As Marcos deliberated over what his next question should be, he abruptly realized that he was outside again. And someone had put a cold sandwich and drink in his hands, along with his bag of chips--which didn’t contain chips at all, now that he was looking at it. It was actually a bag of dried seaweed. That sounded pretty gross to him, but he resolved to at least give it a try.
Everyone else was already eating, he saw, so he joined them. The sandwich’s bread and meat were nearly frozen, making the task more difficult, but he didn’t mind so terribly. A cool meal was quite welcome in this baking heat. Even with the sun going down, the temperature didn’t seem to care. This was definitely Sandlord territory.
And that sunset--a mural of blazing streaks above the mountainous horizon, deep yellows and oranges and reds, even a few purples burning around the edges of an occasional cloud. They sure didn’t get that back in Aguarey.
Before anyone could even finish eating, the refueling was done, and everyone returned to their respective limousine so that the entourage could get on the road again.
And as he polished off his sandwich, Marcos finally thought of another question for Shenado. ‘Do a lot of reapers believe like you do?’ he asked.
‘You mean are a lot of us doubting, cynical bastards?’ Shenado shrugged. ‘Yes. In fact, I would say the majority of us are.’
Marcos glanced at Dimas. ‘What about Iziol?’
‘Iziol is a freak of nature. I have no idea what he believes, but it is probably something ridiculous.’
‘That’s a little mean...’
‘Oh, Iziol is wonderful. Don’t get me wrong. I adore him. Being half-crazy is part of his charm.’
‘Ah...’ That made him curious about something else, and he looked toward his unconscious father and the equally unconscious reaper attached to the man’s arm. ‘What is Axiolis like? I still haven’t met him yet, but you and he are... uh...?’
‘Axiolis is also wonderful,’ Shenado said flatly.
Marcos just stared at her, waiting.
‘...But don’t listen to anything he tells you about Lhutwë.’
That almost made Marcos smile. ‘He still believes in the old water god?’
‘Yes,’ sighed Shenado. ‘He will probably try to teach you all about it, at some point. Preserving the old ways, he calls it.’
‘Really? I wouldn’t mind learning.’
‘Ugh.’
That actually did make him smile. ‘How much do YOU know about Lhutwë?’
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
Enjoying it so far. I know a lot of people are begging for more Hector, but I find the younger mind of Marcos quite a refreshing perspective myself. The lack of social awkwardness which makes Hector a great character also stands in the way of gaining background information from concersations, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteAlso, while I'm not one to nit-pick, isn't "yellows and oranges and reds" supposed to be "yellows, oranges and reds"? It flows better in my opinion.
Might I ask how're things going with the computer transition Mr Frost? As someone who writes myself I don't mind the daily updates slipping, but I like to think you're handling the stress of such a long-running series okay and it's all down to technical issues.
Regardless, great story, thank you for providing such fantastic content for free and I hope you're still enjoying writing The Zombie Knight.
Finally... Will there be a 1000th page special?
-GW
"Had a out a "?
ReplyDeleteTypo copying the typo lol
ReplyDeletePretty sure it would be "yellows, oranges, and reds" I think it needs to ,s
ReplyDeleteThe second comma is completely optional.
ReplyDeletecould even [finish] eating
ReplyDeleteMissing closing quotes:
ReplyDelete"‘Yes,’ sighed Shenado. ‘He will probably try to teach you all about it, at some point. Preserving the old ways, he calls it."
I know it as an Oxford comma, and it seems to be a big deal to anyone who uses it, for some reason.
ReplyDeleteIts optional, but you could start holy wars among certain English majors by asking them whether it should be included or not in the presence of others.
ReplyDeleteAll the gods are super old reapers who've been shaping the planet over the ages mostly in secret. Or maybe abberations, cuz most gods are psycho/sociopaths. That's my story and I'm stickin to it until frost says otherwise.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that your screenname is Satan makes this post sooo much better.
ReplyDeleteHonestly you could word that however you wanted. I would actually disagree, and say that in this particular instance, "Yellows and oranges and reds" flows better. Drags out the sentence a bit a makes you appreciate the scenery. Sometimes you need to look at writing as poetry instead of trying to follow traditional grammatical usage.
ReplyDeleteAberrations that got to godlike status would quickly either get taken down before they had time to develop much reputation, or they would destroy Eleg all in one go.
ReplyDeleteI have a disqus account but my phone fucks up the login all the time so I guess post as the prince of darkness. And can you imagine if Luthwe is a mutation user and the whale beast is actually her? Like shit, that'd be mind blowing!!
ReplyDeleteI was always taught that there's no comma behind the second last item in a list (before the 'and', in other words), but when you say things like "yellows, oranges, and reds," out loud, you take exactly the kind of pause between "oranges" and "and" that is indicated in text by a comma, so it's always irritated me to be told that it's wrong to put a comma there.
ReplyDeleteDon't even get me started on the other irritating discrepancies between written and spoken English!
Yeah, tradition is pretty stupid in written English anyway, not to mention arbitrary. It's SUPPOSED to be a representation of spoken English, so all those times Word tells you you've typed a sentence fragment? You know what you're doing better than Word does. Speech would be really boring if people only ever spoke in grammatically perfect sentences.
ReplyDeleteGot it, thanks.
ReplyDeleteFixed, thank you.
ReplyDeleteFixed now, thank you.
ReplyDeleteUsing a comma there is optional.
ReplyDeleteMm, the computer transition is still being a pain. Getting new parts and waiting for them has been pretty agonizing. 'sbeen killing my concentration. It's nothin' to do with the story itself. I already know where the next several arcs are going. It's just the actual focusing and getting-text-written that's been causing me problems.
Nah, no 1000th page special. Not tryin' to make more work for myself right now, haha.