ECA 36-44

Hello! Today there are EIGHT ECA posts! I wanted to keep the latter 6 together, as you'll be able to see why.

In other ECA news, I had an inspirational spark yesterday and I am a little more than 90% done with the story now! (FINALLY -_-) It's gotten to the point that I have the same feeling I had with the Spring Ball Trouble story: that "Idk why this took so damned long and I just really don't like this story anymore"feeling. But I'm definitely going to finish ECA, and post all of it up here with their comment blurbs.

After that the main writing content on the blog will be Sun Dagger, though I do have plans for some fanfiction and maybe some other stories. But before that, school will be starting next week and I'll be hard pressed to find time for school, work, writing, and art.

Enough ranting.

PREVIOUS SET (31-35)

36. Dreamer

Vesper was avoiding her—no, she was avoiding him. For good reason too—how dare he imply her stupid? Elysia was good to loathe him. 

Elysia. Good. The words didn’t fit together. 

Elysia Kieran…literally Dark Heaven..

Intana…she didn’t know. She wondered…

“She is named for—“ 

“Stop!” Stop! Stop! 

“I don’t want to know!” To know! Know!

“But you—“ 

Celestine stood in a whirl of cloth and fog. Today an individual was floating in the air before her; she prepared to run as the figure flew forward, wings fluttering and hands outstretched. 

“Who—No, I’m dreaming—you… don’t exist!”

37. Mist

The head-tall purple pixie hovered at eye-level, half-shrouded in the mist.

“You—who—what—“

“I am Perilyn Epsilona Tinkerbell, aes sidhe, daoine maithe.”

She was Epsilona, species pixie. She came without ill will.

Celestine hesitated. She knew the ritual; she could only be polite: “Celestine Syeniar Sesium, mortal…”

Cautiously, they touched fingers. A flash of light, and a tingle ran up Celestine’s spine: two images flickered past her eyes: 

She saw herself, winged and dressed in strange armor, armed with a silver bow. 

Then a memory: her crying alone in the psychologist’s office after being pronounced insane. 

38. Burning

Weapons majors were designing swords for an upcoming exam. And since workshop days always went overtime, Elysia was sitting by the window outside the workshop room sketching designs an hour before class. Elysia hated missing lunch.

Elysia had practiced much with the blade of the Angelic legend during her three weeks off, and was envisioning how she would rebuild the one-handed longsword to suit a faster fighting style. Sye’niar was simple but strong; that would be her guiding principle in this project: Simplicity and speed.

Opening her eyes, she set her sketchpad down and through the window glimpsed flames.

39. Out of Time

“I’m late, I’m late, I’m so terribly late,” Arlin raced down the stairs, stowing books in her bag. “This is so totally your fault.”

Murantagh leaped beside her in the grass, a ribbon of silver-scale and pale blue. He clicked a terse protest. 

“Wand, wand, don’t tell me I left it in the room…” Suddenly Tagh screeched a warning and Arlin instantly skidded to a stop, her hair ribbon skimming the flames. 

“What—what happened?”  

Arlin turned to see Aldis and Fiana, also rushing to class, join her.

“Accident,” the thief guessed, already opening a magic gate. “Or attack..”

40. Knowing How

Celestine jumped and almost dropped her book when someone called her name. A flurry of crimson:

“A-Anuna! Something wrong?”

“Come quickly Celestine.” She explained as they ran: “Fire in the Great Wheel  Courtyard.”

“Wh-what?”

“Normal spells don’t seem to be able to extinguish it, but I think I know how.”

Celestine recognized where they’d come to. Anuna plucked a golden sundial off its pedestal and handed it to the wide-eyed girl. Summoning a book out of a clock face, Anuna thrust the spellbook into her hands as well. 

“I believe you can do this. Page 265. Go!”

41. Fork in the Road

Outside, Celestine saw that Anuna had undermined the fire. It had split to obstructing sections and was quickly overwhelming the students. Glancing down, she skimmed the spell’s words, motions and instructions; she swallowed, certain she would miss something in the unfamiliar working. 

She stared up at the courtyard in horror. On one side Arlin, Aldis, and Fiana cast water spells from elemental gates. On the other side Vesper and Rhys brandished their wands, working a fire-eating spell.

Epsilona’s caveat and frantic fluttering within her mind didn’t help: “You have time and energy enough to help only one, Syeniar. Quickly!” 

42. Start

“This can’t-I can’t let it end this way! Ep-Epsilona, help me! Show me you’re real!” 

Celestine spread her energy as far as she could, surrounding all flames. Book held open, sundial raised high and hoping the pixies—if she wasn’t insane—had heard and were with her, Celestine started the spell. 

Blood-red light bathed the clock but she continued. A massive gate opened above. She continued. Dark streaks engulfed the courtyard in a black cocoon, choking the air out of her.

“No start without a finish,” Epsilona reminded. Gasping for breath, Celestine uttered the last few words.

43. Nature's Fury

Fire cascaded in waves around her, setting the ground on fire and racing around the building, scorching walls and windows. Through slitted eyes Celestine found herself floating above the giant wheel statue, surrounded by streams of black fire. Her only defense glowed as brightly as a second sun in her hands and her only weapon was already singed. 

Smoke choked the air out and snuffed bricks to ash. Whenever she fought with it, the incendiary flared up again, refusing to be tamed. 

It raged without equal, melted into the sundail and exploded into a giant monster of shadow and ash.

44. At Peace

Elysia dodged screaming throngs before skidding; over her now-winged friend, a black, bone-monster bellowed.

Calming herself with a prayer, Elysia touched the birthmark on the back of her head. “From the depths of Blackmist, I summon Sye’niar.” The blade and its gear materialized in her grasp and from the first downstrike her heart stopped racing. 

Thrust, parry. Her motions were fluid, as if the fight had been choreographed. Sweep, strike. No doubt. Dodge, Leap. No hesitation. Twirl, stab. Every movement from the soles of her feet to the tip of the blade radiated control. Block, blast. Inner tranquility.

COMMENT BLURBS

36. Dreamer

The entire first part was legitly just an excuse for me to connect heaven with dreams. And to rant about name meanings that I usually spend forever tailoring to the character (e.g. Elysia). I always end up doing that or just coming up with a random name on the spot that I like too much to change into something complicated (e.g. Arlin). And sometimes it’s a random cross between sense and randomness (e.g. Celestine).

But this part is called dreamer because for the first time there is a form to the voice that Celestine hears. And she’s tempted to succumb to the voices in her memory and say yes, she’s delusional, but at the same time she knows she’s asleep and wants to cling to any scrap of sanity she might still have. Even if that means rejecting a friendly figure.

37. Mist

The voices gained a form last post, and now they/ it has a name! Enter Perilyn Epsilona Tinkerbell, who was created because I saw a cute picture and had to make cute little pixie characters. 

Aes sidhe is actually irish for something along the lines of fairy/ pixie.  Daoine maithe is also Gaelic Irish for “the good people,” which is a way to say fairies. I twisted this a bit and in addition to saying she is a fairy, more specifically a pixie, by “good people” she also implies that she does not come with ill intent. Which is fairly believable, because irish fairies are supposed to be nice unless treated cruelly. 

Everything I know about Irish mythology comes from wikipedia. I feel bad in advance for getting something wrong D: 

38. Burning

This one should be pretty plain and boring: it’s basically just Elysia thinking about an assignment to design a sword. She’s been practicing a lot with Sye’niar, and while she’s more or less fine with its weight and strength, she has a bit of a problem with its speed. Although she knows she will get faster with more practice, Elysia is currently looking from a designer’s perspective and wondering how she would design a similar sword more conducive to attack-speed based fighting. The part that aligns with the prompt is the last line, where she blinks out of her envisioning and sees a fire burning outside the window. 

This is actually the second version of this entry. I changed it after reasoning that it would be pretty ridiculous to expect college freshmen to design and forge their own sword then use it in combat, especially at the beginning of the new semester. The original had a line that also featured fire (“In her mind [Sye’niar] itself guided herself through the fires of the forge.”) 

39. Out of Time

Basically, Arlin is rushing late to class (out of time) when she runs into a fire that’s pouring over the campus. She is joined by Aldis and Fiana who are heading the same way. As Aldis opens a magical gate to help put out the fire, he speculates that this is an accident (since the forges are nearby as implied by Elysia seeing the fire) or some kind of terrorist attack.

I noticed that Arlin sounds like the Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. I don’t know what to think of that, but I guess it’s cute enough to keep? Arlin in Dreamland, teehee

Since it’s mentioned, Murantagh (nicknamed Tagh) is a skinny, silver eastern-looking dragon with pale blue and pale green accents (such as whiskers, the odd scale, and eyes). He has four forms, differing mainly in size and power. The form he is in this post is probably around 2.5 feet long and the second smallest form. He moves by flying or leaping lightly on surfaces. He communicates in clicks, purrs, growls and other animal sounds, which only Arlin understands completely. 

And finally, there are three forms of magic mentioned in this 100 words: anima summoning (Tagh’s presence), wand-mediated magic (Arlin searching for her wand), and gate-mediated magic (Aldis’s gate). This is partially due to my complete indecisiveness when it came to a set system of magic and partially due to my belief that all forms of magic-mediation should be appreciated and somehow present in my worlds XD. As you may have noticed, the magic system itself is never really gone in-depth to in this story aside from the existence of air, fire, earth, water elements and the dark vs light distinction. Thus (at least in this story) it would be a “soft” magic. 

40. Knowing How

I never really understood this prompt, honestly. So I made it more or less having someone (Anuna) knowing how to put out the fire that normal-level spells (such as the one Aldis was seen casting in the last post) aren’t able to put out. Anuna takes Celestine to the Room of Clocks where they’ve been practicing and summons a spellbook for Celestine to reference and a sundial to amplify Celestine’s power. 

The original reason why Anuna doesn’t just do it herself is because in order to take any clock out of the room, another person would have to stay in there, but this became too complicated to explain. Now, the reason would have to be something like summoning the book drained enough of Anuna’s magic that Celestine would have to do it. OR, it could be that Anuna, who’s been teaching Celestine these spells, believes Celestine has greater magic power than herself. I’ll leave that up in the air.

Page 265: why? Because on page 265 of my copy of 1984, O’Brien tells Winston, “Reality is inside the skull”. This is hands-down my favorite line in literary fiction.

Trivia: The Great Wheel in the Great Wheel Courtyard is supposed to be in the image of a massive clock (something like the Room of Clocks Celestine and Anuna hang out in.) It’s also a minor reference to the Wheel of Fortune tarot card. 

41. Fork in the road

I didn’t see a way to incorporate the theme with the story, so I made the fork in the road a choice for Celestine to make: the fire in the courtyard has broken down into a bunch of fires sprawling the entire courtyard (college courtyards can get pretty huge).  Epsilona, the little pixie that talks in Celestine’s head, warns that she only has enough time and magical energy to stop one section of the fires. Not exactly the most reassuring thing to say when someone’s already flustered thinking they won’t be able to work the spell required in the first place.

42. Start

The last line is what I really wanted to comment on in this post. I found it very interesting that there is a “Start” theme at point 42 (more than a third into the themes list). Furthermore, there is no “Finish” theme aside from the last theme, “Endings”. 

So in this post, the idea is that, no matter what was going on, Celestine strived to finish the spell completely. It’s also a bit of a reminder to myself on perseverance ;)

43. Nature’s Fury

As Celestine finished the spell, the fire fights ferociously against her control. Celestine herself is caught floating in the eye of a giant firestorm. Ultimately she perseveres and the fire gets sucked into the sundial, but the clock soon explodes into a giant ash-and-shadow monster. 

It’s pretty ok if they’re switched, by the “defense” Celestine mentions is the sundial and the “weapon” is the spellbook.

44. At Peace

It’s been a long 6 entries since the fire-monster was first mentioned in passing. I realized in retrospect that this could have been a “calm after the storm” moment, but the way I ended Nature’s Fury didn’t lend itself very well to that. Instead, I tried to focus on the calm within the heart that a lot of athletes attest to having in the middle of a match. The idea of being at peace in the midst of chaos has always showed itself as an eerily beautiful scene.

It’s a minor but important detail also how Elysia enters the scene: pushing past panicking students, Elysia finds the giant ash-shadow-bone monster created from the aftermath of the inferno. Huddled unconsciously at its feet is Celestine, who in the course of the particular spell-working and the last 2-3 posts, has grown wings. Not like anyone saw it, but this would be how Celestine was floating in that last post. 

Finally, Elysia, the weapons-tech major does use a form of summoning in this post, but I would think that weaponry people would learn at some point to summon their weapons so they aren’t hauling battle-axes everywhere. Finally, even if this was not the case (I mean, Aldis carries his knife-whip everywhere) Sye’niar is obviously a special weapon. XD 

NEXT SET (45-49)