#wip: at the end of blackmill road

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writeblr re-intro

who? ‣ damien (he/him)

what? ‣ i write horror, fantasy, and sci-fi, but mostly horror. i like writing about body horror, monsters, and queer themes. check out my website

other fun facts ‣ i'm a musician (piano and flute) and i'm majoring in computer science. i also play a lot of video games and enjoy horror media, which i talk about over on my main blog @dismembered-narrator

tagging ‣ i currently don't do taglists because i don't post many excerpts, but feel free to tag me in tag games, and i'll tag you back

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I'M GOING TO FINISH THIS SECTION TONIGHT

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At the End of Blackmill Road Excerpt #3

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Bea is horrified when a chasm opens up in her village. (220 words)

Bea's thoughts were dissolved by a rumble in the ground beneath her. Another quake. The table, the chair she sat on, the ground beneath her feet, vibrated. As the shaking intensified, the walls began to creak, dust falling from the ceiling rafters. The bottles behind the bar rattled like the chiming of a thousand bells.

The rumble crescendoed to an enormous crash that Bea felt in her bones. She leapt to her feet, and almost fell over as the shaking continued, slowly dying down over the course of a minute. Once she felt steady enough, she ran outside. A plume of dust rose over nearby houses, staining the sky brown. She went to it, rounding the side of the buildings. Behind the houses, there was a field. There had been a field. Her stomach turned over as she stared at it, her mind wanting to fill in the blanks, to paint in those green and yellow rows of crops—but it couldn't. There was nothing left.The ground in front of her dropped off into a cliff. A huge chunk of land was just . . . gone, in a single instant, swallowed up by the chasm below. Bea couldn't see into the depths, the dust and debris was too thick, but in the pit of her stomach, she knew nothing was down there. It was all gone.

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At the End of Blackmill Road Excerpt #7

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Bea investigates a seemingly empty church. (200 words)

The dark, quiet woods were peaceful. Bea usually didn't go out at night, but now, any of the normal dangers were far from the worst that could happen. When she arrived, the church's windows were unilluminated, and the building was no more than a hulking silhouette in the clearing. She approached the front door and knocked.

No answer. Even after a minute or two, nothing. She knocked again, then reached down to try the doorknob, and froze. The door was ajar. She pushed it open and stepped into the church. A few dim candles lit the hallway, flickering at the ends of their wicks. One of them went out as Bea stepped inside. "Is anyone here?" she asked, her voice muffled by the utter silence of the space. Still, no answer.  She wanted to turn and run. But if something horrible had happened . . .  She couldn't just leave. It was probably, hopefully nothing. But she had to check. She walked farther into the church. Eventually, she came to a set of double doors, and pushed them open to reveal the sanctuary. More lights were on in here, illuminating the pews, a strange basin in the center, and something crumpled beside it.

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At the End of Blackmill Road Excerpt #2

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Shane tries to mythologize his life, but his new mentor doesn't play along. (400 words)

It wasn't that Shane was upset to be training. Learning how to fight, becoming a knight, it was what he had dreamed of his entire life. The problem was that this could hardly be called training. Kye-Syla swung her sword at him. He blocked it with his own, the wood clacking together, then returned a swing. The same thing they'd been doing for the past week: left, right, left, right, over and over. There wasn't any skill in it, not even any danger with these fake swords. The worst injury Shane had gotten was a tiny bruise when her sword slipped and smacked him on the wrist once. He wanted to be a knight like the ones in the stories, going on incredible quests and facing terrifying creatures. He wanted to be like Kye-Syla.

He'd grown up hearing about the legendary adventurer who'd given up on the life and become a hermit in the woods after . . . well, he wasn't sure. After she faced a beast she failed to slay, after corrupt leaders turned on her, after she lost her love. There was plenty of room for extrapolation as the stories passed around Shane's sleepy home village. So when he was old enough, he looked for her deep in the forest and asked her to train him. It took two days—no, three days, that had a more poetic ring—of begging for her to finally agree. At first he was ecstatic, but the more time he spent with her, the more he realized that her glory days were long gone. She was just an old woman who hated traveling and hated youth and made him practice the fundamentals over and over. Maybe she thought he would forget his dream of becoming a knight, since she hated them too for some reason, if she never actually taught him anything. But Shane wouldn't give up that easily. He watched their swords strike back and forth and back and forth—and took his chance. He hit her sword as hard as he could, knocking it to the side, then tried to swing back at her. Instead of flesh, his sword struck wood. She had whipped her sword back into his path, and with a movement too fast for Shane's eyes to track, sent his own sword spinning to the ground. The tip of her weapon came to rest inches from his throat. "Congratulations," she said. "You're dead."

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ATEOBR Excerpts

happy july! i'm not doing camp nano, but i want to post an excerpt from each of ateobr's eight sections throughout the month

i will be updating this post with a link to each excerpt as they come out, but for now, here's the schedule:

July 4: Mitch returns home after disappearing for ten years, burdened with a horrible task.

July 6: Shane tries to mythologize his life, but his new mentor doesn't play along.

July 11: Bea is horrified when a chasm opens up in her village.

July 13: Mitch sneaks into the mines beneath the castle.

July 18: Dominic runs from his mysterious pursuer, but is forced into action.

July 20: Calantha visits a burned temple and reminisces about life before her death.

July 25: Bea investigates a seemingly empty church.

July 27: Kye-Syla returns to her lover.

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my favorite part of this wip is mentioning seemingly separate things that all happened ten years ago and slowly revealing how they're all connected

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i made the mistake of looking at my very first attempt at writing ateobr and i can't believe my writing was that bad only three years ago

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At the End of Blackmill Road Excerpt #8

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Kye-Syla returns to her lover. (180 words)

Kye-Syla knocked on the door. It had been ten long years since she'd stood in this spot. She could only hope it was still the right room; even if it was, she could only hope she'd still be welcome.

The door opened, and there was Andrea. Her hair had gone silvery-white since the last time Kye-Syla had seen her, and a few more lines had accumulated on her face, but they did nothing to alter the beauty that radiated from her. Kye-Syla felt like a young woman again, arriving on her doorstep with a simple question. Too much had happened now to go back to those times. She'd disappeared, not spoken to Andrea for a decade, left her without a word. She started to offer a pitiful explanation, but Andrea cut her off with a hug. Kye-Syla wrapped her arms around her. She held her like she used to, until Andrea pulled back and kissed her. Then she said, "It's been ten years." "I know," Kye-Syla said. "I'm sorry." Andrea frowned, but brought her inside.

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At the End of Blackmill Road Excerpt #6

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Calantha visits a burned temple and reminisces about life before her death. (400 words) - CW for body horror / graphic descriptions of injury

The old Extolist temple was a black singe on the map of the capital. It sat hunched on the corner of two streets, once filled with pedestrians, now vacant, lifeless. The temple was a skeleton of its former self. All that remained were the blackened bones of its foundation, columns like a grasping ribcage, bricks crumbling between them, the last decaying meat of the structure clinging to the appearance of a wall. The main spire had caved in, the stained glass windows shattered, their shards littered the ground like a splatter of blood.

Calantha entered the ruined structure, stepping through doors that had long since been knocked down, their blackened, twisted remains resting inside. The floor had once been a brilliant abstract mosaic, swirls of colored glass depicting the Void. Now it was covered with dust and debris. The roof had caved in during the fire, blocking entry to many of the other rooms from the central chamber. The library, however, was still accessible, so that was where Calantha went. To her surprise, most of the books remained. She had assumed they had been burned too; or if not destroyed, then stolen and sold. Apparently the price of getting caught with a book of magic outweighed the gold it might be worth. With the state the books were in, it wasn't worth it, anyways. She pulled one of the intact ones off a shelf, and found that the pages were stained with ash around the edges, the thick cover crumbling beneath her fingertips. She flipped through pages of carefully drawn runes. Symbols she would never need again. What would the old Extolist priests think if she appeared to them like this ten years ago? A miracle, maybe. But her miracle only came about through suffering: a painful death and even more painful rebirth, opening her eyes as the bones in her neck snapped back into place, guided by an amateur, inhuman hand. Her vertebrae clicked when she turned her head too far, when she laid down to sleep she felt a knot of tangled nerves at the point where her skull and spine met, she bowed her head and the sharp edges of a broken trachea jutted up into her chin. She hadn't been given the choice to accept her first death. She had been dragged back into the world, "gifted" a "miracle" that ate away at her every day.

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At the End of Blackmill Road Excerpt #5

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Dominic runs from his mysterious pursuer, but is forced into action. (380 words)

Dominic walked a long time. He glanced at the path behind him whenever he heard a twig snap or an animal rustle in the underbrush. His black cloak hid him from any humans coming down the path, but not from her. They could both see perfectly well in the dark.

When the sun started to brush the tops of the trees, he resisted the urge to rest. With dawn he felt the effects of his long walk, the constant paranoia, the lack of sleep. The trees thinned out, and in the clearing ahead, he saw a building. A few more steps, and he could make out the details: a church. It was built from the dark wood of the trees in the area, decorated with stained glass windows depicting abstract, colorful shapes. Dominic sat on a fallen log at the edge of the clearing, studying the church. He'd never seen one before, but he had met followers of the faith. What was it called again . . . Footsteps coming down the path. Dominic jumped up and hid behind trees and brush. It was her. She looked like a ghost wandering through the forest, pale hair and pale skin, the only color the threads of red on her white clothes. Dominic held his breath as she entered the clearing. He felt her gaze sweep over his hiding spot, but she didn't see him. Or maybe she did, and was pretending not to. All he could do was wait and listen. The sound of knocking startled him. He glanced around a tree—She stood in front of the church's door. Dominic prayed that no one would open the door. Of course, someone did. It swung open to reveal a priest, dressed in multicolored robes reminiscent of the windows. He greeted her, apparently oblivious. Dominic would have expected better from a priest. When she asked, "May I come in?" the priest balked—good—and said that the church wasn't open for visitors. She insisted that it would be a quick look and pushed past him. The priest frowned, then followed her, shutting the door behind them. Dominic could run now, get ahead while she was distracted. He glanced down the path.  He couldn't leave the priest there with her. Cursing his conscience, he headed for the door.

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At the End of Blackmill Road Excerpt #4

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Mitch sneaks into the mines beneath the castle. (460 words)

He was met by an immense cavern. The jagged, rocky ceiling reached high above him, a tunnel at the very top meeting scaffolding, which wound down along the walls until it merged with the minecart tracks. They continued down, past gold veins that glimmered in the rocks, past miners secured to the scaffolding with harnesses, and then the tracks ended and the lanterns nailed into the walls disappeared, but the rocky walls stretched further down into darkness before narrowing into stalactites, and past them was nothing, a great black pit so far down it looked no larger than a coin, a single black eye staring up at the castle above it. They dug too deep, Mitch realized, as vertigo made his head spin. They dug too deep and reached the hollow center of the world.

He tore his eyes away from it and started to climb the scaffolding. It was a long way up, going round and round, spiraling up the walls to the top. The weight of the entire castle rested over the pit. At any moment, he could see the ceiling cracking, breaking apart, everything plummeting into the nothingness below. He looked down again; he couldn't help it. He felt something down there, something so huge it drew him towards it. As he stared into the pit . . . It moved. It was so massive that he couldn't comprehend how it had moved, only that something had changed in the chasm far below, and his mind interpreted it as movement. The shaking started only a moment later, the entire cavern rumbling. The scaffolding shook. Mitch clutched the railing, a flimsy wooden beam that felt like it would snap at any moment. He let go and ran. Dust fell around him, then larger chunks of stone. He ducked to the side as a rock struck the scaffolding, taking a splintered chunk with it. He looked down again and saw another, larger stone fall. It hit a miner, knocking them away from the wall. Their harness snapped and they plunged into the empty depths, screaming. Mitch kept running. He was almost at the top—but stopped in his tracks when a figure came down from the tunnel above. She raised her hands, and above the shaking all around, Mitch felt the hum of magic. As he watched, the falling rocks slowed in the air, coming to a hovering stop. Like snowflakes frozen in time, she held them there. Then they moved, converging to a column of rubble in the center of the cavern, and dropped. The quake soon stopped. Mitch stared up at her. It was only when she turned and headed back up into the castle that he snapped out of it, sprinting up the rest of the scaffolding.

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i'm not going to be working on a new wip in july for camp nano (other than outlining mortification while i'm on vacation probably) but what if i posted a short excerpt from each section of ateobr......

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changing my goals for ateobr draft 3 from "good" to "functional"

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all of mitch's actions in the beginning of ateobr can be explained by the fact that he's running on -2 hours of sleep and hasn't eaten in like a day