Weekend Writing Warriors: 2/15

This 8 sentence blog hop is hosted by The Weekend Writing Warriors. (Click the link for the list of participants, or rules if you want to join!)

This is a snippet from my yet-to-be-completed NaNoWriMo story, Black Ink Plague, a fantasy about inkbloods, people who were left at the roots of a magic tree as babies, and can use charcoal from those trees to write and cast spells.

The main character, an inkblood called Liar, cast a spell to kill a gang leader called Cin, then traveled to The Friendly Mermaid, a disreputable and smelly tavern/inn, where she meets with the gang’s second in command, Jash, and asks for payment to purchase supplies for charms she is making for the gang.

 

“I understand,” Handsome Jash met her eyes for a moment, “even after a death, we all have to eat.” He nodded to one of the men beside him, who stood and handed Liar a heavy purse.

She tucked it inside her own, “I will leave you, then, to honor your fallen.”

“You’re not going to count it?” One of the men, with a scar running across his cheek and through his patchy dark beard, asked.

“Leave it,” Jash said, “We have more important things to take care of.”

“I want to know how much she was paid,” the man said, jaw jutting out stubbornly.

Once again, Jash’s gaze flicked over Liar’s face, measuring, before he turned his attention to the barely-contained chest of the woman sitting beside him, dismissing the argument.

*    *    *

Black Ink Plague is set in a world similar to ours, with the addition of the Rakau tree, which has magical properties–charcoal or ink from the tree can be used to cast spells. However, only inkbloods, babies who were left overnight at a Rakau tree’s roots on their first full moon, can harvest and use the tree. The price they pay for their magic is that the ink infects them, staining their skin and eventually forming words from the spells they cast on their skin. These words change their lives in unexpected ways.