An Elemental Spirit

Welcome back to Fiction Friday!

Before I took my unexpected hiatus, I was working my way through the novels I’ve written for National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo, or NaNo for short. My last true Fiction Friday showcased my 2018 NaNo novel, which means today we're up to 2019.

When I started writing An Elemental Wind I had no idea what I was doing beyond posting a new chapter on my blog each week. And I can totally blame the amazing Jamie DeBree for this, because she was the one who challenged me to do a serial on my blog. ;-)

Anyway, I didn’t start out with the idea of writing a multi-book series, but when I got to the end of Wind I realized there were three more elements and I should write about them too. By this time I had a common thread running through the books which I figured would culminate in a fifth book.

Fast forward to the end of the fourth book and I still had only a faint idea of how all these books would come together in the fifth book. I mean I knew but I didn’t know how to make it happen. For the next couple of years I did a lot of thinking/planning/angsting about the fifth (and final) book in my series. Finally I decided it was time to fish or cut bait. So with only a vague idea of what I was doing, I dove in to make An Elemental Spirit my 2019 NaNo novel.

The fact that I reached 50,000 words is nothing short of a miracle. The book ended up being one hot mess, but at least by the time I was done I had a better idea of what it should be. It was just going to take a lot of rewriting. The following scene is the opening of An Elemental Spirit. Unedited.

It had taken the science vessel Odessa several months to make its way to the rogue gas giant on the edge of the Hurangan star system. Their specialty was the study of gas giants, their ongoing mission was cataloguing and analysing data from them.

“Standard orbit,” the captain ordered. “Let’s not get too close until we know what this baby’s made of.”

“Standard orbit, sir,” the navigator said.

“Sir,” the woman manning the science station, Ensign Wabito, broke in. “The preliminary readings we’re getting are gibberish. I don’t understand it – if I didn’t know better I’d say we were being jammed. We’ll need to get closer to sort them out.”

The captain debated for a moment. “Negative on that. We’ve already determined this planet is unlike any we’ve ever encountered. Send a probe in – we need more data before we take any risks.”

“Aye, sir.” The ensign dutifully launched a probe towards the hazy mass filling the main view screen.

Compared to the size of the planet, they were a mere speck of dust hanging in space. The captain stood in front of the viewer, almost mesmerized by the sight of the swirling gases below. He never got tired of the sight – every gas giant a mystery to be solved, every gas giant different. He wasn’t the only one fascinated by the view on the screen, several others of the bridge crew couldn’t seem to stop staring.

“Sir,” one of them said hesitantly.

“What is it Lieutenant Yunang?”

“Sorry sir, my eyes must be playing tricks on me. I could swear I saw several land masses down there.”

The Captain frowned at the screen. Lieutenant Yunang came from Boryun, a dark desert world whose inhabitants had developed a powerful sense of sight. So powerful that they had trouble seeing clearly off world and used specially constructed visors. Yunang had apparently taken his off and was staring intently at the screen.

“That’s impossible,” the technician beside Yunang said. “Gas giants don’t have land masses.” Yunang shrugged. “It was probably just a shadow, or a light distortion.”

“Maybe not,” Ensign Wabito broke in. “Reports from the probe coming in. The composition of gases is unlike any I’ve ever seen. And it’s confirmed – there are several large land masses.”

“Impossible!” the captain said, echoing the technician’s disbelief. “Can you show the data on the big screen?”

“Yes, sir.” Ensign Wabito’s fingers danced over the controls and the image of swirling gas was replaced with lines of raw data from the probe.

“Amazing,” the captain said. “Send the probe towards the nearest one. Let’s see a image of this land mass.”

The ensign made the appropriate adjustments and the view once again changed. This time it was the images from the camera on the probe. At first it was just a blurred view of the gas, almost like a fog, white with darker particles of varying sizes.

“This is—this is impossible.”

“Captain, look!”

The captain, along with several of the non-essential crewmen, moved closer to the screen, unable to believe what was showing on it. Not only was there a land mass, but on that land mass… “Is anyone else seeing a structure?” the captain asked.

There were several murmurs, but no one wanted to come right out and agree with him. A land mass, any kind of land mass, was unheard of. A gas giant just wasn’t designed in that way. For there to be a land mass solid enough to hold a structure though….

“Sir,” Ensign Wabito said cautiously. “Some of these readings I’m getting…I don’t think this is a true gas giant. I think it’s been terraformed somehow so it appears to be a gas giant.”

“We need to get closer. Brant, take us in, slowly.”

The navigator had to give the helmsman a nudge before he was able to comply with the order.

“What does this mean?” Lieutenant Yunang asked.

“A discovery like this?” the navigator said. “We’ll be famous. Rich and famous.”

“It has to be some kind of hoax,” Ensign Wabito continued. “Captain, those land masses aren’t fixed, they appear to be moving.”

“Moving? What do you mean moving?”

“I mean they’re moving, sir. It’s like they’re islands floating in the gas.”

As the captain and science officer stared at one another, a klaxon began ringing. The image on the screen disappeared into static.

“What’s happening?” the captain demanded.

“Something just targeted the probe, sir,” weapons and security specialist Drake Perez told him.

“What kind of something?”

“I don’t know sir, something in the gas, some kind of instability causing a massive energy surge maybe.”

“Could something in the gas have reacted to the metals of the probe?”

“It’s possible sir,” Ensign Wabito said. “The magnetic properties of the gas might have built up on the hull of the probe and shorted it out.”

“Ensign Brant, get us out of here!”

Even as the captain gave the order there was another massive surge of magnetic energy from the planet below and then all that was left of the Odessa and her crew was wreckage.

The rogue planet eventually passed unchallenged out of the Hurangan system and continued on its journey around the edge of known space.

The Home Stretch

After a herculean effort on my part (ie. less farting around, more writing) I managed to finally catch up on my NaNo and I’m even a little ahead of the game. But even if I wasn’t, I still have the rest of today, most of tomorrow, and all day Saturday to cross that finish line.

It’s been a fun ride, but I’ll be glad when the pressure’s off. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up the good habits I’ve developed – writing every day and spending more time in my office. Working on the Neo helped a lot too.

And now, the final excerpt from An Elemental Spirit. This one is actually in two parts, but they’re both giving a little more insight into the Illezie. And while you read them, remember that they’re unedited. :-)

Many important records had been lost when the dissenters set off the explosion in the records hall in their attempt to contravene the prophecy. The most important loss was that of the clan birth records, which is why the age of any Illezie born before that time could not be confirmed.

The Illezie hierarchy was age based, the older the Illezie the more weight their words carried. A syllable was added to their name with each century that passed, but many, after the explosion, had eschewed this tradition, citing that after even half a millennia the names became too unwieldy, and that more time was spent reciting lineages at a Gathering than discussion on the topic at hand.

E.Z. had stopped adding to his name at ten centuries, but even so he preferred to go by the initials the young wind elemental with so much potential had given him. Watching her grow had been a bittersweet experience for him. He knew the boosting of her mother’s gene sequence at just the right stage, infusing the embryo she carried with his own DNA, would result in the most powerful wind elemental born, just as he had known what fate she was to be groomed for. What he had not known was how much he would come to care for the girl.

It was too late to put a stop to events now, far too late. What had been put in motion had taken on a life of its own. If he had not been instrumental in bringing Nakeisha and Chaney together they would not have been in the right place to help Rayne and Pyre, which in turn set off the events leading to the creation of the elemental comet which spelled his world’s doom. But who was to say the volcano would not have erupted in any case, sending the elemental energy released by the death of all those elementals and potential elementals into space instead?

He sighed, a most uncharacteristic thing for an Illezie to do.

“It is a heavy burden we carry, the Illezie who learn to care,” Gra’anna’s voice came softly to him.

“Did you ever attach yourself to one of the Ardraci?” he asked, curious.

“Oh, yes.” She came to stand next to him where he was gazing out at the stars streaming past. “It was many centuries ago. Her name was Anna, she was an Earth Elemental.”

“They are so short-lived,” E.Z. said quietly. “Their lives burn out so quickly.”

“That they do,” she agreed. “But oh, how bright the flame while it lasts.”

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

There had been no new offspring of the Illezie for centuries. Da’nat was, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, the last Illezie hatched in the incubation chamber. Housed in a large cavern deep in the bowels of Zarathul, it held row upon row of pods waiting to be filled.

It was a place Da’nat visited when he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, as he did now. He had never made use of the sequencing pods and so never contributed to the gene pool from which new life was drawn. Now he would never have the chance.

As far as he knew, no one but him ever visited this place – there was no need. Or perhaps they found it too depressing, that it would never be needed again. It was a sad and lonely place, but somehow he felt at peace here.

Da’nat had never given any thought to offspring, until he had become acquainted with the young elemental Zephryn. Of course he was only young by Illezie standards, by human standards he was a grown man. But he was a man full of life and exuberance. He lived life fully while the Illezie had become nothing more than observers of life.

Though young by Illezie standards, Da’nat was old enough to realize that the Illezie race was stagnant. Save for the few who still made their presence known on Ardraci, the Illezie had not left their world in centuries. While he had no more wish to die than any other creature, he was ready for whatever lay beyond this plane of existence. He would play his part in the ascension with a willing heart.

So wrapped up in his thoughts was he that he did not sense the presence sneaking up behind him. By the time he sensed the danger it was too late. The blade of obsidian cut like butter through his back and into his double-chambered heart. Da’nat would never know the joy of ascension.