Switching Gears

Hey there, Fellow Creatures!

 

Hope all is good in the woods. As of writing this, I’m officially done with draft 1 of Stone of the Scarred. 

 

The final word count is right around 117k. How can that be when I just wrote a blog about surpassing the 125k mark the other day? 

 

Well, I ended up taking out a few chapters and switching some things around and cut it a little (or a lot if you think about the percentage of the story 8k is!), and I’m relatively happy where it ended up.

 

There’s still plenty of editing that needs to happen to get it into tip-top shape, but first I’m switching gears a bit to concentrate on getting out this stand-alone novel I’ve been messaging about and sitting on for quite some time.

 

Under a God-Made Mountain. 

 

If you haven’t been following along, this was my palate cleanser.  After finishing Shadow of the Dragod, I needed to write something different before jumping back into the Scarred World Saga.

 

Something smaller. Something quieter in scale. Something a little more…weird and scary.

 

And I think that’s what I ended up with. Under a God-Made Mountain is just over 70k words, which is about 40k shorter than my other books (or 200k shorter if you look at SOTD).  

 

It’s focused on the journey of an orphan boy who has found purpose as a tamer of the lions used as weapons for a crusade waged by the religion that dominates the city he lives in.  

 

Accused of a harrowing crime he may or may not have committed, he is banished to the top of the Maker’s Mountain and told to make his way through its tunnels as a way to purify his soul.  Now he, along with 5 other criminals, must navigate the terrible depths of a mountain said to be inhabited by the creatures of hell itself.  

 

I’d say this one leans more into the horror side of things than any of my other stories, but is also more introspective. It tries to look at the things that tempt the orphan throughout his journey and pull him into the darkness of his own being.

 

What tempts him? Well, there’s a whole host of trials and oddities waiting for him in the mountain, as well as what the other criminals have to bring to the table. 

 

If you want to see how it all turns out, hopefully, you won’t have to wait too much longer.  

 

I’m still in the beta reading phase and then want to do a final pass on the manuscript to make sure it still holds up after stepping a few months away from it.  Then it’s onto an official scrub by my editor and then, cover art! 

 

Getting this out into your paws and claws is going to be my focus for the next few weeks/months before jumping into book 3 of the Scarred World Saga.  

 

During this time, I’ll be posting updates here and will switch up the content on my Instagram to start trickling out some snippets from the book instead of parts of Stone of the Scarred.

 

I hope you’re as excited to read it as I am to get it to you!  

 

Here’s another, never-before-released piece of the book, right in the beginning. Where the criminals are all getting to know each other and figure out where the hell they are…

 

Stone received him. An awful welcome party. He let out a gasp as the agony rose where he had been met. 

His arm and shoulder. His head.

He was certain something had broke, but as the pain dissipated he only realized it was the cold playing tricks on him, numbing him into thinking he’d been done worse than some bad knocks that would soon turn to bruises upon his body.

“You shites! You think I won’t find my way out of here?” The first voice was back. Louder, as if amplified by the god it had been so bent on disavowing. “I’ll carve my way through your god’s test and find you. Still the same man! Still just as broken as you claim. I’m your hell. Do you hear me? I’m your devil!”    

Melk sat up, blinking. Sparkles and shapes took form in his eyes. His hands were unbound, strangely. The coarse rope they’d tied him with snapped in two from the impact. 

Or something else.

A blade of blue light fell through an opening overhead, cutting away the darkness enough to reveal a wall of unconquerable ice. Yet still, someone tried to scale it, posing a stone as a pick, and failing. Falling back to the ground beneath so that more curses could be forced from their mouth.

“Do you hear me?” It was the owner of the first voice Melk had heard overhead and it yelled from its back. “Answer me!”

Someone did. “They’re already gone.” 

Another figure sat on the edge of the darkness, rubbing their hands. Wisps of hair danced in and out of the sapphire glow falling through the ceiling, playing with the light like it was already something novel and strange, a toy yet understood.

Melk’s eyes were figuring themselves out now. There were other figures squirming within the dark. Bodies trying to make sense of the chaos sewn by such shadow. Such circumstances.

One was muttering and whimpering, rocking back and forth like he was sitting in a chair.

“They ain’t gone.” The one on the ground came to his feet. “They’re watching. Making sure good and proper that they’ve said their prayers and sealed our dooms. But there ain’t no dooms to seal! Do you hear me? No doom awaits the Doomless.” 

“It’s you then.” Another sauntered out of the dark, cradling his arm. A man who had seen some years. Hair shifted from the top of his head to his sides, like it was trying to run away from the thoughts that occurred within there. He wore a robe threaded with golden lace that would have been lustrous if not for the signs of the rough treatment its owner had received. Ripped and frayed, frost-ridden like blue jewels strung lazily across it as if poorly tailored. 

The one on the ground turned, the speaker of the first voice he heard. Melk saw him fully. Shadows fell into the deep recesses of his face, catching on all the scars, all the wrinkles, collecting in the pits created by the ugly configurations of his features. Yet his eyes seemed to sparkle, like a dog’s in night, like a hungry thing on the wrong side of a window looking in on a proper dinner. “I know you?” Was all he said.

“No,” answered the robed man. “But I know you. You’re Durrel.”

The man pounced, fist raised. “Where’d you get that name?”

The robed man threw up his small hands as if he was begging and sputtered. “It’s my business to know names. I need to know people.”

The fist fell. Two wet smacks, like the noise of a cleaver falling on the ribs of a pig carcass Melk once heard outside of a butcher’s.

“Stop it!” A woman stepped forward. Her hair fell to the side of her head, as if satisfied to finally be with the light it craved. A burn decorated the only side of her face that Melk could see.

“I’ll stop it only when this wad of shite tells me where he heard that name.” 

“You’re the Doomless,” sputtered the robed man from the ground. “The Unhuntable. The Lion-Breaker. Head Fist of the Ruined Hands of Merigone.”

“Better,” snarled the one called the Doomless. He raised another fist. “Speak your name.” 

“Belwin. Belwin Artemand.”

“The Bilker?” said the woman.

The robed man went silent.

The Doomless looked down at him. “I’ve heard of you. Belwin the Bilker. You run a merchant guild. The Boots of Bar..Bar…”

“Boots of Barlett.” Belwin wiped his face. His fingers came back bloody.

“Should’ve said ran, heard it’s no longer yours,” said the woman.

“Where’d you hear that?” said the Doomless.

“Word passes where they plucked me from,” said the woman.

“And where is that?” said the Doomless.

“Can’t you see what she is?” said Belwin. “She’s a whore. Spreads her legs for coin and gossip.”

But Melk couldn’t. The blue light pouring in overhead reached over, tidal, ebbing to reveal her hair. Chestnut. Only a shade different than her own skin. She’d big cheekbones, full lips that looked to have been split one too many times by the back of a hand. A tattoo of a hunched figure decorated the patch of flesh behind her right ear. Her lobes were torn and blood-crusted. 

The earrings of the apprehended.

She was pierced once to be certain, but the Shepherd’s had taken those decorations from her by force. The Maker preferred His flesh whole. Melk knew at least that much from Lacort’s sermons.

“I ain’t a whore,” snarled the woman.

The Doomless dropped Belwin. “Then what are you?”

“A merchant of skin.”

The Doomless laughed, a noise that sounded like stones tumbling. “First whore I’ve met name their profession that.”

“Skirting the truth is what it is,” said Belwin.

“Just like you did the church?” snapped the girl.

Belwin came to his knees and spat. His eyes looked to take on the color of the ice nearby. “What’s your name?”

The woman did not freeze beneath his gaze. “What? ‘Not the truth itself? Caught hiding your tithes in the books. Dodging the numbers is what I heard. Tried bribing the wrong birds.”

“That what happened there, Belwin of the Barletts? Get a bit greedy?” said the Doomless.

“My guild paid for years. Decades. Greatest supporter to the Maker in all of Brayce. By the Maker, put all the statues in front of His churches and made sure they were gold. Gold! Would have been more than happy to keep paying the same…”

“But good Vithy called for his damned crusade.”

“The Arch Tymon had good reason. The Rolite uprising is of great concern to the church. They would—”

“Save it, Bilker,” said the Doomless. “They ain’t listening no more, nor is He. Not down here. The Arch Tymon raised the price to raise the sword, and to put a few more inches on that belly of his and you couldn’t bear to bleed your coffers for it.”

Belwin looked down to the ground. “I thought the ask… unreasonable.”

“Blasphemy. You speak blasphemy.” A new voice entered, same direction that Melk had heard the mumbling. It caused the three participants to jump.

“By the Maker’s own wood how many did they drop down here?” said the Doomless. “Would the fool dumb enough to side with our good friend Arch Tymon Vithland the Third come forward along with anyone else we happen to be sharing this tomb with?”

Melk ambled forward at the same pace as the man crawling out from the shadow, both summoned from their hiding spots like eavesdropping children caught listening to the wrong conversation. Melk hung on the blue fringe, watching as the figure on all fours came before the others. He sniffled, huffed, and whined like a starved mongrel, yet he wore the white robes of a Shepherd. There was something wrong with him. Melk couldn’t tell what. Not yet.

But the others could.

“By the Maker.” Belwin stepped back.

The woman retreated to the shadow as if it would save her, gasping.

The Doomless stepped forward and knelt before him, grabbing the robed man’s head in his hands like one would a dog needing to be told something.

“What did they do to you?”

It was then Melk could see the problem. 

His eyes were gone.

Burned out of his head. Nothing but charred voids inside his skull, red dribbles of melted flesh hanging below them, running down his cheeks, onto his jaws, as though he’d had wine thrown in his face. 

“The Arch Tymon was in his right,” muttered the man.

“The right to what? Take your eyes?” said the Doomless.

The man struggled to open his mouth. “To take the tithe. The Rolites. They are a stain upon the Maker’s image. They denounce Mithland. Hunt the birds of rapture. Pillage the sanctuaries of our God.”

“Listen to yourself. You defend the man who did this to you.” The Doomless dropped the man’s head, a fruit gone rotten.

“’Twas the Maker’s reason. I am to atone for what I’ve done. I am to be tested. I am to be—”  

“Save it.” The Doomless stood and turned, finding Melk standing there. The Doomless’s eyes widened at the sight of him. “A boy.”

Melk skirted into the darkness. “Ain’t.”

The Doomless laughed. “Your voice says different.”

“Ain’t.”

“Take a step closer,” said the woman.

Melk came closer. Light showered him, showed him off like a good behind a store window.

“Just a boy,” said Belwin.

“Told you, I ain’t.” Melk curled his fists.

The Doomless laughed. “Oh, would you look here? We’ve gone and turned him into a man just like that. Think those tattoos can hide you? Think that scowl will put hair on your cock?”

Melk was staring, watching the words escape from the pit of the Doomless’s face. The woman stepped forward, half-sheathed in the shadow, her burn blanketed by the dark.    

“Why are you here?” she said.

Melk didn’t answer, only looking between the group.

“Go on,” said the Doomless. “Out with it, boy.”

Melk rubbed his nose. “Killed a man.”

This made the Doomless laugh louder.

“Who?” said Belwin.

“He didn’t kill no man,” said the Doomless. “No one kills a man in all of Brayce without me knowing about it and never heard of no sprout putting the knife to anyone.”

“Did,” said Melk.

“If you killed a man then I sew the Arch Tymon’s arse to its current ant-hole tightness, and I assure you I could never stand within twenty miles of its divine stench.”

The woman kept staring at Melk as if she was waiting on him to do something, like dance or tell a different story or let loose his fists… “What?”

“You alright? That was a long fall.”

“Fine,” said Melk.

“You sure?” said the woman.

“Said I was fine,” said Melk.

“Careful there, merchant of the skin, he might bite,” said the Doomless.

“That true?” said the woman, not looking away from him.

Melk just stared back.

“You have a name?” she said.

“I do.”

“You going to make me ask?”

Melk chewed his lip, his eyes dancing across the others. Each of their stares said something different. Something incomprehensible. Something he would understand if only he could just bear to meet their gazes a little longer.

His eyes fell to the ground at his feet.

“I’m Thiplee. Most people call me Thip.” She extended her hand.

“What?” said Melk.

“What? Never taken a lady’s hand before?”

Belwin sneered. “Nor will you have if you take hers. She’s no lady.”

“Come on, boy,” snarled the Doomless. “Even strays know manners.”

Melk brought his hand to hers. Their fingers grappled strangely, like two spiders trying to embrace. “Melk, I guess,” he grunted.

“Melk?” repeated Thip. “You’ve a soft touch for a hard hand.”

He slipped his fingers away from hers, careful to return them to a fist.

The Doomless laughed. “Melk? What in the gabbard’s arse kind of name is that? The Maker must of hated you square in your mother’s belly to give you such a thing to go by.”

“The Maker hates none of his creations,” said the blinded Shepherd, still bound to his hands and knees.

“That so? Then how do you explain where we are?” said the Doomless.

“Where is it we are exactly?” said Belwin.

The Shepherd started babbling, “Where the Maker can remake us. Where the Maker can reshape us. Where the Maker—”

The Doomless struck him. “Heard enough of that overhead. Don’t need any more of that Maker nonsense following us in here, wherever the hell this prison is.”

“It’s the Maker’s Mountain,” said Melk.

“The Maker’s Mountain?” said Thip. “You mean like the one they preach about in the sermons?”

Melk nodded.

“How do you know?” said Belwin.

“Was told so before they took me,” said Melk.

“You’ve been listening to too many bedtime stories,” said the Doomless. “The mountain isn’t real. Just something those unimaginative dullards whipped up to scare children into their beds.”

“It’s real.”

The voice came from the stone itself. It sounded like shale skittering beneath boots. Melk didn’t know its origin, thought it was the mountain talking to them, but then another figure materialized from the shadow. Only inches taller than the shepherd on all fours, she was hunched and crooked, her antique flesh spotted from age. She braced herself against the nearby rock.

Her hair was so long. Melk wondered if she had cut it at all for the entirety of her life. When she pushed it aside she revealed eyes as dark as flint. It was as if the rock were her parent.

“You know it is real. You feel in your bones, don’t you? You know it in your hearts, yes? It’s real,” said the old woman.

“By the Maker, they’ve condemned a grandmother to be fixed?” said Belwin.

The Doomless stepped toward her. “Are you hurt from the fall, mitha?”

“Mitha?” The woman cocked her head and laughed, a booming noise for something so small. She cradled her arm. Walked forward with a limp.

“You know her?” said Belwin.

“No,” said the Doomless. “Just trying to show the old woman some respect.”

“Mitha. The Sacred Mother? She is here?” said the blinded shepherd, his head bobbing about like a bird’s, restless, attempting to find the source of such a disturbance, such a surprise.

“It’s just a name,” said the Doomless.

The old woman limped forward. “I’ll be your Mitha if you’ll have me. We’ll need one here.”

“Where is here?” said Belwin.

“Methugarna.”

“I’ve heard that name before,” said Thip. “Where?”

“Methugarna. The prison of shadows. Where the Maker cast the armies of His enemy after the Ascension.”

“I’ll not listen to the fables stuffed from your holy books, Shepherd,” said the Doomless. “Certainly not in this place.”

“Then what is it?” said Mitha.

“I’ll tell you what this is.” The Doomless sauntered over to the ice wall and picked up the stone he’d been using to help him climb. “The easiest escape I’ve ever seen.”

The Doomless went to plant his pick, but Mitha’s voice stopped him.

“There is no way out up there. You somehow summit the wall and you’ll face winds. A cold like no other. One that will break you before you even hope of seeing city lights again.”

The Doomless looked at the stone, looked at the ice. A chill swept down through the hole as if to exemplify the old woman’s words.

“Then what?” said Belwin. “We’re trapped here?”

“Trapped,” said Mitha. She held her arm closer to her body. It looked limp in her hand. Broken in a few places from the fall, yet she did not complain. “No. That would mean there was no way out, but there is.”

“But you just said if we climbed the ice we’d die,” said Belwin.

“And you will, but that is not the way out I name.” 

“Then where is it?” said Thip.

The old woman stepped aside and pointed into the darkness at her back. The shadows collected so thickly it looked as if it were a sable curtain draped over that side of the cavern, a pit where the moonlight overhead was thrown to be buried. “In there.”  

“In there?” Belwin gave a sarcastic grunt. “Are you joking?”

The Doomless squared up to the shadow. His fist clenched tightly around the stone as if it were a dagger. “What’s in there?”

Mitha looked into the darkness with them, as if it were a mouth speaking, and she could translate its words. “The Lord’s test. The start of a path that leads down the throat of the mountain, into its gut, into its heart. Into its very soul. A labyrinth that will lead us to an exit.”

“An exit? Where?” said Belwin.

“Why, it’s arse of course.” Mitha showed a smile. Her teeth were brown and jagged, like stalactites. “Somewhere at the bottom of the mountain, there is freedom again.”

“So we just hike down a few miles and we’re done?” said Thip.

“You make it seem like it is a casual walk down the Red Road.”

“Is it not?” said Belwin.

“The enemy of the Maker is here,” said the blinded Shepherd. “The Animal is within.”

The Doomless turned on the shepherd. “What did I tell you about your religious shite—”

“He is right,” said Mitha. “The ex-priest speaks the truth.”

The Doomless jutted his jaw. “How do you know this?”

Mitha laughed. “Look at me, sire. The last grain of my hour glass is nigh to fall. I’ve had plenty of time to hear the stories of the world. To sort out what is true. What isn’t. What lies within is dark territory. The darkest, perhaps. It’ll be no easy path. One wrong step and you’ll fall into the clutches of those who’ve only known shadow. Those who have been born and bred within it. Those who have only drunken a sweet and endless night from the mountain like it ‘twas their mother’s bosom.”

The shadow seemed to reach for them, uncoiling its black fingers like a hand inviting them through its door, and if they were to accept, if they were to go inside, they would meet properly. Understand it wholly. Know it, and it them.

A proposition that made Melk quiver, though, he’d never let the others see it happen.

“Ain’t scared of the dark,” said the Doomless.

“What dark have you known, sire?” Mitha took a step closer to them. “The one that slipped into your crib when the sun went down? The inside of the closet you hid in as your da taught your old lady a hard lesson? ‘Tis not the same. Not the same at all. In that dark, there is still hope of light. A candle is a mere room away. A lantern is always close. Your ma’s arms, just a bed next door. Even those raised by the street still have the luxury of the city’s glow. But down there, within, light is the rarest of commodities. A thing as hard to come by as God herself.”

“God herself?” The Shepherd perked. “You defile the Maker’s image with your tongue. Blasphemy.”

Mitha cocked her head. “Look what your Maker has done to you, ex-priest. Yet still you defend her.”

“Was my own making, not that of the Maker’s.”

“The Maker made you with the hot blood running through your veins, and it is you who are guilty for walking with it?”

“You know what he’s done?” said the Doomless.

Mitha shrugged and cracked a smile.

“She doesn’t know,” said the Shepherd. “She can’t know.”

“Then why don’t you tell us?” said the Doomless.

The Shepherd’s head fell, as if weighed down by the task. A lagging drip of blood fell down his cheek. A miscolored tear. 

“What I thought.” The Doomless turned his attention back to the ice. “There must be some other way out of here.”

“If there was do you think they would have put us in here?” said Thip. “You heard what they said. This is supposed to be our test. No test I know is passed easy.”

“She speaks true. There is only one way out, and that way out is through the mountain.” 

Well, that’s all for now, Fellow Creatures! Appreciate you coming along for the journey down Elsewhere, like always.

 

Until next time,

 

Stay chivalrous!

 

-Jeff