Recently I’ve been getting into the hobby of Dungeons and Dragons. This is, I admit, an odd way to start a conversation about Harry Potter. The reason I mention it is that in the spell lists of D&D there is resurrection magic. Online communities for D&D openly discuss what the meaning of resurrection means for their game table. Mechanically, it means that a player can continue playing their character that they’ve grown attached to. While I was ruminating on resurrection, I began to think of the most influential fantasy text of my generation. When it comes to healing and resurrection in the world of Harry Potter it is a painful, slow process that more often involves potions than spells.
Category: Fantasy
The Third Elf
Sitting at a crowded intersection where Glittergold Ave and Dathos St meet, there is a small building. The building is about five floors and on each floor, there are twelve small offices. If one were to wander down the right-hand side hallway of the second floor, they would eventually find themselves standing in front of a door. This door would have inscribed on its frosted glass window the following epitaph.
Althis Sarren: Private Investigator
Behind that door, one might discover a lean and sickly-looking elf in an oversized suit. He would probably be smoking his pipe of tobacco, scanning over some photograph or obscure legal document. The particular legal document that he was perusing at this moment was noteworthy. Its noteworthiness came from the red typeface at the top of the document that read simply: Eviction.
The Wild Hunt
Then
Woden appeared before me as I slept. The haggard form of the All-father stood near eight feet. The glimmering wings of his helmet almost touched the ceiling of my longhouse. In one hand, he held a spear. In the other, he held a shield. Woden looked upon me with his one remaining eye. I began to realise that I was floating above my bed. Woden lay his shield and spear along the wall of my longhouse and removed his glimmering helmet from his head and held it outward.
The Hunt needs a leader.
Fracture Part Three – Malron
“You brought a Fae on board my ship!” Varda cursed out Finn.
“I came of my own volition. I was not smuggled aboard like chattel,” Nessa defended.
“Silence,” Varda commanded. “I know the magic your people possess.
Malron watched the exchange happen from across the room. He was slouched against a wall. Malron knew that Varda was feigning her outrage a bit. Damaged as she was, she relied on these newcomers to help run the ship and make sure they made a profit. However, revealing that hand would leave her very poor. Nessa’s Fae presence provided a bargaining chip. The Fae were considered a human myth. If they ever existed, which now clearly, they did, then their civilisation would have been disrupted when the world exploded. Fae draw their power from the earth below them apparently. Malron wondered if this story about the Fae had been a human misunderstanding about magic. All magic flowed through the core, perhaps the Fae practised magic by drawing close to the core, hence the myth about the power of earth. Malron was very curious to find out how this Fae came to be here.
Fracture Part Two – Finn and Nessa
Finn prepared the crates of cargo on Cedric’s orders. A ship was coming in soon that would take the cargo. Finn had a plan to be on that ship. Their previous ride had dumped them unceremoniously in this backwater outpost. Finn looked over to Nessa who hoisted the large boxes of cargo onto the top of their piles with grace and relative ease, never once letting her face be revealed under her overly large hood. He, meanwhile, was rather clumsy but made a concentrated effort to make sure the cargo was packed neatly. Cedric came around to see their progress and inform them that his contact was approaching. With this, Finn collected his cargo and began moving it towards the dock. Nessa followed suit.
Fracture Part One – Captain Varda
Captain Varda sharpened her axe deftly with a whetstone. She sat in the wooden cabin, perched behind her desk. Along the walls and strewn across the tables were charts of every region in the known world. Charts stacked on top of charts, the most relevant sitting on top of the others. Captain Varda placed the large double-sided axe in a sheath on her back. She stood and the large axe was almost as tall as her. She was admittedly a dwarf, and dwarves were not known for their stature. She moved her braided, red hair over her shoulders so that it didn’t get knotted on the axe. She looked to the gilded instruments that were built into her desk. The spinning disks that spun to indicate the speed of the vessel were beginning to slow and Varda knew that they were approaching port.
Maelstrom – A Look Back at My Writing
I’ve decided that this week I’m going to return to a piece I wrote around 2011. During 2010 I had a lot of spare time because I had open contempt for my VET IT course (It wasn’t what I expected and in terms of knowledge base it was either too basic or too advanced). Anyway, during that time I wrote a work of fiction that in some way a response to Twilight. It began life as a script but quickly morphed into a novella length story and at 30,000 words is still the longest thing I have written. I finished the work in 2011 and rather enjoyed it. However, on reflection, the main goal of the text (to satirise the Twilight scenario by making the Edward character intensely unlikeable by every metric) somewhat failed whereas the interesting plot threads still hang on to me to this day. There were many subplots that rather interested me and might be worth returning to. So, without further ado, here are the two pieces of writing separated by five years.
You Can’t Get Ye Flask – Audio Play
[Author’s Note: Originally written October 2015]
Scene: 1
(THE NARRATOR SOUNDS LIKE A GPS AS VOICED BY A WOMAN OR PERHAPS SIRI, HER VOICE SOUNDS DISTANT, AS IF COMING FROM A PA SYSTEM.)
SOUND: THE SOUND OF WATER DRIPPING ONTO STONE, ECHOING SLIGHTLY
NARRATOR
You awake in a room. You hear the sound of dripping water, though it’s not clear which direction the water is coming from. There are three clear directions NORTH, EAST, and WEST.
LEXI
Go NORTH.
NARRATOR
You go NORTH. You drown. As you drown you think that the dropping water must’ve come from this room.
(COMPLETE SILENCE FOR A BEAT)
SOUND: THE SOUND OF WATER DRIPPING ONTO STONE, ECHOING SLIGHTLY CAN BE HEARD AGAIN
Zach Eastwood - Writer 