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 80: It was as Kasca expected, decimated by the disease.
It was as Kasca expected, decimated by the disease. The town of Harve was ground zero for the infection that spread. Kasca could see easily how it spread but to see the starting point was, in its own eerie way, interesting.
The marks of death were on the doors of those who first took ill. From the shapes of the homes and businesses Kasca realized these were the locations where the collectors stayed and the merchants who gathered goods that would then be traded to the rest of the community. As the trio from the Sanctuary walked the streets, Kasca took stock of the markings as visible reminders of the spread of disease.
‘It started with the rich first,’ Kasca saw judging by the quality of the houses where the disease was marked. She knew she shouldn’t have been surprised. The wealthy traded in coin and bout more goods while the poorer quarters tended to trade their labor for goods and foods. As the collectors worked with coin first and then collected supplies from the wealthy it made sense that they were contaminated first.
There was no sign of burning pyres here. Whatever Harve did with its dead, it didn’t show itself in the center of town as it did elsewhere. ‘I wonder if they left,’ Kasca thought the others wandered around.
She could easily see the panicked villagers trying to flee the disease and only succeeding in spreading it further. The trio wound their way through the empty city streets. No people moved, not animals appeared. There weren’t even birds in the sky.
With the shields in place, the trio could not talk to each other. It meant Kasca couldn’t overhear conversation, but it seemed to be more of a concern for them than her. She could see through the shields now, curtesy of a spell she learned while still in the cottage. She didn’t know if they could and that as well as the lack of conversation bothered them.
One of them dropped the protective shields. The other two jumped and Kasca thought she was right about them not being able to see each other.
“The disease has clearly passed,” the one who dropped his shields said. “There is no contamination. The markings on the doors all predate the harvest and are within weeks of the initial release, anyone who didn’t die fled. Besides. We have the cure.”
The other two dropped their shields as well. “Where do you think they went?” One of them asked.
“Probably some village closer to the overlord’s Keep,” the third one suggested, the same as all the others who fled.”
Kasca frowned as the trio continued to investigate the town, poking into houses and buildings as they searched for signs of where the others might have gone. They seemed convinced that everyone who survived the disease found a new home.
While Kasca was willing to believe that those who believed themselves unafflicted fled, she suspected they carried the disease with them. Seeing the diseases projection, she expected they were dead now as well. She was curious about the cure, however.
Ten til Midnight 