useless lives used as raw material
40,000 words into “Nightfighter”. Maglarion is shaping up to be an excellent villain.
In today’s excerpt, sharp-eyed readers might catch a reference to “Ghost Rage”:
So many people.
Maglarion looked at them from the inn’s balcony, his lip curling in contempt.
Vermin, every last of one of them. Stupid animals, eating and defecating, rutting and birthing, living in their own filth and detritus. They spawned like rabbits, or perhaps like rats, filling the world with their useless, worthless offspring. They cared about nothing but filling their bellies, or filling the bellies of their brats. Their concerns were petty, mundane, material.
Meaningless.
Maglarion had transcended them. He had mastered death itself, had already lived four times longer than even the healthiest of them would manage, and he would live longer yet. He was above them, like a man looking down at rats.
Like a god looking down at rats.
He smiled at the thought. A god could do as he pleased with his creation.
And one day Maglarion would put the people of Malarae to very good use indeed. Not yet, not quite. He had a great deal of work to do yet. But…soon, very soon.
And then their lives would have more meaning than they had ever dreamed.
“Nightfighter” isn’t a NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) thing, incidentally – I started on October 4th, after all.
Personally, I’ve never much needed NaNoWriMo. I understand and approve of the reasoning behind it – motivating people to write who might otherwise never get around it – but it’s not something I need myself. In the last ten years, I’ve written 15 novels, and “Nightfighter” will be 16.
Granted, I’m crap at selling those novels, but the motivation to write them – just fine there, thanks.
-JM