• Fandom,  Writing

    Unforgiven: A Highlander fic

    So a few weeks ago, Medieval POC, the website I feel is the actual purpose of the Internet existing, posted this picture:

    rock_howland

    and requested immortal vampire fic. I was all like “VAMPIRE WUT NO HIGHLANDER OBVS!” and she said that would do too.

    And then I, er, had an idea. And then…well, then this happened:

    Unforgiven: A Highlander Fic
    Etruria (today, Tuscany): ca 500 BC

    The last thing he remembered was the lion killing him.

    He didn’t expect to awaken in a field; he did not expect to awaken with a surge of pain that felt like his blood had been set on fire. That faded quickly, as if was no more than a warning of things to come, and he was left again with the strangeness of awakening at all, much less beneath the blazing sun and surrounded by wildflowers. His faith said the afterlife would put him in a home much like the one he’d left, domed and comfortable, and that he would be reunited with the family who had gone before.

    It said nothing of a sharp-nosed man crouching over him, expression patient, as if he had been waiting for some time and was prepared to wait longer yet. “Ah,” he said. “There you are. What’s your name?”

    The answer to that seemed a long time in coming; surely the dead knew who roamed their own realm, and the lion’s blows had rattled his own brains. “Alcaeus.” he finally replied. “Who are you?”

    “Alcaeus. What on earth were you thinking, going after the lion?”

    “A child was going to die.” That, he remembered more clearly than his own name. The boy had stood up and said it all very simply: today he would be fed to the lion, the Nemean Lion, the beast of the north. Alcaeus might go in his stead and slay the monster; if he failed, then in a month’s time this child of no more than ten years would be sacrificed to appease the gods and draw the beast away. There were three paths before him that day, and two led to the child’s death.

    The third, of course, led to his own glory, and the survival of a child, besides. It was reason enough to have acted.

    Still, it earned a derisive snort from the slender man. “Children die all the time. And if you didn’t notice, you died instead, accomplishing nothing.”

    Alcaeus’ eyes closed in dismay. He had known, of course; he remembered the blows that killed him, but this was so unlike the afterlife he had been prepared for…. “You are not Leinth,” he said after a time, and opened his eyes again. “Laran?”

    A softness came over the man’s face, an inward change that could not disguise the masculine lines of his nose and jaw but which somehow awakened all that was female within him. “Could I not be Leinth? Deity of death, god and goddess?” His female manner faded as quickly as it had come; Alcaeus could only stare in wordless astonishment at his shifting aspects as he spoke again. “But Laran…Laran is closer. God of war,” he said, and a depth of bitter irony shivered through his voice. It returned to its usual tenor with his next words, the change so swift it might have been imagined. “You can call me Laran. But as it happens, you’re not dead.”

    “Thank the gods.” It was not that he minded dying, but waking in a field of flowers under sunshine and the sarcastic voice of a thin-faced man was not what he hoped for from the afterlife. “…why am I not dead?”

    “Because you’re immortal. Get up and get out of here before anybody else realises it.” Laran stood and offered his hand, pulling Alcaeus to his feet. “You already know how to fight, so I’m not going to waste my time on you. The rules are simple: you can’t die unless your head leaves your shoulders. There are others like you who will try to kill you for your power. You’ll feel them coming. Kill them or talk your way out of it and you might just live forever. Good luck.” He strode away, leaving Alcaeus alone in a field of golden flowers.

  • Fandom

    highlander on the mind

    Apparently I’ve got Highlander on the mind. Last week MedievalPOC caused me to write a fic (I’ll post it after I’ve retrieved the third that I was working on when the tablet battery died), last night I got into this big discussion about Methos over on FB with a friend, which caused me to point out IMMORTAL BELOVED to her, and to wist about someday being able to write my other two Methos novels (which, unless Davis/Panzer opens Highlander up to Kindle Worlds, is not something I can ever see happening).

    So this morning I had this exceedingly vivid Highlander/vampire mashup dream in which Tom Hiddleston may have been playing Methos, I couldn’t quite tell.

    Anyway, I typed up what I cold remember. I wish dreams made as much sense in recollection as they do in the moment, because in the dream it was extremely coherent and I know I’m only remembering bits of it in the writeup. Someday I want to see if hypnotization brings back dream detail.

  • Uncategorized

    The Final Quest

    Elfquest: The Final Quest, Page 2. And yes, I will be linking to this every week until they’re done with the prologue, because THAT’S HOW I ROLL.

    Via Neil Gaiman: Wow. One of the actresses in “The Innocence of Muslims” speaks out. Her story is really, really not what you think it would be.

    Bleeding Cool has been doing a fairly regular set of gendercrunching posts to determine what the gender splits at the Big Two comic companies are. The latest also has some bonus “ethnocrunching”. That post was followed up by the experiences of a self-described “big Black dude” who works in the industry. Worth reading if any of this matters to you.

    On this week’s Doctor Who, with incredibly minor spoilers but I’ll put them behind a cut for you of tender spirit anyway:

  • Uncategorized

    No…we would have been great.

    I am the geekiest geek who ever did geek, and I am going to order this. *clutches heart* Furthermore, I now have to learn how to make the really good little animated icons so I can do an animation of the last few seconds of that. *clutches heart more*

    I am also the slowest writer who ever did write. I’ve only got one or two chapters left (two would make it…smoother, I think, but one seems more likely), but I’m not sure I’ll write tomorrow, because I’m getting increasingly slow. I wrote 3K today, but it took All Day. Possibly a day or two off would help me get through the last bit. Of course, possibly just finishing it would also, you know. Help me get through the last bit.

    Um. Yep, that’s it for today. No brain, no brain, la la la la la la!

    ytd wordcount: 79,400
    miles to Minas Tirith: 88.5

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