The dragon egg (short story)

It was an ordinary Monday morning. There was a morning lecture that I was bound to be late to. Everything was normal, until I stepped outside into the balcony for the first time, and found a dragon egg.

Let me elaborate. It was a rather large, 25 cm long, and ovoid in shape. It's skin resembled that of a reptile. I didn't touch it at first - it was a suspicious object, after all. I considered talking to my roommate about it, but by then, the person is question was in the bathroom, so I decided to lie down for a couple of minutes until it was free. I'll spare you the details and say I underestimated my capacity to fall asleep.

In any case, when she decided to check up on me (probably under the impression that I had passed away in the course of the night), it was late, and I didn't remember any of it. I didn't recall it until I was actually in the lecture, but by then, I had no idea where she was.

I remembered it again when I got back to my room that evening. I was almost sure it was a figment of my imagination, but I had to check. I ran out to the balcony, and voila, there it was. It was glowing now. What on earth was it?
I had to decide whether I was going to call the police. It could be something explosive, after all. It didn't look man-made, and no one had any reason to harm me, as far as I knew. I decided to ask my roommate. Of course, I made the mistake of assuming that she was in touch with reality.

"That's a dragon egg, of course!" she said, the moment she clapped her eyes on it, "maybe it'll hatch if we take care of it."

She probably realised that I didn't buy any of this by the look on my face. She took it as an invitation to elaborate on her position.

"The mother dragon probably couldn't take care of the egg herself, so she probably left it in the care of a human who could. Dragons are reptiles, so I don't think you'll have to sit on it, but you should probably take it inside and take care of it."

"If it's a bomb..."

"That's clearly natural. As far as I know, there are no creatures that lay exploding eggs - that would be counterproductive if you want to..."

"Alright, then you can take it in."

"It's meant for you. You have to take care of it. The mother might not like it if someone else handles the egg."

"If it's a surveillance..."

"It's not artificial. Take it in. cover it with a towel or something if you're afraid of being spied on."

"Why are you so set on this?"

"I'm not set on it, I just think you're being an idiot."

She probably knew more about this than she let on. She had no particular reason to hate me (other than the usual frustration with a roommate, but she was the furthest thing from a psychopath), so if it was from her, at worst, it would be mildly annoying. I decided to play along.

"Alright. I'll set it on the ground here and cover it with a towel. That'll be good, right?"

"Yes, that should be good. Good luck!"

With that, she turned and left the room with suspicious speed. I was curious about it, but also dead tired. I still had a lot to study, as the exams were due to start in two days.

I had no lectures the next morning, so I decided to sleep in. It was a restless sleep, and I was woken, fairly early, by a sort of chirp. It took a little while for my sleepy brain to register it. When it did, I almost fell off the bed. The sound was coming from the corner of the room where the egg was. I went to it, and pulled the towel off. It still looked exactly the same. It wasn't glowing anymore. As I watched, it made a single chirping noise, and then went silent.

I tapped the shell lightly. There was no response. I stared at it for a while, but I was too sleepy to process anything. I put the towel over the egg again, and went to get dressed and have breakfast. After this was done, I returned to my room. The egg was still silent. I settled down to my studies. It made no noise after that, until about 5 pm when I was about to go join a group study session. That was a single chirp, and after that, it went silent. I was starting to suspect there was an alarm clock inside the thing.

The study session went on until quite late. We had a break for dinner, and settled back into our studies. Some time later, my roommate called. She wanted me to come back, since the dragon egg would miss me.

My plan was to stay and study overnight, sit for the exam, and then go sleep in the morning. I refused, point blank. My roommate accepted that, at least for the moment. Then, half an hour later, came another call. The egg was making noise constantly, so she wanted me to come home. I was almost done with my studies anyway. Besides, I was quite tired. I decided to do a bit of cramming in the morning. I went back to my room.

She was right, the egg was chirping constantly. By now, I was starting to have serious doubts - like, did dragons chirp in the first place?  Anyway, it stopped as soon as I entered the room. I went to sleep fairly fast.

The next morning, I was woken by the alarm clock. It was chirping again when I came back. It stopped again when I entered the room. I couldn't help saying goodbye to it when I left the room that day. It didn't exactly respond, but I assumed it was asleep. I went to the exam in a strangely positive mood as a result. There was a paper in the afternoon as well. Afterwards, we had another group study session.

My roommate called again that evening as well. The egg was chirping again, apparently. I was considering the alarm theory again, or perhaps, that it was planted by my mother. Again, I ended up giving in and going back to my room. Again, it stopped once I entered the room.

The next morning was the same as the previous one, except for one difference - when I said good bye, the egg chirped.

That evening was the same as the last. The last two papers were on the next day, and I hadn't had a lot of time to study for them. I was annoyed about being disturbed, and took half an hour extra during which my poor roommate had to listen to the egg, but I ended up spending that night in my dorm room as well.

The next morning was also the same. It chirped quite a bit in reply this time when I said good bye.

That evening, we were planning to go out and celebrate the end of the exams, but as it turned out, everyone was sleep-deprived and declined. I went back to my room earlier than anticipated as a result.

Only, when I went back, the door to my room was wide open. My roommate was there, with a friend of hers.. He was holding a hammer, right over the dragon egg. My blood ran cold. It took me a second to get the linguistic part of my brain operational, but when it finally kicked into gear, I was finally able to express my thoughts.

"Don't kill it!" I screamed.

My roommate jumped, and so did her friend. In fact, it startled him so much that he dropped the hammer, on top of the egg. I lost the ability to scream. My roommate and her friend both tried to catch the hammer, and both failed, as it miraculously landed in the best possible way to crack the egg in slow motion. The shell made a dull sound, and then cracked.

I think I need to elaborate on what happened in more detail. By 'cracked' I meant that some sort of hard shell inside the egg definitely cracked. The outer, leathery layer stayed intact. Then, it started leaking.

"Looks like it punctured the plastic,"said the friend.

I immediately put two and two together. My roommate immediately realised that the had deduced that much.

"Let's discuss this after you get your results," she said.

"Fine. In exchange, if you tell anyone..."

"It's strictly between the three of us," said the friend.

"So, how long did it take?" I asked.

"A couple of weeks, between the two of us," said my roommate, "do you want to know how it was done?"


-------THE END --------------------

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The children of Mars - Chapter 03

The last time I reported on my situation, I was attacked by Ryan in class. I told you that I tried to cover Kathy, and I managed to fall with our chairs. Before we could think of getting up, we found ourselves facing Ryan holding a pen in an ice pick grip.

I have to tell you that hand to hand combat is not my strong point. I scrambled to my feet as fast as I could and barely missed being stabbed. I was lucky Deimos chose the grip that he did - it took him a split second longer to recover.

I had to get a weapon as well. I looked at the nearby chair, thought it looked good, and grabbed it. By then I regretted not picking up something more versatile, but I had no opportunity to change my weapon. Ryan was turning his attention to me again. The chair would have to be a shield, not a weapon, for I wouldn't be able to talk my way out of hurting a fellow student seriously.

Fortunately, it didn't come to that. By now, Ellis grabbed Ryan by one arm, the professor by the other, and another student put him in a lock from behind. Immediately, Ryan went limp.

I relaxed, but not everyone did. The student who got Ryan in a lock, Phil, released the grip immediately, and Ellis lay him down on the floor. I could assist, but I had to get my priorities right, and gather the energy that Deimos leaked.

That might have taken me a few seconds, but by then, the entire class was in a panic. I couldn't let the situation escalate - it would be food for Deimos. The real problem was, where was he now? Judging by Ryan's symptoms, Deimos fed off him, but whether he was still there or whether he left for a new host was harder to determine. I could still sense his presence in the room.

I was thinking of this when I heard someone calling my name. It was Kathy. She was screaming at me.

"Murdoch, answer me! Do you know what's wrong with him?"

I did. And I could treat it. There were two problems - energy, and my identity. Treating him would cost me a lot of the energy I gathered, and if I were to treat him, I would expose the fact that I wasn't human.

On the other hand, if left untreated, he would wake up soon enough. If Deimos was still there, and my assumptions about humans were right, though, he could die.

"No, I am not sure."

"Quite callous, aren't you?"

This was Deimos, in my language, and I am sure the whole class heard it. I wasn't sure where the voice came from, but he was leaking energy again.

"What was that voice?" asked one of the students.

"Who said that?" asked another.

"That was just a noise, stop panicking," said the professor, "I think I'll call an ambulance."

This had to be stopped. The last thing I needed was Deimos loose in a hospital.

"That won't be necessary," I said quickly, "he just fainted. Face it, Phil, you didn't even get him into a lock properly. He's probably exhausted or something. That's probably why he panicked and attacked us."

"You know better. You know, he could die."

Everyone heard this as well. By now, everyone was starting to look around, terrified. Mass panic was seconds away. I was tempted to let it run its course, if it would mean evacuating the room. I ignored it and went towards Ryan.

"Oh, so you're going to heal him, aren't you?"

"Where is it coming from?" asked someone, "if there is a ventriloquist in here, own up!"

"That's the same language you were speaking, wasn't it, Murdoch?" asked Kathy, suddenly, "Is that your weird friend? The one behind the library?"

Yes, it was the same language, but Renard's voice and Deimos' voice were very different things. Deimos definitely couldn't pass for a human.

Now everyone was looking at me. I still couldn't pinpoint Deimos. Still, getting closer to Ryan, I could sense that he wasn't possessing Ryan anymore. He would probably wake up in short order. The problem was, what was Deimos trying to accomplish? A little longer, and I would have enough power to cripple him seriously. Was he really overestimating himself so much?

"Come on, keep acting like that, and they'll probably start treating me the way you treated me. Locked up, treated as a freak - but you know that better than me. How does it feel?"

Someone started saying what I could only assume was a prayer. I suppose it would be a little freaky to the human mind. I just needed a few seconds now.

"Why aren't you saying anything? Afraid your true nature will be known? Come on, say something - a word! Only that tiny creature next to you knows anything about you, and she's a defective specimen, as far as I can see. Don't imagine, for a moment, that the rest will just watch you like she did. And you, humans, stop that racket!"

The last part was addressed at the group of students who were praying. I still said nothing. I had a plan, only, I couldn't see how anything I said could influence things positively.

The professor took control of the situation. "Everybody, leave the room, now!"

Deimos reacted immediately. He physically appeared at the doorway. Several students screamed. This was mass panic, just what he wanted. He went for what he needed, energy. He could absorb it in the form of fear. I absorbed a lot of energy in the process as well.

Within seconds, everyone in the class was down. This was exactly what I needed. Deimos was still corporeal, and could get hit by the spell I was about to cast - which I did. I didn't have time to set it up properly, which meant that the spell would be a bit weaker than it should, but it would weaken him considerably.

It was a hit. My spell hit Deimos before the last of my classmates hit the ground. He reeled and fell backwards, out of the class. I went towards him. It was a mistake.

He fired back. It was just a blast of energy. I ducked, instinctively. The blast flew over me. When I looked up, Deimos was gone, the air was so energized that my hair was standing on end, and there was a huge hole in canvas where you projected stuff and the wall behind, which, luckily, led to the outside of the building.

I absorbed all the energy I could, and got to my feet. It was a matter of time before people noticed what was going on. What would I do?

"Look, now that it's come to this, there's only one thing to do. I'll do the fighting," said Kathy, getting to her feet as well, "In return, I want a full report of the situation, and when you go back, I want to go back with you."

It took a second for this to register. "What?"

"So you really didn't recognise me at all."

"What?"

"Remember the campaign on the northern continent? We ran into a fortress that wasn't on our map. I went to investigate with six of my men, and we got caught in a trap. We ended up being blown here."

"You're the knight who led the campaign."

"Exactly."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to get my men involved in this."

"Where are they?"

"They aren't students here. Why do you want to know?"

"If you want to go back, they may want to, as well. Do you have any baseline magical sensitivity?"

"Minimal, almost non-existent."

"What about your men?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe we can fight back," I said, "and we may be able to go back, all of us. Look, Kathy, you don't mind me calling you Kathy, do you? Let's all meet up, and discuss this. We can do this."

She promptly collapsed. I tried to catch her, failed, and while she fell onto the floor neatly between the nearest chair and the table, I managed to hit my forehead on said table. Maybe it was the knock, but I realised that something had startled her, so I collapsed backwards on to the floor as the door opened and someone looked in.

------------------------------------END OF CHAPTER THREE-----------------------------------------

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Previous chapters: Chapter 01 | Chapter 02

None of the characters or places described in this work are representative of any real people, incidents, or the like.

Please do not post this story on other sites or on any other media. Instead, add the link to this blog post.

Thank you for reading.

Worldbuilding - part 01

World building is somehow simultaneously the best thing and the worst thing about writing a fantasy, in my experience. I've spent a good few years developing the world where my novels are set (It's a shared universe where I have based two series to this date). It's fun, but it's also vexing, trying to keep all the various details in your head.

In this post, I will point out a few things you might need to consider when trying to build a world from scratch. Here, the main focus on getting the geography and locations down, and I will talk about the rest of the process in a later article.

1. Names!

If you're creating a world (or, let's be realistic, a country and its nearest neighbours), you need to refer to that country in some way. There are a few ways to go about this. 

1. Postpone the problem until you're older and hopefully wiser (guilty!), and use a placeholder in its place. While this may speed up the writing process, it also means you're dropping a crucial detail, and you may lose some nuance it could have added to the story. 
2. Option two is to look for inspiration in foreign languages. This tends to work better if you pick a language that is not too close to the language you're working with. A less widely understood language probably works better than one that everybody knows. Google translate is very useful for this. However, there is one major drawback to this - words tend to have multiple meanings, or mean something else in the particular language's slang. So, tread carefully.
3. The third alternative is to create the name you want from scratch. You could either create a language from scratch first, or use the phonology of the language that your characters use to come up with a word that sounds plausible enough. If you create the language first, you could use words from that language to come up with a name, but it's not strictly necessary - not all countries have names that make sense, immediately, in their own language.

One more thing - you might be tempted to worry about whether the name of the place means something else in a another language. Don't worry - there are so many words that mean one thing in one language and something completely different in another. If it didn't, we'd all be speaking versions of the same language.

2. More names

You will also need to figure out what the people call themselves, and whether they have a different name for their ethnic group and for the nationality. Also, you might need to come up with a name for the continent if your country is in a continent, but that probably won't be necessary in every case.

3. Geography

What is your setting?Is it a country attached to a larger continent? Is it an island? Is it a planet city? Or is it underwater/in orbit? Or is your focus just on one city? Or is it something else entirely?

Ideally, you would have some idea about what sort of setting it is when you get to this stage (unless you're designing a world because you think it's fun - in which case, carry on). 

Once you've picked the type of location, you probably need to decide how big it is. As in, in square kilometres (or miles, centimetres, parsecs, whatever you like). This is important, because you have to know how long it will take to traverse the area in question, for example. The size also determines the number of different climates you can squeeze in there. It also determines the size of the rivers and streams, and possibly of mountains (unless it's a volcanic island). 

Then you need the approximate shape of the area. I would recommend reading some basic geography if you want to keep things realistic. Of course your world doesn't have to play by the rules of reality - if there are forces there that can make a landmass a completely illogical shape, go right ahead.

At this stage, you will have a blank map with the outline of the the area in question. Now, it's time to fill it it.

4. Climate

What is the climate like in there? Are there a lot of micro-climates? What is the average temperature? How much precipitation do they get? What other factors would you expect to influence the climate?

5. More geography

Now, we have to fill in the important features. You can have mountains, lakes and other bodies of water, rivers, plains, marshes and bogs, etc.

I prefer to fill in the approximate elevations first (it's more practical in my case - the country is over 3 million square kilometres) instead of marking individual mountain ranges. The mountains are a good starting point, because they influence climates a lot, and most of the other features I mentioned tend to be dependent on them.

Once you've decided where the mountains are, you can start putting the rivers in. There are specific ways in which rivers work, though, and you might need to be careful about them (unless someone or something is pumping it, a river cannot flow uphill). They can start on flat land on occasion. They can just disappear into a desert (there are a few cases like that). In most cases, however, they tend to start from a mountainous area as a bunch of streams and flow into another stream or the sea, a lake, or other such source of water.

Then there are other features, like lakes. They could be formed by rivers emptying into it. they could be artificial, or they could be caused by springs at the location. They could be poisonous or have pitch in them (depends on volcanic activity). You can also add a few significant waterfalls along the rivers. 

Marshes could be directly connected to the sea, but they don't have to be. you can have a river draining into one if you want to (provided it's not too big). 

Now you can fill in the type of forests and grasslands as appropriate. You also have to determine which areas are occupied, and therefore changed by the inhabitants of the place in question.

All this, of course, refers to a place that is firmly on dry land. If your setting is underwater, for example, you might have to look into different features to liven it up.

6. Settlements

First of all, do they have settlements? If so, what sort of settlements are they? Are they medieval style cities? Or modern cities? Or are they small villages scattered far and wide?

How are these settlements connected? Is there a road network? Or are there alternative means of transport (rail, for example)?

Is there a command center, so to speak, politically or in a military sense? Where is it located? You would want to place it in a place that can be defended, but within a reasonable distance from the places that are being commanded from there.

7. Even more names!

You are going to have to name all the places you just created - the mountain ranges, lakes, rivers, cities/villages, etc. Here, you could use the same approach as you did when naming the country. Alternatively, you could also use words from English or the language you're working in to create an understandable place name (the shire from the lord of the rings comes to mind).

This is not the end of the list by any means. I am planning to cover the rest in a series of articles, but for now, I must say farewell. Please tell me what you think in the comments.
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Until next time!

How not to write a character death

Once upon a time, one of my characters died. Then me, the rest of the cast, and everyone else promptly forgot about him.
Let's back up a bit, and start from the beginning. I was writing the first draft of the novel I am working on at the moment. The character - let's call him Jack for now - was one of the main characters' inner circle. He died heroically, trying to hold off the enemy in the midst of a chaotic battle.
One would logically expect that the death of Jack would have an effect on the story. There would be grief, maybe anger, maybe feelings of guilt, inadequacy, etc. from his friends if not anyone else.
That didn't happen. Before I knew it, I had moved on with the next three or four chapters. I felt nothing, and neither did the rest of the cast. Why did this happen?
There are several reasons that I have identified since, and I will list them here one by one.

1. Lack of relationships: Jack is a secondary level character. He had friends, yes, but the closest meaningful relationship he had with a viewpoint character was as a friend of a friend.
2. His personality (or lack thereof): I designed his character, of course. I knew his name and what he looked like. Beyond that, I didn't pay much attention to him - I thought he would grow, organically, and be the character he was meant to be. That didn't happen, because...
3. Invisibility: Jack simply wasn't saying anything, or doing anything - he was just there in the background. He was simply a prop. He rarely had to say anything, because he was in the presence of characters with more developed personalities, and I knew exactly how they would respond to a situation. So, he faded into oblivion long before he actually died, provided that a reader would have noticed his existence in the first place.

Now you are probably wondering why I bothered to kill off such a peripheral character. The answer is, I had too many characters in hand and I needed to reduce their number. On top of that I needed a character death at that point, since the main cast had been operating in a situation with a high mortality rate with no casualties. So, who was better suited to the situation than poor Jack? He wouldn't be a loss to the team.
That was the problem. You see, the team lost absolutely nothing by his death. There was only one character who would have lost something, but he was in a lot of problems of his own, and though he ought to have reacted to this a bit more, well, he didn't. I forgot all about it.
So, the moral of the story - develop your characters before you kill them if you want an emotional reaction (as in, in advance, not half a chapter ahead before their death). Mooks and random characters that die do not need this Also, don't randomly pick and character and kill them off just because you're feeling mean (I did this on a spectacular scale before. I might right about it later).
I hope this is a useful guide in how not to kill a character, and I hope you would avoid making the same mistakes that I made.
If you're wondering what has happened to Jack since, he's doing fine in the current version of the novel. He has a backstory now, and a personality, and most of the main cast are really his friends. I haven't reached the point where he died yet, but I doubt I'd thrust him in the line of fire so easily again. There is one thing I know, though - if he dies now, I'll definitely feel it, and so will the rest of the cast.
Until next time!