The fifteen minute novel writing experiment is a attempt to write a complete (and very rough) draft of a novel by writing for fifteen minutes each day. I have taken a timed writing from one of the daily prompts done in 2021, cleaned it up a little and used it as my jumping off point into a story. Each day I will take the last line of the story written the day before and use it as my sentence starter and write for fifteen minutes, growing the story as the year progresses.
Day 129: She found herself back in her space and by the early morning light, she knelt on the stones in front of the fireplace and bent over to peer into the chimney.
She found herself back in her space and by the early morning light, she knelt on the stones in front of the fireplace and bent over to peer into the chimney. To Anya’s relieve she saw daylight. The chimney didn’t appear to be blocked at all. There was a fire box with wood in it and Anya carefully laid the fire and retrieved the fire strike from her rucksack. It had been one of the few useful items she found stashed away in the tower where Lord Mathis held her. If she hadn’t managed t escape through the tunnels, her second plan involved setting a fire inside the tower and then bashing the guard with a heavy object as he came in to see what was happening.
‘Although since they apparently left me to starve or magically feed myself I suppose it’s a good thing I didn’t have to try that plan,’ Anya told herself. She used a handful of sawdust to get the fire going and as the embers turned to flames she added small sticks until she had an actual blaze going. She added a few more sticks but was wary of adding anything bigger until she was certain the chimney worked. She didn’t want to flood her room with smoke.
While Anya was certain no one would really notice one extra chimney emitting smoke from among what had to be dozens of them, she was pretty sure that even if they couldn’t enter the hidden spaces, smoke seeping through the wall would be noticed.
To her delight the smoke rose up the chimney and was taken away. The chimney functioned as it was supposed to. Anya gratefully added a few more logs and soon had a real fire going. Her room warmed and Anya allowed the heat to sink into her bones, warming herself completely as she sat before the fire. As she sat, she thought about something she noticed on her way back to her rooms.
On her way to the room with the orb, Anya passed many unused rooms. Occasionally she had to cut through one of the rooms when there wasn’t a straight passageway, but for the most part she stuck to the corridors. While the room she chose to sleep in was somehow dust free and had few items in it, most of them sturdy and not given to mold and collapse, the rooms she passed through and the hallways themselves were dust filled with any upholstered item falling to ruin.
On her way back however several of the rooms looked clean and well swept. She knew no one else enter those rooms, she was watching on the orb as she searched the buildings for signs of Lord Mathis and his men. Even if someone had any access to the hidden spaces, they hadn’t been in them this morning. ‘And there wouldn’t have been time to clean them while I was there.’
Anya wondered if she was mistaken about the rooms being dusty. ‘But why would only a few rooms be cleared of dust?’
Neither made much sense. Remembering that one of the books she took with her was a book on the House of the Star, Anya decided to see if she could find an answer in it’s pages. Now thoroughly warmed, she took another of her left over rations and ate it before settling down on the bed with her book. It took less than an hour of reading before she found what she thought might be an answer.
When the ancient battle was over and the Fesian Empire defeated, the victors found they could not enter the buildings. The buildings remained sealed against them. The mountain stronghold was, to them simply a mountain. They could not enter the buildings and could not ferret out it’s secrets. It was as if the mountain was still solid stone. It was the last of the magic that sealed it.
Ten til Midnight 