Toying with how to introduce Halvar. He’s kinda my boy right now.
Halvar made his way confidently down the stone hallway, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. He nodded as he rounded the corner and locked eyes with the guard drawn to his approach. Without a word Halvar stood on the other side of the door.
The guard faced forward with a light smile on his lips. “What are you doing Halvar?”
Halvar turned to look at the man. “Agur needs at least two men on his door.”
“Tarin is inside speaking with the king.”
Halvar frowned. “A third set of hands couldn’t hurt.”
The door opened and a rather slight sorcerer started at the sight of the blue naim. “Oh, Halvar. I’ll tell Agur you’re here to see him.” He turned and vanished back into the room.
“Oh, no, no, wait…” Halvar started, taking a step toward the door, but Tarin was gone.
The first guard’s smile widened as Halvar stood softly scratching his forehead with his thumb nail. “Where are you supposed to be right now?”
Halvar leaned against the wall. “A planning meeting for the outer city.”
He turned to look at Halvar who was dressed in full guard armor. “Hmm. Not really dressed for it are you?”
“Shut up.” Halvar said as he tried to think of a reason to be dressed in armor that didn’t involve him pushing against Agur’s wishes again.
“Agur will see you.” Tarin said with a relaxed smile as he came through the door.
“Thanks.” Halvar said softly as he pushed off the wall, allowing the guard to take his place. He took a deep breath and walked into the king’s study sheepishly. He still couldn’t think of a good enough excuse. Not that it would matter, he wasn’t a child anymore. Agur was well past scolding him. He would simply be redirected back to the meeting.
“Halvar,” Agur said as the naim drew close. He glanced up from is book briefly. “I wonder you keep trying to guard me and not at the city gate where you won’t be discovered so quickly.”
“The guards at the gate are a bit more forceful. Your personal guard knows you’ll find me.” Halvar said as he took a seat.
“I need you in the planning meeting. We’ll have refugees pouring into the city soon, we need to be ready.” Agur’s voice was calm.
Halvar nodded.
“You’d make an excellent guard, Halvar, but I need you to help Dariel.” He paused. “Now.”
Halvar looked over to the wizard whose eyes remained on his book, slowly moving across the page. He wondered how many times the wizard had read that particular book. Had he forgotten it in some age past? He sighed and got to his feet. “Apologies, my king.”
Agur said nothing as the naim made his way out of the room. He wasn’t exactly frustrated though he wished to have lasted a little longer than he did. Sometimes Eban would leave him for an hour before turning him in.
“See you later, Halvar.” Eban said as he passed.
Halvar stopped and looked back at the guards. “You know its not a lack of trust in you guys, right?”
The corner of Tarin’s mouth turned up in a grin.
“We know.” Eban said with a nod.
Halvar nodded back and slowly made his way toward the city planning meeting on the other side of the castle.
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“Jedrek taught you to make this?” He asked, confused.
“Well, no.” She dropped her eyes.
Zuriel laughed. “Chiron?”
Alethia nodded. “He didn’t mean to teach me, it’s just I ask questions and he likes to talk.”
“How did you get past the guards?” Zuriel asked as he started heating the chains to bend the links. He’d have to worry about removing the cuffs later.
“I couldn’t get any of the charm spells to work, or the spoken ones so I made a powder.”
“A powder that does what?” He asked as he pulled at the first link. It gave allowing him to rid his left hand of the chain.
“Oh, a sleeping powder.”
He looked at her a moment and shook his head in wonder, smiling. “I am so proud of you.” He took up the chain from his right hand and began heating it.
Alethia let out a laugh. “I thought you would be so upset.”
Zuriel gave a grunt as he bent the weakened link on the right chain. “Even if I was opposed to you learning wizard magic, I would have made an exception for you to come and save my useless rear-end.” The link gave and the chain dropped to the ground. He turned his attention to the lock.
“I still promise to marry whoever you think is best.”
“Honey, you are getting me out of imprisonment with some of the cleverest use of magic I have ever seen. I think you can handle picking your husband.” With the lock heated, he pulled on the bars. The bar in the lock bent and slowly gave way allowing the door to open.
Reading over what I have of an outline for the 3rd draft of The Shadow of Vale and I think I fixed the beginning of the story. Looking back at it after a year of rest, it works much better than the other beginnings I gave it.
Happy WBW! ^^ If you could bring one thing/person/place/etc. from your wip into the real world, which one would it be and why?
I thought this was an easy answer, but the more I think about it, it's actually really hard to pick.
My first thought is Zuriel just cause he has been a favorite character of mine for years, but I'd also hate to take him from Aila.
I think maybe Nydia, the subrealm Aila made with Kyra. It'd be a neat hide away with really interesting plants and buildings. A place made with the goal of it being as beautiful and peaceful as possible to bring Kyra back from the darkest despair. By it's nature it would just be so restorative.
I had this story in my head last night. Probably not something I'd ever actually try to publish, just an idea i wanted to play with.
“Halvar.”
Halvar dropped out of his stance and turned to the sound of Zia’s voice with a frown. It took a moment for him to spot her across the garden. She had someone with her. One of her nymph suitors. He took several slow steps toward her, trying to figure out what she was doing out here.
“Halvar, I didn’t know you’d be out here.” She emphasized her words, looking at him pleadingly.
Halvar tilted his head slightly. Of course, she knew he’d be out here, he was always out here in the afternoons. “Yeah,” He said slowly, starting to get that she was coming to him as her guard. “I picked your stomping grounds today.”
“Hi! I’m Seneh.” The nymph introduced himself enthusiastically, offering his hand to Halvar, rather awkwardly given that he practically clung to Zia with his right arm.
“Halvar.” He replied curtly, glancing back at Zia. “Oh, so since I’ve run into you,” Halvar started again, suppressing a smile as an idea struck him for how to get her out of her predicament. “I got an ointment from Rafael for you.”
Zia turned her head, looking sideways at him. “Oh? An ointment? For what?”
“For the uh,” he leaned toward her, careful to whisper loud enough for Seneh to hear. “The growth. It’ll help with the oozing.”
Zia looked at him with amused shock, biting her lips as he stood up. This was not the tact she had expected him to take. She felt Seneh’s grip on her loosen immediately.
“I was going to bring it by later, but it is probably better if I give it to you now, you know, given the severity.” Halvar had a glint in his eye that made Zia feel both like hugging him and punching him in the face.
“If you are busy, I could come back. I believe your brother will arrange a dinner for us soon.” Seneh said, looking uncomfortable.
“Oh, yeah. That would probably be best. Thank you.” Zia said, feeling relief as Seneh released her arm and bowed politely before exiting the garden in a manner that invoked the word fleeing.
“Halvar!” Zia scolded as Seneh left their line of sight.
Halvar smiled, then began chuckling. Soon he was bent over in laughter, joined shortly by Zia.
“Well, I hope you didn’t like him ‘cause I don’t think he is going to make that dinner.” Halvar said, his face still flush with laughter.
“I can’t believe you did that. You could have said anything. You could have even gone guard dog and chased him off with threats, but you picked an oozing growth?”
Halvar shrugged, still smiling. “It’s all I could think of. You put me on the spot.”
“A mistake I shall not be repeating.” Zia looked around a moment. “Practicing?”
“Yeah, not much of a guard if my sword arm gets rusty.”
“Zuriel wanted me to learn sword. He gave up after three lessons.” Zia’s mouth turned up in a slight smile. She found she missed her brother. The early days when they had spent more time together were fond memories.
“Did you not want to learn or were you not picking up on it?” Halvar looked at her, resting his sword on his shoulder.
“Uh, I wasn’t particularly interested in learning at the time.”
“You want to now?”
“I’m not dressed for it.” Zia balked.
“I didn’t literally mean now. I mean do you want to learn sometime?”
Zia considered for a moment before nodding. “Yeah. What are you doing tomorrow?”
Halvar smiled and waved his arm back to his practice set up.
“You know you really aren’t as busy as you pretend to be.” Zia said, crossing her arms.
“Who am I pretending to be busy to?” Halvar asked, amused by the accusation.
“You said you don’t date because you are too busy.” Zia raised her brow accusingly at him.
“You got me. I don’t date because I just don’t want to.” He turned back to his training and ran through a few motions.
“Mind if I stay? I can probably pick some of it up just watching you.”
He looked over his shoulder at her and shrugged. “That’s fine.”
“So, you’ve never met anyone you wanted to date?”
Halvar finished his sequence before answering. “I’ve met one.”
“Really? How did that go?”
“It didn’t.” He moved through a new series of moves.
“Why not?”
“Because it couldn’t.”
“But why?”
“It just couldn’t, okay? Drop it.” He stopped and turned to her.
She raised her hands toward him. “Alright, alright. Sorry.” He turned back to his routine. Zia watched him as he moved smoothly through the motions. “I don’t have a sword.”
Halvar turned to her. “Really? He wanted you to train but didn’t give you a sword?”
“I used one of Aila’s.”
Halvar rolled his eyes. “He should have at least gotten you a dummy sword. Aila’s swords are heavy.”
Zia’s eyes opened wide. “It wasn’t Aila was it?”
“What?” Halvar asked, genuinely confused.
“’Cause that would definitely be a thing that couldn’t happen.”
“Ugh!” Halvar let out a grunt of annoyance. “It’s not Aila.”
“Oh, present tense. Interesting.”
“Zia, that’s enough.” His voice rang out firmly, matched with the steel in his blue eyes. She had been warned.
“Sorry. Again.”
“If I wanted you to know about it, I would tell you. I don’t.” He sheathed his sword. “I’ll walk you back to your room. Make sure no more straggling suitors catch you unaware.”
Zia fell in beside him as he started back toward the palace. She could still feel the tension radiating from Halvar. She hadn’t realized he was so sensitive about his love life. She guessed when you’ve only loved once, and that apparently with someone he couldn’t be with, it made sense.
“I didn’t mean to snap at you.” He finally said as they came to the gate. “I just really don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m sorry for pushing it. I just haven’t known you to be sensitive like that.” Zia replied as they stopped in the entry hall.
“Well, you found my sore spot. I trust you’ll leave it be now.”
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Playing around with a possible starting point with Aila and Kyra in Nydia.
I just have no idea of it’s going to work to set up the world. I think I can set up a good deal of it, take some of the weight off of putting it all in the scenes with Aaron learning about Vale.
It feels really chaotic to wander around the plot lines of all the characters across two books, but I think it is making everything work together a lot better. I am trying to run through the plots to see if they conflict with anything that happens later, or that is cannon as happening before.
Given the number of characters in the first book, there is huge potential to pepper in the needed world building without overwhelming the reader because I can just drop them in a family of a particular area and be like, “this is how this place and people work.” Then go to another and repeat, weaving it together as the characters meet and move along toward the next critical moment.
I really want my sister in law to finish reading the second draft so I can look at her feed back. She already gave me a few good thoughts about the beginning of The Shadow of Vale which I have played with.
