The Project: An excerpt from another of my novels-in-progress set in a fantasy world where magic is scarce and war is not.
The Text:
Trembling with terror, Ryselia backed up, pressing against Vorianul, who gripped her shoulders. If not for the fact that he was keeping a tight hold on her, she would already have bolted.
“I changed my mind! I can live like this,” she insisted, trying to turn around to face Vorianul… or to push him out of her way and make a break for the safety of the trail they had taken to get here.
Every fiber of Ryselia’s being screamed at her to get away from the edge of the canyon. Meanwhile, a single voice whispered to Vorianul: push her.
Before he realized what he was doing, Ryselia was already tumbling forward into the chasm below. Well, that’s fantastic. She’s definitely never going to trust me now. Barely even hesitating, he stepped forward and braced himself for a rough trip.
Ryselia, for her part, was stunned to find that she hadn’t broken anything in her fall. She wasn’t even particularly bruised. Not a fall when someone pushes you, she thought darkly. Strangely, her fear had subsided now that she was down here… but she would think about that later. Right now, she had a string of curses cobbled together from every edge of the map, and she was ready to unleash them all at her wayward travel companion.
“Vorianul!” she screamed into the darkness. “Where are you, you miserable coward?” The sound seemed dampened somehow. The wild, insensate terror had not returned, but a vague sense of unease was beginning to gnaw at her. “Vorianul?” she asked more tentatively. No answer. Looking up at where sunlight should still be illuminating the rocks, she noticed that the air was shimmering and the colors were muted, as if a film stretched over the canyon.
Meanwhile, Vorianul was scrambling down a narrow, nearly-vertical ledge. It’s not really vertical, he reassured himself. Our eyes are prone to vertical exaggeration, so this isn’t as steep as it seems. Sadly, that was little solace when he slipped, slid to the edge, and fell the remaining eight feet to the canyon floor. He attempted to use his magic to slow his fall, but everything seemed muted, somehow, and he barely managed a puff of air before his body slammed into the ground, knocking the wind out of him.
For a minute, he lay there, sucking air into his lungs desperately. Then, he sat up and looked around. Two things were very noticeable: the canyon was much larger and more subterranean than it seemed from above, and Ryselia was nowhere to be seen.
Of course. Why would this be easy? He summoned a light, wondering briefly why it seemed to flicker like a torch instead of remaining steady, and set off into the darkness.
After getting no response to any of her shouted questions, Ryselia found that her sense of dread had grown considerably. Not that she needed Vorianul by her side to feel safe, but she wished she hadn’t shouted his name quite so loudly. Or repeatedly. Deciding the best defense was to keep moving and hope nothing big found her, Ryselia headed north. Why north? she asked herself. But she didn’t answer, since she didn’t have a good reason for why she already knew the way.