Morning all and welcome to the Fifteen Minute Novel. Here I take the start of a story idea and work on it for fifteen minutes a day. I started with an old writing prompt that interested me, cleaned it up a bit to fit the basic outline of the story I want to write and then set aside fifteen minutes each week day to see it grow. Each morning’s writing starts with the last sentence of the day before. And so now we have the story of Kasca…
Day 2: She took a deep breath, stepped out of her scant cover and began to run.
She took a deep breath, stepped out of her scant cover and began to run. As she waited, the shadows lengthened giving her greater cover. She knew however she needed to reach the end of the field and beginning of the craggy rocks at their edge before the sun fully set. Once darkness arrived, the lights would go on. The overlord wanted no night time sneak attacks and the lights bathing the landscape at night banished more shadow than the noon sun. Kasca moved swiftly, silently, hoping this was not the time when her luck would run out.
She reached the first of the rocks as the sun painted the world behind her crimson. She slipped behind largest boulder and kept going, threading her way through the rubble obscuring the once clear path. She monitored her steps, more worried about twisting an ankle than anything attacking. She needed to get to the entrance of the old mines.
The path she took twisted and turned, some of it more exposed than others. She moved quickly seeing the crimson light fading to black. She took a turn and saw the markers. She could feel time running out and hurried forward.
The mines were abandoned before the Overlord took power, the silver having run out and the miners relocating elsewhere. Those who didn’t leave were among the first slaughtered when the Overlord took power. Their secrets, for the most part, died with them. Magic was used to seal the entrance long before his arrival. While the Overlord had magic, he used it for creating monsters and war machines. Large blasts of powerful magic wielded like hammer blows. The magic here was subtle and involved small bits of power. Lockpicks rather than hammers.
Like those who sealed the mountain, Kasca was one of the Touched, those brushed with just enough magic for the small things. She could never create the monsters the Overlord built, but his magic was not designed for subtleties and thus far things like the sealed mine were beneath his notice.
The overlord knew such magic existed and concealed things from his sight. To make up for his lack of sight, he executed anyone who was found to be one of the Touched no matter how scant their magic was. He believed if no one could access the secrets, then it was as if they didn’t exist at all.
He wasn’t wrong. Many things once well-known were being forgotten.
But not everything was lost. Not yet.
Kasca knew that to use magic here, to be sensed as having magic was a death sentence. Yet it was the only way into the mine. She took a deep breath, pushed the fear to the side and placed her hand on the rock. She loosed a thin tendril of magic into the stone and felt the lock click open. A door appeared.
Kasca pulled her hand away and opened the door. The crimson was fading now, black around the edges as the sun dipped below the horizon. She heard the hum of the massive generators as they began to warm and she slipped through the door. Once through, she started to push it closed. With only a sliver of the door open, she heard the heavy click as the machinery came to life and saw the nearly white light bathe the world outside. She clicked the door shut.
White light seeped in around the edges outlining the door. Kasca pressed her hand to the door, let go another drop of magic and the light disappeared as the door faded into solid rock once more, sealing out the outside world once again.
Kasca sagged to the ground. Every muscle was tensed, even her bones felt the strain of the last part of her run. For a moment she sat in the darkness inside the mountain. She slowly worked through her muscles letting each of them relax in turn as she let the tenseness go. While no part of the pathways were safe, the stretch crossing by the Overlord’s castle was the worst bit. The open ground, the slavering ever watchful monsters on patrol.
While she would never refer to the rest of the journey as easy, it was significantly less hazardous.
‘Or it was,’ she reminded herself.
Three other runners came before her. She didn’t know if they made it past the castle to the mines or not. She didn’t even know if the others had enough magic to open the mines or if they had to go the longer route skirting the edges of the mountain and working their way through the forests.
Ten til Midnight 