Studies

Just like Da Vinci, Dali, Raphael, and other great artists sometimes did sketches and studies to get a better understanding of color, lighting, or themes, sometimes I'll try to narrow my writing in a certain way to better understand a facet of a genre. The following two excerpts are just studies on the differences between light and dark fantasy. They will never be full stories. 


Light Fantasy

The knight awoke late into the morning to find Gill grinning at him, squatting atop a nearby rock. The man groaned and tried to sit up, instead finding the thick ropes wrapped around him and woven like a rug through the knotted roots of the broad magnolia. He was a stinking thing; looked like he’d been living in his mail and cuirass for the better part of a month. The plate on his shoulder held the rampant stag of the Iron Fathers.

            “Cut me loose, and I’ll forget you ever tried this,” the knight growled.

            Gill grinned and held up a dull, rusted longsword. “With this? It couldn’t cut cheese.”

            “It would split your skull were it in my hand.”

            Gill dropped to the ground and walked towards the knight. “Cut you free? And then what? You run to the village and say that a boy took you prisoner? You tell your pals camped on the berm that you found Witches Lowgarden?

            “It’s not how it seems.” The knight was fairly young, Gill could see. Perhaps thirty, maybe younger than that. A thick, ropey scar ran across his jaw and down his throat, latticed and fingered like it had been poison, or a burn.

            “The Lowgarden? You’re a warlock?”

            Gill grinned again, letting marbles of fire orbit his fist before extinguishing them. “The most powerful warlock the world has ever seen. Sometimes they call me The Chosen One.”

            Something or someone snorted on the rock behind the knight and he craned his head as best he could, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever had made that sound. A girl, maybe two years younger than Gill, squatted as he had on the rock behind the knight.

            “Selice, really.” Gill sounded petulant.

            “I’m just watching,” the girl whined.

            “I really must insist that you release me at once,” the knight said.

Dark Fantasy 

Prologue

            Far across the howling moors, untethered from their chains, the dogs roamed wild in the deserted keeps that spined the Fellhorn Range. Inside the largest of these, away from the bone-cracking cold, a monk sat, scratching glyphs into the paper. His roughspun robes, dark though they were, couldn’t hide the stretching stain of fresh blood. Nearby, the bodies of the elder monks lay, twisted into unnatural positions like frozen branches. A guttering tallow candle lit his final work.

The Unchained have returned. We have no other options but to find Frith the Eternal, the Inexorable, the Vile, and return him to the world. He was imprisoned to protect the mortals, and he must now be freed to protect them again. When greater devils roam the earth, when Helfast of the Stolen Song rides again, we have no choice but to turn to greatest devil.

A trembling hand lifted the candle and spilled milky yellow wax across the bottom of the page. His fingers could barely close around the stamp of the father, but he managed to bring it down in the pool of soft wax. The monk stumbled to the window where an owl sat, unblinking. A bit of red twine secured the message to the owl’s leg, and the bird flapped noiselessly into the winter storm.