Hûw Steer's Blog, page 24

Missives From Isolation For Real This Time #2 – Escapism

Despite the fact that I’ve now had/still have COVID, I’m feeling much better this weekend. It’s been rough, but I’m on the mend, and all being well I’ll be allowed outside next week.

But until then I’m still stuck in my room. The only outside world I’ve seen in a week was for two minutes this morning when I was allowed to take the bins out.

Not that that matters at all, of course, because I’ve got a whole separate outside world of my own right here. It’s called Stardew Valley, and it’s basically the reason my mental health has remained largely intact.

In Stardew Valley, your character leaves their soul-crushing city job for the countryside, and the old farm that their grandfather left them years ago. You get to rebuild that farm from the ground up – you clear weeds, plant crops, keep animals, and befriend your many new neighbours in the adjoining town. As the seasons change and your farm grows, you get access to new crops and materials, expand your farmhouse, and make more friends, all in a beautifully drawn and realised game-world. It’s simple, but effective. All the more so when you remember that it was all made by one person, the redoubtable ConcernedApe.

Keep animals, grow crops – however you want to play the game, you can. But you should get animals. They’re adorable.

It’s a long-term game. Crops take weeks to grow, and there are 28 game-days in each season, so you have time to take things slowly as you build up your farm. For perspective, I’ve played for almost 60 hours now, and I’m only just at the halfway point of my second year. But there’s no pressure whatsoever to rush things in Stardew Valley. There’s no pressure to do anything at all. You can fish, or farm, or mine, or just forage flowers and berries from the bushes if you want to. There are little quests to do, but no consequences whatsoever if you don’t complete them. The only negative thing that can really happen to you is accidentally giving another villager a gift they hate and making them sad.

Put simply, it’s… breathing-space. It’s comfort food. It’s a joy to play, however you decide you want to play it.

You can just sit down and let the world pass by around you.

A good friend of mine called it “the game equivalent of a Studio Ghibli film”, and I couldn’t agree more. There’s that same sense of peace and tranquility, in beautifully illustrated worlds that are a joy to look at. And both Ghibli films and Stardew give you space to appreciate the ordinary things in life. A lot of games – most of the ones I play at least – have you running around fighting, or fleeing monsters, or trying to save the world. The act of playing it relaxing, but the world you’re escaping into is still a stressful one.

But in Stardew the most exciting part of an average day is going fishing, or bringing in a crop of blueberries. Maybe you’ll have a conversation with one of the townsfolk, or make a new piece of machinery. Even when you do fight monsters, it’s not usually that stressful.* You’re basically relaxing while relaxing, and it feels great.

Stardew is good for the soul. It’s without doubt the most mindful game I’ve ever played. It’s kept me sane, in a time when I’ve been on the verge of going entirely stir-crazy. So if you find yourself getting too stressed out and need somewhere to escape to, pay the Valley a visit. It’ll help.

Cheers, ConcernedApe.

* Except for you, weird green dragonfly things in the Skull Cavern. You can bugger right off.

Missives from Isolation For Real This Time #1 – WHY (also SPSFC)

Spoke too soon when I stopped putting ‘lockdown’ in the title, didn’t I?

I am now self-isolating, as is the rest of my house. Until today we had one person sealed in their own room and seeing nobody, but now we’re up to 3/5 testing positive, not including me (though how the last two of us haven’t got it yet we have no idea). Which is just great, given that we all need to move out of the house we’re currently stuck in within a few weeks. Nobody’s fault. We’re just all a bit frustrated.

So that leaves me sitting at home all day for at least the next 10 days. I’m still working, so that’ll be most of my time, but I’ll try and get some writing done around it.

I had a much longer post planned about how I’d been coping with the initial isolation (which was pretty well), but I’m not feeling it right now. Next week I should be in a better mood. It’s a good coping mechanism I’ve found myself, and I will tell you about it – but it needs a few more days to work on me first.

In a bit of better news, while Ad Luna was eliminated from the SPFBO, it is now a contender in the brand-new SPSFC (Self-Published Science-Fiction Competition)! Not sure which blog I’ve been assigned to yet, but it should be a fun little competition and I’m looking forward to seeing what people think of the book.

Sorry for a bit of a downer post. But I’ll be alright.

SPFBO 7 Interview: Hûw Steer

Two posts in a day? Appalling of me, I know. But this one is again coming from FanFiAddict – I answered a few interview questions with their own Justin, and they’ve just published it on their site.

For a few insights into Ad Luna and my writing process, read on below!

SPFBO 7 Interview: Hûw Steer

SPFBO – Or Not

The bad news: Ad Luna has been eliminated from the 7th SPFBO.

The good news: the guys at FanFiAddict did at least seem to enjoy reading it!

“The world building is excellent, prose is crisp and pacing is spot on.”

Definitely one of the better rejections I’ve had over the years.

But fear not – there are some other competitions that I’ve been eyeing up for Ad Luna, so all is not lost…

What’s Going On?

Technically we’re not in lockdown anymore, so I think Tokyo Drift is over. Whether we stay out of lockdown is another matter…

Update time, I think, as it’s been a while.

Boiling Seas 2 may still lack a title, and a cover, but the editing process is about 2/3 done. Probably more. I’m just about finished with editing ‘part 2’, which was the longest and probably most complicated bit, which leaves me with just the whole jungle trek to do. But there are big easy cuts I can make there. I just need to seed all the ideas that I came up with along the way for the overarching plot of book 3 a little earlier…

I’ve got a week’s holiday from work coming up. I’m beginning to move house during it, but I intend to use the time wisely and get a chunk more editing done. Hopefully I’ll have it ready for proofreading within a few months. A summer release went out of the window long ago, but I’m confident it’ll at least be out this year. Maybe Christmas. Maybe earlier.

In terms of other books, Ad Luna has yet to be eliminated from the SPFBO, which is a good sign. Maybe pick up a copy. It’s not a bad book.

Short stories… well, haven’t written any new ones for a while, but I’ve submitted a few around the place to see if I can find them some new homes. Right now I’m working on something longer and newer, as you may know if you read last week’s post…

In sadder news, my venerable old Kindle Keyboard appears to have given up the ghost after (I think) 15 years. I’ve managed to pull all the books off it, thankfully, but after many many restarts a factory reset is the only option left to me. So as soon as I can get it to turn on again to do that…

But I’ve also started sending out agent query letters again. Well, one so far. And it got rejected. But still. It’s progress. I’ve left it far too long as it is.

Lockdown: Tokyo Drift #17 – Burning To Death

“In July the sun is hot… is it shining? No it’s not.”

Except it is, Flanders and Swann. It’s bloody boiling.

My brain has been melting since the moment I woke up, so it’s a little difficult to concentrate on writing something that makes coherent sense. So I’m just going to give you all a little teaser on my current writing project. (My current editing project is of course still Boiling Seas #2).

Funnily enough, it’s also hot in what I’m writing. Very hot. The kind of hot that kills you. But there is life, regardless. There’s water. It’s just only in one place. A place that looks an awful lot like this…

Let me know if you know where this is – and even if you don’t, then let me know what you think my world might be looking like…

Lockdown: Tokyo Drift #16 – I Miss Game Manuals

A bit of game-related nostalgia, as I work my way towards the ending of Mass Effect 3 (which I’ll write a post about soon, especially about the Citadel DLC…).

You’ve just been out shopping in town with your parents. Trips like these aren’t as dull as just going to the supermarket, but standing around for hours while your mum and sister try on clothes (or, worse, make you try on clothes), or your dad goes and buys shoes or widgets or whatever he needs for the garage this time, is still boring. As a small boy, there aren’t a lot of shops that are remotely interesting enough for your goldfish-like attention span.

But if you’re lucky, you might have been allowed to go off on your own for a bit. You might have been able to wander up the high street while the others were in White Stuff or Monsoon. You might have been able to go into GAME – and if you were even luckier, you had pocket money, and when your parents came to find you 10 minutes after you were supposed to meet them outside the bank, you might walk away with a shiny new/preowned video game.

Then, of course, it was back to the car for the drive home. The car, of course, is famous around the world for not having a PS2 in the back of it. (Unless you had one of those cars with the little screen in the back of the headrest, which barely anyone actually did, despite every child wanting one more than anything else in the world). Your preowned copy of Ratchet and Clank 3 (the best game of all time) was just a lump of plastic in your hands for the next 45 minutes, before you got home and could actually play it. But that didn’t matter – because when you tore off the weird sticker that held the box shut, inside the box was the most exciting thing in the world besides the actual game itself.

The manual.

It didn’t matter that you couldn’t play the game yet. It didn’t matter that the pictures were so tiny and low-res that you could barely see what they were depicting. The manual had everything you needed for the journey right there. It had the controls, it had a summary of the story. It had a list of weapons and gadgets whose descriptions set the mind on fire as efficiently as they would soon be setting enemies on fire. It had a list of instructions about how to play multiplayer, on the Internet! You’d never use them, because getting a PS2 online required eleven bits of external hardware, and it was much easier to just have your friends come to your house – but sitting in that car those instructions were the most exciting words in the world.

There was no better way to build anticipation for a game than reading the manual. I remember dozens of trips like these, dozens of car journeys with my head buried in those little booklets. By the time I got home I’d basically been playing the game in my imagination already – and as soon as I was allowed to I’d sprint upstairs to the PS2 and get playing for real. Even later when I was in high school and I had a PS3, many games still came with a proper manual. I remember devouring the instructions to Skyrim on our way home in 2011.

Not now, though. There are no manuals these days. If you do actually buy a physical game (and it’s probably just a download code), there’s never anything in the box besides the disc and a few DLC codes or whatever. Skyrim was probably the last game I bought that had a proper manual in it. My other PS3 games just had a barebones list of controls, if I was lucky. More cutting by far were the booklets of safety information and adverts for weird proprietary cloud services. When you picked up the game case, it felt like there was a manual inside… but when you opened it later, there was just useless, boring paper.

And of course these days we mostly download our games straight from the Internet, so we don’t even have that.

I miss those days. I miss manuals more than I miss old games. I can still play the games. But I’ll never read those manuals for the first time again. And I’ll probably never read a new one.

The Boiling Seas: Non-Canon Adventures, Epilogue

Rounding off the non-canon Boiling Seas story with a little epilogue. I forgot how much fun I had just writing side-stories with these characters. Whatever happens with Book 2 (and presumably Book 3), I think there’s scope for me writing some more little adventures later.

(Read Part 4 first.)

Tal’s boat was a tiny thing, barely worthy of the name. Its hull still steamed faintly from its outbound journey, still hot from the scalding waters that washed onto the beach, wave by wave. But it was big enough for the two of them.

“I’ll push,” Tal said, and Max climbed gratefully into the little skiff. Her limbs were still leaden, but she felt much better after their run from the grounds. When they had surfaced, the guards, by the grace of the gods, had been none the wiser to Max’s escape. The two beneath the ground in the ossuary had clearly failed to report their suspicions to anyone else before going down. No alarm bells rang; no hounds barked as they sprinted loose around the grounds. It had been an unexpected blessing. Tal and Max had made their way to the walls and to the narrow postern gate, disused and rusting, that Tal had managed to force open to gain entry to the grounds. It had been so overgrown that most of the guards couldn’t have even known it was there.

Then it had been a straight run to the beach, crouching briefly behind a rise as a dog patrol made its way past, and to the narrow inlet where Tal had hidden his little boat.

Max raised the collapsible mast and unfurled the dark sail at Tal’s command. It wasn’t much, but it would do. It was only a short hop to the main islands, and the Boiling Seas seemed calm. The steam that rose from the slow waves made a mist of the shoreline. Hopefully that would obscure them enough. The walls of the asylum behind them loomed tall and dark, and atop them walked guards with sharp eyes.

“Ready,” Max called softly. Tal tossed his satchel into the boat next to her, rolling up his sleeves.

“Three, two, one.”

With a great heave, Tal pushed the boat, heels digging into the warm sand, just enough for it to slide back down the steep slope of the shore and into the crashing, scalding waves. He leapt aboard just before the waters touched his boots, wincing as a splash of hot water caught his arm. Max hauled at a line as the boat slipped into the water and dragged the dark sail out. It caught what wind there was and billowed, barely visible against the starry night. It was a smuggler’s boat, this; Max had looked carefully away while Tal had been obtaining it, haggling at the docks with some… interesting characters. Some things she just didn’t want to know. It was small, but it was hard to see, hull and sail both deliberately darkened, quick and nimble even on the roiling waters of the Boiling Seas.

Or it would be if there was any wind. Tal was at the tiller now, but the boat was barely out of the breakers. They needed to be faster. They did not have forever.

Max reached out. It was much warmer now, with steam rising gently all around her, the water hot beyond the boat’s alarmingly thin hull. It was treated with some very clever chemicals but it would not last long in this water. Caulking and planks were warped and devoured quickly by the heat and minerals within the waves – there was a reason all large vessels had hulls sheathed in metal out here. Never mind the guards patrolling the shoreline, perhaps moments away from spotting them and sounding the alarm – if they stayed out on this sea for too long the boat would breach and they would boil alive before they could even drown.

But though the night was cold, the sea was hot, and that was all Max needed. She reached out, and drew it in, feeling her shivers subside, her body fill with blessed warmth, with energy. She drank it in, sucking it from the air, from the water – there was no danger of the sea growing cold – and with it she seized the air and dragged it hard into their dark sail. It billowed, ballooning outwards, straining at the mast, and the little boat shot forwards like an arrow from a bow.

“Woah!” Tal fumbled with the rudder, barely keeping them on course as the boat skipped across the surface of several waves in quick succession. “Bring it down a little!” Max flushed, and let go, the sail slackening, feeding just a little wind into it. She glanced back, and saw the asylum island disappearing rapidly into the steam. It lurked in the mists, terrible to look upon – but it was small, now, a nightmare swiftly forgotten upon waking. On the wind, she heard, finally, a bell ring out, as the guards at last realised that something was amiss. Took you long enough, she thought with a smile. They were far too late to catch the ‘escapees’. We’re out and away.

“Thanks,” Tal called, over the rushing of the wind and the flowing of the waves. “Needed that boost.”

“No problem,” Max replied with a smile. She felt better than she had all evening, the borrowed warmth of the Sea flooding her limbs. She’d still pay for her exertions later, of course – the body did not take too kindly to having so much energy poured in and out of it, even after long practice – but for now she felt warm, and alive.

Tal consulted the boat’s fixed compass, adjusted the tiller.

“Keep the wind up and we’ll be there in less than an hour,” he called. “Can you?”

“Sure.” The wind seemed eager to respond to her touch after her bending of the reluctant light.

“Let’s see it then.” Tal’s eyes were bright with anticipation. Max grinned, and reached into her pocket for the object she had taken from the ossuary. Thank you, Lord Fierling. She held her hand out, then opened it. On her palm there sat a small silver key.

“That’s it?” Tal’s gaze was locked on it, his breath catching.

“That’s it,” Max confirmed. They crested a wave, the boat riding the swell, and Max closed her hand tightly, quickly as it rocked. If they were to lose the key now… “It matches the description. Four teeth, silver. And it has the rune.”

“And we found it on the body of the man who claimed to have found the thing it opened.”

“That too.”

“Then we’re set,” Tal said, a slow smile spreading across his face. “We’re ready to go out there.”

Max shuddered at the thought, whether from fear or excitement she couldn’t tell.

“I guess we are.”

“You don’t sound convinced,” Tal pointed out gently, as he checked the compass, adjusting his iron grip on the tiller. “What’s wrong?”

Max took a long moment to reply, letting the warm wind rush over her as she put her thoughts into words. Above, the stars shone brightly.

“Nothing major,” she said finally. “Nothing important.”

“But you’re nervous?”

“No.” Don’t be an idiot. He’s your friend. “…yes. It’s just…” she faltered.

“That we’re a long way from home?” Tal finished.

“Something like that.” She grimaced. “I read books, Tal. I don’t actually go out and see the places they describe.” For most of her life she had sat in the great university tower and studied, reading countless texts on places long ago and far away. She had dreamed, for years, of going to see them; had accepted the fact that she likely never would.

But now she had the chance. And it was wonderful and terrifying all at once, and she wasn’t sure whether to weep or laugh.

“I was the same, once,” Tal said softly. She had to strain to listen to him over the wind she was still channelling. “I read, and dreamed. Never dreamed I’d actually do it. It was simple. Peaceful.” He smiled sadly. “Sometimes I miss it. Usually when I’m about to get myself killed.” Max chuckled. That does happen a lot.

“But when I’m out there,” Tal continued, “when I’m living what I thought would only ever be stories… it’s exhilarating. It’s like nothing else. And I’m guessing you feel the same.”

Max thought about it for a moment. Then she smiled.

“Yeah. I do.”

“Good.” Tal twisted the rudder. “So. You ready to go put ourselves in serious danger for bad odds at a vast reward?”

Max chuckled.

“No. No, I’m not.”

“Want to do it anyway?”

“More than anything.”

Tal smiled, and twisted the tiller, and Max reached for the wind, and together they sailed through the mists of the Boiling Seas towards the dawn.

The Boiling Seas: Non-Canon Adventures, Part 4

If you haven’t read part 3 yet, do. If you have, welcome to the crypt…

He strode off along the corridor of skulls, and Max followed. Shelf after shelf after shelf they passed, Tal’s witchlight flowing smoothly over pale bone. Most were unblemished, stripped of whatever aged flesh had once wrapped them,  but there were many that showed signs of damage. Max was healer as well as scholar, and recognised sword-cuts and hammer-blows, fractures old and new, the swathes of tiny spines that spoke of cancers of the bone, and other strange mottling besides. Most of the alcoves were stuffed full of bones – but again some were missing leg-bones, or half a stack of ribs. They passed one skull that grinned down without a lower jaw, its remaining teeth glinting in the golden light. Max shuddered at that one without quite knowing why.

A few alcoves – just a few, but enough – had no skulls. Their plaques described nothing but neat stacks of long bones, their owners’ faces lost forever.

There were sconces in the walls for old-fashioned torches, but none were lit. As they progressed, torches became oil lanterns, then chemical, as the bones in the ossuary’s alcoves grew brighter, whiter, newer. But there was no light at all, save that which flowed around Tal’s fingers. The shadows flowed too, oil to the water of the witchlight. Finally, after what seemed like a mile of shadowed skulls, they came to a break in the bones. The shelves stopped, and beneath an extinguished lantern there was a pedestal of the same grey stone as everything else at the asylum. On it was a heavy book. It was old, but nowhere near as old as anything else they’d seen so far.

“If this isn’t alphabetised,” Tal muttered as he stepped over and opened the tome, “I’m going to burn that building down.” He sighed with relief. “By date. That’ll do. When are we looking for, Max?”

“Date of death or internment?”

“Internment, looks like.”

“Fourteenth of Parthis, twelve seventy-two.” The date rolled off Max’s tongue like her own name.

“Your memory,” Tal said as he began flipping pages, “is genuinely frightening.” The pages were heavy parchment, each one landing audibly as Tal turned them. “I brought your notes and everything. Wish I hadn’t bothered.” He patted his satchel absently, and Max noticed that it was bulging a little more than normal. She grimaced guiltily. She wrote quickly and profusely, and in the process of gathering information about their target she’d filled a heavy notebook from cover to cover – and stuffed it with loose papers. And then, because she’d known that nothing she took with her into the asylum would come out again, she’d committed it all to her admittedly prodigious memory.

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Tal said, flashing her a smile. “But if you write much more we’ll have to buy a bigger trunk. And hire someone to carry it.”

“I’ll condense a bit.” Tal carried nothing but his satchel. Max had a pack and a set of cases that weighed almost as much as she did.

“You’d better.” Tal was still flipping pages. “And you’d better keep watch. I’m only in the eight hundreds.”

Max nodded and stepped back. She wanted to look at that book – but if she did then it would be days before she reached the entry they needed. She knew she wouldn’t be able to resist taking a proper look – but Tal could skim-read like a professional. She stepped away and turned to face the pitch-black corridor. Keep watch. Right. She hadn’t quite gotten the hang of Tal’s air-sense yet, and she couldn’t see a thing.

So she closed her useless eyes, and listened.

At first, all she could hear was the whisper of turning pages in the echoing gloom. But she opened her mind, stretched out her senses. She could feel the stone of the tunnel, cold beneath her bare feet. It was still, at first. But as she breathed, slowly, in and out, she felt the subtle movements shaking through it, through the air that began to feel like liquid against her skin, the vibration of each and every tiny sound – for that was all sound was, when you broke it down, and vibrations were energy – and so was magic. Some audiokenes could wield sound like a weapon, roaring like a storm as easily of breathing; some could render crowds as silent as a whisper. Max was newly come to the discipline, but practice made perfect, and the best way to learn to wield an element was to immerse one’s self in it. So she stood, and paid no attention to anything save touch and sound. Her own breathing was like thunder in her ears, each page Tal turned a great door creaking open. She tuned those sounds out – something that had taken her a lot of practice to master – and listened for the vibrations in the air and stone ahead of her, from the tunnel. At first there was nothing. But as her connection to the stone grew stronger she heard sounds that were faint at first but grew louder: the sound of distant voices, incomprehensible but there, the sound of heavy boots on flagstones.

“They’re in the chapel,” she whispered, wincing at the thunder of her faint words. “Two… or three.” Their voices mingled from so far away. “Can’t hear them, but they’ve not come down yet.”

“Alright.” So close, Tal’s whisper made her jump out of her skin. Max refocused herself, listening again, connecting herself to the far end of the tunnel with a chain of gently humming particles. The longer she listened, the easier it became to understand the distant voices.

“…broken… something…”

“…prisoner?” That chilled her a little; not patient, prisoner.

“But… locked. All… floor.”

“They’re starting to figure it out,” Max warned, feeling her own words ripple from her mouth in a great wave. “We don’t have long.”

“Almost found it,” Tal replied, his voice another pebble dropped in Max’s ocean of sound.

“…downstairs?”

“Can’t have.” She could pick the two voices apart now. One reverberated far deeper than the other. “It’s locked.” The rattling of the heavy door on its hinges cut sharply through the air. “See?”

“Unless they picked it.” The other guard’s voice was reedy and unpleasant. “Let’s just check it, shall we? No harm. And it’s out of the wind.”

“Sure,” the other guard sighed. “Why not.”

The sound of the lock being turned rang sharply in Max’s ears as she broke her trance. Sound rushed out of her ears in a flood, and she reeled for a moment as she adjusted to ordinary noise.

“They’re coming down!”

“Got it!” Tal slammed the book closed with a heavy thump. “Further on. Seven twenty-seven.”

Without another word they both turned and began to run. Tal’s boots were soft and Max’s feet bare, so even at a jog they were near-silent – but behind them Max could hear the clicking of hard heels on flagstones. The guards were coming.

“Dim the light,” she hissed, and Tal did so, the glow in his fingers dimming until they could barely see two feet ahead. She heard him begin to count under his breath, marking the alcoves they passed by the rhythm of their footsteps rather than sight. Behind them, the glow of a chemical lantern was slowly becoming brighter as the guards marched down the corridor of bones.

“five, six, here.” Tal skidded to a halt, and Max stumbled after him. He raised his glowing fist, and illuminated the plaque marked with the number 727, and the name Thaddeus Fierling, and the grinning skull that had borne it.

“That’s him,” Max whispered. Her mind was already painting the skin and muscles back over the man’s face, his regal countenance etched in her memory from a dozen portraits and etchings. Thaddeus Fierling, gentleman explorer. The nobleman had been legendary in his day for his extensive travels across the world and the Boiling Seas in particular, sailing in his own personal cutter on the wildly dangerous journeys that had been all that were possible in the age before steelships. His accounts of the islands of his era had been required reading in the Lantern’s history classes, lauding the intrepid noble for an inquisitive spirit centuries ahead of his time.

Max’s own reading had uncovered a very different man: hypocritical, prone to outbursts of violence – especially against his long-suffering servants – and as exploitative as possible of every culture he had encountered on his travels. There was a reason that his skull and bones were lodged halfway down a colossal ossuary instead of having a fine tomb of their own, that his name had been almost entirely forgotten outside of the world’s universities and archives. He was one of those figures it was more expedient to leave forgotten than to make the effort to remember.

But there had been enough written to tell a diligent researcher – or at least one diligent researcher – where to look to find Fierling’s bones. And what might have been left with them.

“Be careful,” Tal warned, as Max reached up to the alcove. She was taller than Tal, could reach it more easily. The wiry thief held up his witchlit hand, his eyes turned away towards the corridor, watching for the guards. The light flowed over Fierling’s skull like molten gold. Carefully, Max reached up and took the skull in both hands, bending down to place it gently on the floor. A swift examination showed her nothing hidden within it, inside the jaw or beneath. Of course it couldn’t be that easy.

Bone by bone, Max slid the fragments of Fierling’s body free of their alcove, slowly and carefully, checking each and every one for the object they sought. She couldn’t rush, not with something so delicate – but as the distant footsteps of the marching guards grew louder, she knew that she soon wouldn’t have a choice.

“Anything?” Tal hissed.

“Not yet,” Max muttered. She slid a thighbone free, and barely caught the femur above it as it slipped from its place. She wobbled on her tiptoes, trying to hold both bones in one hand, but recovered her balance.

“Be quick,” Tal said. Carefully, slowly, he drew his knife. “They’re almost on us.”

Max slid another bone aside, but there was nothing in the alcove but dark stone and old dust. Frustrated, she looked down at the row of finger- and toe-bones. She shoved them aside with one hand, trying not to rattle them – and saw beneath the fingers a glint of silver. She grabbed it.

“Got it!” I think. But there wasn’t time to look for anything else – the light of the guards’ lantern was growing brighter and brighter. She bent for Fierling’s skull.

“No time!” Tal hissed, grabbing her arm.

“But they’ll see – ”

“Can’t be helped. Move!”

Light in hand, he pulled her away – deeper into the tunnel.

“You think there’s another way out?” Max whispered as they ran.

“Not a clue.”

“Then shouldn’t we – ”

“Just run, will you?”

Max shut up and ran, bare feet slapping softly against the flagstones, the gleaming object she had snatched from Fierling’s bones cutting into her palm as she gripped it tightly. Behind them came a shout of alarm, echoing down the tunnel: the guards had clearly reached the old explorer’s desecrated alcove. Max winced. Sorry. Whatever kind of man he had been in life Thaddeus Fierling deserved a peaceful rest. She felt guilty for taking so long, not replacing the skeleton. Tal, she knew, had fewer qualms about such things than she did. Though he respects them too. It was just that he was more prepared to be practical when it was really necessary.

They ran through a blur of bones. Tal let his light grow brighter – there was no point hiding it now, now that the hard sound of boots on stone was fast and loud, joined by the clinking of metal as the guards ran down the corridor after them. There must be another way out. Or they wouldn’t be rushing. Or maybe they were just eager to catch the intruders, Max thought to herself as they ran. She was out of breath now, trying not to pant too loudly even though stealth would soon be pointless.

She hoped Tal had a plan. She had assumed he did when they started running, but he hadn’t stopped, hadn’t said anything. She saw the knife in his hand. Not like him. He wouldn’t resort to violence. Would he?

“Here!” The whisper was sharp, and Max stumbled as Tal skidded to a halt in front of her, almost running into him. The witchlight played off another alcove, like the one before, holding another pedestal with another ledger. Of course! There had to be more than one copy of the heavy index. Tal had known that. That was why he had run on.

“Get in,” Tal muttered, sliding behind the pedestal awkwardly. It was a small alcove, and once Max had obeyed and struggled inside herself there was no room to move at all. She was shoulder to shoulder with Tal, pinned against the back wall by the pedestal.

“They’ll see us!” she hissed. It was the worst hiding place she had ever seen.

“Not if you do that thing again,” Tal muttered, bringing his knife-hand up across his chest awkwardly. “Like you did outside.”

“I don’t have the strength,” Max protested feebly. She really was tired; the run would have been bad enough if she hadn’t already been drained by the magic she’d done above the ground. Could she do it again?

“Tough,” Tal said curtly. “Now or never.”

His witchlight dimmed, then died, and all was dark – for a moment. Blinking rapidly to adjust her eyes Max saw the faint but growing glow of a chemical lantern, as the sound of the guards’ footsteps grew louder and louder. Now or never.

She took a deep breath, and drew the darkness of the tomb around them like a shroud, and as the light of the guards’ lantern finally lit the alcove she pushed it away. Please. She gritted her teeth with the strain of it – but then the clinking mail and hard boot-heels were gone, fading as the guards kept running straight past the dark alcove and into the unknown.

Max felt Tal’s hand on her arm – a warning. Hold it. She knew better than to let the cloak of shadows drop, but it was hard, so hard, to keep it up. But she managed it, drawing on energy she hadn’t known she had. After what felt like forever Tal squeezed her arm, and she let the magic go, gasping as cold flooded her very bones. Tal’s witchlight ignited dimly.

“Well done,” Tal whispered. “Very well done. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

With a gentle hand at her back, he helped her down the tunnel and back out to the surface above.

Part 5 – the finale – coming next week.

Interview with Fantasy Hive – Ad Luna, SPFBO, and More

I was interviewed last night by David M. Samuels (of Euvael fame) for Fantasy Hive and the SPFBO. It was a nice informal chat about Ad Luna, how I wrote it, etc., as well as potential teases of a new project or two. Provided that bit made the cut.

You can watch it below on David’s YouTube channel – and it should be up on Fantasy Hive soon.