Realfunghi Comics

Here’s a middle portion of what I’m working on.

Just a little reminder that I’m alive, here’s a bit of what I’m working on. The chapter focuses on Gaëlle the mother of the main character but I’ve decided to keep Marlen (the main character) as narrator. I got the idea from reading John Steinbeck’s East of Eden recently.

I have a short story idea about AI, writing and time travel that I’m noodling with so you might see that soon.

Please forgive me for any typos and grammatical errors. This is my very first draft of chapter 2 and it is rough!

---

Chapter 2 – Gaëlle, The Diviner

“I’ll get no richer standing here with you,” she said as she turned to make her way back to the road and back to her basket on the road. This Zuras seemed to think of her as being no more refined than a hayseed, “I’ve laundry to return to my Lord’s home.” Zuras stuck too close to her side, walking along with her. He smelled of a man who’s travelled alright, all sweat and horse but no horse to be seen. They walked in silence until they got back to the road. The whole time Zuras is looking about, his head in the clouds like most learned folks.

“What got you chased up a tree by a dog?” she asked as soon as she hoisted her basket back over her shoulders. Zuras’ head jerked back to her as if she caught him off guard.

“Oh well, you see I’ve lost my travelling companions,” he said, “as well as my horse, Proto. I tried circling about to see if I could find them all and was then accosted by that foul mutt. Thank the Red God that you happen to come about.”

He touched Gaelle’s arm as a gesture of thanks, but it made her uncomfortable. His touch had an unsettling feel to it as if his bony fingers took a little bit of her vigor. She tried to hide her discomfort and a shiver by stepping a little to the side as if ambling down the road under the load of her laundry basket. Zuras doesn’t have much of an accent, but she takes it that he’s a Northerner since he only invoked Zulad, the Red God. Those in the North believe that He’s the one and only God, not realizing that the world is built on a pantheon of the divine, like we believe here in the Empire. Regardless, Gaelle has never been interested in talking theology.

“What brings you here?” she asked, “Have business in Bucktoo?” She thought he was ignoring her but noticed that he was putting some thoughts behind his answer.

“Afraid not, Gaelle,” he said, his voice becoming grave, “Whatever ‘business’ I have is not with who in Bucktoo but what.” He is a cryptic little scoundrel. He must think he’s cultivated some sort of mystical aura with my mother, but she’d no sooner prune any odd bud that wants to flower into a mystery. She gave him no answer.

“You see, Gaëlle,” he continued, “My companions and I are on the hunt for dark forces that seek to ruin our land, both North and South. Have you witnessed any strangeness recently?”

“Found a strange man up a tree just this morning,” she said. He laughed with a muted chuckle stuck in his throat, like a bad actor on the stage playing the role of pithy bastard.

“Yes, yes, very funny,” he said, “Your husband is married to a very clever woman.”

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to betray the fact that the husband she did have is long gone and perhaps dead. She felt as if he was digging in her for something to use. There’s a glow of malice behind his eyes that his smile cannot disperse. He’s trying too hard at being a wizened old man when all that can be seen is a sallow puck nicking away at my mother’s heart to plant a seed of fear.

“But yes,” he continued, no longer waiting for a response from her, “We are on the trail of the Black Wizard, Olyn. He is an evil man set on reviving the Red Order. I have reason to believe that one of his agents is up and about here, set to recruit wayward souls to Olyn’s damnable army of shadow beasts.”

Overwhelmed by Zuras’ tale, she stopped for a moment and then kept walking. She failed to hide the drop of dread that that evil and awful name invoked. My mother had not heard of the Red Order for years, not since my père left. He and Gully’s wife, Inez, would talk on and on about the local history and that included the Red Order. Inez herself had a theory that the Order was not wholly evil but was instead a threat to the Kingdom and Empire. She never shared that with anyone else but Garon and my mother. If word had spread that a Perdras like Inez showed any sympathy to the Red Order, it would have led to an execution. Instead, she perished from a fever. Perhaps as a punishment from the Divine Realm though I remember going to church with my mother as she prayed to Iaro, God of healing and grace, to sooth Inez’s soul and bring it into the folds of the Veil. We might not be the center of the world here in Bucktoo, but the Order did leech itself onto our ancestors’ land. Emperor Nor XXXIX, great great great grandfather of our Empress, declared a bounty on the Red Order after the Fall and I can only imagine that my distant kin were there at the Dangling Saule watching wizards and witches hung from the neck until dead.

“If what you’re saying is true, it would be dark days ahead if this Olyn were to succeed,” his feeble chest puffed out at the sound of her fear.

“There is nothing to fear, Gaelle!” he said with a sweep of his staff cast over the approaching village, “My companions and I have thwarted the scoundrel wizard at every turn.”

Gaëlle stopped on the road just in sight of Bucktoo. She grew hesitant to even bring Zuras with her to the village. As much as he’s seeking out the ills of our world, ill fortune could find him all the same in our village. The twine holding my mother’s world together was already pulled taught with my père gone. Something as large and awful as the Red Order’s return or Zuras’ so-called “shadow beasts” would shred whatever else was holding her together. It seemed moot for her to stop now with the steeple of our church peeking out over the hill.

“How did he become a wizard, since the colleges have all been closed for centuries?” She asked and wanted to ask more questions. How does a man who dresses as a wizard not be one? How does a man thwart a dark and evil wizard but gets chased up a tree by a wild dog no bigger than a kid goat? How is he further north than Port Haxford when it’s nothing but the ocean? His old gentlemanly manner does nothing to charm her but only makes my mother feel uneasier. She’s more vexed by this man at his every attempt to dazzle her.

…