A Damn Long Post

Okay, just as a fair warning to you all, I'd just like to make sure you know - as the title says - that this will be a damn long post.

Alright, now that that's out of the way, I'd like to take a minute to curse Blogger before I get to the main stuff of this post. Namely, this is because that when you delete a post, it will still show up on the Dashboard. And when you plan short snippets of the posts like I sometimes do before writing them, this is incredibly annoying.  This is only a problem because I accidentally posted the planning post a few hours ago instead of saving it, but then, I'm picky like that, so you may as well ignore this whole paragraph.

Right, now for NaNoWriMo. As most of you will know by now, I FINISHED IT. I actually finished it.
I reached 50,000 on the 28th, and finished the actual novel off tonight (yesterday night by the time I post this) with a grand total of 56,120 words.

I must say, it does not feel like it's been a month since I started the stupidly horrible thing that is now the novel. I don't know how long it feels like, but it just doesn't feel like a month.
A lot of people that I've been talking to over email while writing this keep saying that they want to read it, no matter how many times I tell them that it really is awful. Seriously, you go and look at how crappy Zathract Mist was (the story...). This thing is that story worsened a hundred times fold. No way is anyone reading this, I'm sorry (not really, Sparky).
I will, however, be willing to let you all read a snippet of this thing. The snippet being the Prologue, which is probably the only thing of the novel that was any good whatsoever. Even that wasn't very good though. Oh well. If you want to read that, it's here.

                                       

PROLOGUE

Nyran Kess approached the dimly lit room with a solemn face and steady steps. His black clothes were singed in places and covered in grime, as was he; battle worn and scarred. Dark rings hung under his eyes, of a deeper shade than was of norm. His hair was untamed and messy, but none of this mattered. In light of the happenings that had transpired in the last few hours, nothing so small and so trivial mattered to Nyran anymore. Besides, he was in a whole lot better condition than most of his allies. At least he was alive, but being mostly unharmed was also a good thing.

Vermillion Falio was already seated in the room when he entered. While Nyran was simply battered and filthy, poor Vermillion had been in the heart of the onslaught of carnage, and had lost one of his arms. His hair was matted and Vermillion himself was still drenched in sweat, face screwed up in pain, clothing ripped, scarred and broken. Yet, however destroyed and mutilated he was, Vermillion was still seated in the room, and that could only mean that the situation was indeed as bad as Nyran feared.

He let his eyes adjust to the dim light which barely illuminated anything, Nyran did not speak to Vermillion, his ally, his stubborn, stubborn ally, in pain, half dying. Words would not come to him, and despite that, Nyran did not think he would have been able to have spoken, for fear of causing Vermillion more pain with the necessity to reply in some way. But then Vermillion spoke anyway, and Nyran’s stomach clenched as he heard the terrible pain his ally was experiencing through it.

“You made it…” he said wearily. Vermillion’s voice was more of a growl than anything else, but it was always a growl, and he meant nothing by it.

“I did,” Nyran coughed after a hesitation. “I’m afraid I don’t know if the others will be joining us, though…”

Vermillion did not reply, and Nyran did not blame him. He backed against the wall and took in his surroundings in an effort to keep his mind off the horrors he had just been in. The floor and walls were marble, giving a slight glow in the dim light. The light itself came only from the two candles sitting on the table in front of Vermillion. Nyran looked up as Lyra Embers limped through the doorway. Neither he, nor Vermillion made any notion of greeting her.

Her clothes were ripped, half destroyed, hair singed and blackened, flesh bleeding. She held her left shoulder with her right, and dragged her right foot slightly as she walked. Wounded, injured, just like the rest of his poor allies. Well, the ones that were still alive, anyway. The ones that weren’t lay in a small pool of their own blood back on the battlefield, inside out, a ball of mangled flesh and bone, some burning. Victims of the Dark Gods. Lyra collapsed in to the chair opposite Vermillion and  Nyran spoke.

“How many of us are still alive?” he asked.

Lyra sighed as if thinking about it was causing her pain. “A dozen or so, probably,” she said. “None of which will be coming here, I think. The seven Lords have been killed. They’re panicking. Everyone’s panicking.”

“Their children are in danger,” Vermillion growled. Lyra raised an eyebrow.

“Their children?” she asked precariously. “Falio, the Dark Gods have just broken their way in to our reality. The Lords have just been killed and the majority of us are now dead too. Their children are of no concern at the moment.”

“The Lords are the only thing that lured the Dark Gods here in the first place,” he grunted. “Their children will be hunted, and burned, for further punishment of their parents. You know the Dark Gods will attend to this.”

“Do I?”

Vermillion did not bother to respond.

“We’re here to discuss means of protecting the seven children of the Lords,” Nyran continued.

“Instead of doing something productive?” Lyra asked. “Such as discussing means of destroying the Dark Gods? Or else, a method of banishing them? Containing them, even?”

“We know of no way to do any of those things,” he retorted. “And they will all take time to discuss thoroughly. But time is of the essence, as is it usually with us. And we’re using this time to discuss means of protecting the children. There will be no more argument on this.”

“Shade…” Vermillion growled. “Gates, James, Rathe, Hayley, Mabel, Sya. The Dark Gods will hunt them, regardless of what happens.”

“Could we hide them with the mortals?” Nyran asked.

“The Dark Gods won’t care if they tear the world apart to find them,” Vermillion said. “That’s what they came here to do anyway. Hiding them with people of no magic would only lower the protection. Besides, half the world will be crumbling under the Dark Gods within a month. There is no real way to contain the situation. Keeping the children in public will do no good.”

“The castle then,” Lyra suggested. “That’s the safest place I can think of.”

“Doesn’t sound too bad to me,” Nyran shrugged. “At any rate, everyone will know who they are and the castle should know if an attack will happen.”

“Okay then,” grunted Vermillion. “The children will go to the castle. They’ll be raised there. Even better, we can keep a close eye on them from the inside.”

“If we stay alive,” Nyran interjected solemnly.

“Indeed…”

“And then what?”

“And then, when time catches up to them, the children shall encounter the Dark Gods anyway. It’s inevitable. They’re the descendants of the Lords. It’s literally a necessity in their lives.”

“The Lords were merely sorcerers who happened to be especially superb at magic,” Lyra muttered.

“Seven men who’ve saved the world more times than any of us know,” Nyran said. “I’ll take the children to the castle now.”

“And what will that mean for us, then?” Lyra asked Vermillion.

“We stay hidden for now,” he said, still in pain. “The Dark Gods will be searching for the children, but it won’t stop them from targeting us considering we were just trying to kill them a few hours ago. Make your way to the castle in a few months.”

Lyra nodded, then shadows wrapped around her entire body, covering it from view. The shadows begun to shrink, and then Lyra was gone.

“We’re the few remaining sorcerers left in the world,” Vermillion muttered to Nyran.  “Try not to get killed.”

Then the shadows enclosed on both of them as well, and the two men vanished from the room. 

So there you go. And yeah, it incorporates shadow walking in there because I had been reading Death Bringer the night before I started and had no idea what I was doing. But there you go anyway.

Another thing I'll be letting you guys see is the cover that I made for it one long forgotten weekend.

And yeah. It's called The Dark Gods. I know it's a horrible name, but that's pretty much what it's about and I wanted to make a cover, so that's what I went with. So that's there too. I didn't bother writing a synopsis for it. Glorifying crap isn't something I think I'd enjoy.
I have to say, I didn't think I'd go as well as I did in NaNo, a few things considered. It was my first year for one thing, and then we had all of our exams in November as well, so that's another. But I made it, and didn't do too badly on my exams either (Maths aside...).

Oh, and I want to say one more thing on NaNo before I move on. A few of you will have known how I ended the story. Simply put, I killed off every character in the same chapter, and then blew up the world. Isn't that just hilarious? It was, you may have guessed, so much fun. Even more so considering that I killed off all of the main characters friends, and girl friend, with him right in front of them. It's a little sadistic I suppose, but honestly, killing characters and causing other characters pain by that is brilliant. So much fun.

And now, finally, moving away from NaNo and onto other things.

We saw Skyfall last Friday night. The new James Bond movie. It was actually really good, and it had a whole lot of plot for James Bond movies. It was still an action movie with lots of explosions (ahh...) and chases and stuff, but it actually had plot, which is great. Definitely recommend you watch that. Also, I'm not really a fan of Adele, but the song she did for Skyfall - called Skyfall - was great. I thought so, anyway.

So, while some people have now finished school (or have two more days or something similar), we're all still stuck in for another three weeks or so. Which isn't very good. But on the up side, all our exams are now finished, so we can all stop paying attention in class now (everyone does it in my class. The teachers learnt to stop trying a few days ago). They weren't teaching us anything important now anyway. I need to revise over maths again, so I pay attention in maths, but I'll be doing that in the holidays as well, I think.

Speaking of the holidays, my family is going to New Zealand from the 27th of December to the 9th of January. And we won't have internet connection there in New Zealand, so that will obviously mean I won't be around for a while. I'm returning to Blogland either this weekend or next weekend by the way.

And so, getting to the end of this post by now, I have a few more things to say.

If anyone remembers this, Adra started a blog about a band, Derek's Minions. Anyone remember that? Anyway, since that that didn't end up doing much yet, I decided I may as well see about starting another band to do a few things. Not necessarily Skulduggery-Based, but just to make music with fellow minions. So if anyone's interested in doing something like that, let me know. Any instrument or other kind of vocals you may be able to do is fine. And no, it will not be a death metal band, if you are worrying about that. The genre would be agreed on by all members, if it ever happens. Anyway, that's a thought.

And now, the last thing. This is my 99th post, which means, y'know, the obvious. My next post will be my 100th. Before NaNo, I was writing Zathract Mist, the renewed version. I thought it'd be kind of fitting to have the 100th post a renewal of the first few posts I ever made on this blog, that stupid little intro thing aside. So I'll be posting that next. I like how it's going, so I think that will go well. Hopefully.

Also, I will get back to writing proper things now. And BfB is my priority considering Nix is doing the next N&M chapter (so there's no need to kill me, Val).

And that is the end of this stupidly long post. There's probably something else I needed to say, but it's 12:45am and I need to sleep at some point.

So that's it. Sorry for the typos in this post. Hate this keyboard.

I'm sorry you lost the game.