The Modern Witch Hunt

If you'll bear with me as I share a bit of a story, I'd like to use it to make a point about the current social landscape surrounding the use of generative AI.

The Witch

When I wrote Starwitch, the first volume of The Book of Newts, I treated witches as a distinct ethnic group, set apart by their talent for magic.

In that novel, the mother of the main characters, Erika Blackwell, had once been witnessed casting a little sparkly spell that did no harm, for which the man that eventually became mayor of the village continually persecuted her, seeking to burn her at the stake for witchcraft.

In chapter four, Erika was caught in an awful dilemma: her daughters had been witnessed using what was assumed to be witchcraft (technically, it wasn't, but it was magic) to make a horseless carriage function.

That's when the mayor made a real cursed bargain with Erika: she could confess as a witch and her daughters would be pardoned, or the mayor would burn her daughters, who were now publicly known as witches.

Erika chose to lay down her life to save her children, even though she could easily have overpowered the Mayor's mob with magic.

She chose not to fight, because she'd been raised as a pacifist, just the same as she'd raised her daughters.

In that final scene, she had all the magic she needed to save herself and her family, but she put her principles first, at the cost of her life.

She spent her life in service to her community, practicing her trade as a doctor. She sometimes quietly healed the villagers with magic and sold weak herbal healing potions that had been enchanted to fail on those that hated witches, to avoid drawing attention.

She harmed no one and the little incident that originally caught the attention of the young man that eventually became mayor was just a spell to attract fireflies, to dance with her.

Yet, to her dying day, she was unfairly persecuted for her nature as a witch.

The Witch Hunter

Erika was the victim, but to fully understand the situation, you must also know her accuser.

Mayor Godfrey Reumblecleaver began as a young man, during a harvest festival, drinking for the first time in his life, and by all accounts, he drank moonshine like it was water.

He stumbled out of the village, presumably to relieve himself, and stumbled across a young girl, who waved her arms in the air and danced, as sparkles flew around her.

Thus, he leveled the first of many accusations of witchcraft at Erika, only to be embarrassed by a lack of proof. Yet, he remembered and never let it go, angry he hadn't gotten his way.

Over the years, he brought many witnesses forward, each claiming to have seen Erika demonstrating her witchcraft, but at every turn, Erkia ran mental circles around Rumblecleaver, because she'd always been far more intelligent than her rival, the real reason he hated her so much.

Most every witness turned out to be either a bad liar or drunk enough to hallucinate, as was the case with one of the last.

Rumblecleaver absolutely hated Erika for making him look stupid in front of the entire village, many times, despite the fact that was his own doing; Erika simply made the facts clear to all, to defend herself.

Eventually, the village blacksmith and his son witnessed Erika's daughters driving a horseless carriage and the blacksmith was bright enough to reason the steam engine should have been producing both steam and smoke, which it wasn't. His conscience compelled him to tell the mayor, because that was the law.

With obscene delight, Mayor Rumblecleaver used the situation to trap his old rival into giving herself up and he burned Erika at the stake.

After her death, he used the law to seize her lands, to sell them at auction, to pay for the firewood. He left the duty of running the auction to his deputy and bid until he owned the land, because he'd wanted it for many years.

There can be no doubt that Mayor Rumblecleaver was a very evil man, because his actions make it self-evident: he was consumed by hatred for a woman that deserved no punishment, even though the unjust law he administered allowed her to be burned.

Salem Witch Trials

I've recently been reading and watching videos about the Salem Witch Trials for a novel I'm writing and the same kind of thing happened in real life, not just fiction.

Some girls got sick, then pointed the finger at women they labeled as witches, and innocent people were hanged for the "crime" of witchcraft. Everything was done with only circumstantial evidence, because there were no witches among the puritans of Salem.

Those that died were simply the ones that refused to confess to a crime they knew they hadn't committed.

I'd like to further point out that the victims were all poor, ethnic minorities, or simply unpopular, because when the accusations were pointed at someone rich and powerful, the whole farce was finally ended.

Where Witch Hunts Lead

The real crime involved in witch hunting is exactly the same as that committed by the Nazis: prejudice of any kind is wrong. Period.

Hatred of any kind leads to prejudice, sooner or later, and the victims of prejudice rarely have any recourse.

The thing is, when one goes looking for the object of their hatred, lo and behold, it's everywhere, because hatred colors everything they see, until they're burning innocent people alive, sometimes literally.

It always starts the same way, with the same slippery slope: hatred and prejudice.

What Happened to Me

About two weeks ago, as of the time of posting this blog entry, I posted in a social media group for science fiction and fantasy books, to promote my most recently-published novel, Stone Prophet. That one is particularly dear to my heart, because it's the one I was writing when my best friend died and the pain of that experience is on nearly every page, whether I wanted it to be or not.

My post was incorrectly marked as having violated a group rule: No AI generated books.

I posted and asked why my book was flagged that way, because I don't use AI to write. Never have, never will. I started writing novels as a teen between the age of 16 and 18, somewhere between 1996 and 1998. Generative AI wasn't available then and I spent too many years practicing before I ever published a thing, long before AI was even available, so why would I use it to do what I can do better on my own?

In my post questioning the matter, I even included links to all of the art sources I used to make both the cover and the promotional image from the post, which I'll share now, for the sake of completeness:

• https://pixabay.com/illustrations/stars-constellation-universe-twin-7249785/
• https://pixabay.com/photos/justice-statue-lady-justice-2060093/
• https://pixabay.com/illustrations/ball-binary-computer-data-63527/
• https://pixabay.com/illustrations/girl-woman-face-portrait-eyes-2013447/
• https://pixabay.com/illustrations/magic-fantasy-magician-purple-6952448/
• https://pixabay.com/illustrations/eye-mandala-3rd-god-art-mystic-7728794/
• https://pixabay.com/illustrations/heart-sand-art-design-shape-7004820/
• https://pixabay.com/illustrations/aphrodite-goddess-greek-mythology-9476326/
• https://pixabay.com/illustrations/aphrodite-goddess-greek-mythology-9476286/
• https://pixabay.com/illustrations/stars-constellation-universe-twin-7249785/
• The hexagonal coin from the cover is my own creation, made in Inkscape, using this texture pack to give it a little something extra:
  • http://opengameart.org/content/20-textures-for-metal-texture-creation-sets

As far as I know, none of those images are AI generated. Pixabay has a flagging system for that, which I use to avoid using AI in my art.

Here's the final image, for the curious:

Taking a moment to examine and compare to the source images will reveal the whole thing is cut and paste (aside from the hexagonal coin; I can do geometric stuff decently, in Inkscape), because that's the kind of art I'm best at. Everything was put together with GIMP, which is an open source alternative to Photoshop.

I politely asked what their proof is that my novel is AI, because it straight-up isn't. I know it for a fact, though I can't prove it, just like the admins of that group cannot prove that I did use AI.

I didn't get a direct answer, but the next morning, the admin that owns the group posted publicly, saying that if he thinks a post is AI, he'll take it down, based entirely on his own opinion, which more or less seems to have been his response to my question.

I politely challenged him on the part involving his opinion, pointing out how easy it is to make a mistake. His response was arrogant enough to make me leave the group, because it made his pointless and blinding hatred of AI obvious to all, because he was hunting witches.

Honestly, I probably wouldn't have cared if the accusatory finger had been pointed at me over one of my other novels, but Stone Prophet is too connected to my real-world pain. It cut me all the way to the bone to have someone basically insist the contents aren't my own words, implying that my feelings over the death of my best friend aren't valid or real.

I'll be blunt on this point: I am not required to share my personal pain with strangers on the internet, via my novels, but they are based on it, because I choose to share. However, the real truth is this: I write for me! Yeah, it's nice if I make a buck from selling my novels, but sharing is secondary to my personal journey of self-discovery that's propelled by writing novels.

The end result of that little drama was me leaving that group and taking a week off from social media, over the fatigue of dealing with that kind of foolishness, arrogance, prejudice and unfounded hatred.

The Modern Witch Hunt

The modern equivalent to the witch is now the AI user on social media and the mere accusation of witchcraft, *ahem*, AI-use is enough to bring punishment.

Just like the Salem Witch Trials and my novel, innocents are the ones that are really being punished, because those that use AI to produce low-quality slop will just go somewhere else, while the innocent literally have nowhere to turn for redress, since as far as most everyone are concerned, accusation is proof.

There Actually is a Middle Road

I get it: some people really don't like AI. I don't like certain uses of it, either, like when it really is based on stolen art or books, or it's used to justify firing some, while overworking others. I also don't like the way data centers are getting sweetheart deals for power, while the residential customers pick up the monetary slack (that one upsets me a lot).

I also get it: AI lets people do things they could never do without it, like seeing art come to life, which they can't produce, because their hands may never be able to move in the way required to make the art in their head real.

Let me teach you something about art, which most of the AI haters seem ignorant of: the most basic skill of visual art is composition, which is the placement of objects in a scene, the choice of colors and so on, basically the overall concept for the image. In essence, describing the scene you want to make into a piece of art is an act of making art and an artistic skill!

Therefore, whether you like it or not, the act of crafting a prompt for an AI art generator is in and of itself, an artistic act, which uses the most basic skill of the visual arts: composition. Yes, generating images over and over to select one that matches the user's vision, while continually refining the prompt, is an artistic act!

It may not be a type of art you like or respect, but that doesn't make it any less artistic. Just like an artist stapling a piece of garbage to a wall and calling it art, so is generative AI, when guided by a human. People generally dislike low-effort art in all forms, but that doesn't mean it isn't art!

Similarly, just because art was made with AI doesn't automatically make it low-effort slop. It can take hours, if not days, of prompt refining and generation to find the perfect image, that matches the one in a person's head. Sometimes it never gets there, but it's still the best they can do with what they've got. Effort and dedication like that should be respected.

At the end of the day, I really am a middle-road guy, because I see both sides and both sides have valid points.

Personally, I use a little AI for promotional images from time to time, but not that often, because people get so wound up about the subject and I don't care to be swept up in the furious arguments.

I also use AI text to speech software to make audiobooks, which I currently can't do without it (I can't afford to pay voice actors, since I can barely afford feeding myself), but the distinction I'll always make about my own use of AI is open source. I won't knowingly use the big models that were made by scraping things without permission and I'll always seek open source options, every time, so it can run on my own hardware.

I try to find and use ethically-sourced AI and yes, that does exist! Not all AI is based on stolen property! The AI text to speech software I use isn't, insofar as I know, and the voice samples I've been using more recently come from Librivox, where everything is public domain and can be used without restrictions of any sort.

For the sake of providing some ethical examples, here's some links to the open source AI TTS software I currently use:

• Piper
• Chatterbox
• Pocket-TTS

I also used to use Kokoro, but in retrospect, I wish I hadn't, because the training data isn't public. That doesn't mean it's unethical, though. It just leaves an asterisk hanging over it, which I've grown uncomfortable with. I've since replaced it with Pocket in my audiobook process, because that one is both faster and largely more flexible, on top of having no ethical concerns. I just need to redo the little experimental audiobook I made with Kokoro.

Please, Temper Hatred and Rage

I will always stand against hatred, because it always leads to witch hunts and those only hurt the innocent, as proven by history, over and over again.

In conclusion, I hope you'll take my words to heart and temper your hatred, on every subject. Try to see the other guy's point of view before you condemn it, but at least check your rage at the door, before you comment.

I think there's a real need for public dialog about the ethics of AI use, development and regulation, but I'm even more certain it must be discussed with cool heads.

Will you please join me as a rational voice of moderation in the screaming electronic void we call the internet?

Tags: artificial-intelligence, prejudice, social-media, witches

Stone Prophet is Published!

I'm pleased to announce volume thee of Jigsaw City, titled Stone Prophet, has been published.

The Ebook released last week and print copies released today. The cover art hasn't quite made its way to Amazon, though it is for sale there.

Buy This Book
Read on Royal Road Nicole Jacobs wants to reassemble the ancient and magical City of Kurg, but as a result of a recent battle, pieces of the city were scattered all over her world. Worse, unlike the ones scattered around the galaxy, which constantly talk to her, nagging to be whole again, they’re quiet and deactivated.

As she struggles with the question of how to find them, she senses a piece of the city coming to life again and she’s drawn like a moth to the flame, to an ancient ruin built by the stone men that made the city. There, she meets a dwarf history miner, who holds the piece, which is folded up like a little coin.

More interesting, however, is an amber lens in his possession that shows glimpses of the past and future when looked through. Even more odd, it’s been whispering into the dwarf’s mind. The strange object is presented to the stone men, who know what it is: it’s a piece of the Seventh Sage, one of their people with a prophetic gift.

Nicole leads a team on a series of missions to collect the Sage in the hopes he can locate the missing pieces of Kurg. The journey is harsh and emotionally painful, because Nicole is forced to kill, not just once, but three times, leaving her distraught, because she wishes she’d found another way.

Collecting the last piece is especially difficult, forcing her to test her resolve with the life of a friend hanging in the balance.

Nicole completes the Sage, but little does she know, a great and powerful enemy lurks within his mind, an ancient and powerful witch whose powers are in a class of their own.

Will Nicole rise to the challenge and fulfill prophesy by becoming the Leader of the stone men, or will the parasitic soul that’s taken over the Sage steal her fate?

Tags: jigsaw-city, novel, publishing

Open Source AI TTS Audiobooks

I'd like to share a little about my more recent audiobook projects, because my research has recently hit gold that may be of value to other authors that want to produce audiobooks, but tend to steer clear of the big AI companies.

Why AI?

At the very beginning of my attempts to make audiobooks from my novels, I tried recording myself reading. My first experiment was an abysmal failure. Since I didn't have the slightest clue what I was doing, it took me three hours to produce one paragraph that sounded good.

I used Audacity for that experiment, which is my go-to tool for manually recording and manipulating audio.

Here's a quick list of things that went wrong that day:

• I'm not a voice actor and the learning curve was steep
  • My audio levels were all over the place and a had to re-record the same lines, over and over
  • This is something more experience could solve, however
• I'm not an audio engineer and the learning curve was steep
  • I tried to watch the UV meter built into Audacity, to avoid red-lining my mic, leading to divided focus
  • Again, experience could solve this
• My mic is not pro quality
  • If I'd had a better mic, I probably would have had an easier time getting good results
  • Fixing this would cost money I don't have
• My home is too noisy and wrong for audio work
  • The air conditioners in the background, fans, etc.
  • Winter would have been a better time, but the heater is still an issue
  • This is fixable, but I would need supplies to build an audio booth, which costs money I don't have

Paying a voice actor to read was never an option, because I don't have the money. It costs a minimum of $900 to pay someone to read a book and even more if you want it to be read well, with no guarantee of sales to recoup the investment.

In the end, I gave up on the project for a while, until a friend pointed out the fact there's AI voices available. That's when my research brought me across three different companies peddling AI voices to authors, allowing their work to be sold in online stores without massive up-front expense:

• Apple
• Google
• OpenAI

There's also ElevenLabs, but I don't include them in the list, because when I was looking into them, they had no existing deals for distribution of the results, which is an important distinction.

There are others, but those are the names I know.

Why Open Source?

All of the options from big companies come with the same downsides:

Exclusivity: Most every online store that accepts AI-read audiobooks only allows one specific company's software to be used for reading. For example, Apple only accepts their own software. This issue really grinds my gears, because I love open source software and these short-sighted policies leave it out in the cold, for no reason at all. I did eventually find some stores that allow open source audiobooks, but I'll cover them in a later section.

Lack of Control: I would have to surrender control of the process of generating the audio master files to cloud servers owned by massive mega-corporations. That does not appeal to me, because it will be in my hands, on my own computer, or not at all. I will not put up with the rug being pulled out from under me by the changing whims of the CEO a mega-corporation.

Predatory Pricing: Most of the viable options for authors are offered up supposedly for free, bound up with those exclusivity deals. However, I've seen enough of life to know that almost nothing of such substantial value can ever actually be free and such deals should always be carefully examined. The up-front price may be zero, but it will cost you something later. For some people, that may be worth it, but in this case, I have serious doubts about so much computing power remaining free forever.

Now here's the reason I call that pricing model predatory: today it's free, but it can't possibly stay that way forever. I would compare it to a drug dealer that says, "The first taste is free!" They can afford to do that, because they know exactly how addictive their product is, but after the customer is hooked, oh my, the price just goes up!

I expect the current AI bubble to burst soon and then all of those free offers will evaporate, leaving authors with unfinished files they have to pay to complete, lest they waste lots of invested time. Alternatively, authors will come back to do a new audiobook and find out they can't do it for free anymore, because the investors of those huge companies demand a return on their investment.

The nature of this rug-pulling behavior disgusts me, but I'm certain it's coming. To quote the movie War Games, "The only winning move is not to play."

These are the reasons I choose open source, every day of every week. My computer exists to serve me, not the corporate overlords of a company that shall remain nameless, which is currently turning one of the most popular operating systems into an ad-serving machine. Are people actually paying for an operating system full of ads? Ridiculous, but that's what my reading of news items tells me.

I stick with Linux for a reason. It has never stabbed me in the back and I know it never will.

So it is with the software I use. I do my best to avoid using software that doesn't run directly on my computer, because the cloud is not something I can control and that rug can be pulled out from under me at any time.

I try to keep the exceptions for tools that only work via the internet, like E-mail, news sites, social media and distribution of my novels.

Some Useful Tools (TTS Engines)

In the end, I decided to try building audiobooks with AI-based TTS (text-to-speech) engines I can run locally. The ones I'm using are nice, because they sound like natural human voices, though to a varying degree.

Here are the best open source tools I've found, so far:

• Kokoro-tts
  • This has become my favorite, because the pronunciation is almost perfect and it can mix its existing voices together
  • It excels at reading well
• Chatterbox
  • This is a zero-shot TTS engine, meaning you supply a voice sample and it reads by producing a voice that mimics it
  • It also excels at reading well, but is too slow for my overall needs
  • My favorite part of this engine is the voice changer, allowing an audio clip of one voice to be morphed into that of another
    • That retains the accent of the first, but makes it sound like the second
    • This can be used separately and that's much faster than using this engine to read
• Piper
  • Piper has a massive library of existing voices (more than 1000!) and excels at real-time reading
  • Unfortunately, the quality isn't the best
• Parler-tts
  • Produces CD quality audio (44 Khz) and can produce voices from a text description of a manner of speaking, allowing for some hint of mood
  • Parler often produces noisy audio clips, but there are prompts that can reduce or eliminate it, at least most of the time
  • The biggest downside is the extreme slowness: without a GPU for acceleration, it's unbearably slow
  • This could easily be used to produce random voices based on description to feed into Chatterbox's voice changer, giving a more permanent variation

There are many others out there, but these are the best I've found and been able to get running reliably.

My Current Process

I've begun getting some very good results with both customization and quality though the following process:

• Choose a character to find a voice for
• Pick a Piper voice that fits the character's tone
  • At this point, all that matters is the overall sound
  • Don't bother with matching accent
  • Filter noise with RNNoise, if required
    • This is a AI noise filter
    • I've found that the default settings are utter garbage
      • I think that's the reason this tool has such a bad reputation for distorting voices
    • Instead, set VAD % between 90% and 99%
      • 99% is for the least noise reduction and 90% is the threshold beyond which I consider a noisy voice unusable
  • Pitch shift it with SoX if it's not exactly right
    • Don't worry if the voice sounds artificial from the pitch change, because it won't matter
• Generate a sample reading some Harvard sentences
  • Two of them in a row is about the right length
  • Setting length scale to roughly 1.25 will be helpful for the next step, but vary by need, since some voices are naturally faster or slower
• Feed that sample into Chatterbox to produce a new sample
  • This should sound far better than the original version of the Piper voice
  • Save the resulting audio clip for the long term
    • It will later be fed into Chatterbox's voice changer
  • If you like the voice as-is, go ahead and use Chatterbox for further reading
    • I personally find Chatterbox a bit slow and like to play with voice mannerisms, so I normally keep going
  • The really beautiful part of this is what happens with pitch shifts of Piper voices
    • They sound natural when Chatterbox mimics them!
    • Mimicking a pitch-shifted sample made to sound like a bad imitation of a child will produce results that resemble a real child
      • That's the magic of a wisely-wielded AI process: garbage in, real data out
• Examine Kokoro voices
  • Now is the time to match accent and mannerisms
  • Sometimes, mixing two voices together is the best option, allowing producing softer versions of accents, or unique mannerisms
• Use Kokoro to read text, producing audio clips
• Feed audio from Kokoro through Chatterbox's voice changer to match the reading to the sample that fits the tone of the character
  • It will retain the accent and mannerisms from Kokoro
  • It will use the tone of the original Piper voice, but should sound far better

Now comes the real fun detail: because any Kokoro voice fed through the voice changer will sound like the same person, I have the option to alter mannerisms and accent as I see fit. This makes room for some slight emotion.

For example, I've been using a particular Kokoro voice along with a slight speed increase for an angry/excited version, while I use another voice at normal speed for calm.

I'll demonstrate with a character from the current novel I'm aiming to make an audiobook for, She Hunts Demons.

Clayton Simmons is the private detective that's the partner of the main character. In the book, he normally speaks with an American accent, but at one point he gets upset and slips back to his native British accent, while at other times, he gets angry. He eventually makes a bargain with a demon, allowing him to take on a heavily-muscled cat-man form that's seven to eight feet tall, depending on how much punishment he takes. That's four voice variations for one character.

For the sake of a demonstration, some examples of the resulting voices follow, reading a test phrase:

"A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky."

Simmons Calm

Simmons in his default calm state. I used Kokoro's 'am_liam' voice for accent and mannerisms. The Piper voice used for tone is speaker 800 of the LibriTTS model and that doesn't change between character states.

Simmons Angry/Excited

This is Simmons when he's angry or excited. I used Kokoro's 'am_adam' voice for accent and mannerisms. The difference is subtle, but it should add a little something to the book.

Simmons British

This is Simmons when he gets emotional and drops back to his native accent. I used Kokoro's 'bm_daniel' voice for accent and mannerisms.

Simmons Cat-Man

Last of all is Simmons in his cat-man form. I started from the angry version, but made one small change: the Piper voice was pitched down by 150 hundredths of a semitone via SoX, to make him deep and menacing.

Where to Publish?

All of that is well and good, but you might be asking the same question I asked for close to a year: where the heck can I publish AI-read audiobooks made with open source software?

I've found only two options, so far:

• Itch.io
  • You can publish almost anything in the Itch store, but it focuses on games
• Bandcamp.com
  • Bandcamp focuses on music, but they also carry audiobooks
  • Their policies don't preclude AI-read books, which was a real shocker to me
  • I only found out because there's already some on the platform
    • Mostly public domain books
    • They might have been using ElevenLabs software, but I'm uncertain

I've got two audiobooks on Bandcamp at the moment:

• Starwitch
  • As the time of writing, this was produced strictly using Piper and RNNoise
  • That required a lot of extra work to generate lines over and over until the pronunciation was passable
  • I'm eager to rebuild this one with my new multi-engine technique, but that's going to have to wait until She Hunts Demons is done
• The Most Powerful Words
  • This is a short story I used as a testbed for modifying my personal audiobook software to handle more TTS engines than just Piper
  • It uses only basic Kokoro voices, though some are pitch-shifted
  • I ought to also redo this one

In Closing

I hope you find this information useful for your own audio and voice projects. I hope it helps you produce quality audiobooks of your own.

I really would like to see a future in which AI models that run on local hardware is the norm, rather than the exception, because this cloud obsession everyone has these days is an unsettling trend. Why run software in the cloud, when local hardware can do the job? Why rent when you can own? After all, most that do real electronic work do so on a computer, so why rent another one on top of that?

I may be forced to generate chapters of my audiobooks with overnight runs, since my GPU isn't suitable for running these AI models, but it still beats letting some mega-corporation control my fate.

Even if you read your own books, perhaps Chatterbox's voice changer could be used to spice up your audiobooks with character voices? That's something I'd like to give a shot, once I learn more about voice acting.

Tags: audio, audiobooks

Farewell, Dear Friend, May We Meet Again on a Fairer Shore

I'm normally against such open over-sharing on the internet, but in this case, I think I need to say what's on my mind. I think I need to be more open for this one subject, but I have a specific intent in mind, which I'll explain at the end.

My Dear Friend

Those that have read She Goes to War may recall the introduction, in which I spoke of the friend that talked me into writing a novel set in Vietnam, during the Vietnam War. Mr. U, as I called him in that volume, to avoid sharing his name, had finally been ready to talk about his time there and we spoke at length about it, including the nitty gritty and often uncomfortable details.

We made a novel together and it became a tool he could use to face his demons whenever he needed to. He told me I'd captured the feeling of being on the ground in the jungles rather well, to the point it triggered flashbacks, but he endured them to help me finish the novel. I think it helped him to face things on his own terms, at a time of his choosing, rather than whenever his PTSD wanted to rear its ugly head.

I know it was difficult for him, but the process of helping me write that novel did seem to heal him to a certain degree and there was a change in him. There was greater light in his life from that point on. It was an honor and a privilege to help him heal.

He Changed Me

Mr. U had a profound impact on my life and my writing. He encouraged me to write more and put my whole life into it for the past four years. I'm forever changed by his influence in my life and I can't thank him enough.

We were closer than I thought two friends could ever be. We were more than brothers to each other. He was often like a father to me and he loved me like a son. However, I find all of these words insufficient: brother, father, son, friend. They're hollow and somehow not quite accurate compared to our true feelings on the matter, because English doesn't have a word for it, which is a startling realization for a writer.

I've never been so profoundly affected by a relationship of any kind and we talked about everything, including our troubles with relationships with women, my divorce, my ex-wife and our families. No subject was forbidden between us and the only boundaries we set were merely a matter of comfort. Those boundaries were fairly loose and mostly a matter of me not wanting to hear about gory stuff, but yet, we would talk about even those things from his time in war or as a cop, if Mr. U had to get something off his chest.

At one point, he was considering moving, to be closer to family, and during that time, I made up my mind: where Mr. U went, I would follow. I wasn't sure how I would make that possible, but I'm sure we would have crossed that bridge together, if it came up. In the end, he decided it was too much hassle, at least at his age and with his health issues.

What Happened?

On June 27, 2025, I went to Mr. U's house to clean for him, as I've been doing for at least a year and a half. He was dead and that was a hard thing, but he'd mentally prepared me for that, because he was old and knew how poor his health was. I'm grateful we discussed that ahead of time, or it would have been harder than it already has been.

I'd hoped for at least another few years with my best friend, but I'm glad I told him how much I loved him, multiple times. I'm grateful I told him the last time I saw him. I'm grateful I felt the need to say it just a couple days before he passed.

I'm grateful I opened up to him about my life and I'm grateful he opened up to me, in turn. I'm grateful we shared each other's pain. I'm glad we lightened each other's burdens like that.

Where I Cannot Follow

Mr. U, I would have followed you to the moon, the stars and anywhere you chose to go. I would have walked on live coals for you and would have done so gladly. This time, I can't follow, because my work is not finished and for the time being, our bodies may be separate, though your spirit is surely near.

My friend, I trust you to go on ahead and prepare the way for me, while I use the lessons I learned from you to embrace life with greater verve. I trust you to be there when my time comes, probably in thirty to forty years. That will be the most joyous of reunions, with many tears and a hug.

I love you and I will never forget you. I will remember the things you taught me and I will stand a little taller, because you were part of my life.

Farewell, dear friend, may we meet again on fairer shores, in the kingdom of our God!

To All of You

Life is too short, too frail, and there isn't enough time. Do not waste the precious moments.

Tell the people you love how much you love them. Do it now and keep telling them, every day, as often as you can.

I'm grateful that I told Mr. U how much I love him and I'm glad to say I have no regrets in that regard.

Don't wait to speak your feelings to your husbands, wives, children, sisters, brothers, parents, cousins and even friends. Live your life without regrets and be prepared for the day your ticket to the afterlife will be punched, because you never know when that might happen.

Try to be more forgiving, because life is too short for grudges, but don't let people walk all over you, either. It's okay to forgive, but to remember when someone has proven they're not going to change. Protect yourself as required, but try to forgive, at least for your own sake.

We're all children of God and the work of his hands. Try to remember that, even when people are difficult. I'll never forget hammering that point home with Mr. U, in regards to French people, who he didn't like. The look on his face when he confronted the idea that they're children of God was absolutely priceless, one of those moments I will never forget, because that was the funniest thing I've ever seen! I'll never forget the change in his attitude after that, nor the way he thanked me for challenging him to grow and embrace what Jesus would do.

In short, be more authentic with others and especially with yourself. Embrace growth and look to the future with gladness. I'm glad I met Mr. U and I will cherish the time I had with him, just as I will cherish the time I have with everyone I love.

Tags: ashen-blades

Starwitch is on Royal Road and Wattpad!

Chapter one of Starwitch has been published to Royal Road and Wattpad and new chapters will follow every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

On Royal Road, it's listed under the series name, The Book of Newts. On Wattpad, it's listed under the name of the first volume, Starwitch.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Read on Royal Road
Read on Wattpad Home, safety, and a place to belong – they seem so easy to find, at least for everyone but Amelia Blackwell and her sisters, who run from accusations of witchcraft at every turn.

It started so simply, with a book. No one might have predicted that a book apparently filled with pictures of newts might lead to so much trouble, but The Book of Newts is no ordinary volume on taxonomic detail of amphibians. The magic book reveals its true nature only to Amelia, at the age of ten, teaching her mathematics, science and engineering – subjects she would not otherwise have been exposed to.

Ironically, she and her sisters are accused of witchcraft for having built a horseless carriage, because to the ignorant villagers, there’s no difference between magic and science. They settle in a new land, only to find the same breed of persecution.

In an unusual ray of hope, they’re told of a distant kingdom that openly accepts witches, but shortly after they settle there, the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be an awful house fire surrounding their gilded cage: they’re drafted into the local military, because their new nation uses witches as living weapons.

The sisters accept the idea that peace will never be found on the ground. Looking to the stars, Amelia builds a space vessel powered by magic and steam, to carry them to a brighter future, hopefully without the strife that’s always followed them.

Unfortunately, the people of the stars have their own worries: an ancient, undead pirate queen, who consumes the souls of powerful witches to extend her own life. The Dead Queen takes Amelia’s sisters and leaves the magically-weak engineer to die, all as a sick form of sport.

Will Amelia survive long enough to overcome this greatest of all threats and rescue her sisters, or will they become fuel to feed the waning magic of a woman that should have been dead centuries before?

Tags: writing, work-in-progress, starwitch

Work In Progress #24: Starwitch #7

"You may have started this fight, but I'm [expletive deleted] well going to finish it! Perhaps accepting you is the path to one of us being eaten, but if it's eat or be eaten, then I know exactly what to do! After the entire ocean of grief I've swallowed, what’s a little more in the name of putting you down, once and for all?"

  – Marta Blackwell to the Dead Queen, an excerpt from Starwitch.

Starwitch is a novel about space-faring witches that I plan to release first as a web series, then for sale in online stores.

You can read short summaries of each day's writing on Mastodon.

Here's a list of previous blog entries on this work in progress novel, in order from oldest to newest:

• Starwitch #1
• Starwitch #2
• Starwitch #3
• Starwitch #4
• Starwitch #5
• Starwitch #6

Chapter 28: Roaring Rowley

Rowley calls out as the scene ends, "Now, someone bring me my axe!"

In the next scene, Amelia and her sisters hear strange music.

By Amelia's estimate, it features a guitar with steel strings and a body of glass, based on the sound. She mentally compares it to a screaming cat mixed with guitar.

Iris points out that the sound is based on a bone transduction spell. Marta asks why and Amelia suggests a better question is who would send music that way, but just as she's about to give an opinion, the music gets past the introduction, becoming incredibly fast-paced and much louder, reaching a painful volume!

The sisters clap their hands over their ears as they fall to the floor, but that does no good, because the sound is coming from their own skulls!

Amelia struggles to get into the pilot's seat, just as the hostile magic alarm goes off, far too late to be at all useful.

Switching back to Rowley's ship, the pirate woman is strumming her heart out with her eyes closed, on a guitar of glass with steel strings, though the interior has been stained blue. Standing beside her is her first officer, who's playing bass on a red guitar, to keep the beat, while Rowley plays about fifteen notes a second! Yes, she's playing something akin to heavy metal.

The first officer orders the weapons witch to fire the ordered warning shot and the next scene shows the glass ship from the outside, which is named Glass House, by the way.

The shape is very similar to a submarine, in that it's a long tube with a command tower for the bridge, but the very tip of it is dominated by a large, glass lens. There's also a large docking/landing bay at the front, which is full of smaller ships, including a squadron of small ships that may be short-range fighters.

Most of the ship is decorated with stained glass. Runic enchantments strengthen the materials and darken it, to keep the people inside safe.

16 mirrors pop up from the sides, which reflect light onto 16x16 arrays of glass filaments linked to the interior of the ship, which work as light-guides. The light is fed into an array of lenses that combine the light into a single, pencil-thin beam, with 4096 times the power of the sun, effectively a solar death ray.

The lower mast of Starwitch is expertly cut halfway through, severing all of the rigging cables, a warning shot meant to make it impossible to run.

Back aboard Starwitch, the song ends and Rowley delivers an ultimatum: "To the Blackwell sisters: stand to and prepare to be boarded! You and your ship now belong to the Pirate Captain 'Roaring' Rowley! Resist at your peril, because we can burn a hole clean through your ship in an instant, even from extreme range."

Assuming Rowley can hear them speak, due to the bone transduction spell, the sisters quietly gesture about the situation to each other as they prepare to fight, while the pirate ship opens its bay door, to scoop them up.

Chapter 29: "People in Glass Houses..."

Iris mentally projects herself into the bridge of Glass House, where Rowley is pleased the sisters appear to be giving up without a fight, though she's mildly suspicious.

She decides to hit the sisters with a rendition of a song she calls Hopeless in the Void.

Iris says, "I think not."

Rowley tries to argue, because she thinks she holds all the cards, just as Iris kicks her in the face.

The first officer, Mr. Zindo, is next, receiving a punch that knocks a few teeth out!

Then Iris starts mentally moving her remote-viewing spell around the room, so she can dish out punishment to the rest of the bridge crew, leaving them all down for the time being.

Back abroad Starwitch, Iris reports the success of her attack and Amelia fires up the main engines, blasting the interior of the open bay of Glass House, nearly roasting the ship's Docking Witch alive!

Marta adjusts the spell-core to pour extra magic into the engines and they accelerate faster than ever before!

Amelia glances at the rear-view crystal and notices Glass House moving to pursue them, shouting about it to Marta, who's been using the spell core and her own magic to scan for space rocks.

She locates an asteroid and charges it with an attraction spell, to slam it into the engines of Glass House.

Meanwhile, Rowley has ordered full acceleration, which is not as quick to do with such a large ship, but just as she gets going, Marta's asteroid wrecks the engines and cracks a water tank, resulting in an uncontrolled sideways spin.

Getting frustrated, Rowley again orders Zindo to start into Hopeless in the Void, with starts with the bass guitar.

Iris, who's still remote-viewing, responds by yanking Rowley's guitar out of her hands, only to use it like a club, swinging it from the neck! Rowley is hit in the head, then goes down, for a second head wound to the back of her skull. The glass guitar shatters and Zindo takes a shard of glass in the shoulder.

As Rowley passes out from her two concussions, Zindo screams for a healer.

Back aboard Starwitch, Amelia runs the engines long enough to reach escape velocity from Taneas.

Iris begins a conversation about the vow they made to their mother, to do no harm, raising the point that it seems to no longer be serving their needs. They consider for a while and decide to abandon their oath in favor of a more practical one: "I vow to do no harm, except in self-defense, for the greater good."

In truth, it's what they been doing, but they do feel better having talked about it, as a family.

Chapter 30: Gaze of the Queen

Captain Rowley wakes as a healer finishes healing her head wounds, though she still has bruises from her earlier tumble over her throne.

She immediately barks, "Status!"

Zindo lists issues:

• Docking bay and the fighters ruined
• Main engines destroyed
• They're spinning in space, due to cracked water tank
• It will be three hours before they can stop the spin
• Their prey will get beyond weapons range by then

Rowley adds a complaint of her own: with her "axe" destroyed, she can't roar.

This forces her hand and she acts on standing orders, contacting her boss, the Dead Queen, via bone transduction. She only does this because she fears being turned into a zombie by the Queen, the standard punishment for a lieutenant that fails to obey orders.

They have an interesting conversation, in which Rowley accidentally gives away her intentions and the Queen admits she has no fear of The Book of Newts falling into Rowley's hands, because the Queen was the young and foolish Newt Witch that The Book used to escape The Order of Newts.

She claims to have gleaned a great deal from it and has no fear at all of what Rowley might learn, because the Queen believes Rowley isn't half as intelligent.

She even goes so far as to say The Book holds very little information on magic, because it's all about science, which surprises Rowley. The Queen promises to deliver The Book to Rowley if she serves well.

Then, she says she'll be there momentarily.

Rowley is shocked, asking how.

The Queen answers, "A little magic and a little science."

In the next scene, Amelia is on a spacewalk, in contact with Iris via bone transduction, while Marta is near the spell-core, to cast whatever spell is required for repair work.

Amelia sees how badly damaged the mast is, finding the way it's been flailing around punched a hole in the hull during acceleration.

Amelia and Marta cut the damaged section of the hull free, replacing it. When they're done welding and spell casting, there's no trace of the original damage.

Next, Amelia gets Marta to cut the broken mast, in preparation for replacing the damaged section, but just as Amelia is about to tie off the mast, so they won't lose it, there's an incredible burst of magic, beyond anything Amelia has ever seen, which leaves the sisters terrified, because they can all feel it.

There's a flash of light so bright, Amelia can see the bones of her hands, despite her eyelids and suit being in the way! When it's over, there's an entire, rectangular mountain worth of granite floating in Taneas orbit, beside Glass House, which is so distant at this point, it looks like a little, sparkling dot.

The monolith scoops up Glass House, then turns to accelerate toward Starwitch! Amelia does some quick calculations and concludes they don't have time to save the mast. She climbs back in the ship, using her tether rope to move faster and doesn't even bother to pressurize the witchpit and the entry room.

She climbs in the pilots seat and rams the throttle forward, while Marta and Iris turn off all the background spells of the spell-core and use its full power to amplify the engines as much as possible, then follow up by adding their own magic to do the same. It isn't much, but Amelia also adds her own magic.

Chapter 31: Final Preparations

Flashing forward to the present again, Amelia uses a new spell to create an atmosphere-holding bubble around Starwitch, then releases the air inside the entry bay and witchpit by forcing the door open a few inches.

Once pressure is equalized, shew hauls the door aside and goes out, walking the underside of the ship with her magnetic boots.

She reaches the rear cargo hatch and carefully pops three corners loose, while the fourth stays latched, releasing atmosphere without blasting the hatch into space.

Her plan succeeds and the tires of the war wagon don't explode, because there's just enough atmosphere to prevent that.

Amelia climbs inside and uses manual mechanisms to flip the wagon over, since it has been mounted upside down, the entire time. She also adjusts the end of the track holding the tires to flatten it out (it's articulated), then locks it back down.

The end result is that the track lines right up with the edge of the hatch.

Next, she climbs back out and puts the hatch back in place, followed by installing a pair of hinges on the outside. She tests them, then seals the hatch and allows the air bubble to slowly release, by poking some balanced holes in it, to avoid undesired thrust.

She walks back along the hull, toward the door, as her mind wanders back to the past...

Chapter 32: All the Stops

The Blackwell sisters realize they're not going to escape with superior thrust, because Starwitch is maxed out and the monolith is still gaining!

Iris switches tactics and projects her mind into the other ship, searching for a vulnerable point. She tracks magic to reach the spell-core, revealing the Dead Queen uses one made from twenty stolen cores welded into a mythril plate, with a control circle on another big plate, above them.

The room is guarded by zombies, which can't see Iris.

She decides to unscrew the spell-core in the hopes that will shut down the gravity-based spell propelling the huge ship.

She reaches out to touch it and it attacks her with magic, effectively lighting her on fire in her mind, and she loses consciousness, due to the pain, though she's otherwise uninjured.

Seeing this, Marta decides it's time to get nasty and she begins charging one of the worst spells the Dugaria military taught her, the very same she used to burn soldiers out of forts with. Additionally, she links the power of the spell-core into it, allowing that vast energy to flow through her body.

The Dead Queen has a short scene in which she observes Marta's spell as it charges up on the masts of Starwitch, truly impressed by the power of it, eventually deciding Marta's magic is a threat.

It won't be important until the next chapter, but the Dead Queen's living appearance is given (curly, red hair, green eyes, fair skin), then for contrast, her present appearance is described (not much hair, a crazed look in her eyes, pallid skin that literally hangs loose, because her muscles are wasting away).

She briefly argues with one of the souls she's consumed, which is the strongest, before silencing her with a little spirit magic.

Concerned Marta has half a chance of killing her, the Dead Queen knocks her cold with a little blood magic, which spoil the spell Marta was charging.

Amelia tries making hairpin turns in the hopes she can lose the monolith that way, but she's disappointed to see the huge ship finally employ its engines to make up for the maneuverability difference.

Hopelessness sets in and she gives up, slowly reducing throttle, to make it clear to her pursuer, so she won't get squashed like a bug. She hopes to find a better moment to fight, some little opportunity to turn the tables.

She turns the ship around, for a better view, and gets a good look at the bridge of the monolith.

As the monolith moves in, with a docking bay open, Amelia works to retract the masts, but she's too late and the Docking Witch intentionally damages them by smacking Starwitch into the ceiling, until the masts are a bent mess, during which Amelia is tossed around the Witchpit. In the end, she extends the landing gear as both a sign of capitulation and an attempt to minimize further damage.

Starwitch is landed and the bay door is closed. When the pressure is up to normal, Amelia takes off her pressure suit and puts it away, then joins her sisters.

All three of them put their hands on the spell-core and get ready to fight as the Docking Witch enters, revealing she's a zombie, with mind intact.

They try to fight, but the zombie witch is faster, hitting them with a lightning-based stun spell that effectively works like a taser.

Armored zombie soldiers carry the sisters away.

The witch suggests they stop fighting and be entertaining, because that's their best bet. She also suggests they show no strength, because the Dead Queen loves to consume the souls of strong witches, though she admits it's probably too late for that.

Iris and Marta argue, but only get stunned for their trouble, while Amelia listens. As it turns out, the undead witch pities them and wants to help, because she wouldn't wish her fate on her worst enemy.

Amelia settles on a plan that involves crying, to make herself look pathetic, in the hope of saving herself, which makes her feel really awful, because she doesn't believe she can save her sisters.

She brings the death of her mother to mind, to make herself cry in the presence of the Dead Queen, adding a twist to the opening scene that the reader may not have expected. In effect, her tears were half despair and half grief intentionally brought to the surface.

Chapter 33: Mixed-Up Marta

Marta is in a cell, with her arms chained around a column, feeling particularly strange and possibly even sick, due to recent events.

She had a really bizarre experience with the Dead Queen, who spent an uncomfortably long time staring into Marta's eyes, using them as a literal window to the soul.

Marta's magic fails to work and she falls asleep, because she's exhausted.

She dreams that she's a child with curly, red hair and lives aboard a star ship with her mother, who's a Newt Witch.

He mother gives her a black puppy and gets her to vow to care for and clean up after the pup. Marta uses these words: "I, Elsbeth Natas, vow to care for and never neglect this dog! I will clean up the messes he makes!"

Cognitive dissonance sets in and Marta steps back from the memory that isn't her own, stepping toward a shadowed corner, which includes a doorway to another room, where someone hisses for her to get out of the light.

Marta joins a shadowed figure in the dark room and she's told the Dead Queen has forcefully stolen a piece of Marta's soul, only to have replaced it with a piece of her own.

Naturally, Marta is suspicious of this shadowed woman, who explains she's a fragment of a soul the Queen ate fifty years before and all she wants is to mess up the Queen's plans.

She talks Marta into accepting the new memories, because the internal fight against them is why she can't use her magic. This witch thinks Marta is strong enough to beat the Queen in a surprise duel, but she's got to get her magic working to do that.

Marta agrees and goes back to the little girl, stepping back into the memory, while the shadowed woman grins in a wicked way, though Marta doesn't see it.

Marta wakes with an aching neck, but manages to use a little weak magic to unlock the chains holding her, though that's enough to exhaust her.

Seeking to gain greater control of her magic, she settles in to meditate on her memories, to categorize who they belong to.

In the next scene, Elsbeth is sixteen years old (she was twelve in the previous memory), with her dog, Bones, loyally following her. He's a rottweiler, by the way, and he's enormous.

Elsbeth wears the red garb of a trained Newt Witch.

A scared and angry man moves to attack, but Bones steps in the way, growling. The man doesn't give up and stabs the dog three times, before Elsbeth steps in, using blood magic to stop the man's heart.

She tries to heal Bones, but she's attacked from behind by three men, while Bones falls over, because he's bleeding out.

Two of the men grab Elsbeth's arms, while the third puts a garrote around her neck and hauls back on it! Unable to speak, she can't cast spells, but magic does pour out of her body. The spirit of Bones absorbs some of it and uses it to tear the man with the garrote to pieces, while Elsbeth uses more blood magic to kill the other two.

She looks on the spirit of her dead, but still loyal dog and decides to bond his spirit to his bones, raising him as a zombie. Then she uses blood magic to repair the corpse, making him look alive again and she reasons that so long as she has the magic, she'll keep him in good shape.

Marta steps out of the memory and finds a dark corner, in an alley, where the shadowed figure waits. Marta admits she doesn't like what she's doing, because it feels strange and wrong.

They talk for a time and the figure reasons that what Marta's doing can be a two-edged sword. If she's not careful, she can harm herself, but she should be able to use it to hurt the Queen. Besides, she needs her full magical strength to fight the Queen, which she can't use with her mind in turmoil.

Marta goes back to the memory and the shadowed figure mutters to herself, "You poor, doomed fool."

She briefly steps out of the shadows, revealing she has curly, red hair and green eyes, because she's a part of Elsbeth Natas, the Dead Queen.

As she watches Marta run headlong into a trap, an invisible real fragment of another soul tells Elsbeth how much it hates her.

Elsbeth responds that she got the idea from the fragment, who tried to help one of her victims fight back, fifty years earlier.

Chapter 34: Interrogation of Iris

Iris is in a cell very much like the one Marta's in, but hers is not so empty and dark, because the Docking Witch of the ship is with her.

The witch applies one torture spell after another, which starts from the toes and slowly passes through the entire body, until it reaches the top of the head, after which Iris always says, "Iris Blackwell, Specialist, L-F-7-5-9-0-2."

The Docking Witch is impressed, because Iris has endured eleven such spells without crying out, but that's due to anti-interrogation training she received in Dugaria, since she was an intelligence operative with access to some rather sensitive information.

Speaking loudly, the Docking Witch questions Iris, but then softly encourages her to keep resisting, because the more pain she can endure, the longer she can put off having her soul eaten by the Queen, who badly wants to know what Iris tried to do to the spell-core.

Ironically, they both hope that Amelia will come back to rescue Iris.

Eventually, Iris finds herself looking on her own body from the outside, in a very detached manner, while her body continues to give nothing more than name, rank and serial number.

After a little while, she realizes she's remote-viewing, without having spoken the words of the spell. She walks behind the column she's chained to and experimentally touches the chain, confirming she can remote-touch.

She reasons her body is near death from dehydration, because she sweats some more with each torture spell and she's literally been sitting in a puddle of sweat.

She considers using the instinctual spell to escape, but decides the timing isn't right. She instead decides to wait until Amelia attacks and returns to hr body.

The Queen steps into the room and instructs the Docking Witch to reverse her tactics, then whispers in her ear. The Docking witch is disturbed by whatever the Queen suggested and it shows on her face.

When the Queen leaves, the witch alters her spell to cause pleasure instead of pain and Iris is overwhelmed into unconsciousness by the spell, after an hour.

When she wakes, she's craving more and the witch offers to give Iris exactly what she wants, if she cooperates. Iris had no issue with resisting torture, but nothing in her training had prepared her for such powerfully addictive magic.

She breaks within ten minutes and spills her secrets over the course of a day interspersed with less powerful hits from the spell. The only thing she held back was her budding escape plan.

When it's all over, Iris feels dirty and ashamed.

Chapter 35: Immortality by Degrees

The Dead Queen sits in her quarters, pleased by the way things are progressing.

Marta has fallen for her trap and is running toward synchronization of their souls, rather than away. Iris has broken and given up her secrets, as unhelpful as they turned out to be, because Iris has no idea how remote-touch works, because she does it on instinct. Even the task of repairing Rowley's ship is moving right along.

Her internal monologue provides an explanation of the effects of consuming a soul, which is compared to how runic enchantments work on granite, with many souls drawing magic in more rapidly, though they do interfere with each other during casting. However, the overall effect is more powerful and that has kept her alive for centuries, though she gives her dog, Bones, an extra helping of magic, to keep his body intact.

The Queen settles in for some quiet meditation in the dark, because she still needs to finish consuming Marta's soul and that requires getting in sync with it. To that end, she enters one of Marta's memories.

The Queen experiences the day Marta's husband, Zayne, died. She sits at home, waiting for him to come home, just a week after they were married, but he never does. Instead, her father shows up, to tell her Zayne was killed.

They cry together and Marta ends up pummeling her father's chest in frustration, though he never complains, just continuing to hold her.

Eventually, they discuss what happened. Her father says Zayne was found tied to a tree and wolves had gotten him. He was still alive, so her father rushed him to Marta's mother for medical aid. Despite everything Erika and Iris did, they hadn't been able to save him.

The Queen steps out of the memory, commenting, "How sad. Makes me glad I never married."

Next, the Queen experiences Marta's first deployment to the battlefield against living targets, in which she accidentally blasted a massive hole in the enemy lines, when she was only meant to be a distraction, because she lost control of her feelings and her magic.

On seeing the corpse-littered field, she says, "I'm sorry."

The Lieutenant and Sergeant both compliment her work and tell her not to apologize for doing a good job.

Marta clarifies in her own mind that she'd been talking to the men she killed.

Marta is promoted to Corporal for her excellent work and the sisterly way she looks after the men.

The Queen steps out of Marta and comments, "You have such destructive talent, yet you call yourself a pacifist? What fool raised you? They should have fostered your talent, rather than expecting you to hide it."

The third memory she experiences takes place just after the sisters reached orbit, after fleeing Dugaria.

Marta wakes and joins Iris in the witchpit. As they stare at the stars, they discuss their military careers, while Marta seeks a way forward, because she's overwhelmed by the thousands of lives she took.

Iris places the blame on the King of Dugaria and his generals, because they're the ones that tricked the sisters into settling in the land, without telling them they'd become weapons of war.

Iris tells Marta she loves her and asks Marta to give herself a little time. From that point on, they quietly talk about their military service on a regular basis, because they both know Amelia wouldn't understand.

The Queen steps out of Marta, feeling a strange sense of nostalgia for home and family, despite the fact she hasn't really had either for centuries.

She's impressed by the level of blind faith Marta and Iris place in Amelia. She starts to feel bad about all she's done to them.

Recognizing the influence of Marta, the Queen violently shakes her head, ridding herself of those thoughts.

Marta steps out of her own memory and faces the Queen, saying, "Didn't work, eh?"

The Queen demands to know how Marta can exert such influence and Marta admits she got the idea from the bit of the Queen that's been trying to trick her (it turns out she wasn't fooled, after all, and was just playing along).

Marta physically attacks the Queen in the mindscape they share because their souls are now linked, using the martial arts training she got in Dugaria. The Queen is knocked to the floor and Marta puts a boot on her neck, all while explaining they have a few things in common, in that they're both killers, though Marta sets herself apart, based on motives.

In the end, she says this: "You may have started this fight, but I'm-' she cursed, 'well going to finish it! Perhaps accepting you is the path to one of us being eaten, but if it's eat or be eaten, then I know exactly what to do! After the entire ocean of grief I've swallowed, what’s a little more in the name of putting you down, once and for all?"

Marta transforms her mental self into a giant snake and reaches to eat the Queen, who responds by rolling away and running through a wall!

Back in her quarters, she admits she underestimated Marta and settles in for a more involved soul vs. soul fight, setting her entire mind on the task.

Chapter 36: Ramming Speed

The Queen's meditation is interrupted, because she's needed on the bridge. Starwitch has been detected, on approach.

The Queen takes a look and determines that Amelia over-shot and will pass right in front of the monolith, without making contact. She considers this kind of sad, but goes back to meditating, this time from her throne on the bridge.

Starwitch passes within a matter of miles of the monolith, which is just close enough for Amelia to use the waste magic its propulsion spells produce. She requires an incredible amount of energy for her plans and Amelia pushes her body right to the limits of how much magic she can process, dang near killing herself.

In fact, a point arrives at which she's certain she's bitten off more than she could ever chew, despite how necessary all that energy is.

In the moment, there's a brief scene from the perspective of The Book of Newts, in which it is both frustrated and angry, wishing it had picked a different "puppet" to act through, because Amelia is not exploring the universe, like it wants to do.

In fact, she's been subconsciously resisting its influence and she doesn't have enough magic power for it to act more directly.

In the end, it realizes Amelia is about to accidentally kill herself, which would leave The Book in a ship that's adrift in deep space, because the current trajectory of Starwitch will slingshot it away from Junas with escape velocity, unless it helps, something it's loathe to do, since it's extremely selfish.

The Book reaches out to Amelia's mind and takes control of the flow of magic going through her body, giving her the power to handle it.

Amelia is surprised she doesn't die and channels the gathered energy into a gravity-manipulation spell, to give Starwitch enough thrust to change it's orbital inclination to match that of the monolith over a very short time. The G-forces nearly kill Amelia and she starts to gray out, until she adjusts her spell to reduce the forces inside the ship.

The crazy spell puts both ships in roughly the same orbit, though Starwitch is moving faster. Seeing this insanely-fast change in trajectory, the Queen orders full reverse thrust, but this isn't enough.

She tries to cast a spell to put even more power into her ship's propulsion spells, but Marta chooses that moment to mentally attack her, to prevent the Queen from casting spells!

Seeing Starwitch approach tail-first and concluding Amelia is aiming for the bridge, the Queen runs into a hallway, followed closely by her dog! The engines of Starwitch come to life for a second and a half, blasting the window to pieces, followed by a little decompression, which blows the remaining bridge crew into space!

Starwitch passes into the bridge tail-first and Amelia deploys the landing gear in time for a rough, backwards landing!

The ship rolls to a halt and Amelia activates the atmosphere bubble spell she tested out in an earlier chapter, sealing the hole in the monolith.

Chapter 37: Weapons of War

Iris is alone in her cell, where she's been since her interrogation ended. She has some water and bread, but she's so sick from withdrawal, she can hardly keep it down.

At one point, she tries magic, but a runic device in the ceiling hits her with a stun spell. It seems designed to detect magic words of any kind, at which point it will stun her.

With nothing better to do, she begins repeating her name, rank and serial number, in an attempt to put herself into a hypnotic state, to control the pain, finding some success.

Eventually, all of her symptoms fade and she realizes she's left her body behind again, having cast an instinctual remote-viewing spell that requires no words.

She begins wandering the ship, mapping it in her head as she bides her time until Amelia shows up to rescue her.

Hearing a commotion and experiencing some brief wind from a potential hull breach, Iris pops into the bridge, quite pleased to find Starwitch parked inside.

Knowing the time has come, Iris seeks the Queen, so she can give her the beating of her (un)life.

Amelia notes the pressure outside the ship is normal and opens the door, then puts away her pressure suit.

Passing through the workshop, she sees The Book glowing in a weird way and realizes it's maintaining her atmosphere bubble spell, to free her mind. She thanks it for helping.

Stepping into the spell-core room, she talks to the brownies: "Uh, rats, I'm leaving Starwitch in your care. I’m not sure if you can help or not, but I'm going to leave a little surprise for you, just outside the main hatch. If you can, use it to keep the zombies away."

She takes a small steam engine with her and exits the ship.

We switch to the perspective of the brownies, who come out of hiding as she leaves. There's a father, mother, a teenage girl and a boy of unspecified age that's covered in dust bunnies.

They have a discussion about whether or not helping is appropriate. The mother, daughter and son are all for helping, but the father is a slow decision maker and apparently the one that's in charge, because they all wait for his decision.

In the background, Amelia makes some noise by driving the war wagon out of the cargo bay, followed by preparing the "surprise" she's leaving the brownies.

Eventually, the father decides they should help defend the ship, because it's a very good home.

As Amelia drives off in the war wagon, they go outside and find a small tripod with a spring-gonne mounted on it, which Amelia has slightly modified for their use, including installing a seat for one of them to sit next to the trigger, for the sake of pulling it. The tripod includes little handles to turn, which rotate it and adjust elevation.

The tripod is linked to the little steam engine, which makes it self-reloading.

The son is super-excited and his family silently decides he isn't allowed to touch it, because he's too eager. The son is given control of the steam engine's on/off lever, while the father decides "A man must defend his family" and mans the trigger.

His mate is amused by this, because pulling the trigger is easy and he's left aiming to the women.

Zombies begin entering the room and the Brownies initially miss. Knowing they can't afford to waste ammo, the father does some magic to make their shots seek skulls and zombies fall with each shot.

The Queen is in the hall, struggling even to move, because Marta is momentarily winning their mental battle, while Bones looks on and whimpers at her, with concern.

The Queen starts to rise, just in time for Amelia to drive around the corner and go right over her! Seeing something that hurt his master, Bones chases the war wagon, presumably with lethal intent, barking as he runs.

Amelia doesn't even notice him and uses the waste magic in the air to cast a locator spell, in the hopes of finding Marta.

The Queen gains enough control of her mind to repair her body with magic and rises to her feet, just in time for Iris to jump her from behind, using remote-touch.

Iris fights dirty, first punching the Queen in the kidneys, followed by putting an arm around the dead witch's neck, hauling back. Next, she puts a knee into the Queen's spine, really putting some pressure on it.

The Queen tries to fight back, but Iris can't be touched.

The undead witch doesn't actually need air and begins considering possibilities, eventually coming to the conclusion Iris is responsible, though the Queen's unsure how, because Iris is in a cell that prevents the use of magic words.

The Queen finally realizes, however, that she once cast an instinctual spell to empower the spirit of Bones to affect the real world and realizes she may have inadvertently taught Iris how to remote-view without magic words, because when someone is being tortured, they would prefer to not be in their body and clearly, Iris used her talent to find a way to do that.

There's a brief and amusing mental conversation between the Queen and Marta:

My, aren't we just underestimating people left and right? Marta laughed, Keep up the excellent work!

Oh, shut up! The Queen mentally growled back.

Marta chuckled, Make me!

Iris adjusts her grip from a pointless choke-hold to grab the Queen's head, literally trying to twist it off!

All the Queen can do is complain.

Chapter 38: Death Dog

Amelia follows her locator spell, which puts a glittering trail on the floor for her to follow and she's soon lost, because the monolith's lower floors are an intentional maze.

In the blink of the eye, she misses an important turn and stops, to put the wagon in reverse.

Bones finally catches up and leaps onto the wagon, with a heavy thump! Amelia slams the accelerator pedal to the floor and Bones slides down the windshield, which only makes things worse. Their gaze meets and Amelia is terrified, because she's never seen a dog with glowing eyes!

She fires the driver's side spring-gonne, putting a lead ball through the dog's belly and hindquarters, which covers the windshield in blood, preventing Amelia from seeing, as she hears the sound of metal tearing! She tries the driver's gonne again, but nothing happens, because Bones ripped it right off!

Amelia switches out of reverse and begins accelerating as fast as she can, while she switches into higher gears, to gain speed as she prepares to intentionally crash the wagon, because she knows she isn't the best driver under exciting conditions and designed it to take a crash or two.

Bones cracks the outer layer of glass, then hits it again, while Amelia continues to accelerate. His third strike cracks the inner pane and Amelia becomes certain his fourth will get all the way through, so she turns the wagon sharply into a wall, just as the teeth of Bones penetrate the glass, which is as strong as steel, due to enchantments, by the way.

Bones goes flying and takes the window with him, but when he tosses it aside and gets up without one single scratch, Amelia switches the wagon back into reverse and hits the accelerator, while Bones howls and gives chase, continually getting faster, as if anger is his fuel!

Amelia turns the car around and starts shifting into higher gears again, as she takes the turn she missed at full speed! She comes out into a massive, open chamber, which resembles a city in every respect, because it is one!

The streets are thronged with zombies pulling hand carts, moving resources around, as required to serve their Queen.

Amelia accelerates as zombie laborers scatter. Looking back, she sees Bones is still getting faster, so she hits the booster rockets, finally losing him in the crowd, though she does crash through a cart loaded with large ceramic jars of water, which dump their contents all over Amelia.

Finally feeling a little safe, she puts more effort into driving and avoids further accidents, though not out of any care for the zombies, but because she doesn't need the delays.

The trail goes into a building and Amelia parks the wagon, draws her hand-gonne and kicks the door, hurting her foot, because it's two inch thick oak.

She turns the handle and pushes it open, then rushes in. For once in her life, she reacts fast enough and shoots two zombies in the head, doing all the math required for perfect shots.

The third swings his sword, but Amelia ducks, thanks to her basic training. She put her gonne in the zombie's face and shoots him in the head, just like the other two.

As Amelia puked, because none of the zombies were a pretty sight before she poked holes through their skulls, I took a moment to explain why shooting a zombie in the head works.

It has nothing to do with brains, because zombies don't need them, or they wouldn't turn into walking skeletons once their flesh rotted off. Instead, think of zombies as animated skeletons covered in partially alive flesh, which gives them doubled strength. What matters most is their skull, which serves to anchor their spirits to their bones.

So, the classic "shoot 'em in the head" trope works because you're breaking their skull, not their brain, at least in this setting.

Amelia is shocked back into full action-heroine mode by the sound of Bones howling, because he's catching up!

Amelia leaps the counter top of the jail/prison she's in, runs down the hall to the door indicated by her spell, then discovers the door is locked, just as bones enters!

She casts a quick lock opening spell as the dog leaps the counter and she pushes her way inside as the dog slides past, because the floor is a little too polished for him.

Amelia lights the dark cell with another spell, revealing Marta is deep in a trance, as Bones enters and growls with more menace than even a rottweiler ought to be capable of, he's had lots of practice and he knows Amelia is cornered.

Amelia shakes her sister and screams in her ear as Bones leaps!

Chapter 39: Rescue

Marta shouts at the dog, "Down!"

Bones lays down, but continues to growl at Amelia, until Marta says, "No! This is Amelia. She's your friend."

Bones licks Amelia's hand.

Amelia naturally has questions and Marta explains: Bones doesn't use the senses of his body, because they failed him long ago. Instead, he uses the senses of his spirit, which work in a much more metaphorical way. Right now, part of Marta is the Queen, so Bones thinks she's his master. This may indicate that their souls are mixing more fluidly than is safe for Marta.

Marta behaves in a more gruff fashion than usual, because her personality and that of the Queen are mixing, though she claims to be in control and her intent is to eat the Queen's soul, lest she lose her own. She insists she'll go back to normal once she wins the soul vs. soul fight.

Amelia is not reassured, but changes the subject, asking where Iris is. She turns out to be just down the hall.

They find her lying on the floor of her cell, repeating her name, rank and serial number, as a mantra to block the pain.

Marta explains that they better not disturb her too much, because she's currently giving the Queen the beating of her unlife.

Marta picks up Iris and they put her in the front seat of the wagon.

They're abut to head back to Starwitch, but Iris briefly stops her mantra to suggest they retrieve their spell-core.

Amelia drives and Marta tells her which way to go, while Bones rides on the hood, presumably enjoying the ride and the wind, as dogs tend to do.

The narrative returns to the Queen, who is beyond furious, because Iris is rather good at hand-to-hand, something the Queen never learned, because she had strong magic. She's also insanely strong in her invisible, untouchable remote-viewing state.

She settles on a crazy plan, based on what she knows of about raw mythril.

Without runes to restrain it, mythril slowly builds up magic over time, until it can no longer contain it, at which point the magic spills into the air, leaving it dangerously charged. When a mind with an active imagination comes along, the energy discharges, becoming a spell that matches the image in mind. This is known as a mythril surge.

She sets her mind on concentrating as much magic as she can in the local area, until it builds to an artificial surge, despite the fact she only has a 60% chance of controlling it, while Iris has a 30% chance of being the one to shape it, while there's a 25% chance the ship will absorb it. There is some overlap between those, in which multiple options happen.

The Queen gets lucky and produces a shockwave of spirit magic, which snaps Iris back to her body!

Just as the Queen is getting back to her feet, the sisters come down the hallway and run her down, again!

Seeing they didn't turn to go for their ship, she reasons they're off to get their spell-core back.

The Queen heals herself and gets back to her feet as she reasons about the chances of the sisters stealing her spell core, initially believing it's impossible, but as she considers the fact their spell-core's runes literally name them as its owner and the fact the Queen's core only makes reference to an "owner", she realizes it's just possible.

She curses and uses a gravity spell to fly down the hall, after them.

Marta torches the zombies in the spell-core chamber, who thank her before they turn to ash.

After a warning from Iris, Amelia puts on some thick gloves and examines the spell-core, intending to just remove theirs, but it turns out to be welded in, which is something Amelia has no clue how to accomplish, let alone do, because the melting point of mythril is incredibly high.

In the end, they decide to steal the whole thing and Iris gives it a go, via remote-touch, though she puts Amelia's gloves on her invisible hands, for some extra protection.

She unscrews the thing and the ship lurches, due to a sudden loss of thrust, though the artificial gravity turns out to be a spell permanently placed on the granite of the mountain, presumably to ensure that gravity is never lost.

Iris puts it in the rear gunner's seat of the wagon.

Marta points out that since they've stolen the core, it should consider them its owner and she recklessly touches it without dying.

Everyone gets in and Amelia backs them out of the spell-core room.

Coming back to the Queen again, she hears the wagon coming and lands in the hallway.

She's beyond pissed, but has gotten her magic under control, now that Marta and Iris are focused elsewhere.

The wagon comes around a corner on two wheels and the Queen smiles wickedly as she chants a spell.

Chapter 40: Showdown

Amelia spots the Dead Queen down the hallway and shifts into a higher gear, intending to hit her as hard as possible!

The Queen uses an inverted gravity crush spell to rip the wagon apart! Amelia is knocked cold and Iris takes a rather distressingly large chunk of metal to her gut!

Bones has the benefit of centuries of experience and he leaps over the head of the Queen, landing on his feet, without injury.

The Queen says, "Heel." and Bones obeys.

She points at Amelia and says, "Kill!"

Bones hesitates, because as far as he knows, Amelia is a friend.

The Queen repeats herself and Marta shouts, "Leave my dog out of this!"

The Queen laughs at Marta's confusion, but Marta points at the Queen and orders, "Kill!"

The Queen points at Marta and gives the same order.

Iris gets a brief scene, in which she begins dragging herself toward the spell-core, because it's her only hope of survival. She looks at Amelia, noting the fact she's also in need of healing.

There's a short scene from the perspective of Bones and we learn he considers the Queen to be his god. At the moment, he can't tell the difference between Marta and the Queen, reasoning they're both his god, which is weird, because his god isn't normally in two places at once.

He compares them by sight, hearing and smell, but can't tell them apart. Finally, he licks the hand of each, while they argue about him and give him orders. He dislikes the way the Queen tastes, but Marta tastes better, since she isn't a rotting corpse.

Therefore, Bones comes to the conclusion that Marta is a good god and the Queen is a bad god and he leaps to attack the Queen.

Despite how much the Queen loves her dog, she hits him with a stun spell that ends by gently lulling him off to sleep.

Marta and the Queen end up on exactly the same mental wavelength for a moment and they cast exactly the same spell, at the same level of power, just pointed in opposite directions. Their spells cancel each other out and the magic involved is released into the air, raw.

This is so much magic that a pair of surges happen. The spell-core rolls right to the hand of Iris and an illusion of the food bowl of Bones appears in front of him, laden with a wonderful-looking steak, because that's what he's dreaming about.

Iris uses the spell-core to heal herself (involves yanking the hunk of steel out of her gut, so ouch!) and her sisters.

Next, she tries to burn the Queen alive with its magic, while Marta hides the fact she's mumbling a spell.

The Queen feels the air heating and saves herself with a gravity spell that punches the core out of Iris' hands, but she's too distracted to stop Marta from casting a fire spell of her own!

The Queen tries to extinguish the incoming fire spell with a counter-spell, but Marta perfectly matches her again, canceling her spell out. The Queen is lit on fire and rolls around, while another surge happens, making the illusion of the steak smell like one.

Bones wakes to the smell of the best steak, ever, and bites into nothing, realizing it was an illusion. In his irrational doggy brain, he decides the bad god is responsible and he moves toward the Queen with menace and growls! Amelia draws her hand-gonne and points it at the undead pirate.

This conversation happens:

Practically crying, the Queen crawled back from Bones, protesting, "First you turn my dog against me, then you steal my ship's core? What's next, pulling my teeth?"

"We didn't ask for this!" Amelia shouted back, "You attacked us! Why don't you just let us go?"

"I might as well cover myself in tartar sauce and go swimming in shark infested waters!" The Queen spoke with great sarcasm, "My lieutenants would tear me to shreds, just the same!"

While the sisters consider their options, the Queen starts casting a spell.

Amelia decides to shoot the Queen in the head with her hand-gonne, but the Queen completes her spell and vanishes in a bright flash of light, using a spatial translocation spell, very similar to the way her ship first appeared.

Iris calls the Queen a coward and they head for their ship.

When they reach the bridge, they're surprised to see hundreds of formerly-zombie corpses, all killed by eerily-accurate shots to the forehead. There's some discussion of what happened and Amelia says "the rats" used the toy she left them.

They pack up the spring-gonne and the steam engine it ran on, then board their ship.

Amelia passes through the workshop on her way to install their new and improved spell-core, seeing The Book is still maintaining the atmosphere bubble spell.

She installs the new core, then requests The Book end the spell. Starwitch shoots out of the bridge of Foundation Stone like a cork from a shaken bottle of champagne and then Amelia fires up the new core, using it to propel them with a gravity spell, since they have no water on board.

Chapter 41: The Chase Begins

As it turns out, Rowley has been watching events aboard Foundation Stone the entire time, using scrying magic.

She is extremely entertained by the outcome, because it has left the Queen in a serious position of weakness, in which she'll an awful time just controlling her ship, because the Blackwell sisters left it without an atmosphere.

The Queen has tired writing things down, but all of the ink wells have boiled away. Some charcoal is briefly used, but that runs out quickly.

Rowley knows exactly what's coming, however, because the Queen has no choice: she'll chase the sisters down to kill them and retrieve her spell-core, lest all of the Queen's lieutenants smell blood in the water and come for her, while she's weak.

Rowley leaves before the Queen comes to the simple conclusion that the spell-core of Glass House could solve most of her troubles, and the Docking With, Mina, helps her do so.

Rowley intends to soon metaphorically be a long way off, with no knowledge of current events, lest she also become a target, since the Blackwell sisters defeated her first.

The next scene is from Marta's perspective, because Amelia passed out moments after writing down instructions for their course and Iris is far too sick to handle looking after the ship.

She considers how Iris is doing, extremely concerned for her mind and body, since it's quite possible the withdrawal symptoms could kill her. To that end, Marta is considering hitting her with occasional low doses of the spell that gave her the addiction, to ease her past the most lethal portion of withdrawal.

Her thoughts are interrupted by the Dead Queen making an ineffectual threat: Marta Blackwell, I’m coming for you! You won’t escape my wrath!

Marta tells her to shut up, then sets her mind to causing the Queen trouble, amazed the Queen found the time to make threats.

Parting Thoughts

Chapter 41 is the last chapter of Starwitch! I hope you enjoyed following along as I wrote. Starwitch will be published to royalroad.com and wattpad.com in the near future.

I can still hardly believe I wrote 13 and a half chapters this week, which was about 28,500 words, more than a quarter of this novel, but inspiration hit me very hard and for once, I felt able to catch nearly all of it, though that has left me very exhausted.

Now I can enjoy re-reading the novel from the beginning, for the sake of editing and consistency improvements, which should be lots of fun. Hypothetically, Starwitch should be published in the next two weeks, though I've still got some big hurdles to leap in the mean time, quite aside from editing.

This link will take you to a page you can watch for further updates on the release details.

Tags: writing, work-in-progress, starwitch

Work In Progress #23: Starwitch #6

"The distant woman groaned, 'We're not pirates, you idiot! We’re just new to space travel, so how could we possibly know how we're supposed to mark our ship, to make you think we're friendly?'

Haley growled, 'That's what a pirate would say!'

'It's also what a normal person would say. Now, if we were pirates, wouldn't we be trying to kill you, instead of talking?' "

  – An excerpt from Starwitch.

Starwitch is a novel about space-faring witches that I plan to release first as a web series, then for sale in online stores.

You can read short summaries of each day's writing on Mastodon.

Here's a list of previous blog entries on this work in progress novel, in order from oldest to newest:

• Starwitch #1
• Starwitch #2
• Starwitch #3
• Starwitch #4
• Starwitch #5

Chapter 23: Solar Wind

Amelia and her sisters stand in the witchpit, while she demonstrates a light sail spell she's cast without assistance from the spell-core.

I did a little research on light sails and discovered that a better approach than reflecting light is to split it with a prism-like sail. I also considered the sails of Starwitch, in particular, and decided that it's an illusion anchored to the masts, via an enchantment. I edited the first chapter accordingly, adding a rainbow effect.

The rigging is enchanted to produce musical notes to indicate the level of pressure on the cables inside the masts, ranging from A to G-sharp, but if if goes up an octave, then the rigging is in danger of breaking under the strain, since steel cables can only handle so much.

Reasoning that illusions can affect light, I decided that Starwitch literally uses weightless illusions for sail material.

Amelia's sail is weak, little more than a spider's web of prism-like material, which she has to refresh from one second to the next, because even raw sunlight can scatter her illusions. Her spell can get the rigging to a C-sharp on one side and a B on the other, based on their angle.

Marta requests and is given an explanation of the basics of the spell.

Iris asks what part the masts play and Amelia explains that they bear enchantments to allow illusions to interact with solid matter, which allows the light pressure from the solar wind to give them thrust.

Iris asks why Amelia didn't just permanently enchant the sail spell into the masts, leading to a discussion of how various materials handle runic enchantments.

The basic idea is that the more types of material go into a crystalline structure like stone or metal, the more runes it can hold, at the cost of reduced power, due to less efficient magic.

I'll quote Amelia's explanation for this:

"Take granite, for example. It's basically many types of rock compressed together, which does give it a much greater capacity to store magic, allowing a large collection of runes to work at the same time, but that strength is also its weakness.

"When runes produce an effect from the magic stored in granite, all of those different types of rock each produce their own copy of the spell, all at slightly different frequencies. When the magic comes together as a cohesive whole, the many competing frequencies interfere with each other and the end result is a weaker spell, plus lots of magic that goes to waste. In fact, eighty percent of the magic is wasted and simply released into the air.

"Pure metals, on the other hand, have a rather simple structure. They can hold only three runes, but when those runes have an effect, it tends to be rather powerful, with only five percent waste.

"Steel, on the other hand, occupies the middle ground, able to hold up to seven runes, with reasonably powerful effects and only thirty percent waste, though the details vary by the recipe of the alloy.

"The masts of Starwitch had to be steel, for the sake of strength, which forced me to choose between the sail or the safety spell, plus a spell anchor. Ultimately, I went with safety."

Mythril is a bizarre outlier, however, with no known upper limit on the number of runes, plus power beyond that a pure metal should be capable of, due to the extreme density of the metal combined with its magical nature.

There's a brief discussion of the process of diffracting light, which involves Amelia using a prism as a visual aid.

Marta tries her own variation of the spell, which produces solid illusion of glass sails that extend about ten miles in every direction! This produces enough force for them to feel it and Amelia is quite impressed.

Marta's spell breaks up fairly quickly under the strain of the solar wind and shatters, just like glass.

Iris goes next, experimenting with an illusion of a diamond sail, which produces less force than Marta's, though it lasts longer. Amelia takes note of this improvement and heads for the spell-core, to produce a sail none of them will have to concentrate to maintain.

Just after Amelia gets a sail setup that extends for a hundred mile radius, Marta notes how clean the air of the room smells and asks why. Amelia points out the fact that the spell-core's primary function is to clean and refresh the air, which is an important point for the next chapter.

They go back to the witchpit and Amelia settles in to get them on course, while her sisters stare out at the rainbow their ship is producing.

Chapter 24: The Trouble With Breathing

Back in the present, Amelia wakes from an unintended nap, with a headache and dizziness, due to too little oxygen and too much carbon-dioxide, because without the spell-core, the air of the ship is going bad.

She's somewhat surprised the mathematical portions of her brain are working at full capacity, which is weird, though she has a difficult time keeping them from wandering all over the place, including calculating how long she can survive without a change in the current situation, coming up short. Just as quickly, she calculates the number of stars in the universe, then the number of zombies on the Dead Queen's ship.

She once again concludes The Book is enhancing her head for numbers and focuses long enough to run the numbers related to her survival a second time, realizing she has two hours to live, but only if she's unconscious. Unfortunately, it will be six hours before her attack run on the monolith begins.

Amelia gets out of the pilot's seat of Starwitch and gets herself to crew quarters, where she puts on a pressure suit she built for herself, which is in a high-visibility orange color. However, because she was in an artistic mood when she made it, it has black tiger stripes and a white belly, to make it look more like the animal. The helmet resembles a fishbowl.

With the suit on, she turns on her oxygen tank at 70% of normal, which is enough to survive on. Between her tank and those of her sisters, she calculates she can last for six hours at 70%, then have enough left over for twenty minutes of full mental clarity, which she'll need for her attack on the monolith.

Next, she heads for her workshop, where she grabs an icepick and a rubberized sack. She opens a steam engine and uses a little magic to freeze the water. With the sack held to catch the chips, she breaks up the ice. This is taken to one wall, where there's a system for filling the rear water tank of Starwitch. She dumps the ice into it, then repeats the process with the next steam engine, because she needs reaction mass to slow down the ship.

As she works, her mind wanders back to the past...

Chapter 25: Ice Palace Two

Amelia is again in the pilot's seat, using one of the scrying crystals to zoom in on a distant object, which turns out to be a huge block of ice floating in space, in the shape of a cube.

She calls her sisters into the witchpit to have a look, only for an alarm bell to sound. Marta demands to know what that is and Amelia says it's an alarm indicating hostile magic.

Amelia starts up the main engines, for the sake of evasive maneuvers, while a huge ball of ice detaches from the ice block and flies their way, but maneuvering does no good, because the ball seems to have a homing spell on it!

After casting a scrying spell, Iris barks orders: "Amelia, face us straight into it! Marta, on my mark, you shoot a heat spell, the strongest you've got, straight ahead!"

Iris waits until they've nearly collided, then shouts, "Now!"

Marta's heat spell causes the ball to instantly vaporize and they pass though a cloud of hot steam. It gets rather warm in the ship, but they're fine.

Meanwhile, we switch to the perspective of Port Commander Haley Knotley, a half-dwarf witch that's in charge of the block of ice, which is actually a port (in-book word for a space station). As it turns out, nearly the entire port is made of ice, though it has a spell-core at the center, like Starwitch.

Haley also has a small, mythril wand, which she uses to cast ice magic, to defend the port.

She mistook Starwitch for a pirate vessel, due to a lack of markings and attacked, to defend the station.

She sees her attack fail, only to be suddenly lifted off the floor by an invisible hand gripping her neck! This is Iris using remote-touch. Iris also uses a bone-transduction spell on Haley, so they can talk.

They argue for a moment, because Haley is beyond stubborn and has a hard time changing her mind once she's decided something, which is the very reason she's in charge of such a remote outpost. Iris eventually gets Haley to calm down and talk.

After accepting the possibility Starwitch might not be a pirate vessel, Haley reluctantly gives them permission to dock.

Iris takes the helm and coordinates with Haley, while Amelia and Marta turn off their light sail spell and retract the masts into the hull. Iris flies them around the side of the port, to an open bay door.

Inside, some figures in pressure suits scurry about, allowing Amelia to calculate the size of the port, at about two miles wide! The landing/docking bay is rather big, but there's only a few small ships parked inside.

Iris flies them into it, and some external force takes over, for final landing. Amelia and Marta are startled, but Iris tells them to relax, because Haley told her it was coming.

They deploy the landing gear of Starwitch and gently touch down. By the way, Starwitch is designed to land very much like a plane, on a set of tires, while the side masts can be made to function like wings.

As that's happening, one of the figures uses a mythril wand to close the hatch of the landing bay, which is made of ice. When that's done, another figures rushed to help, spraying water around the gap of the door, while the one with the wand uses it to freeze the water into a seal.

After that, the room begins to pressurize. Eventually, all three of the docking bay workers remove their helmets.

The sisters exit Starwitch and Amelia gets a look at three other ships that are all smaller than her own.

The first is a red sphere with eight dual-purpose legs that appear able to extend to great length, to serve as masts for sails.

The next is shaped like a white snowflake, with a central body for living spaces and six extensions that possibly serve as masts, despite each of them having windows and living spaces in them.

The last is shaped like a green bug, with six legs and a set of cloth masts that are folded up on top of it, much like wings.

Amelia is immediately confronted by an angry witch, because normal procedure involves a strict schedule for opening and closing the docking bay and they were woken up to let Starwitch in, a waste of water and time.

The angry witch is joined by a polite and friendly witch, who says a few soothing things to get the woman to calm down.

The first apologizes, then introduces herself as Agnes Vixen. The second says her name is Alice Talbot. Amelia introduces herself and her sisters.

The figure that manned the hose finishes putting it away, then runs over, introducing himself as Nonar Bonebuster, though he does so rather loudly, because he has hearing issues.

Alice says, "Don’t mind Agnes. She’s a very serious woman."

Nonar mishears and agrees that Angnes is very spurious. Agnes smacks him on the back of the head and they begin arguing, while Alice leads the sisters to one side.

She explains that Nonar and Agnes are married and argue all the time. She suggests with a wink that Nonar starts the arguments in public, so they can make-up in private.

Alice informs them that Haley wishes to see them, that she might apologize, and the sisters follow her.

Chapter 26: A New Way of Life

The sisters meet Haley face to face and Amelia accidentally insults Haley, by referring to her as a "little woman".

That's a label the half-dwarf objects to, because "little people" can be born to any race, but the dwarven race is distinct from them, just as elves, fairies, orcs, goblins and gnomes are not human.

Amelia apologizes and she learns about the existence of the other races and it would seem her home moon is entirely inhabited by humans, because she's never before heard of the other races.

As an apology for attacking them, Haley waives docking fees, and even offers to top of the water tanks of Starwitch, for free, a declaration that gets Alice to gasp, because Haley is extremely money-oriented.

Haley and the sisters introduce themselves and Haley asks where they're from. They tell the truth and Haley asks why they left.

Again, they speak honestly: persecution and forced servitude as living weapons. Alice is sympathetic to them, as is Haley, and they're assured they're among friends. They're told most any Ice Palace will openly welcome them.

Amelia asks why the port is made of ice and Haley reveals her money-oriented nature again, by explaining that water is the currency used in space, because everyone needs it. Her eyes light up as she explains that the place is literally made of money!

Further, Haley explains that the Ice Palace has a spell-core that keeps it at the right temperature and provides gravity. The port is called Ice Palace Two, though it used to have another name: Breadbasket.

The history of Cakana, the moon below them, is explained by Alice. Three-thousand years back, the moon was settled by witches and farmers, because it was one of two worlds in Junas orbit that was suitable for massive food production. After three-hundred years, the farmers objected to the witches "never doing an honest day's work" and rose up in rebellion, using you guessed it: torches and pitchforks.

The witches peacefully backed down and the farmers took over. This resulted in the witches no longer hauling food into orbit for sale, and most of them left. Only a few stayed behind, which were the ancestors of the Blackwell sisters.

This change in government of the moon cut them off from the other moons of Junas and led to a shortage of food for everyone else, causing many deaths, over a pointless disagreement.

Haley asks the sisters to consider how they wish to live, because that will determine their allegiance and which markings their ship should bear, to avoid getting killed by non-pirates.

Alice explains a few options:

• They could become port workers, but the pay is crap and they'd be stuck in place.
• They could join a merchant house to stay mobile, but the pay is still crap.
• They could become couriers, which pays good, but they'd lack the safety and backing of a merchant house.
• They could also become pirate hunters, who kill pirates for a living, a dangerous occupation.

Regardless, however, Haley can only help them become couriers, because they're out in the boonies, but once they reach a more important port, they'll have more options.

Alice brings up the subject of navigation tables. Every Ice Palace provides a free service of storing and sharing navigation tables, which are predetermined courses, including thrust and timing figures for courses guaranteed to be safe, if followed. At this point, it's revealed that most of the moons of Junas are in orbital resonance, which makes preset navigation possible.

Amelia is surprised no one travels more directly and her comments gets her hosts talking about the "Newt Witches", the mysterious witches that rule the star system, and who rarely interfere in the affairs of others, unless attacked.

The Newt Witches seem to have an innate ability to calculate direct courses in their heads, on top of having incredibly potent weapons and magic. The Newt Witches are also the group behind colonizing the system. They own the Ice Palaces (the ports) and dress in red, covering their whole bodies, except their eyes.

Haley shares a story of witnessing a Newt Witch use incredible magic to snuff a pirate ship out of existence, first crushing it, followed by making it grow smaller under the crushing power of her magic, until it vanished. Hypothetically, she described the formation of a small black hole. This witch used some form of magic item combined with her own powers to make that happen.

Despite this incredible show of power, the woman was kind to Haley and spend a lot of time chatting with her, because the witch liked children.

Amelia begins to suspect she's a descendant of a Newt Witch and after her sisters ask some pointed question, this is confirmed, because the witches that stayed on Cakana were Newt Witches.

More subtle questions shift the subject to the origin of the Newt Witches and Alice offhandedly mentions a myth about a magic book that taught them to fly through space, which they lost and have been searching for, though this is only one story among many.

Getting uncomfortable and wishing to change the subject, Amelia decides they should become couriers, at least for the time being, and Haley shows them the symbol they need to paint on their ship, which looks like a stylized sailing ship that will basically be the space equivalent to flying a particular flag.

Chapter 27: Rush Delivery

Six months later, Iris is busy minding the ship as they launch from Ice Palace Three, which is in orbit of a lush, garden world that lacks seasons, because it's perpetually like spring there.

As she gets Starwitch away from the station, she chats with the Port Commander via a bone transduction spell. The commander happens to be a fairy that fancies herself as a match-maker. She's been trying to setup Iris with her brother. As the subject comes up, Iris shades with embarrassment, but in the end, she decides aloud, "Next time."

She says goodbye to her friend and works the winches to deploy the masts.

After that, she passes into the entry room, which has become a cargo bay for the things they carry from port to port. Currently, it's full of oranges, which are a gift from the port commander of the local Ice Palace to the commander of another. This is a display of supreme confidence in the ability of Amelia to plot direct courses, because oranges spoil quickly.

Passing into crew quarters, she finds Amelia asleep, because she was up all night adding new cargo racks, since this shipment is the largest they've ever taken on, with the entry bay crammed from floor to ceiling, with only a narrow passage down the middle.

In the workshop, Iris finds Marta working at a potter's wheel to turn a bowl. Marta has been making and selling pots with runic enchantments, which are a big money maker, almost as good as their rush delivery service as couriers. It's revealed that almost no one in the system knows how runes work, aside from the Newt Witches, who don't sell enchantments.

Iris reaches the spell-core and briefly examines the current wheel of cheese the brownies have been eating, noting the fact they slowed down a lot, after the first few weeks.

She activates a sail spell, makes some minor adjustments to the gravity spell to help compensate for a coming engine burn, then heads back to the witchpit, where she pushes the engines to one-fifth power for twenty minutes, because their course requires both the sails and an engine burn, for a particularly speedy arrival.

In the next scene, Marta is minding the ship, in preparation for their last burn of the journey, after a few days travel. In the rear-view scrying crystal, a red moon looms ever larger.

Amelia pops her head in as Marta begins the burn, asking if she'd like to get some rest. Marta decides she wants to handle docking maneuvers.

Marta gets the ship inside Ice Palace Sixty-Eight and notices how full the docking bay is. Most of the ships belong to The Silver Circle, which is the most prominent merchant house, though there's also a great many from The Twilight Flame, another big house. There's some couriers mixed in, which makes Marta feel right at home.

The sisters have a two hour wait before the bay will pressurize and Marta joins her sisters for breakfast. Amelia jokes about the dwarf port commander, who's obsessed with oranges, constantly raving about the first time he ate one. She even does an impression of him: " 'Me was in heaven, it was so juicy and sweet! Me hardly noticed the skin was still on, because me didn't know better!' "

In the next scene, they present the dwarf with the best crate of oranges, for his personal consumption, while his men work to unload the rest.

The dwarf actually tears up and thanks them for the crate, then Marta informs them they brought ninety crates. The port commander's face becomes a mess of happy tears and he bites into one of the oranges, sucking the juice from it. His tears freeze before they even hit the floor.

When he's done draining the orange, he comments, "Sweet, juicy heaven!"

The sisters laugh and turn to leave, but he stops them long enough to hand over a sealed letter, claiming it's a job offer. The seal in the wax is a pair of crossed cutlasses, a symbol Amelia doesn't recognize.

Amelia opens and reads it, learning the Queen of a kingdom on the surface of Taneas wishes to hire them. Taneas is the most distant moon of Junas, named after the goddess of commerce. The moon is in an eccentric orbit that's only in direct contact with other worlds every 300 years, because it isn't in proper resonance with the other moons.

This Queen, named Edwina Rowley, wishes to initially employ the sisters as messengers, but if things go well, then she would like them to calculate courses for entire merchant convoys, promising 5% of all sales.

The sisters are moved with compassion for the people of Taneas and decide to take the job. Amelia takes them straight to the navigation table of the port, which is a slab of granite mounted in the wall of the main hall.

She examines the figures describing the orbit of Taneas and decides it is possible for them to get there, though it will take three weeks of sailing.

With nothing better to do until the port's bay door opens, they go shopping.

The next scene focuses on a woman in a parka that's been following and observing the sisters, without being noticed, despite the way she's shivering cold.

She uses a bone transduction spell to report: "Captain, the fish have taken the bait, hook, line and sinker. Looks like our intel was right, because they're real eager to help out ‘Queen Rowley’, may she reign forever. The youngest sister says they'll arrive in three weeks."

The woman she's contacted laughs at her joke, then says, "Good. Fishing is always better from a well-stocked pond. Continue to observe from a safe distance."

The witch in the parka ends her spell, then complains, "Just so long as I don’t freeze to death. I hate Ice Palaces!"

Chapter 28: Roaring Rowley

The Blackwell sisters have arrived in orbit of Taneas and they're above the night side of the moon, noting a bizarre sight: yellow-white dots and lines illuminate the land.

They're confused for a time, before Amelia explains that they're looking at what could only be a huge, sprawling city. It won't be revealed for some time, but Taneas has rejected magic and embraced technology. They're currently at about the level of Earth, but they do not look to the stars like we do.

In fact, they know space is full of magic, and anyone that touches their atmosphere will be shot at by multiple nations at once, with surface-to-air missiles. In effect, this is very much a "look, but don't touch" world.

The sisters aren't sure how to contact Queen Rowley and Amelia suggests they try to locate a suitable landing site, once they roll around to the daytime side. Failing that, they'll have to wait for the Queen to contact them, because she must employ someone with remote-viewing ability.

In the next scene, Captain Edwina "Roaring" Rowley comments, "You may rest assured in that, Amelia Blackwell."

She's been using remote-viewing magic to observe the sisters for days.

Her ship is made of glass and crystal, which normally gives a view of space, but at the moment, they're hidden by a spell to bend light around the ship, making them invisible. This makes it impossible to see, however, which is among the reasons Rowley is using scrying magic.

Her observations have turned up an interesting fact: Amelia is the owner of The Book of Newts, which Rowley is quite aware of, because she was a Newt Witch before she turned pirate.

The Book has been lost to the Newt Witches for 2,000 years, not because they misplaced it, but because it ran away. This isn't explained, but they were using it as a reference, rather than using it to explore the universe, which is why it arranged to be stolen, presumably by manipulating the mind of one of the witches.

The Order of Newts is mentioned as the name of the ruling body of witches and it's confirmed that Amelia's mathematical gift is basically what makes someone a Newt Witch, though not a member of the order. It's also explained that the mathematical gift gives one the ability to see through The Book's illusions, though the real truth is that Amelia's gift is weaker than average and The Book made sure she saw through the illusions, because it liked her mind.

Rowley intends to take The Book for herself, though she plans to act with great precaution, because she expects just about anything to happen. After all, Amelia has the book.

Rowley gives orders in preparation for an attack, which will happen as soon as they're out of the shadow of Teneas.

Tags: writing, work-in-progress, starwitch

Work In Progress #22: Starwitch #5

Amelia sobbed, closed her eyes and accepted her impending death, until a glimmer of hope pierced the darkness, a single point of light so intense she saw it through her eyelids! She opened them and looked, but her vision was blurred from too many tears.

  – An excerpt from Starwitch.

Starwitch is a novel about space-faring witches that I plan to release first as a web series, then for sale in online stores.

You can read short summaries of each day's writing on Mastodon.

Here's a list of previous blog entries on this work in progress novel, in order from oldest to newest:

• Starwitch #1
• Starwitch #2
• Starwitch #3
• Starwitch #4

Chapter 19: Sticks, Stones and Words

Using scrying magic to watch for trouble, Iris informs her sisters, "We've got company: two witches on sticks!"

Marta switches to the rear-facing seat and tells her sisters it's Denholm and Krauss. Iris reminds Marta to focus on Denholm.

Iris tries to kill Krauss by crushing her heart with remote-touch, but Krauss is able to barely protect herself with blood magic. She does, however, fall off her stick and injures herself enough to be out of the fight.

Meanwhile, Marta uses the rear spring-gonne to shoot at Denholm, very nearly killing her with a spell to make the lead balls target-seeking!

Denholm loses her temper and her eyes glow, followed by her entire body, surrounding her in an angry, red aura, which makes her hair float on end.

Denholm begins a complex incantation that would have ended with the magic word for 'kill', but Iris uses remote-touch to force her mouth shut before she finishes!

Amelia suggests: "If she wants to play with sticks, how about you give her some stones?"

Marta agrees and focuses on a complex incantation, which is a multi-stage spell, including linking syllables held on the tongue to create brief delays before modifying the spell's effect.

Initially, Denholm uses gravity-based telekinesis (Denholm is a gravity witch, as it turns out) to fend off hundreds of boulders Marta ripped out of the ground! Denholm shatters and deflects boulders, while smaller fragments bounce off her glowing aura!

Denholm thinks she's done with Marta's spell and charges to attack, while Amelia switches on the war wagon's steam-based rocket boosters to get out of the powerful witch's reach. Yes, Amelia effectively built a rocket-tank.

Marta triggers the next stage of her spell, which causes all the fragments of rock to heat up and continue seeking Denholm. It all turns into lava and the bristles of Denholm's broom catch fire!

She glances back, sees the incoming attack and focuses entirely on defense as the lava envelopes her!

Marta triggers the third and final stage of her spell, instantly cooling the lava into a big ball of obsidian, three feet thick! Whether she's alive or dead, Denholm rolls off on her own.

The sisters reach their front gate, which Iris blasts with magic and they crash through the gardens of the yard, including a topiary creation that looks like the sisters and a floral clock.

Amelia drives them toward the tower holding Starwitch.

Meanwhile, Krauss finishes healing herself and forms a magical link to Denholm, to feed her magic. Denholm shatters the obsidian sphere holding her and gives Krauss new orders: "We terminate the traitors with extreme prejudice! I don't care who or what gets in the way!"

In short, they won't be trying to avoid damaging the war wagon after this and will be going all-out. That may have been the only reason they failed at all.

Chapter 20: Launch

The Blackwell sisters load the war wagon into the cargo bay of Starwitch, the open area at the bottom. They seal it inside, then climb the tower to board the ship.

The boarding plank is kicked out and the door is sealed. Marta is strapped in, while Iris climbs to the Witchpit, where she straps into the pilot's seat.

Meanwhile, Amelia climbs all the way down, to reach the spell-core, which she uses to ignite thermite that's been hidden inside the supports of the tower. The thermite melts through the steel holding the two halves of the tower together and one whole side falls away, producing a minor quake.

Next, Amelia uses the spell-core to briefly manipulate gravity to point away from Starwitch and most of the rest of the tower breaks free, leaving only a support gantry designed to keep Starwitch from falling over, which is reinforced with steel. Amelia climbs back up, strapping in beside Marta.

Iris starts the launch engines, which are little more than long pipes running half the length of the vessel, which are absolutely filled with little, metal plates enchanted with runes to make them vaporize water on contact, though they also heat steam. These pipes are linked to the four rocket nozzles at the tail of the ship.

Steam pours from the vessel and it lurches into the air. Sacrificial bolts attaching the support gantry to Starwitch snap, which were in turn attached to high-tension cables that were part of what kept the bottom of the gantry stable, while the steam forces the gantry to fall away from the rocket.

Starwitch rises through the air at a leisurely pace at first, because Amelia is concerned that full throttle would kill their servants, an unnecessary loss of life. The intent is for them to rise to three-thousand feet before going full throttle.

Meanwhile, Denholm and Krauss fly on one broomstick, together, landing on top of the mansion as they see the rocket rise. Denholm tries to destroy the rocket with magic, but she can't directly affect it, because Amelia put some protective enchantments on it. Likewise, Krauss tries to kill the sisters with blood magic, but also fails.

In the end, Denholm demands, "How much do you weigh?"

Krauss answers honestly, "One-sixty! Why?"

Denholm begins casting a spell to hurl Krauss into the air, which she begins objecting to, but Denholm pays her words no heed, telekinetically throwing Krauss into the sky!

Krauss screams, of course, but that makes no difference.

Iris sees Krauss on the rise and tells Amelia, who gets out of her seat and requests a reduction in throttle, so she can climb back down to the spell-core.

When she's there, she lays down and puts a hand on the magic device, concentrating first on a scrying spell, so she can see what's going on outside, then an air-manipulation spell, to attack Krauss with blasts of pressurized air.

Amelia nearly beats Krauss senseless, because her attacks have the advantage of being invisible, since they're made of air. Krauss takes some heavy injuries before enacting a spell that causes her to bleed enough that she can surround herself in a protective shell of blood, which intercepts Amelia's attacks and incidentally helps with air friction.

Amelia is forced on the defensive as Krauss begins firing her own blood like pellets from a huge shotgun! Amelia blocks most of them with a barrier of air, but a few of Krauss' blood bullets hit the ship.

As Krauss presses the advantage, firing still more blood bullets, Amelia demands to know their altitude and Iris says, "Twenty-five-hundred!"

Amelia shouts back, "Close enough! Go full-throttle!"

Iris obeys and Starwitch goes from one-third to full throttle! The sudden increase in volume bursts the eardrums of Krauss and Amelia goes back on offense, managing to knock the witch cold!

Denholm, who's been watching the whole time, to direct the flight of Krauss, gives up and brings her subordinate back to the ground, though she's disappointed.

This marks the escape of the sisters from their home moon.

Denholm gets on her broom and tracks down the carriage driven by Dawkin. She captures him, but soon discovers he has some papers stuffed into his jacket pocket.

Getting curious, Denholm takes the papers and unfolds them, revealing the plans for Starwitch. In this moment, she basically vows to track the sisters down, that she might have revenge and justice for her King. It may take years, but Denholm is not one to give up. This is an intentional hanging plot thread, which I'll come back to in another book, because Denholm is far too much fun for me to toss her on the garbage heap.

She's so distracted by her find, Dawkin manages to escape. At the next town, he paints the carriage, ties a canvas tarp over it, to make it look like a junk wagon, then hitches a horse to the front, instead of using the engine, all to make himself look like a junk merchant. This allows him to escape the country.

Chapter 21: The Next Horizon

Iris cuts the engines, presumably since they've left the atmosphere, and Amelia briefly struggles with zero-G. After fumbling around for a bit, as the wheel of cheese floats about, Amelia figures out how to move around and gets hold of the ladder, "climbing" to the witchpit.

She joins Iris there, who's getting sick. Amelia takes the pilot's seat and Iris loses her breakfast in the background, using a paper sack to catch it.

Amelia assesses their course, calculating their altitude and velocity in her head, then proceeds to using calculus, which she learned from The Book of Newts, to calculate the details of the engine burn that will get them into a stable orbit.

She begins to worry about her ability to do such complex math in her head. Her ability to make numbers dance and sing had always been unusual, but from the moment she obtained The Book of Newts, she found if much easier to work even complex calculations in her head. She isn't certain and it isn't spelled out, but this is a perk of owning The Book.

However, just as she's starting to ask serious questions about what The Book is trying to do, Iris draws her attention to the view through the windows.

Both of them have their breath taken away by the sight and Amelia tears up, with the droplets gathering around her eyes, due to the lack of gravity.

She wipes them away and the sisters stare with awe as the liquid floats free, naturally becoming a series of spheres. Iris thanks the Gods for their safe escape from the moon they once called home and Amelia also says a quick prayer of thanks.

Shortly after, Amelia gets back to work, because if she doesn't correct their course, they'll fall back into the atmosphere and burn up.

Amelia uses water-based maneuvering thrusters to turn them parallel to the ground, then Iris straps herself in, beside Marta, who's still unconscious. Amelia watches the second hand of the witchpit's clock as she runs the engines for a precise amount of time, to circularize their course into a proper orbit.

After that, Amelia uses the spell-core to create an artificial gravity field inside the ship, then lays out a mattress on the floor of the crew quarters, shrugs out of her military uniform and gets to sleep, while Iris watches for trouble.

Amelia dreams of flying Starwitch toward the sun, leaving Junas behind. She argues with her sisters rather often, but can't recall the words or the subject matter.

The sun looms ever larger and a time comes in which Amelia becomes certain they're going to burn up. However, as she's looking out at it, she sees lines forming on its surface, between six points along the edge.

First, a hexagon forms, then every other point is linked, forming a six-pointed star from two overlapping triangles. Then the hexagon formed as the center of the star starts the process again, with a new star forming inside it. The process continues until the details are so small and fine, Amelia can't see them, forming a geometric fractal.

All of this is a magic circle. At the center, a point of blackness is seen, which quickly expands and Starwitch is drawn into it, causing Amelia to scream in her sleep!

The darkness is far deeper and more terrifying than anything Amelia has ever experienced before, and as it snuffs out the lights of the ship, she succumbs to a mind-numbing depression, curling herself into the fetal position as she gives up all hope.

Just as she's totally given up, intense light interrupts the darkness, and she wakes.

Her sisters look on her with worry, because she was both screaming and crying in her sleep. Amelia can't remember the dream, but she knows The Book of Newts was trying to show her something, because she recognizes its subtle magic swirling around.

On hearing about this, Amelia's sisters become quite concerned, but Amelia is forced to tell them she doesn't remember the dream. This is a little foreshadowing for later books, though it should soon spark Amelia to try talking with the book again, probably while she holds a hand on the spell-core.

Amelia dresses in clothes she designed for wearing on the ship, which is basically a custom set of coveralls made just for her, though it has a series of loops and pockets for tools around the waist. Her sisters have already changed into their own shipboard uniforms and Marta uses her tool loops to hold some jerked meat, so she'll always have a snack on hand.

Amelia fills a canteen with water from a spigot in the wall that's linked to the water tanks and drinks a little, then gets herself some jerky, while they discuss what comes next.

Amelia says there's somewhere nearby that they can sail to, at least according to The Book of Newts, which has detailed maps.

Chapter 1: Lonely

I revisited chapter one today, because I thought of an opening scene that would set the main conflict rolling from the first paragraph.

Amelia and her sisters have been captured by the Dead Queen and the zombie soldiers have forced them into a line, according to both height and age.

Marta and Iris both try to fight, but their words are cut short by torture magic that leaves them screaming.

In stark contrast, Amelia begins to cry, because she feels utterly helpless, and the evil, undead witch laughs.

The monstrous woman instructs her soldiers to take Marta away, so the Queen can consume her soul. Marta begs and pleads, to no avail.

The Queen next decides that Iris is another suitable candidate to consume, but Iris has more fire in her and fights back, only for the Queen to hit her with another torture spell.

Coming to Amelia, the witch thinks aloud, "What to do, what to do? I've never seen such a weak witch before. I could consume her soul, but I would probably waste more magic in the act than I would gain…"

The pirate witch paces for a time, before saying, "The other two will enrich my magic for centuries to come, but this fish? Throw her back, because she’s too weak! Oh, and drain the water tanks of her little vessel before you release it, but leave her enough to force her to choose between maneuvering and drinking water!"

Amelia is dragged away.

Chapter 22: Weaponsmith

Amelia is alone in the workshop of Starwitch, back in the present, the flashback paused for the moment.

She's busy assembling a prototype spring-gonne, which consists of some pipes and clockwork mechanisms, very similar to a pinball launcher, only with much stronger springs, approximately the same power as a crossbow.

Each barrel is six inches long, with a six-inch chamber for the spring mounted behind it. Each spring chamber has a rod for drawing the spring back sticking out to one side, which hooks into clockwork mechanisms of the pistol, allowing a cocking handle to be drawn back, very similar to some toys that shoot foam darts.

The mechanisms in the handle allow cocking each barrel in turn, then fired individually. The barrels don't rotate. Amelia refers to the device as a "hand-gonne".

Amelia considers how deadly it will be once she's done, and her mind is drawn to the past, when she was eight years old.

Her mother caught her experimenting with a grasshopper, by cutting off its back legs, followed by sewing them back on. Amelia had been effectively trying to do a biology experiment, out of curiosity.

Her mother takes a dim view of this and squashes the poor creature, to put it out of its misery.

They have a discussion about what constitutes animal cruelty and what doesn't, even considering the matter of killing animals to eat them.

Amelia apologizes for hurting the insect and her mother extracts a vow from her that's very similar to the one she got from Marta.

In essence, Amelia promises to never harm a person and only harm animals when necessary.

Back in the present, she considers the harm she did to "Killer" Krauss. Technically, she violated her vow, but it had been a matter of weighing three lives against one and in truth, Amelia didn't kill Krauss. She only knocked her cold, an injury Krauss could easily heal with magic, once she woke up. In short, very little harm was done and all of it was necessary.

Amelia considers how her vow applies to undead and concludes killing them would be a mercy, like unto putting down a rabid dog. She especially applies that last thought to the Dead Queen, because killing her would end her abominable, undead existence and ultimately save lives.

In short, Amelia has nothing to hold her back in the upcoming fight, though she still feels nothing but regret for dragging her sisters into danger.

Future Plans

Now that I've got the sisters in space, my main concern is to set the stage for the end conflict. On the other hand, however, I'm only halfway through episode 6 and I need to finish the flashbacks by the end of episode 8, so the climax can begin in episode 9.

Episodes 9+10: The Climax

My episodes have all been four chapters, so far, and making the climax two parts would involve about eight chapters. However, I can safely assume the last chapter of the book will be given over to tying up loose ends, but I may add a short epilogue at the end, after episode 10, probably just to tease what's coming in book two.

The epilogue will probably consist of the Dead Queen screaming with rage and getting her monolith on the move, to chase the escaping sisters down. This will serve almost as a preview of the next season.

In short, that means I need the climax to be 7 chapters, which is reasonable enough. That leaves me with two chapters for each of my three protagonists, plus one mostly dedicated to the Dead Queen, so we can really learn what motivates her.

I have many details in mind for the climax, which will be more action-packed than anything else in the book. I could describe it now, but I don't want to spoil the details until I get there.

The Near Future

I'm left with a conundrum: what goes into the end of episodes 6 through 8?

I've done the things I planned early on, including establishing the prejudice and strife that propelled the sisters into space and the war Dugaria started was an excellent way to leave the sisters with emotional scars that may never heal, a fact that makes them more interesting to read about. It also made them strong enough to fight a war, even though they object to violence.

I believe I've covered the necessary growth and scarring of my characters, and I could shorten the season to make it a total of eight episodes, which would probably get the length to around 85,000 words.

This isn't an option I like, however, and I hope you'll bear with me as I consider options, below, as a sort of brainstorming session.

Episode 6

The end of episode six (one more chapter) should demonstrate how light sails work, giving me a chance to detail the almost musical chimes the masts produce under load, probably due to the cables inside the masts vibrating under the effects of slight waste magic. I'll probably include a montage-like scene of Amelia teaching her sisters everything about Starwitch and the magic it uses, to cover the week it takes them to reach their first space station at a leisurely pace.

I also need to make a point of showing Amelia wistfully looking down and thinking about Dawkin, as her sisters try to comfort her. This is something I'll have to do regularly, through this and the next season, since Amelia's feelings for Dawkin will be a central point of the third.

The sisters will find surprising acceptance at stations, because magic has always been the tool of choice for traveling the stars, whether through runic enchantments, witchcraft or wizardry.

In the novel, I'm likely to refer to space stations as "ports", since that's how chapter one referred to them. Just about every moon of Junas has at least one, including their own, though they'll soon find it has no connection to the surface, because the people down there are so very backward.

This will also give me a chance to give the names of some moons, in the form of potential places the sisters can visit or should avoid, which are named after the gods of the setting.

For example, Cakana is the name of the moon they orbit, which is the name of the goddess of agriculture and harvests. Cakana's chief export used to be food, before the locals decided they hated witches for being smarter than them, a story the people of this first port can tell them. I imagine the story boiling down to the following paragraph:

Farmers were brought to the world by witches, because the land was so good, but after a hundred years, the farmers came to resent being ruled by "smug, know-it-all witches that don't work a day of their lives", a direct quote from the farmers of the time. They rose up with torches and pitchforks, leading the witches to back down, due to their vows of non-violence. Aftet that, the farmers ruled themselves, cut themselves off from contact with space (that always required the witches) and over thousands of years, forgot the past.

There will be a variety of little micro-fiction stories about various moons, to explain the more prominent ones, ranging from a single sentence for something amusing, but unimportant, to several paragraphs for those that matter. I should be able to somewhat explain the setting's pantheon of gods in the process.

Episode 7

I think episode 7 will serve to establish how things work in space, probably after a six to twelve month time skip. I'll get a chance to show how the sisters earn their keep, probably by hauling cargo and building things.

I think one chapter should be dedicated to making an ordinary delivery of metal ingots, followed by a chapter about a visit to their favorite port, which probably orbits a moon inhabited by dwarves. I might go so far as to make that port an orbital tether, because dwarves always build big.

In these two chapters, I plan to sprinkle in mentions of pirates in the area, with people saying they're grateful the Dead Queen hasn't been seen in Junas orbit for a few years, though her lieutenants still harass everyone for "protection money", with each of them assigned to patrol a particular moon.

My thinking is that the Queen has been on the outskirts of the star system on some long-haul trip to capture a rebellious subordinate, so she can eat the woman's soul.

With the scene in space set, I think the chapter after that will cover the sisters accepting another delivery job, which will take them to a moon they've heard very little about, which is incidentally in neutralterritory, in orbit of a moon that has no contact with space and no port in orbit.

The job turns out to be a ruse to get the sisters out of the network of stations that are current on their "protection" fees, leading to them being attacked by one of the Dead Queen's lieutenants, a powerful witch. Unlike her boss, this one is alive.

The episode will end on some action and a cliffhanger, in which the sisters look like they might just die, to add some suspense.

Episode 8

The episode will begin with a battle between Starwitch and a pirate vessel that's probably made of rune-enchanted stained glass. The sisters will barely win, but the bottom mast will be badly damaged, which forces them to slow down.

In the next chapter, the witch they defeated will contact her boss, telling the Dead Queen all about the Blackwell sisters and I'll perhaps write something from the villain's perspective. Meanwhile, Amelia goes on a spacewalk, to make repairs.

Just as she begins addressing the damaged mast as her last repair task, the Dead Queen's monolith will show up and Amelia will lose her concentration just long enough for the broken mast to slip from her hands and drift away, which will lead into a break between chapters.

The third chapter of the episode will come back to Amelia in the present, pausing the flashback for a time. In this chapter, she'll go on another spacewalk, to adjust the way the war wagon sits inside the cargo bay, because it has technically been upside down, all along.

She'll also work to make the cargo bay hatch into a ramp for the vehicle to drive out of, when Starwitch is landed. This task will briefly involve Amelia over-taxing herself with magic, to create a bubble of partial atmosphere around the ship, since the cargo bay is pressurized.

Once her work is done, she'll briefly stare out into space and her mind will once more drift to the past.

The last chapter of the episode will show the sisters pulling out all the stops, in an attempt to out-run the Dead Queen's monolith, using all of their magic combined with the spell-core and the launch engines of Starwitch, to produce maximum thrust, but it won't be enough.

Despite the fact the monolith is practically a mountain made of granite, it will be fast enough to gain on them. In a last-ditch effort, the sisters will try to out-maneuver it, but that will also fail, because the monolith uses a set of powerful, central engines, along with a system to vector superheated steam to any exterior thruster, on any side. Effectively, the monolith's engines will bear some resemblance to those of a Harrier Jet, only far larger.

I think the sisters will start graying out from acceleration, while the monolith's crew is unaffected, because they're undead.

The episode will end with their capture, which leads directly to the opening scene of the novel, getting the reader fully up to date.

Tags: writing, work-in-progress, starwitch