#wrieblr

I wrote part one a while ago, but this seemed like a perfect post to add to the fantasci community! Also, the characters now have names. General is now Vorrin and Empress is now Callista.

Part One

Vorrin awoke with a start. He didn't know at what point he drifted into real sleep, but the early morning sun now bathed the room in dull, dove-gray light. But not his room. He abruptly rolled over onto his other side. The space beside him was now empty.

He flopped onto his back with a heavy sigh. That was probably for the best. Falling asleep next to her had been hard enough, he hadn't exactly wanted to wake up next to her too. He already felt entirely too vulnerable.

"Good morning."

Vorrin yelped, shooting upright and whipping his head around the room until he landed on Empress Callista's long, slender figure lounging in one of the plush sitting chairs. She smirked and crooked one dark brow, but other than that made no comment on Vorrin's embarrassing display.

"Breakfast?"

"You're still here," Vorrin said.

"Indeed. I did say we'd be spending more time together, didn't I?" She lifted the delicate teacup from its saucer and took a long, silent sip. "You slept in a little longer than expected, but no matter. We still have about an hour."

"Before?"

"You're coming into the city with me. It's about time people saw us together publicly. Besides, the change of scenery may be good for you."

Vorrin hated how she could sound conniving in one breath and caring in the next. What was he? Her pet? Something to parade around and spoil? Did she really think that any of these luxuries or favors could change his feelings about what she'd done? Though he did not deny, that a part of him longed to leave these palace walls. It had been months since he'd been any further than the gardens.

He swung his legs over the mattress and gingerly rose to his feet. "Shouldn't I get back to my rooms? To get ready?"

"I've already requested your manservants to attend to you here. They'll bring your change of clothes and fix your hair.

"My...?" Vorrin glanced across the room into the great gold-framed looking glass overhanging the vanity and found his long, chocolate hair had decided to tangle itself into a bird’s nest on one side. The other side lay frazzled over his shoulder, like he'd taken to rubbing it between two whetstones. Probably all that tossing and turning last night.

Vorrin rapidly dragged his fingers through the mess. It didn't seem fair that Empress Callista's hair still remained tight and tidy in it's whippish tail.

"You still have a few minutes before they arrive. You should eat. Reports tell me you don't eat much, but this is your favorite breakfast."

Vorrin crept toward the spread. A kettle sat on a wooden hot plate, the scent of sweet mint escaping out it's long silver spout. Beside it sat a plate full of steaming biscuits, halved, buttered and slathered in strawberry jam.

His stomach growled traitorously.

Empress Callista waved to the open seat across from her.

Vorrin begrudgingly accepted. The bitterness only grew as the cushions sank beneath him, setting him a couple inches shorter than the empress. But he tried not to let the annoyance show on his face as he stacked three biscuits on top of each other and took a large bite. Letting her know he was upset would only give her more power.

His stomach squirmed a little as he swallowed. This really was his favorite breakfast. He wondered how much she knew about him already. He'd known all the servants in the palace were her people, but he hadn't realized that they'd been her eyes as well. How much did they report? How much of what he said, of what he did, had been repeated back to her?

"Even if you weren't from an enemy nation, I'd still have you watched," Empress Calista said. Vorrin shuddered a little at the way she seemed to read his mind. "You're my consort. It's my responsibility to ensure you are properly attended to. That means keeping you safe and meeting your creature comforts. Better if I understand what makes you happy."

"My freedom would make me happy."

Callista tapped her lips thoughtfully with the edge of her spoon before using it to scoop a couple cubes of sugar into her half-full cup. "I suppose I can arrange an armed escort every now and then if you're restless."

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

"And you know I can't let you go. So why don't we both stop pretending?"

A light rap on the door snapped the growing tension in two.

"Enter," the empress called in that gracious voice of royalty. Not too loud, not too aggressive, but commanding all the same.

The door creaked, and Pins poked his head through the door, a small leather bag slung over one shoulder. At the sight of the empress he immediately bent in half, folding his hands in front of him and gluing his eyes to the floor.

"We've come to prepare Royal Consort Vorrin for the day, your majesty."

"Right here, Pins," Vorrin said.

Pins's head rose a centimeter toward Vorrin's voice, then he raised up all at once with a large grin. "Good morning, Royal Consort. Your hair is exciting this morning. I've brought a brush and several accessories for you to choose from. Would you like to get started, or would you prefer to dress first?"

As if on cue, Switch slid into the room, breathing heavy and face flushed, a long red garb draped across his arms. He bowed hastily to Vorrin and then deeper to the Empress, speaking to the floor as he began profusely apologizing. "Forgive me, your majesty, Royal Consort Vorrin. The outfit selected for today had a tear. The royal tailor claims it will not be ready until this evening. I took the great liberty of selecting another outfit of a similiar style. Does it please your majesty?"

Empress Callista's sharp eyes scanned over the draping fabric in a couple seconds. "It will do."

Switch looked ready to melt with relief. He turned sharply on his heel toward Vorrin, eyes still wide, frantic, and slightly watery as if he had been, or barely held back from, crying.

"Then shall I, my lord?"

Vorrin felt all eyes on him, but most importantly he felt the gaze of Empress Callista. If her eyes seemed sharp overseeing his outfit, they were even more daggerish digging into his side profile. He gripped the neck of his nightclothes tightly, a humiliating squire's blush rising to his cheeks as he couldn't seem to make his hands take the action to undress.

After what felt like an eternal silence, she pushed smoothly to her feet. "I'll leave you to it. Remember, darling, one hour."

And with a swish of her braid and long cape, she was gone.

As soon as the door shut, Switch immediately collapsed.

"I thought I was going to be fired," he bawled, a few tears pricking the corners of his eyes.

"Empress Callista doesn't fire people for finding tears in clothes," Pins said.

Switch's head snapped up. "Don't act smart, you've only been here as long as I have. You didn't know what was going to happen either!"

For the first time, it occurred to Vorrin that the two servants may be as fresh to the royal scene as he was.

"How long have you been working in the palace?"

Switch hesitated a moment, always the suspicious one. Maybe he thought Vorrin wanted to berate him for the clothing mishap.

"A little under 6 months," he answered finally. "I applied for a position as soon as word came that the empress would be staying in Totholan. I traveled here with the rest of the serving caravan."

Vorrin had assumed after the kingdom's conquering that Empress Callista had sent for her regular palace staff. Those she most trusted. But it made sense that she would have left some to care for the homeland palace in her absence. Any person wishing to make it into the Empress's employ would seize the sudden surge of job availabilities. And all it took was a willingness to relocate.

"And you, Pins?"

"6 months and 10 days," he piped peevishly. "Switch was only mostly right when he said we've been here the same amount of time. I was hired on before we found out of the empress's success. So I've been in the palace just a teensy bit longer. Plus, my mum was a maid, so I was already used to palace walls."

"But the empress wasn't there when you started work," Switch said. "So it doesn't make you any more the expert."

"Why do you always need to be better at everything?" Pins said with a pout. "Why can't you just admit I have something on you?"

"Because you don't."

Before Pins could respond, Switch marched away, laying the clothes across the bed and stepping behind Vorrin to begin helping untie his white sleep clothes.

"I wouldn't have let her fire you," Vorrin said, sliding out of the sleeves and letting the soft linen fall into Switch's hands. "If that's of any comfort."

Switch paused, folding the nightclothes into a neat square before finally responding. "It is."

He retrieved the new outfit, blessedly allowing Vorrin to put the first part on himself. It was a little different from most of clothing he was given. Trousers for one. Impractical ones, but trousers nonetheless. Next was a long ruffled tunic that laced all the way up to his throat. Switch helped him with the long draping overcoat, a similar style to the wrapping robes, though this one had no waist tie and buttoned to the middle of his chest. For his bare feet was a pair of short soft boots, little thicker than slippers.

As soon as he was dressed, Pins got started brushing through his hair until it was silky.

"Which ones?" he asked, pulling a leather wrap from his bag and unfolding a display of hair ornaments. Ruby hairpins and golden chains, a net-like crown, encrusted with jewels, a gold circlet with red diamond teardrops dangling at the temples, twin clips designed to appear as sprigs of current berries, each ruby a berry on a silver branch. Vorrin chose the ruby pins. They still may have been worth more than he'd ever made in his entire career, but at least they were less gaudy than these others.

"Aw," Pins said. "I wanted to do the net and chains." Then suddenly remembering they were addressing a superior quickly added, "But the pins are lovely too!"

"You can add the chains," Vorrin sighed.

Pins perked up, plucking up the metal strings and beginning to braid them into strands of Vorrin's hair. He gathered half the hair into a bun, using the ruby pins to secure it and the gold-twined braids together.

A couple minutes later, Empress Callista pushed open the doors without a knock. She surveyed Vorrin swiftly before giving the manservants an approving nod that sent them grinning and offering her arm out to Vorrin.

"Shall we, my love?"

Vorrin gritted his teeth. Such falseness. Such lies. Such utter humiliating mockery.

He linked arms with her anyway.

If he knew one thing it was this: he couldn't win against Empress Callista with brute force. He would need another tactic. A passive one. Something that looked deceivingly like cooperation. Until the time was right to strike.

Part 3

Master Taglist: (I forgot to add it again!)

Hi there and thanks for the STS ask, sorry it's a day late. Anyway, let's see:

I didn't really have much in the way of inspiration for this new WIP other than that I wanted to write again after another long creative hiatus and had been searching for a story to tell. There was a fairly nasty storm outside one night while I was watching a movie with my wife (Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, for the record) and some things just started clicking in my head. Next thing I knew I was actually writing again and was having fun this time around just telling a simple fantasy quest story's start, not making some grandiose plot that fizzles out early on.

As for the story's end, that is way off. However, I have a general sense of direction and should I be successful in writing this project, I have a faint sense of where a first book would end which is more than I usually have going for me. So now I just need to stay focused and actually write and do all the extraneous support writing i.e. notes and apocrypha and what not (as the late great Sir Terry Pratchett once wrote, 9/10 of the universe is the paperwork for the other 1/10.)

5 FACTS ABOUT MY CURRENT WIP: DISABILITY DETECTIVES: THE HISTORY THIEF Last week I talked about my other WIP (found here) and this week I'm going to give you some facts about my second one, which is also the second in a series and the facts for the first book can be found here. I do love getting to come up with these facts and share them with you all, simply because they help me hone in on what I'm trying to do and how things are coming about! Disability Detectives is a young adult crime/mystery series that deals with four disabled teens who attend a prestigious school that mostly caters to those with disabilities. Veronica, the main character, and her three best friends, find themselves thrown into situations that they might not have sought out for themselves otherwise. The History Thief picks up a few months after the events of book one, The French Murder, and so there will be some facts I can't share because of spoilers. With that in mind, let's get into it! FACT #1: VERONICA IS NOT OKAY AND SHE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT After what happened to her last term, Veronica had kinda hoped that returning to Rosewood would make things easier. She's never had a close relationship with her parents, and spending the winter break with them didn't change that. With the school trying to paper up the cracks exposed from Veronica's last investigation, she's in a familiar place but new faces aren't making that transition easier. She has a lot to work through, and one of the only ways to get proper help would be to ask her parents, but that isn't going to happen any time soon. FACT #2: THE LAST THING ANY OF THEM EXPECTED WAS BEING ASKED TO SOLVE ANOTHER CRIME With everything that happened last term, Veronica and her friends kinda assumed that would be the end of issues for them. They'd be able to settle back in, take it slow, catch up on schoolwork and then not really have to think about things beyond the upcoming court case which is stressful in itself. Except them a school project puts them with a girl they don't know, and she's had something go missing. Veronica and the others can't help but offer to see if they can track down the thief, which is a whole can of worms they didn't see coming. FACT #3: SCHOOLWORK IS BECOMING IMPOSSIBLE TO MANAGE One of the things Veronica's parents disagree with their daughter on is simply that she's not top set, A* material. She never has been, and while she works as hard as she's able, it's just not going to happen. So when faced with a mountain of schoolwork that she didn't get a chance to dive into over the break, and deadlines approaching rapidly, teachers starting to lose patience with the ones she's already missed, Veronica is starting to feel like it's sink or swim time, and she can't swim. FACT #4: SECRETS ARE HARD TO KEEP While Veronica is happy to help where she can, there are some secrets that she can't keep. She's trying to do her best, to stay on top of schoolwork, to go to her classes and be somewhat present, but with all the people asking for her help, there's one student who's louder than the others. She feels like she owes it to them to bring an end to the fear that has plagued them for a while, but at the same time, maybe it would be better for the truth to come out. FACT #5: VERONICA NEEDS MORE HELP THAN HER FRIENDS CAN GIVE Plagued with flashbacks, and anxiety off the charts, she really does need someone to step in and give her a helping hand, but because of the situation with her parents, she can't do anything about it. She may not mind the fact that her parents are so hands off, but in this point, she'd rather they take that decision away from her and get her the help she needs, even if that means letting her friends advocate for her, something she would never normally do. So there we go, there are five facts about my other WIP. I do love Veronica and her friends, love getting to see them grow and change and love getting to watch as they go from place to place. I have at least two more books in this series and I'm very much enjoying it. I needed to return to my roots of crime/mystery for a while, and it's not something I regret at all! Any questions? Lemme know in the comments!

Let me be clear writers deserve to be paid fairly for their work.

But so many of them seem to write off zlib users as all a bunch of thieves who just want books for free. And yeah if you're using zlib just to read the latest ya horny fantasy novel PLEASE use your local library that's what they're there for!

Even if the author is somebody you don't want to support it does more good to check out Twilight o Aco-whatever the fuck from your local library than to pirate it! You're still getting it for free but at least you're using the library and right now libraries NEED support.

But back on topic I feel like a number r of authors don't seem to want to address this and similar situations with any form of nuance. Because honestly when people were freaking out over zlib being shut down, the biggest concern I saw was "how am I going to afford textbooks?" Because textbooks are largely overpriced and from what I've learned that money rarely goes back to the authors. Most people I know weren't using zlib to read the latest fall releases they were using it to save a few hundred dollars on textbooks.

And honestly if you're an author who laughs at the fact people are going to have a harder time accessing higher education, on behalf of all broke college students, fuck you.

I feel like maybe instead of authors shitting on people for being upset or looking for alternative sites it would be more productive to promote library use, I know authors don't make as much from library sales as they do with retail book sales but honestly libraries are so so important, they do much more than loan out books, and if potential readers can't buy your book, the library is a far better option than piracy.

Authors deserve to be paid, broke people deserve to be able to read. People should have access to higher education and libraries deserve support. None of these are mutually exclusive.

Something that our forefathers had no time to unravel from fighting lions. It should have left when paid no heed to. Yet it serenely lingered in the dark corner unknown to light.

Longing for its time to come.

Alas it came sooner.

Playlist masterpost

My spotify profile. Check it out for more playlist you might like, and maybe leave a follow.

These playlists are updated frequently. Stay tunned for more! Always open to suggestions and feedback

֎ Royalcore orchestal: Waltz / ballroom-oriented castlecore music. A bit more hand-picked than the violin & cello playlist: selected pieces or otherwise fantasy-like soundtracks to study like a true cold-blooded royal.

֎ Dark, somber music for studying: Macabre, haunting masquerade-ish music to study to. There’s a bit of everything here; piano & violin works, orchestal, opera, choral... but it all shares that somehow gothic, hellish appeal. Chaotic evil energy overload! If not for reading, this playlist is great for writting & inspiration.

֎ RPG / Open world exploration suites: videogame music is great to study to because it’s designed to keep you focused. This playlist is a compilation of my favorite chill, ambient fantasy exploration music from videogames. Includes osts from games like Skyrim, The Witcher and NieR Automata.

֎ Epic soundtracks for studying / writting: great fantasy, war, mythological music for a very hyped reading! I included both cinema and gaming soundtracks for this one. It’s a great source for inspiration if you’re a writer.

Not necessarily dark academia / light academia, but might still help you to study below.

֎ Space ambient music: synth, sci-fi ambient tracks that are great to enhance focus while reading.  It is also very useful for meditation, and sometimes when you can’t sleep it can be a great sleeping pill playlist, as it is, indeed, very slow-paced.  Alt version: Blade Runner Blues (inspired on Vangelis’ work for Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

֎ Lo-Fi hip / hop: useful for literally anything, but a great company for overnight study sessions. Chill Lo-Fi beats for focus or relaxation. Alternative version: Samurai Bebop

[Image description: a banner with a photo of space, with bright stars and a purple nebula in the background. In the center of the banner, “The Foolish, Foolish Stars” is written in big, white letters, and “A day and before the Grand Coronation” is written in smaller letters under it. /end ID]

TW/CW: Nothing, but please tell me if there should be!

A/N: They're there! I have a picture of what the planet looks like if you're interested:

Word count: 718 words

For context: [WIP intro], [chapter 1], [chapter 2], [chapter 3] [chapter 4] [chapter 5] [chapter 6]

Taglist (contact me to be added/removed): @viskafrer @47crayons @apocalypsewriters @drippingmoon @chazzawrites @wizardoface @drbibliophile @dragon-with-a-pen

A day before the Grand Coronation