This is the final post in Fiction Week here at The Gamer Dome (see Excerpt One, Excerpt Two, and Excerpt Three), so read on and enjoy, and then come back each day this week to read a new excerpt from a different story. Now, let your voice be heard as you vote for your favorite story in the poll in the sidebar, which one I’ll continue to write, hopefully substantially, over the Christmas holidays.
Thanks!
Propagandroid
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Sorry this took so long, but it’s freshly written and so I had to find the time to finish it up. Fantasy and espionage really are two great tastes that could go great together, and I’ve been talking about writing some stories along those lines for a year or so. Over the past two months, I’ve read all the Ian Fleming James Bond novels, except Live and Let Die, which I don’t own. I started to get excited about my idea again while reading them, and so decided it was time to create my own leading character and throw him in a fantasy milieu. Thus Vanik Slade was born.
This is the most D&D-inspired fantasy piece I’ve posted this week, so if you’re looking for something like the Salvatore novels, Dragonlance, or whatnot then this is your huckleberry. If you’re a fan of James Bond, or “cool-character” driven two-fisted tales, you’ll also like this one. Another advantage is that this is the only one of the three that might turn out a completed tale by the end of winter break.
So please enjoy the teaser to One by Torchlight: A Vanik Slade Tale.
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It isn’t often one finds oneself at his own funeral, but that’s exactly where Vanik Slade appeared to be.
He seemed to be floating about five feet above the volcanic soil of Mount Rizentree, slowly climbing upward away from Rizentree town. The hard jostling told him he was merely being carried…and by slaves, at that.
Though vertical, he was not standing. He was bound in the traditional funerary wrappings of the Hunters Guild, broad swatches of coarse white cloth interwoven between his “dead” limbs and the canes that made up his bier. The cloth stretched his skin and pressed his flesh into the bier so that he could feel the bruises forming across his neck, back, arms, and legs. His skull felt like it would crack at any moment from the strip of knotted cloth holding his head in place.
He would soon be transferred from this into a coffin cage the size of an ogre (Guild members were of all shapes and sizes) and lowered down into the burning heart of the mountain. The cage’s metal had been mined from the center of the world in ages past, and was impervious to the lava’s burning kiss.
Vanik wasn’t. He had to do something, and fast.
He was just thanking fate for the cool breeze that made his prison of cloth bearable when the first wave of heat from one of the mountain’s glowing cracks swept across his face. The mildness of the day had given him a minimum of relief, but now the sulfurous fumes scorched his lungs and focused his mind on the helplessness of his position.
Cough, damn you, cough. Vanik Slade willed his body to comply, but even the simplest reflex was beyond him.
Around him, the scene could be described as…professional. Groups of guildies stood at the green-spotted base of the mountain, still and silent like a poorly painted parade. The hunters stood apart in their “forest, cave, and castle” gear, which always seemed out of place when they weren’t on a mission. Most of the gathered busied themselves trading wit and maneuvers, since they hadn’t even known Vanik. Only his team bore any resemblance of mourning…if it was an act, as he suspected, it was a surprisingly good one.
The Administrators stood apart, wearing the fine clothes and draping sashes of their positions. Vanik had never liked them. They weren’t hunters, yet they controlled the guild. The elections that appointed them were shams, he thought, since none of the hunters gave a damn about politics or the false achievements of electioneering and stuffing handbooks full of rules and procedures.
Vanik’s mind gave a short, barking laugh. He wouldn’t have minded them writing a new burial procedure! But no, that would never happen. The guild was bound by law to respect local traditions, and one such tradition was the drowning of the dead in the lake of fire beneath the mountain. Vanik never did understand how an Ankwai ritual had survived the coming of the Great Mystery, but it had. Damned inscrutable religions! Six feet of earth would be easier to escape than a lava bath.
Dotted about the area alone or in pairs were the guild’s support staff. Vanik saw them as those without skills or ambition, but with an interest in the world outside the normal routines of farming and keeping shop. They were well paid, Vanik had to give them that, and safer in the guildhouse than out on their own, but he’d never been able to conjure much use for them beyond the services they provided him.
Carrying him were slaves—not Guild slaves, since the charter forbade them—whose owners had been compensated for their time. Aside from the other hunters, Vanik liked the slaves better than anyone else in Rizentree. He ate, drank, gambled, and went on missions at the pleasure of the guild, who he often referred to as “master.” He’d often wondered if the slaves had it better in some ways…there were no laws to protect guildies from abuse like there were for the slaves, for example.
The heat continued to grow as they approached the lip of the mountain’s crater. The assembly below were barely visible through the fumes rising from cracks in the black crust. Now his vision swung up to the gray skies above as he was tilted forward and laid on the ground. Good thing his restraints were treated, else the heat would have caught them like dry tinder and set them ablaze.
No need to burn early, Vanik thought.
He could hear the chains of the coffin cage being unraveled when a whisper of hope flashed across his thoughts. Was he capable of sweating? Would the slaves notice the drops on his face and bring the news to the Administrators below? Surely he must be sweating by now, but his face felt dry.
Of course…a preservation spell. How wonderful of them to care.
Before long he would be transferred and then lowered down into the mountain. Would it hurt? Was there any way of breaking his paralysis and crying out? Hallowed Lords of the Great Mystery, how had he ever gotten into this?
