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The Woman With a Dragon’s Heart: Chapter 5

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Moved some exposition up from THE LAST CHAPTER to this chapter. I was really certain that there was more talking with the Architect in this part of the game? Oh well.

Lizrage! Once again you can thank Attack on Titan from the SnK OST (the same one that I used for the Rendon Howe fight). Yes, I’m reusing it for inspiration. I can’t help it; I associate it almost entirely with Liz these days. I would wish to have the Aldnoah OST as well so I don’t get tired of the SnK OST, but I don’t, so I’m trying to use it sparingly…

With the letters at the end, I wanted to make it clear that they’d been sending more than a few letters back and forth through the summer, but it doesn’t really sound clear to me. Any advice?

Clocked in NaNo at just under 75,000 words; not too shabby for a month when I was so tired and distracted by other things that I almost thought I wouldn’t finish at all. And thank goodness for Liz, eh? I would love to finish this story while my inspiration is fresh and my momentum is good, but maybe I’ll work on other things when it’s not Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday evening. 😛

Chapter 4, Chapter 6

 

Chapter 5

 

A day later, Elizabeth had finally managed things such that she could leave affairs to Varel and Garevel for several days. She found Velanna, sent for the rest of the Wardens, and departed again for the forest.

“Finally!” was Velanna’s only comment. “I thought I was going to go crazy waiting for you slow humans.” After that, she stubbornly said nothing, even when Anders attempted to flirt with her. Continue reading →

The Woman With a Dragon’s Heart: Chapter 4

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The Oaths of Fealty scene at the beginning of this chapter was very interesting to write! It came together in bits and pieces as I figured out how many threads I had going and what points would be made where and the PACING of it all. Also you can thank Jiyuu no Tsubasa for Liz’s speech there.

And I’m going back to rewrite bits of the earlier chapters already! Nate’s not conflicted enough! I need to check the subtext of everything! I might be able to remove some extraneous expositions!

I’m so looking forward to Chapter 5. I might write most of it tonight.

My best friend is finished Part 1 of the rewrite of his story… it’s magnificent. It’s got so much tone, and character, and maintains a ‘legend’ quality even when it goes into snarky dialogue and action scenes, and yet it doesn’t feel pretentious like it might be easy to fall into for an inexperienced writer. Cullean and Asrath are vying with Varel for ‘favourite badass old man’, and Dann is adorbs.

Chapter 3, Chapter 5

 

Chapter 4

 

The Wardens from Orlais had brought the white and blue uniforms of their order with them, and one of Elizabeth’s servants, Firiel, brought me one to wear. I went down to the Great Hall a little late to the gathering. I had no particular desire to stand out, either from my smart blue and white uniform, or from anyone recognizing me as Rendon’s son.

Unfortunately my wish was to go unfulfilled, as only a minute after I entered the Great Hall – the room now looking fresh with autumn flowers – Bann Esmerelle, who governed Amaranthine City, spotted me and came to speak to me. “Nathaniel Howe!”

I bowed to her rather stiffly. “Bann Esmerelle, I believe. It’s been a while.” Continue reading →

The Woman With a Dragon’s Heart: Chapter 3

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Lots of repetitive exposition in these chapters, especially if you’ve already read My Dark-Haired Fereldan Beauty. I apologize. It’s easy to write about things I already know. On the other hand, I don’t understand all the darkspawn politics, so the exposition you get on that is suuuuper vague. I apologize for that too. Although in my defence I’ve gone back and looked at game videos and it’s super vague in the game, too. Those darkspawn aren’t too bright.

As of this chapter, I officially passed NaNoWriMo for this year. I’m going to try to keep going while I have inspiration on this story, why not? Get lots of it done now and if I run out of steam, at least I made a good start on it. (But the chapters are getting longer, help, I don’t want them to be super long)

Of course, the situation in my apartment is really starting to get dire, and I have three concerts of varying stress levels coming up, and I had Japanese take-out yesterday evening that was highly disappointing. BUT FOR SOME REASON I’M HAPPY. Guild Wars 1 and 2, maybe?

Chapter 2, Chapter 4

 

Chapter 3

 

“Your husband?” I asked Delilah, when Elizabeth was out of earshot.

She nodded. “His name is Albert. He’s a good man, much nicer than that stuck-up noble that Father was trying to set me up with a couple years ago.”

I raised an eyebrow. “This wouldn’t be Albert the Grocer, would it?”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a grocer, Nathaniel,” Delilah said. “And… after how Father changed…”

“He changed?” I asked, a sinking feeling in my stomach, although I already suspected.

Delilah looked at me sadly. “You really don’t know, do you? Come in. I’ll put the kettle on and tell you everything.” Continue reading →

The Woman With a Dragon’s Heart: Chapter 2

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Ahhh, the first chapter that’s mostly from Nate’s point of view! How nice. I forgot what a sarcastic bastard he was. Love that guy, big Howe nose and all.

Apparently there is a Ghost in the Shell game coming to Steam?????????

Chapter 1, Chapter 3

 

Chapter 2

 

They buried Mhairi early the next morning; Queen Anora was present, and left to return to Denerim soon after, wishing Elizabeth good fortune one more time.

One of the first things she wished to do as soon as Anora was gone was to familiarize herself with the entire castle, from top to bottom, and Elra went with her, and another soldier, Mia – Garevel didn’t seem to want her to be on her own, even though the castle had been made secure. As far as she knew, Varel and Garevel had taken care of blocking up the path from which they believed the darkspawn had emerged, at least until it could be investigated further. It was a little worrying to be sitting upon such a thing, but there wasn’t anything more that could be done instantly. Continue reading →

The Woman With a Dragon’s Heart: Chapter 1

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Going to write this story fast and loose. Hit the emotional moments and not worry TOO much about all that annoying political stuff, not to mention the dialogue. I might go through later after replaying the game in order to put in some of the extra good dialogue (Anders and Oghren in particular are suffering) but right now I’m just going to WRITE a STORY.

I also managed over 9000 words today, so that’s an achievement worthy of my past NaNo records. I was beginning to worry I’d lost that ability completely.

…I should probably clean the apartment, it’s been pretty neglected…

…but Guild Wars…

Prologue, Chapter 2

 

Chapter 1

 

A week and a half later, and Elizabeth and Mhairi were walking steadily up a surprisingly small road in the middle of the Arling of Amaranthine, heading to the castle of Vigil’s Keep, where a small force of a dozen Grey Wardens from Orlais waited for her to assume her position as their leader. Zevran had left them in Denerim, taking ship to Antiva. Elizabeth had also taken some time to visit Fort Drakon, where Huan was proudly siring many puppies to try to rebuild the mabari population in Ferelden after so many of the noble beasts had sacrificed themselves in the Blight.

Evening was falling. “Tell me more,” Elizabeth said to Mhairi.

“The Grey Wardens have been here about six months,” Mhairi told her. “They’re… decent people, for Orlesians. I would be proud to work beside them.”

“You want to be a Grey Warden too, don’t you?” Elizabeth said. Mhairi’s eyes were full of admiration every time she said ‘Grey Warden’, and her voice hushed a little. She must be young, as young as Elizabeth, perhaps. Continue reading →

The Woman With a Dragon’s Heart: Prologue

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NaNoWriMo is being a pain this year; between teaching, organ playing, friends, and life, I’m too exhausted every night to keep my word count up except on Sundays and Mondays. But! I did finish Gary’s Story and the Hiriless edits, although there are still a couple tweaks to go to both of those… I can’t show you those because if I want to publish them someday there could be issues with internet publishing or something? But there’s no laws against publishing fanfic, so I started writing my Dragon Age Awakening fic, and so far I’ve got lots of momentum, so hopefully this is the one that will get me through the next week and a half. But I have so many projects, and only so much energy…

I did start this fic immediately on a NSFW bit, so if you are not of a mind to read such things you may wish to skip directly to Chapter 1 whenever I finish it.

Also One Punch Man is still awesome and you need to watch it immediately. Also also I finally finished enough of Guild Wars 1 that I decided to start Guild Wars 2, and so far it is pretty neat! I have a Zela Norn ranger. Continue reading →

My Dark Haired Fereldan Beauty: Aftermath

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Aaaaaaand we reach our slightly wonky ending. Hooray for awkward not-quite-brothers-in-law! ROLL END CREDITS (which is actually the music for the interlude that transitions into the sequel >.> )

Stay tuned for the eventual sequel, The Woman with a Dragon’s Heart (Liz, obviously), and the AU detective thriller Dragon Age Noir! Though first I’m going to be working on visual art for a while. I’ll probably do a bunch of outlining (DAN currently makes only about 5% sense – good concept, super-sketchy foundation) but I don’t intend to do any writing until November, when I make my big push to finish Anima’s Seal. We’ll see how well that resolution goes. I certainly have enough art to do, but there’s a lot of writing still on my to-do list… we’ll see what I feel like!

I realized there was at least one Oghren moment I wanted to put in, so I’ll sneak that into one of the previous chapters somewhere. …Tomorrow.

Now I can cross ONE project off my immense to-do list… Now, what to do next………

Previous chapter: The Archdemon

 

Aftermath

 

She became slowly aware that she was warm. She was warm and comfortable, and really, that was all she wanted to know at the moment.

There was a shadow over her from the… left? Someone was breathing near her. The more stimuli she received, the less her brain felt like getting back to sleep. Which was really annoying, because she wanted to sleep some more. Maybe go take Huan in the fields for a romp later… She could hear birds chirping outside her window, so it must be time to get up, but she didn’t want to. “Mm… Mother, just a few more minutes…”

Someone’s breath caught on her right side, but from her left came a low but insistant voice, a voice that made her stomach flip-flop. “Lii~iiz… tell your brother to stop glaring at me. He’s quite intimidating.”

Her eyes flickered open and immediately closed again. It was too bright for that nonsense. “Zev…?” She managed to get one hand free and rubbed at her eyes. There was a lot of sleep crusted there and she took her time with it.

Then she processed what he had said. “…What?” She opened her eyes again, blinking against the light… Continue reading →

My Dark Haired Fereldan Beauty: The Archdemon

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NSFW again in one spot, should be the last time, though.

I decided the penultimate chapter wasn’t going to be long enough for a whole chapter and I was right so HERE YOU GOOOOOO everything except the epilogue! LOTS OF SOUNDTRACKS FOR THIS ONE:
Lizzev morning cuddles/vista/march: Vogel Im Käfig
Anora-Liz speech/gate battle: Counter-Attack Mankind (awww yeahhhhh)
Archdemon battle: Doa (yeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhh all right) (some typos in the subtitles though)

You know, the first battle, with the assault on Redcliffe… I totally missed that happens in the game? Anora was just like “so we’re going to Redcliffe now” and I was like “kay” but then the darkspawn started attacking Denerim? And I was like “HOW DID YOU MISS THAT” but well anyway I guess Bioware does what Bioware wants? Anyway, it does explain a lot and I’m a little disappointed that it wasn’t more clear in the game. OH WAIT IT DOES …Well that… is still disappointing. I just thought that attack was like a raid, not a feint capable of drawing out Ferelden’s entire forces. Ugh.

Not too sure about the Zevran POV bit; I need more practice thinking as him? I knew what things I wanted to happen in that part, I just wasn’t sure how to word it so it sounded like him. And it doesn’t sound like him that much. :/

I’ve been pretty distracted with watching HuskyStarcraft’s Bronze League Heroes series, it’s pretty great. : D (this is probably the unofficial start of the series? Also I haven’t been watching the series in any particular order) I don’t even play Starcraft! XD

Previous chapter: Landsmeet; next chapter: Aftermath

 

The Archdemon

 

Even though she rose early, Arl Eamon was up before her. He greeted her coolly as she ate breakfast; he was consulting maps and reports at the dining table.

“What are the darkspawn doing?” she asked.

Eamon sighed. “They have besieged most of the castles left standing in the Bannorn, but a large portion of the horde appears to be heading westwards in a major offensive. It is good we are leaving for Redcliffe today, or else we might not have been able to make it before our enemies reach it and besiege it. Will your company be ready?” Continue reading →

My Dark Haired Fereldan Beauty: Landsmeet

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Moooooaaaaaar dramaaaaaaa

The theme of this chapter is fathers and death. : P

The fun part about this chapter for me (besides the fact that Elizabeth is becoming isolated from half the people she likes) is the (re-)introduction of Elra (and Gemmet), my elf servant OCs. We won’t see much of them in the rest of the story, but I’ve become pretty attached to them and they’ll definitely be showing up in the Awakening sequel. : D

Soundtrack of the day! Army Attack was used for the mad chase scene down to the docks.

I also checked out some swordfighting videos for help with the Loghain duel, but nothing really worth linking: 1) because I was in a hurry and didn’t keep track of the most helpful ones, and 2) because most modern matches pause the match every time someone scores a hit, which isn’t helpful if you’re going for “total submission” or something. : P

I’m running out of writing energy, which is probably fine; it’s time to draw more art anyway. I’ll finish this story for certain, first! This chapter’s a little shorter. Not sure how long the next chapter will be (long, probably) but I hold out hope of finishing in the first week of September if not before. I’ve put the next two chapters into one chapter so it’s a push to the end!

Previous chapter: Denerim; next chapter: The Archdemon

 

Landsmeet

 

The servants who came to wake her the next morning were scandalized to find she was not alone; she waved them away impatiently and set about getting dressed while Zevran lounged indolently in her bed. After a minute he also rose and did her hair again. She would take everyone into the alienage, even though they were mostly humans and likely to arouse great attention and suspicion. She wanted safety in numbers, unlike the day before.

As she approached the locked gate to the alienage, the guard on duty did a double-take and called to her. “Lady Elizabeth!” Huan barked at him in greeting.

She jumped in her turn. “Who- John?”

The guard had been a soldier of Highever, long months ago, before anything bad had happened to her home and family. “Lady Elizabeth, you’re all right!” Continue reading →

My Dark Haired Fereldan Beauty: Denerim

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More NSFW-ness in this chapter. Does it seem like these two only talk seriously when sex is involved? Well, I guess they don’t get a lot of alone time so they need to multitask their relationship… Note this is the first time she loosens up enough to call him Zev. : )

Oh man oh man oh man I’ve been looking forward to this chapter ever since I decided Liz would fight Howe with Attack on Titan. It turned out pretty much the way I wanted it to. Liz herself has been eyeing Go Away by symphonic metal band Delain as a personal theme song. >.>

Also this one took so long to write because I wasn’t sure where I should put the chapter break, and also Cauthrien has been a pain as far as her little added scene goes. I may do editing on this later. In fact, I already want to rewrite the story and cut out large, irrelevant sections. : P

 

Previous chapter: Haven; next chapter: Landsmeet

 

Denerim

 

It was five days to Redcliffe – they were closer to the edge of the mountains than Elizabeth had thought – and immediately they went to Arlessa Isolde with the Ashes in their little white silk bag. A doctor and a mage from the Circle Tower took them and argued with Brother Genitivi over what should be done with them; the doctor suggested that Arl Eamon ingest the ashes, while the mage wanted to see if simply applying them to Eamon’s skin would help.

Whatever they tried, in front of all of them, the Arl frowned, his hands flexed slightly, and his eyes slowly opened. “Where am I?” he whispered, very weakly.

“Be calm, dear husband,” Isolde said, although she was on the verge of happy tears. “You have been deathly ill for a very long time. Do you remember anything?”

“I dreamed… terrible things, yet I have the feeling that at least some of it was no dream. Where is Connor? Where is our boy?” Eamon asked anxiously, his voice cracking with disuse. The doctor hastened to sit him up and offered him a glass of water.

“He lives, thank the Maker,” Isolde said. “Many awful things have happened, Eamon. I will tell you later. For now, rest, and regain your strength.” Continue reading →