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 4: She shrugged her pack onto her back and held her lantern high, studying the tunnels looking for damage as she began her journey.
She shrugged her pack onto her back and held her lantern high, studying the tunnels and looking for damage as she began her journey. While it didn’t seem as though any person passed through, nature could have altered the tunnels. They were old and it had been a long time since anyone performed routine maintenance. She knew some of the lower tunnels were unstable and remembered at least one collapsed in her first year as a runner.
She had been in the tunnels at the time of the collapse although luckily not too close. The rains had been heavy that year and water wore through the rock. The stones giving way had been deafening in the near complete silence of the mines. When she recovered and relative silence returned, she investigated. Not only would knowing where the damaged section was located help her, but she could pass the information on to others. The damage cut off one of the tunnels, but as it was one going deeper into the mine and not out towards the other side it wasn’t a problematic collapse.
Others had been worse and caused a reroute of the standard pass through the mountain.
‘Not that anyone standardly passes through.’
Such thoughts led towards bleakness and Kasca tried to set them aside. She moved cautiously but quickly. As she moved she studied the rocks, the trickles of water and the growth of moss. While the tunnels were created by man, after so long being abandoned, they were starting to look more natural.
‘As long as the supports hold,’ Kasca thought.
She reached a partially obscured tunnel and stopped, studying the rock fall. It was minor and the supports looked as though they were holding. It was only one of several paths she could take and erring on the side of caution, she chose a different route. ‘Later,’ she promised the pathway.
When she returned this way she would take the time to study the fall more closely, determining if it was still a usable route or if its use needed to be abandoned. On her return trip there would be time for such things. She would have to wait for the optimal time to once again cross the Overlord’s central district and she knew she was always hesitant to leave the safety of the tunnels.
It always felt like tempting fate to cross a second time even though she knew she had to get back somehow.
For now, Kasca took one of the undamaged tunnels and kept moving. She had a message to pass and time was not on her side. Time was of little use in the tunnels. She gaged it by the weariness of her legs and the rumble of her belly. When her belly rumbled, she stopped to eat. When her legs grew weary she stopped to rest. She knew that it generally took three days to pass through the tunnels to the other side of the mountain and she stopped to rest three times before she reached the exit.
The exit to the tunnels was lower down on the mountain and well concealed. It too needed magic to open it, but a deliberately placed rock fall shieled it’s opening from anyone looking in the direction of the mountain. Kasca planned to take her last rest inside the mountain but knew she needed to see what time of day it was in the outside world. She needed darkness to conceal her movements once she left the tunnels.
To check Kasca let loose a thin thread of magic and let the rock face become a door once more. Light seeped in around the edges.
Ten til Midnight 