Weekend Writing Warriors July 31

Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image below.

Continuing a scene from my current WIP, The Ashes of Home, Shayla has tracked a mysterious madman, Randall, to a makeshift bar in a forestry work camp. The patrons have been plying him with drink, and he rewards them with an insane rant about fire falling from the sky. Shayla asked about the fire and Randall described an impossibly pure bight lilac.

Note - a Sword is a class of battleship, the largest in existence.

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Despite the warmth in the room, goosebumps raced up and down Shayla’s body. The table in front of her swam in and out of focus. She pushed herself upright, steadying herself against waves of vertigo, ignoring angry protests as she stumbled from table to table towards the door.

Outside, the night air restored a measure of balance. She gathered herself and, with an effort, walked around the corner to the shelter of a dark alley. There she doubled up and was violently sick.

There were no immigration records of this man because he hadn’t arrived and dropped off grid as Brin supposed. No, he had always been here.

Shayla and a few hundred others had escaped the Cleansing, taking flight while the Imperial navy closed in, but this man had lived through it. He had just described perfectly the flash from an exawatt plasma cannon, the signature weapon of Imperial Swords.

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