Moving Day

I've been having a few minor issues with this site and it has prompted me to move it to Wordpress. Every new post I will make will now be on Wordpress and I'll slowly be moving all my content over there as well. Thanks for reading. Oh, and here is the link to the new site.

https://withinendlessskies.wordpress.com/

Priorities

I wish I could say that I don't care about how many views I get each day on my blog. Unfortunately for me, facebook is my only means of sharing to a mass audience and facebook makes sure that view counts matter. Unless you follow my posts specifically, facebook will not post my shares to the top of newsfeeds unless I get a consistent number of likes and shares for each post. This has put me in a bind of sorts and I'm beginning to have to sort out my priorities. I love posting to the blog and I don't plan on stopping, but I think I'm going to have to rework how much time I put into it. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to start posting every other day instead of every day. I'll still post stories, but I'll also try to focus more on the regular blog posts. If you like what I write, please, leave a comment or a like and share it with a friend. It's the only way I'll be able to keep this up.

Writing a Novel

It's that time of year again... no not turkey day time... the month thousands of people across the US decide to do the impossible. Write a novel in a month. November first marks the start of National Write a Novel in a Month Month or National Novel Writing Month, whichever you happen to prefer. The goal is fifty thousand written words within the 30 days of November. I've tried this before, usually only to fail miserably as work and home take up the time that I should be, supposedly, writing.  Add on to this that I've written two complete novels and several unfinished novels and I finished none of these projects in any length of time that even resembled a month. Or even a year for that matter. Well, the second one was close to a year... sort of. Melody and Barnabus might come closer to making it, discounting the small hiatus to give you a short story dealing with Melody's back ground. Who knows, maybe I'll have fifty thousand words of their story written by the end of the month. Unfortunately, blogging doesn't add to my official word count, so I had better get back to work.

Meet Melody: Part 5

I'm too tired to think of an intro, so here you go.

She pulled Melody back into the room, away from the crowded common room. “What are you doing here like this? I thought…” she hesitated. “Melody, what happened to you? Your eyes!”

“It’s a long story,” Melody said. She looked around as one of the cooks slipped and pricked her finger on a knife. The scent of blood filled her nostrils and she swallowed uncomfortably as the thirst began to return. “Mary, I need help. Do you have my room open?”

Mary hesitated again and nodded, leading her up the back stair to a small but cozy room on the inn’s third floor. The woman bustled about, lighting candles and oil lamps.

“I’ll have my girls bring up coal for the brazier,” she said as she worked. She looked at Melody in concern. “Are you sure you’re okay? Is there anything I can get for you?”

Melody shook her head, struggling to ignore the sound of her friend’s heartbeat. “No… no, I’m fine. I just need a place to rest.”

Mary stared at her carefully for a long moment and left with a nod.

Sounds of the inn and town outside filled her sensitive ears as she stripped off her coat and crossed to the frosted window. Her eyes pierced the darkness outside, cutting through the dark and the smoke. Clouds obscured the sky and it had started to snow. She glanced up, momentarily forgetting the burning of the thirst as she saw past the cloud cover and into the endless stars.

“It almost makes up for the thirst,” whispered the voice. It look Melody a long moment to realize that the thought was her own.

“I guess I’m getting used to this,” she mumbled, groaning as she dropped into the soft bed.

There were footsteps in the hall outside and she sighed, realizing that she could recognize Mary by the smell of her blood.

“Thanks for doing this Mary,” she said, closing her eyes as the door opened. “Something happened, I….”

There was a clicking noise and her eyes snapped open.

“What are you?” demanded Mary, leveling her husband’s flintlock pistol at Melody’s head. The weapon wavered slightly, matching her trembling voice. “I’ve heard the stories! You’re not my friend!”

Melody froze. “Mary, no, it’s me….”

The woman shook her head, frightened tears filling her eyes as she edged closer. “No! You’re a vampire, a demon! What did you do to Melody?”

Melody started to move, started to reassure her friend but Mary panicked, her finger tightening on the trigger. The gun went off with the sound of thunder and something hard hit her in the head, knocking her back into the soft pillows. The bullet, glancing off of her iron hard skin, slammed into the oil lamp on the stand by the bed. Shouts and screams filled the air as flames spread through the room, biting hungrily into the bedding and wooden walls. Mary dropped the gun and clapped her hands to her mouth in horror, screaming hysterically as Melody jumped to her feet and dove headlong through the window.

She landed easily on her feet in the street below, the voice screaming at her to run.

“No,” she growled, forcing the voice away as she looked up at the smoke pouring from the shattered window. “Mary!”

Guests inside, already unnerved by the gunshots and screams, turned in shock as Melody burst through the door.

“Fire!” she screamed. “The inn’s on fire! Everyone out! Get the buckets!”

Blessed are the Peacemakers

We live in a culture saturated by anger and indignation, wholly without mercy and true compassion for those around us. We preach tolerance, yet readily attack any whose beliefs threaten our own. Even God's own people seem to have lost sight of goodness and mercy. We have forsaken the role of peacemaker in favor of that of a warrior. May God make us peacemakers once again.

Meet Melody: Part 4

Melody wasn't actually supposed to be a blood dragon, or even a dragon at all. When I first created the character, she was a photographer, struggling to survive in the city. I had intended for her to meet a dragon, but as I began to write her main story, set some 250 years after this timeline, she became the dragon and Barnabus the human. Blood dragons were also an accident, created as I simplified an overly complicated system for dragon society and magic.

“When I talk to you, you know you’re talking to yourself right?” asked the voice after a moment. “I’m magic and the memories your maker passed on, nothing more.”

“Well your company’s still better than nothing,” Melody growled, coming to a stop on the hill overlooking the settlement. Her eyes focused on the people moving through the growing evening. She cocked her head, suddenly hearing a complaining lamplighter as if she were standing at his side.

“What am I looking for?” she asked, more to herself than to the voice. “How do I know if there are more supernaturals down there?”

A sound in the distant forest behind her brought her around with a start. To her new eyes, the evening was still as clear and bright as it had been at mid-day. Movement on the trail to her cabin caught her eye and her breath quickened.

“I think you had better worry about what’s out here!” warned the voice. “Quick! Hide in the town!”

With barely a thought, she was in town, moving almost more quickly than the eye could see. One of the night watchmen swore in shock as she went, the wind from her passing lifting the tricorn hat from his head. She stopped in the darkness not far away, resisting a sudden and overwhelming urge to laugh.

“This isn’t funny,” grumped the voice. “We should get inside before the hunters get here.”

Melody nodded, slipping through the streets unseen, her new powers making it easy to hide from watchmen and townsfolk alike. She stopped beside a small tavern by the waterfront, owned by the husband of a woman she had known in the orphanage. The woman, a pleasant girl named Mary, and her husband, were the only people in the colony that knew her secret.

The common room was crowded and Melody kept her head down, ignoring the raucous noise and curious glances as she crossed to the kitchen. Mary looked up as she opened the door.

“Melody?” she hissed, her eyes widening in surprise. “Is that you?”

What is it about Dragons?

Dragons have been my favorite mythological creature for as long as I can remember. They come in all shapes and sizes, limited only by imagination. Dragons are evil, they are good, they are beautiful, they are terrible. At best they are majestic creatures looking benevolently down on humanity as they soar above us. At worst they are the terror and the fire in the night, destroying everything before them. They are the ultimate test for the noble knight and the guiding voice for wayward heroes. Dragons are forces of nature and the ultimate abomination... they are everything and anything we need them to be. To me, dragons are magic incarnate, given the power to bring life to stories.

Meet Melody: Part 3

So? Had enough of my mild insanity yet? Here's some more just in case.

Melody’s legs started to move by themselves and she was suddenly running, a drab blur moving through the winter woods. Her trapline was one of the longest in the area and the trek to her cabin, which should have taken days in the deep snow, took less than an hour. Though nearly twenty, Melody, an orphan, had spent almost two years posing as a fourteen year old boy, earning his income by trading furs. The remote cabin and trapline offered a hard life, but compared to the life of an orphan in the colony, Melody thought it preferable. Even as it was, it was getting harder to avoid curious glances every time she went into town.

“You won’t have to hide anymore,” said the voice as she opened the cabin door. Unbidden memories of the men other girls had warned her about came to her mind. “You’re stronger now….”

“Then what are we running from?” she demanded as she went to the hearth. The winter cold didn’t bother her, but the familiar ritual of lighting a fire was comforting. “If I’m a blood dragon, what’s there to be afraid of?”

“Our maker was running,” replied the voice. “The dragonflights are the founders of the supernatural courts, but it doesn’t mean that we’re above their laws.” Melody gasped as a flood of memories and knowledge filled her mind. “Our maker was being hunted by the Court of Magi and the mage dragonflight.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” Melody groaned, dropping miserably into a rickety chair. “They don’t need to hunt me!”

“Our maker was a renegade,” said the voice. “Courtless. Until we find the Court of Blood and our own dragonflight, the Court of Beasts and the Court of Magi will consider us a threat. Other courts would be eager to gain the favor of a dragonflight… without our own Court to back us we are vulnerable.”

“How do we find our Court then?” Melody asked wearily.

“I don’t know. The Blood Dragonflight will search for us though… a new dragon is too valuable to ignore. We just have to survive until we’re found.”

“We have to get to town,” Melody said. “They’ll be less likely to attack there… I, I have to get ready.”

“Look in the mirror,” commanded the voice. “You’re disguise won’t work. We’ve changed.”

Melody got up and went over to the single old mirror. Her breath left her in a gasp. Even under a layer of dirt and ash and blood, her face was… beautiful. Too pretty to be mistaken for a boy any longer.

“My eyes,” she said, running her fingers over skin the color of ivory. “They’re purple!”

“The color of our dragonflight,” said the voice. “Blood dragons and their vampires all share purple eyes. Your friends will know something is wrong. We need to be careful.”

Melody threw off her stained and dirty clothes, suddenly filled with an uncharacteristic desire for elegance.

“What else do I need to know?” she asked, forced to choose a pair of heavy woolen breeches and a man’s shirt that was several sizes too large.

“You already know it,” the voice said. “I’m your memories. I’m nothing but a way for you to cope with the turning.”

The voice faded away and Melody was left feeling strangely alone as she gathered what little money she had and shrugged on her heavy, fur lined coat. The new memories and knowledge was becoming easier to process and the subconscious piece of her mind that made up the voice, opened. Melody swayed and fell against the doorjamb, feeling like her head was going to split in half. The psychic pressure faded and the girl swore, growling under her breath as she stepped out into the snow.

Meet Melody: Part 2

If you haven't guessed yet, I have an odd imagination. One slightly demented result is the blood dragon, the most feared member of the three dragonflights. All dragons refuel their innate magical abilities by "consuming life force". Wild dragons and mage dragons hunt prey, typically devouring it whole, but blood dragons drain their victim's blood, allowing them to leave victims alive.

“What are you talking about?” screamed Melody, a deep growl ripping from somewhere deep in her chest.

“We’re a blood dragon now,” the voice snapped. “I’m your ancestral memories. The one who turned us should be helping us, but right now I’m all we’ve got! So shut up and listen!”

She froze in shock as a vision of a tremendous creature with shining red, black, and purple scales popped into her head. The dragon spread its sail like wings and roared, spouting flames. She felt the beast inside of her at the same moment, straining, begging to be unleashed.

“No!” commanded the voice. “Not yet! Not here!” Melody subsided, her breath coming in great, heaving gasps as the voice continued. “Blood dragons don’t need to show their true form. You have all the strength you need as you are.”

“My throat,” she choked. “It hurts!”

“It’s the thirst,” said the voice. “We have to feed!”

*

Melody dropped the last wolf to the ground, wiping blood from her mouth as her fangs receded. She looked around at the four others, equal parts horrified and exhilarated. The  wolf pack, once so terrifying as she followed her trapline,  had been no match for her newfound strength and ferocity. It had been a simple thing to chase them down and drain them, their jaws not even scratching her skin in the few moments they had to fight.

“I killed them,” she panted, the thirst finally sated. “I drank their blood!”

“You’re a blood dragon now,” the voice said. “One of the three great dragonflights! As well as the most powerful vampires in the world!”

“Vampire?” she whimpered, sinking to her knees as she stared at the slaughtered wolves. “Blood dragon? No… no, no, no, this can’t be real….”

“It’s real,” snapped the voice, losing patience. “But our turning attracted attention! We should go, we’ve been out here too long already.”

Meet Melody

I'm doing something a little unusual. I've mentioned my new characters, Melody and Barnabus, the main characters of my latest story. I'm actually taking a break in their main story to write a short piece about Melody's origin. I'm not quite finished with it yet, but I'll post the first part anyway.

Melody MacTyre woke up alone in the snow, amid a ruin of fallen and broken trees. Her head was swimming and her throat ached horribly, as if she hadn’t had a drink in days. She stared at the sky in confusion, unaffected by the brightness of the sun as she looked past it into the countless stars.

“Move,” said a voice in her head, a voice not quite her own. “Get up!”

“I can’t,” she mumbled, her words feeling like fire in her neck. She looked down without moving her head, peering stupidly at the great limb pinning her legs to the ground. “I’m stuck….”

“Move the branch!” growled the voice.

Her leg moved, an involuntary jerk that sent the heavy branch tumbling away in a spray of powdery snow. Melody’s eyes widened and she stood up, looking down at her torn and dirty breeches in awe. The pain in her throat temporarily forgotten, she reached down to grab a length of broken oak that would have taken ten men to move. With barely a thought, she flicked her wrist and sent the log soaring away into the forest.

She swore softly, nearly falling back into the snow.

“Well done,” said the voice. “Told you!”

“What’s going on?” Melody asked as the burning in her throat returned. “Wh… what’s happening to me?”

“Us,” corrected the voice. “I’m you… at least your new memories.”

Melody’s head spun and she staggered away, her movements as quick as the wind. She came up hard against an unyielding outcrop of stone, shattering the rock with her shoulder.

“Watch it!” cried the voice. “Take it easy! Act a little more like a human or we’ll never blend in!”

The Letter I didn't Want

Rejection is an unfortunate part of a writer's life. According to popular belief, we are a sensitive species, notorious for our insecurity. I can't speak for other writers, but for me it's true. Each time I get an answer for a query or submission, I have to work up the courage to open it, fearing another blow to my already fragile self esteem. Being chosen for publication is little more than sparking an editor's interest, whatever it happens to be that day. It's more luck than anything else, submitting your work to someone's whim more often than careful consideration. Even for magazines, monthly submissions can number in the thousands. Most submissions are admittedly pretty poorly written and planned and the reading team often spends hours poring through stacks of bad writing without finding anything worthwhile. Even if they do stumble upon something that is well written and compelling, the deciding factor is typically whether or not the reader thinks the piece is sell-able. Sometimes good work is passed over simply because it was not what the reader was looking for at that moment. This usually leaves the writer with a baffling rejection, with no real idea of what went wrong. Still, we can't give up, even in the face of this sometimes senseless discouragement. We just have to keep trying until we find the right person at the right time, someone who is willing to take a risk because something we wrote resonated with them.

How did I get Here?

I had big plans for my weekend last night I swear. It's not my fault I ended up sitting in Books A Million this morning, honest. I was going to paint the guest room today, or at least scrape off the peeling paint and tape off the trim and ceiling. I've learned over years of working on maintenance that nothing ever quite goes as planned however, and this job isn't any different. Putting up a sheetrock wall is a relatively easy task, and when someone eventually decides to paint over the work it should be a simple job. Whoever decided to build the walls of my guest room had something very different in mind.

At a glance, the room's biggest problem is the choice of paint. It is a deep maroon that might have been nice in a bigger room with polished wooden trim and picture windows, instead of a single hung window and white painted boards for trim. If you look closer though, you will notice that none of the walls are quite flat as the builder used two different sizes of materials. To make matters worse, the joint compound used to blend the pieces of drywall together were never properly sanded, giving the wall a rough, unfinished texture. So that's how I ended up here in BAM instead of painting my guest room. After a few hours in one of my favorite places, maybe I won't decide to rip down all the walls and start from scratch....

Confessions of a Romantic

I have a confession to make. I'm a romantic. Not in every sense of the word, but in many. It influences great portions of my life and personality, though for many people the definition of the word has changed slightly. For me, my favorite definition is that of one who is imbued with idealism, has a desire for adventure and chivalry, and emphasizes imagination and emotion and introspection. Part of my makeup as a writer is my tendency to feel deeply, and without reservation. This may or may not explain my dislike for Realism and my loathing for The Great Gatsby. 

Endless Battle

I feel like I'm fighting a never ending battle against leaves out here in the woodlands of New Hampshire. Even with a leaf vacuum attached to a riding lawn mower does little to stem the tide. There's a soccer field here that takes about forty five minutes to mow in the summer season. Today though, it took me most of the day to clear the leaves away, and tomorrow, I expect more of the same. I don't mind though, there's something relaxing about riding the mower in the crisp fall air.

Life of Stories.

I'm not sure what to write tonight, but I guess I'll write anyway. I had a conversation with a friend about the life that stories seem to develop all on their own. In the world Barnabus and Melody share, Barnabus had been the intended supernatural element. As I started to write however, Melody quickly showed herself to be a better choice. In all of my planning, I never expected that to happen, but now as the story is filling itself out, I realize how much better it is than my plans.

Block and Anxiety

Honestly I don't really feel like writing tonight. I have a great story, characters that I love and for some reason, I still can't quite bring myself to try to put it on the page. The story is considerably different than anything I've ever done before, and at first I was worried that it wouldn't work out. To my surprise it's worked out better than I could have ever expected. Yet somehow I still can't continue tonight. All I can do is stare at my computer, watching the minutes passing me by.

There are many people that say that writer's block doesn't exist, that it is simply an excuse not to write. Sometimes this is true I guess, after all writer's tend to be chronic procrastinators. Yet more often, writer's block is a battle against anxiety. We pour our hearts and souls into what we write, drawing from our deepest hopes and fears for inspiration. It is almost literally baring our souls to the world and it is completely terrifying. It reminds me of a description I read once in a book on personality theory, used to describe the INFP personality type. My type.

When we're young, we are the most likely out of the children in any given classroom to have imaginary friends. To us, they are very real. Sometimes so real, that we never even realized that other children couldn't see what we did. Most children grow out of this, though it's still a traumatic thing to realize that the friends we hold so dear matter so little to the people around us. Some of us though, grow up to be writers, that still can't quite bring themselves to say goodbye. It sounds strange to say, but many of my closest friends are still those that only my eyes can see, at least until I can attempt to bring them to life on the page. So, in a manner of speaking, when I write I bare not only my own soul, but those of my greatest friends. To give these pieces of myself to a world that might not care, or worse yet, care enough to call what I love worthless, is easily the hardest thing I'll ever do. These words are pieces of my heart, please, take care of them.

The Power of Stories

Stories are powerful for any reader, but I think that they can be even more powerful for the writer. Melody MacTyre and Barnabus Rayne have been characters for more than a year, but now, as I'm writing their stories, they are becoming more than ideas scribbled down in a notebook.  They are becoming my friends, living things with lives of their own that I just happen to be lucky enough to share. Even when the creative flow doesn't come, I find myself wishing to return to their lives, just so I can see what happens next.

Through the Bridge of Worlds: Part 10

Wow, time really does fly when you're busy reinventing dragons now doesn't it? I swear that last time I looked at the clock it was only half past eight and now its after eleven. I enjoyed writing Blink's story, and someday I'll come back to it, fill it out and make it complete. Right now though, it feels far, far away. A good time to end it for now. So, for a little while at least, let's say good by to Blink and Baird... wish them luck for me okay?

Blink ignored him and pressed it into his hands. “This has a spell of strength and a stoneskin charm on it. You don’t need to be a warrior, just hit things until they stop trying to kill you.”  She paused, her silvery eyes piercing him. “If you get in trouble, I’ll teleport you out of the way.”

The writer nodded, the sudden and unfamiliar rush of magic from the weapon leaving him breathless.

“There are more of them this time,” Blink continued as the professor finished charging one of the batteries with a final flash of energy from the borrowed sword. “Four, maybe five. If we can’t stop them, we need to lead them to your Knight Wardens before they can do any damage to your city.” She lowered her mask, feeling her heart turn cold in her chest. “If it comes to it, I’ll let them take me. They’ve done enough damage to my world, they don’t need to cause havoc here.”

She turned around as the air began to darken and ripple, her blade drawn in one hand and a shining dagger in the other. A smile came to her lips as Baird stepped up beside her, his new hammer raised and ready.

“If they take you they take me too,” he said breathlessly, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and determination. “They dragged me into this the moment they chased you on to my patio!”

The reapers were there, as suddenly and silently as shadows. A telekinetic blast rocked the workshop as they attacked, sending equipment and notes flying. The push barely slowed Blink as she responded in kind with a shout, knocking one of the dark soldiers to the floor and rocking a second back on his heels. Baird and the professor, the writer protected by the hammer and the old man safely ensconced behind a steel table, attacked as well, yelling. In another circumstance, Blink might have laughed as Baird charged at the fallen reaper, shrieking maniacally as he swiped with the hammer, knocking the man’s weapon from his grasp more by luck than by skill. The professor hurled curses and absurd threats, his face quickly turning purple with rage as he used his charged battery and a pair of iron rods to launch searing bolts at the invaders, the unexpected show causing them to dance out of range from the stinging sparks.  

She had little time to regard her friends however and popped out of existence for a moment to reappear behind the reapers, her shining dagger finding a gap in her prey’s armor. The reaper, a woman, bellowed in agony as the dagger’s charm sapped her strength. She tried to wrench away, pummeling Blink with telekinetic blows. Blink growled savagely and twisted her blade, feeling a satisfying crunch as it cracked a rib. In the next instant she was gone, avoiding a second blade as it hissed past. The reaper at Baird’s feet grunted, stilled by her heavy boot as she passed. The writer’s hammer came down at the same moment, finally breaking through his weakened guard to cave in his breastplate.

The deaths of two of their number set the remaining reapers back  on their heels, though it was the professor’s impromptu lightning that truly doomed them. Blink, with her new power as a reaper added to her potent teleportation ability, attacked the first in a fury, blinking in and out of existence as her lethal blade tore strips from the man’s armor. The reaper raised his hands, raising a spinning sheet of flame as a shield. To his horror, Blink appeared inside of the flames, her blade biting hungrily into his throat. The last reaper ducked away from the professor’s searing bolts, diving through the dying flames to tackle Blink. The man’s jaw worked and Blink felt his grip weaken, but it was too late. The workshop was fading away. A new room, horribly familiar, began to appear. More reapers, at least two, loomed over her like horrible shadows. She roared with anger and the roomed vanished, replaced by her own familiar home.  The reaper hit the floor as Blink twisted furiously, losing hold of her blades as she put her knees in the man’s gut. The powerful reaper hit her with an open hand, the blast of power shredding Blink’s armor and spraying blood from her shoulder.

Blink’s eyes blazed beneath her mask and she raised her hand, a bright corona of fire building around her fist. The reaper raised his hand again, but the elf was quicker, crushing his iron mask with a vicious punch, blackening the crumpled metal with the ferocious heat. Blink remained where she was as the reaper died, staring at the man’s burned and ruined face, her chest heaving with exertion. For just a moment she could feel the mind’s of the other reapers in the city, recoiling as their brother’s spirit left his body. Vaguely she realized that they were suddenly wary. She was safe, at least for the moment. A small sound caught her attention and she stood up and turned around.

Baird was in the corner of the room, still holding his bloody hammer, his eyes wide and confused. His mouth worked silently for several moments before words came out. “Blink… how did I get here? Did you bring me?”

Blink shook her head, struck dumb. She shook herself and looked around. “The professor? Where’s he? Did they bring him too?”

“No,” Baird said shakily, sliding down to the floor. “I was right next to him. I thought the reaper was going to get through to him, but he turned around and went after you instead. You two vanished and suddenly I felt like something grabbed me and pulled me along.”

Blink swore and sat down beside him, gingerly examining her wounded shoulder. “So if I go home, you get pulled along with me.” She groaned. “And I’m just betting that if I take you home, and try to come back, you’ll be right back here with me.”

“At least you’re home,” grunted the writer. “That’s all that matters isn’t it? Now you can save your city.”

“But what about you? Your work, the professor?”

A fat lip from the fight gave him a lopsided grin. “I write about adventures all the time, but I’ve never been on one.” He tapped the hammer on the floor. “Just think about the stories I’ll write once this one’s done!”

End

Through the Bridge of Worlds: Part 9

Help! I've been kidnapped! No, not really, its just that I've been working on my other story so much that I keep forgetting to update the blog. We aren't too far away from the end of Blink's story though, so we should be finishing it pretty soon.

Baird’s eyes opened wide and he put a hand to his head as his face lit up with a sudden idea. “Lucid dreaming! That has to be it!”

“Lucid dreams?” asked Blink. “What are lucid dreams?”

“Have you ever had a dream and realized that you were dreaming?” he responded. “And suddenly you could control it?”

The professor nodded, beginning to understand. “Yes… I’ve had those once or twice. What about them?”

Baird grinned nervously in the face of Blink’s dour scowl. “You can learn to recognize when you are dreaming, and when you do, you can bend the dream to your will. I’ve been practicing it for a while and sometimes I realize I’m dreaming almost right away.”

“How?” asked Blink, crossing her arms. “How do you do it?”

The writer balked. “Uh… I’ve read about some techniques seers use… they think that lucid dreaming allows them to glimpse the future and the past. B… but I don’t remember everything about it… I need my books.”

Blink reached out and touched his shoulder, instantly transporting him to his home.

“I’ll never get used to that,” he said shakily, moving unsteadily to his overfilled shelves. He rummaged through the stacked books, tossing them haphazardly aside. He swore and moved to the next shelf. “I know it’s around here somewhere…. Ah! Found it!” He turned to go to the kitchen only to yelp in surprise as Blink took his shoulder.

“Well I hope we have the ingredients here then,” he said as he recovered his balance. “Professor, can I look through your larder?”

*

Blink stared warily at steaming in bowl in front of her. It smelled like herbs and earth and looked like the dark cider she drank at the tavern in Mauradin. She poked at the thick, syrupy liquid with her spoon, watching it dribble back down like honey.

“What’s this supposed to do?” she asked.

“Seers use this to induce a waking dream state,” Baird said, pouring over the weathered pages of an old manuscript. “It’s the quickest way to bring on a lucid dream. It’s actually related to sleep root powder.”

“Wonderful,” she muttered, taking the list he had written out. “What do I do if this works?”

The professor and Baird shrugged in unision.

Blink glared at them and took the bowl, draining it. She could feel the effects almost instantly as the world began to spin around her. Baird and the professor took her shoulders as she began to sway on her feet, helping her to the nearest chair. Her eyes were hidden by her mask, but Baird got the sense that she was looking around the room, watching things that only she could see. She started to reach out, but her arm fell weakly into her lap as her body relaxed into the seat. For several long moments, nothing happened, but then the room lurched and vanished, replaced by a second room. This second room was almost the same size as the workshop, but was more sparsely furnished. The single hearth was cold and dozens of unlit candles lined the walls in between oil lamps. Books, fewer and better kept than Baird’s, filled a bookshelf between racks of weapons and armor. Baird looked around as the foreign room flickered and began to fade, catching a quick glimpse of a bed and wardrobe in the corner. Blink shifted in her chair and he heard a clatter as the room disappeared again. The last thing he saw was a dark shape in the window before they were back in the workshop.

“Reapers were guarding my house,” Blink grunted, forcing away the potion’s effects. “I could feel them trying to get in.” She lifted the mask and peered at Baird. “Were you there with me? I thought I saw you.”

“Yeah, you took us with you,” Baird replied. “Did you mean to do that?”

“What?” asked the professor. “What happened? One second you two are gone and the next you’re back.”

“My magic didn’t take you?” Blink passed a hand over her face. “Then why did it take Baird?” She got up, hefting a heavy bag she had gotten from the other room.. “The Reapers are coming again. We have to get ready.”

“Our traps are exhausted,” said the professor. “I don’t have any bottled lightning left. Is there enough time to recharge the batteries?”

Blink shook her head and dumped the contents of her new pack on the table. She picked up a slender blade and pressed it into the professor’s hands. “No, they will be here within minutes… this sword has a lightning enchantment, it will work at least as well as your bottled lightning.”

The old man nodded grimly and turned away, examining the blade as he took it over to an empty battery.

Baird swallowed nervously as Blink took out a large hammer and held it out to him. He shook his head and backed away. “I, I don’t think this is a good idea… I’m not a warrior, I’m a writer!”

Through the Bridge of Worlds: Part 8

Okay, distraction free for the next five minutes. Maybe.... As hard as writing can be for me, its also pretty addictive and I've stumbled into the beginning of another full length novel. Ten thousand words in five days might not sound like a whole lot, but with any luck it will mean I can write the entire rough draft before Christmas. I might post pieces of it up here as I go, but it will also mean that I probably won't be putting up two posts a day for a while. Anyway, while you wait to hear from my new friends Barnabus and Melody, please give a warm welcome to Blink.

Blink had thought that sleep would be difficult. With the looming possibility of reapers tracking her through her dreams, the prospect of rest suddenly became unnerving. In spite or her fears, her exhausted body slipped easily into slumber, her weariness compounded further by the hours of work the Professor put in before allowing her to retire. Blink knew little about the strange technology of this new world, but the weapons that the writer and the inventor set up reassured her.

Even as a little girl, Blink had always remembered her dreams. Now they were dark and troubled, warped by sudden images of strange figures with metal masks. When she finally opened her eyes again, it took her several moments to realize that the dreams had ended. Her heart was pounding and she looked around in a daze, searching for the danger. The professor’s workshop was unchanged, though she could see the dim outlines of her friends shifting nervously behind a false wall. On the streets outside, machines still roared, carrying goods and passengers along, blissfully unaware of the threat closing in. Blink tapped her sheathed blade of the floor, warning the professor and Baird to hide. As she got up and moved to her place in the center of the room, she heard a hissing thud. Her friends, so easily seen in the wall moments before, were gone.

The air rippled and a pair of reapers stepped from the shadows, their blades glittering in the light from the gas lamps. Their faces were blank, and strangely impassive beneath their helms. The first stepped forward, his heavy boot landing squarely on a hidden pressure plate. All around the room, hidden springs launched slender bolts and wires, spinning a fantastic web of shining copper and leaving Blink in an empty space at the center. The reapers jerked in pain as several of the light darts hit their leather and plate armor. For just a moment, they tried to pull free before canisters of bottled lightning came to life, filling the room with a blast of energy. The burst lifted the reapers off their feet, hurling them back into the unyielding stone wall. Blink followed the lightning, plunging her blade into the first reaper’s throat before snatching away the second’s mask. Then, without a sound, she was gone.

Safely away in the wood outside the city, Blink threw the reaper into the iron hard trunk of a great oak, snatching up the thick chains and wrapping them around the man’s chest and neck. She vanished a second time, returning in barely a second with the professor and Baird. The reaper was awake, straining against the chains as it thrashed, caught in the grip of a crippling migraine.

“Want this back?” Blink asked, kneeling down and holding out the stolen mask. “Want the pain to stop?”

The man swore, peering at her through scrunched up eyes. “My mask! Give it to me and I will kill you all!”

Blink raised her eyebrows as the trapped reaper lashed out with a telekinetic shove, the force of the strange magic feeling like little more than a soft breeze. “Really?” she asked, resisting the urge to loosen the man’s teeth. “Is that really supposed to make me want to give this back?”

“Damn you!” the reaper snarled. There was a loud smack as Blink’s fist connected with his chin.

“How do you travel between the worlds?” she asked, drawing her blade to menace his throat. “How do you come here through the dreams?”

“Dreams,” he said, his head beginning to loll unnaturally. “Walk the dreams….”

Blink’s eyes widened as the man coughed and closed his eyes, his form beginning to waver. She tried to grab the man by the neck, but her hands passed through him like smoke. Chains clinked together, loud in the still forest, and the man was gone. Blink shrieked in fury, lashing out at the tree with a telekinetic storm. The mighty forest giant groaned and tipped, its roots making the ground bulge wildly as the professor and Baird ran for cover. The woman relented and the tree sagged back into place. She flicked her blade, scouring a deep scar into the bark where the reaper’s neck had been.

Baird hurried past her to gather up the chain as the professor put a hand on her shoulder. “Come on,” said the old man. “We should get back before something else happens.”

The writer yelped as Blink grabbed his shoulder, instantly transporting him back to the workshop. The dead reaper was still on the floor and the dozens of slender wires were undisturbed. Baird dropped the chain and fell back, nearly knocking over a small work table as the unexpected magic left him disoriented. The professor fared better and slipped through the wires to examine the body. Blink joined him, removing armor and pouches as if they would slip through her fingers.

“Damned nonsense about dreams again,” Blink grumbled, searching the dead man’s armor for secret pockets.

“Look in his mouth,” Baird said, finally regaining his composure. “I thought I saw the other guy swallow something before he disappeared.”

“I’ll be damned,” whispered the professor, gingerly opening the dead man’s mouth. “He’s got a false tooth. There’s a powder in it… smells like sleep root.”

“Sleep root…” Blink muttered slowly. “Sleep root knocks you out quicker than a hammer and puts you in dreams before you hit the ground.” She lifted her mask and massaged her temples. “So they do use the dreams, but how? I was dreaming all last night and I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t even know I was dreaming until I woke up!”