» Tue Jan 25, 2011 7:03 am
DiGNiiTy: Thank you. I was not going for even a hint of compassion in the final bowshot however. I was hoping more for what Acadian would say was "cuddly as a rattlesnake". I went back and edited that final line to make it seem more ruthless.
Winter Wolf: Thank you. I have been trying very hard to make Not A Hero seem fresh and new, given the circumstances.
mALX1: Thank you. It took a while to get that just right.
treydog: Thank you. One thing that has actually helped my writing was all the time I spent playing pen & paper roleplaying games when I was younger. That taught me to think and act based upon what the character knows, not what I know.
Also, thank you again for the things you pointed out, which I have fixed.
bobg: Thank you indeed. Thankfully this will get us through the part of the story that is very derivative of the game, and into completely territory.
D.Foxy: Hi O' Kitsune of the D, welcome to Teresa's world. I am glad you are enjoying it. I found your Of Blades, Fights, and Assassins topic to be very helpful. I have not commented there because I saw Leydenne put a note in the topic saying you wanted the conserve the remaining posts for new work.
A long time ago I was a member of an amateur press association and one of the many things I learned from that was that you have to set your hook in the reader very quickly for the reasons you cited. It does not matter if your writing is pure gold later in the story if your opening does not get their attention and make them want to continue turning pages. Because of that I am always very nervous about the first few pages of anything I write.
I really was consciously working to depict that evolution of Teresa's character. It was a requirement really, as I had to explain how she went from someone with no self-confidence to one who would be willing to actually go out looking for trouble. Thankfully the plot provided me with the perfect tool for that in the death of the Emperor. One of the reasons I worked to make him seem larger than life in Teresa's mind was so that his death would a such powerful influence on her. Of course that is also combined with simply being cornered and forced to fight or die for the first time in her life. So there was a good double-whammy there.
I have always imagined that Teresa was one of those 'gutful few' people who actually shot to kill in a fight. It was just that she never had the impetus to reach down inside of herself and draw that out until now. She has always been able to avoid serious violence by running or hiding, and since that is what she has always been told to do, that is what she had done. In some ways I compare her to U.S. Grant, who never amounted to anything until the U.S. Civil War, when he found that he had what it took become a successful general. But if not for that war he would have never risen above obscurity.
As far as moving the plot goes, one thing I learned a long time ago was that all the characters must act based upon their motivations and personalities. They should always do things because it is in their nature, not because it is what the writer wants them to do. That can make things tricky as a writer, and often cause the plot to go down paths you were not expecting. I was surprised at some of the things that came out when I was writing this in fact. But I followed down the path Teresa naturally took, and everything worked out better than I originally planned.
Edit: Well, since D Fox asked, I may as well post the next installment. Note that this is one of the places where I have taken artistic license, namely with my description of Night Eye.
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Not A Hero - 6 - Masser's Light
The tunnel fell into a silence that was only pierced by the steady dripping of water and the sound of Teresa's own gasping breaths. The skin of her left arm ached where the bowstring had rubbed against it with every shot, and her fingers throbbed in pain from releasing it with her bare hands. That was what she got for using a bow without an arm bracer and a shooting glove, she thought.
Looking down at her hands, Teresa saw that they were trembling. A moment later she dropped to the stone floor, shaking all over. Her heart pounded like a hammer in her chest, and the pain in her arm and fingers became worse and worse.
Yet in spite of it all, she felt exhilaration coursing through her body. She was alive! she thought. She had faced three goblins, and she was alive! She sat there, just happy to still be breathing, and waited for her hands to stop shaking.
Once they did she concentrated upon her healing spell, then released her magicka with a glow of white light and sent it into the scraqed skin of her arm and fingers. This time it only required a single casting for the pain to stop.
Then she took a closer look at the body the goblins had been fighting over. It was a man, an Imperial perhaps, and did not seem to have been dead for long. He was dressed from head to toe in brown leather, including a thick cuirass that could not be mistaken for anything except armor. His head was bare except for a curious-looking pair of goggles that he wore. An arrow had pierced his leg, and his throat was torn out in a huge gash.
The work of the goblins no doubt, Teresa thought. But who was he? He was not a legionary, or one of those assassins, that was for certain. Was he a thief? she wondered. She had heard that some of them used the sewers as an underground road, hidden from the eyes of the Imperial Watch. What about the goblins themselves? Was it normal for such creatures to live so near to the city? Just under its nose in fact?
Teresa shook her head. She would probably never know the answers to her questions, she reasoned. All that mattered right now was that she was still alive, and she had to get moving.
Still, her street instincts moved her to gather up the bag of coins the goblins had been fighting over and attach it to her own belt. Likewise she pulled the leather cuirass from the dead man's frame a moment later and settled it upon her own shoulders. It felt bulky and uncomfortable, but if there were more goblins ahead it might save her life. His gloves followed soon after, and rifling through his belt pouches she discovered a handful of lockpicks as well. Finally she pulled the goggles from the dead man's head and settled them over her own eyes out of curiosity.
She was startled when the tunnel suddenly lit up as if it were under the noon day sun. She could see every individual stone, crack, and droplet of water that fell from the ceiling. A shaft of light from a hole in the ceiling ahead was so bright that it was near blinding, prompting her to turn her head away. Strangest of all, nearly all of the color washed out of everything, reducing the world to a grayish landscape broken only the occasional bits of muted red or yellow.
This must be what that Night Eye spell did that she had heard about, Teresa thought. She knew that many thieves preferred it, as it allowed you to see in the dark without making any light that would give them away.
A quick rummage through the corpses of the goblins yielded no great treasures as the dead thief had. They carried little more than daggers and wore filthy loincloths. The archer had a brace of arrows, but when Teresa inspected them she found they were smaller, shorter, and thinner than those she had found on the thief. They also appeared to be tipped with soft iron, where his were plainly of good hard steel. So while she strapped the arrow bag of the thief around her waist, she left the goblin's arrows behind, as she knew they would only make her misjudge her shots if she tried to use them. Once she got used to the heavier arrows of the thief that is.
That is when it occurred to her that if the last goblin had not been an archer, but instead had charged in at her as the first two had, she would probably be dead. The thought gave her a chill, and brought the tremble back to her hands. She had panicked when the second goblin was upon her, she thought. What would she have done if the third had been right behind with a knife or club? What should she do differently the next time, to be prepared for that? she wondered.
Suddenly she stopped and realized what she was doing. She was assessing weapons and tactics, as if she did this sort of thing for a living. As if she was going to continue doing so. She sounded like the legionaries did when they talked about fighting. She sounded like a warrior...
Her head spun. She was a nobody, she thought, a nothing; just an orphan from the slums with no past and no future. Yet here she was alive and well, after fighting and killing an assassin and then three goblins all on her own. A curious sensation filled her chest. It was warm, comforting, and made her stand a little straighter. It was something she had never felt before, and it took a while for her to understand what it was. It was pride, she finally realized as a faint smile came to her lips. For the first time in her life, she felt truly proud of herself.
The smell of feces interrupted her chain of thought. Proud or not, she was still in a sewer, she thought. It was time to go.
She started off down the tunnel, getting used to the weight of the leather cuirass. She did not like it at all. It was too big in the shoulders, too tight in the chest, loose in the waist, and tight again in the hips. Clearly, she thought, it had not been made for her six.
In time the tunnel narrowed and turned into a round tube, while the dry ledges to either side vanished. With no other choice, Teresa waded into the mire and pushed on to what she hoped would soon be the exit.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v90/subrosa_florens/oblivion/Oblivion058.jpg
Soon afterward the light seemed to brighten in the tunnel ahead of her, prompting Teresa to stop and raise her free hand to her face. Carefully grasping the Night Eye goggles and trying not to smear muck over the lenses, she drew them up from her eyes and rested them on her forehead.
The tunnel was plunged into shadows that obscured everything in dark swathes. Yet in that near inky darkness she could make out a red lightness ahead. It was steady, not the guttering of a torch or lantern, and her heart leaped at the thought that she might finally be nearing the way out of her dank and dark prison.
She tried not to get her hopes up too high and drew the goggles back down over her eyes. Once again the colors of the world dissolved into a dull grey. Looking more closely ahead, she saw what she thought might be bars blocking the tunnel far ahead.
Gripping her bow tightly in hand, she slowly crept forward. She stayed as near to the wall as she could because the goo was not as deep there. It occurred to her that it would also prevent her from creating a silhouette in the tunnel, and she suddenly felt proud of herself for being such a professional sneak, even if it were completely by accident.
She came to a gate of rusted irons bars that blocked the passage. She could smell fresh air now, and hear the lapping of water beyond. Fumbling through the pockets of her sack cloth breeches, Teresa produced the heavy iron key that Baurus had given her. With trembling hands she put it into the large square lock, and when she tried to turn it found the door swinging open under her hand.
She remembered the lockpicks she found on the thief's body. Perhaps he had picked the lock to enter this way? she thought? Or maybe the goblins had? She shrugged. It did not really matter, because now she was free.
Moving through the door, she found herself standing at the end of the stone tunnel, with the vastness of Lake Rumare spread out before her. Again Teresa pushed the goggles up on her forehead, but this time did not fuss about the lenses. The giant moon Masser glowed above her with its red light, and the night sky around it glittered with a thousand silver stars.
Teresa looked down at herself. The sack cloth breeches that she wore were soaked with filth and blood, as was the leather cuirass and gauntlets that she had appropriated in the tunnels. Squatting down by the edge of the water, she stared at her reflection with disgust. Her pale skin was as grimy as her clothing, and her long brown hair matted with blood.
Without a second thought she cast her bow and arrow bag aside and leaped into the water. It was cool, clean, and caressed her like the touch of the mother that she always wished she had. Staying under the surface as long as her lungs would allow, she rose up and took a deep breath of fresh air.
Then she set to pulling off her gloves, shoes, and cuirass. She knew the water would ruin the leather, but it was not like any of it had been in pristine condition to begin with, and there was no way she was going to put it back on her skin the way it was. Her sack cloth breeches and shirt followed, until finally she stood naked in the lake and let her body sink into the cool embrace of the water.
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