Daily wordcount goal done.

So far highlights include these gems:

“He’s wearing his
usual tailcoat over his shirt but he lost the cravat and wears only a white tie now. What a
douche.”
“I bet he thinks he
looks so cool right now.”
“She must be old as balls by now,” I offer my input.
“Were you, like,
jerking off furiously to a weird erotic book?“
“You know if you’re
gonna get broken out of here you could really take me with you. I’m like, such a good
ally. The enemy of my enemy is my friend for a little bit until we both get
what we want and then we turn on each other and I kill you in cold blood, right?”
“Do you always talk this much?”

“Yeah, that’s kinda like, my thing. I’m a cool assassin. People like me. I tell jokes.”

“Did any of you guys notice Agatha Browning wasn’t a real person? That it was me all along?”

“We didn’t. I must admit I’m relieved. She’s a terrible woman.”

“You just say that cause I didn’t have time to reveal her tragic backstory yet. It’s a real tearjerker.”

I can’t believe Vale has an OC.

Alright, tonight is Camp NaNo eve…

I’m way further in Vale than I thought I was. Cool?

I’m where Vale and Cephas get separated and Cephas meet those two and Vale gets to talk to Zavier and the weasel (disclaimer: not an actual weasel) and then some heart-to-heart happens and it’s great fun (disclaimer: it’s actually suffering).

Find the Word Tag

Rules: Search for X word in your WIP and post the first sentence that comes up. If you can’t find the word then… search for whichever one pleases you! Tag as many people as you want, and choose a word for them to search in their WIP 🙂

Stole this from @perringcentral bc I thought this was fun as hell :3

Silver, mist, tree, and bright for Vale (obviously, duh).

“Like…
two hundred thousand silvers… somebody paid a poor bastard to pay me this much
money so their identity remains secret,” I say and grab the metal bar of the
man’s cell. I can feel my pulse rise. “I’ve never had that before. People don’t
usually care who knows if they got someone killed. You won’t live to tell the
tale, and I don’t give a shit so who wants you dead so badly that
they would put two walls between the two of you…”

“What’s
your point?” he frowns.

“Just…
aren’t you a little bit curious?” I squint. “Not even a little bit curious.”

“Yeah,
sure but does it matter?”

“Doesn’t
it?” I ask and dangle the key of his cell in front of him.

(this is the part where Vale decides to free Cephas instead of killing him, my poor heart, the nostalgia ♥)

When an area ahead is badly infested we hop
on the roofs and either proceed that way even with our gas masks on.
We still can’t risk breathing the real outside air as a constant mist has
sat upon the town and there’s no telling how much of it is blight, but it’s
nice to just be outside.

Then
Morlene picks us up and takes us to a “buffer zone” where we get disinfected
and we can enter the Atrium.

You’d
think we know what we’re doing. We really don’t.

(the word mist actually only appears twice in the whole story but the word mistake appears seventy-eight times so that says a lot :D)

I
come up on my target so I wait
until they walk past a tree that’s wide enough to pin someone against it and I do just that. Grabbing them by their thick longcoat I yank them off-balance, making sure they don’t get to react before I have
a blade to their neck, and press my other hand against their mouth.

“Quiet
or I slit your throat right now,” I hiss.

Two
things become painfully clear as soon as I look my pursuer in the eye.

1) I
probably shouldn’t have slammed his back against a tree trunk.

2) It’s
Cephas.

The
moment it registers with me I’m not even jumping back in surprise, I just let
out a painful groan let my hand down currently keeping him quiet.

“Cephas,
what the fuck…”

“I wanted to help?”

This next one is from our first meeting with Lourdes, Vale’s ex’s new girlfriend whom she’s not happy about at all.

“Shit, shit, shit, here she comes,
don’t look at her,” I notice a woman walking towards us and hope the situation can be salvaged but I’m sorely mistaken.
Before Cephas could even get confused a smile forces its way onto my face. “Lourdes!
Fancy meeting you here!”

“Vale, I also fancy meeting you here,”
Lourdes smiles and stands between Cephas and me with her
hands on our backs. Long waves of dark brown hair are cascading over her shoulder, but her
bright blue eyes draw all the attention to her glance. She stands two heads
taller than me even on my tiptoes, and she could probably deck Cephas’ ass
before he could even turn around and run. “How’s your health serving you?”

“Alright,” I shrug. “I’ve been recently
stabbed but recovering.”

70, 77, 82, 90, and erm…. I can’t remember numbers! 3, 22, 35, 38, 54. I hope those aren’t weird!

3. Lucky number

I don’t believe in luck. #edgy

22. Do you have any hobbies/activities you like doing?

Everything I enjoy doing I already do as my job #blessed #murder #assassination #weapons #blood

35. Would you sacrifice yourself for the good of everyone else?

Absolutely not, what has “everyone else” ever done for me? I don’t owe them shit.

38. Have you ever gotten sheer joy out of hurting someone else (physically or mentally)? If so, who and why? Did it scare you?

Most of the time I’m paid to kill people I don’t even know but sometimes I get to kill people that owe me money and then that makes me really happy ^^

54. Is there a saying you ascribe to? Is there a saying you think is stupid?

Every saying is stupid, just stop talking altogether.

70. What would be the best possible way you could die?

Huge explosion I didn’t know was going to happen but then it turns out the whole building is rigged by someone who outsmarted me somehow and there’s no way I can get out in time so I just sit down and put up my feet on a table and smirk to myself and then HUGE EXPLOSION

77. What is your idea of paradise?

Chilling with Morlene.

82. Do you like children? Why or why not? How do you react to bratty children? How do you react to children who constantly ask ‘why’? Do you want children? Do you already have children?

I only know one child personally and while they’re cool, my general reaction to other, unknown children is the same as my reaction to most unknown grownups which is removing myself from their vicinity. No thanks. You’re all very annoying and I don’t want to be here.

90 already answered

For the OC thing: 4, 21, 29, 41, 52, 64, 76, 81, 90

4. How many pairs of shoes do you own?

One that makes little to no noise on most terrain, then a bunch of throwaways to traverse blight-infested areas.

21. Rant about something you dislike (don’t worry, we’re not limited on time)

I don’t know, man, I don’t got much to rant about….

…..

Alright, let’s talk about Lourdes. Who’s Lourdes? Umm, only the Devil Herself, thank you very much. And Morlene’s new girlfriend, that’s who. But who is she really? She says she’s a teacher but… I mean, would you believe her? Have you ever seen her at work? I haven’t! Not that I was looking but you know… plus… pLUS!!! She moved out of Morlene’s and back to her parents AND you want me to believe they’re still dating? Sure that sounds like a committed relationship to me. If she can’t even look past the fact that I sometimes stumble through Morlene’s doorstep with my guts in my hands and she has to patch me up together again well I say that proves my point.

AND have you ever seen her and the royal witches in the same room? That’s right, you haven’t. It’s because she’s evil. I’m pretty sure she works for the king and only got close to Morlene to somehow get to me.

She’s eeeeeviiiiil.

29. What’s your favorite place to be?

Cobaltcast 28
…
Hm? No, that’s not where Morlene lives. Nope. Not at all. Just a random house, shut up.

41. What’s your most treasured possession?

Ummm…. *rummaging through backpack* discombobulators?

52. What does your voice sound like? Do you think it’s pleasant? Do other people?

I don’t talk in my own voice much these days. I bet it sounds sexy though.

64. Drama is going on. Do you grab the popcorn and watch it unfold or just ignore it?

Ignore it. Who cares? Extra ignore it if it has a chance of compromising my current job *glares at Cephas who keeps getting involved with drama*

76. You’re given $1000 and told you have to spend it in an hour or you get to keep nothing. What store do you go to? What do you buy? You are not allowed to use it for online shopping and you are only allowed to go to one store.

KNIVES SHOP

KNIVES

81. For one day you’re in charge of babysitting a younger version of yourself (5 and under). What do you do? You are not allowed to give yourself back.

uh… knives shop? That’s what I did when I was five.

90. You think you might be getting sick. Do you pre-emptively take medicine or wait to be sure?

Ugh, sick or not sick, who cares, if it ain’t blight it don’t matter.

1 & 12 ✨✨

1. The one place they end up falling asleep (where they’re not supposed to)

Whenever and wherever someone drugs me. Happens more often than you’d think. (I would say also wherever a pub crawl ends but I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to fall asleep after a pub crawl. That’s what they’re for, right?)

12. Honestly, has anyone seen you in your underwear in the past 3 months?

Even I haven’t seen myself in my underwear in the past 3 months.

I collected all the Vale facts from my twitter, just to have them in one place because they’re fun 🙂

Fun fact about Vale: Cephas was almost called Kieran in the beginning. No idea why.
Another fun Vale fact: though there is a church in the story, religion isn’t explicitly mentioned, and no gods actually exist but hell is referenced several times and is widely believed in.
Fun Vale bits while I’m editing: Vale’s mum was always “the tallest person in the room, by far”.
Further Vale tidbits: Zavier, Ormandy, and Cephas are the only named male characters in this book that have a speaking line. There’s some other named dude but he dead. (edit: this is actually not true, Eamon and Tulip are also male characters but they don’t have many speaking lines)
Sad Vale tidbit: Cephas never had a friend in his life until he met Vale. Good times!
Vale secrets! I made Caelmoor into an island because this way it’s 1) a town 2) a country 3) a kingdom 4) an island, and I never run out of synonyms to call it within a sentence without repeating myself :3
Vale insider info: in my 1st outline Morlene and Vale weren’t exes just friends. That was a stupid that idea and I’m so happy I decided they used to be together cause it made some of my favourite relationship dynamics possible, including the one between Vale and Morlene’s new gf.
A longer Vale insider info, this might take several tweets so bear with me: the song History by One Direction fits the story very well so naturally it’s on my playlist and because I’m an idiot I keep imagining a movie made from the story while the song plays over it.

Except the song has a part that goes “good champagne, and private planes” which is not that relatable to Vale cause planes don’t exist in Vale so I usually just change the words to “good champagne, and bad champagne”. That’s… that’s the info… that’s all I wanted to say…
other Vale tidbit: before I had the scene written fully, I used Scanlan’s answer to Vax’s “How do you do it?” question when Cephas asks Vale why she came back for him. (as a placeholder)
Fun Vale tidbit: I was actually going to find Vale a badass assassin name but then Bloodslinger came up and I thought it’d be so much funnier if she had a dumb name she hated, the way Ed hates being short in Fullmetal Alchemist, despite being the damn Fullmetal Alchemist.
Vale insider info: Leo, Morlene and Lourdes’ kid, was taken from the acid water-world story that I had where they were the agender sibling of the protagonist. That story was also completely revamped and then turned into what is Risk of Rain today (another story I never finished).
More fun Vale facts: Cephas was originally the name of the villain from a story called Part Time Goner where he was a demi-god who promised a mortal girl immortality and with that deal he bound his soul to her. The girl then spent the rest of the story

trying to get rid of him and finding a way to stay immortal. That story also had the chapter with the Festival of Flowers that I eventually used for Vale as well because it was too cute to be wasted.

That story also included a family of demi-gods who were just trying to fuck with each other. The Original Cephas’ sister had wings made of bones!

Eventually the girl found Cephas’ body and put his soul back into his body but then she started dying for some reason, I got no idea. In the end they bonded and Cephas sacrificed himself to keep the girl alive. WHICH IS IRONIC, CONSIDERING [VALE SPOILERS]

Get to Know Me -OC version

I wasn’t tagged lol but I’m tagging m’self. Stolen from writeblr extraordinaire @perringcentral go give them a follow if that’s your kinda thing ♥

Name: Vale Callaghan

Nickname: Vee to people who can’t know her real name and then she has like a hundred aliases

Gender: Female

Star Sign: they don’t exist in Caelmoor, years aren’t even 365 days so I couldn’t even guess it. If I went by the fact that she was born three days before the month of snow/winter solstice, I’d say that’d put her somewhere late November or mid-December which would make her a Sagittarius innit.

Height: 171cm (let it be known that I determined this by seeing how tall the actress is that I would want to play Morlene and Jessica Williams is 180cm so….. there)

Orientation: ace lesbian

Hogwarts House: Gryffindor which she would be very pissed about

Nationality: born and raised in Caelmoor

Favourite fruit: I don’t know cause it ain’t relevant

Favourite flower: I also don’t know cause it ain’t relevant, it never fuckin comes up and she probably wouldn’t care ugh.

Favourite season: spring because that’s when she gets to see Morlene again, even though she acts like it’s winter cause that’s when she gets to be alone, because she’s an idiot

Favourite scent: whatever ingredients Morlene is using for her spells, listen, Vale is a lovestruck idiot

Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate: tea

Average hours of sleep: I’ll say not much, around 3 I reckon.

Dog or cat person: definitely cat person, she is a cat, I mean.

Favourite fictional character: none canonically cause that much worldbuilding is just too much, to have fictional books in my fictional book? No, thanks. In our world it’d probably be Wonder Woman.

Number of blankets they sleep with: none blankets, makes it easier to jump up in the middle of the night and stab your attacker, duh.

Dream trip: the Mainland.

Random fact: out of two aspects of her job, conning and stealthing she loves stealthing more but she’s absolutely garbage at it, however every time she has to con and lie and deceive her way through situations she just absolutely shines and she hates that.

Vale: okay, from now on we’re going to use code names. You can address me as Eagle One.
Vale: Morlene, code name: Been There, Done That.
Vale: Mason, currently Doing That.
Vale: Angel: It Happened Once in a Dream.
Vale: Lourdes is ‘If I Had a Gun Held Against My Head, Maybe’
Vale: and finally, Cephas… Eagle Two
Cephas: oh, thank god.