I Promise the Next Part has a Sword Fight
It won’t just be people talking anymore but Ambergris plus whoever you have to admit the Saurus is a genius idea
The Void was so close I could have struck it with a rock. Unfortunately, there were no rocks in the Periphery so the gray barely defined smudge on the ground would have to suffice. Everything was like that out in the Periphery where Imagination was weakest and there was barely enough Spark to hold things together. The Periphery came from the edges of stories, from the places only seen in the background or off to the side, not even named on the map that came in the front of the book. The smudge had almost no heft to it but it still flew straight enough to strike the dark surface. The Void undulated around the impact like a sheet on a clothesline and part of me was worried it might snap close enough that it would eat us all. The ripple was too small, though. The smudge disappeared and so did a few others near the ground where I’d thrown the smudge.
Walls wouldn’t stop the Void. Swords wouldn’t stop the Void. Whatever went in the Void, anything that even so much as touched it, just disappeared and never came back out.
We had gathered in a rectangle out in the far reaches of the Periphery. You could call it a big building or apartment complex, but that wouldn’t be accurate. Nothing could hide the fact it was nothing but a really big rectangle. Granted, a rectangle that you could go inside, so maybe it was a big box in that sense, but it didn’t have a reality other than its shape. Viewed from a distance, though, a rectangle could be any number of things. A high rise condo, an office building, an apartment complex,or maybe even a Wizard’s tower. Creativity was a collaborative experience, where the creator laid down rails and guidelines and the mind of the observer filled in all the details. So, this far out in the Periphery, everything was wide open to interpretation and incredibly amorphous as a result.
“Three days is not much time to plan,” Arthur Pendragon sighed. He rubbed his temples and had his elbows set on the Round Table. The boy king looked more weary than I had ever seen.
Huck Finn had his feet up on the table opposite Arthur and idly carved an apple with a small pen knife. A half dozen or so others, the last members of the Resistance, had gathered here to strategize.
“Reckon there must be some kind of book convention or award ceremony or something back in the Real. Always kicks up a bunch of Cancellations whenever that happens. Somebody tries to kiss someone. Somebody accuses someone else of being low-down or mean-spirited. You know how it goes. As Below, so Above.” Huck finished his thought while still chewing a slice of apple.
“So what do we do? How can we prepare in advance for something we barely know anything about? This entire business seems… undefined.” Merriam was a diminutive member of our group, slight of build with thick glasses and sharp eyes dressed in meticulous librarian garb. She was one of the few reference books to have ever materialized in Imagination and looked more or less exactly what you would have supposed a living Dictionary would look like. Which was to say rather mousy but also cute despite that fact. Her entire existence was owed to the misunderstanding of children, but since it was a consistent and widespread misunderstanding it had been enough to bring her to life out here.
The Saurus, which followed Merriam everywhere, blinked its reptilian eyes and jumped up and down like a small dinosaur dog in her lap before simply murmuring, “Indistinct.”
I was thankful that Gray’s Anatomy had never acquired enough Spark to come fully alive as his presence was… off-putting. It was bad enough to run into him in the Periphery at night, let alone to imagine the horror of watching all those muscles move over one another attempting to carry out everyday conversations. As it stood, Miriam and the Saurus lived all alone on the entire Reference Shelf.
“Who is going to set up the events for him? We could start there. I’d guess someone in Science Fiction. That genre is full of cowards and boot-lickers for the last decade or so. Sherlock always said they were the first place to look for rapscallions and miscreants. They’re one of the only genres not in the Resistance,” Watson looked thoughtfully at his monocle while he cleaned it with a handkerchief. He seemed less desperate now that he had seen Sherlock’s note but his fingers were still noticeably gray and left smudges on the handkerchief as he took them away.
I bent over and picked up another smudge and threw it into the Void.
Mowgli growled and continued his menacing walk around the Round Table.
“We should beset them with scorpions and poisonous serpents. Let them test their piety and compassion against the Law of the Jungle,” he spat.
“Serpents are venomous. Venom has to enter into the blood. Poison is eaten,” Merriam sighed but it was obvious from her wistful tone she wished to do the same.
“Ingested,” whispered the Saurus.
“I do not care so long as they suffer. They chased me out here only to never let me return. They call me racist but I say my author was not afraid to write a man of action! They think themselves kind but the Periphery is far worse than the Jungle with much less to eat. They force me to beg food from all of you or else scavenge at the corners of a Feast Scene like a hyena. I will show them how much I hate them with my teeth!”
“Do not throw caution to the wind too soon, my friend. Mayhap, this contest will prove their undoing. Soon we will have our revenge. I still feel naked without my crown, but they said it was a sign of Imperialism,” said Arthur.
“Whatever they do, Sexy Dracula will know and if he knows then Alexander ManCandy and Sebastian Brood will know. Other than them? My money is on Peter Pan, Robinhood, and Aladdin. All of them have been eaten up and changed by the C’s since the Void first appeared,” I was still staring into the Void as I said it but I felt certain.
“Oh, there was something wrong with Peter Pan long before the Void appeared. Mark never knew the particulars as the boys who inspired the story didn’t pass away until some years later but I’d like to think he wouldn’t have approved. I admit the story has a certain charm but only if you don’t think on it too long. You should have seen Mark unload on old Byron. If they’re making teams by genre Peter will be on Literary with me so I’ll keep an eye on him,” Huck’s face became a sneer by the end and I had to remember he was over a hundred years old and wasn’t simply the boy who had run away from home to learn how to become a man any longer.
“We don’t have anyone in Anti-Hero, so Sexy Dracula will do whatever he likes and my guess is he’ll have at least Sebastian Brood to back him up. That will be the main power center,” Merriam said.
“Axis,” whispered the Saurus.
I rubbed my eyes. Whatever happened, it was going to try all of us. There used to be dozens of characters brave enough to come to these meetings and now only us six and Mowgli probably only because he had no other choice. It wouldn’t take much to get rid of the rest of us. I hadn’t told them about what Harvey had done to me for that very reason.
“Adventure, Literary, Detective, Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Romance, Fairy Tale… there’s going to be a lot of genres fielding characters out there. There’s no way they can all get Canceled at once is there?”
A woman with a pale face, dark hair and bright red lips ran into the rectangle so hard she almost tripped over a tiny man hovering around her feet who had turned the corner just before her.
“She just made number one in Young Adult on Kindle!” Snow White clapped her hands in excitement. “The new girl is awake and her sales rank is going up every time it refreshes! She’s becoming Popular!”
Random Notes: let’s just write as if Watson showed her the note at the end of chapter 3. The rewrite of the start of chapter one should refer to the restaurant for the Bechdel Breakfast as a “Feast Scene” as this is their in-world speak for restaurant. Also I want Ariel to have a cyborg arm and maybe give a talk about “mind powers” which are a fucking ending that I hate with all my heart. Like, write an ending that resolves the stakes YOU set by developing a deeper understanding of the problem and what it means, not where your main character shakes their head and maybe trembles their outstretched hand while their nose bleeds to show that they’re trying really hard to wield godlike power. Also should Earth be their sun? Maybe call it the Real? Plan right now is to maybe write through the first event and then go back and do the first partial rewrite so I know where I’m going. I kinda sorta know what happens next and what a couple big twists will be but this is all being discovery written.
I found the Saurus hilariously charming. Brilliant. Hope he eats bits of word play and puns people whisper under their breath.
Poked at stable diffusion image generator - pre-raphaelite style for jade princess. one didn’t suck.
https://postimg.cc/dZGg47Lj