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 38: There weren’t empty stalls many and she didn’t know if they were always empty or if it was a recent change.
There weren’t empty stalls many and she didn’t know if they were always empty or if it was a recent change. Then as Kasca allowed her magical sight to skim through the city of Vecerteron she began picking up more signs that something was not right. There were government seals on certain buildings. She knew not everyone marked the houses where death entered the way they did, but she knew enough of the language to read the word Contaminated on the seals placed on the doors.
The seals were red and glowed. Magic was not as prohibited in Vecerteron and The Feracan Confederation in general. Magic was often used for both governmental purposes and by healers. In fact in the Confederation if you didn’t have magic you couldn’t train in the medical arts, their magic and medicine combined to such a degree that having one was a precursor to the other.
Kasca dismissed the thought. She wandered through the city taking in the signs of contamination. She felt the magic drain her energy more than usual and thought it might be because she was expanding her sight to a place she never visited physically. Knowing her time was limited, she tried to direct her sights to the Overlord.
She was whisked to the other side of the city. The city blurred around her in a sickening wave as it sped past. Her vision moved to quickly for her to focus on anything. Then it stopped.
Before her was the wealthy quarter of the city. These weren’t the sprawling estates of the wealthy but rather their more compact town houses. They were no less opulent, but they were not separated by vast plots of land. They sat cheek by jowl in the quarter, lined up along both sides of the street. She slipped inside the one where the vision took her and walked inside.
It was opulently decorated and well arranged, at least in the front rooms. Kasca moved further in and found piles of luggage that had not been unpacked. There were bales of goods from cloth to the delicate pottery so often made in the western district. In fact as Kasca looked she could see the high-end goods produced in each of the districts. They were piled up, some packed, some bursting out of hastily filled containers.
It looked more like loot than luggage.
Kasca moved through the working sections of the space. The pantry was full, the cellar storage was packed tight with barrels of goods, grain overflowing, fruits beginning to spoil. When she thought of her own people hungry and hoarding food from the collectors willing to suffer the punishments for not making quota rather than see their families starve, the sight made her angry.
The vision started to waver and Kasca tried to tamp back her emotions. She left the kitchen areas knowing that she would not be able to contain her anger if she continued to look at overabundance left to rot.
Kasca journeyed into the private levels of the house. As she was halfway up the staircase, Kasca realized the house felt wrong. She tried to figure out what it was, the thought only reaching her as she entered the hall.
‘No one is here,’ Kasca thought. There were no servants moving about their tasks. There were no guests visiting. She entered the study and found no one working away and demanding quiet for the house. No one was moving around.
Ten til Midnight 