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 81: She was curious about the cure, however.
She was curious about the cure, however. Kasca had not taken it yet because she had not become infected. She had three bottles and hoped that if the first cure wasn’t permanent, she could simply take another dose if she became reinfected.
Looking at the trio wandering the town, she knew they took the cure. She recognized one of them as being quite ill before Jascon shared the concoction and wondered if he was too far gone for it to be effective. He seemed to have been just on the edge and recovered well.
But they lowered their shielding to wander the town, finding it easier to communicate with each other without the shields. Kasca could see the benefits of communication, but she worried about reinfection. They believed time rendered the disease inert and that the cure they took now made them immune.
She wasn’t certain she agreed with either of those assumptions.
‘I suppose I could watch and see,’ Kasca thought. While she wanted to know, the idea sat uneasily with her. It reminded her too much of the Overlord. He deliberately infected people so that he could watch how the disease was contracted, how it spread and note each stage as it progressed. Watching the trio of men Jascon sent to investigate felt very similar. The notes from the Overlord’s journal kept circling in her mind.
‘I am not infecting them,’ she reminded herself. ‘I didn’t send them out and I certainly didn’t tell them to lower their shields.’
Even knowing this, she felt uncomfortable about watching them. Still, she needed to know and she set her discomfort aside. The town of Harve was the last one the trio was sent to investigate and once they had finished poking around, each taking several souvenirs, they left. While Kasca thought their theft was distasteful, she tried to justify it as collecting small items for use in scrying. The smaller pieces would be useful in extending the sight of the Sanctuary and like her, they needed more information.
She was certain that more was taken than was actually needed. ‘And the items taken were of value.’
She found the rummaging distasteful but had to admit that she might need to do the same thing or at least something similar. She was watching the passages off the island waiting until she could manage them. While she could take a boat on her own, once off the island she would be on her own. A stranger in a strange land with no connections. She would need funds to establish herself. She knew she couldn’t afford to appear in a foreign kingdom with no coin or trade goods.
‘Maybe I can raid one of the abandoned collection carts,’ she thought. Somehow taking from the Overlord’s collectors made her feel less disturbed than the raiding of the homes of the dead.
She set the thought aside as a concern for later and continued to watch the various places she needed to see, reading and learning spells from the Sanctuary library when the others were doing nothing of interest. The water levels in the north slowly dropped as the snow melt ran its course. Jascon waited for news, the trio traveled home, most lost in their own thoughts as they travelled the empty land.
It left her time for study.
Kasca waited and watched. In time the trio returned to the Sanctuary. They had not gone near the overlords keep and circled only the towns nearest the sanctuary. When they returned they reported to Jascon and his coterie of councilors.
Ten til Midnight 