. A sandwich may give off a delicious smell of bacon, but how could I be sure the moment it disappeared inside me it didn’t change to something else. I shivered before it struck me that Collingwood was probably trying to make small talk to keep me calm. No wonder most people only had good things to say about him.
“So we’re just throwing it overboard?”
“No, we need to leave it a little away from the river,” Collingwood said, giving the answer I feared. “Too close and it might be too obvious. Out in the middle of nowhere and hopefully whoever finds it will think of it as typical inter-fairie meddling, green-on-blue so to speak.”
The boat kissed the shore and I looked around, scouting the area we were landing on. I felt like my own miniature D-Day arrived. The riverbank was sandy white but marinated in the green air. Mountains once more gave way to those impressive trees, the thin crown looking ridiculous against the thick trunk. I wondered how much was perspectives. Beyond the forest I could see nothing, the leafy canopy beginning to rock as Collingwood stood up, reaching for the metal container between my feet. Swallowing in a lungful of air, I grabbed it and passed it to him, my own legs wobbling to an upright position.
“You can stay in the boat if you want,” Collingwood said, meeting my eyes. I tried not to blink. Obviously, being told I was standing in an illusion unnerved me. It was fair enough to say I was even a bit scared. Most of all, though, I was a BSI Agent and ex-armed forces and I wasn’t going to let some pretend world reduce me to a shivering wreck.
“Give me one of those guns and I’ll be fine.”
Collingwood rolled his eyes but gave me a gun anyway. It didn’t escape my notice he also tucked one into his own waistband. The plastic-metal bastard material in my hand brought my heartbeat down to a more sustainable rate. I felt like a knight who had just been reunited with his sword. Now I didn’t have to gaze helplessly at Faerie, trying not to let my eyes linger on one spot for too long. As we walked away from the boat, slipping into the grasp of the unreal trees, I matched Collingwood’s strides. Whenever I felt my nerves slip, whenever I wondered just exactly what I was walking on or what the trees really were, I looked down at the handgun in my right fist and breathed deeply. Impossible fairies were now nothing more than enemy combatants.
“Here should do,” Collingwood said, breaking the silence that built up over ten minutes. I didn’t stop, my feet a constant patter on the ground, pacing back and forth. Regained nerves could be easily routed and I felt better on the move.
With a far too loud click, Collingwood freed the black cube from its makeshift prison and tucked it under his arm. It seemed flawless, like some carefully cut gem. Even the corners were smooth, somehow shifting from pointed edges to rounded curves. Turning, twirling like the boy at the back of dance class, Collingwood’s eyes flickered around the wood. He walked forward twice before shaking his head and returning back to his scouting, not slowing until he placed the Skeleton Key into a cradle formed between two low-lying branches. It looked like a football caught in some poor neighbour’s tree. I didn’t slow throughout the entire process, walking a small circle, noticing the cube was visible no matter what angle you entered this part of the forest from.
The not-quite-a-man saw it too.
From the soup of my memory, I couldn’t quite pick the moment when he walked out from the collaborating trees. One second we were definitely alone; the next we were not. The rush of fear left enough reason behind for me to see this was my fault. The fairie sensed my illusion breaking, those horrible twisting lips and that pulsating mountains, and followed us to hunt its prey. Still, there was enough training in my head, enough finely tuned instinct inside me, for my gun to arch upward through the air. I was a clockwork machine, following a path a dozen mentors built earlier. Even then, Collingwood was quicker. His gun was levelled at the not-quite-a-man before mine moved. Several iron bullets flew through the air and embedded itself into the fairie's skull.
A hole grew, more like a surgical opening than a bullet wound but no blood trickled down the not-quite-a-man's skin. My gun shook as a full clip rattled free from the barrel, aiming in the vicinity of the fairie. Trees exploded in a shower of bark. Robes were shredded by the metal projectiles. There was not a hint of red upon the fabric. Rooted to the spot, I stood helplessly as the strangest thing of all happened. Collingwood grunted in pain.
He crumpled to the ground under the weight of some almighty force. Nothing made sense. The not-quite-a-man had waved an arm lazily toward Collingwood yet there was no hint of the electric warmth magic left behind. There was a dozen feet between the fairie and Collingwood yet it looked as if the man had taken a punch to the stomach. Eyes closed, body motionless, he was left laying on what was probably not real grass. I took a step toward him and then the fairie turned to me, my finger instantly squeezing the spent gun's trigger, desperately hoping for some miraculously conceived bullet to fly out from the barrel.
“Duck left,” the not-quite-a-man yelled liked an army sergeant and I followed the order out of instinct. The ground where I previously stood exploded upward in a sea of mud and dirt. “Use the Key.”
Fear was always an excellent sharpening stone for logic and reason. It cleared the excess noise and left me with a problem to solve. In a library or exam hall, I might have laboured for hours trying to explain what just happened. Standing in front of a killer fairie, in the middle of a world I couldn't even see properly, it took me all of five seconds. The not-quite-a-man couldn't speak English and if he could, he certainly wouldn't be helping me. My own illusion could. My subconscious was on the sidelines, yelling at me the exact formation needed to beat Arsenal. Leaping to my feet, I cleared the gap between me and the cube in several strides and jumped clean off the ground to snatch the Skeleton Key from its perch within the tree.
The cube was warm as if blood pumped within its surface. It was impossible to tell back from front, every face identical to the other. There was no switch, no interface, no set of instructions that would ultimately be ignored. I had no idea how to use the Skeleton Key as the fairie towered over me. Only one option presented itself. I threw it at his face.
Much like law, magic deals a lot with 'intent'. For rituals or charms to work properly, they needed both the actus reus and mens rea. Tarot cards required both the physical act of turning but also the mental intent of telling the future. Without both, the deck wouldn't show anything. In fact, even with both, it probably wouldn't. Similarly, Collingwood could hold the Skeleton Key because he didn't intend on opening himself up to having his internal organs pillaged. It seemed quite possible, with my cursory study of the subject, that having contact with the cube while there was an intent to open up the receiver could work. In other words, I was one-nil down, deep into injury time and you could sure as hell bet I was bringing the goalkeeper up for the corner; it was worth a shot.
Striking the fairie on the forehead, the Skeleton Key hung suspended in the air, refusing to budge from its new-found home. The not-quite-a-man screeched and the cube began to steam, slowly opening out. My own illusions were unlocked as well. The tinted green air vanished. Everything became crystal clear, a high definition viewing experience. The constant sea of trees twisted and were stripped back of all comforting signs of conformity with their real world colleagues. Leaves vanished first, the trees bare, offering up a view of the land around me. Then the bark peeled away, drifting into nothingness before it could hit the ground. Briefly I wondered when a tree stopped being a tree, the question distracting me from the sight of what had emerged. It was hard to describe the forest I now stood in. What had previously been trees were now some sort of mutated cross-breed between tusk and tentacle, stretching high into the sky. There were no leaves and the bark looked more like skin, sickly and grey. Still, I locked my eyes upon these new ‘trees’, devouring them as if I had never seen a more beautiful sight in my life. The alternative was to look at the fairie unlocking in front of me.
If the forest was hard to describe in its true state, the fairie was an impossibility. It was no longer not-quite-a-man. Looking at it made no sense. At times, what appeared to be legs suddenly shifted into arms, long and thin, stretching out between the ‘trees’. Collingwood had been punched; my illusion just couldn’t cater to the image. The fairie’s reach was too long. Its torso was an inconsistent mess, famished ribs contrasting against bulbous legions, and his hair appeared more like a thatched roof. It was his face, though, which made me drop to the ground. The Skeleton Key had worked. Skin and bone peeled back to reveal wide, oval eyes and fleshy gums, which housed several rows of darkened teeth. The skull opened a window, offering a glimpse of the brain inside, a mass of slimy blackness staring back at me.
My knees completely gave way and I was too far gone to spread my hands out in front of me. The ground struck my face with a ringing blow. There was gunfire, a terrible scream, and for a moment I swore I heard James Brown blaring through my ears. Then blackness claimed me in a tsunami.
*** I stood alone. It was cold. Ice stretched out as far as I could see, the whiteness never ending. There was no way to tell where north or south was. Above me, the planets and stars were my only indicators. There were so many of them. One, I knew, was a pale blue dot. I didn't know which. I lifted my hand up and plucked the first pinprick of light out of existence. Everything was so clear; I could only be found if I was truly lost. The universe still gave me a sense of direction. It had to die. It was just the truth. My hand continued to stretch up and snatch the passing dots, every time fearing it would be a pale blue light within my hand. I began to cry. The ice disappeared beneath me. My tears formed new stars and planets under my feet. One was a pale blue dot. Everything went black.
*** “Easy, easy,” a low, smooth voice said. It reminded me of whisky. “The first taste of Faerie Madness is always the worst.”
I opened my eyes and immediately regretted it, clamping them shut at the rush of light searing my corneas. In the comfort of my own eyelids, I heard laughter, a ringing bell and the trickle of running water. Every sound flowed smoothly into my ears, sounds I recognised and understood. Gently, slowly, my eyes opened and I saw a cloudy, blue sky. Flanking me on both sides were old houses, Tudor beams staring back at me. A small footbridge was in front of us. Several young children stared down at me with puzzled looks. The sound of the ringing bell clicked as Canterbury Cathedral and I swallowed back the urge to cry.
“You did great,” Collingwood said as I sat up. We were on the boat, floating along the River Stour as it dissected Canterbury. The city and river seemed so quaint, so small, so human. “Using the Key on the fairie, just excellent. They’ll be calling you Fay-Killer in no time.”
“What happened?”
“I shot it. All I needed was a route to its weak spot,” Collingwood said, plunging head first into an explanation. I picked up he left the Skeleton Key with the dead fairie, seeing it as the perfect cover. None of them would believe a human had killed one of their own, they would think it was Faerie civil war. He rambled on about my own strength and how everyone passed out during their first time and I nodded, rubbing my forehead. The words soon folded into gibberish, barely understanding he had carried me back to the boat. All I cared about was that the creature was dead and I was alive. Everything else seemed unimportant.
Collingwood's lips finally stopped moving and he began to rummage through one of the many bags of supplies. “You got some miracle fairie-hangover cure in there?” I said, my voice sounding different, as if it had become old and wrinkled.
He handed me an open bag.
“Sandwich?”
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Post by Kaez on Jan 10, 2015 19:51:38 GMT -5
James“We get minor fairies. What medieval Europe got were first year uni kids on a dare for freshers’ week. If they sense the power of the Skeleton Key over here, we won't get those fairies. We'll get the fairie equivalent of General Patton and an armoured regiment. We really, really don't want that.” This is the first bit of genuine worldbuilding and it's a good one. Being urban fantasy, it gives me a frame of reference, gets me excited about the setting, helps me understand the context of the fantasy world relevant to our own. I wish this was expanded on further. The metaphysics of this world seem strange and unique and I really like what you say about it here, but it feels a little brief. Especially if this is the first our protagonist has ever heard of this particular feature of the Faerie world, that's a pretty quick explanation of a pretty complicated concept. The action here feels really rushed. The narrative transitions from thoughts and conversations to gunfire and dialogue fairly abruptly, and the nature of the prose doesn't shift, the sentence length or structure doesn't shift... and it's all kind of over before you know it. It may have been supported by just a bit of emotional description or some vivid descriptions without having to expand it much, but as is, it's not long enough to feel interesting and engaging, but it's also not visceral enough to come in packing a punch of action and excitement. And the result is that the action just blends in with the prose and never feels "action-y" at all. Elaborating on that previous comment, this also seems like a pretty bare bones (heh) description. Even a little bit of how our protagonist felt would have made this description seem like something more than just a factual account. Ideally, we'd get some other sensory details worked in. So, the positive thing is, the issue I've got really is just one thing that repeats itself: a feeling of brevity. The ending seemed to come awfully quickly. The story told here could have had another 1,000 words and been nothing but better for it. I like the world, the setting, the characters, the writing style... but it describes what I imagine to be, at the very least, one very weird hour, full of complex mental shifts, scary monsters, gunfire, magical relics, faeries, fainting... and it all just kind of flies by. I'd be way more immersed in the setting if this had taken its time a bit more. Don't be afraid to indulge in some details. Overall, I've got mostly a positive opinion. I think the setting is really interesting and, even though I'm not usually big on urban fantasy, I love the alternate dimension its-in-your-head-but-not-really thing you've got going on with it. The setting here is strong, and the writing -style- is strong, it's just a matter of getting the writing and the setting in sync and really allowing your storytelling to do the setting justice and help the reader really get in there. And I'm of the opinion that the best way to do that is generally to be patient with it. You're describing a whole world, here. You don't gotta' go Tolkien and start breaking out three names for "faerie boat ore" in different ancient dialects, but some details and complexity, some worldbuilding subplots, could make a tasty apple into a rich and complex pie. *** ZovoThe doeo, fearsome reptiles half again as large as a man, encroached rarely upon the forest and beaches at the river mouth. Here, though, at this confluence, they had arrived in droves to drink of the boiling water; filling their bladders at the riverside before returning to the desolate wastes upon which they dwell. I pushed my vision further toward the peak and spotted their prone bodies lining the banks of the molten flood at regular intervals. It is said the doeo will kill its own given reason, and it is suggested their kind is their own primary food source, for little else lives upon the barren slopes of the mountain. I like the doeo. This is where the story begins to feel like real worldbuilding to me. From this point on, the story takes a whole different character and just gets better and better. I quoted this bit and intended to go back and tell you that it should've been expanded upon. Three days and nights is a long time. But... in retrospect, I'm skeptical of myself. While I think you -could- have very successfully expanded upon this... maybe include some of the protagonist's dreams or memories or something while climbing to expand the setting... it now seems clear to me that there's a good reason for not including it and the story flows too well for me to still endorse that point. Talua and Po'O are characters in this story every bit as much as our mortal protagonist. I love that. The gods having substance is awesome. I think you could even gain a lot from including demigods of sorts -- the existence of doeo, some kind of fantastical creatures, really helps the story, in my opinion. Some kind of giant doeo demigod, or other non-traditional animals, would only further benefit the story. But sparingly, of course. The realism and believability of this setting is a virtue. I really enjoy the metaphysics going on here. I hope we get some more tastes of this. Maybe a shaman/elder character will come along and enlighten us as to the nature of the Sleeper and his slumber. WOAH! Even as he climbed down and saw the doeo, I didn't see this coming. Love how that happened. Not even sure you exactly deserve credit for how well that worked, but it worked. They've got an alien mindset, our little pantheists. This helps open that up. Up until here, the reader could have just thought of them as self-aware-ly personifying deities, but here we see that these are true pantheists who live truly different experiences and see the "good" or "bad" in events with a whole different compass. I was really skeptical for the first few paragraphs here. It didn't feel very fantastical and the writing style reminded me a lot of my own when I get a little... ambitious in my experiments. But the writing found its flow, the setting began to establish itself, and by the end I was, frankly, excited to read another story in this setting. Keeping it kind of vague in some aspects is now kind of taunting and leaves me curious to learn more about this world, which is just about the single biggest compliment I can give a Round 1 story. Kudos to you. Zovo 1 - 0 James
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Jan 12, 2015 19:30:44 GMT -5
James:
I don't care what Kaez says, I thought that was a really strong story. I loved what you did with Faerie being, in essence, an illusion. I though that was a really cool idea which i felt like you could have capitalized on with a little more vigor. For instance...
I got really excited that your were going to throw me a fun twist here. Make me realize that Lydia had been travelling not with Collingwood (they had become separated in the transition or something), but with some other Faerie the whole time and that here was simply her expectations skewing her perceptions. I was thinking how great it was that the somewhat out of character big smile earlier had foreshadowed it in a really subtle way. That she was seeing the actual Collingwood as the not-quite-a-man trying to get her attention... And then I was disappointed.
I mean, what you did was cool; her subconscious warning her through the illusion. But having her come to the realization that she'd been cruising downriver making small talk with a complete stranger... That would have been spine-chilling.
There were a couple other items which gnawed at me. Mainly having to do with the whole purpose of the trip. The point was to deliver the Skeleton Key; but then they talk about just finding some random place to dump it and going home. So I though, why not just fast-ball it through the portal and be done with it? Why go to Faerie at all?
Then you explained this by saying it had to be far enough away from the portal to not be obvious what had happened. That it had to appear inconspicuous, which I accepted... Then he goes and "cradles" it in the groin of a tree... which is like the -most- conspicuous way to leave something lying around.
I dunno. It just seemed inconsistent. Maybe that's nit-picky.
Oh, and finally, the ending seemed a little abrupt. Like a cop out. I spent 4,000 words leading up to this exciting conclusion; then BOOM! everything goes white, stuff happens, Lydia wakes up and they eat a sandwich.
I can't judge too much, since I shaved about 2,000 words off the ass-end of mine, but it just felt . . . Abbreviated.
I think your assessment in the discussion thread was right, just allow things to be as long as they are. I, too, will be attempting to apply that principle next round.
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Post by James on Jan 12, 2015 20:02:17 GMT -5
James: I don't care what Kaez says, I thought that was a really strong story. I loved what you did with Faerie being, in essence, an illusion. I though that was a really cool idea which i felt like you could have capitalized on with a little more vigor. The fact you and Pete are both really keen on the concept of Faerie is really, really gratifying and is completely going to drive me to go back to this story and improve it after the competition. I'm just really pleased this wasn't a crazy idea! ... I may steal that. I'll probably steal that. I'm definitely going to steal that (if it's okay with you). I still want to keep the subconscious warning, but there's other ways to achieve that, I think. Meanwhile you're right, that is amazingly spine-chilling. I'm really disappointed I didn't think of it. Yeah, this was a casualty of my panic as I neared 4,000 words and was still nowhere near the end. Originally, the Skeleton Key was going to be taken back to its proper spot. It was going to appear as a typical, by the book medieval castle, and then the illusion would shatter you get this Lovecraftian sort of horror home, half alive, half inanimate, completely insane. I was really sad to cut that, but I realised I was looking closer to 8,000-10,000 words and I freaked (especially after making the public promise to keep them my stories under 5,000 words). Yep, complete agreement. Just thanks so much, to the both of you (but especially Zovo because he had no obligation) for your well-thought out replies. I may come back to both of you in the future if when I decide to rework this story. Like I said, the mere fact that the concept of Faerie is catching the attention of both of you just really pleasing.
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Post by James on Jan 12, 2015 20:05:00 GMT -5
Meanwhile, for you:
So this won’t be the most in-depth review I’ve done. Partly because I agree with Pete on a lot of areas, so I’d just be parroting him, but also because I’m trying to at least get one other review out in between writing myself.
As mentioned before, the start was not too strong. I think that partly came down to the “camp fire” style. For instance, the repetition in the opening paragraphs, which I usually love, just fell a little flat. I like the idea this is a story actually told to people in the world, but it didn’t really work until I was drawn into the story myself. A camp fire story has its atmosphere going for it, the audience is close and intimate and it’s dark and almost primal. A written story doesn’t have that atmosphere straight away, you needed to build it and then tell the story. I think you need some scene dropping before delving into the river talk.
Where everything came together to me was where the two gods met. That moment of the dam of black stone, rumbled plumes of white steams, burning stone and boiling water flying in all direction, it was vivid and perfect. It was those descriptions which grabbed me and refused to let go. The doeo were then the cherry on top, a moment to drive home the otherness of the setting and really give a flavour. Similarly, I really liked the touch about having to throw away the shard to talk to Po’O. It gave a wider history to the setting.
I am going to depart from Pete’s excellent review on one point, though. I’d be careful about adding “demigods”. The sheer gap in power and scope between the gods and men is awesome in both senses of the word. I don’t think you should lose that and “demigods” are definitely something which could have a negative impact by bridging that gap in a not-good-way. I do agree, though, on more fantastical beasts like the doeo. They really do provide a flavour.
Overall, beside a slightly wobbly start, it was just a great story and I’m looking forward to more.
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Jan 12, 2015 20:30:30 GMT -5
Meanwhile, for you: So this won’t be the most in-depth review I’ve done. Partly because I agree with Pete on a lot of areas, so I’d just be parroting him, but also because I’m trying to at least get one other review out in between writing myself. As mentioned before, the start was not too strong. I think that partly came down to the “camp fire” style. For instance, the repetition in the opening paragraphs, which I usually love, just fell a little flat. I like the idea this is a story actually told to people in the world, but it didn’t really work until I was drawn into the story myself. A camp fire story has its atmosphere going for it, the audience is close and intimate and it’s dark and almost primal. A written story doesn’t have that atmosphere straight away, you needed to build it and then tell the story. I think you need some scene dropping before delving into the river talk. I originally conceived this as a campfire story, and was even going to add a disclaimer to the front that if Pete wanted the full effect, he -had- to read it out loud to someone. Then I decided that wasn't really fair to the spirit of the competition. So I attempted to adapt it, removing passages which addressed the audience directly. Partly because it bordered too closely to second-person narrative, and partly because it wasn't working as well as I'd hoped. There was a structural consideration for the story here which goes back to campfire story structure I had originally envisioned. The idea would be a shift in storytelling styles from talking about things which the audience was familiar with (the river, the village, the people) to something more detailed and, potentially, exaggerated in order to make a seat-gripping story. And the clash of the gods was to be sort of symbolic; a dramatic transition from familiar to unfamiliar. But I didn't feel like it worked since the reader was already unfamiliar with the content. Basically, the campfire story made too many assumptions about the reader and had to be abandoned. Again, I tried to soften the blow when I removed that second-person aspect, but the shift is still pretty apparent to me. Yeah, I'm not sure where I've landed on demi-gods, though I -think- my Round 2 is going to touch the subject to some degree.
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