The Abyssal Fields – Prologue

by Revis Edgewater

This is the first part of the story I talked about in this post. I’m scheduling the rest of the story to publish throughout the rest of the month. Because it’s one of the first things I ever wrote, it’s not exactly the greatest. Hopefully, it doesn’t send you running for the hills.

P.S. The handwriting to text app apparently has trouble distinguishing between when I write a comma and when I write a period. I didn’t feel like changing every single one of them, so there will probably be a number of instances throughout this entire series of posts where the wrong punctuation is present.

The day was like every other day. Sword and shield clashed. Metal rang as armor was struck by an unblocked weapon. The men struck down would fall only to rise the next morning. Thus, the circle was complete.

Dwarf, elf, and human all fought here. This place is one of many designed for this purpose. Any man, regardless of race, religion, or color, who fought and died in honorable combat, had their souls transported here. It is an afterlife they all dreamed about, spending eternity doing what they loved. Every soul was happy. Each lived for the heat of battle and relished in it’s sweet embrace as they fought the other souls. There was never any bad blood here. If a soul fell in battle, they tipped their hat to the soul that bested them, hoping to meet them again. That is the way of the Abyssal Fields.

As the new day dawned, the air remained silent. All of the souls stood still. What was once a beautiful, never ending field was now littered with broken down buildings. Nobody knew what was happening. Each soul starred at their new surroundings , wondering . At first, only one dared to move. His name was Karacus. He was a dwarven priest while still alive. It all began when he went to investigate one of the buildings.

A Story of Few Words

by Revis Edgewater

It’s been awhile since I wrote one of my 99 words or less stories. I’d forgotten how hard it was to fit anything resembling a story into so few words. When I first started writing the posts I published yesterday and the day before, I fully intended for them to fit into my 99 Words or Less series. If you couldn’t tell, they both kinda got away from me. By the time I realized how many words I’d written, it was too late to it cut down to size. There was no way to get it to 99 words and have it make sense.

I’m going to try again at a later time. Maybe I’ll get back into into the 99 word groove. Maybe not. I suppose we’ll see.

The Speck

by Revis Edgewater

He looked down at the speck next to his foot. Whatever the speck was, it was trying to get his attention. His head moved down to get a closer look at it. There were many creatures in the world, but this was slightly different than any he had ever seen. It was humanoid, though smaller than any he’d encountered. Perhaps it was one of their children. He’d never eaten a human child before. Maybe they tasted differently than the adults did.

“I will vanquish you!”

He raised his eyebrow at the humanoid’s proclamation. Unless this tiny creature had some form of powerful magic, he wouldn’t feel anything it did. Perhaps it was a human child after all. The way it spoke made him think that the creature was merely playacting. Lowering his head all the way to the ground, he scrutinized the creature’s odd appearance. It had a strange knot of hair on the top of its head and carried a weirdly shaped walking stick. He’d heard about a humanoid creature such as this, but he’d never seen one. Then again, it could still be just a human child.

As he was analyzing the creature, it ran forward and hit him in his mouth with its walking stick. He couldn’t help but laugh at the pathetic attack, but when he did, he accidentally let forth a burst of flame breath. The tiny creature was burned to a crisp. He felt bad for killing something so small, but he was starting to get hungry. After swallowing the humanoid whole, he spread his wings and took to the sky, glad once more that he was born a dragon.

After the Calling

by Revis Edgewater

A fireball flew past his face close enough to singe his beard. He would’ve been angry at the spellcaster, but they’d done this many times before. They’d fought together for decades, which is something he never would have expected when he was younger. Fighting side by side with someone from the surface was something unheard of when you grew up in The Commons of Orzammar.

The fireball exploded in the middle of a group of Hurlocks. He turned his axe toward the next darkspawn coming at him. He didn’t thank the mage for the assistance. Surviving this fight wasn’t a priority for them. They’d had their Calling and they knew that death was approaching. The only thing they could do now was take as many darkspawn with them as they could.

After taking down a Genlock with a well placed cleave of his axe, the rest of the darkspawn parted. Coming through the gap was an ogre, a monstrous creature easily twice as tall as him. He looked back to his elven mage companion. They nodded to each other before turning to face this newest threat. They weren’t going to back down from it, even though it was one of the toughest creatures in all the world.

They were Grey Wardens. Dying fighting the darkspawn was what they did.

Shamless Plugs – The Update

by Revis Edgewater

Sorry for posting about this two days in a row, but I’ve been trying for a while to figure out how to get the installments of my Declevon Blackmoon short story collection down to $0.99 on Amazon. Well, last night, I finally did it. The changes were already in effect the last time I checked (an unintentional rhyme). Here are the links to the individual ebooks.

Blackmoon Warmage (Book 1)

Blackmoon Conquest (Book 2)

Blackmoon Spellsword (Book 3)

Blackmoon ShadowMage ( Book 4)

Blackmoon WarPriest (Book 5)

P.S. I promise that this will be the last time I’ll ask you to buy my books…this month, at least.

Shameless Plugs

by Revis Edgewater

As I do every time I participate in NanoPoblano, I am using one of my posts to remind everyone that I have published a number of works (either solo or with other amazing, talented writers) on Amazon that are available for sale. These tales fall either in the fantasy fiction or science fiction categories. My latest work, Blackmoon WarPriest (the final installment of my Declevon Blackmoon series of short stories) can be purchased here. If you haven’t read the first four in the series, I recommend purchasing those too. Then again, I recommend everyone to purchase everything I’ve published on Amazon, though I could possibly be a little biased.

If you’re more into sci-fi than fantasy, you will like The Erratic Sun, and the second book in the series (The Information Broker) more. Co-written with WordPress’ own Matticus, from The Matticus Kingdom, these space adventures are sure to be right up your alley.

If you enjoy anthologies, I’ve got you covered! I, along with three others, created a chaotic world where the gods and their followers seek to change the world in their favor. Check out The Seven Sceptres!

Also, I have made one foray into writing a solo novel. I’d really appreciate it if you looked into either purchasing/reading The Bracers.

Any support you give me, or any of the talented writers that I’ve worked with, would be appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Lady Applejack

by Revis Edgewater

Lady Applejack was in the forest gathering berries to take back home. She hummed along to her favorite tune as she worked. After a few moments her humming stopped. There was a noise behind her. It was the sound of feet shuffling through the leaves. Thinking it was one of her friends, she was shocked when she turned to find an undead human coming toward her. If the human was still alive, it probably would have underestimated her. They would have been wrong. Even though her stature showed her being a halfling, her clothing marked her as a member of a fierce barbarian tribe.

Her people knew how to fight.

She raised her halfling sized greatsword and charged the undead human. Her sword came down hard and inflicted a wicked wound to the zombie. Still, its head remained atop its neck. “It’s not dead yet?” she asked.

The zombie swung and struck her. It wasn’t a hard hit, but it had done a little damage to her. With a yelp, she darted away from it and toward the closest tree. Lady Applejack jumped up to grab onto the lowest branch. She missed and tumbled to the ground. The zombie shuffled forward, determined to finish the halfling maiden off. She got to her feet and jumped again. This time, she reached the branch. Her hands gripped it strongly as she pulled herself up. Lady Applejack managed to climb up just high enough to be out of the zombie’s reach. None of the other trees were close enough for her to jump into to try to escape. Just when she thought she may be trapped there forever, a deep shout boomed from behind the zombie.

“Get away from her,” the voice warned.

Looking up, Lady Applejack saw a Dwarven priest standing there. He had both his battleaxe and teeth bared. Driven by a unending desire to kill, the zombie shambled toward someone it could reach. The dwarf didn’t give it a chance to attack. He leapt forward and buried the axe directly between its eyes. It fell onto its back with the angry dwarf landing standing up on its chest. With a grunt and a tug, he pulled his weapon free of the zombie’s skull.

“Are you ok?” the dwarf asked.

“Yes,” she replied after climbing down. “Thank you for helping me. My name is Lady Applejack.”

“I’m Rothan Hammerstrike. My fellow priests and I have been scouting the area because we heard rumors of the undead were roaming these woods.”

“That was the first I’ve seen.”

“Even so, it’s probably best if I walk you home. If you’ll permit me, that is.”

Lady Applejack agreed to walk home with Rothan. Along the way, they came upon another zombie. The dwarf readied himself to fight it, but Lady Applejack ran away. As much as he wanted to kill it, protecting the young halfling maiden was his top priority, so he chased after her. He caught up, slowed her down, and began steering her back toward her home. They saw another zombie a while later and she ran away again, forcing him to chase her down again.

“You know,” Rothan told her when he caught up to her once more, “there’s probably going to come a time when you won’t be able to run away from them.”

She shrugged and continued home. Then, as if to prove his point, when they got to her home, they found a zombie pounding on the door to get in. This time, instead of running away from it, she ran at it. Rothan followed close behind. She swung, but her balance was off and she missed to the left. The zombie tried to retaliate. Lady Applejack ducked underneath the blow. The dwarf, certain that he’d cleave the zombie in twain, was shocked when his waraxe hit nothing but air.

Just as she was about to lash out once more, Lady Applejack stopped. “I’m bored,” she said. “I don’t really want to do this anymore. Maybe we can do this again later.”

The dwarf replied, “Uhhh, I guess we can pick this up later if you want.”

The young halfling skipped away, saying strange words, something about watching some nonsense called “YouTube”.