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 56: For now, she needed sleep.
For now, she needed sleep. If she expected relief from her spinning thoughts while she slept, Kasca would have been disappointed. Her thoughts kept turning and her dreams were filled with pursuit, often by shadowy enemies she couldn’t see. It was a relief to wake and start the day.
Despite the nightmares she slept long enough to feel at least fresh enough to try slipping into the Sanctuary. Her plan was to look for the library and the spell that would allow her to communicate with the others. Her fear was that in order to find the library, she would have to search the sanctuary. In doing so she would see the state of the others.
As she ate her breakfast, Kasca realized that was her biggest fear. She could argue with them about where the disease started, but in order to do that they would have to be alive. She had the formula they would need, but she couldn’t get it to them until she found the spell. She worried that she would see them dying and be too late.
‘Delaying isn’t going to help,’ she reminded herself. Kasca washed out her bowls and went to the small shelf of books. She took down one of the books she knew came from the library in the Sanctuary and tore off a small corner of one of the back pages. She took as little as she thought she could get away with as she didn’t know how many times she would need to search and had only a finite amount of material. Unlike the carved charm that could be slipped into the bowl and then retrieved later for repeated use, once she added the paper to the bowl it would be gone.
‘Each piece is one use only.’
She had to make them count.
Kasca settled herself before the bowl and instead of focusing on the Sanctuary as a whole, she concentrated on the library. She figured that the less she saw, the less it could affect her. She knew she could only move so quickly. ‘Worrying there won’t be anyone left to save isn’t going to help.’
Focused on the library she cast the spell and dropped the small bit of paper into the water. She felt the soft tug as the magic took hold and slowly let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding as she made it into the library.
The spell took her too the library and it was clear someone had been working there. The space was vast and as much as Kasca marveled at the accumulated knowledge she realized what a daunting task it was going to be to find one spell.
The tables in the library were littered with books. Many were left open. It looked as though someone was busy. Currently there was no one in the library. The windows brought in light as the curtain hadn’t been drawn and she decided to see what was being researched.
Kasca skimmed over the tables easily reading the open pages. It took less energy than it did to read the books when they were closed. Looking at them, she was not surprised to find many of the same works the Overlord consulted. ‘Someone is looking for the cure.’
It was a relief to see, although she could tell from the books that the researcher was taking a different path than the Overlord. ‘He started down this line but shifted when he realized magic was integral,; Kasca thought. She scanned the books and realized that whoever was looking, had not shifted from this path yet. ‘Or they didn’t leave those books out.’
As she looked at the books, Kasca found one book that had been left out that didn’t belong with the others. She felt relief wash over her as she realized what the book contained.
Ten til Midnight 