INSTRUCTIONS: Quick Shifts in Limited Third - a short narrative, 300-600 words. You can use one of the sketches from Exercise 7 or make up a new scene of the same kind: several people involved in the same activity or event. Tell the story using several different viewpoint characters (narrators) in limited third person, changing narrator from one to another as the narrative proceeds. Mark the changes with line breaks, with the narrator’s name in parentheses at the head of that section, or with any device you like.
Ulashan of the Obsidian Order
The wizard felt his nose start bleeding, but he couldn’t take the time to wipe it away. There was only one way this battle would end with any of them alive, and that counted on him being able to hold the Astral Gateway closed against the machinations of the very angry gods on the other side.
“Ghostwolf!” The fur-clad warrior at the threshold of the gateway turned, briefly, from cutting down the astral squidlings to glance at Ulashan. “If any of those things get to me, I swear I will haunt you until the end of all things!” Ghostwolf grinned, his filed teeth glinting in the non-light of the light coming through the crack in the gateway, and resumed cleaving through strange, otherworldly entities that seemed to reform even as they were destroyed.
This had all been his fault. Being a practitioner of the arcane had its risks–every wizard knew that–but he should have told his apprentice the truth. That there were limits, natural limits that everyone should observe, even in the search for the fundamental meaning of the universe.
And now all that was left of poor Uvira was that crack in reality, desperately trying to find a way to open and bring an end to all things.
Sweat dripped into Ulashan’s eyes. He dared not blink.
Ghostwolf, Leader of the Nightwise Tribes
They never stopped. Each one came, then the next, then the ones before.
The Wizard thought he would let the squidlings get to him. If Ghostwolf ever laughed, he would have found that funny. But there was nothing funny here. The smile that he wore was not of amusement. Not fun.
It was a warning.
He turned at the pressure on his back and prepared to destroy more of these strange, silver creatures.
“Wait! Wait, Wolf, it’s me!” Octavia Lishette backed away, her dark armor only visible with the eerie glow of the gateway. “I still owe you money, so you can’t kill me!”
Ghostwolf speared another squidling. “Talk, thief. We have no time for debts.”
“That’s the thing, Wolf,” she said, digging into her satchel. Ghostwolf had seen many things go into that satchel and not come out. This time, though, she brought out a shard of ruby-red crystal. “I found it,” she said. “The Nail of Intagluis.” She laughed, and Ghostwolf spun to slice through another squidling–or maybe the same one–so she wouldn’t see the way his face became warm when she laughed. “We have to get this to Ulashan. Can you get me there?”
Ghostwolf glanced up at the wizard, who was on his knees now. Ghostwolf had seen men break before, and he knew the man was close. “Yes,” he said. “Stay behind me.”
He turned, adjusted his grip, and started to carve his way to the wizard.
Octavia Lishette
There was no way they couldn’t do this. Who were the ones who’d brought down the Mad Necromancer of Quarg? Who were the ones who drove that damned dragon out of the sewers of Lennismore? Who had bested the Swamp Witch at her own game of cunning and guile?
Well, okay. Ghostwolf had driven a sword through her face, but to be fair, that was his way of being cunning.
The Nail was right where the Wizard said it would be, Octavia thought as she kept as close to Ghostwolf as she could. Was there a lock? Yes, of course. Did she nearly lose her eyebrows disarming it? Well, eyebrows would grow back. And it took her only a little longer than she thought it would to get away from the little automatons that were protecting it, which Ulashan could have told her about, but apparently had other things on his mind.
Like stopping his apprentice from turning into a planar breach between worlds.
She saw an Astral Squidling slip through Ghostwolf’s swings and go for his spine, their favorite delicacy. She flipped a dagger and stabbed it, then the next, then another. “Doing great, Ghost! Just get me to Ulashan!”
Ghostwolf grunted at her. He looks tired, she thought. And Ghostwolf never looked tired.
With her free hand, she dove into her satchel and pulled out an injector full of bright green fluid. “Incoming, Wolf!” And without waiting for a response, reached up and jammed the needle into his thick neck.
Ghostwolf roared as the bright green potion flooded his veins, and then howled loud enough to rattle the windows. “That’s my boy,” she whispered.
The fight pulled both of them up to the platform where the wizard was. He was on one knee now, his face bloody from the effort of trying to close the breach. “I… I can’t,” he wheezed. “I failed her. I failed all of you.”
Octavia laughed, high and clear. “We don’t fail, Sparky. You told me that the first time we went adventuring.” She grabbed his hand and slapped the crystal shard into it. “Now. Save the apprentice, save the world.”
The crystal flared red in Ulashan’s hand. He looked over at the two of them, tears running down his face. “I can always count on you two, can’t I?”
“Damn right.” Octavia clapped him on the back. But not too hard. He didn’t look strong. “Go get her.”
She took a step back with Ghostwolf as the wizard slowly got to his feet, holding firm against the waves of unearthly energy, and held the shard out towards the breach in reality. He spoke words that made Octavia’s ears hurt. She glanced up at Ghostwolf, still trembling from the emerald infusion, though its glow was subsiding, and she took his hand.
Then, all was light.
Apprentice Uvira
Uvira had been away for a long time.
She remembered working with her master on planar magic. Moving from one to the other, and she told him that she didn’t understand.
He said that she did. That she just had to try harder.
So she tried harder.
After that…. Nothing.
A great, endless sea of light and stars, and a rushing wind that came from everywhere and went everywhere else, forever.
And that was all she was. The wind. The stars. The expanse.
And then she wasn’t.
And then she was on the floor. There was no wind. There was no light. There was only gravity and stale air and the meat that entombed her.
She tried to speak. She wasn’t sure she remembered how.
Her name. Over and over, in a rough, agonized voice as arms wrapped around her. Apologizing again and again.
She could smell him. That smell of old incense and ink.
He had a name.
What was it?
It had been so long.
Uvira looked up at him. Face and beard streaked with blood. Eyes flowing with tears.
“Master… Ulashan?”
All was silent. She could see two figures in the blurry distance. One bright white. One impossibly black. Both watching.
She turned back to her master and tried to blink her eyes clear.
“Why….” Uvira swallowed. “Why did you bring me back?” Her chest clenched, and she was horrified to remember that she had one again. “I was so.. .happy,” she said through tears of her own. “Why?”
She put her head in her hands and wept into the silence.
REFLECTION
This was fun! I started by wanting to do a D&D-type story with a wizard, a fighter, and a rogue, and I knew that I wanted each section to advance the story, rather than simply see it from another point of view. And I think I managed that.
The tough part was trying to make each section “sound like” the character whose point of view it was, and I think I succeeded… more or less. If I were to do a revision, I’d probably ramp up the complexity of Ulashan’s language, trim down Ghostwolf’s, and maybe have more meta-commentary in Octavia’s.
And no, I didn’t really know what had happened with Uvira until I got to Uvira. Then I realized it wasn’t an apprentice meddling with things beyond her ken. It was a teacher pushing too hard on a student who genuinely wasn’t ready.
Plus I got to do a nice little knife-twist at the end, which was only somewhat completely stolen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
