Good Morning everyone! I have been thinking about how to start off my journal for a long time and nothing was clicking until I thought about posting a story. I wanted my journal to feel like a cohesive piece on my website portfolio, and this seemed so natural when it finally occurred to me, I am not sure why it took me so long to figure this out!
Making stories has been something that I have done since I was a little girl. I still have copies of hand written poems and short stories from elementary school complete with drawings of mystical horses and faeries. I have never been the “sit down and monologue every instance of my life” kind of journalist, and maybe one day I will be able to figure that out. I have instead this ingrained desire to create stories that has burned in my bones since I was a child, eating up the literary creations of many authors and illustrators that inspired me (that is a post for another day). At the risk of sounding like a complete maniac, I will admit that sometimes it feels like I am going to fall apart if I don’t put any of this out, so for a long time I have been creating and cataloguing for the sake of my own personal sanity.
What I seem to have lost since childhood is the unfettered confidence that what I was creating was worth being seen by other people. Isn’t it weird how as adults we lose that inhibition? Getting past that self-doubt has been a battle for me (another post for another time HA!) A lot of experiences have burned me, but I think that I have finally come to a place of peace with it all enough to begin (tentatively) sharing some of my creations with you. I have had so many people, even complete strangers sometimes, reach out to me and express such kind compliments and encouragement to keep sharing what I create that it has started to feel like Divine Intervention. An encouragement from someone who I didn’t know I was longing to feel empowered by. (Sheesh this is filling up with post ideas for another time!)
I have been feverishly working on many different projects that I am excited to put out, but I am not at a point with my larger pieces to be able to post them quite yet. I will tell you that those will be made available in a webcomic format, probably through Webtoon, and I will keep you updated about those details as they emerge. I am working hard on it to bring it to life. What I do have to offer today is sort of a little pet project that I have been making in my spare time!
Mystery & Magic
Without further ado I would like to present: The Garden, a “beautiful horror” DnD based story set in the lands beyond the Amaranth Sea, where the material realms collide with realms of greater magic.
The Garden follows the story of my Bard character Lysander, who has been transported away from his desert city home to a realm of legendary proportion. If you have been following my posts on any of my social platforms, you have probably seen the plethora of Lysander related concept art that I have been sharing this year. When I first considered making the garden I thought “Ah! I can’t make all these webcomics it is going to take forever!” but as I considered further, I thought it would be better in this case to write it. Encouraging actual reading in our population, especially among the younger generations, is something that I hold in great regard. Reading encourages personal autonomy and creates in the reader an enhanced imagination and ability to empathize, so it is a very valuable life skill to foster (I will get off the soap box now lol)
Illuminations & Illustrations
I wanted to create something visually interesting as well as literarily tantalizing. So for those of you interested in the art, do not fret! The Garden will feature many rich illustrations and Illuminations to help bring the world of the Garden alive for the reader, but will be presented in a novel format, posted by chapter in this Journal.
Now, a little about the story and the characters. I won’t give anything away, but a quick note may be warranted (spooky vibes) Essentially a trigger warning.
The Garden follows a “beautiful horror” genre of storytelling, meaning that there are some aspects of the story that may be a little on the spookier side. I am not a graphic writer (generally) and I don’t believe that descriptions need be graphic or vulgar to get the point across so don’t let that throw you, however there are some psychological themes and hauntings in this story that may hit a little close to home for some readers. Beautiful Horror, or dark fantasy is a genre of storytelling that romanticizes the horrific experiences of the characters alongside aesthetically beautiful settings that play into the elements of the story, finding beauty in the dark things that surround us. As a holistic health professional, talking about mental and emotional health openly is something very important to me. It is important to me to be able to depict characters with complex, and relatable struggles, and to illustrate them in their struggles and penultimate triumphs.
Lysander
A Bard with a flair for style and a penchant for the dramatic.
Lysander originated as an NPC character and developed from there into the beloved bard I have come to know him as. He is vibrant and unapologetically charismatic, a social butterfly that finds tremendous joy performing for his audiences, as well as a tenderhearted rogue with a soft spot for anyone who suffers. I hope that you will enjoy his journey as much as I have.
Alongside him we have a colorful cast of characters in this universe, including quirky spirits, shadowy monsters, and a dragon or two, but I will let you get to know them as the story unfolds! ;)
Now without further ado, I present for your pleasure the Prologue of The Garden! Enjoy!
Part I: Spring
Prologue: In Which Fate Intervenes
“Wait!”
His blood was still dripping on the floor when Lysander bodily heard his voice rattle out from the chambers of his chest. The words escaped his lips like water from a broken floodgate, bursting out of his mouth before he even fully knew what weight they carried.
“I will stay!” he croaked, his voice quavering.
Behind him, still laying on the floor, Dreg, the Orcish Barbarian who had been summoned along with him stared at him in mute shock. For once in his life, he kept his mouth shut, and that fact may have been the only reason that they were still drawing breath, however brief it may be. Lysander’s head was still spinning, their sudden summons had happened so fast and he was still trying to regain the breath that had been stolen from his lungs only minutes before he stood once again in this overgrown courtyard. His body ached, an acute awareness lingering in the back of his mind about how much he was going to hurt later, but he was still cresting the ride of an adrenaline high. The faint numbness he felt creeping along his skin was the only indication that there would be more pain later, but that was a future problem.
Now, staggering before the massive and furiously pissed off dragon, close enough that he could see his bloody reflection in the sheen of the saliva on her barred teeth, he was very aware of the “now” problem, scrambling to put the word salad in his head into a comprehensible sentence. The dragon’s lucidus green eyes bore into him, the debris that had been swept up from the magic that had summoned them there still falling around them like ridiculous confetti. He stared back at her, frustratingly unable to force the words that he usually wielded with precision onto his tongue. He felt her eyes slide over him, felt her probing his mind, her unyielding might more terrifyingly powerful than anything he had ever felt before. Her consciousness thrummed through him like the ocean crashing over a stone on the shore. It took extreme effort not to crumble before her. He could feel the muscles along his spine seizing, every nerve firing wildly, still trying to make sense of the chaos that had been pooling on the floor of the vault only moments before they had appeared in her courtyard.
“What?!” She hissed, her voice reverberating through his consciousness like he was a tuning fork that she had just chucked into the cacophony of the oblivion. The echoing growl that rumbled from deep within her rattled the rubble on the floor around them, turning what little strength he still possessed in his core to jelly.
Lysander swallowed, the heavy tang of blood still on his tongue. Every instinct and good sense that the gods had seen fit to bless him with was screaming to run, to hide, to fall on his face and beg for mercy. What came out of his mouth was not only the exact opposite of what common sense would dictate an appropriate response to this impossible situation, but also a complete and utter rebellion of the practiced talent for word craft that he had fostered for decades.
“I… I will stay… as collateral…”
Sweat mingled with blood slid along the curve of his spine, the misty rainfall that permeated the atmosphere of this ruin stealthily dampening everything in the vicinity. He felt droplets of water fall from the tips of his hair, stinging his eyes as the kohl disintegrated into sad smudges of black that trailed along his cheekbones.
“Of the two of us…” he felt his lips shape the words against his better judgement, “He is more likely to be able to recover the Pearl for you…”
This wasn’t a good plan, he realized, even as it was beginning to take shape in his mind. He knew that Dreg possessed the charisma of an empty sack of potatoes, and had a tendency to expect the best out of everyone he met. They wouldn’t even be in this mess in the first place if Dreg hadn’t blindly volunteered them, in true Dreg fashion, to become servants to this creature. They knew absolutely nothing about her allegiances, her agendas or alignments and Lysander was all too keenly aware of that fact, yet here they were, bound regardless.
“Spare him… allow him a little longer to find it,” he gestured numbly at Dreg behind him on the floor, “and if he doesn’t complete the contract in time…”
He could feel Dreg’s eyes on him, heard the rustle of the foliage beside him as he got back to his feet, and continued speaking before Dreg had a chance to open his mouth and screw them further.
“Take me instead… A life for a life. I will vouch for his honor… on my head be the consequences…” the words punched their way out of him like he was sinking to the pits of the ocean and couldn’t physically stop himself from gasping for air. A whispered breath of finality.
The mythical Great Dragon of the East considered him without easing any of the pure wrath that emanated from her being. When she spoke, he heard it as more of a metaphysical, psychic interaction that echoed on a more feminine spectrum and left his conscious awareness with a pleasant sensation similar to having his teeth ground down with a farrier’s file.
“You would stake your life on this?” she rumbled through what shred of understanding he possessed to be able to communicate with this primordial creature. Whether Dreg heard as well or comprehended what was happening, he was unsure. It happened in mere milliseconds, between heartbeats. For all Lysander knew, she could be talking in his mind at the same time as his companion’s.
Lysander felt her eldritch consciousness slither through his own like he was being passed through a sieve. It was an effort to keep from visibly trembling. All he wanted was to collapse into a heap of blood soaked rags and melt beyond the cracks between the stones of her courtyard but he somehow found the will power to force his posture to remain erect, he did not want his friend to comprehend his fear. He met her gaze, his reflection distorted by the swirling opalescent quality of her feline eyes, this massive godlike creature burning like an angry emerald coal in the heart of her tangled garden palace, staring him down like a cat sizing up an injured sparrow.
Please…
He wasn’t even sure if he had spoken it aloud, but spoken between them physically or psychically, it swept out of him all the same, reverberating through his awareness with a breath of magic, the word humming into existence like a long forgotten song. Something foreign passed between them in the heartbeat that followed, a strange familiarity that neither seemed to fully comprehend. Lysander felt her look through him, past him to something that he couldn’t see or understand, but he felt the connection he had nurtured with his magical abilities flow through him in a way that he never had before and found it rather funny in the same moment, that now of all times, half broken and still bleeding, whatever power that controlled the cosmos found it fitting for him to have a magical breakthrough. After all, he was pretty sure that he had actually been dead on that floor less than ten minutes ago, his blood now the only evidence that he had been there at all.
“Very well,” He heard the Dragon purr suddenly, his mind still staggering back to reality from the place that she had drawn out of him. “I accept. You have your life for now. I will keep your companion as collateral for your honor. Fail me, and his life is forfeit,” she declared with the edge of rage still reverberating against their skulls, “you have your year.”
Dreg didn’t even have time to acknowledge understanding before the portal from the Dragon’s realm opened under him. Lysander turned his head to the side, looking down at his friend as the magic pulled him away, back to the broken city Lysander called home. “Take care of the others for me,” was all he managed to say before the portal blinked out of existence, closing around the wide-eyed, horrified expression his companion was wearing on his face.
Lysander watched the portal close, the residual magic in the air making his skin prickle, kicking up the leaf liter again. The sound of the rain filled the silence left in the courtyard, and Lysander felt his knees buckle. He collapsed into the thick clover at his feet, crushing exhaustion washing over him now that the imminent threat of annihilation via the pissed off mythical being had seemingly passed. The world swooned around him as an overwhelming wave of the experiences of the last twelve hours flooded his memory, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden vertigo that crept over him. He was vaguely aware of the dragon speaking to him, her voice growing slurred and distant in his mind as he exhaled a shaky breath, digging his fingers into the soil for some kind of handhold to keep the world from spinning out from under him. The clover under him turned sickening little somersaults when he opened his eyes, shadows of twinkling black unconsciousness looming in the corners of his vision. He felt the rain drip off his cracked lips, his grip on consciousness beginning to falter, and he tried to turn his head to look at her. The action proved his undoing. A shallow sigh escaped his lips as he blinked sluggishly and then collapsed into the clover, blissful unconsciousness blanketing him in the peaceful euphoria of silence.
“I will Stay…”
I hope you enjoyed the preview chapter. The Garden is my first publicly posted original story, and I am not certain enough to promise a dedicated release schedule yet, but I am going to aim for every two weeks. I am not a professional (but that title honestly is very relative, no one is until they try it) I did all the editing and artwork on my own, but the future of this project is vast.
If you are worried about missing future posts, please consider subscribing, I will never send you a ton of junk! I have also included the Spotify playlist for the Garden below, if you are into that sort of thing.
Thanks for reading! Until Next time!