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 61: Bottles of the cure were created for those who were uninfected, but Kasca saw that they remained in their isolation.
Bottles of the cure were created for those who were uninfected, but Kasca saw that they remained in their isolation. Daily, Kasca watched as those who were infected and those previously infected managed to clear the Sanctuary of the dead. The air, even in Kasca’s cottage, was filled with the scent of burning. Bodies and items were removed and added to the pyre.
As she watched, Kasca realized she didn’t tell Jascon about the cleansing spell. Given his reactions, she wasn’t going to return now to correct the lapse.
She noticed that Jascon and his small contingency seemed to be the leaders of the Sanctuary. They worked on securing the rooms they occupied and were waiting for the building to be cleared before leaving. While they had the cure, they were as yet not willing to risk contracting it. Given the heigh death count, Kasca couldn’t really blame them.
‘And those are just the dead I saw.’ For every person who was still living after the cure was taken, there appeared to be at least five bodies placed on the pyre. She wasn’t certain how many went before she started paying attention so she suspected the ratio was higher.
The more she watched and listened, the more Kasca began thinking that leaving was not a bad plan. Those in Jascon’s group were planning what they would do once the Sanctuary was cleansed.
‘They sound a lot like the Overlord,’ Kasca thought as she listened to them make plans to take the cure to the populous in order to lead them in their direction. Many of them planned to use it to stage a coup against the overlord. It reminded Kasca of the Overlord’s plans once he left the island. ‘Some of the same terms were in his journal.’
“This time we will be in control of the disease,” One of Jascon’s friends told him. Jascon agreed and from the tone of the conversation Kasca realized that they had been the ones to create the disease and let it loose.
She returned to the library and looked over the information laid out on the tables. The spell used to communicate was on a book close to the top of the displayed items. The information about the disease was below. Looking at it Kasca wondered if these books were left out as someone created the disease instead of the books used to search for a cure.
‘Definitely time to leave.’
Kasca monitored the Sanctuary, but she began practice moving herself around the compound within the palisade. The weather was still frosty, but much of the winter was behind them now. Kasca shifted herself inside and outside of the cottage. As practice, she began shifting herself from the cottage to the outhouse without having to walk between.
‘I could have used that more in the deep winter,’ she thought.
Still the short cut was making her stronger and keeping her from tracking in muddy footprints from her visited to the outhouse.
As she grew stronger, so did those in the Sanctuary. They were healing and they were slowly returning to normal. With the last of the winter storms gone, Kasca decided it might be a good idea to get herself someplace safer. She began spiriting supplies from the Sanctuary and loading her pack. With the cure available, she thought getting back to her home to see who she could save there was more of a priority than sitting here and waiting to see what those from the Sanctuary would do. She only had to wait until travel was more of a possibility.
Ten til Midnight 