Tymely News
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:
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