Tag: union

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Returning to Imbuer’s Local 451

Back in Writemonkey. I’m blaming my low production this past week on the near inexplicably clunky feel on Scrivener fullscreen. That means I better show up today, or it’s just me.

Imbuers Local #451

Revisiting Imbuers Local #451

A single voice intoned the chant.

Other voices joined the first in staggering succession as if each new chanter required a sense more substantial than mere hearing to recognize the invitation. As the number of chanters grew, others joined more quickly until the swell of the chant could not be ignored by the remaining few—save one, the chant’s initiator.

Thima, toak-Slay, had ceased chanting once sufficient others took up the [song]. It waited silently but not unmovingly for the remaining Imbuers to join. Thima then maneuvered the crowded dais to the edge and signaled for the next hoop to be lowered into place. It worried they would fail in their task.

The unseen audience—hushed to silence on their benches in the steep [auditorium]—drew a collective breath as the second hoop descended from the darkness. Lit from a bright point at the apex of the chamber, the silhoutted ring channeled a cone of light on the chanters below that transformed into a cylindar of rays as it dropped to match with the first. Had a blonde-haired girl, arms out and twirling in the evening air, stood in the center she might have been able to touch the insides of the ring. A grown man could put thumb to fingertip when hoisting the iron torus in his grip.

248 words on day 825

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Into the Bowels of Crainstock Ltd

https://1000days.douglasblaine.com/20090818/crainestock-ltd/

Kera had never imbued an [engine ring] before.

“How many is your most?” the hurried MPM asked. She swung open the next door and held it for Kera while encouraging her to walk faster with the clipboard her other hand.

“Nine of us blessed a sword with accuracy and ever-sharp in school,” Kera said.

“OK. This’ll be three times that.” The door shut behind Kera like a prison gate.

Kera frowned to the MPM despite her excitement.

“It’s a much bigger ring than our usual.”

“Oh,” Kera said. “Dana, right?”

“Donna.” Anything else the Magical Project Manager might have said was lost in her attention to the contents of the folder attached to her clipboard.

“Donna, what happened?” Kera didn’t need the late night rush down unfamiliar hallways to tell her something had gone wrong if she were being snagged off her own project to imbue a ring with twenty-six—twenty-six!—other other mages. If she’d applied for one of the infrequent junior mage roles, did two layers of interviews, waited 90 days, and then was accepted to imbue a standard [engine ring] she’d have been astonished.

“That son-of-a-bitch Ajit…sorry, Mr. Balasubramanyan…threw up all over my…the, the [engine ring] during tuning. I guess he’d gotten the flu or something but didn’t want to recuse himself.” Donna stopped short. “You’re not sick are you?”

Kera considered the question, even pushing her thoughts out to her extremities like a mental MRI feeling for everything from sniffles to cancer. All she found was excitement.

“Maybe I ought to be?” Kera joked.

The MPM whispered as if she gripped Kera by the collar and jerked her face to face. “Don’t fuck with me. Is there any reason—any at all—you can’t do this?”

“None.” Kera swallowed as silently as possible. “Did you say during the tuning?”

“Kera, do I seem like the kind of person who enjoys walking fast?”

“Why didn’t you mention that earlier?” Kera skipped to a backward jog further down the corridor expecting Donna to match pace at least some. The MPM pushed her face to a flat grin, pointed at the featureless wall with her clipboard, and stepped into it’s surface.

367 words on day 579

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Crainestock Ltd

I need a new place to write for a while. Maybe I’m being childish but I’m just not finding much motivation siting at my desk. What I am finding is more than a little distraction and more than a few excuses. Today I’m giving the WordPress app a third shot. Maybe this time I’ll get something up online.

Leaves fell from the trees much as they always do in the early part of my feigned writing. This action reads like an ending but writes like a beginning. Leaves fall to the ground from autumn soaked limbs, from winter frozen branches, and from dampened vernal buds. We all know this.

No idea where that was going but on the iPhone I’m not deleting it since it proves I wrote at all. Let’s try again.

Crainestock Ltd loosely enforced a policy established so far back in company history that most old Crainers took for granted the story they passed on to the new Crainers: Edward Crainestock III’s mistress was a Numerologist. Of course none of the company’s documentation captured this detail and certainly the veracity was never tested by a deep or even scant perusal of the company’s less official papers either. Everyone employed in those early days knew it to be true, therefore it was now true.

The policy held that no spell, not the smallest charm to power a child’s trinket or the most secret enchantments used to imbue legendary class weapons, shall be carried out by less than a Triad. That in all cases a prime number of mages was preferred to just an odd number and that any odd number was preferred to an even number even when it meant less mages be employed.

Kera found herself in the strange position of not only begging the crusty Bookman to help her but also waiting outside the door of the Chief Executive Mage’s office while he finished a phone call so she could finish her last enchantment before heading off on vacation.