An Overture To Conflict
Aboard a ship waiting for war, The Author and The Immortal speak of memories and a life long lived.
Link: An Overture to Conflict
Deep breath. Here we go.
This character, the immortal one, is a character I have been working on for almost 20 years now. For the most part, I can see the trail of development he has been through, starting as almost a caricature of existing archetypes and how he slowly transformed into his own person with his own goals and motivations.
At this point in his story, as you may well be able to infer, he is tired. He isn’t who he used to be, and a lot of his energy, a lot of his willpower has been sapped on his singular mission. He continues, though. He pushes forward because he can see the end. You will have seen the irony, yes?
The Author, whoever they are, is someone who will get a lot more attention when I set to write the biographical-ish story of the immortal man. For now, they are a stand in. Someone visceral and angry - although, a lot of that is not on display here. Someone who has seen a lot of trauma - some of it their own - and they place the blame for it squarely on this immortal man’s shoulders. To this person, the writing of the book, the articulating of the events that have led to the war they all sit on the brink of, is nothing more than a final effort at catharsis. A way - they hope - to assuage the negative feelings they hold, not just towards the immortal, but towards themself as well.
In the same way that my Preludes to MBK offer a glimpse into that world before I actually have the real story to be read, Overture does the same for what I’m calling the climax to my Immortals Series. I don’t have any real plans as of this writing to sit down to those stories, but I have a lot of ideas for them. Because the main stories are interlinked in some fashion - prior to the climax, that is - I need to have a solid idea of what each of them are doing, how their individual themes complement or contrast to each other and all that actual writer stuff.
I will say this, though, you have not seen the last of They. Nor has The Author.
Stats!
This story was originally written on 02 February 2023. It has a word count of 1363 and the original draft of 1239 words took 33 minutes to write.
This story contains references to five other long form stories I am currently writing.