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NaNoWriMo'09: excerpt #1 from Prologue
Nov. 1st, 2009 12:41 pmokay, here's a few hundred words of what I've got done of the prologue so far:
Red Threads, Book 1: No Faith
Summary: Half a millennia ago the Elemental Beasts were born from the gradual concentration of four elements in the east, south, west, and north corners of the mortal realm. While magnificent, they were as impassive to mortal life as the natural disasters they embody, and were eventually ordered to be imprisoned in the underworld by the Jade Emperor of the immortals. As punishment, they were stripped of their immortality and condemned to numerous lifetimes of the very suffering they had caused.
Over the centuries, as the mortal realm slowly returned to peace and prosperity, the beasts and the terrors they wrought faded from the mortals’ memories， until they remained no more than a faraway legend.
Now, five hundred years later, their spirits have been reborn as five mortal beings, each struggling through their own trials of redemption, and each connected to the other by a red thread of fate. Caught on either side of the conflict between the rénlèi (humans) and yāojīng (nonhuman entities that can take on human form) will fate bring them together as friends, or enemies?
序幕 《紅線》
Hóng Xiàn
(PROLOGUE: RED THREADS)
Yùe Lǎo
The small ferrying cloud I had summoned scatters in wisps beneath my feet as I hurriedly make my way through the spirit gates of Dìyù, realm of death and rebirth. Ahead of me lies the path to Dìfǔ, the court of the underworld, blanketed by clusters of translucent línghún – mortal spirits – drifting through, clinging to their peers and silently bemoaning their deaths.
Nervously, I start to dust my robes off of the tendrils of residue immortal energy that had followed me down during my descent from Tiān’táng, the upperworld. Some of the línghún are already breaking from their clusters and gathering towards the weak immortal light of my own essence, the dead drawn to the allure of eternal life and everlasting wisdom. Knowing that the yánwáng – judges of the dead – disliked any and all interruptions to their orderly business of assigning doom, I quickened my pace and did my best to avoid the wayward spirits slowly crowding around me. My long silver beard I kept tucked inside my robes just in case – the hair of an immortal holds just as much power as their blood.
( By the time I reached Dìfǔ’s doorstep... )
Summary: Half a millennia ago the Elemental Beasts were born from the gradual concentration of four elements in the east, south, west, and north corners of the mortal realm. While magnificent, they were as impassive to mortal life as the natural disasters they embody, and were eventually ordered to be imprisoned in the underworld by the Jade Emperor of the immortals. As punishment, they were stripped of their immortality and condemned to numerous lifetimes of the very suffering they had caused.
Over the centuries, as the mortal realm slowly returned to peace and prosperity, the beasts and the terrors they wrought faded from the mortals’ memories， until they remained no more than a faraway legend.
Now, five hundred years later, their spirits have been reborn as five mortal beings, each struggling through their own trials of redemption, and each connected to the other by a red thread of fate. Caught on either side of the conflict between the rénlèi (humans) and yāojīng (nonhuman entities that can take on human form) will fate bring them together as friends, or enemies?
Hóng Xiàn
(PROLOGUE: RED THREADS)
Yùe Lǎo
The small ferrying cloud I had summoned scatters in wisps beneath my feet as I hurriedly make my way through the spirit gates of Dìyù, realm of death and rebirth. Ahead of me lies the path to Dìfǔ, the court of the underworld, blanketed by clusters of translucent línghún – mortal spirits – drifting through, clinging to their peers and silently bemoaning their deaths.
Nervously, I start to dust my robes off of the tendrils of residue immortal energy that had followed me down during my descent from Tiān’táng, the upperworld. Some of the línghún are already breaking from their clusters and gathering towards the weak immortal light of my own essence, the dead drawn to the allure of eternal life and everlasting wisdom. Knowing that the yánwáng – judges of the dead – disliked any and all interruptions to their orderly business of assigning doom, I quickened my pace and did my best to avoid the wayward spirits slowly crowding around me. My long silver beard I kept tucked inside my robes just in case – the hair of an immortal holds just as much power as their blood.
( By the time I reached Dìfǔ’s doorstep... )
