Weekend Writing Warriors: 2/22

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 the gang leader called Cin, then met with the gang’s second in command, Jash, to ask for payment to purchase supplies for charms, but one gang member demands to know how much she’s being paid.

 

“Why would I do that?” Liar fixed her gaze on the scarred man, knowing that in the poorly lit inn, her deep brown eyes would seem like dark pools in her pale face, a frightening effect.

But the scarred man, full of courage from anger, and from the smell of him, plenty of cheap beer, stood. “Because you’re a cursed tree-woman, we’re not friends, and we do our business open-like, so everybody knows.”

“Ah, but if we can’t honor our word, what will become of us? We get no help from the lords, except for the occasional… donated purse,” Liar smiled wickedly over the last words.

Jash and several of the men chuckled at her reference to what happened to young lords who came slumming, who were lucky to leave with the clothes on their back. But the scarred man didn’t even smile, reaching for the purse at Liar’s side.

*    *    *

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.