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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:
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