Writing Practice

writing practice 1: Elves are really cool

Day one

Green. For as far around as the eye could see there was only green. Leafy branches, extending out into a massive canopy. Gleaming grass and thick bushes, fed by seemingly impossible dapples of sunlight filtering down from above. The plants shifted slightly in the wind, rustling. The colour of leaves changed as drops of water trailed down them from the recent rain rolled down them. The shapes and texture of different plants and the interplay of light and shadow as the sun, the wind and the tiny movements of forest creatures shifted the woods minutely. There were many shades and flavours in the forest, a palette which the crude tongue of humans could not well describe.

Minori did not blame the humans for their lack of words however. They after all did not know the forest as its inhabitants did, and so would never have had time to fully describe it. They would never have time in their mayfly lives to sit as she did, watching the forest through senses which were far sharper than theirs even without the enchanted blindfold that covered her eyes.

Besides, there were plenty of other things that you could blame them for.

The forest echoed to the tramp of feet and Minori looked down from her high perch, her shifting cloak fitting her seamlessly into the canopy's background. Feet clad only in a thin layer of enchanted silk shifted slightly on the rough wood of the branch as she gazed down at the column passing beneath her.

There were several score humans, each dressed in a faded red surcoat over rusty and ill repaired chainmail armour. Most were on foot, a few on horseback. It was not the humans that held her attention though, but rather the vastly taller figure stomping along in the centre of the formation. The golem looked to have been built from a cage of wood around a giant's skeleton. Some effort had gone into fitting large iron plates to the frame. A massive and rather ungainly looking helmet, far too big to be properly sculpted sat atop its head.

The golem looked back and forth, eyes glowing with the flame of the lanterns behind them. Minori frowned. That was certainly new. These were fighters of a local bandit lord by the looks of it, but the golem was a new edition. Shifting slowly, the young elf let out a cry, too high for human ears, her magic carrying it through the forest in every direction. A sound of warning.

The last human passed out of view and Minori rose, ran and jumped, the enchantments on her stockings lifting her in a superhuman bound. She dropped, falling below her last position, and flung out an arm, enchanted rope coiling from her hand. The rope snaked around a tree, changing Minori's course and letting her land easily then spring off again as the hook untangled. Her pattern zigzagged, keeping always behind the column of humans.

A few minutes later she caught sight of another cloaked form moving through the trees, again all but invisible, but highlighted by the enchanted blindfold she wore. The other stopped about a hundred meters away, easy range for Minori's eyes - especially with the blindfold, and raised both hands to talk.

<<Minori>> The other elf's hand moved in a complicated pattern. <<Should we attack yet?>>

<<Lirna.>> Minori's hands rose in reply. The first sign was greeting, the rest instruction <<When they reach the Blue Tor, then we'll take them>> she looked down at the humans below <<We'll attack the golem. Hopefully when it falls the rest will flee.>> She grinned under her hood. <<Let's give them a scare they won't forget!>>

Day Two

<<You're so merciful Minori.>> Lirna signed <<Hey wait!>> Minori was already well ahead of her, jumping from tree to tree, her bow pulled from its leg holster and in her hands. The elf warrior shook the weapon once, snapping it out to full length, the string coiling around the end, ready for use.

Minori didn't need to look back to know her partner was following. She could hear the slight noises the other elf was making as she bounded after her. Drawing an arrow from the holster by her bow she quickly notched it, leaving the bow's silken string slack. The human column was slovenly as it moved, without even any observers looking backwards, not even an lookout platform on the back of the golem. That was good though, because any observer would be killed by the effect of the arrow.

Ahead a tall slab of unusual volcanic rock reared from the ground: the Blue Tor. It marked the boarder of the area where humans were permitted and as Minori approached, the back of the column just passing it. Beyond the tor there was a large area in which the lower canopy was absent. Most humans would not notice the difference, but to an elf it was obvious. Then again, the trees were crafted that way for a reason: to give people like Minori a clean shot. She leapt, cloak billowing around her and hanging for a perfect moment then drew and fired twice. Without even waiting to see if her arrows struck, the young elf spun in the air, a line snaking around the upper branch of a distant oak, yanking her into a new flight path to avoid any retribution the humans might launch. She heard the arrows though, two satisfying thunks as they struck the golem's wooden frame. The humans didn't know it yet but the battle was already over.

On the ground below, Gemmes the Baker Son, sworn man of the Duke of Foltenmer and just over eighteen summers old, scratched at his beard. He had heard rumours about the forest, they all had. Some told of the place as cursed. Others that there were great riches inside. Gemmes knew which ones the Duke believed, that after all was why he'd sent them. There was something about the woods he found off-putting though, a feeling that he was being watched.

He looked up and for a brief moment saw something flash by overhead, so fast he thought he'd imagined it. Then the golem began to howl, putting it's great hands to it's head. Its wooden frame distorting, as metal nails exploded free, iron plates hurtling off into the trees. The wood rippled, then green shoots exploded out and rammed into the ground. Men were running as the golem flailed, giant's bones crushed to powder as its limbs reached out, more green bursting forth from them.

Day Three

Gemmes ran too, not knowing which way he was going and not caring, so long as it was away from there. A nail flashed past him, imbedding into a tree with a thump. Gemmes didn't dare look back but he didn't need too. Around him the shadows changed, the tall silhouette of the golem growing larger, branching out into the form of a vast tree. The young soldier couldn't even conceive of the power needed to do something like that, he could only run.

Bushes tore at him as he crashed through them. The shouts and crashes from behind fading into the distance. He kept going, then stumbled and tripped over a log, slamming into the ground hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. Even this didn't bring him to a halt: the soft earth beneath him gave way, and gravity gave his armoured body a rough yank. Gemmes rolled and slid forward, wheezing, finally coming to rest with a painful bump at the bottom of the slope. Whimpering he rolled to his knees and tried to push himself up on a fallen log. Slowly, pushing up on his arms as much as shaking legs, he managed to rise enough to perch on the tree. Wincing slightly and taking deep breaths, he looked around then slowly got to his feet.

The forest around him seemed uninhabited. He could hear birds, the rustling of leaves, his own breathing. Nothing from others who might have escaped the ambush... had it even been an ambush? Maybe it was just some enchantment of this place? He looked back up at the sheer bank. Foolishly he hadn't checked way he'd was running. He hadn't seen the bank when he'd entered the woods so he must have run deeper inside.

Pulling the water skin from off the side of his knapsack, Gemmes took a long drink. Running at such a frantic pace in full armour and heavily loaded had been foolish, and now his body ached all over. He looked back up at the slope but didn't fancy the climb. Instead he began to work his way along it, looking in both directions. To one side there was a clearing, and Gemmes saw something shining inside it. Carefully of his footing, his ankle aching, he walked that way. Perhaps it was a pool where he could refill his skin.

When he saw what actually lay in the clearing though, Gemmes stopped, goggling.

Silver towers rose out of the woods, connected by gleaming paths of white marble. Trees and flowering plants grew in profuse gardens around the great buildings, stretching far overhead. Between the towers graceful figures clad in fine silks went about their business, chatting to one another in lyrical cadence.

Gemmes opened his mouth, then heard a slight sound behind him. He was still turning when blackness took him.

Day Four: Second Practice

Midori hadn't ever seen a Terran before. The woman was tall and dark skinned, long legs reaching almost the midpoint of the smallish waiting room from where she was sprawled in one of the chairs. She wore the long dark blue coat of a Terran Hegemony Officer, with a major's bars she looked too young for on the shoulder. The front of the coat was unsealed so it flowed around her on the chair. In one hand she held a palm top, a bulky looking military model. Her other hand moved across the touch screen with lazy precision, the chirping sound of a game just audible.

Midori cleared her throat "Major Miziku. The Minister will see you now."

"Thank you." The officer quieted the machine, dropping it into a coat pocket as she slid to her feet. Midori saw something through the room's window. Intolerable brightness.

And then something hit her, every sense at once.

"W-what?" The secretary babbled, realizing the Terran was on top of her. She squirmed and the weight lifted off her. The Hegemony Officer looked down, sheepish, then shook her head. In the distance there was another explosion. Air raid sirens sounded.

"Looks like the Arcturans have decided to invade" her voice was rye for a moment, then the humour vanished abruptly: "go find your boss and get to the a shelter. I've got to go."

"But... but...!"

"Go." the instruction was firm, and aided by a push back the way she'd come. Looking stricken, Midori obeyed quickly, taking one look back at the Terran and wondering where she was going.

Nadia brushed herself off, bits of synthetic clanking slightly against the wood panelled floor as it fell. Her coat had absorbed most of the splinters but she could feel blood running down the spikes of her hair. "Ouch." she murmured, reaching up gingerly pull out a shard, the flesh beneath healing over almost instantly. No time to dawdle. Nadia began to make her way down towards the room's entrance, crawling under the cracked windows to avoid exposing herself she moved up to the door and peered outside into the street.

For an instant, Nadia saw only panicked people. Civilians cringing against the ground, frantically aiding or just yelling at people injured by shrapnel or runaway vehicles. For a second it was almost possible to imagine this as merely some terrible accident, some awful computer error. A horrid, but momentary problem.

And then the God Machine thundered overhead, turning to touch down, arms crossed, in the large park at the end of the road. Nadia ducked back inside and scrambled over to one of the broken windows, kicked away the synthetic and going out after it. A missile blasted down the street from a distant tower block, streaking past out of Nadia's sight towards the golden machine. There was a loud explosion then a moment's pause before the top of the skyscraper pinched inward, as if some giant hand had grabbed both sides and squeezed. Debris fountained from the ruin then the whole building began to fall.

Nadia risked peering around the corner of the building. The god machine stood untouched, no evidence that the missiles had even struck it. There was another thunderclap and a swarm of artillery submunitions rained down on the golden figure, wreathing it in explosions but achieving nothing else.

This mission had gone to shit.

Day Five: First day back after holidays!

It was the stench that hit Rin first: a mix of salt, ammonia and rot, stronger than anything she'd ever smelled . She coughed, then sat up, almost banging her head on the low ceiling, and realized the strangeness of her situation. She'd been unconscious. The thought was slightly terrifying: she'd never been unconscious before. It was dark in what had once been referred to as he visible spectrum, but Rin could see the heat radiating scores of other people, laying around her in the cramped space. Some of them looked quite alien. The walls looked like wood around her, and the floor swayed up and down, and the walls were made of wood. Rin also noticed they were chained together. Large collars of black metal connected to the next person along by a thick chain.

Next to Rin, huddled up against her was Akira, an off again on again friend of hers. The pair had been walking back from town together when... Rin didn't remember what had happened then. This place was like nowhere she'd ever been. They were on liquid, and travelling in a wooden boat. Rin checked her internal clock and found only a two hours had passed since she remembered. That seemed too short a time to get her off world, and she was sure there was nowhere on Sakura that smelled this foul. That probably meant that this wasn't real.

Rin was trying to remember some things she'd read about telling simulations from reality when Akira began to stir next to her, her long ears pricking up at the strange sounds around her as. "What happened?" She looked frightened "Where are we?"

"I don't know." Rin did her best to project an aura of collected coolness "this has to be some kind of simulation I think. It doesn't seem like anything on..." Then the hatch opened and a fat, misshapen creature with long dirty claws hauled her out into blazing light.

Reiko looked around as they were dragged into the light and her mouth dropped open. In front of her the two young women in what looked like some kind of school uniform were talking urgently to one another in something that sounded almost but not quite like Japanese. The stench was worse up here and she almost started to cough. They were on a wooden ship, all manner of strange, monstrous crew members tending to tall sails and ropes, rigged in a way not even the most backwoods violet would use. Above the sky was angry red, roiling like a gas giant, the sun must be hidden behind them. She couldn't see any of the rest of her squad yet, or any of her equipment. The people around her were men, women and stranger creatures. Reiko saw women in silk robes that looked straight out of a fantasy movie, a man with strange jet black skin, another with small horns. A gleaming humanoid machine tramped near the back of one line. The school girl in front of her had long pointed elf ears and deep orchid purple hair. In another line she'd seen two different women with angel wings.

Not for the first time since something had crashed through the wall of her bivouac Reiko thought she must have lost it. It had to be a dream or something, no matter how real it felt. The monster holding her chain yanked and Reiko was pulled forward, redirecting her vision towards the ramshackle town ashore. Buildings of bone, rotten wood, stone and iron grew like fungi out of the shore line, connected by narrow, winding streets laid out in an utterly disorderly fashion. Massive crenulated battlements of a metallic fortress overlooked the town, and Reiko could see huge brass cannons overlooking it. A massive fleet of ships and barges stood on the docks, unloading various cargos: animals, machinery, gold and gems. Things she couldn't recognize. . . and slaves. Like her. Reiko put her head down as she was dragged onto the dock, telling herself the watering of her eyes was just an effect of the river's fumes.

The balor looked Law over, his eyes moving to the other captives important enough to be chained on deck rather than down in the slave holds. The group were chained together, iron collars marked with runes that restricted their magic gleaming on their neck. "I fear you are mistaken oh princess." He grinned. At one end of the deck a hatch was opened and several dretches began to pull lesser prisoners out of the hole. The balor captain stood back as several other of the least demons grabbed the chain connected to Law's collar and began to yank her group towards the gang plank.

Everpresent Diamond Law felt slightly sick as she looked at the settlement. Her eyes kept trying to find patterns but there were none. She was looking away, feeling slightly ill when a large shadow fell across her. A massive tower of fat, brown flesh, covered in bristling untidy hair learned down on her. One of its clawed hands grabbed her hair and yanked her head back and attempted to stick its massive tongue down her throat. Law gagged, eyes blazing and found enough play in her chains to drive a fist into the bloated demon's grotesquely fat stomach. The tanar'ri coughed, withdrawing its head and letting Law breath for a second before it backhanded Law, knocking her down onto the deck, in a clatter of chains. The huge demon raising a foot to stomp on Law as she struggled to rise when a hand settled on its arm, flames licking around it. The big demon stiffened as the shorter form of the ship's captain stepped into view behind it. The fiend was shorter than it's subordinate, its proportions more humanoid. Its body was baleful orange fire around a horrific spiked skeleton

"My apologizes Princess." The balor's voice was the screams of the murdered. It's flames rippled to smoke as it reached down offered her a courteous hand up. Law ignored it, rising on her own and looking up at the archfiend angrily "My first mate could not resist your beauty." Law maintained her silence and the balor chuckled. "Alas you are our lords property."

"I am no one's property." Law said, voice quiet so to conceal her anger and fear.

The Balor grinned, running one finger across the dark abyssal iron of her collar, then his eyes moving to the other captives important enough to be chained on deck rather than down in the slave holds. The group were chained together, iron collars marked with runes that restricted their magic gleaming on their neck. "I fear you are mistaken oh princess." The balor captain stood back as several other of the least demons grabbed the chain connected to Law's collar and began to yank her group towards the gang plank, following the lesser slaves who had been below off the ship.

Day Six

Eirin tried to stay close to Yasmin as their slave line was yanked down onto the dock, wincing slightly every time her sword, chained to her collar by a short length of chain to make it impossible to wield banged against her back.

Useless girl. Quorin hissed in her mental ear. See now what your wilfulness has bought us too!

Shut up Quorin. Command growled. You berating her is not helping.

If she'd listened to me in the first place and not associated with that woman we wouldn't be here!" Quorin retorted, but quieted a bit after that.

The line stopped on the dock, the short, fat demon holding their chains looking back at Eirin and talking to another. The dock demon seemed to be of the same general type, but was never the less thoroughly different in features, with green fur and a face who's ugliness was far different from thinner and more mean than the first. Eirin shrunk behind Yasmin. "What are they saying?" She whispered.

The dark skinned mage looked back, adjusting her slightly torn silk robes to better cover herself. "The crew demon is informing its dock side counterpart about why how removing your artefacts would kill you" She replied after a moment, then gave Eirin's hand a squeeze. "Don't worry, we'll get out of this somehow."

The dock demon grabbed the chain and began to drag them off through the streets again. Eirin looked around curiously, unable to escape a fascinated curiosity with this place. The street narrowed and widened without seeming reason. Some areas where bare earth, others paved with rock or iron. On either sides buildings rose, ramshackle hovels made from drift wood nestled against impossible seeming palaces of gleaming metal, glass and quartz. Random assortments of stone and brick rose high into the sky, next low lying bunkers half submerged in the rock. In some areas stinking alkaline slime flowed across the street, bypassed by one or another bridge, always a different design.

The procession finally came out into a large square, in the middle of which a large rough hole had been dug. A massive iron tree jutted out of the hole, on each branch and twig hung a large cage, each filled with frantic looking captives of all sexes and species. More cages waited below. The demon turned and spoke. Yasmin translated "It says this will be our new home."