Heres an update on a story i wrote and posted here a while ago.

Title: Lord Of The Dead
Genre: fantasy/mythology
Rating: probably teens or over, its got a bit of violence and alot about the theme of death

1st part can be viewed here, in my journal.

If you can't be stuffed to read that bit, basically Hades has just been murdered and Zeus collected his dead body.

( read on... )

to anyone who enjoys writing: i suggest you try this.
basically I just turned my screen off, at an empty document, and started typing whatever came to mind. this is 100% unedited, blind freewriting. just so you know, it took up just under a complete page in MS word.

( oh the blank page )

Posted this in fiction writers a while ago, but here it is in my journal, so its easier to find.
( Click 2 Read )

Beginning of a story I'm writing, about 5 people each with a specific 'power' or 'trait',
not sure about some of the plot details yet, particularly the backstory behind the powers, so suggestions are welcome.

The cold wind whistled like a kettle through the deep ditch. Satsklov Nireisch crouched low to the ground. He leant forward, and opened the tiny doorway of the lantern. He lit a match, and set the candlewick alight. He pulled the match away, and used it to light the cigarette in his mouth as well. He only hoped the Germans wouldn’t see the smoke. Unlikely, on this moonless, cloudy night, but one could never be too careful down here in the trenches.

He stood up, and began moving forward, when he suddenly tripped up on a rock. With a small grunt of pain, he collapsed to the ground. He breathed a quick prayer of thanks, as he realised what might have happened if he had stood up for any longer, with a lit cigarette in his mouth. He stood so that he was bent over double, picked up his lantern, and continued on his midnight patrol.

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A small light shone through faintly from the other trench. Through the scope of his sniper rifle, Fredreich Hayner could clearly make it out to be a cigarette butt. A Russian had snuck outside for a smoke. Very foolish. He quickly adjusted his aim, so it appeared in the dead centre of the sights. Shoot to kill, show no mercy. His commander had told him. His finger hesitated at the trigger. Something was telling him not to shoot. A small voice in his head, fighting against the overwhelming urge to fire. He shrugged it off, and re-adjusted his aim. He looked harder at the small glow, and he could almost see the mans face. Strange, he thought, He looks like… The light disappeared; it looked like the man had tripped over something. He didn’t come back up again; presumably because he realized how exposed he was. Fredreich tried following the trail of smoke, in case he popped his head up again, but it was to dark to make it out clearly, and he lost track of it. He glanced at his pocket watch. His shift was over. He headed back to the dugout to report his boring night.

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Dear Freddy,
How are you, old friend? I hope you haven’t gotten involved in this retched war. Unfortunately, I have.
Since the Germans tried to invade Russia, I have volunteered to do my part for my glorious country. Although, I am finding that, day by day, war is seeming less and less glorious.
Life in the trenches is so incredibly dull, all we do is sit around and wait for a German charge. Or we charge ourselves, but I haven’t participated in any of them yet. I am very thankful for that, too. Every time we charge we lose hundreds of men. Of course, the enemy loses more. Which kind of worries me. Every time I see a German soldier in pain, I wonder how I would feel if it were you.
Our commanders expect us to simply kill without thought or mercy. They describe the German culture and personality to be invariably cruel and evil, but just knowing somebody from Germany makes me think differently. After all, if you can be kind and friendly, why can’t all Germans?
This war is getting increasingly difficult for me. Protecting our great and innocent country is one thing, but slaughtering another equally great and innocent country, not to mention each of their soldiers… is it even worth it?
Anyway, I should not be dawdling here writing, no doubt there are trenches to dig, or some other useless job to be done.
Best wishes to Germany from Russia,
Satsklov

Satsklov read over the letter twice more, and picked it up. He hesitated for a moment, before holding it over the candle by his bed. It caught alight, and he watched it burn. Ever since the war had started, sending letters had become increasingly difficult.
Although the army had its own postal service for men missing their families, Satsklov doubted that any letters actually got through it. Nobody ever received any in return, at any rate. As for sending letters to another country, to say nothing of the fact that it was the opposing country… it was absurd.

Satsklov didn’t even know why he bothered pretending to write to Fredreich; although he had been his best friend for most of his life, Satsklov hadn’t seen him since late in April, a few months ago, when Freds parents had become terminally ill, and he was forced to return to his homeland to be with them. Satsklov could only hope for the best; He had not received word from him since the war had broken out.
The sergeant called his name. He blew the ashes of the letter off the desk, and headed out to join his squad mates.

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Fredreich lay back in his bed, wishing sleep to come quickly. He had volunteered himself for a raiding party the next night, and he needed to catch up on his rest.
It had been two days since he had seen that familiar looking face in the other trench.

He thought about his old friend, from when he had lived in Russia. Poor Satsklov. He remembered the many days they had spent at the orphanage together. Until, one day, Fredreich had finally been chosen.

He shivered under the thin sheets that supposedly protected him from the cold. It was as useful as putting ice over a raging fire to cool it. He shut his eyes and thought back to that day.

His adoptive parents had, also, been German. It was both the happiest and worst day of his life. Waving goodbye to his lifelong friend had been the hardest thing he had ever had to do. But finally having a family, after seven years of meaninglessness, had been like heaven on earth for Fredreich. But it was a bittersweet happiness; he couldn’t bear to leave his friend alone in the orphanage for long.

Fred rolled over in his bed. He could hear his bunkmates snoring in each of their beds. But he couldn’t sleep.

Each day he had visited Satsklov, until they finally turned seventeen. Old enough to get jobs and start their own lives. When he was twenty, Fredreichs parents had insisted that they moved back to Germany. Fredreich had refused to go with them, opting instead to buy a house with Satsklov, who was living in a pathetic rental apartment, and stay in Russia with him.
Eventually his parents grew terribly ill, just a little earlier this year, and Fred had felt obliged to go and be with them. He had barely stayed there for two days when they passed away. His original plan had been to stay for a month or two, until funerals, wills etc. had been taken care of, then go back to Russia and live with Satsklov again. Perhaps find a wife, a German wife, and start a family. But then the war had broken out, and he had been conscripted into the German army. He missed his friend.

Slowly, Fredreichs eyes drooped downwards, as he slipped into unconsciousness.

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Another tedious sentry night. Satsklov yawned for the fifth time that minute. He stopped walking for a moment, and checked the field. The small wooden periscope was cracked and splintered, but still managed to display a near decent image of no mans land.

There was, as usual, nothing to see. The bleak, inhospitable landscape looked the way Satsklov had always imagined the surface of the moon to look like. Nothing could survive here; even if there weren’t two massive armies crouching at either end, firing at anything that twitched in the wind. Between the many artillery barrages, grenades, bullets and stamping feet, it was no wonder the once beautiful countryside had been completely demolished.

Satsklov began to lower the periscope. Not only are we killing the German people, he thought to himself, but we’re ruining their country as well.

He grimaced, and prepared to walk away, when something in the dirty mirror caught his eye; a glint of light. He looked again, and then he saw them. They had hidden behind the craters and mounds of wreckage when he had looked before; several dark figures could barely be discerned through the gloom. A German raiding party.

Satsklov quietly awoke his commander, and three other soldiers. Two of them silently took up positions at a machine gun turret, whilst Satsklov, the commander and the third soldier crouched just under the parapet.
At the commanders’ signal, they all stood up together. The commander brandished a hefty shotgun; Satsklov took up his trusty rifle; and the third soldier held some grenades and a powerful torch. This, he turned on, and pointed it out towards the Germans.
They cringed backwards, blinded by the sudden intensity of the light. Compared to the deep darkness pressing in around them, it was like setting fire to an oil tanker.
Satsklov was the only one who spoke German there, so he called out to them.
“Don’t move, put down your weapons and your hands on put your head! Otherwise machine guns will rain you on!” They Germans quickly huddled together in the large crater they had taken refuge in, separated from the Russians by several metres of uneven wilderness. Satsklov waited, hoping he had remembered enough of the language to convey the message clearly enough. Freddy had taught him German long ago, on his visits to the orphanage, which he had learnt from his new parents.

Finally, the Germans emerged from their cover. Satsklov eyed them suspiciously, as they marched closer and closer to the Russian trench. They didn’t seem to be discarding their weapons.
“I said drop. Weapons and hands on head.” He warned them, but he was sure they could hear the nerves in his voice. He hoped beyond hope that they weren’t getting lost in translation. The Germans stopped advancing. One of them stepped forward, and started speaking in fluent Russian.
“We hear your requests, and deny your wishes. Our response is as follows.” Before Satsklov could even begin to wonder what they meant, the raiding party responded. All five Germans raised their guns at once – except for one at the back, who appeared more nervous than the others – and fired in unison.

Five bullets pierced the commanders’ torso, arms, neck and stomach at once. He collapsed backwards off the parapet. With barely a seconds delay, the German party reloaded and took aim… a sudden splutter of a machine gun saved Satsklov and the other soldier. Although the gunners had been caught by surprise at the murder of their commanding officer, they had recovered in time to save their lives.

In five seconds, the majority of the raiders lay dead or wounded where they stood. There were only two left, turning to run. The soldier next to Satsklov chucked a grenade towards them, striking the leftmost one in the back. He fell to the ground, just as the explosive detonated. There was only one soldier left; Satsklov took aim with his rifle. The man was to far gone now for the machine guns, only an extremely accurate rifle shot would catch him at this range. No problem, He thought, I could make this shot in my sleep. He looked through the sights, lining them up with the shrinking figure, taking into account wind and kickback…

He hesitated. Something was telling him not to shoot. A small but distinct voice in his head gave him the impression that if he fired, he would regret it. Why? He wondered, what is so special about this soldier that I should spare him? He thought back to the soldiers face, when they had shone the torch on him… no, it had been to dark to see then. What? The muzzle flash! When the machine guns had opened fire, Satsklov had glimpsed the mans face… He strained his memory.
It looked like… no, it couldn’t be. The man disappeared over the parapet of the opposite trench. Could it?

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The next morning, Fredreich sat shivering in the muddy German trench. This was suicide. Just like their little caper last night. If not for him, for the other four soldiers who had accompanied him. They were tougher soldiers than he, nearly twice his age with many times the experience. They had risked everything on a single theory; the death of the Russian commander would confuse them enough to get away.

But now the Generals were ordering a full-scale charge at the Russians. Stealthily sneaking through enemy defences was one thing, but running straight at them, screaming at the top of your lungs? That was genocide. There was no way anyone could talk him into doing this.
The whistle blew, and Fredreich, reluctantly, picked up his pack and loaded his gun.

Within five minutes, they had prepared. Hundreds of soldiers lined up along the walls of the parapet, waiting for the next whistle signal. But first, the commander insisted on giving a few encouraging words.
“Alright men!” He called along the giant ditch, “The Russians have brutally slaughtered our brothers in the place. Months of fighting have amounted to this. Today, WE WILL TAKE THEIR TRENCH!” A faint cheer rang up amongst the soldiers. None of them were really enthusiastic. “As private Hayner can tell you,” Fredreich looked up at the mention of his name. “The Russians are barbaric, insecure, sadistic fiends, and we must drive them from this land! Isn’t that right, Fredreich?” All eyes were on him. They gave us a chance to surrender. He thought, and we tried to kill them. His mouth was to dry to respond out loud. “Ah, I see their cruelty has deeply affected you, my friend.” The commander tried, and failed, to seem sympathetic. “Perhaps you will relate it to us later, until then CHARGE!” The whistle blew, and German troops all along the channel poured out, into no mans land.

It felt like he had entered a blizzard. A blizzard of heat and ash and smoke. There was a slight ping near his shoe. And bullets. He thought.
Fredreich had never been in a charge before. Which was probably why he had been chosen for this charge. Able-bodied men with charging experience were quite hard to come by in the trenches.

He sprinted forwards, with no clue where he was going. The fresh, morning sun had been completely blotted out by smoke, dust and debris caused by artillery fire. All around him, Fredreich caught glimpses of his squad mates getting caught up in painful and brutal circumstances. He never saw any of them again.
He had made it nearly… Past halfway across the battlefield. Here the artillery fire stopped. The large cannons were too inaccurate to be trusted this close to friendly units. Now came the rifles. Two hundred Russians were lined up along the edge of their trench, each cocking and aiming their rifles. Looking around, Fredreich realized that he was one of a mere thirty or so remaining Germans. He looked ahead again, and prepared for the wall of hot lead that was sure to come his way…

Fredreich was spared the firing squad by a rouge artillery shell. One of the cannons, some distance away, had been bumped a little to far down, and it fired its cargo terribly close to its own trench. The Russians on the parapet ducked for cover as they heard it coming. All but one. Fredreich took a split second to look back at the Russian frontline on last time. There, head and torso over the trench was Satsklov. His face a mix of shock, horror and delight, he stood gawping as Fredreich redoubled his efforts to outrun the approaching missile. It was hopeless. Fredreich looked upwards again, to see the monstrous explosive looming out of the smoke that clogged the air.
He stretched his hand out, as if somebody might be able to grab him, to save him. His last notion was the sight of Satsklov in his trench, doing the same reaching motion.
Then, nothing.
The mortar exploded onto the ground, with an ear-shattering boom, scattering debris everywhere.

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Satsklov picked his way through the wrecked stretch of land. All around him, German medics did the same, looking for any man left alive. Of course, since he was Russian, the Germans weren’t all to welcoming of his presence. They carefully avoided him, as if they thought he would whip out a gun and shoot them all. But no, he had had enough killing. He was here for somebody special.

Dressed as a Russian ambulance officer, Satsklov had told the acting commander that he was on a mission to look for one of their soldiers, who had been to far out when the shell had hit. Which was, in a way, completely true. It had only taken him a few minutes to find the fresh crater mark. It had been several more minutes before he found where, he thought, Fredreich had been standing when the explosion had occurred. It was hard to be certain, of course, for the landscape had been completely reshaped again by this recent bought of fighting.

Satsklov wiped the sweat off his brow, willing himself not to panic. With every minute lost, there was an increased likelihood of the Germans halting their search, and resuming the fight. He had to be confident. He would find his friend.

Finally, he did. Fredreich lay still on the pockmarked ground, buried under two other German bodies. Satsklov checked his pulse. Weak but alive. He checked his breathing. Shallow, but recoverably so. Satsklov carefully hoisted the dead bodies away from the living, and examined Fredreichs physical damage. It seemed that when the shell had landed, several metres to the right, these other two soldiers had absorbed most of the impact of the blast. Fredreich, however, had been struck in the legs by two flying bodies, breaking them both, and knocking him unconscious.

There was a gasp. He was coming to. Satsklov gently began to pick him up, then stopped. He carefully began tearing off every German emblem and symbol from Fredreichs clothing. By the time he had finished, it looked as ragged and torn as if it had been in the centre of impact. He splashed Fredreichs face with some water from his field bottle. He woke up.
“Fredreich.”
“Satsklov?” His eyes were still half-closed.
“Do you still speak Russian.” Fredreich frowned.
“I – uh, yes. But-“
“I will take you to the Russian hospital. You will be treated there as one of our soldiers. Then,” Satsklov looked briefly around at the devastated landscape. “We will get out of this cursed army, and go home.” Fredreich nodded. There wasn’t much more he could add.

Satsklov stood up, and carried his friend back to the Russian trench.

The warrior ripped his sword from his enemy’s chest. It slid out easily, with a squelch. He brought the heavy weapon up over his head, just in time to block a hard blow from another soldier. He parried the stroke, an in a few more swings he had swung his sword through his new opponents neck. Amidst the chaotic clattering and ringing of the battle, the man could hear a light thud as the head hit the ground. With a satisfied grunt, he turned to face another opponent.

Every few seconds, one of his own troops fell, unscathed, and apparently unharmed; seemingly without explanation. But this general knew. From the corner of his eye, he could see the old man, standing atop the hill. He glanced down at the glowing necklace Hyperion had given him. Wear this, he had said, and no harm will befall you in battle. Just as long as you kill the old man. It was a decent deal. The man prided himself on being invincible. Now he was. Even with the old man on the prominence, killing his troops with magic, he would be victorious. As long as he got up there, fast. A loud clang, and a painful smash on his helmet, brought him back to the present. To get to the hill, he would need to fight through these men. In less then a minute, three of them were down. The man fought with vigour, every swing was a devastating blow. His mentors had often told him that a fearless man could be more formidable than an indestructible one, in battle. Now he was both. He lashed at another soldier, swinging his blade so hard; it snapped the iron breastplate in two. Within minutes, the general was standing atop the rocky hill, watching the battle progress beneath him.

His troops were doing well, considering the terrible circumstances. They had come here, all the way from Rome, to chase the Greek armies all the way home. At first, they had far outnumbered the enemy, but within a few hours a second army had overrun them from the side. Hyperion had told him this would happen, and he had set lookouts along the flanks of his army. What Hyperion hadn’t mentioned was just how large and how strong the third army would be. Without the warning, they would all have been slaughtered, but as it was they had barely survived. Hyperion had told him how to beat the ambushers. Just kill the old man on the hill. His army will falter before you. The man was a few metres away, back turned. The general took another step towards him.

If the old man had waited another second, he would be dead. He turned as the mighty blade rose over the warriors’ head.
“Stop.” He said it with such power and authority; the general hesitated. Unfortunately, he was in mid swing when he did so, and he collapsed to the ground, suddenly feeling exhausted. “You cannot kill me.” The old man walked towards him.
“I can,” the general took a deep breath. He had never met anyone that made him nervous, just by talking to them. Until today. “I can, and I will.” He looked up. The old man had a kind of grim smile, on his bony grey face.
“Not if you value the lives of your men.” Whatever smile the old man had was gone. It was replaced with a sad frown, which somehow gave the general an uneasy sense of foreboding. He picked up his sword, with considerable effort. Somehow, being around this man made him feel weak.
“What do you mean?” He resolved to keep talking to stall for time, until he had the strength to launch a fatal blow.
“Everybody in your army is going to die.” Although a cruel comment, the old man seemed to hold some remorse for it. “You should not have come here, Roman.”
“”Not if I kill you first!” The general lunged forward.

With a click of his fingers, the old man turned and looked down the hill, across the battlefield. In the time it took for the general to take three steps to reach the old man, every single Roman in the valley dropped dead. There was no loud explosion, no flash, no blood, nothing. Thousands of lives simply left their bodies, in a split second. The few Greek survivors were left completely baffled, but thankful.

Atop the hill, the general saw what had happened halfway through his swing. Fuelled by a sudden overwhelming sense of fury, his already powerful lunge picked up momentum, and became a mighty charge, such that could fell a giant. The old man turned around in time to catch the blow in the chest. With no form of armour to absorb the shock of the attack, the generals’ sword went straight through his body. The two men went crashing over the edge of an outcrop, and down the hill. They slammed into rocks, tree stumps and dead bodies as the rolled along downwards. The general barely managed to hold on to consciousness, thankful for his helmet and armour, without which he would surely be beaten or impaled to death on the painful obstacles.

They came to a rest together, on a large slab of rock near the bottom of the hill. The general climbed to his feet, surveying himself. He was badly bruised and had many scrapes and grazes all over him, but he was virtually unharmed. Just as Hyperion had said. He looked at his opponent. The old man lay dead beside him. A gaping hole in his chest, which still contained the generals’ sword, revealed the disgusting innards of the man. Strange the general thought, black blood. He relinquished his hefty sword, and wiped it on a small patch of grass nearby. The black blood was sticky to. As he sheathed the weapon, he heard a screech echoing across the valley. An eagle was flying overhead, investigating the battlefield. The general did the same. Thousands of men lay dead. Most of them, sadly, Romans. The mysterious army that the old man had commanded had vanished, all that was left were the few hundred Greeks picking through the corpse-field towards a campsite set up at one end of the valley, where they had stayed the night before the Romans had attacked them. The eagle was flying lower now and closer to the hill. The general eyed it suspiciously; eagles rarely flew low unless hunting, and they never flew near humans. This eagle, apparently, was different.

The general looked again at the slain man on the ground; this time, at his face. He was surprised to see that it carried a sad expression, like the slaughtering of thousands of enemies had truly pained him. The general looked away. Once he had felt sorry for every man he killed. But now he took men’s lives so often, he didn’t really care anymore. The eagle screeched again - this time it was right above his head. Instinctively, he drew his sword and turned around. A man was standing behind him. The general recognized him, from his limited knowledge of Greek religion. For once, he was truly in awe.
“What have you done, mortal?” It wasn’t a question; it was a command. A command from the gods.
Zeus! The general raised his sword into a defensive position. Here in front of him was the supreme god of his enemies, weapon less and apparently shocked. Of course he was going to kill him.
“Don’t try it.” Zeus spoke with the same powerful authority as the old man, but louder. The general drew back his sword and prepared to unleash a lightning-stroke upon the god. At that moment, lightning struck. The general was blasted backwards by a massive shockwave, a deafening roar that consumed his world. He flew backwards, and over the edge of the outcropping. He would have landed safely and lived, had he not already been dead. Instead, the lightning killed him, long before he hit the ground

Zeus watched calmly as the Roman soldier joined his fallen comrades on the ground below. Quickly, he walked over to the old man, still lying on the rock in front of him. He took in the scene for a second, then waved his hand over the mans chest. The yawning hole in it disappeared almost instantly. Useless, Zeus knew, healing a dead body, but he thought his brother deserved some respect. Transforming into an eagle, he picked up the corpse with his talons, and took of into the fading light.

He resented the fact that he would have to bring this news to Olympus. Yet another god had been struck down in battle. Hades, Lord of the Dead.