#crystal combat

[silvershears]

Last Line Tag Game

Tagged by @akiwitch — thank you!! Given NaNo, I actually have fresh writing to contribute this time....

Sheytana wiggled the knife free and tossed it back hilt-first toward them, calling, “We said we don’t want a fight, but you’d be wise to figure out a better enterprise than looting the crypts for corpses.”

Throwing a tag out to @luwianskies since I know you’ve been writing some! :}

[silvershears]

An excerpt from book one of the Moonwater Series, Crystal Combat, by request of @absurdtamsin​ who asked for a peek at moonwater in its natural state. Good news: This will answer exactly none of your questions.

Cyrian met her at the asylum warehouse where Keetan tugged the tables from a corner. The legs had been disassembled and pulled from their housings, and the light distillation equipment blinked in the morning light where it stood stacked in the street. "G'morning," Cyrian piped, hauling a large glass beaker onto his shoulder. "Grab something and we'll head to the crypts."

"Is that where you're taking this?" Keetan asked, tucking table legs under his arms and waving Sheytana to the other end of the heavy wooden slab to help carry it. "How much do you reckon I've changed since being there, Sheytana? Enough for them not to notice the imp who's supposed to be dead?"

"It won’t be much trouble if they see you coming out of the catacombs. They'll just sing you back in."

Cyrian chuckled. "Right back into your grave."

“Don’t know that I need help with that,” he grumbled, lifting the table top.

By the luck of the Twelfth One, the three did not meet anyone in the gardens on the way. The funerals for the casualties had ceased and the priests and priestesses’ hymn shifts had dropped back down from twelve hour affairs. They needed rest, both sleep and silence. Their voices and nerves were as raw as the rest of the city’s, if not worse, having to still sing with all that wailing. As it was, the bulk of the order wouldn’t rise until much later in the day and Sheytana couldn’t blame them.

The great pointed arch of the crypt entrance loomed between two trees in the garden beside the Chapel, and it grew immediately dark as they circled down the steps to the vaulted chambers beneath. The huge hall, supported by twenty four thick-set columns, sprouted corridors from twenty four peaked alcoves into more rooms, each identical and barely lit by the blue glow of the moonwater pooling against the edges of the ceiling. It smelled damp and felt somehow green, though none of them could see much once they'd stepped from the stairs.

Glass clinked on the stone floor as Cyrian’s shadowed outline set his enormous beaker down. A slosh brought a smaller vial of liquid mild morning light at his side to wakefulness, setting its pale light aglow. The hall still fell to darkness further in, but around them wet grey walls peeked between sheets of clinging green moss. Water ran to the ceiling in thin rivulets, glowing the faint, familiar blue of the moonpools in the gardens. It flowed upward, struggling out of the soil between the stones, between the moss covering the walls, up through the chinks in the ceiling to the surface where stone basins waited to collect it in the gardens.

Sheytana had only been to the crypts a few times and never bothered to inspect how the place held as many bodies as it needed to, but with the influx of corpses from the invasion, many had been tucked into the biers in the walls with little attention paid to their comfort and the moss curtains haphazardly replaced over them. The alcoves in this first chamber spread fingers and toes from beneath the green.

Cyrian walked before them confidently enough that she wondered how often he’d been down here. Who would he look for if he did frequent these halls?

The chamber he selected had only a few rivers of moonwater running up at the corners and along the edges of niches that had been sealed over with stone plates. The moss covered the names and obscured the face of the statue lying atop a sarcophagus in the center of the room. It was a thick sheet, mostly undisturbed, and looked impossible to separate from the wall.

"Set that down here, you two, and go back for the rest of the equipment," Cyrian said, motioning for the table she and Keetan carried. He leaned it against the tomb and took the legs from Keetan. "I'll start setting up. Hopefully this back room's all but forgotten."

[silvershears]

First Paragraph Tag

Tagged by @akiwitch!

I’m working through edits to Crystal Combat, so here we go:

Twin sticky buns rocketed out of the back door of Mel's Bakery at the entrance of Cinnamon Plaza, straight into the dry summer heat of the back alley. Sheytana caught both before they landed in the dust, juggling them before tossing one to Keetan. Mel's husband winked, put a finger to his lips, and dragged the sack-of-flour doorstop into the kitchen.

[silvershears]

Last Line Tag

Tagged by @akiwitch! Can’t wait for the next Ihale book~ Soon (TM)~ Here’s from work I’m doing on Crystal Combat’s edits:

Aimery called something else after her, but she'd already passed in front of the Chapel and the hymns wafting from its fire-lit interior scrambled his words.

Thank you!