I was asked to post a piece from my WIP (work-in-progress). I will tag seven others. Heres something from my current NaNo piece that Ive never seen done before. As with most magical things, it just sort of happened while I was engaged in slogging through an otherwise uninspired passage. (Roger Ebert said The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Just get out there and get started.) This is from my very raw first draft. The POV character is an 8 golem named Clay. He has no sooner arrived in the magical city of Fantasia when strange things start happening. Such as this... Phalen started yelling from the moment we left The Black Oak - I was an abomination, I shouldnt exist, Fantasia deserved better, blah blah blah. I figured he didnt like having his evening disrupted by someone like me. I understood that, so I let him go. We were walking along the outskirts of the city on the edge of a rather large forest when I started to notice what tasted like sulfur. I don’t smell with my nose but when I open my mouth, I can take in the scents in the air, and something was definitely different. Phalen didnt stop yammering so I figured he was used to it. But I knew something was up when I sensed something large pacing us in the woods. I stepped it up and drew closer to Phalen. “And if you think I’m going to ignore what this means for the city…” Phalen said. “One moment,” I said. I grabbed Phalen by the back of his tunic and the seat of his pants and took a step forward with my left leg and threw him twenty feet into a fountain. And not a moment too soon. A large, scaled figure hurtled out of the woods. A roar filled the air and the smell of sulfur boiled out of its throat. I quickly turned to my right and it was on me, snapping at me with jaws as large as my entire body. I grasped the outside top of its mouth with my left hand and the outside bottom with my right and I took the blow of the mighty animal with my strength. It drove me back as I held on and then I dug in. It kept trying to lunge forward and snap at me and I hung on for dear life. I finally got a good look at it - a thirty foot winged lizard with luminescent green scales, a really magnificent beast. Phalen came up out of the water howling and sputtering “DRRAAGGGOONN!” he bellowed. “Watch out for the…” He never got a chance to finish. The dragon hit me with a gigantic spout of liquid flame. It’s a good thing I’m a magical creature of clay and a steady disposition. I survived well enough but my clothes lit up before I had even had a chance to get them dirty. I stood in the gap and yelled as the flames engulfed me and burned the clothes right off my frame. It hurt, but other than baking my clay hide, didnt incapacitate me. The dragon took a breath and I decided it was time to go on the attack. I looked around for a weapon and then the thought occurred to me - /I/ was a weapon. I tapped into some of that great pool of manna within me. Blue lightning glowed underneath my fingertips and my empty eye sockets lit up with a sharp blue light. I looked at the dragon. “There’s no need for that,” I said conversationally, and then I re-planted my gigantic legs and twisted sideways /hard/. Gormen the dragon went right over onto his back and the ground rocked with the impact. Dust and leaves filled the air as the dragon howled in surprise. And then I saw my opening. Quick as thought, I pounced on his exposed undercarriage and started tickling his belly. “/Who’s/ a big lizard? /Who’s/ a big lizard?” From his back, Gormen gave me an alarmed look out of the corner of one eye and then his eyes rolled up into his big dragon head and he started batting softly at me with his claws retracted. He liked it. I tickled his stomach for a good five minutes as Gormen made the most disturbing, most delightful sounds of lizard pleasure. He finally rolled over - which caused the ground to shake again - and nuzzled my hands with his very large snout. I scratched along the side of his snout and he flipped his tale around in pleasure like a big, scaly dog. Gormen licked me - which was an experience in itself - and then he turned in a big, sinuous circle and melted back into the forest.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 20:53:33 +0000