Instead of working on finishing Heart of Fin over Easter, I got completely sidetracked with a random aside which I've working titled 'Librarian'. It started out as a 'I don't feel like writing anything, but I just gotta put pen to paper... well, fingers to keyboard', to 'I'll make this a three parter', and now it's 6000 words and 5 chapter long. I think I'm about 2/3 of the way done, but who knows what will happen? I've stopped trying to predict what I will write.
Here's the first few paragraphs (warning, not edited, and yes, I did just cheap out and abuse latin for spell words):
If Santi had thought that his time as Head Librarian would
consist mainly of the leisurely pursuit of wisdom, then he was mistaken. As he stared into the sunken hollows that
might have been the bookworm’s eyes, he wondered if this was a mistake that
would be paid with his life.
“Oh, Great Devour of Books, my mortal enemy, would you
kindly drop dead?” he asked hopefully. With
the first three volumes of the original Oraculi
Alchemiae, Prophecies of Alchemy, in his hands, there was no way that he
would be able to cast defensively in time.
He should have known that such delicious volumes would attract the
beast. “Or at the very least, would you considerately
come back later?”
In reply, the bookwoom’s looming, serpentine body struck at
him, missing narrowly only because the librarian dived out of the way at the
last second. Its thick tail swung around
and barrelled into the poor man’s stomach.
The brown powder coating the bookworm’s hide puffed out on impact,
creating a choking cloud that smelled of book dust.
Coughing and wincing, with the books pressed to his chest,
Santi rolled unsteadily to his feet.
Unfortunately for him, the bookworm wasn’t one to allow him time to
recover. It threw itselt at him again,
this time, its mouth latched onto Santi’s shoulder. Enzymes in the bookworm’s saliva, evolved to
digest the tough leathery covers of books, made short work of Santi’s shirt before
burning his skin.
With a cry of pain, the librarian flung the books as far as
he could from the bookworm. Though every
fibre of his body told him to pry the bookworm’s sucking mouth from him, to do
so would unleash the creature on the scent of books again. If it noticed the volumes of Oraculi Alchemiae now, it would surely
devour the books before Santi could stop it.
He drew a nugget of gold the size of an infant’s thumb from
his pockets. Pain made concentration slippery,
but he mustered what he could into a simple, but effective spell.
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