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 33: It was also clear that someone went through them in a hurry.
It was also clear that someone went through them in a hurry. Drawers were left open in the desk and the large closet doors hung open. Kasca let her sight wander through. Many of the opulent garments she assumed belonged to the Overlord hung discarded. Some looked as though they had expensive ornamentation removed even if the garments were left behind.
She wondered if it was done by thieves or if the Overlord thought the gemstones more important then the garments. ‘As though he needed the wealth more than the display.’
When Kasca looked at them she could see the sections with the gemstones sewn in were carefully cut out. The garments weren’t ripped or shredded but looked as though they were taken from the rack, clipped and then discarded in a pile. Looking around, Kasca saw no sign of the Overlord himself. There was no body laying in state. If he was dead then he died elsewhere.
She knew what the Overlord looked like. They all did as his image was printed on banners or placed in gilded frames through every sector. Any government building had a large image of him. He wanted anyone conducting any sort of business to know that he was watching at all times. There were stories that many of them were spelled so that the Overlord could indeed watch transactions. While no one knew for certain if it was true or not, only official business took place in the government halls. May transactions, even if they were technically legal were one elsewhere away from the Overlords gaze.
Even legal, there were some things people weren’t comfortable with the Overlord watching. They conducted enough business in the official locations so it would seem as though they were being used, but at least two thirds of the everyday business of the town was completed elsewhere. It made some average everyday things seem clandestine, but no one was willing to change.
No one remotely matching the Overlord’s description was among the dead Kasca could find. She felt her energy starting to flag and realized she would have to end her scrying.
Kasca pulled her self away from the image and blinked. Suddenly she was standing in front of the kitchen table, the bowl of water just a bowl of water. Hungry, Kasca reached for some bread and cheese. As she ate, she thought about what she saw.
The disease spread everywhere she was able to see. It even spread to the Overlord’s keep. There were no living patrol monsters she could find, just the dead left behind. The keep itself seemed abandoned, its jewels taken and packed up.
‘Could be thieves, could be the Overlord.’
Kasca couldn’t determine which. The problem though was one of contamination. The condition of the bodies in the Overlord’s keep seemed longer dead than any of the dead she found elsewhere. In the far north where her village lay they were still struggling with the disease, but further south entire villages lay empty. As she ate, Kasca tried to piece together a time line.
Into her thoughts she found the image of Drax enter her mind. The bumps she saw could have been a rash.
Ten til Midnight 