Requiem of the Forest (Kristy's NaNo 2014)

[Kristykimmy]

So, we're back, with the second part of my trilogy, following on last year's NaNo, Sparrows.

Synopsis:

SPOILER: Click to show

A little over a year has passed since the Old Guard retook the planet of Avarest from the Empire of the Overlord. Emboldened by this display of power from the lost planets, the remaining planets of the Empire rise in rebellion against their dark lord. The power struggles of the planets turn from lord against lord to the common people fighting for their freedom. The Old Guard takes notice, and chooses to rise to answer the call.

In Empryl, the balance of power begins to shift as well. Lady Yukari, savior of Avarest, is appointed to the Circle of Fourteen, making it whole once again. Parallels between the young noblewoman and the lost monarch begin to be drawn, and those who desire a second-coming of the Empress begin to sow the seeds of such a day.

Yuka finds herself in a battle not merely for an Empire, but for her very self. As strange memories begin to surface in her own mind and ancient puppet masters try to manipulate her for their own aims, she must decide for herself what role she will play in the coming days.

There is most of the important stuff to know covered in last year's NaNo thread, so check that out if you're interested.

Basic overview of the story is simple. It is a high fantasy dystopian(ish) fiction (I'm not very good at genre classing, so fantasy is yes, the others might be stretching). The setting of the story is spread across several planets, this time Avarest, Empryl (which is technically only a floating city above a dead nameless world) Midor, and potentially Numar.

The cast is largely the same as the last book, lacking a few characters who met untimely ends. (The Voice of Murder would have been so proud if she had been around for that.)

Pointless trivia, the titles are following on a legend/bed time story told within the story that will begin to have greater relevance to the story starting in this book, and which you can also find in the previous thread. Most of the Circle are named after constellations because I had three names and realized they were all the names (or part of) of constellations and ran with it because I felt like it. (and honestly, who doesn't love the names Corvus and Aquila? Bazooka blasts for anyone who doesn't.) This story actually contains the first fragment of the story I ever wrote, back when it was a half formed idea in my head inspired by another story that popped into my head, which is the aforementioned story in last year's thread.


Character Bios:

SPOILER: Click to show

Lady Yukari 'Yuka'
Age: 23
Occupation: Ambassador and Representative of the planet of Avarest in the House of Empryl.

Yukari was thrown into the spotlight when she rescued an infant child who would turn out to be one of the legendary Circle of Fourteen. Her efforts to liberate her planet from the Empire and unite it with the Old Guard made her something of a legend. As daughter and sole surviving heir of the Lord Protector of Avarest, she joined the council of the Old Guard as Avarest's representative.

Lord Hiram
Age: 57
Occupation: Lord Protector of Avarest.

Hiram's efforts to keep Empire control of his planet to a minimum was its saving grace. His daughter's efforts to liberate it saved his life, though it cost him half his family.

Ashram:
Age: 47

Ashram previously served as head of Hiram's bodyguard and his most trusted companion during Avarest's time in the Empire. His subsequent assistance in liberating the planet earned him a place in Yukari's diplomatic party as her right-hand man.

The Circle:

Ursa:
Leader of the Circle of Fourteen. Very formidable in appearance, but a kind and intelligent man who most enjoys reminiscing about the golden age over drinks or telling stories to the children of Empryl. His descendants live in the city as well.

Viram:
He is one of the Circle of Fourteen. Viram has been one of the Circle of Fourteen since he was a teenager in the early days of the Empire. He is close friends with Ursa, who took him under his wing when the boy came to Empryl to escape the poverty of the slums he had been born in.

Cassiopeia:
One of the Circle of Fourteen. Cassiopeia's trust was shattered by Umbra's betrayal and the death of the Empress Memora. She has control issues when it comes to her rage, which often clouds her judgment and causes her to take risks and disobey orders. Despite this, and her caustic nature and apparent lack of concern for others, Cassiopeia actually has a strong set of morals and objects to plans that endanger the lives of others.

Caelum:
Caelum appears to be the most open hearted of the Circle of Fourteen. She alone does not believe that Umbra had a hand in the death of the Empress. Her true nature is much darker. She lacks concern for individual lives, believing that all should be ready to do whatever they can to bring about the greater good. She is scheming, willing to manipulate and lie to everyone around her to advance those aims.

Aquila:
The eldest of the Circle of Fourteen. He asked Memora to give him his youth without the appearance of it, and consequently looks to be in his sixties, at odds with all the others who appear to be in their late twenties. His long years and wisdom keep those not within the Circle of Fourteen grounded.

Monoceros:
Another of the Circle of Fourteen, Monoceros boasts the widest knowledge of weapons and training techniques. He willingly leads the training of the armies of the Old Guard. He is Aquila's son.

Octans:
One of the Circle of Fourteen. Octans trades on having a very unremarkable face, changing his looks to suit the occasion, and working as a spy for the Old Guard wherever he can.

Pictor:
One of the Circle of Fourteen. Pictor has earned the nickname of Pictor the Swift. He is usually the carrier when they need something urgent delivered. His ability to break into places, slip through security, and get to his destination in record time is legendary. He tends to wield daggers and throwing knives, and is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat.

Carina:
One of the Circle of Fourteen. The only two-handed sword fighter of the company. She is wife to Volans, they met and married after being chosen to become a member of the circle. She has descendants from a previous marriage. They have had no children of their own.

Volans:
One of the Circle of Fourteen. Volans is an archer and husband to Carina. They met and married after they were chosen by Memora to become a member of the circle. They have had no children of their own.

Corvus:
One of the Circle of Fourteen. Corvus is a quiet soul. He's always there for others to sound off of and confide in. Corvus knows the secrets of everyone in his acquaintance. He is a capable warrior and the most attentive of any of the fourteen.

Orion:
One of the Circle of Fourteen. Orion and his brother Aries are identical twins. He wears his hair short. He is always paired with his brother on missions. They wield axes.

Aries:
One of the Circle of Fourteen. Identical twins with Orion. He wears his hair long. He is always paired with his brother on missions. They wield axes.


Antagonists:

Overlord:
A powerful entity who rules over the Empire, spreading his dark and cruel reign to all corners. He rewards the most depraved he can find with power. He never leaves his dark world, sending Umbra and his dark army to speak for him and do his work. His true age and identity are a mystery to all.

Umbra:
Umbra is the chief servant of the Overlord, leading his armies and acting in the Overlord's stead in all his business. Umbra was one of the Circle of Fourteen, legendary heroes of the Empress Memora, until he betrayed them and sided with the Overlord. Some whisper he killed Memora himself to gain his place at the Overlord's right hand. This is a serious point of contention among the remaining members of the Circle.

[Kristykimmy]

One of those bits and pieces I have lying around, it'll probably be the prologue/first chapter of the story:

SPOILER: Click to show

Ashlin jumped from the battlement, an action ever wordless and full of contempt. Yukari raced to look over, always praying she could catch her, always knowing she was much too late. The body of her mother slammed into the ground and bounced once, landing a few feet further along. It came to rest at the feet of a young man who happened to be standing there. Her blood began to pool around his boots as he stared down at the body for a what felt like an age, but was no longer than a minute. His gaze slowly shifted upwards, coming to rest on Yuka. An arrow was lodged in the base of his neck.

“Magnum, Mother...” Yuka whimpered.

Magnum kept looking at her, his gaze glassy but showing that his life was still alight within but fading fast. She held his eyes until she could bear the stare-down no longer and shut her eyes tight. She tried to block the scene below her out of her mind; she tried to forget all the death she had seen.

She heard her own voice speaking, a distant echo across the plains.

“Fly away, Sparrow. If you can.”

When she opened her eyes, she was standing in a sunlit room. The walls to the east and west were lined with windows that stretched floor to ceiling. The roof above was made of glass. She glided along, her heart light as a feather. At the end of the room stood Umbra. His face was glowing, lit by a smile. He bowed as she approached and she nodded in response before passing him by and gliding out the doors.

She entered a garden in full summer bloom. The garden was filled with birds. They sat almost expectantly, as if waiting for her. She reached down and scooped up the tiniest bird, an unusually diminutive sparrow.

“There now, isn't it time for you all to fly?” she asked the bird.

In response, all the birds suddenly took to the wing. The sound of their wings flapping vigorously was almost deafening, and their feathers rained down from the sky. This only made her heart leap with delight. She spun in the circles, her face turned up to the sky, laughing simply out of joy.

As she spun, she caught sight of Umbra. He was smiling as he watched her, the smile of someone who is happy merely because someone they love is. This also made her heart glad.

She blinked and the scene changed again. She was standing on the outskirts of Empryl. She was beyond the gates, in sight of the very edge of the floating city. No one was there; the artists and the grooms excising horses were strangely absent. The sky was still bright and beautifully blue, but the air was chill and the sunlight pale.

Suddenly, a great rush of noise washed over her. From the city, all the birds were rising up and flying away, right over her head and out into the distance. The sheer number of them was staggering; there had to be millions. They screeched as they flew, as if being pursued by something that they knew would take their lives.

“No, no, no! Don't go!” she cried up at the birds.

They kept flying, desperate to get away. Finally the sea of birds ended, the company departing the city.

“Come back! Come back!” she shrieked after them.

She kept screaming, but they wouldn't turn around. She dropped to her knees and sobbed for them to come back, her voice too hoarse to scream any longer. She could only watch as the birds simply disappeared into the world below. She dropped to the ground, burying her face in her arms, her tears lost in the long grass.

Behind her, in the city, bells began to toll. It was a death knell. They would only ring a death knell in Empryl for one person. Yuka raised her face from the ground and looked out at empty sky. She was gone, and her birds had flown away with her soul.

The birds would never return, and neither would the dead.

[Kristykimmy]

I'd like to think that it's not a bad sign that my mind only realized that NaNo starts on Saturday yesterday, and that the moment of massive panic at 'Where did that month go?' isn't either.

I suppose I should start putting together playlists for it.

_{Yes, we've officially hit the 'somebody save me; I can't do this' stage.}

[Kristykimmy]

Updated with updated bios for Requiem. I should have done that ages ago. ^^;;

[Kristykimmy]

So, I have work tomorrow, so I need to get to bed now to get a good night's sleep. You can't watch small children half asleep from staying up until 2 AM. XD

But, today's writing was good. 10,590k and we're barely into the setup. Next comes ceremonies, wars, weird dreams, death, destruction, and lots of scheming and threats, and soon no one will be sure who they can trust.
It started out so well too. Sorry guys. XD

So, yeah, bed, and maybe 2 or 3k tomorrow if I'm lucky.

[Kristykimmy]

Day 2: 3710 words written.

I'm going to consider that pretty good for a day where nine to ten hours were spent either working or sitting around in a headache induced fog. Still slogging through the beginning with all the set up to when things happen. Things are currently happening, but they are not as much fun as the things that are to come.

I really like the word 'things' apparently.

Anyway, I'm going to call it a night and get an early start again tomorrow and hope I move a little faster once I'm fresher.

[Kristykimmy]

Excerpt time.

A Promise Kept, from Chapter 8:

SPOILER: Click to show

The city lay in ruins. Buildings collapsed a century earlier had continued to fall over the long years as the passage of time wore away what little strength they had struggled to keep during the initial onslaught. The only thing that grew was a straggling black mossy growth that seemed hardy enough to eek out a meager existence on the otherwise dead planet.

She closed her eyes, trying to focus on the memories that flitted dimly in the far recesses of her mind, almost dead, but hanging on with the last of their strength. They were like the city, ruins lost to time and slowly being erased by its cruel passage.

Finally, she found what she wanted. One crystal clear memory of long ago days. She focused on it, focused on making it real. She closed her eyes, but she could still see what was happening around her.

Around her, time was reversing. The black moss crawled backwards, crawling away from the buildings and down out of the city. The dust reformed into chunks of wall, which rejoined its brethren and leapt up from the ground, remaking the walls they had long ago fallen from. The rotted furniture, the broken glass, the lost possessions of those who had once lived there relived their sad lives in reverse, becoming whole and new again.

The grass began to spring up again, fresh and lush as it had once been. The paving stones of the road filled out again, becoming proud and straight. The dry fountains filled with water, the symphony of running water filling the city with a sound it hadn't heard since it had died.

Most amazing was the proud palace that once loomed over the city. Its once tall towers reformed, climbing upwards into the sky and once again casting their long shadows into the city. The crumbling portal into the palace grounds had their broken iron wrought gates lifted from the ground and replace themselves into their now unbroken hinges. The long shattered windows of stained glass fell back into place, their stories told once again. The throne unburied itself from the dirt and placed itself proudly upright on the platform of the great hall.

Every detail of the splendid place returned to the glory it had once known.

All around her, the city returned to the life it had once known, save for the living. The city was now all that it had once been, but in the material only. The plant life lived again, the water flowed, the wind rustled amongst the drapes of open windows throughout the city. There was substance, but no life in it. That was the one thing she could not change, the one and most tragic difference that could not be made.

Still with eyes closed, she spun in place, taking in all that had changed. The years that had rolled back; the destruction undone. She smiled a beautiful and yet emotionless smile.

“A palace in the clouds? Was that the promise made?” she said aloud. “Then the promise shall be kept. A palace in the clouds there shall be.”

There was a great rumbling, like an earthquake was rocking the city. A crack appeared, separating the living ground from the dead. The living ground rose up, slowly, almost imperceptibly at first. Soon, it was a foot above its former mate, then a yard. Soon, the city parted from the world entirely, rising into the sky.

It continued its journey upwards into the expanse of blue and white, until it came to a stop amid the fluffy white clouds. It stayed there, miles above the planet, hanging in the sky like a star in the heavens.

She opened her eyes at last, looking at the city with her eyes for the first time.

“The promise has been kept.”

[Kristykimmy]

Didn't update last night because I was just so fogged from my cold that I was ready to go face down on my keyboard.

The Astral Bridge opened over a section of the shoreline of the ocean Umbriel on the Eastern Continent of the planet Midor. They were the first on the ground, touching their boots to the soil of the planet they had been forced to forsake a century and a half ago. Around them, the Astral Bridge opened again and again, the sonic booms tearing the air, announcing to any close enough to hear that the game had changed.

Well, THAT HAPPENED!

Yes, the war has finally begun. Now all will be funtimes and bunnies, as everything goes to heck around them.

I kinda have a hope that I might hit the 50k by the ninth this time. We'll see if that happens. I'm not moving as fast as I think I would need to to have that happen.

[Kristykimmy]

Unless I get a massive second wind in the coming days, hitting 50k by the ninth isn't happening. It was a silly goal anyway, I guess. November really does hate me. First the cold, and now on top of that a stomach bug that is nasty to say the least. Given that I'm halfway to 50k, I shouldn't complain. However, I'm only a fourth into the plot, which is what actually bugs me. Things are going well, they are moving, but the story is still a long way out.

Writing battles is hard, people. Especially when your protagonist is 23 and not coping well with what the last war cost her and spends so much of her time trying to decide what is the right thing for everyone while not getting deeper into trouble, and failing miserably at that, I might add! 8D

So, yeah, blegh. Someone throw motivation at me. Or give Muse caffeine shots. Because the unreasonable overachiever in me is weeping and I can't get her to shut up. My favorite thing to do as a teenager was to replay the same video games over and over to see how much faster and more efficiently I could complete them. NaNo is both wonderful and awful, because it has become the new 'how much better and faster can I do this?' in my life.

[Kristykimmy]

Well, 40k happened. 8D

Yeah, we got to the part where the super important stuff happens. I had actually written the scene a long time ago, like before I even wrote Sparrows, and I've rewritten it multiple times since, but wound up going a totally different direction with most of it to leave stuffs waaaaaaay more vague so things have a lot more drama and contention as things go along, with Yuka really struggling to maintain her own self against everyone else wanting her to be someone else. Despite all the things I cut and rewrote less wordily or not at all, it wound up being a thousand words longer than the original scene. Dunno how that happened. XD

Gonna call it a day and reward myself with Mystery Dungeon because of course Pika would totally find the game she told me I could borrow months ago but we discovered was missing during November. Because, yeah, NaNo is like a test of whether or not Kristy can actually stay devoted to it during a month that is usually rife with distractions.

[Kristykimmy]

So, I was totally distracted and tired and found myself staring off into space and incredibly distracted by thoughts of my planning process for Sparrows, back before I finally figured out what everyone's motivations were, and I honestly didn't sit and write for more than 15 minutes at a time without getting horribly derailed, and the plot barely advanced, and I was just all over the place today.

And I wrote 6k.

I would love to figure how this writing thing works, really.

That's all. I suppose I might hit 50k tomorrow, a day ahead of plans, but not counting on it. I'm going to see Big Hero 6 and I have some work in the evening. But, you never know.

Plotwise, my days of writing seriously are coming to a middle. (See what I did there?) No idea how far out wordcount wise from the end I am, but I'm thinking it'll be in the 70k or more range. Funtimes and bunnies.

Goodnight, Mr. Coconut. I really should get to bed before someone needs to slap me.

[Kristykimmy]

So, um, 50k just happened. Honestly, 50k is still pretty early into this story. Way earlier than I expected it to be. It's weird, and awesome, but there is still a lot of novel to go. Better not lose speed. I'm gonna set my next goal at another 20k before the 16th, which should bring me pretty close to wrapping it up, if it doesn't wrap it up.

Back to writing. =D

[Avery]

Nov 8, 2014 15:19:05 GMT -5 Kristykimmy said:

So, um, 50k just happened. Honestly, 50k is still pretty early into this story. Way earlier than I expected it to be. It's weird, and awesome, but there is still a lot of novel to go. Better not lose speed. I'm gonna set my next goal at another 20k before the 16th, which should bring me pretty close to wrapping it up, if it doesn't wrap it up.

Back to writing. =D

You madwoman, you. XD Congrats, my number one bae daughter! 8D

[Mostly Harmless (flufflepuff)]

....


.........

Wow.

*Is so wordy today*

XD

[Kristykimmy]

Nov 8, 2014 15:54:53 GMT -5 Mostly Harmless (flufflepuff) said:

....


.........

Wow.

*Is so wordy today*

XD

That was my reaction when I looked down and realized that I had pushed over 50k.

Followed by: 'Well, that happened.'