Hey hey , sorry to double - post. I wrote the beginning of a story based on Plot Armour (the way main characters can't die to a nameless goon for example). The premise is that if you say this litany, your life is thereafter owned by the Gods who write for as long as your story lasts.
===III===
Amril the Damned.“Scribe, Vixen, Key, Hammer, Reader let it be now as it once was,” he whispered. The pull at his chains stopped and he stopped with it as hands turned him roughly the right way.
Just remember the words. Don’t shaft the order. Say it right. Ignore the rest. Just like Kinter told you. “Take me into the black. Rend my fate from the unknown chaos-” the blindfold came off then. “-bring me to Order and choose me for your work.”
He squinted through the blue-tint of the castle courtyard. It was Igor van Delte before him, shrouded in the morning. Goddamn Igor van Delte of all people there standing opposite in the gravel that dug into your naked heels and made wet sloshes as you sunk in. Igor van Delte had shoes. Igor van Delte had medals.
What comes next? For fuck’s sake. There was a deep set pit down somewhere in him now. And he tried his best. Two more lines came to him through the memories of those afternoons in red cloaks and bronze gauntlets. “For though I am not worthy, and I’ve given no time or effort of my own, I make now my plea and offer my pledge to be a man of the pages for as long as you so shall desire.”
He looked out onto the high walls and the pale white morning sky that felt so wrong. Something fell and grated and the weight fell off him. He felt lighter. The chains were off. He rubbed his wrists.
“It’s been a fine few weeks, Amril. A fine few. Farewell.”
He recognized the voice. It was the one he’d played cards with, who he’d taken for six gilded bears and two silvers that he still had somewhere in his pockets. ‘You’re a right cheat, Amril. Where you’re going you don’t need money’. To which he’d said ‘go on then, wage me for the cell key. Go on. I dare you’, and the guard had only laughed, and given him another contraband beer. Yttriy was it? Guard Captain Yttriy? The limping frame shifted off to one side and didn’t look back. It was him.
“I am your hero, or your villain. I am yours to keep or to kill. To the Scribe I pledge to never presume my actions mine own. I thank Him for his Trials. To the Vixen I pledge to never sink but to try with all my might as She has done to save our lands. By the Key-”
And then what? What about the key? When did I last hear this litany? In the high steppes? When? Eight years? Ten? More? People dreaded the litany there. They knew what it meant to say it, and to really mean it. The litany to the Gods of Black and White. It was High Armourer Kinter who’d given him the words out there in the sparse woods where the grass grew thin and the granite rocks jutted out like giant barbs on the hills between the pines. Three left. The Key pledge, the Hammer pledge and the Reader.
“Never start it unless you plan to finish. They are the Gods of Black. Never say it in vain. Better men than you have, and you’ve heard how that ends,” Kinter had said.
“Thank you for your faith in us, High Armourer, and for all your help,” Amril had replied then. “Gods willing it’ll be a short war. I’ll do as you commanded, and the Armourers will always be welcome in our King’s council.”
But it hadn’t been a short war. The siege had gone wrong, hadn’t it? It was before he’d known.
He could remember the way the High Armourer flung his hood back, surrounded by the boulders and the hills and pines and then slapped him, a colonel with all his finery, on the back so hard that he jingled. “Well now. That’s enough pledging and honour and swearing. Let’s go eat. The food’s shit down in Polto, and shitter the further you go.”
“That’s the least of my worries now,” said Amril.
“And that’s the most heretical thing you’ve said all day.”
But now the row of soldiers parted and he was back here, now, with half a litany in the castle courtyard. And van Delte stepped through the salutes towards him with his sword at his side and a flask. He stepped up to the prisoner and blocked out the sun, then held something out. It was the flask. He took it from Igor van Delte and felt it burn deep heat all the way down. Brandy. Good brandy.
Al-Zadrian brandy.“You’re a sad-looking prick aren’t you, Amril.”
He took a break from the flask and wiped his face. It burned. It was worst where it all scabbed over. They weren’t deep cuts. They’d heal. If only he’d had time to let them heal. “Piss off.”
“Those your last words? To me? After everything? Piss off? Have an imagination, Colonel Amril and don’t die a sad prick behind enemy lines.
You’ve had days to prepare. Give them something they can at least write songs about.”
“Die? I was hoping you’d got me out in front of your nice people with their sub-standard rifles to give me a pardon.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Now it makes sense why you got the good brandy out. Go on.” Amril tossed the empty flask aside. “Let’s do it then. Get it over with.”
“I wanted to tell you I think you’re a humorless bastard,” said van Delte.
“A real achievement to be considered that by you, animal-fucker.”
“I’ll miss you, Amril. You know you almost got me at the Derne Bridge? I saw you up there, maybe not fifty paces.”
Amril shrugged. “I need a piss. Either kill me or don’t.”
Van Delte turned. So he whispered when he was sure the man who’d recognize at least some of the words wouldn’t hear.
“By the Key I pledge to know my place and remember I will end, for it has the power to give and take away, to add and to annihilate.”
The man clad in navy splendour reached the line of soldiers who looked almost unreal here in the sunlight, their faces dark, all alike. Mirrored.
Please. Please let me be right. The order was given and the riflemen reloaded. The bolts slid home on fresh rounds. Rounds stolen from his munitions.
I’ll die by my own damn bullets. Amril focused on the closest man. Two pledges. You have only two. “By the Hammer I pledge to forge my path, to bring glory and joy to the Gods of Black and White as the hammer brings to the arena.”
“Aim!” The rifles came down level and it was then that van Delte’s sabre gleamed a white crescent in the blaze of the sun.
“And to the Reader I pledge my memory, and stand before them naked in all that I am.” Amril stepped forward, arms outstretched.
“Fire!”
And the line detonated. The rifles struck the rounds and bulged as they tried to fire. They ignited.
And the build quality never was quite right, was it? In a split second steel buckled and eviscerated the men firing into a red cloud as the ammo turned defective and ripped itself free through the steel and slammed its way through flesh.
How deep can we go? Through your skull? Your eyes? Out through the top of your head? How deep? Can we make it all the way through? Can we? Now Amril has plot armour. You can’t kill him, you don’t have names in this story. And only someone with a name who’s a main character can kill him. Just like Kinter said. When he said the words his fate was sealed in black and white. For better or for worse, he’s a plaything of the Gods who write. The Gods of Black and White.And Amril watched as the faces of his firing squad melted in shrapnelled metal and heard the screams and the guttural chokes. There was one man standing. There. Third from the left. One is always given a blank cartridge, isn’t he? It’s a tradition, isn’t it, that one man is not the executioner. And Amril forgot about the gravel, ran and barrelled through him past the bayonet to wrestle it free.
One rifle. I need just a clear shot. He yanked the rifle and buried the bayonet deep into the last man. Black chunks fell and slopped from the wound as Amril roared and pulled the bayonet through with chalk-board vibrations where it jammed into bone and held. He reloaded and fired. The man’s torso exploded into chunks that wrenched the bayonet free in a sickening crunch. He reloaded again. It was empty.
Of course it will be empty, thought Amril. That would be too easy. So he dropped the gun and ran, and wasn’t surprised when there was a horse in the stable saddled or when the gate happened to be open.
You’ve done it now, Amril. You’re the Scribe’s plaything now. And the Scribe is writing, oh yes. He’s tapping the keys, though they’re not any keys you’ve ever seen. He’s taken notice of you, Amril. The moment you started speaking the litany he started writing your fate. And he won’t stop until either you’re dead or the story is done. 
Author
Topic: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___ (Read 198216 times)