Story 4: Circuitious

Lauren woke up with a gasp. She was still slumped on her chair, but bright sunlight was shining down from the skylight directly on to her. Grimacing, she put a hand up to shade her eyes and rolled her neck, feeling the joints click and grind.

The dream was already fading in her mind, just leaving her with the uneasy impression that something terrible was going to happen and a little damp patch on her shirt where she had dribbled in the night. With a sigh, she set about making breakfast in the tiny kitchenette.

Twenty minutes later, with tea and toast in hand, Lauren stepped up to the worktable and pulled a fresh piece of paper towards herself. She quickly sketched a diagram of the experiment taking place up at Figger’s Cross, the junctions off of the main cable and the amber keeping the whole thing from exploding. Then she went over to the rug in the centre of the living area and pulled it to one side.

Underneath there was a trapdoor with a ring handle; she tugged it open and coughed as musty air blew dust into her face. Below the floorboards, within easy reach, several files of paper lay. The paper had yellowed slightly, she noticed, and the folders had seen better days. As she pulled them out, they crinkled and small flakes of something showered onto the floor. She carefully swept the debris into the hole and closed the trapdoor again.

Each one represented years of research by her father and many engineers before her. She knew that he had once been a part of amber research at the SIC, but had sworn many years ago never to touch it, long before she was born; the only reason she knew that was because she had come across these files one day while left alone.

Every page was filled with father’s meticulous handwriting, neat diagrams and the complicated algorithms required to make working amberic circuits. The knowledge was all here but she had never had the will to use it until now.

Checking often, Lauren began to add some of the figures and sums to the diagram she had drawn until the entire paper was filled with what looked like random letters and symbols. She sat back and reached for her mug of tea and took a sip; then she made a face and spat it out. The tea was cold, had been for hours by the look of it. She stretched and got up, working out the stiffness in her legs and arms.

She was half expecting the knock at the door and, when it came, she went straight over to it. Outside, wrapped up against the chill air, Vael Holston was stood with his Growth Movement mask in his hand.

“Holston,” she said. “You comin’ it? Cup of tea?”

“Please,” he replied, and took a step forward. Lauren barred his way. “What’s… you want me to come in or not?”

She pointed at the mask. “I want you to come in, Vael Holston. I don’t want anyone from the Growth Movement in here. If you ever had an ounce of friendship towards me in your bones, you’ll leave that and your ideals outside for now.”

He bit his lip and, for a long moment, she thought he might just turn around and leave. Then he carefully placed the mask on the step, facing outwards, and looked her in the eye.

“Better?”

“Better,” she replied, standing to one side.

They sat and drank tea in silence, Holston perched on the edge of his seat with his elbows on his knees while Lauren sat back, legs crossed, deep in thought.

Finally he set down the mug with an audible click and looked at her.

“So.”

“I went to Figger’s Cross.”

“And?”

“And there’s something wonderful going on there.”

Holston stared at her for a second, his eyes widening; then he shot to his feet. “How can you say that! The Movement-|”

“You left the Movement at the door, remember?” Lauren said sharply. “I didn’t invite you in to hear rhetoric. Sit down.”

His lips thinned down to almost nothing at her tone, but he sat back down.

“When I say there is something wonderful out there, I mean from an engineering standpoint. Definitely not from the SIC’s standpoint, though they’d love to get their hands on it.” She got up and moved around the chair, leaning dreamily on the back of the chair. “No, this is something that was thought impossible and yet, there it is. Running for Tree knows how many years, an almost perfect system.”

“Almost perfect?”

She nodded. “There’s a slight instability, but it might take years to play itself out. Whoever did it did it well.”

“And you know who it was now, right?” Holston said, standing up again. He walked over to Lauren. “Don’t you see now that you’re the only one who can undo this great wrong? It’s powers that we shouldn’t be tampering with and sacrilege to boot. Now that you’ve found the mug, you’ll-“

Lauren cut him off with a sweep of her hand. “I never said anything about a mug, Holston.”

“Erm,” he said, but it was too late. Lauren took two long steps towards Holston and grabbed the unfortunate boy by the scruff of his shirt.

“You know who really put it there, don’t you,” she snarled, advancing and taking the boy with her. “My father was an honourable man and he kept his oaths. When he joined the SIC he dabbled in amber power, sure; he even worked with some of the greatest minds in the field and developed theories for this sort of thing. But when the SIC outlawed Tree battery research, he followed their rules.” By now she had Holston up against the wall, pinned tightly. “Whoever did that out there is talented. But it wasn’t my father. Was it?” She pushed her face as close to his as possible. “WAS IT?”

“N-no! They told me to put it there! They said if I did everything they said, I’d have a place with the Tree ever after!” Halston was almost on tiptoes now; Lauren wasn’t tall, but anger leant her strength. “Put me down and I’ll explain! Please!”

She held him a moment longer, then released her grip and stepped back. “Talk fast,” she spat.

Holston looked up at her, anger in his face as well as fear. “Someone in the Growth Movement gave me the mug. They said that if I put it there and told you about what was going on, you’d dismantle it and the SIC would stop looking for it.”

“They know it’s there?”

He laughed bitterly. “They’ve known for months; they have some sort of device for detecting the energies in the amber and it’s been going crazy. We’ve kept them busy, but they’re closing in on it.”

“And the Movement can’t have the SIC getting their hands on that amber without knowing for sure what will happen to it,” Lauren finished for him. “They’re just as likely to elevate the creator to some equivalent to sainthood and use it to further their own research than they are to follow the Church’s edicts and dismantle it.”

“But you don’t owe the SIC anything, or the Church. You’re the perfect middle ground.”

“Yes. Perfect.” She walked back over the chair and leaned heavily on it. “There’s one problem, though. I’m not an SIC engineer. I was my father’s apprentice, yes; he… died while my apprenticeship was still in progress; I never formally completed entrance into the SIC.” She smiled at him. “I’ve taken no oaths. Figger’s Cross stays operational.”

Surprised even with herself, Lauren examined her feelings as Holston picked himself up. It was sacrilege, but once you looked past that - not hard for an atheist - it was an opportunity beyond all others. She could become a secret authority on amber manipulation just by the notes in her father’s folders, and studying the system set up in at Figger’s Cross would surely give up a wealth of knowledge. Little by little she could make a name for herself picked out in specks of amber and crackling energy.

“NO!” Holston shouted, suddenly leaping up and slamming into her. “Turn it off!”

Lauren flew backward and heard, more than felt, the sound of her head hitting the edge of the table. Bright light seemed to flash in from the edges of her vision and suddenly she heard a voice.

“But how does it work, daddy?”

She looked down. It was as if she floated above an impossible white stage with two actors stood on it; the first, tiny, was hugging the second and, as the child stepped back, she saw that it was her father. His grey hair seemed vibrant in the white light and every detail, every familiar wrinkle, was picked out for her to savour.

“All trees have sap in, little one,” he was saying. “You get it on you when you climb. The One Tree is no different. Over a long time, thousands of years, that sap hardens and becomes amber, complete with the energy of the tree stored within it.”

“But why don’t we use amber all the time? Why don’t we just use the Tree’s energy?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “What if it were a human being? What if we could get all the light, heat, everything we need from killing one human? Would that be ok with you?”

The child shook her head, eyes wide. “No, daddy; killing is wrong.”

“And that is why we don’t perform those experiments, little one.” He stood up. “Now then, how about a game?”

The two walked off into the light, fading away, hand in hand.

Lauren slowly felt the colour leaching back into the world in concert with a throbbing pain in her head. Carefully she got up from the floor and felt the back of her head. There was a lump the size of a pigeon egg but she’d live.

Holston had apparently fled, the coward. Lauren got a jacket and went to the door; his mask was still on the step, staring out into nothingness. Experimentally she picked it up and held it over her eyes, waiting for divine instruction. Nothing happened. With a heavy sigh, she went around to the horse and got ready to leave. Figger’s Cross was a few hours away, after all, and she wanted to be back before dark.

Story 4: Circuitious

It was unmistakeable; the tree in front of her was exactly grown in the image of the One Tree; it was easy to check as the silhouette of the One Tree lay on the horizon wherever you . Its leaves glowed slightly, green with a slight golden sheen, and small flowers dotted it, each with a tiny yellow dot in the centre. The bark was pebbled and there was a slight vine-like protrusion, as if something had grown under the bark, spiralling up the trunk.

The cable ran straight into the root system of the tree and disappeared somewhere into the earth. Lauren walked around the wide trunk of the tree, stepping carefully over exposed roots and avoiding patches of long grass. She saw a glimmer of something in the branches and stepped closer to look. She leaned against the trunk and immediately drew back with a gasp.

It was warm.

Her mind raced as she drew everything her father had taught her to the forefront. The Arbour, a vast tree in the centre of the continent; the Church of the One Tree held it in such esteem that it was only to be touched by the High Father himself and then only to obtain the cuttings needed for founding a settlement. It was, in all other respects, a relatively normal tree; bark, leaves, flowers. It never bore fruit, though. It was locked in time forever, enjoying an endless spring.

It shouldn’t be warm, though. And was that a pulse she saw running up the trunk? Impossibly, it was as if a ripple of something physical had travelled from bottom to top, and the leaves of the tree rustled in response.

It was difficult to be raised an atheist in a world where the arbiter of the main religion was a physical presence, visible from everywhere, but Lauren’s father had managed it. Even so, it was difficult to climb the tree, to even set foot on it. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching her, that her back was bared to some hidden naked blade, and more than once she stopped on a branch and turned to check.

Towards the top, she found what she was looking for. It seemed that whoever had put this cable in place - and she was still not willing to name her father as the one responsible for this - had somehow cored the entire tree and run the cable up. At various points they had teased one of the copper wires inside out and wrapped it around a branch.

Lauren, stood on tiptoes to examine the cable, tapped her fingers on a branch. Whoever had done this, it was brilliant work; the One Tree was known for providing a slight amberic charge when properly harnessed or recorded, but this was a way of obtaining far more energy from the tree than normal. The wires wrapped around the branches would amplify the energy and allow it to be channelled into several labour-saving devices, were there to be any nearby. This experiment was active, to be sure; how long it had been operational, though, was anyone’s guess. It was unlikely that the Growth Movement had closed the circuit and left it running. Had it been humming away since the last time its creator had been here?

It was normally far too much of a risk, though. The energies were unstable and could feed back into the tree itself, causing rapid combustion and an expanding sphere of superheated splinters of wood. In short, trees exploded when this was tested in the workshop. More than one engineer had died. Moreover, the Church viewed this as a gross sacrilege, more than anything that the SIC normally undertook, and had made it clear that stiff penalties would be applied to anyone working with trees in this way. It was a threat taken seriously by the SIC, who had passed the decree on to all engineers, whether registered or not.

Lauren climbed carefully back down and began to follow the cable back towards the quarry, thinking her way through the situation. The Growth Movement weren’t tied to the Church, but they had the same goals and ideals. The Church didn’t approve of the Movement, but let them get on with it as long as they didn’t do anything too terrible. For the Movement to come and try to deal directly with Lauren told her a few things. First, the Movement didn’t want the Church to know about it, perhaps because the Church would undoubtedly try to cleanse everyone who knew about it, including Movement members. Second, they didn’t want the SIC to know about it either; they wouldn’t go so far as to kill the people involved but they would definitely silence them in other ways. Forced relocation would be the least of it. And then, of course, they might look at this setup, such a long-running, considered and delicate approach to a problem that normally ended in death and destruction and think that it should be preserved, researched, studied.

Realistically, the best solution was that Lauren herself safely turn the system off, deconstruct it and forget that it ever happened. She was fully capable of it, almost honour-bound to do it; things between the SIC and her father had never been good and something like this would certainly cause problems.

She reached the quarry again and slid down the slope into the bowl. The cable disappeared into the nearest dark hole, just large enough for her to walk into. She had gone several dozen paces before she realised that whoever had set this system up had had the forethought to place several lamps strung up and connected by gossamer-thin cables to the main one. She lit them and was surprised to find that the tunnel widened out, heading almost directly back towards the tree providing the power.

Her footsteps echoed and, somewhere, she could hear water dripping. The tiny amber bead inside the glass bulb in one of the lanterns had cracked and a strange blue spark rattled up and down the metal frame; Lauren hissed and pulled her hand back. Taking a handkerchief out of her pocket, she unhooked the lantern and the dancing blue spark abruptly stopped, plunging that section of the mine into darkness.

The tunnel ended, opening up into a large round chamber and Lauren followed the cable, which snaked around the chamber and then into the middle. Every lantern she lit revealed a new facet of the experiment taking place here, and she marvelled at the unseen architect.

The roots of the tree above, for she was surely directly underneath it, penetrated through the ceiling and curved down to form a sort of hourglass shape. Captured in the middle, where the roots pinched together, was the largest piece of amber Lauren had ever seen. It was almost perfectly spherical and easily the size of her head; the cable had been split into smaller, rubber-sheathed filaments that were wrapped tightly around the roots and attached to the amber with some sort of resin.

This treasure must have formed naturally over hundreds of years, somehow perfectly nestled here in this chamber, waiting to be found. Usually in experiments such as this one it was the buildup of unused energy that caused the trees to combust, but here there was no such worry; the amber contained it all and more, naturally bleeding it out into the air while simultaneously feeding it back into the tree via the roots. It explained how this could have run for so many years without worry.

It couldn’t last forever, though; the tree was warming up and, though it might take more years, the end result would be the same. Combustion, probably just the tree itself as it was a few metres removed from any other trees.

She moved to take a closer look and felt her foot knock against something that rattled as it struck the roots. It was something dark against the dark floor, in the shadows thrown by the lanterns, and she knelt to picked it up.

It was a mug, made of cheap tin that was painted with red enamel paint. Her father’s name, engraved on it so many years ago, was still clear even though it had been used so often. Her mind flashed on so many childhood memories; sat on her father’s knee as he drank something strong-smelling; the smell of smoke from the occasional cigar mixed with oil and wood shavings; the mug holding pencils during one of his obsessive abstentions from hot drinks, or soup, or whatever he thought might improve his work. All this and more flooded back to her as she turned the irrefutable evidence of her father’s work over in her hands.

Turning her back on the splendour of the scene, both to her engineer’s eyes and to a simple observer’s, she left the mine and began the slow walk back towards her horse.

It was nearly night by the time she trotted back into the village and made her way up the twisting path to the workshop. It seemed a different place now, suddenly empty; where her father’s spirit had always seemed to fill the walls, learning that he had kept his greatest and most radical accomplishment a secret made him seem different in her mind. She tethered the horse back behind the workshop and went inside. She sat in one of the overstuffed armchairs, not even bothering to light a lantern, and closed her eyes for a moment.

She heard a small sound and opened her eyes. She was back in the cavern under the tree, but the room was filled with a growing red light emanating from the amber. She could see a whirling vortex of energy growing there. Beams of light shot out from it, scoring dark patches into the walls and she screamed as the temperature increased. Suddenly she was ten miles from the tree, watching as a huge column of light grew out of it, shooting into the sky; a massive sphere of angry red energy began to grow, centred on the amber, and she was helpless to do anything as it raced towards her. She shrieked and raised her hands to her eyes.

Story 4: Circuitious

Lauren stared at the masked man with no little fear and apprehension. He was stood in front of her doorway, blocking her way back into her workshop and appeared to have no intention of moving. She let go of the sack she was holding and it rattled onto the floor, screws and small brass rods spilling out onto the ground.

“You’re going to have to listen to reason eventually,” the man said. He was dressed in simple farmer’s clothing, a rough cotton shirt and thick trousers tucked in to heavy boots. The mask covered his whole face, a rough-hewn thing to look at; bark fronted with two eyeholes crudely cut out. The edges showed a bit more care though, sanded flat. Three or four pieces of bark made a sort of crown up from the top of the mask. It neatly cHe could have been anyone.

“Vael Holston, I know it’s you,” Lauren said. She put her hands on her hips. “You can just take that mask off and we can have a talk about what’s bitten you.”

Though she couldn’t see his face, she could see Holston’s eyes widening, then narrowing. “I think I’ll leave it on, Engineer.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Engineer? That wasn’t what you called me two years ago at the winter solstice. Least I remember then, you were tryin’ so hard to get your hands in my shirt that you’d have called me anything I wanted.”

Holston swore and tore the mask off his face. “You’re makin’ this hard, Lauren.” He was about nineteen, she remembered, and suddenly looked every inch of it. Then again, she thought as she stifled a chuckle, not like I’m much more mature. Twenty five isn’t an ancient by anyone’s reckoning.

“Are you goin’ to let me in so I can put the kettle on, Holston? Or are we going to stand out here until the sky darkens?”

For the briefest moment he looked like he was going to contest it. Then his chest deflated and he stepped to one side.

“What’re you drinking?” Lauren asked as she gathered up her bag.

He looked at her for a long moment, then shook his head and smiled. “Tea, one sugar,” he said, stooping to pick up a long angled brass pole. He handled it awkwardly, holding it with both hands, then followed Lauren in to the workshop.

The drapes were over the skylights, full of dust; Lauren coughed as she tugged them open and let the light in. It had been a while since she had had guests; no-one much wanted to come out here after Dad had… moved on. Holston was already sitting on one of the two armchairs in the tiny living area, carved out by dint of a piece of moth-eaten carpet on the floor. It was like the single token piece of normality in the workshop which was otherwise full of giant pieces of brass work, long tables with dusty tools scattered at random, half-finished pieces of work and a half-destroyed cuckoo clock.

“So,” Lauren said as she put the kettle onto the warm stove and added more fuel, “What brings you here? You with the Growth Movement now?”

Holston nodded, his leg jiggling as he sat on the very edge of the chair. “They’ve got a thing, Lauren, a creed. ‘Touch lightly, Nature is watching.’” He jumped up and came over to the cupboard. Opening it and took out two chipped mugs. Lauren, looking over, sucked in a breath; one was her fathers. Holston plonked it down on the worktop and drummed his fingers.

“Where’s your tea?” he said.

“I’ll get it. Sit down,” Lauren replied, motioning back towards the chairs. She picked her father’s mug back up and turned it round. The worn chips in its handle and rim winked white against the lacquered paint, faded but still clear, that read ‘Wurld’s Best Dadde’. It was the one she had made him after he had lost his favourite red tin mug.

The kettle boiled, disturbing the silence. She made the tea and put a drop of milk from the jug she kept in the cold room into each.

“No sugar,” she said, bringing the steaming mug over to Holston. “Sorry.”

He shrugged. “Just like old times, Lauren.”

“Hmm?”

“Us sat sharing a drink. Just like old times.”

Lauren took a sip and stared through the steam at Holston. Without the mask he was almost handsome. “Just like old times. Except now you work with terrorists and I have to deal with the both your mob and the SIC. Thanks for that.”

Holston put the mug down and wriggled in his chair. “Look, I’m sorry about that. They said I had to do it. Gave me the mask and everything.” He picked it up from where it was laying on the table. “Not even really sure why.”

“Scare tactics,” Lauren said. “They’ve tried before; you’re not the first. At least your lot don’t tend to get violent. The SIC just send goons to beat me up and take my father’s things.”

“Lauren, they told me stuff. About what you do; about what your father did. He was involved in some really sacrilegious stuff, experiments with the Tree and everything. If you had any idea-“

“Don’t you ever speak that way about my father again!” Lauren jumped to her feet and slammed her mug down hard enough to make tea slop over the sides. “He was twice, no, three times the man any of you are and he didn’t have to hide behind a mask!”

Holston’s brow creased into a frown. “Lauren, they showed me the gear your father was working on out at Figger’s Cross.”

“I can’t understand why you believe half the lies those idiots feed you,” Lauren said, pacing back and forth, then she paused mid-step. She turned around and strode back towards Holston, who cowered back slightly. “Say that again?”

“Figger’s Cross? Your father was working on amber-infused energy crystals, right?”

Lauren sat back down, sudden doubts clouding her thoughts. “He worked out a Figger’s Cross, but he wasn’t working with amber. We didn’t do that sort of thing. He was…’” She combed her memory. “He was working,” she finished lamely.

Holston leaned forward. “He never told you what he was working on, though, right?” He took her hand in his. “Lauren, you need to leave this life behind. Repent your sins and-“

That broke the spell. Lauren’s eyes glittered dangerously and she snatched her hand back. “Oh, get out. Just go. You’re a follower, Holston, and you’ve always been. Not enough brains to be original.”

He scowled but got up and moved to the door. “I might not be the best thinker, but I knows wrong when I sees it. Go out to Figger’s Cross, Lauren, and we’ll talk again.”

Lauren heard the door open and close as she sat staring into space.

Her father.

A storm was blowing in and the air was a knife-edge on her cheek as Lauren slid down off her horse. She patted its rump and pulled a sugar-lump out of her pocket. As it licked her fingers clean, she looked around Figger’s Cross.

She was stood in a slate quarry about ten miles away from home, open on one side and curved at the end. Several openings into the hillside yawned invitingly with wooden barriers blocking most of them off. Notices in dwavish and the common tongue all said the same thing: Danger, do not enter. Restricted access, danger of rockfall.

Chewing absently on the inside of her cheek, Lauren moved towards the hillside that curved around. If what Holston had said was true, her father would have been working at the roots of a One Tree. Finding one in the wild was very rare, though. As she walked, she ran through the possibilities in her mind. The Arbour, the One Tree in the centre of Ehrian was the progenitor of all trees and life in Ehrian, or at least so the Church said. Each settlement that was founded throughout the land took with it a cutting from the One Tree so that everywhere you went you were able to worship. A cutting of the Arbour in the wild meant either that someone had brought a cutting here and planted it, tended it and then abandoned it, or that the Arbour had somehow spread seeds far and wide. The latter was unheard of; the former was unlikely, but possible. Unauthorised cuttings of the Arbour were sacrilege though. The Church would hound you for ever and a day. And, possibly worse, if the cutting were authorised, someone in the Church was developing research into amber power, going against Church teachings. Lauren shook her head; it was far too confusing to think about without more data. So far, all she had was the ravings of Holston, and they couldn’t have been counted on even before the Growth Movement got their hands on him.

She swore quietly; she’d been too harsh on him, but he was a follower. He didn’t have the stones to have come up with that lot on her own; the puppet master was always hidden in societies like that, but there would be someone in the shadows, tutoring him, telling him what to say. His mouth, but his master’s voice.

She was so preoccupied with her thinking that she tripped over the thick cable that was half-buried in leaves. She went sprawling, sudden pain flaring in her elbow as she fell heavily on it. Gritting her teeth, she stood up and looked at the cable. It was thick, a smaller cable wrapped around it; she knew that, inside there, the cable would be tightly-pressed copper tubes for transferring the energy of amber crystals from their source to a machine or a method of storing it, such as a cat. It was a common sight in any engineer’s workshop, or at least anyone who dealt with amber as a power source; her father never had. Swallowing deeply, she looked along the length of the cable. One end of it went towards the quarry; the other went off into a small woodland. She shrugged and went in the direction of the woodland.

The cable went down a short hill, across a single stone that bridged a tiny stream and then into the woodland. It wound between trees, pine and fir, and Lauren began to feel more hopeful. Over this sort of distance, a massive power source would be needed for the strength of the amber to be transmitted for anything useful.

She was so busy watching the cable, and hoping that it wouldn’t happen, that she almost walked into the Arbour cutting.

Poisonroot - Chapter 26

Almost done, I think! Can things get any worse for Trip and company? Rennin swoops in the save the day and Sabir kicks ass, but will it be enough?

Poisonroot - Chapter 25

Chapter 25, and the end is in sight for Trip, Lauren and Victor! What surprises await them? How will they deal with this new threat? What is High Father Hork going to do now that he has his own personal army?

Find out in the thrilling conclusion, over the next few days!

Side note: I had real trouble not having Victor swearing in this. I'm tryin' t'keep it fam'ly friendly, I'm guessin'.

Listened to nearly all of the Final Fantasy XI soundtrack while I wrote this at 10pm at night and I got told off for getting Sue and Chippy 'right in the feels!'

Me too, y'know. Spent a lot of time in that world, and learned a lot about worldbuilding from it!

Poisonroot - Chapter 24

Ok! So I can share a post now, as the last two were either plot from after the current canon or background-related info.

I kind of had trouble moving on after the last chapter. It's taken me most of three days to write Trip and co. away from the cozy semi-safety they were in at Lord Rennin's. Poor Trip; he's not had a pleasant time of it recently, and things are only going to get worse.

I've been reviewing my stats on NaNo and I've discovered I've been almost bang on par or over it since Day 11. That's 13 consecutive days. I think I can actually do this again. It's almost miraculous considering how bad last year went.

Anyway, enjoy the next chapter! Things are definitely moving towards... A CONCLUSION!

Poisonroot - Chapter 23

Today has been crazy. We made bread at work; the kids thought it was great. Hell, I thought it was great! Only... cooking is incredibly tiring work when you're doing it all day in a school.

Got my words done though. Half of this was written in a Brick Lane cafe called Kahaila. I can only kind of half recommend it; they chucked us out after twenty minutes because it was closing time, virtually no warning. No posted opening times either. When I mentioned it might be nice to put them up, the lady looked at me as if she'd never thought of it before.

The rest was written at home over a pie and chips.

Now off to kill people in artful ways in Hitman Absolution, which arrived in my mailbox this morning. How I've managed to avoid putting it in the PS3 up until now, I don't know...

Poisonroot - Chapter 22

Just broken 30,000 words on NaNoWriMo! Feeling pretty good :D

Music; what do you listen to while you're in the writing groove? I listened to the Bastion soundtrack for the first half of this, the Braid soundtrack for the second half. They've both got good points and bad points; I need something quiet, not too beat-y, interesting but not more interesting than the writing. Nothing with words. That is a definite no-no.

There was an interesting Twitter discussion the other day with Sonia Leong asking what people listened to. I waded in with the Death Note anime soundtrack (not all the tracks, only some of them) but it was interesting to see that I also listen to some of the other things that were mentioned; Shadow of the Colossus, Braid, Bastion, a lot of Final Fantasy, Tron Legacy, all that sort of stuff.

To be honest, I have a 'quiet music' playlist that contains 2.4 hours of tracks selected from loads of different things. They're all quietish, all good 'background music' and, most importantly, all things I like. I use them when I'm teaching too. It's therapy for me and the kids have never heard any of them before.

Anyway! Today's chapter.

Poisonroot - Interlude 3

Sneaky sneaky stuff from Anila here. I love her character; religious zealot, daughter who desperately wants to impress her father, highly-skilled agent. She's great.

Warning: Mild defenestration.

Poisonroot - Chapter 12

Turns out my flatmate and very awesome friend Chippy is also doing NaNo. She needs some cheering on :D

Poisonroot - Chapter 11

Chapter 11! Short post today as we've got a lot on. I'm back at work and generally things are motoring but I still found time to do this, so that bodes well for future updates.

Poisonroot - Chapter 10

Still ill. However, Chris is down this weekend. An awesome friend, he was my best man at our wedding and he is ALSO doing NaNoWriMo! Wish us both luck ^^

Poisonroot - Chapter 9

I have the flu. Blegh. Proper stuff; joints aching, temperatures, loss of appetite, upset stomach, the works.

Anyway, next chapter of Poisonroot.