Thursday, July 24, 2014

Page 765

Octavia seemed to have trouble continuing her story. She glanced at her reaper another time, and Wendy helped her out.

Axiolis and Zeff were both able to identify the attackers as members of Abolish,’ he said. ‘Zeff recognized them from photographs, while Axiolis had actually fought against them with his previous servant. We sent a team to the lake in order to look for any other survivors, but there weren’t any. Octavia and I visited as well in order to make sense of what had happened. It was very unsettling to us that Abolish could make it this far into our territory undetected while still having enough power to wipe out over two dozen servants--some of whom were quite powerful. We didn’t find any answers, but it has always bothered me.

After that, all of the Rainlords gathered to mount a counterattack, along with the Vanguard’s assistance. We knew who the enemy was, where they were located, and had solid intel on most of their members. On paper, at least, they DID have enough power at their disposal to have conducted such an attack, and we had several reports that they’d been in frequent conflict with the Vanguardian units to which the Elroys belonged. So, despite the strange circumstances, there was no doubt that they were the ones responsible, and at that point, we were all brimming with righteous fury. We fully intended to obliterate them from the face of Eleg.

However, when we reached their base of operations, there was almost nothing left. Instead of a large military complex, we found a smoldering crater. A chasm. So deep that we could barely see the bottom. And all around it, were the heads and mutilated corpses of everyone we knew to be responsible for the attack--as well as a few we DIDN’T. Some were very surprising, being well-known and high-ranking members of Abolish who might have given us real trouble in a direct conflict. As you might imagine, we weren’t sure what to make of it. And thirty years later, we still aren’t.

6 comments:

  1. Maybe typo:
    "And all around it, were the heads and mutilated corpses of everyone we knew to be responsible"

    Is the comma correct?

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  2. Strictly speaking, no, it's not correct, but when it comes to dialogue, comma rules get kinda wonky. Wendy is pausing there, even though the sentence structure doesn't necessitate it.

    Alternatively, I could've used an ellipsis ("...") to achieve a similar effect, but personally, I felt that would've also added sense of hesitance on Wendy's part, which wasn't what I wanted.

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  3. Uh huh...interesting. Servants being what they are, whoever did that is still a player. And a complete unknown. If one servant did it...then we're probably talking an unknown on the level of the emperors.

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  4. I use commas to imply pauses and other spoken rhythms all the time.

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  5. If there were innocents there, it could have been Sai-Hee acting anonymously, but I doubt it.

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  6. For some reason I feel that this was Geoffrey's grandfather (Dozer?) leaving abolish.

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