#bydeathdefined

Excerpt from Chapter 8/18, “By Death Defined”

No more spams as the contest ends tomorrow.

“Ahh settle down, young wan,” the other one said, “just having fun.”

“Aye, fun,” she rolled her eyes as she buttoned her trousers, “what with the bleedin’ French spraying their magic across our city like dingleberries.”

They laughed hard. There were two things to do in the calm before the storm: you either brooded in fear or laughed it away.

“To bleedin’ the French out all over their dingleberries!” One of them said, right before putting his mask on, which immediately muffled his laughter.

“Ch-what?!” The woman, who had just thrown a jacket at someone else who had arrived after Gittan, and was thus outside of the context of the conversation, scoffed a confused laugh.

“Aye!”

“What?”

She laughed, strapping in the jacket while the two walked off in full gear, grabbing jetpacks.

Gittan looked off into the distance thinking of John.

I wonder if I can find him before the battle. I’d feel better.

“Hey, what’s yer name?”

She looked back at the newcomer, a young woman like her.

“Gittan.”

“Ah. I think I know ye. Class o’ eighty-three?”

“Two, actually. Who’re you?”

“Biddy. Guess I just saw ye around.”

“Well,” Gittan smiled and held up a mask, “I hope you see me around again, Biddy. Good luck out there.” She put on the mask. She saw her wishing her the same but didn’t hear it properly.  

The masks really were terrible in how they cut off hearing, but how else to properly protect themselves from the bloody magic spells.

She grabbed a jetpack and then walked to the racks where the weapons were lying in wait to be picked up. She grabbed a pistol and went to grab another rifle but, at that moment, she hesitated.

Distractions were gone and her thoughts, in the silence of the mask, had caught up to her. John, Gilroy, Muirne, Ruari.

She felt a loss. An utter loss, as if the biggest pillar holding up the world up had fallen. No, not just fallen, it had shattered. She felt an immense, inexplicable, loneliness.

Because she was alone. She had started off with her mother and husband, but now she was alone.

She looked over the weapons and suddenly felt an immense lack of motivation to join up with a squad. Instead, she wanted to go and try and find John, or Gilroy.

Are they dead?

It was possible, a lot could happen in an hour. Her eyes finally landed on a gun her gut was okay with. It gave her a sense of being appropriate, the right gun for her right there and then, especially with her paining leg. It was a long distance high caliber rifle, the kind of weapon she wouldn’t be able to fire on the move and the kind of weapon a lone marksman would use from afar. She had never been the type but, right then and there, she had changed into it.

It wasn’t like she wasn’t trained with it, the instructors had even told her to take up that role, but she never applied for it. She didn’t like the idea of being behind everyone dying, taking pot-shots from relative safety.

But that moment, looking upon the gun, she was sure of it. As sure as she was that she loved her mother, and John, and her family and friends, and that she hated Napoleon, she wanted that gun. She wanted to lift off and fly on her own to the nearest battlefront and just shoot them. Pick off mages from a distance.

It’ll also help me find them, most like.

One could see a lot better with those scopes. Nodding, she grabbed it and ran to have enough room to engage her jetpack. She did so as soon as she could.

She flew up, almost simultaneously with another one. In the time it took her to overview the horizon and decide where to go, three other soldiers had done the same in her vicinity. One of the two jokesters was already flying eastward, probably to link back up with his squad, but she wouldn’t. She wasn’t part of a squad anyways, she was a reserve and hadn’t yet been assigned since she had returned from Scotland after her last tour.  

Technically, she had been assigned to Gilroy’s platoon.

Gittan looked for signs of what part of the front-lines was closer to the docks and didn’t take long to find it. Finally, she leaned and directed the propulsion to push her forward.

If they’re dead they’re dead, she tried to tell herself, they didn’t die in vain, none of us do. Death defines us, it reveals who we are to others and how we’re supposed to be remembered. Until it comes, nobody really defines us, no one’s got a good headstone sentence.

She wasn't doing a very good job of convincing herself.

That’s our motto, that’s okay. It’s okay if they’re gone. Mom…was mom, the best. Dad too, they raised us all so well, they…

She shook her head and tried to steel her heart. She thought of Gilroy.

“Don’t think about it,” she whispered to herself.

Read more at Inkitt: By Death Defined!

Excerpt from Chapter 2/18, “By Death Defined”

The real trouble was that the number of jet packs safely landing onto the castle was very small. The vast majority was getting picked off and brought down very clearly.

In a grunt of frustration, she stretched out her arm and rotated it, signaling the young couple who were ready to follow her to hell, to follow her instead in a sharp turn towards one of the buildings.

They swayed and swerved around loosely targeted spells. She rigged and threw another grenade, but it bounced off a shield and into a window of a house.

She pulled her legs up to straighten her body as she turned off the jet-pack for one moment, turning it on again so she could descend. The grenade went off, if there were any mages inside the building, they were now incapacitated.

She planned to shoot at a couple of pockets of sieging casters from the roof. Alas, she didn’t even get the opportunity to take her position. She landed so hard the roof gave in, and she fell through.

“Aaaahh!” Terrified the thing on her back would explode, she turned to land on her face. She landed instead on her arms and legs, but the mask still pressed hard against it, busting her lip.

“Ugn…” She pushed herself up with the taste of blood in her mouth and quickly unbuttoned the clasp on her shoulder to get the rifle and pull it at the ready, while her situational awareness settled in.

“Oleg--”

She turned and shot the mage somewhere in the chest. He winced back, a layer of what looked like solid air cracking inches from his brown robe.

A body shield. He had been interrupted, however.

Sorcha cocked the bullet casing out of her a rifle. There was a door to her right, the corridor she had fallen in went to the left, the railing to a staircase spiraling down started a few feet to her left. She took aim and squeezed the trigger.

“Non!”

The Mage jumped to the side, allowing the wall to contend with the bullet.

“Tsk,” she drew her handgun so she could take a third shot before he could speak a word.

“Ogofdlob!”

The pistol bullet made its way through the fireball easily. The layer of solid air around him, the tiny repulsion field, shattered in a concussive blast that only helped the bullet to implode the inside of the mage’s skull instead of crossing through. They were too close, and he had unfocused in order to cast his spell.

She closed the arm, in reaction, to block herself from the fireball but made sure it caught her torso. It pushed her back a step, giving her a sudden flare of heat, but her suit was sturdy and flame-retardant.

Sorcha looked down and slapped away the flames, cursing under her breath. “Blasted ceiling, going arseways on me…”

“Mom! ‘Re you okay?!”

She looked up at her daughter. John was not there. Most likely, she was looking after Gittan’s back, she could definitely appreciate that.

“Ah, yes. Clear the rubble ‘round the hole, Gittan, and I’ll be right up.”

Her peripheral vision caught movement on the spiraling staircase. She looked to find a blue hooded robe, peering out of them at her. He was showing little else than his bleach-blonde hair, blue eyes, and the two staffs the size of forearms which he was pointing over the last step and at her.

Read more at Inkitt: By Death Defined!

Excerpt from Chapter 7/18, “By Death Defined”.

Battle was an odd thing, regarding the way in which it was perceived, Gilroy considered.

It was either one numb blur of action where you weren’t even sure about most of what happened, and your mind was elsewhere as all your combat instincts and belligerent emotions took care of the fighting and the atrocities.

Or it was one very slow moment in time. Where every detail was scarred into the mind, like a memory that would resurface in nightmares if one refused to face it. And sometimes even then.

Gilroy had always wondered what it was like to experience the former. From talks he had had with Ruari and John - on those few introspective nights where they would sit around the fire, have a drink, and actually share experiences out loud - he had the impression they did experience it the other way.

It was slow for him, however. Painfully slow as he did his best to continuously be aware of the bigger picture of the fight. Of his men, the numbers in his forces, the strategic geometry of the battle that was described by his placements, and those of his enemy. 

Gilroy’s thoughts were interrupted by an attack

Some stragglers attacked his column, hitting the jetpack of a man he had known for ten years. It caught on fire and sent him speeding onto a wall, Gilroy hoped he was killed on impact.

Don’t think about it.

The column swarmed across the streets, landing loudly on roofs and floors, spreading apart so as to provoke as little collateral as possible from being hit with the spells. By the time they took down the two mages, using the standard tactic to simultaneously shoot to bypass their individual barriers, they had taken the life of four others.

When he saw the pub marking the first intersection, he pointed at Birte – she applied a specific seasoning to her mashed potatoes that he really liked, and had a son that idolized him – and waved at her to break off and hit the ambush point to their east. She did a few waves of her own and took her squad off with her.

Usually, you’d never take equal numbers against a force of mages, but Gilroy hoped that the surprise factor would give them enough of an edge. More importantly, it was necessary, much as her son had asked him to ensure her survival.

Don’t think about it.

A scouting mage attacked, trying to hit him, but Gilroy knew to roll and evade as soon as he heard any kind of weirdness around him. The fireball missed him. The mage ducked back into the house, and it took them five whole minutes and one life to make sure the mage was dead.

He held Alby’s hand as he died. Poor lad, it was his first battle.

They continued on. When the time came, he waved at Walden – he had once made Gilroy laugh like never before, or ever since, using his terrific talent to tell stories and jokes – to take his squad and attack the nearest ambush point.

They went, led by the wittiest man Gilroy had ever met.

Don’t think about it.

They flew uninterrupted to the actual frontline. The noise of battle grew from being there to being thunderous and overbearing. The screams transitioned from memory to happening, and the smells seeped in even through the mask: of blood and terror.

He landed on a roof, behind a larger roof that belonged to a building which was right next door and a flight taller. The leader that was standing there seemed to recognize his cape.

“GILROY! IS IT TIME? IS IT US?” He was excited.

Read more at Inkitt: By Death Defined!

A month may come when I fail to update, but it is not this month. #Writing #ByDeathDefined

Before the Beast, Pt 1 I peered out into the open with my hands gripping the balcony’s railing. I was overseeing the destruction that was fast approaching in a mighty unstoppable stampede. Of one. I stood taller than twenty men on top of the last wall standing. The beast, alas, stood higher. We never had a chance. The catapults and cannons might as well be firing pebbles. It looked increasingly…