I recently finished the second draft of a story I’m working on, and I decided to share it online. I’m sharing one chapter at a time, and the story is about 487,000 words right now (roughly 5 paperback novels in length, give or take), so this will take awhile.
I estimate that 2nd draft is about 80% of the way there, story-wise; but 80% is not 100%. This chapter might show up in the final story completely unchanged. It might show up with minor changes, or heavy revisions; or might be cut from the final draft completely. If it does remain, it might be in a new place in the story or the same place.
Anyway, enjoy!
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CHAPTER 5
D’Arthur stood on the gray sand staring out into the flat sea.
It was fitting that the Island felt so dead. He turned to glare at it, feeling that familiar red-hot rage, hotter than the lava in the Hellscape, filling him. Tightening his frame, tightening his muscles into fists. Then in an instant it cooled. Froze so icy that he could think with perfect clarity, could think utterly about how much he despised every living thing and how he would make every single bitch and rat bastard of them pay. How they would pay for what he had done, would pay for how he had suffered. Not that it was his fault, what he had done. It was her fault. But they would pay either way.
It was fitting that there were no smells in the air. No stirring of breeze for the last ten thousand years; just air hanging flat and dead and clammy around him. It was fitting that the sea and sky and sand were gray, that there was no life here and nothing ever moved except the sun behind the clouds and the waters lapping at the shore. Gently, always lapping; their rhythmic sound driving him mad the few times that he was truly here. Only when a mortal summoned him did he appear here. And he hated that, hated being at their beck and call even in this small way, even in this inconsequential fashion; as much as he hated anything and everything else.
But it was fitting; because even in his home in the Mortal Realm, he felt like this. Like the beauty of the Mortal Realm, the life and smells and tastes, was absent. He hadn’t felt a woman’s touch in nearly a thousand years. Hadn’t wanted to; they were all worthless bitches, and he would sooner cut off his own arm than let a one of them touch him. Even–especially!–the ones who reminded him of her.
But he hadn’t felt the breeze on his face or the grass beneath his feet in a thousand years. Hadn’t tasted the fine duck and chicken that he had brought to his chambers, or felt a cool chalice of spring water quench his thirst, in far longer than that. Yes, he thought, his rage flashing from icy again to raging hot; it was fitting. Fitting that he should suffer this way. And fitting that he got to enact proper punishment on all the worthless mortals who made him suffer this way.
He had sent Danur back to the Mortal Realm, now that their business was done. Had opened up a whirlpool that served as the conduit from Island to Mortal Realm and back, and Danur had dove through it. The man was likely on his way back to his ship even now.
The rage flashed again, raging and red-hot, writhing inside of him like serpents. Let these worthless bastards live in their paradise for a few measly years. He always got the last laugh. When they died, when he threw them in the Hellscape for ten thousand years of loneliness and isolation and agony…then he got his revenge on them. When they screamed as fire blackened their skin and charred their bones…then they suffered the way that mortals should. The way that he did.
Except for Danur, and that bitch Illidrea. They had found the secret to immortality, and they alone were set to escape his punishment.
Unless he killed one of them. The molten rage flashed inside of him again, cooling into ice that let him think. That let him wallow in his own plan, in the sheer crystalline genius of it. He had sent his agents in the Mortal Realm after her, with a sloppy would-be assassination that had masked the more dangerous plot while pinning the attempt on one of her advisors. And Illidrea, too arrogant to believe someone could possibly have pulled the wool over her eyes, had fallen into the trap like a bear into a pit covered with leaves.
But that wasn’t the beautiful part. No, the beautiful part was yet to come. He turned to watch her, a grin lighting his ancient face, twisting his thin and wretched mouth into malice. He couldn’t see her, of course; she was in the Hellscape, and that was no part of this Island. But he stared through the mist towards her, and imagined where she would be now. How her proud facade would start to break down as she realized where she was. How she would start to beg, to claw at the bars of black iron that scalded her skin whenever she moved; how the hubris in her eyes would turn to horror and then to pleading as she groveled and begged and cried out for someone, anyone, to help her. To rescue her. His mouth twisted in a snarl. It was no more than she deserved. Less. Less, for the sin of looking like—he cut that thought off like a razor before he could say her name.
But he would raise her. When Danur had accomplished his mission, he–D’Arthur–would raise her. He had no obligation to do so–that blathering about a God’s unbreakable oath was just something he had cooked up so that mortals would bargain with him, so that he could twist the knife of their bargains and hurt them in ways that they didn’t expect. But he would do it.
And none of it would matter. Not to Danur. Because the moment Illidrea was raised from the dead, everything Danur loved would be ripped away.
And both of them, those worthless rat bastards, would spend eternity in the deepest, darkest, most fiery portion of the Hellscape. Learning, over and over and over again as they screamed and begged for mercy and tried to find each other and were thwarted again and again right on the cusp of hope, right on the edge of insanity, that they should never have trifled with the God of Death.
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