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GILBERT

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What a beautiful evening!

Gilbert ambled forward with a smile on his face. A gentle numbness filling his body, his limbs warm and heavy. He felt comfortable, safe.

He strolled along the sidewalk, taking in the crisp air, marveling at the last fleeting moments of twilight. Blue fading to black, stars just beginning to shine in the heavens above. The gentle evening breeze scattered fallen leaves up from the curb and sent them dancing out in the street. The ground tittered softly as tiny shadows leapt across the pavement.

He filled his lungs with the autumn air as the trees along the sidewalk gently swayed. Colored points of light rustling among the branches. He couldn’t help but smile. Since starting this new drug regimen, he’d never felt so alive. Never understood just how perfect life could be.

And it was reinforced every time he had foolishly missed a session or tried to reduce his dosage. To reject the blessings of the Thirsting God. Sin was punished, though it was always done out of love to correct and to enlighten. Always to teach. The soul-shattering sadness to remind you of the joy you were rejecting. The shaking and sweats showing the physical toll that stress and unhappiness have on the body. Things that were always there before that you just weren’t seeing when misery was normal. Even the vomiting showed how a body rejects even the goodness of food when not kept in righteousness by careful discipline and ordered lifestyle.

And he was on a mission!



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DAMIEN

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Breath came furiously from his nostrils, seething through his bristled mustache. Lips curled in rage, bearing clenched teeth. Boots pounding on the pavement, never breaking stride as he stormed forwards in a blaze of violent, half-drunken fury.

Before him was the wall and metal gate, the mansion rising up behind, scarcely visible in the darkness. Terrible purpose drove him faster, his mind focused on just one thing.

A pair of guards stood at the gate. They watched him idly as he approached, but snapped alert as light from the only streetlamp on the block revealed his murderous demeanor. One of them spoke nervously to the other, fingering his stun baton. The other took a step backwards. Damien came on them at once, his overbearing posture forcing both of them to yield slightly at his arrival.

“Good evening,” one of them said, edging closer. Damien nearly trampled him to the ground, but at the last moment stopped, inches in front of the guard, staring him down with all the fury at his command.

“Let... me... in...” he hissed, spitting into the guard’s face.

“Umm... I’m sorry, but the gate is closed for the evening,” the guard replied bravely.

Damien seized him by the collar of his uniform and pulled up, throwing the guard off balance, forcing him right up into Damien’s face. Acid breath of alcohol pouring into him from clenched teeth.

“I don’t think you understand me,” Damien seethed, almost whispering. “You will open your gate. Now. And you will let me in. I am here to see Rochefield.”

“Ah, please. I’m sorry,” the guard stuttered. “But... But I can’t let you in. You’ll have to come back in the, uhh, in the morning.”

Damien growled, cinching the guard up into the air, both hands curled into fists around the fabric of his shirt. The guard tried to squirm as Damien stared into him with bloodshot eyes.

“Hey!” the other guard barked. “We’ll have none of that now. We know who you are, and we know that you want a meeting with Lord Rochefield. We will tell him you were here, and you can talk to him tomorrow.”

Damien turned, seeing the second guard standing with his weapon out.



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Week 10. Landed at 172,748 for a total of 14,236 this week. Sorry for the slow pace.

But thanks for sticking with it anyways. As a reward, the chapters over the next week of writing are going to be all the big ones. From here until about 200k words is the climax. As if things aren't getting crazy enough, they're going to get a lot crazier after the next chapter.

It's time for Jaines vs. Melchoir, round 2!

Crazier? Crazier than Gilbert being a bad guy? Crazier than Damien actually getting his hands dirty (great last chapter, by the way)?

Consider my interest thoroughly piqued! Bring it on!

Thanks!

So, there are two interesting things about the last Gilbert chapter.

The first is that at no time are Gilbert and Damien talking about the same thing at the same time. They're completely incommensurable. Gilbert refers to Melchoir in his typical way as "He just always wants to do things his way and he doesn't care who he hurts. He's so crude and reckless and disloyal to his friends". But because, like Melchoir, he has a natural assumption that people are trying to do the right thing he assumes that Damien (who he's never really met) is a decent person, not understanding that what he just said about Melchoir not only doesn't apply to the governor, but also 100% applies to Damien.

And that keeps through the entire dialogue. He goes off being his usual enabler, assuming that he is enabling goodness when he is, in fact, enabling Damien. The end result is complete surprise by Gilbert when the former marshal goes off on a murder spree.

The second interesting thing is something that was interesting by design.

You say that Gilbert has suddenly become a bad guy, but he hasn't actually changed. He's the exact same character in this regard.

The only difference is the subject of who he's enabling, and the circumstances that it leads to. He doesn't come across as a bad guy when his enabling comes in the form of not being tough enough to stand up against Jaines, and freeing from prison a character that is arguably the protagonist at the time. It makes him look like a good guy. Then you take that exact same behavior pattern after Melchoir starts looking better, and Jaines starts looking crazy, and what happens is that he enables an assassination attempt of the good guy, and then enables Damien to be an inhuman monster. As such, he looks like the bad guy.

But the interesting part is that he's been the same this entire time. Not only that but he has been, in fact, one of the bad guys this entire time. Just think about his actions up until now. Disregard his intentions and his attempts to garner reader sympathy.

That's just one of the things that makes him such a good baddie - you don't realise that he is one until the end.

I almost reached that conclusion about Gilbert myself, but I think what stopped me was that he seemed, at the start, to be one of the few principled and decent characters (along with Melchoir and later Lucas). But as you say, he's the same, it's just what his actions achieve that's different.

Or maybe years of playing nothing but Imperial armies has brainwashed me into thinking Chaos automatically equals evil

Well, yeah, that was also supposed to be rather a hint.

The thing to remember, though, is that Gilbert and a Slaanesh cult go together like salt and pepper. When presented with the option, there wasn't a moment's hesitation joining up with like-minded people. All he was missing before was a specific god to follow. Well, and the pink windbreaker. And the drugs. But otherwise...

The thing with Lucas that wasn't intentional at the beginning, but I wound up rolling into my plan, is that your opinion of him changes once again because of a proverbial optical illusion again.

If you ignore the prologue, Lucas shows up as a narrator in the first 28 chapters only twice. As such, you never really hear anything from his point of view. You just know he's a rebel, and everybody else agrees that the rebels are bad, and therefore Lucas must be bad, because he's a rebel.

But, once again, Lucas didn't change. Even in the prologue he regretted being a rebel, if you go back and see. There are only two things that actually change. The first is that he becomes a regular character, so you actually get to understand him better, rather than him just being a label.

The second is that this transition happens on the one hand after the rebel army flees, and so "ceases" to be a threat, and on the other hand, he breaks away from the rest of the rebel army before it launches an attack on Cupercourt, so you're already seeing him as separate from that group by the time the fighting happens again.

Put it together, and Lucas starts lumped in with the bad guys, and then continues to be lumped in with them when they become neutral guys, and then breaks away, at neutral. And then the rebels go off to look like bad guys again while you're learning that Lucas in specific isn't neutral, but is good.

It's all just sort of a trick of perspective.

Anyways, speaking of Lucas...

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LUCAS

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Lucas walked forward, led by the faint but unmistakable scent of burning.

Ahead of him, the dark street pulsed with a flickering orange glow. The fire must be just around the corner. A thin stream of people was walking towards the light – whatever was going on, it was drawing a crowd.

In a city with as many collapsing and vacant buildings, fires weren’t that uncommon, he’d found, but it piqued his curiosity nonetheless. Not like he had anything better to do, anyway.

His days had been a murky blur, trapped in a weird kind of stasis. He couldn’t return to Mr. Rochefield, and he couldn’t return to the governor, and between them was any real hope he had of getting out of Bellemonde. The battle for Cupercourt was over, but the trains still weren’t running for passengers yet. Without a legal way to leave, he had to rely illegal ways, which invariably led back to Jaines, and he didn’t think she’d be too excited to see him either.

So it was, day after day, eating at shelters and sleeping out on the street. Filling his time with gossip, mostly, but it was real, hard news that he yearned for.

So far, news of casualties from the siege had been scant, coming only from people already living in Cupercourt who were able to identify the bodies of their friends and families. That and the daily trickle of corpses dug out from under ruined buildings. The one thing he knew for absolute certainty was that no one had found Claire yet. Yesterday’s news had a page-four article about the rebuilding of the city and how no one had found the town’s superior.

He didn’t know how to take the news.



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JAINES

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They stood in the middle of the street, over two hundred of them. Men and women all in Defense Service khaki. Red handkerchiefs on their heads, tied around their necks, and serving as armbands. They were nervous, eager, fully armed, anxiously staring up at her as she stood on the fire hydrant, leaning out against the disused no-parking sign.

And she watched them back, stretching out before her, filling the intersection beneath the clear, azure sky. This was just a small part of it, of course. There were hundreds more of her soldiers elsewhere, along with thousands of civilian supporters. Her little army of true believers, standing tall, ready to fight.

This was it – the very hour that destiny had chosen for her. All of her thought and energy consumed by this one moment since the very beginning. Her forces were deployed, her minions on the move, the time was at hand.

The battle for Bellemonde raged around her.



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MELCHOIR

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Voices exploded as he entered the room.

Melchoir strode through the wall of shouting, up to his seat at the head of the table. What members of the Council could be found were gathered together for their own protection in the chamber. Magistrates in their places, yelling all at once, trying to be heard over each other. Fear and anger flung through the air, with demands to know what was happening.

The governor reached for his chair and pulled it back. His mind raced, taking in everything at once: the Defense Service guarding the room, the few people who had taken refuge in the gallery, even the lights overhead, which had been reconfigured into a different pattern now that more of the bulbs had burned out. He took a deep breath and sat down, giving a brief nod to his chancellor and then to his aide. The fourth chair sat conspicuously empty where Marshal Vogel had once sat.

“Thank you,” Melchoir said loudly, over the roiling noise. He raised his hand to call for silence. “Thank you, everyone, please just calm down. Thank you. Please. I’ve been talking... I’ve been talking to my commanders, yes, thank you. I’ve just been on the vox-comm. We are starting to get a picture of what’s going on. Things are going crazy out there, as you know. Do not worry, though, we have nearly two thousand servicemen protecting this building and stationed outside. So long as you stay here, I can guarantee your safety. We’re still searching for the other magistrates that aren’t here, but they will arrive as soon as we can get them in.”

“Is it true about Rochefield?” one of the magistrates shouted.



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MELCHOIR

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Melchoir growled as he ran, power fist crackling. The cluster of insurgents turned at the sound, surprise breaking into terror as he charged them from behind.

“Oh fething gak! Run!”

The four of them scattered, fleeing wildly in a panic, a blur of tan throwing itself out of his way. Melchoir rushed through them, not stopping. He didn’t have time to engage, and especially not to chase them. He dashed around a stack of boxes, rushing towards the railing. He broke out into the open.

The central rail depot sprawled out beneath him. The wide patch of concrete nearly empty, save a few makeshift barricades and long tendrils of smoke from fuel bombs rising through the air towards the broken skylights. Melchoir looked along the railing at the L-shaped second floor jutting out above the platforms. Gunfire screamed back and forth from the insurgents up above and his soldiers below.

In the center of it all, the mag-train sat at the end of the rail. The lead car taking heavy fire, its front face ripped apart. The Folerans formed a defensive position around both sides, joining at the ruined nose of the train, supply boxes hastily thrown around to give them cover as gunfire rained down on them from above. At most, a hundred were visible, Melchoir noted anxiously. The rest were pinned down in the train itself, a few returning fire from the smashed-out windows near the front.

There was a growing casualty pile as well. The situation more than desperate.



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JAINES

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“Well, we could do that,” one of the magistrates replied. “I can add a subsection there to approve that kind of oversight.”

“Yes,” another agreed. “I’ll get my team to draft a proposal immediately.”

“Good, then let’s move on to—”

The door slammed open with a thunderous crack, startling everyone as Jaines burst into the room. Everyone watched the young woman rushing forward, smile beaming across her face. The magistrate of justice hurried to his feet.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Council,” he boomed. “I give you Jaines Harcourt!”

A round of applause broke out in the chamber, several of the magistrates standing, clapping loudly. A great swelling outpour of acclaim rose through the chamber. Faces everywhere alight, surprised but gladdened by her presence.

“We won!” Jaines shouted, jumping into the air, flush, even giddy. The Council applauded even louder, a few of them cheering her on. She rushed over to the head of the U-shaped table, reaching down and giving General Carell a hug. The old man jumped at the sudden embrace, and then smiled somewhat, despite himself.

She released him and turned to the Council, giving a wave to the small assembly, tears of joy flirting at the edge of her eyelashes.



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GILBERT

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“May the peace and joy of the Thirsting God be with you all, brothers and sisters,” the cantor spoke cheerfully. “May his goodness fill all of our hearts tonight. Let us be touched by His blessing.”

“Let it be,” Gilbert intoned with the rest of the congregation.

“I’d like to thank our praise band, Rocktimonious. Thank you very much. Such a wonderful new experience you always bring. I can certainly say for sure that I’ve never heard an electric base solo that went on for longer than fifteen minutes before, nor have I heard every note on a keyboard struck simultaneously that many times in a row. What a blessing. Music is truly praiseworthy in the sight of God. Let us make a joyful noise for Him. Let it be as loud as we flawed and humble humans can make it.”

“Let it be,” the congregation replied.

“But now, it is time to continue with what we have all been brought together for. It is time for our most sacred ceremony. It is time to bring into this world a whole new experience. A new life. It is time for the spirits of God to come to us tonight. To wrap us up in His holy presence. Let us pray.”

Gilbert closed his eyes. The room spun slightly around him. He felt himself floating above the ground, the cushion below lost to the distant void outside the self.



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And the good stuff goes on. Last few chapters have all been great.

Thanks!

And it's week 11. This week I ended at 193,587 for a weekly total of 20,839. I did it, I finally broke 20k in a week again, yay!

And that's not the only thing to celebrate either. This week I blew past 400 pages (up to 450, actually), and I also broke the 1 MILLION character mark. And I'm now 3/4 of the way through the story.

And, obviously, things have rather happened, storywise.

It was kind of neat writing the deposition of Melchoir and ascension of Jaines. In the former, it was sort of just a laundary list of things, sorted chronologically, that had led them up to this point, from the failure to understand Jaines and her revolutionaries, to losing the cities, up to Damien killing Rochefield. All the little pieces coming together, showing the inevitability of their betrayal.

And then, when it came time to write up the Jaines chapter, I decided that I wanted it to mirror the Melchoir one. To have the way she ascends to play out literally the reverse of how Melchoir came down.

If you take the Melchoir chapter, and reverse the order of events, and then place the Jaines chapter over it, you get:

1.) Melchoir flees / Jaines arrives

2.) Magistrate of Justice moves against him / MoJ welcomes her

3.) MoJ goes on a rant / MoJ makes a speech

4.) Defense Service commander decides to make peace with Jaines / Jaines moves against DS commander.

5.) New leader of DS voted in / Jaines voted in as leader of DS

6.) Council asserts that it is the Council / Jaines asserts that it isn't.

7.) Everybody wants more stability, and a single vision going forward / Jaines promises peace, and to impose her vision on everybody.

8.) The cities are revolting / The cities have declared for Jaines

9.) Leader of the DS steps forward / Old leader of the DS taken away.

10.) Folerans are fighting against Jaines / Jaines has Folerans to fight.

Pretty neat, huh? I think it also helps cement the role of the Council in this, going from the beginning to the end. Seeing how they all really did it to themselves.

And, of course, it's not the only chiasmus I have in this set either. I've added...

-26/+21: In a scene of water, Lucas runs away from Claire to save himself / In a scene of fire, Lucas runs towards Rochefield to save Claire.

-18/+26: A hedonistic party gets out of control, bringing the authorities / Gilbert brings the governor to a hedonistic party that's gotten out of control.

-21/+23: Melchoir presides over a Council meeting that gets out of control. Troops rush into the chamber / Melchoir presides over a Council meeting that gets out of control. Troops rush throughout the chamber.

So, a little bit broken up, this time. And there are, of course, other themes that you've seen before. For example, Melchoir has now joined Jaines, Claire, Lucas, and Gilbert in having a scene where he flees for his life.

It's especially interesting to compare the Melchoir (61) to the Jaines (25) flight scenes. Jaines, in a fit of cowardice drives over a bunch of people with her car to save herself, while Melchoir, in an act of bravery, rushes to link up with his soldiers without killing anybody. Both of them then turn around and try to go on the offensive. Jaines with words talking to the press and Melchoir physically with his army.

Compared to Gilbert (5) and Claire (53) who just straight run away, or Lucas' (11) combination of all of them, Melchoir's skill at arms and personal bravery, Jaines' ballistic energy and requisition of a vehicle, and Claire's making use of rebel skill, and Gilbert's falling out of something. Combined with his characteristic guile.

Anyways, we've reached the climax, and now it's time to race to the end. The chapters are in place, and it should take exactly two weeks if I write a chapter a day (which I won't, because I'm going on a camping trip this weekend). Hopefully I'll still be able to sneak it in under the three month line.

Anyways, this next week will set up everything for the grand finale. Stick with it, we're almost done!

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CLAIRE

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Claire settled a little deeper into her dirt patch, trying to get comfortable. She lay, propped up in the ravine under a pile of heavy blankets. They itched like crazy, and she knew for a fact that they were full of bugs. Fleas – or worse, possibly lice.

She stared down at a piece of hard rations, which only were made edible when you soaked them, which changed the bland fixtures from rocklike to sopping in an instant. She was hot during the day and bone-chillingly cold at night, and as the leaves fell from the trees, her face was getting sunburned.

But, well, it could be worse.

And it so recently had been. It was bad that she was trapped in a city where artillery rained destruction every day and every night, and it was bad that she had starved in a hole for nearly a month, only to watch those few she had left scattered or shot, and it was bad enough that she was captured by rebels and forced to flee the city through a river in a raging storm. That was all pretty bad.

But then her health had completely collapsed – the strain and hunger joined by the cold and wet had finally done her in. The rebels had tried to keep going after the first day, but it didn’t take long to notice something was wrong. She had fainted and fallen down into the ravine, and after that, was unwakable for a day and a half, they’d told her. And when she finally came to, her consciousness had come with a raging fever.

She could scarcely remember anything, except that she suffered from delusions and nightmares powerful enough to wake her in the night. She remembered shaking under the blankets, trembling until her legs were scraped by the twigs and stones on the ground. They had tried their best to keep her covered and to keep her fed, but there was little more they could do out in the wilderness.

More than once she overheard someone whispering that she wouldn’t make it.



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MELCHOIR

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“They just keep retreating and regrouping.”

“That used to be the problem,” Marshal Phaedon corrected. “Used to be. Now that they’ve set up a base of operations, they’re getting too much of a numerical advantage over time. They can start crawling forward whenever they want. ”

“But they’re still not giving us the ability to just hit them and be done with it,” the first complained.

“That’s because they’re not idiots,” Phaedon replied, rolling his eyes. These new marshals...

“They either have serious morale problems, or they’re clever enough to try and draw us out of our trenches with feigned weakness,” Melchoir replied patiently. “Either way, if we commit part of our forces, even if we crush them completely, we would be leaving some of us exposed and unsupportable. They would defeat us in detail.”

“Then why don’t we just attack them?” the first marshal replied peevishly. “Throw everything at them.”

“And then the next train stops ten miles up the line and we’re in the same position we’re in right now, except further from supplies and without our defensive positions.”

“So? If we kill enough of them, they’ll stop coming.”

“Are you sure about that?” Zanmar asked weakly. He was propped up into a sitting position, legs encased in hard bandages, painkillers keeping him somewhat cogent.

“It’s a matter of time and resources,” Melchoir replied in a more conciliatory tone. “Jaines can always make more servicemen. I can’t make more Folerans. Every skirmish loses men we can’t spare. It may seem small, but it’s still a battle of attrition, which is something we will eventually lose.”

“Well, that’s what I’m saying, we need to attack or retreat, and you’re not seriously suggesting that we withdraw, are you?”

Melchoir leaned back and rubbed his eyes, taking in a deep breath. These new marshals. Right.



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LUCAS

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The dark street was lit by an eerie orange glow. Shadows moved, shifting together and splitting apart, pooling unsteadily. The light from below flickered on the jagged teeth of ruined walls reaching towards the night sky, crumbled lines barely visible in the darkness.

Lucas had already come across this scene a dozen times so far. The road ahead had been struck by an artillery shell, leaving a gaping crater in the pavement, several feet deep. A roaring fire filled the bottom, flames burning continuously, hour after hour, all day and all night.

The pits were a necessity in this hellish landscape that had once been a city. Perverse beacons of civilized humanity in a blasted graveyard of people and buildings. The siege had shut down the city’s power grid and destroyed the gas lines. Without fire, there was no way to cook food, or boil water, and no light once it got dark.

But it was more than that. For many, everything they owned had been destroyed, and the crater fires were filled with great heaps of broken furniture, snapped structural beams, and roof tiles. Anything that could be burned was stripped out and thrown away into the flames.



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Week 12. So yeah, not a lot written. I'm up to 200,488 for just 6,901 for the week. I knew this would be short, what with a bit of a vacation, but I also didn't expect the part about writer's block or a trip to the emergency room.

I did lose a couple of days to prewriting, but you'll see why. This last chapter and the next two are all in a set, and I had to make sure everything was planned out for all of them before I could begin.

Trust me, though, it's worth it.

Anyways, 12 chapters from here left to go. It means I'll miss my three-month deadline by a little bit, but I should still be good to end before July is done with.

Exciting conclusions to follow!

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DAMIEN

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Damien snarled as he stomped up the stairs. The scent of blood and rotting meat filling his nostrils. Hands clenched into fists as he reached the landing then turned, storming up to the next level. Filth crusting everywhere, his unwashed body adding to the stench. His eyes searched wildly as he burst into the loft.

All around him lay the wounded and the dying. Those who had dared to stand in his way. Row after row of civilian enablers. He would have shown them mercy, once, if they had just given him what he needed. But no, they withheld his woman from him, so he withheld nothing of his vengeance on them. Not one person in this filthy shithole could claim innocence. Not to him.

He should have known better, he saw that now. He should have known that Rochefield would betray him. He should have known that Melchoir would stab him in the back. He should have seen everything working against him. Everyone fighting to keep him from his basic needs.

Oh how they conspired with one another! To think that he ever trusted any of them! That was their plan all along, keeping him civil, keeping him polite. Keeping him restrained. Making him think that he needed them and that they were all getting along. All smiles to his face, and scheming behind his back. Their venom seeping deeper every day. How dare they!

And it wasn’t just his peers that sought his ruin; it was everyone, even these bedridden vermin around him. Claire was hiding, he knew it, and she would find people who would help her. Someone in this city knew where she was, or knew who knew, and he would find them. He would discover the truth at any cost. Who in this church was hiding secrets from him?



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LUCAS

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The madman stared at Lucas, dripping with blood as terrified men and women rushed towards the stairs, desperate to flee. Lucas locked eyes with the wild glare, his breath coming fast from the chase. He swallowed hard.

Damien was serious.

This wasn’t a game. Not another run-and-hide, ambush-and-flee boyhood adventure in the forest. Not another time to play rebel. He didn’t get to be clever and just barely make it out – this wasn’t a matter of survival against nameless odds.

It was him and Damien Vogel.

He had promised Claire’s father he would protect his daughter and stop the blood-soaked man standing before him, but it was so much more than that now. It wasn’t just his own love story, it was everybody else around him too. Half a hundred defenseless, wounded innocents whose very existence depended on him and on what he chose to do. He was responsible not only for himself, but for everybody else.

He didn’t need to stop Damien from getting to Claire. He needed to stop Damien.

His face began to flush as the reality of his decision came to him. His chest clenched tight, eyes darting back and forth, trying to find something he could use. This was a real fight, one they both might not survive. He needed to find some sort of advantage to match his enemy’s raw, primal fury.

His instincts screamed at him as he willed himself to continue forward.



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When i read about the fire pits i wondered if it was just colour or if it had a role to play latter in the story. Nicely done!!

Thanks! Yeah, the end of Vogel was very carefully planned out.

This story is a tragedy, which means that bad things happen, but they do it to themselves. In this case, the fire pits represent everything that Damien did to Cupercourt literally - to replace sewage and gas lines, etc. broken by his month-long siege. It also represents what he did metaphotically as well. He made Cupercourt a living hell, and now that he's arrived there, it's all smoke and fire and ruins - a hell on earth.

And the whole story is sort of a sad testament to Damien's over-reach. He didn't have to destroy Cupercourt, but he did to make sure he could get Claire. He didn't have to attack Lucas the moment he saw him, but easily could have waited and just stabbed him in the back, but no, he had to be impulsive and seek revenge face to face. He gets stuck with the morphine because he attacks, and he gets thrown out the window because he recklessly charges. Lucas does his part, too, but his fate could have been easily avoided were it not for everything he had done up to that point.

Plus, of course, a sickeningly thick level of cliche. Damien is wearing black, and is described several times as being like a frenzied animal. They're fighting in a church, a holy place where Damien loses once he is expelled from it, only to burn in a filth-encrusted pit, proverbial heaven into slightly less proverbial hell. In proper bad-guy form, his fall is also literally a fall. Etc. Etc. There are several others you'll find if you go over the imagery carefully.

I had a few other ideas that were a little less cliche (like him falling onto power lines and getting electrocuted), but they just didn't seem as good. Plus, once I had the idea of him falling onto a fire hydrant, I really couldn't go back. That had to be included, and there wasn't a lot else that would work (I had an idea for there being a rock crusher he falls into, but why would one be below the level of a fire hydrant, etc.)

And, of course, the whole scene has delicious irony to it as well. Damien has always worked by preying on vulnerability, and thus is his end. He flies through the air, flailing helplessly. He lands on his spine, easily paralyzing him, so when he falls into the fire he can't escape, and nothing will prevent the vulnerability of human flesh to burn. He was destroyed, helplessly, like he tried to do to others.

Anyways, speaking of characters doing it to themselves...

Nicely done! I see what you mean about it bordering in cliché, but at the same time, Vogel was such a 'traditional' villain in some sense that he deserved an end like that, and anything else would be unfitting. I somewhat saw it coming that he would die utterly powerless, but it was still well-executed and written.

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JAINES

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“All rise for Jaines Harcourt, Governor of Geomides, Defender of the Revolution.”

Chairs scraped on the linoleum floor as those assembled quickly got to their feet. The Service personnel lining the walls snapped to attention, autoguns presented, bayonets glinting in the dim overhead light.

Jaines entered the room, accompanied by a few carefully chosen yes-men. Her uniform was neatly pressed and actually fit her properly, now that she was wearing one issued specifically to her. She’d added a pair of respectably large epaulets befitting her station – she was in charge after all, she got to decide how a governor should look.

The assembly stood in uneasy silence as she approached her seat. She took a moment to consider their faces, sorting friends and enemies in her mind. While under surveillance, no one had made any obvious blunders she could exploit, but she knew there were those among them who she couldn’t trust. That were actively conspiring against her, even now.

She gave a curt, polite smile anyways, briefly considering a quick wave, but thinking better of it. Best not to let them get too comfortable. Instead, she took her seat quickly, team of flunkies falling in behind her.

The rest of the chamber began to sit down, some looking warily at each other, more staring at Jaines. Waiting on what she would do next.

“Thank you,” she stated dryly as the last of them sat down.


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MELCHOIR

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The world was shrouded in a dense, freezing mist. Vapor drifting slowly through the beams of floodlights scattered on the forest floor. The light reached out, casting long, slatted shadows through the ghostly columns in the night. The only sound, the quiet hum of power generators over whispered conversation.

Melchoir sat near the edge of the camp, bathed in shadow, sitting at the base of a massive spruce tree. Crouched down among the tangled roots in total darkness, save for a faint green light from the small display in his hands.

He fiddled with the alt-pass-aux button, sweeping it left and right slowly, trying to clear up the static-filled image. It was nearly hopeless. His ancient surveyor required constant calibration for it to work at all, and the trees and folding ridgelines all around played havoc with its sensors. The device showed only dancing flecks of green, with the faintest shifting image of topography. At least, that’s what he thought it was showing.

He would get a better understanding of this place if he walked out into the cloud-choked forest with nothing but a flashlight.

But the scanner wasn’t the only thing struggling with the terrain. The broken ground and days of heavy fog were scattering his army far and wide. Whole companies were getting lost, and hours were wasted tracking them down. Communication was hopeless when no one knew exactly where they were. More than once, a part of his army had bumped into another as it wheeled around a ridgeline or wandered off to find a river crossing. They were just one itchy trigger finger away from a friendly-fire catastrophe. This was hardly the seamless disappearance into the wilderness he’d been planning for.

Melchoir sighed, letting his scanner fall slack in his hands, monitor sweeping through the static. This was hopeless.



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Week 13 and 3 months, both on the same day. This week was 213,547 for a weekly of 13,059, and a monthly of 58960, which is only a little north of 5k more than I did last month, except there's much less excusable reason. I've just been slow.

I know a part of it has just been me wanting to more carefully plan these sort of ending chapters. The last Jaines one was sort of the moral of the story, in a way, for example, so it's more important I get it right. I am, though, just missing deadlines. I was hoping to be done before this point, and then done by this point, and now I'm getting concerned I won't be done by the end of the month even, which would be pretty bad. I kind of just want this to be over.

But at least it's close. Once I'm done with the chapter I'm working on now, I'll have only seven left. With some serious work for a change, I'll hopefully be giving my last weekly update and then throwing down the epilogue.

Anyways, the last part here is the finale, really. There's the chapter I'm working on now, and then everyone gets a final chapter, followed by sort of a two-part epilogue: a repeat of chapter 1 as chapter 77, and then an epilogue that's a repeat of the prologue.

So get ready readers, the stage is set, this thing is coming to an end!

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CLAIRE

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“Okay, I’ve got one,” Claire announced. “I’m thinking of a song, an old one. It’s about two lovers on a journey, and it was the theme for the Celestial five years ago.”

“What? How am I supposed to know that?”

“When I tell you, you’re going to hate yourself,” she warned coyly. “It’s obvious once you remember, trust me.”

She smiled as they climbed out of the creek bed and turned up into a ravine. She made her way forward clad in two rebel greatcoats, each more absurdly huge than the last – the outer one nearly scraping the ground. At least it kept her warm.

“Five years,” one of the rebels thought aloud, searching through his memory. “Which one was that, again?”

“Jolienne?” another replied.

“No, that one was... umm...”

“Nobody knows this?” a gruff voice asked.

Claire smiled again as she made her way up the slope. She just might have them this time, she thought as she looked up at the forest around her.

It was completely bare now, the underbrush now puffs of gray twigs huddling on the ground. The trees casting their long, unadorned branches towards the sky, sighing unhappily in the breeze. A few scraps of brown still clung to the oaks, but it was otherwise only the stands of fir and spruce that still had any claim to foliage.

She huddled into her coats as her feet plowed through the dirt. At least the weather was clear, but the fog was being pushed away by a harsh breeze from the north.



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LUCAS

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Lucas brought the rope around through the loop, then pulled hard, grunting as the knot cinched tight. He pressed down with his knee on the bundle of sticks and branches and pulled again, the cable snapping taut. He looked down at his creation so far: a beam of crooked bits of timber now at least as long as he was tall. He picked up another stick and carefully jammed it into the open end.

He sat in the dirt at the edge of a small gulley, a creek running through the bottom, rippling as it flowed over hidden stones beneath. It was too wide to jump over without a running start, and there was just enough underbrush to prevent him from building up speed. It was also too deep to walk across without the frigid water pouring into his shoes.

Cold, wet feet would be yet another challenge, which was the last thing he needed right now.

After his fight with Damien, he had tried to find people who had been with Claire before she disappeared, but to no avail. It didn’t help that he had to be circumspect about it. People were talking about the bloodshed at the hospital, and if anyone recognized him, someone might call the police.

Which meant he was forced back into his old habits, yet again. Stealing food, and pilfering equipment. Hiding during the day and trying to set up for his mission at night, preparing for another foolish adventure. His attempt to sneak between two fighting armies, and hopefully to find Claire in the process. In a way, nothing had changed, still, though he did somewhat appreciate the irony that this time it was Claire out in the forest with rebels, not the other way around.



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JAINES

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She pushed down lightly, blade piercing into skin.

She flinched slightly, the pain and endorphins sparking through her system. Her breath came slowly, deliberately. She pressed a little bit harder, flesh parting against the steel. A droplet of blood blossomed suddenly from her arm, the dark red pooling, massing up before breaking free, gliding away.

She gasped, eyes fixed, burning into the sight of blood as she carefully moved the blade, tugging gently as it sliced through. More rose from the thin red line, streaming after the first droplet. Tiny crimson splotches appeared on the ground between her feet, blood pattering softly on the floor.

Her mind was on fire, a raging inferno of energy. Her breath trembled, hands shaking slightly as she worked the edge down. The pain, but so much more. She was filled with life and a sudden drive, barely controlled, surging through her instincts, quieting her thoughts amid the roaring immediacy of the present. Filled at once with a singular sense of purpose.

She dragged the edge down more, and then more, her body filling with the shock of steel piercing flesh. She was almost there, just a little bit further.

Blood poured down her arm in a steady trickle, drop after drop running to her elbow, falling free, leaping towards the ground.

The intensity filled her until she began to shake, almost unable to take it anymore. Everything burning away, nothing able to withstand it. And then for a brief moment she felt it. That one floating moment. Perfect tranquility. Just her, the pure, uncluttered psyche, and her pain. Nothing else.



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