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 156: “How did he take that?” Anya asked.
“How did he take that?” Anya asked. “That she could see all of his kingdom and he couldn’t.”
“Not well, but as she only used it at his command and stayed far from the orb unless he was with her, it seemed to work out well. Future Emperors didn’t take as well to this, either because they weren’t married to those who could use it or didn’t truest the loyalty of those who could. It became a point of contention and many times Emperors thought of destroying it.”
“Why didn’t they?” Anya asked.
“It was too powerful a tool. Each one thought they could somehow master its use or find a way to control those who did use it. So they locked it away but never destroyed it and so it ended up here. The Sphere might have sensed that the Matron was the strongest person with magic in the vicinity and connected with her.”
Anya thought about the warmth pulsing from the orb when she placed her hands on it. “Is it …alive?” she asked.
“No,” Deran said. “Well not like you or I are alive. Well technically like you are and I was,” he shook his head. “There was a lot of magic poured into it. While the sphere is not sentient, it doesn’t think independently and make its own decisions, it is a tool that wants to be used so it will link to whoever it sees as most like it’s creator.” Deran tilted his head. “You found the orb?”
“I did,” Anya said. “It helped me see what was going on when I needed to hide and to find the paths so I could more around unseen.”
Deran nodded. “It has linked with you then. It will not go back to the Matron. If she has the gift of sight that will return seasonally but it will not be the same sight that the orb granted her.”
“I can’t see her liking that,” Anya said. “The matron wasn’t pleased that she couldn’t see the hidden spaces. “I don’t think she will like not having that sight return.”
“No I suppose not,” Deran said. “In that she is a bit like many of the Emperors. But you should be safe from her sight even when her sight returns for the season. She will not be able to see the hidden spaces.”
“Even if they are…waking up?” Anya asked.
“Waking up?” he asked.
“The dust and decay are falling away. It is going room by room so that no dust remains.”
“The magic should have preserved all of the hidden spaces with no dust or decay,” Deran replied.
“I think it did, for a while,” Anya said. “When the House of the Star first moved here the place was as though people had just walked out. After a time though there was dust in unused rooms and they had to maintain it. The book I was reading said that the books remained intact and preserved even if they did have dust on the spines. It was similar when I found the hidden spaces. The books were dusty but the pages unharmed, but things like upholstered chairs were in ruins. The longer I have been her, the more it seems to be waking up.”
“Dust had reached the spines,” Dercan said. He sounded shocked.
Ten til Midnight 