rachelmsterling

Oh wow, I love the voice of your narration here--it's very fun and funny, even when (and/or partially because) it's describing all the violence and brutality so casually. Your opening lines hooked my interest immediately, and then you kept it by making me curious about Aida's "parents" with their physical description and wanting to know more about the world where this is set.

Ha, I love the last line in the scene! I'm certainly curious about what's going to come along and shake up this "life of disappointment" Vivica is expecting for them both.

Wow, really pulled into this. The post-apocalyptic setting feels very vivid, that very American dead space-ness with danger lurking unexpectedly anywhere. I really enjoy the narrator's voice--those moments of biting humor give the reader a nice breather from the heaviness of the world. And I was very curious to read to the end of the excerpt and get a sense of what the vials were for. I also love the idea of bringing queer romance into the post-apocalpytic genre too--I personally haven't come across much of that before, so always exciting to find queer narratives in unexpected places!

The rivalry with Olympia is really so strong! That feeling of both the frustration with her and the ways she can go for the most brutal comments sometimes and the sense of the narrator's familiarity with her, of Olympia being such a well-known entity (not a friend, but not an enemy exactly either) feels so relatable and vivid. I'm curious to see what their relationship will look like as the plot progresses.

The world already feels so rich, your descriptions are vivid, and I'm already very much siding with Ayna. The idea of not being loved or being considered beautiful because she has no magic and the ways she feels so immediately forgotten about around Mahl and the knight hit hard and really deliver that feeling of hurt and bitterness at not being valued as a person. I definitely want to know what happens to her next and where she goes from here!

The summer Vrinn turned seven, her not-quite-mother led her from the edge of their village and deeper into the forest than she’d ever gone before. This was unusual, since Vrinn was often shouted at about wandering too deep into the woods. She had a habit of losing track of time and her own location when she was exploring. Crane—the woman who’d carved Vrinn from her dead mother’s womb and been responsible for her ever since—was furious whenever Vrinn came home late, always ordering her to stay closer to their cabin. So, the idea of actually being led into parts of the forest that Vrinn never seen, leaving foot trails and even deer paths behind was thrilling. She stared around herself at the trees whose trunks grew a little wider than the ones surrounding the village, ancient oaks and elms, their leaves rustling far above her head like they were whispering a thousand secrets back and forth every moment. Even the birds sounded different this far from home, their cries sharper and more chaotic. They sounded less like song birds, and more like harbingers from the old stories the village women told the other children and which Vrinn would sometimes listen to while pretending she was just passing by on some errand or another. Vrinn followed Crane quietly, sometimes swinging her arms at her sides and always taking in the sights around her, everything from the bright green moss growing on tree bark to the yellow-spotted salamander hunkered down in the shade of a stone, but Vrinn never interrupted Crane from whatever important thoughts she was clearly thinking. Vrinn knew that distracting Crane from important thoughts never led to a positive reaction, so it would be best to pretend Crane wasn’t there at all. Crane was doing a good job of pretending Vrinn wasn’t there, anyway. She was leading the way into the forest in a straight line to the west, not following a trail and never turning back to make sure Vrinn was still following her. Crane also never slowed her pace, not even when Vrinn’s tunic got caught in a bramble bush, and she had to hurry so quickly to free herself that she pricked the pad of her thumb on a thorn, blood welling up on her skin in a crimson bead. Eventually, Crane seemed pleased with the spot she’d led them to, a space that wasn’t so much a clearing as a small gap in the trees, allowing more of the bright sunlight to filter down to the forest floor. Crane turned back toward Vrinn, head tilted down to study the child as she towered over her slight frame. Crane wasn’t exactly tall compared to some of the other women in the village, but she was certainly taller than Vrinn. She was solid too, her frame heavy and strong. When she looked Vrinn as she did now, her pale gray eyes serious and severe in her weathered, unsmiling face, it was more than a little intimidating. Crane scanned up and down Vrinn’s body, acknowledging her presence for the first time since giving her a curt order of: “Come with me,” and starting off into the forest earlier that morning. “All right,” she said. “Today, we’re going to test your magic.” Vrinn cocked her head off to one side and watched Crane, waiting for the trick. The first rule Vrinn had ever learned was “Never use your magic.” It was a frustrating rule for someone growing up in Orchys, a village populated mostly by witches and where the other children had been learning spells and potions alongside their letters. But Vrinn had been forbidden from using magic, ever since she was three years and had a disastrous accident with her power. She’d sneaked into the village’s shared barn while hunting for a litter of kittens she’d heard were hidden there. She’d been climbing up a haystack, sure that was the best spot for the kittens to be hidden away by their mother, when somehow, she let out a burst of power that ended up rotting everything stored in that corner of the barn. At the time, no one understood how Vrinn—a child too young to have received any magical training—had managed to cause such a disaster. More important than the mystery behind how Vrinn had managed such a feat, however, the village had struggled to survive that winter on unexpectedly limited provisions. Thanks to the village’s natural magic, which allowed them to produce rich, bountiful harvests every year, Orchys had never experienced difficulties with growing enough crops to feed themselves or with coaxing the land to provide for all their needs. Losing so much of their stores that late in the year had been a shocking blow. The villagers of Orchys weren’t used to going hungry, and they weren’t inclined to bear this new hardship with any grace. Everyone knew Vrinn’s mishap was the reason they had to tighten their belts that year, and they weren’t likely to forget it. After that, the lesson that Vrinn was never to attempt doing magic of any kind ever again had been thoroughly beaten into her. Crane didn’t even need to use her obedience spell anymore to get Vrinn to keep her power locked up inside herself. Vrinn was that good at it all on her own. But now, Crane was telling her to let out her dangerous, unpredictable magic. It had to be some kind of trick—or a test. Maybe if Vrinn showed Crane she was going to be good, could be trusted to have learned her lesson, maybe then Crane would kiss her forehead like the immortals who showed up to help children in stories. Maybe she would say Vrinn was really her daughter after all. Maybe if she passed this test, Crane would start to love her. Maybe. Vrinn shook her head, fighting back the smile that wanted to break free on her face, because she was going to be much too good and clever to fall into the obvious trap. There was no way Crane was going to trick her that easily. “You stupid, useless girl,” Crane hissed, reaching out to slap her ear, not hard enough to really hurt, but loud enough to startle Vrinn. “Can’t you do anything right?” “But,” Vrinn said, feeling stupid even as the words left her mouth. “I’m not supposed to use magic?” “Not in the village, you idiot child, but look where we are!” Crane said, gesturing around them with one hand. “There’s no one else around for miles. Not much damage you could do in the middle of nowhere, is there?” Vrinn studied Crane’s face, the sharp line of her jaw, the gleam of her eyes under thick, iron-gray brows. She looked serious. But then again, Crane always looked serious. As she didn’t seem any less serious than usual, though, Vrinn supposed that meant she was serious about this too. “You really want—?” she asked, trailing off, finding it difficult to even say the words out loud. “Yes, I really want,” Crane said, impatient. She raised her left hand, muttering a series of syllables Vrinn had been threatened never to repeat if she wanted to live into adulthood. As Crane spoke, she moved her hand in a series of small, precise fits and starts until a faintly glowing blue symbol resembling a backwards “R” shimmered in the air before her palm. “I won’t ask again,” Crane warned. Vrinn nodded and spun around, facing the trees, trying to show her willingness to obey. She studied the green canopy of leaves ahead of her, wondering how best to meet Crane’s demands. “What should I—do?” she asked after a long moment, her voice almost lost in the caw of a nearby crow. She didn’t know any spells. She’d never been taught any of the combination of sounds the other children had memorized, tucked away in their minds for the right moment to use them. She didn’t know how to mix together ingredients to make a potion for easing headaches or repelling pests or anything else, and Crane hadn’t given her any supplies to use even if she did. “Dead gods, child, I don’t know. Your magic always seemed to leak out of you and into the world. Just try something. We haven’t got all day for you to waste. It’s a long walk back, and I’m not foolish enough to linger in the woods after dark.” Vrinn took a deep breath, the way she noticed the others in the village would do before they started some complicated piece of magic, like preparing the fields for the first day of planting. Since she didn’t know what she was supposed to do next, though, she figured she’d have to rely on power and intent alone. Those were the two things at the core of every spell, as Vrinn knew from spying on Frelda Imle, the woman who lived next door, as she taught her youngest children about magic. Crane was right about Vrinn’s magic leaking out of her, usually without her wanting it to, so she guessed that would count for power. She just needed an intent, something that would tell the magic what to do and how to re-shape the world to Vrinn’s will. Vrinn scanned the forest, her eyes landing on a slender maple tree up ahead. She thought about how beautiful the maple trees around the village looked in the fall, their leaves vibrant red. It was still the middle of summer right now, but Vrinn decided turning a tree’s leaves should be an acceptable test of her powers. That didn’t seem too complicated. Vrinn closed her eyes, in her mind picturing the tree across from her with every detail she’d noticed. She thought of its height—short in comparison to the much older trees beyond it. She thought of its width, slimmer too than many of the other trees in this part of the forest. She thought of the pointed shape of its leaves, and then she imagined a cluster of those leaves on the upper branches changing, losing some of their vibrant green. Growing a little pale at first, but then deepening into a rich scarlet, a deeper red than sunset. Vrinn sucked in a breath of surprise when, from behind her, Crane’s hand reached out and clutched her shoulder, fingernails digging into her skin through her shirt like talons. “That’s it,” Crane whispered, voice right at Vrinn’s ear. “Keep going.” Vrinn pressed her eyes shut even tighter, imagining every leaf on the tree turning that hue, becoming a riot of brilliant color in the endless green canopy around it. Crane’s hand on her shoulder spasmed, and Vrinn heard a soft thumping sound ahead and to her left, a sound that was echoed by another series of quiet impacts. Puzzled, she opened her eyes. Ahead of her, as far as she could see, the trees had changed. They hadn’t gained fall colors, though. They had died and started to rot, the leaves browned and leathery, their branches falling off, and their trunks crumbling inward and decaying. The wood itself looked like it had laid on the forest floor for decades decomposing, but the most of the trees were still standing upright. Vrinn heard another thumping sound, this time to her right, and it pulled her attention away from the trees. She watched as the body of a large blackbird fell from the sky, landing on the ground nearby. Now that she recognized the sound, she scanned the ground and spotted the bodies of other birds in the tall grass. Only a couple yards away, she saw an owl that had tumbled off of a dead tree. So many birds had fallen to the forest floor, now lying there completely still. Somehow, just like in the barn that day when she’d been too young to fully remember what had happened, Vrinn had—had killed everything in that patch of the forest. Even the grass in the little clearing, starting at her toes and extending back to the treeline where grass couldn’t grow in the shade, had turned brown. Her heart beat rabbit-fast in her chest. She hadn’t meant to do this. She hadn’t meant to. Surely Crane would know that. She wouldn’t blame Vrinn for this, not after she’d ordered her to use her magic. Would she? Vrinn stole a glance up at Crane’s face. Crane stood a half a step behind her and to her left, her hand still digging into Vrinn’s shoulder. Her eyes stared out at the forest, cataloging the destruction before her. “You’re going to learn to control this,” she said. “You’re going to practice every day, until you can do that to whatever I tell you to, understand?” She looked down at Vrinn then, her eyes wild in a way Vrinn had never seen, pupils dark and wide enough to eat up all the color around them. Her strange stare frightened Vrinn, and she tried to take a step back. Crane’s hand on her shoulder anchored her in place, tightening even more when Vrinn tried to move. She winced, sure Crane’s nails were breaking through her skin by now. “Do you understand me?” Crane demanded, lowering her face to Vrinn’s until she could smell the bacon on her breath from their breakfast that morning. Vrinn nodded. “Yes,” she breathed. “I understand.” But she didn’t. Not really. Not at all.

1. Story Statement: Vrinn must regain control of her own magic from the immortal king who plans to use it to punish his enemies. 2. The Antagonist: While leading the charge to slaughter the gods fifteen hundred years ago, the Archenking took a magical artifact from the goddess of life: a stone that gave him a way to preserve his soul, moving it from one host body to the next, effectively granting himself immortality. The Archenking used this power to gain followers, fight his enemies, and set himself up as the ruler of the known world, in many ways, replacing the very gods he helped to destroy. In the present, when he discovers Vrinn’s magic which grants her power over death itself—a form of magic that should not exist in the Godless Age—the Archenking intends to take possession of this impossible magic. At first, he hopes to make Vrinn’s body the next vessel for his soul, moving into her flesh and wielding her power directly, but when he discovers Vrinn’s magic cannot be separated from her own soul, he settles on a back-up plan: tattooing a spell of obedience into Vrinn’s skin, forcing her to obey his every command. With Vrinn’s power fully leashed under his control, the Archenking doesn’t hesitate to use Vrinn to intimidate or kill anyone who displeases him. 3. Breakout Title: 1. Archenking 2. To End the World 4. Genre and Comparables: Genre: fantasy Comparable 1: A.K. Larkwood’s The Unspoken Name features goddesses of death and their relationship to the mortals they hope to use to achieve their own goals, much like the goddess of death in my manuscript. Comparable 2: Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne contains multiple POV characters, each with their own agendas that fold together to further the central plot focusing on Priya’s magical abilities and opposing Emperor Chandra’s oppressive rule, much like my manuscript uses multiple POVs centering around Vrinn’s struggle to regain control of her magic and the Archenking’s tyranny 5. Hook Line: When an immortal king learns of her impossible death-magic and forces her obedience via a permanent spell, Vrinn struggles to regain control over her power and her own fate. 6. Two Levels of Conflict: 1. Inner Conflict: Vrinn has never fully embraced her own power over death. As a child, the rest of her village learned of her magic when Vrinn accidentally rotted their food stored for winter, after which she was forbidden from ever learning magic or using it again. Her foster mother, Crane, has been teaching Vrinn to control her power in secret, often ordering and sometimes forcing Vrinn to use her magic as directed. As a result, Vrinn fears her own affinity with death, sometimes sickened by the things Crane tells her to do with her magic. Vrinn even holds herself back from ever touching her love interest, Cheyla, worried that her magic might accidentally slip out and harm her. When Vrinn learns that her foster mother has been keeping a horrifying secret from Vrinn for entire life—that Crane killed Vrinn’s parents, creating the opportunity to “rescue” Vrinn as a baby and raise her, taking ownership of Vrinn’s magic—Vrinn is overcome by rage. Furious, she uses her magic to kill Crane. Although part of Vrinn is appalled at herself afterwards, this is the first time she truly owns her magic, and this is a moment in which she is able to feel and understand exactly how powerful she is. 2. Secondary Conflict: After living in the palace for a time and upsetting the Archenking, as a punishment, Vrinn is assigned housing with “the vessels,” common people who competed and went through a rigorous vetting process to earn the right to live in a locked wing of the palace until the Archenking or one of his fellow-immortal underlings need a new body to possess. At first, Vrinn, disturbed at the idea of anyone willingly giving up their body and their freedom to the Archenking—as well as unaccustomed to making friends or even being treated kindly due to her dangerous magic—is unsure of what life will be like living alongside them. The vessels are too eager to serve their rulers for Vrinn’s taste, and at times they seem insipid or naïve, but most of them are kind to Vrinn, unafraid to touch her and inviting her to spend leisure time together. Vrinn becomes fond of a particular group of vessels, eventually even growing defensive of them at the Archenking and the other immortals’ treatment of the vessels, referring to them as “pets” or engaging them for sex work in a power dynamic where consent is illusory at best. Her relationship with the vessels is another element that allows Vrinn to see just how cruel and damaging the Archenking’s rule is, looking beyond her own personal reasons to resent him and understanding the ways he makes use of even his most loyal subjects so thoughtlessly. 7. Setting: · Hatchet Wood: This forest features heavily in Vrinn’s early narration. It is both the only place she sometimes feels safest—the only place she is left alone for any stretch of time, able to hide from her abusive foster mother and the distrust and distaste of the others in her village—and a sanctuary that is sometimes invaded by Crane, her foster mother, who will occasionally accompany Vrinn on her forays into Hatchet Wood to practice her magic at a safe distance from the rest of the village. The forest is ancient and sprawling. Nearer to the village, there are younger trees and cheerful birdsong. Further into the Wood, there are ancient trees, strange sounds, and long-forgotten and occasionally delightful secrets, like an abandoned peach orchard and swathes of colorful butterfly weed. It’s a peaceful place for Vrinn, but it’s dangerous as well, since one of the first things the reader learns about the forest is that Crane would never be foolish enough to be caught out in it after dark. · Orchys: This is the village in which Vrinn and Crane live. It’s a small, isolated community of nature witches, who mostly know spells to ward off pests or help their squash grow big. Orchys is small enough everyone knows everything about everyone else—or so they believe, since no one but Vrinn and Crane are away that Vrinn didn’t really give up on growing her power as a child. Vrinn has never been able to escape from the shadow of her strange magic, and alongside Crane, she is largely ostracized by the other villagers. Vrinn enjoys tending the sheep that live in the front yard of the two-room, dirt-floor cabin she and Crane share, and Crane tends to the garden out back. The closest thing the village has to a community center is the “Town Square,” a large patch of lawn on the western edge of the village where people gather on market day, when the traveling Faoren come into town to trade with the witches, or just to gossip about their neighbors. · The School of Night (located in Trepharryn): This is a “school” that trains and houses the assassins commanded by the Archenking in a sort of open secret. One of the POV characters, Darian, was raised in this school and has been working as an assassin for over a decade. The School of Night is a large sandstone building that doesn’t bother to lock its doors, because who would be foolish enough to break in? There’s a labyrinthine system of catacombs below the School, where the bones of former Servants of Night are interred, and deep within the catacombs lies “the Tomb” a room where the deepest secrets of the School are spoken only to die, taken no further. This is the room in which Darian meets an immortal who sends him on a special mission to assassinate members of the One Life Movement, a rebel organization seeking to end the Archenking’s reign. · Haford: A fishing village that is not all that it appears. Haford is located on the edge of a beautiful lake, and the houses of the town begin on the edge of the water, built up on stilts, only to grow cramped and too-close together the further they are from the shore. The air smells of fish, and large warehouses on the edge of town prepare cured fish or seal off barrels of live fish to ship to the capital city of Trepharryn. This town is where the reader learns that Cheyla, Vrinn’s love interest and the brand new Pathguide of her clan of traveling traders (as well as another POV character) is involved in the One Life Movement, doing her part to bring down the Archenking. In Haford, Cheyla and other members of her clan meet with the local One Lifers, who share upsetting news about a recent spate of assassinations of high-profile One Lifers in Trepharryn, speculating what this will mean for the future of the movement as a whole. Cheyla worries about that as well as what the implications could be for her clan, so involved in passing treasonous information and messages from one town to the next along their route. · The Blazer Barracks (located in Claron): In the town neighboring Orchys, larger than Vrinn’s village, there is an abandoned “Blazer” Barracks, a structure meant to house members of the Archenking’s military force, the Blazing Hand, when they come through the area. The last time the Blazers used the barracks was over fifty years ago, and Vrinn grew up hearing horror stories from Orchys’ survivors about the carnage they left in their wake, taking villagers’ money and possessions in “back taxes” owed to the Archenking and killing or maiming anyone who stood up to them. Vrinn is surprised when Crane brings here there to answer Vrinn’s questions about her recent, strange behavior. Crane brings Vrinn into a shrine to the Archenking located in the Barracks’ front room. There, seated on the creaky wooden floor, in a shaft of sunlight filtered through dusty windows, Crane tells Vrinn that her father was a Blazer, and that Crane has spent her whole life scheming how to claim her rightful place in the capital city. Crane explains that Vrinn’s magic is going to be her ticket in. Crane has already written to the Archenking about Vrinn’s power, and Crane hopes that in bringing Vrinn to him, the Archenking will grant her an incredible “finder’s bonus;” Crane expects that the Archenking will be so grateful, he’ll invite Crane to join him and his underlings in immortality, living in comfort and power in the palace for centuries to come. · Trepharryn: The reader sees different views of Trepharryn through the eyes of Darian, who was born and grew up there, learning its streets and rooftops to accomplish his work with all necessary subtlety, and Vrinn, who prior to being called to the palace by the Archenking, had never been further away than a day’s walk from Orchys. Both characters’ perspectives highlight the discrepancies of quality of life in various parts of the city. The rich live in large, marble buildings with balconies supported by fluted columns and green lawns bursting with flowers and manicured trees. Trepharryn’s poorest citizens live in hovels cobbled together from used lumber and driftwood in parts of the city where the Blazers don’t bother to investigate crimes and where even the sewage isn’t properly tended to. At the heart of the city lies the Archenking’s palace, but another notable location is the basement of Tanna Lin’s pub, where the Trepharryn members of the One Life Movement meet in secret to make their plans. After the goddess of death reveals herself to Darian, claiming him for her own schemes, she sends him to infiltrate this group of One Lifers, to win them over and manipulate them into filling a role in her own revenge scheme against the Archenking. · Faoren Camp (location shifting): The traveling Faoren, led by Cheyla, walk on foot or ride on donkeys or in wagons from one place to the next. In the evenings, they set up camp. Colorful, mismatched tents are pitched—Cheyla’s own is more patchwork than original tent at this point—wagons are blocked off, and cooking fires are lit. The clan eats shared meals together and takes turns seeing to chores or watching the children. Cheyla’s clan sets up camp wherever they go, and while the configurations of tents, wagons, donkeys, and fires might alter from place to place, the sense of community within the camp is a constant—until it isn’t. When the situation in the One Life Movement grows more dangerous and unstable, Clan elders question Cheyla’s preparedness to lead the clan in such uncertain times. They want to push for safer actions, withdrawing from the movement, focusing their energies on their own clan, and forgetting about their settled allies in all the towns and villages they visit throughout the year. This becomes a source of tension for Cheyla that carries on for most of the plot, until Cheyla realizes the tension within the clan is tearing it apart and offers an ultimatum: if the clan has truly lost faith in her, they can remove her from her position, but until they do, she will lead them in the ways she believes is best for them, for the One Life Movement, and for the future of the world itself. · Newtriumph Palace: Eventually, Vrinn arrives at the palace, a hulking display of architecture, a building the size of her whole village made of marble threaded through with gold that glimmers like flame in the sunlight and that turns grey, looking more like cracks in bone in the dark. Vrinn is exposed to many different parts of the palace, from the Archenking’s enormous throne room with its towering columns and stained glass windows, where the Archenking tests Vrinn’s magic by ordering her to execute a prisoner to the lavish guest suites she and Crane are assigned on their arrival to the locked wing of the vessel dormitories, where the living quarters might be lavish to the vessels who all came from poorer families but where Vrinn is only too aware of the fact that the narrow bedrooms, cramped living quarters, and most obviously, the big locked door separating them from the rest of the palace are evidence that the Archenking treats the vessels more like livestock, being tended carefully until it’s time for the slaughter, than like valued members of the court. Vrinn is also brought to the Archenking’s workroom, a circular room at the top of a tower, cluttered with strange magical artifacts and half-finished experiments. There, the Archenking makes an experiment of Vrinn, testing to see whether her magic could survive her soul being torn from her body to make room for the Archenking’s soul to take its place and furious when he discovers it cannot.