NaNoWriMo: Day Twelve

This post was meant for yesterday, but seeing as a ten hour work day took priority, I got essentially no writing done. Here's to playing catch-up! Hope all of your projects are still chugging along. We'll be breaching week the start of week three very soon.

Here is your excerpt. It's safe to say that I've really been waiting to write this scene. Enjoy and continued writing success through November.

Peace and Writing Love,

JWP

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The Shattered Darkness
Chapter 6 excerpt

He arrived under the Im’dumol an hour later. His parents and the keeper seemed to have been waiting, as had been a tiny gathering of soldiers and concerned citizens. He had taken his time to wrap Melana. Each roll of linen he used, he draped it delicately as if doing otherwise would disturb her. He came with her in his arms and stepped toward the keeper. A knot rose in his throat and he did not want to let her go. While any uncertainties about his journey to the Sands may have fought to the front of his mind, he forgot them for but a second when he knelt in a mound of dirt and laid her body down. He pushed himself out flat, knees in the soft earth and his arms flat against the ground.

“It’s the best way,” he whispered.

He rose when his father put a hand on his back. A team of soldiers hoisted a stone tablet over the casket and positioned it even along the edges. 

“Do you have words for her?” the keeper asked. “You have the honor of the sealing prayer, also.”

“I couldn’t prevent the Darkness from taking you from me, but I know had I been stronger—had I been able to control it—you would be here.” He glanced at the twisting rune stones above the plot, and said, “Noxi Un, Deri Re, tol mu verdis Im’dumol.”

The stones exploded with green fire from the runes. They spun outward in a circle over the plot while the fire grew more intense over them. It jumped from one rune to the next, each linked by a burning chain.

“If this is not the end for us, you will never know suffering again. Goodnight and farewell, child of nature: my Melana.”

Shadows spiraled down at the tomb, a lance of pure quivering darkness, then encased by a shell of green light. Similar green marks drew across the tablet, as if a chisel was being taken to it before their eyes. The mounds of dirt trembled around the burial site and the piles slowly fell back over the casket. When the earth had finally taken Melana under, the lance of green thinned to a thread’s width that hung around the shadows and the disappearing sun.

Valence breathed uneasy as he stepped over the site and took his hand to the thread. He placed his forefinger and thumb on it and made himself wait a moment longer. He pulled at the thread until it tore. The green of the Im’dumol left the cemetery grounds, marking her body as one sealed under the gods.