Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 148
148
There was light all around her, but not a good kind of light. Not a comforting light. This light was heavy, runny, almost like melted cheese, dripping down the walls of this place in thick, goopy strands.
Her head hurt. Bethany raised a hand to her temple and winced at the sharp sting of pain, but when she pulled her fingers back to check if there was any blood, she noticed she didn't really have a hand at all, just the idea of one. Sure, she could still feel it, could even curl it into a fist, but her hand (her entire arm, for that matter) was no more corporeal than the thick haze of smoke winding around her head, burning her eyes and scratching her throat. This realization didn't bother her as much as it probably should have. This entire place only seemed half-real anyway, so why should she be any different? No, what really bothered her was this crippling sense of urgency deep down in the pit of her stomach, telling her that she had to get moving, that she was running out of time. But... time to do what? If only she could think properly, but it felt like someone had taken a frying pan to her head...
(Great, moaning crack, huge black hand tearing through the roof.)
She felt dizzy just thinking about it.
She tried to call out, but her lungs were full of smoke and she doubled over, coughing into hands that weren't really there, hacking and spluttering, blinking tears out of her eyes and -
Rufio, how many times have I told you not to smoke that thing in here when I'm cooking!
Rufio? Where was Rufio, anyway? She wanted to... wanted to...
Kiana! Where's your father? He's not in the smithy. Kiana?
_That girl, I swear she's gone off somewhere, too. _
Yes, she's gone to visit Ander, I bet.
That's good, I'm sure he'll keep her safe. He'll definitely keep her safe.
Safe? Bethany turned in small circles, trying to see through the thick plumes of smoke. Why would she think something like that? Why 'safe'? What was there to be kept 'safe' from? Was she in danger?
Rufio? Rufio, where are you?
Was that what this urgent feeling was about? Was she supposed to find Rufio and Kiana? How? She had no idea where they were.
My family! Where is my family!? Rufie! Kiana!
The more she called their names, the more she was certain that they needed her, and that time was indeed running out.
She stumbled through the smoke, shielding her watering eyes against the thick, goopy runners of molten light and coughing into the crook of her elbow. She couldn't do this alone. She needed help.
Layla! she called, squinting into the light. Layla, where are you? I need you!
"I'm right here, Mother."
Oh, Layla, thank goodness! Bethany said, turning around. I need -
Layla was on fire, completely engulfed from the tips of her toes to the crown of her head. A living, breathing torch. Her dress was slowly falling apart, shedding bits and pieces of burning fabric. Flames licked at her face, scorching her fur, making them blacken and curl. Her hair was fanning out in all directions, caught in a blazing updraft of hot air. But worst of all was the smile on her face, completely carefree, as if she was oblivious to the fire eating away at every inch of her body.
"Hello, Mother!" she said, the absolute picture of good cheer even as the flames wrapped their greedy fingers around her muzzle and blisters began to form on her nose and lips, wet and shiny. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
Layla! Bethany shrieked. Oh gods, Layla, you're burning! You're burning!
"What?" Layla tilted her blazing head and regarded her as if she had gone crazy, but that horrid smile never left her face. "Mother, you're so silly! As you can see, I'm perfectly fine. There's no need to worry about me."
"Layla!" Bethany tried to beat at the flames with her bare hands, but it was no use. She was little more than a ghost in this place. Completely useless. She couldn't even thread a needle, let alone protect her family! She'd already lost one daughter tonight, and Rufio -
(Out of my way, please! I have to - Excuse me, please! Rufio! Rufio, wake up, we have to get out of here!)
(I have to find Layla, we have to move, they're coming they're coming where's Kiana I have to find Kiana my family oh dear gods my family!)
"Really, Mother, I'm fine," Layla insisted even as her skin began to peel and crack. "But is there anything I can do for you? Anything you need help with?"
Thick, burning hunks of meat were beginning to slough off her face, peeling away like the pages of a book, revealing layers of scorched muscle and sizzling fat. Blood poured down her face in rivulets, hissing and bubbling, sending dark plumes of fragrant smoke into the air, smoke that smelled just like roasted pork. That stink was everywhere, flowing up Bethany's nostrils, invading her lungs, inside her, the stench of her daughter, burning alive before her very eyes.
"I'm here for you, Mother. I'll always be here."
Bethany backed away slowly, raising her hands up to her lips and shaking her head, whimpering because no real words would come out anymore. And still, still_that smile was stuck on Layla's face, stuck there because she felt it _had to be stuck there, because to drop it would be to send her mother completely over the deep end. She was barely holding herself together, worrying about Kiana, about everyone. She had to do what she could, even at the expense of herself. Just to keep her mother together, just to give her enough strength to keep going, just to...
"I'm fine, Mother... I'm totally fine..." A chunk of meat fell off her forehead, revealing the slick shelf of blood red bone beneath. Her left ear slid down the side of her face, followed shortly after by her right, both of them engulfed in flames. Pitch black lumps of meat dropped down from her jaws. Her eyes swelled and popped like a pair of grapes in the overwhelming heat and hung, deflated, against her cheeks, and now she was nothing but a burning skull, hellfire blazing from her empty sockets. But still that smile was stuck to her face, still that smile refused to disappear.
"I'm fine, Mother. Can't you see me smiling? This is proof of how fine I am. So please... Please..." She reached out with one bony arm clad in searing, scorching flame. "Please don't worry about me. Please just take care of Father. And Hezzi. And little Renna. And everyone else who needs your help right now. They're all depending on you, Mother. They all..."
Layla took Bethany's hand in hers, but it wasn't skeletal at all. It wasn't burning. It was just her youngest daughter's hand, the same as it always was, with the bright orange fur and the dainty fingers.
Bethany raised her head, her cheeks washed in tears, and Layla was looking into her eyes with such kindness. There wasn't a trace of fire anywhere.
"They need you, Mother," she said. "They all need you. So please... You need to -
Now that the parts with Layla and Dan are done for now, I can talk a bit about what the original versions were like, how they slowed me down, and why I changed them.
First, the part where Layla nearly got flattened by a burning tree. In the original version, it was a whole lot worse. A big ol' branch actually impaled her leg through the calf, pinning her in place. I thought this would make for a nice bit of drama, and I must admit I really liked the way I described the scene, with all the blood and the encroaching fire and the Wolves pouring into the circle and little Tio trying frantically to get her out. Even now, reading through that sentence I just wrote, I feel like it would have made for some really nice tension. But there were 2 massive problems with it, and I just couldn't justify keeping it in like that.
Problem the first: time. It simply took way too long to get her out of there. Three entire extra subchapters, to be exact. One with Layla squirming around, trying to free herself. Then another where other characters finally showed up to help her. Then finally a third where they actually had to dig a trench underneath her leg and push it down to get her free, all while she bites down on a stick and screams bloody murder, which, although it was interesting to write, was also far too similar to the scene of Ander's birth, so it felt like I was rehashing old stuff the entire time, which is another reason why I didn't like it very much. All of this added up to about 30 pages. And even after those 30 pages were done, that great big gaping hole in Layla's leg continued to be a thorn in my side, slowing her down considerably and constantly demanding attention from her thoughts and feelings, which I wanted to focus elsewhere. It all just felt way too slow and laborious for the rapid pace I wanted to bring forward with the advancement of the Wolven invasion. Even so, I struggled with the idea of scrapping so much hard work until I realised something, the same thing that has happened to me several times before.
I realised that I could delete all three those subchapters (plus their aftereffects) without affecting the plot in the least.
Here's a tip for any aspiring writers out there (I may have said this before, but I'll say it again): if you can delete a big chunk of your work without affecting the direction of your story, then odds are you really don't need that chunk to begin with. And rule no. 1 of writing is to omit needless words, even if there are, like, 15 000 of them.
So that's why, instead of being pinned and useless for three extra chapters (which also caused problems for Dan, but I'll get to that later), Layla managed to crawl her way out of there and into the confrontation with the attacking Wolves in just a single chapter, ending up where she would have ended up regardless, except now without a giant hole in her leg. Can you begin to see why I had to cut out so much work? There were other problems, too, of course.
Problem the second: character placement. Having Layla stuck meant that I had to pull in characters from elsewhere because she couldn't get out on her own. This meant that they were out of position for where I really wanted them, which meant I had to spend a lot of time writing clunky paragraphs just to get them back to where they could actually contribute to the story, and that is such a schlep it isn't even funny. Here's another tip: if you need a character to be someplace important, it's usually okay to just have them start in the proper location from the get-go, doing the appropriate actions, instead of first having to move them over there. It saves so much time.
This, just like the first problem, ultimately boiled down to time and pacing.
Okay, and now for Dan. In the original version, there were two extra subchapters detailing how Dorin first showed up to rescue him from all the Wolves chomping him into minced meat, and then another where Dorin's friends come in to act as backup. I've known since long ago that I wanted to have Dorin repay his debt to Dan in some way, but doing it like this caused a lot of problems. First, time and pacing again. Two extra subchapters of them fighting to get Dan out. But not only that, with the three extra subchapters of Layla's impalement, it was impossible for me to suspend my own disbelief at Dan's resilience, much less the readers'. I could imagine them going: 'Wait a minute, Dan has been getting his ass kicked off-screen for like, 30 pages, and he's somehow still alive? Bullspit, I say!'
Also, with Dan and Dorin fighting outside the ring, there was no one around to save Layla from her attackers. Do you want to know who did it in the original version? Denko, of all people. The Wolf who can barely walk. Even now, I can't help but roll my eyes, but at the time he was the only character available, since all the others were occupied.
I ended up cutting all of it. Having Danado simply appear out of nowhere like a knight in not-so-shiny armour to save Layla meant that only a few minutes of story-time had passed since he sacrificed himself to allow Nilia to escape, and I thought that would be waaaay more believable than him somehow holding on for 30 pages while Layla screamed and bit down on sticks while they tried to dig her out. Not only that, but giving Dan a hero moment also allowed him to finally keep his promise, which was a nice way to tie off that particular arc in a neat little bow. And Dorin still got to repay his debt, too, so that worked out.
And one more thing. The subchapter where all the injured Wolves stood up to help defend Layla and her friends went through a butt-load of rewrites because I simply couldn't get it to feel right in my head. I wanted it to be a glorious cavalry charge like something out of Lord Of The Rings, where the good rise up to smite the evil and all that jazz. But it simply didn't feel right, no matter how I wrote it. It always felt wrong, somehow, and it took me quite a while to realize that the reason for that was because it _was_wrong. I was writing from Layla's POV at the time, and of course she would never look at something like that and feel good about it. Of course she would never look at two factions of Wolves beating the hell out of each other and think to herself: Yeah, finally! Go get 'em, boys!
No. This is Layla we're talking about. Seeing something like that would only make her feel horrible, sad, guilty, scared. So I rewrote it one last time, and ended up with the current version. It still isn't quite as good as I wanted it (nothing ever is) but it feels much more honest that way, and that by itself counts for something, in my humble opinion.
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