#planar tears

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For real. Chapter 37 may be happening this weekend. Couple of hundred words off finished and it has been LONG ENOUGH. Thank you if you’re still here and waiting <3

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After Moonrise

I commissioned @darkurgetrash for this wonderful picture of Catrin and Rolan, lingering in their newly-admitted feelings safe at Last Light Inn. They’ve still got plenty to work out but… in this moment, they are happy.

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Planar Tears 37 is inching along I promise. Probably another 500 words and it’s good to go? We’ll see!

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Whatever You’re Working On Not-Quite Wednesday

Thank you for the various tags, @redroomroaving @graysparrowao3 and anyone else I’ve missed. Consider this an open tag!

Below the cut for another brief installment of Planar Tears Chapter 36. Rolan is on Catrin’s tail… but will he find her soon enough?

And then he sees it, as he looks around the corner to the square, watching the gates creak open. His eyes fall upon the slowly-drying cobbles, so vacantly and fearfully that he almost does not notice the soaked blue ribbon lying crushed into the gaps between them. It takes a moment for his heart to lurch, and for his mind to comprehend its meaning; time in which he steps out into the square unseeing, feet possessed by a drive his mind has not caught up with.

The velvet clings, slimy, to his skin. Faraway, he knows he cannot linger, when the Fist could turn from the gate at any moment and see him. But he stays frozen, staring at the bedraggled slip of fabric in his fingers.

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I simply have to go for Planar Tears, whatever you would like to share from or about it! <3

Below the cut: both an excerpt of the next chapter, and some chat about the plot/progress!

Rolan takes shelter eventually. Gasping for breath, with long fingers of hair plastered to his cheek and jaw. Everything burns; tail, shoulder, lungs, throat. His calves, and the hammered soles of his feet, little protected by his worn boots.

It only takes a moment’s absence of movement for a rush of painful reflections to fill up the space. Catrin seems impossibly far away. He does not know how he can find her, short of a miracle. There are hundreds of thousands in this city. Travellers from every continent, and beggars of every description. No-one will know yet another strangely-dressed, foreign-tongued human from another, if he could even ask a passer-by without the fear of discovery.

Once upon a time, he imagined Baldur’s Gate as his home. It is bitterly ironic that he has never felt more lost.

———

I’m really happy about the way this has come out. I took a lot of (abstract) inspiration from the scenes in Jane Eyre where she runs away from Thornfield and into the unknown. Rolan’s stuck in a city he barely knows, and worse, it is almost certain that people will be hunting him for Lorroakan’s murder. And yet— unlike Jane Eyre, who is running away— he is running towards Catrin anyway, searching. Suffused with pain and exhaustion.

Originally [BIG SPOILERS AHEAD] the imminent reconciliation was meant to happen in the same chapter that Rolan killed Lorroakan, aka the last one I published. But in the end, that just felt like too much in one chapter, and I really wanted the audience to feel the weight of Rolan’s decision. This is the moment where he chooses her, and it comes at enormous personal cost— so we should sit with it from one chapter to the next, I think.

And what happens then? Well, I hate to say it, but Lorroakan is not the final antagonist of this story. He’s the culmination of Rolan’s personal arc, and his killing represents the death of the kind of wizard Rolan once thought he was, and has now discarded. But he’s not the final chapter in Rolan and Catrin’s story; that is someone they’ll have to surmount together, whose presence has haunted them since the very beginning. I’m hopeful that long term readers will have some guesses about what Catrin might have done since we saw her last…

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WIP Whenever - Planar Tears C37

A tag for @graysparrowao3 ! And @redroomroaving ! And @cactusmisslittle and whoever else wants one! 🥳

Ok, here’s some Planar Tears. This chapter is very early in the drafting, but I’m excited, so I thought I’d share!

It is Rolan’s turn to be barely conscious. An orchestra of wounds lay siege to his senses, so loud it drowns out almost everything else; it was bright, and now it is dark, and only dimly does that make him realise that they have reached the house, and they are safe.

Catrin’s brisk voice fades to the background. A chair, she demands for him, and before he can protest he’s steered towards it, the names of the two women who greeted them floating to him through the pain. Mayrina and Adrielle. Catrin asks something about healing potions; no need, Adrielle’s a cleric.

A thing Rolan could have told her from her robes, but he is in no state to talk; no state to do more than nod faintly as the pair of them check his injuries, whilst he grits his teeth through the pain.

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Planar Tears, C36//On the Run

Catrin seems impossibly far away. He does not know how he can find her, short of a miracle. There are hundreds of thousands in this city. Travellers from every continent, and beggars of every description. No-one will know yet another strangely-dressed, foreign-tongued human from another, if he could even ask a passer-by without the fear of discovery.

Once upon a time, he imagined Baldur’s Gate as his home. It is bitterly ironic that he has never felt more lost.

Alone and injured, Rolan tries desperately to find Catrin in Baldur’s Gate.

Read on AO3

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Sentences WIP Game

At last, some of the promised sentences - starting with Planar Tears and In Service of Magic! All of the options have a bonus +5 sentences from the free space votes. Thanks to everyone who voted for bearing with me, it’s been A Time lately but I’m glad to be getting back on the horse <3

Planar Tears, C37 - 13 sentences

‘Christ!’ she chokes out, forcing back the slew of Draconic and Infernal that is mingling on her tongue. 

Rolan jerks up, grasping her hand. 

‘Are you alright?’

She nods, grimacing, her lips contorting as she fights for control and loses. Her grip tightens.

 ‘[Draconic] - [Infernal] - ’

Lurching forward, Catrin seizes for him, her words a stream running over his wet shoulder. 

‘I am sorry,’ Rolan whispers tightly, at a painful loss.

Catrin shakes her head as the curse keeps coming, squeezing his hand. 

‘Don’t be,’ she says when it’s over. ‘Fuck. I’m just… glad you’re here.’

Insufficient, really, but he nods. He has spent enough time feeling powerless already, and yet there is always more fate thrown his way, wrenching the ground from beneath him. 

In Service of Magic - 9 sentences

‘If you find it too much, tell me,’ she murmurs. 

‘I will not,’ he interjects hastily.

There is that dangerous enthusiasm again. Hard not to want to take advantage of; but she heeds her mother’s oft-mentioned advice, and strokes his cheek with a gentleness that clearly embarrasses him. 

‘You may do,’ she says. 

His jaw grits slightly under her touch, but he gives her a civil, if short, nod. 

She gestures him to the bench. 

‘Should I remove my robes?’ Rolan asks, hesitating. 

‘No. Bend over the bench, and draw up your skirt for me.’