Chapter 23: Are They Supposed to Explode?
Posted by: Alex McG in Chapters, CotF Main StoryChapter 23, right on schedule!
This is my second chapter without the benefit of an editor (aside from myself, of course) or even a first reader, so any feedback will be much appreciated. Of course, I can always count on Pan to catch my typos, but I want to hear what you all think—aside from that I'm a pretty crappy speller.
Thanks for reading, guys. You are metal. Continue to rock. \m/
-Alex
“Get this shit offa me!”
Jarn was struggling furiously at the gluey net that still held him. “I hafta go, getit offa me!”
“We're trying, just hang on a sec.” Rilly and I tore at the net until finally—with some help from Pebbles and Derrick—we got him free and he took off like a rocket.
“Jarn, wait,” Pebbles called after him. “You don’t know where he is!”
Jarn slowed down enough to let Pebbles lead him off through the woods to where Roo had been injured. The rest of us followed, doing our best to keep up.
Derrick, Rilly and I were the first ones to catch up and join the group at the next field’s tree line. I pushed my way through the crowd to find Retis and Jarn bent down next to Roo with Pebbles standing next to them, chewing her fingers while the rest of the students looked on.
The first thing I saw was the blood. Lots of blood. The grass was slick with it, black and shining. I slipped as I rushed to Roo’s side, falling to my knees in the warm puddle.
“Roo,” I stammered. “Roo, we’re here, what happened?”
“Gauntlet… I was…”
I looked down and my stomach lurched—the blood was coming from Roo’s leg. His foot was missing. A piece of cloth and a stick had been used as a tourniquet, but the damage was done.
“Gaia…” I was in shock. “What do we do?”
“We keep him awake,” said Pebbles. “He’s lost a lot of blood. Feral’s gone to get the Medicos. She’ll be back any minute.”
“What the fuck happened?!” Jarn screamed at her. It was terrifying to see him so upset, like it was him bleeding on the ground.
“Faeli,” said Retis. “The Half-elf girl with the green hair, she tried to hit him with a Stun but something happened with her gauntlet—it backfired or something… exploded… burnt her hand real bad, but he got the worst of it. She went with Feral, probably at the health center now.”
“Oh fuck!” Jarn cried. “It’s gonna be okay, Roo, you’ll see, yeah. Gonna be okay…”
After what seemed like hours, Feral finally returned with two Medicos and a stretcher. The Medicos made everyone back away before rubbing some foul-smelling stuff all over Roo’s leg. I later learned it was to stop the bleeding and try to keep the magic from doing further damage. They got him onto the stretcher and started taking him away. They said we could go to the health center and wait until we were allowed to see him.
“Fuck that,” Jarn snarled. “I’m staying with him. Try to stop me.”
The Medicos looked at him for a second before deciding it wasn't worth arguing. I wouldn’t have argued with him either: His chest and arms were drenched in Roo’s blood, matting his fur and making it glisten an evil red-black; his face was smeared with tears and gore, his eyes red and defiant.
“Fine,” said the older of the two Medicos. “But only as far as the health center. You'll have to stay in the waiting room.”
The three of them rushed Roo off the field, leaving the rest of us standing around in a daze.
“Fuck,” Feral muttered after a minute. “Well, I’d made my decision anyhow. One, two, three, four,” she pointed at Kesti, another Cat, and two Gibri. “You’re cut. The rest of you show up for practice here on Monday at five-thirty. Go home.”
No one said a word as we left the field.
Jarn had been cleaned up and was pacing around the table in the waiting room of the health center when we got there.
“Hey,” I said quietly. “Did they tell you anything yet?”
“Not much, no, no.” He didn’t stop pacing or even look up when he spoke. “Leg blown off at the ankle. Magical injury. Real bad. Tryin’ t’stop magic from killin’ his leg, yeah. Hope they can grow it back.” A glimmer of optimism crept into his voice for a second, but didn’t last. “Maybe not. Maybe can’t grow…” He started pacing faster.
“Because of the magic?” Pebbles asked softly.
“‘Cause of the magic.” He stopped pacing. “‘Cause of the Gai-damn girl’s fucking glove ‘sploding!” He fell to his knees. “Gaia-fuck!”
Pebbles hurried over to put her arm around him. “Shhh…” she tried to soothe him and eventually got him to calm down. “He’ll be okay,” she said. “Roo’s tough. He wouldn’t let some silly missing foot stop him from scram.”
Jarn let out a feeble laugh. “Wait…”
“He made the team,” she whispered.
He laughed a little more and wiped his eyes. “Heh… Wait’ll I tell ‘im… He’ll go inta shock again, yeah.”
“We all made it,” said Retis.
Jarn looked up, his eyes drying. “Yeah? That’s good… good.”
Pebbles helped him up into a chair along the wall and he let her wipe the last few streaks from his cheeks. Pebbles was sitting on his left, so I sat in the chair to his right and Retis sat next to me. We sat in silence; Pebbles held Jarn’s hand, I picked at the skin on my palms, Retis pretended to read a magazine but never turned a single page.
Hours dragged by before anyone told us anything. When someone finally did come out to talk to us, it was Medica Lily, the same Medica who had fixed my wrist and head after I fell off that mountain.
I saw her first. “Medica Lily!”
In a second, all four of us were on our feet and crowded around her. “It’s good to see you again,” she said without a hint of irony. “I wish it were under better circumstances.”
“How is ‘e? Is my brother okay? He’s okay, yeah?”
“We’ve stopped the thaumatic necrosis, so his leg is safe and he’ll recover.”
“Thank Gaia,” Jarn sighed. We all exhaled—apparently we had been holding our breath.
“He’ll recover,” Medica Lily continued, “but it’s too soon to know whether we’ll be able to grow the foot back or not. Magical scalding this severe is impossible to predict; it all depends on how his body’s energy reacts to the magic. He’s stable now, resting. You can see him for a few minutes.”
We followed her out of the waiting room through the swinging double doors and down the hall to one of the special rooms for severe magical injuries. The walls were all made of a wavy, opalescent glass that was designed to control the flow of magic in and out of the room. We crept into Roo’s room and up to his bed. He had a pulse stone on his forehead and his leg was covered in amulets that looked just like the pulse stone, except much larger.
“Hey Roo,” Jarn whispered, touching his head lightly.
Roo opened his eyes and smiled sleepily. “‘Ey rot-head,” he murmured. “How does it look?”
“How does what look? Your leg? Sheee-uh,” Jarn scoffed. “That’s nothin’. Prob’ly won’t even leave a scar.”
Roo let out a weary chuckle. “Thass good… gotta look good…”
“Hey Roo,” Jarn smiled, then leaned down and whispered in his ear. “You made the team.”
Roo’s eyes got as wide as the sedation would let them. “I… what? I made th’ team?”
“We all did,” Retis said proudly. “At least for now. Feral might make more cuts, but we’re on the team for now.”
“Hahaha-awwohh…” Roo’s laugh turned into a groan and his grin was replaced by a decidedly nauseated expression.
“Ho-kay,” Medica Lily hooted, ushering us out of the room. “That’s enough.”
“Why can’t we stay with him?” I asked.
“The Thaumatic Trauma rooms are designed to control the flow of magic for the patient. The only other people who can be in there without disturbing the flow are the assigned Medicos, and then only because they’re wearing their energy braces. Now, shoo. Visiting hours start at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
We scurried out of the room, saying goodbye as we went. Roo smiled and tried to wave, but Medica Lily held his arm down and scolded him for being “a complete fuzzy-headed moron who doesn’t listen to his Medica, because ohh no, that would be far too reasonable. And why do you think…” Her voice faded as we walked down the corridor to the waiting room. I couldn’t help but chuckle a little; I liked Medica Lily.
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1: Welcome to Raekos University
- Chapter 2: Scramble, Mythical Monkey!
- Chapter 3: Professor Jerkface
- Chapter 4: Talking to Rocks
- Chapter 5: Ow, My Ear!
- Chapter 6: Puff the Magic Dragon
- Chapter 7: Shower Scene
- Chapter 8: Playing with Pebbles
- Chapter 9: Over the River and Through the Woods
- Chapter 10: Of Books and Ballet
- Chapter 11: And Then the World Started to Hurt
- Chapter 12: Teddy Bears Have Boring Picnics
- Chapter 13: Overabundance of Stupid
- Chapter 14: Dinner and a Show
- Chapter 15: Shawn Shall Take No Guff
- Chapter 16: Really... Shut Up, Squishy
- Chapter 17: Rock Is No Water When It Comes to Slides
- Chapter 18: I Fell Off a Mountain, Didn't I?
- Chapter 19: Let’s Not Forget Who the Damsel Is Here
- Chapter 20: Mmm... Entrails...
- Chapter 21: Stabbity Stab-Stab
- Chapter 22: Tryouts and Tribulations
- Chapter 23: Are They Supposed to Explode?
- Chapter 24: Roo's Mom is... Intense
- Chapter 25: Ooh, a Project...
April 24th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Well the grammas okay (well most of the way... i think i saw two or three places where there might have been some
but at the moment i'm pretty drunk..... soo i might be wrong ehehe ... the flow of the chapter was okay...(not REALLY GOOD.. but okay 
““ “Not much, no, no.” He didn’t stop pacing or even look up when he spoke. “Leg blown off at the ankle. Magical injury. Real bad. Tryin’ t’stop magic from killin’ his leg, yeah. Hope they can grow it back.” A glimmer of optimism crept into his voice for a second, but didn’t last. “Maybe not. Maybe can’t grow…” He started pacing faster ““ kind of want some hint that he is stammering/stuttering.. but that may be just me... 
drunk.... but beside that... well liked Chapter 21: Stabbity Stab-Stab more but hell i'm weird hehe
Rock on. =D
loved it all
nice cliff hanger and overall SWEET hehe to copy someones saying
and thank you for for the story really worth the time i waited for it
April 25th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Wow, I had pretty much given up on you, only thinking bad things. I thought you were some shitty washed up loser of an author, a few chapters and you gave up. This chapter and the last one proved me wrong and I am glad. Keep writing, you are great at it.....and if you stop ill have to come to America and superglue a keyboard to your hands. Good stuff dude.
P.S medica lily is cool. This story has great potential
April 26th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
I'm not good at editing and the like.
I'm sad that Roo got hurt, and i hope he makes a recovery.
April 27th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Thanks guys! Glad you liked it.
@ AusRambo: Hahaha! Well I'm glad you no longer think of me as "some shitty washed up author," though I think I'm a little young to be washed up. I'm pretty proud of the last two chapters, so it's good to know you like 'em too.
April 27th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
And no one asked why his glove exploded... guess it wasn't that pressing of a question at the time.
Two visits to the doc in less than two days, I am sure Lily might get tired of seeing them before to long.
April 27th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
"The way Jarn looked, I wouldn’t have argued either; his chest and arms were drenched in Roo’s blood, matting his fur and making it glisten an evil red-black; his face was smeared with tears and gore; his eyes red and defiant." Now that you're getting better, I don't feel bad pointing out a nitpicky thing like the punctuation/flow being kind of off here. =P Technically the semicolons are ok the first two times, and that last one's the only wrong one since "his eyes red and defiant" isn't a stand-alone sentence. However, you'd be much better off breaking this up with a few complete sentences, or shortening it entirely.
"'Fine,' said the older of the two Medicos, 'But only as far as the health center.'" Again, another nitpick, but that b in "But" should be lowercase.
"He started pacing faster" You're missing a period at the end of this one.
I LOVE "thaumatic necrosis." ^_^
Ok, done with comments while reading. A solid continuation here, I would say. Be a little careful with the magical/medical theory, because it's easy to descend into the "As you know, Bob..." style exposition when you need readers to know things, and that's poor writing. (Not saying you DID here, just watch for it.) I also noticed in this chapter a bit more telling than showing. You'd gotten into a good place with describing things more than telling us about them; don't stop that! For example, there was hardly any talking about Roo's actual wound when they walk in and see him. You'd think that would be the first thing to which their eyes were drawn, you know? Just remember that these are PEOPLE, not puppets. Get in their heads instead of pulling the strings.
Overall though, well done. And hehe, the shoutout in the intro made me laugh. Glad to know you appreciate it. =)
April 28th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Very nicely done in my opinion and I liked the way Jarn was talking all broken up... Shows that he was very distracted by his brother being hurt... Loved the discription of how Jarn looked very graphic and brings the image to life in my mind. Would love to hear more about how a gaunlet could have exploded???? They seemed more stable and less powerful than that so far in the story so I would love to learn more about them and how they work.
Keep up the good work.
April 28th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Glad you're back. Missed 22, but had still been checking back intermittently.
Enjoyed the chapters--the injury tells us things are serious.
April 28th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
P.S. Agreed, hope you treat the gauntlet thing with the appropriate intensity because that's kind of a big deal. If they're that dangerous, they'd be better regulated, and if they're usually not, then you should at least make a token attempt at explaining why this one did.
April 29th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Fear not, the explanation of the gauntlet won't be "a wizard did it." Unless a wizard actually did it... who knows?
Oh yeah, I do
@Pan (#6): Thanks for catching that last semicolon there; I actually do know how to use them (see?), that was leftover from a different permutation of that sentence and was actually meant to be a comma. I changed the sentence a bit, though probably not how you had in mind. I would normally agree that I'd be better off breaking it up into separate sentences—it would make it easier to read, for one thing—but I had a specific effect in mind: I wanted to slow the the description down without slowing the action of the story. Separate sentences would make it seem like Shawn was pausing to make his observations, which I wanted to minimize. Basically, I was trying to make the description read slower without slowing the action. (Also, I got those two typos fixed, thanks.)
About the telling rather than showing: I was trying to make this chapter seem a bit blurry, with a snippet of sensory detail here and there. Kind of an "everything was happening so fast," feeling. I think once the next chapter is up it may make more sense, but I will keep an eye on it, thanks.
Thanks for the really excellent discussion, guys. It's nice to know I'm writing stuff worth talking about.
The next chapter should be up either Sunday or Monday, by the way.
Rock on. \m/
April 29th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Heh, I know you know because you have before, and I figured it was probably something like that. I leave words and punctuation behind in sentence debris all the time too. =) I would argue against the stylistic thing, though. Ideally, stylistic devices like that should be felt and not noticed, you know? Plus, we're so used to reading periods that I don't think it'd slow you down much. If you really felt strongly about it, I'd argue for concentration the description down to a single more powerful clause.
Tell/show: ah, ok, as long as it's on purpose. You DO get the sense that everyone's more reacting than thinking, so it was pretty successful then. I just wanted to make sure it was intentional and not the beginning of a trend. =P
See ya on Sunday. ^_^
April 30th, 2009 at 4:11 am
word.
April 30th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Yay! Chapters! Good ones! Yay! (again)
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:11 pm
“Roo’s tough. He wouldn’t let some silly missing foot stop him from scram.”
Jarn let out a feeble laugh. “Wait…”
based on context, i'm thinking Jarn's more likely to be saying "What..." than "wait" right here. particularly since his next sentance has the "wait" in it.
May 24th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Nope, he's supposed to be saying "Wait..." He was laughing at the 'silly missing foot' understatement and then realized what Pebbles was saying (that Roo made that team). The "Wait..." was a shortened version of something along the lines of "Wait a minute... What did you just say?"
Thanks for watching out though!
May 27th, 2009 at 3:48 am
This chapter made me wonder, what kind of prosthetics are available. With the magic about, they should be pretty intense, right?
May 28th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Well I could just tell you... but I don't think I will