A question came up in my earlier request for NftWD topics. Ill address it tomorrow, but it was about working on more than one story at a time. I do, though my time isnt equally divided between projects. More detail later on that. I am working on three projects simultaneously at the moment. One of them is a story I started way back in 2009 and almost abandoned. Ive since taken it back and started work on it. Excerpt from GASLIGHT HADES: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well make it three blokes then, mate. Ill bet Doc Teppes would pay andsomely for a bone keeper seein as ow youre muckin up is business these days. The de facto spokesmans bravado lent the others courage. They snickered and two more brandished sidearms. Nathaniel braced his weight on his cane and shrugged. Shoot then, and lets get this over with. I havent all night. He closed his eyes for a moment and shifted, feeling his armor come alive and slither across his skin. As with the time before this, and the dozen more before that, the action was met with yelps of horror and the predictable lock and whine of a disrupter just before it fired. He knew what they saw-a white haired, pale-eyed demon wearing armor that writhed and hissed and snapped fanged jaws in a Medusa dance around his body. A miasma of green light filled his vision before a blunt force smashed into his chest. Nathaniel stumbled, the breath rushing out of him in a hard gasp. He righted himself with the aid of his cane. Mercurial rays that would have killed a normal man ricocheted against his rib cage and darted through his altered veins in a shower of razor-edged splinters. The living armor pulsed with verdant luminescence, shifting back to rigid angles and points that set him aglow like an ethereal gaslight. For Gods sake, shoot it again! More blasts, more green light. Nathaniel shuddered from the agonizing shock of the blows but remained standing. All his focus centered on containing the energy suffusing his body, shifting and shaping it until it emerged from his chest in a rotating sphere of emerald fire. The orb hovered between him and the resurrectionists, tiny bolts of lightning arcing along its surface. Dust thou art. Nathaniel blew gently and the sphere exploded, blasting outward in a blinding surge. It enveloped the men in radiant flame. Their screams were mere ripples on the night breeze, dampened to whimpers by the rays effects. Fabric and flesh melted away from bone that darkened to coal and finally disintegrated altogether until what were once five men became nothing more than the scrapings from a dirty fireplace. Nathaniel ran the tip of his cane through one of the ash heaps, pushing aside the melted scraps of destroyed disrupters. And unto dust shalt thou return, he whispered. The sepulchral chorus chanted in his ears once more. They are gone. They are gone. Yes, and good riddance. He suffered no guilt for dispatching the vile creatures that desecrated the dead and turned them over to men who would make them lurching horrors. He wiped the cane on the dew-spackled grass. And people called him monster. ---------------------------------------------------------- GASLIGHT HADES by Grace Draven Copyright 2009 by Grace Draven All rights reserved
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 23:06:43 +0000