Writing Blog

🎀 they/them

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hiii my name is maria and im an aspiring author. :)

i set up this blog to keep track of my progress and reach out to other writers!

my main blog is @tinymush and my craft blog is @wholemaria :)

my current project is godsend. when im feeling a little less shy, ill share more!

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my prologue below the cut... :)

its not suuuper long which i think is fine... its meant to be a story told to my main character by their mentor figure. i think it gets the job done as far as setting the scene but ive also considered including some sort of index at the front of the book to introduce the classes/professions and the species of the world. argh.

would love to hear thoughts. critique welcome as well. im worried i may have used too many similes but that's also just how galileo (the mentor figure) speaks... trying to strike a balance is hard.

The Godless Age

The dawn of the Spire’s unearthing is the final god’s last living day. The world breaks apart like a giant egg, spiderweb-cracks gashing great chasms through the earth. The final god, nameless in Its glory, is speared through the chest by the Spire’s unending walls. Its blood falls in rivulets down the tower, staining the golden bricks with rust. As each droplet meets the earth, a new red marsh blooms with virulent aplomb. 

It’s bloody, and violent, and is the birth of the Godless Age.

From there, a magitechnical revolution explodes. The gods’ corpses are looted, swarming with irreverents. They crawl across the gods like maggots, scraping off what fur or flesh they can salvage. They pluck eyes, teeth, claws. They pick the bones clean to gleaming, and they leave them to bleach in the sun.

(They are fools. It’s the bone that holds the marrow, and the marrow that holds the magic.)

It isn’t until the Gravetenders begin their holy mission -- to bury forever that which should never rise again -- that the world recognizes the power of the bones.

From the marshes come the Beasts; pure, and mourning, and rageful. With steelskin and iron scales, they are invulnerable to weapons of wood and metal. Only the sacred bone, sharpened to a blade, is enough to put them down. And then the Gravetenders’ shovels, spades of godbone shining, put them into the ground again.

The caches of bone are, finally, picked apart and stolen, sold off to the highest bidder, forged into weapons and trinkets. Only the gods whose bones were too dense are left to rot, and from their spines grow settlements, towns, cities. Our own Whitehart sprung up this way, within the safety of a long-dead god’s ribs.

When the godbone can give no more, rooks and mavens turn their attention to the Spire. Its golden shell is stripped to reveal bones of copper, of iron, of steel. It becomes a hub for adventurers and merchants alike.

(But the Spirits are drawn to that place, and from its great heights fall the Angels. They are keen, violent things; best avoided, lest you be lost to the blast of their blinding halos.)

A group from the Bloodswords’ Guild is the first to enter the Spire. They don’t make it far before they retreat, but it’s enough. The Spire has been breached, and adventurers flood in like poison from the fang. For years, the Spire is mapped and scavenged. Progress is only halted by another vault, this one not so easily picked.

And this is where the Godless Age ends, for now. There is a corpse atop a tower, and there are countless would-be heroes slavering over the chance to strip It of Its sacred flesh.

They need only break the lock.