91,000
The rough draft of “Nightfighter” passed 91,000 words.
I should be done. I’m supposed to be done. I had planned for 28 chapters and 90,000, maybe 95,000 words. But necessity took over – seven years of narrative is hard to tell in 90,000 words. I had to expand the outline to 34 chapters, which means about 110,000 words or so.
I started on October 4th, and I’d wanted to be done by December 23rd. I highly doubt that is going to happen. Might be able to pull it off, but I’d have to hit at least 2000 words every day between now and the 23rd, and that’s kind of hard to do when you have a life. Possible, but difficult.
Can I do it? We’ll see.
In the meantime, here’s a pithy little excerpt from last week:
“The rain,” Maglarion said, gesturing at the window.
Ikhana shrugged. “It falls. It makes it easier to move unseen at night. What of it?”
“Have you ever considered,” said Maglarion, “how it falls everywhere?”
She stared at him in puzzlement.
“Rich and poor, young and old, the rain falls upon them all,” said Maglarion. “One rainfall can cover an entire city, even one the size of Malarae.”
Ikhana looked indifferent.
“Tell me something else,” said Maglarion. “If you wanted to kill everyone in Malarae, how would you do it?”
Ikhana blinked. “There are a million people in Malarae, Master. Perhaps a million and a quarter, once the Grand Kyracian Games begin.”
Maglarion sighed, whispered a spell, and clenched his fist.
Invisible force seized Ikhana, flung her to the floor at his feet. For a moment his will held her in its crushing grip, and Ikhana trembled like a dying rabbit. Then he gestured again, releasing her from the spell.
“That is not what I asked,” said Maglarion, as Ikhana climbed to her knees. “How would you kill everyone in the city?”
Ikhana licked her lips. “I…would take my dagger.” She touched the black blade at her belt. “I would go into the street, kill the first man, woman, or child I saw. And I would kill, and kill, and kill, until they were all dead, and I was bloated and sated with their life energies.”
“Eloquent as ever,” said Maglarion. “But what if you wanted to kill them all at once? Every last man, woman, and child in the city, all dying in the same moment. How would you do it?”
For a moment puzzlement touched her empty face. “It…is not possible, Master.”
“Is it?” said Maglarion. “What if one were to, let us say, poison the rain itself? The rain that falls upon rich and poor and young alike? What would happen then?”
“Such a thing is impossible.” said Ikhana. “Not without the aid of great sorcery…”
Her voice trailed off, her dark eyes glancing at the bloodcrystal.
Then a smile, like a corpse’s rictus, flashed across her face.
“You’re going to kill them all,” she breathed.
–JM