NEW RAN - Places in The Empire
— Rise of the Blood Dawn trilogy
Worldbuilding?? What’s that? Never heard of her. Which is a shame because I’m writing a fantasy series and WB is kinda essential.
But whenever I find myself in desperate need of logical fictional setting slash structure, I usually just wing it. I do, really! And then I make some kind of marker in the document so I can find it and change it in edits. Yup!
It’s not the smart way around, it’s exhausting, but pantsing is what makes me write the story —AND FINISH IT. So I bear my cross!
Recently I’ve been prepping for finishing my second book in Rise of the Blood Dawn Trilogy (The Liar Alliance) and that means reading all my little scenes that I wrote last November for NaNoWriMo.
And I thought you might think so too, so I’m sharing.
This little scene/glimpse is Shiroin seeing New Ran, the harbor city, for the very first time, and she would’ve enjoyed it (as much as a murderous emo empress can), if she wasn’t struggling to keep her very insisting necromantic magic snake from jumping out of her mouth.
Blue. Crisp, brilliant, deep. And then white, blinding white in the cool sun. Those were the colors of New Ran’s banners that bellowed in the ocean breeze from every windowsill as we, Deria and I, rode through the city.
He had taken to horseback before we entered, no doubt to sit high and sparkle like a beloved jewel at his neighbor country.
The masses had poured out on the streets, the curious as well as the fanatic.
Women, children and men waved their crest flags and laced kerchiefs. They threw torn paper and white rose petals in the gust. It soared like snow down on the cobble stone street.
Their roar of adoration was mainly for Deria I would imagine, and the rest of roars, bellowing words of power, were for The Red Ruler. Me.
“Erah Erah, Behjer, Erah!” They cried in Gailian as one voice, pretending that I had already won the thousand-year war.
Hurray, hurray, victory, hurray.
It was strange to be admired. Loved publicly. And to have my name, or at least my newly required nickname, being cried out in worship. It surprised me that I did not hate it as intensely as I would have thought.
Kiel had said that he was going to New Ran. I wondered if he was still here. Looking at me from one of the cooler shadows perhaps. I hoped not. It would break something in me to know that we had been so close, and yet so far from each other.
With the help of the green-capes, who did a thorough job of keeping the crowds from flooding us, the caravan curved a corner. Instantly the narrow street dipped down a steep flagstone slope, allowing an unpolluted sight of the entire harbor with the mountains rising on either side of huge wide-mouthed ria. New Ran’s banners were inspired by the grand marina, a simple white ship on a royal blue background, but they did not come close to doing the view justice. The coast swelled with spearing masts, stringing the huge sails and gangly sea folk from swaying ropes between the yards. And beyond them, was the ocean, meeting the sky without a clear line to define the horizon by. Stunning.
Hurray, hurray, victory, hurray!
I took a deep breath and tasted salt. As much as I prized the virgin forests and sleeping mountains, I valued the ocean equally so. It smelled like a childhood I had briefly had, but tented to forget about. And though it was a treacherous thing to do, I closed my eyes and took another breath when the wind rose to greet us. The calls and yells dimmed as I took a soft memory in my mind’s hand. I turned it gently. It was heavy with grief but beautiful. For the shortest of moments I was on the beach with my mother. Holding shells up against the sun and seeing rays beam through pinholes in the pearl-shine.
Dream of sunshine, my little Bloom.
In the memory the voice should have been a sweet whisper. A light kiss on my eyelids, but it was sounding wrong.
I snapped my eyes open as someone repeated the words of my mother in a lethal and hissing voice. The memory shattered and my serpent snickered darkly as it flowed free of its grotto and out through my ribs.
Deria rode past me. His rankness on his prancing steed was the one of a King rather than a Prince and I was impressed by how quickly he had put on his fathers cloak, and then carried it so naturally. Deria waved and blew kisses from his palm to both men and women, it looked false and staged to me, but the people ate it like starving mice. When Deria twisted slightly in his saddle to see if I was watching him, he grinned wider to see that I indeed was.
Our eyes met and his were as lively as the colored banners in the wind. But my serpent had sent my heart racing from its sudden and horrid presence, and my own gaze felt cold and twitching. I could have made up for it by a smile, but I did not dare. My teeth had sharpened ever so slightly behind my closed pink lips. A smile would only flash Deria something nasty.
Instead I inclined my chin and flicked my eyes down to the street before me.
Looking reserved, rather than hungry for chewing through tendon and bone, would be the lesser of two evils.
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