Backpacks & Shields Zine Preview
This is a preview of the first zine I'm hopping to finish this summer. I've got about a month per zine if I want to finish both in time to chill before classes start; I think I can do it. :-P
"Backpacks & Shields" is the tentative name, but this zine will feature some of the weirdo fantasy fiction I write I dream up in between work and essays. The first story I want to include is called:
The Dead Elf Keep
Finn stood outside the tower walls, it's stone silhouette loomed over her. The vagabond-knight held her shield close to her body, a torch blazing in the other hand. The stars swam in the dark sky above the massive keep. A shadow loomed over the structure, the same shadow that loomed over Finn. Zimbarah, disgraced elf king, nekromancer. This keep bore his name, and his foul odor crept through its brick.
Mossy stone stairs rose in front of Finn, the steps leading into the small bailey around the tower. She knew better than to enter through the front door, yet had lost her grappling hook to that bandit, "neglect." After this I'll buy a thousand more grappling hooks, and a crossbow just for fun. Finn snubbed her torch into the ground and pulled her short sword from its sheath. Up the stairs to the entrance, Finn stood for a moment before its gate. Holding her blade upright before her round face, concentrating. Three runes at the blade's base began to appear in the steel. From these marks warm light spread over the sword, from dull orange to crackling yellow-white. Finn was no mage, but the sword carried its own magick, enchanted long ago. Illuminated in the sword's glow, Finn breathed deeply in through her nose and steeled herself for what might lie behind the iron gate.
Finn crawled under the bars of the portcullis, the spiked tips of the iron lattice hovering hardly a foot over the cold dirt and dragging slightly across her pack. The small bailey was blanketed with dead straw and grass that filled the air with a rotten moisture. Floating on top of this miasma was the lingering of something sharper, still rotten, but less dull. Rotting flesh. Finn's stomach turned As she began to march forward, Finn raised her sword over her head, casting its magickal light as far as possible into the venomous dark. The bailey was pocked with broken carriages and half-slumped huts. As she walked, Finn's eyes scanned the ruins of the opulent keep. Now all that remained was the skeleton of a kingdom that at one time had been full of promise, and life...
That's all for now, I hope you enjoyed! It's been so much fun to write fiction after doing so much analysis during the school year haha. <3