Tymely News
Work In Progress #13: She Seeks Peace #5 (October 7-11)
She Seeks Peace is volume 4 of Ashen Blades.
You can read a short description of She Seeks Peace to learn more or you can read short summaries of each day's writing on Mastodon
Here's links to the rest of my blog entries on She Seeks Peace, in chronological order:
Chapter 19: Confluence of Sin
I continued this chapter from where I left off, last week.
After seeing the 1000 soul bounty posted for the Hunter's capture, Ulmoch contacts Pride to ask permission to accept the contract. Pride says yes, but also requires him to do exactly as he says...
I intentionally left his instructions to the imagination, but they'll become apparent during the climax.
From there, I did wedding invitations:
Gluttony
Gluttony is in her throne room, which she's combined with a corporate conference room, for modern times, all decorated with obsidian and gold, with a boardroom style table at the center.
She's slimmed down for modern times and wears a gray business suit with a skirt. Corporate overspending and waste are the modern equivalent to eating too much.
Her modernization started with a conspiracy between light bulb manufacturers making their products disposable, but that spread to making everything disposable, with plastic being a huge part of that. In her internal monologue, the oil tycoons were wasteful on their own, needing little demonic push.
She sits at her huge table, which has been set with a meal consisting of three live imps, in the form of a boar, a turkey and a piglet, all tied up.
Each has been condemned to death by Gluttony for refusing to be her meal (that's what they were raised for). Ironically, the outcome is the same.
Just as she raises the piglet to bite, an illusion of Sergeant Thilvod (the stag demon Sogliun spoke with to get an appointment with Wrath) appears.
He invites Gluttony to Wrath's wedding. There's some discussion of catering (Wrath hasn't done this yet) and Gluttony offers to provide the food, mostly so she can avoid Wrath dumping a box of MREs on the food table, which is exactly what he would have done, if left to his own devices.
I have plans for Gluttony in a later book, so this serves as a bit of foreshadowing.
Greed
Greed is in his own throne room, which is also his treasury. He dresses somewhat like a street-level member of a gang, but with far more expensive clothes, including a pistol in his waistband and some gold chains. The only odd bit is his tricorn hat, a fond left-over from the days he was a pirate.
He's busy using a laptop from the human world, which is connected to the internet via a gremlin-possessed DSL modem.
His plans involve pouring magic into the internet, but it isn't explained. Again, I'm doing a little foreshadowing for a later book.
He's also interrupted by Sergeant Thilvod inviting him to the wedding.
Envy
Envy is next, but I carefully pointed out to the reader that Envy is actually one of Pride's bodies in disguise, because he ate her in 1972, during the second book.
He/she wears a ring that blocks that particular body from being tracked by the Thaumavore, a unique trinket he can't reproduce.
Sergeant Thilvod appears and invites Envy to the wedding.
Sloth
Sloth is woken by a servant. He appears as a puddle of foul, black slime at the center of a circular room lined with shelves. Those hold crystals that change shape and color over time, because they're physical manifestations of the dreams of humanity.
Sloth manipulates humans through their dreams, mostly in a for-hire fashion, the most famous example of which are Lust's succubi.
Sloth himself, on the other hand, favors driving men mad in their dreams. He admits to himself that he recognizes the existence of the eighth deadly sin, willful insanity, because he uses it in his work.
Thilvod has appeared to invite Sloth to the wedding. Sloth is happy to hear the news, because he and Wrath are friends; when people go mad, they often start killing, so he and Wrath work hand in hand on those cases.
With the invitation extended, the image of Thilvod vanishes and Sloth yells for lots of coffee, because he doesn't want to sleep through Wrath's summons, when the time comes.
Pride
When Thilvod appears to Pride, he smugly interrupts, "Of course I’ll go to my old friend’s wedding, just so long as it’s on Earth. I’m not returning to Hell until the Thaumavore is dead. When and where?"
Thilvod tells him, "The Australian Outback. I’ll provide more exact coordinates when the time is right."
Chapter 20: …in the Rainforest
The Hunter's thoughts are interrupted by the crazed cry of Ulmoch, who was brought to Giza by Sogliun. As it turns out, Sogliun can track the very distinctive feel of her life energy, which he's more sensitive to than any other demon.
She's not in the mood, so she flies off, while Ulmoch tries to taunt her into a fight.
In the next scene, the Hunter slashes her way through the Amazon rainforest, comparing it to the jungles of Vietnam.
She stumbles on an ancient, Aztec city, which includes a pyramid, a fact that amuses her, because she thought she'd left pyramids behind, in Egypt.
She climbs on the roof of the temple at the top and sits on the corner, admiring the view, because she can see pretty far, including the Amazon river as it winds back and forth.
Her mind is drawn to the past, to her time with Simmons in the jungles of Vietnam.
Between this and the opening of the next chapter, this would make for a nice cinematic dissolve, were it done in a TV show or movie, transitioning from a view of the rainforest to a view of the jungle.
Chapter 21: The Last China Shop
The Hunter and Simmons are in the jungles of Vietnam, in 1973, on their last search and destroy mission in the country, accompanied by Staff Sergeant Greer and his men, the long-range patrol that stayed with them while they were there.
She sniffs out a demon nest Verda located on a map with magic.
There's a brief disagreement between Simmons and the Hunter over who goes inside first, since the cave entrance is only wide enough for one at a time, so they decide to settle it with a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.
However, Simmons (correctly) accuses her of cheating; she's been using her extremely-fast mind and reflexes to read his muscles before he moves, so she can choose a winning move, every time. It only worked because she's known him for thirty years, demonstrating how well she reads him.
Simmons insists they both close their eyes to make the game fair and the Hunter reluctantly obeys. She chooses scissors and Simmons goes with rock, so he gets to go first. Naturally, she's very annoyed, since she's always been a sore loser, but she lets it go, because it's Simmons.
They enter the cave, while Simmons unwisely uses a flashlight (tunnel rats didn't use flashlights unless they had to, because the Viet Cong were used to working in total darkness, so a light would give the enemy the advantage).
Simmons takes full-auto AK-47 fire from three demons, but isn't permanently affected, spitting out some slugs, while the rest fall off his magic suit, which can shrug off small arms fire. He goes total ape-crap on one demon (the pain forced him into a berserk fit), while the Hunter dispatches the other two with a bit of swordplay.
They head deeper inside, while the Hunter considers how happy she is to have such an indestructible partner.
When they emerge from the cave, they're informed it's time to head back to the world (Army slang for home/out of the war), because Verda says they've wiped out the last nest they can reasonably reach.
The Hunter considers the meaning of 'home', realizing she was never homesick in Vietnam, because she'll always feel at home with Simmons by her side.
Chapter 22: Rescue
Wrath rescues Lust and takes her to the abandoned mine that serves as his current base in the Australian Outback.
They discuss what he wants from his relationship with the Hunter, coming to some conclusions:
- She will never be willing and would rather kill him.
- He wants a long-term relationship, not a single night.
Lust forms a plan accordingly, which consists of an enchanted engagement ring that will force the Hunter to split in half by forcing the activation of the power she stole by eating Pride during previous books.
The ring will cause the Hunter to split into her human and demon halves, each of them pure and unsullied by the other.
The next half of Lust's plan involves an enchanted wedding band that will bind the demon's will to Wrath, so he can order her to love him.
Before Wrath leaves to obtain the required supplies, Lust's stomach growls, so he asks Thilvod to bring her a meal, a living human being.
At the end of the previous book, Lust was given a copy of the Book of Mormon, which she's been reading a bit here and there in this book. She reached 3 Nephi 11 at the start of the chapter and felt something powerful as a result (the presence of the Holy Ghost).
Seeing her "meal", Lust is disgusted by the thought of killing and eating the man. She refuses, claiming she's gotten used to the taste of beef during her incarceration (a half-truth), though she picks her words very carefully, lest Thilvod suspect her of feeling compassion, which demons have been known to kill each other over.
Thivold takes the man away and returns with some MREs that feature beef. Lust eats while working on calculations related to her enchanting work.
Chapter 23: …on Top of the World
The Hunter's thoughts are once more interrupted by the voice of Ulmoch, causing her to groan as he leaps from the trees to the roof the the temple she's sitting on.
She immediately flies off, while he tells her he got her an expensive present, which required killing a lot of "guys he liked" to obtain.
Her response is to go super-sonic.
In the next scene, the Hunter climbs Everest, hoping the remote location will keep everyone away from her.
She sits at the peak and stares at the horizon as the chapter ends.
Chapter 24: Airdrop
Were this a movie, I imagine a dissolve from one horizon to another, though with a military plane in the air (the kind used for airdrops).
It's 1989 and the Hunter is in a military plane in the air above Canada, preparing to parachute to the ground, because there's a demon hiding somewhere in a remote and snowy mountain range.
Naturally, the Hunter is sick and on her fifth barf bag, since the combination of low life energy and the motion of a plane get her every time.
Simmons gleefully jumps out of the plane with a whoop of delight, because being indestructible has made him adventurous.
The Hunter nervously steps up to jump, but hesitates, because her last drop from a plane went badly. The plane hits some turbulence and she loses her balance, falling out of the plane before she's ready! She screams and panics, forgetting what she's supposed to do!
She passes Simmons on the way down, since he's got his limbs wide, to slow down, so he angles himself through the air (he's gone skydiving many times before) to catch up to her, yelling for her to calm down.
They link up in the air and Simmons pulls her ripcord for her, ensuring her safety.
As he turns to look back down, he realizes he's too late to pull his own ripcord and screams, "Mashu'ra!"
He hits the ground mid-transformation to his cat-man form, but that's enough to save his life.
The Hunter lands and rolls back to her feet in one fluid movement, only to get hit in the face by her parachute, which pulls her off her feet and drags her on the wind!
She cuts herself free with her sword.
She follows her nose to Simmons, finding him groaning at the bottom of a small crater in the snow, with all four limbs badly broken. She helps him by lining his bones up, while Mashu'ra's power heals him.
When he's done healing, he releases Mashu'ra and returns to normal size.
The Hunter can't smell any trace of demon and they conclude they're in the wrong place. There were eight other teams being dropped all over the range, so no big deal.
Simmons produces a map and leads the way.
Chapter 25: Safe and Secure
Lara enters the Cauldron of the Elements, the same remote valley the Hunter sought some peace and quiet in.
Lara is worried that Wrath is coming to kill her and came to the valley, because she can think of no safer place to leave her son.
She bumps into Ignacio Greer, who settled there after the events of She Goes to Summer Camp.
They discuss current events, including Artemis (another name for the Hunter) being missing and Greer explains that Macie saw her in the valley, seemingly looking for some peace and quiet.
Lara explains her current situation and her worries, asking Greer and Macie to care her son.
Greer accepts and assures her that James will be looked after (Greer helped his Mom care for three younger brothers).
Tags: writing, work-in-progress, ashen-blades