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 47: Now that she knew where to go, she would not have to waste energy searching and could visit until she found the answers she needed.
Now that she knew where to go, she would not have to waste energy searching and could visit until she found the answers she needed. Kasca passed the rest of the day quietly. Mostly she wanted to recover her strength. She had a destination now and knew the variation of the spell that would let her look inside the closed books would take more energy than her usual scrying.
‘But now that I know where to go, I can just go there and spend the energy reading.’ It felt like progress. Kasca rested, did some knitting and ate. As it was storming outside, there was little reason to leave the cottage.
The next morning she woke, relieved herself, ate and began a new round of scrying. She slipped into the hidden space she wanted and with effort managed to look inside one of the scrunched up pages. It was for a formula that didn’t work out and had been discarded. She managed to look through all of the discarded formulas on that first pass before her energy was drained and she had to return back to the cottage and end her efforts.
The next day, she managed several pages of the record kept by whoever was working in the laboratory. It was a record of the arrival of the disease and the attempts to find a cure. Each day that followed, Kasca returned to the book, slowly working her way through the pages, following the progress of the disease.
After a week, she took a break, expecting to be contacted by those from the sanctuary. She used the time to rest and recover. Her efforts with the scrying bowl left her with mild headaches each time and she was relieved to have a day without them. She did not get a visitor however and was left to think and wonder on her own.
It was clear from what she read in those first pages that the Overlord did not create the disease. It took him by surprise and he began a dual search. One side for a cure and the other side of his search looking for the origin. He believed too that if he could find the source of the contagion he might be better able to formulate an antidote.
The journal she was reading contained a mix of both paths. She saw the things he tried to stop the diseases progress as well as his search for it’s creator. That the journal was written by the Overlord was not much of a surprise. The laboratory was accessible only through his private chambers. It was strange to read, to think of the Overlord as anything but the enemy. To read his words and see him as a person was strange.
‘He wasn’t nice person,’ Kasca thought. That much was clear through the pages. He had a distain for all those around him. He learned of the alliance Kasca was sent south to tell the others about and had plans to counteract its effects. Kasca even found a passage where he decided to let the disease help him. He found several of his collectors were contaminated and he sent them to the north.
He figured an outbreak there would be safe for him. It would take out some of the trouble makers and allow him to study the spread so he could have a better understanding of how it spread. Reading those passages was not easy. She realized as she did, not only how little he truly cared for the people, any people, but how often he spied. There were magical means of spying, however Kasca also found the names of those who spied for him.
Ten til Midnight 