Time for another Weekend Writing Warriors snippet. Every Sunday, I join a bunch of writers through a blog hop and post an 8-10 sentence snippet of my current project. You can click on the link to see what everyone else is up to.
Last week, we talked a bit about the Animen. A few have offered to help her with her mission to get revenge on Althod. This snippet gives some insight on the first wave of their plans.
Gilly alighted on the cold stone roof of one of the spiral towers and turned her head left then right to observe the long and reaching skies that surrounded her. She then raised a wing and then tucked her feathers close to her body again. She repeated it three times; it was an invitation for the Animen following her to approach the castle.
Birds of all sizes and colors appeared through the thick gray clouds. Gilly watched a small hoard of snow leopards and white tigers approaching the castle walls and hiding in snow-covered bushes with care. A dozen hunting dog Animen approached the guards and attacked them in formation before transforming into humans and taking their uniforms.
We’re the last to come—every visible guard should be taken care of, one Animen voice came to her. With that, Gilly swooped down and circled around the tower in a spiral and scores of birds followed her into the inner courtyard.
After quietly swooping into closets and emerging as humans in costly apparel, they dispersed and walked impassively through the halls. Their human eyes darted back and forth under makeup or fake wigs and tried to disappear into the backdrop and fuse among the throngs of courtiers.
Check out other snippets here. You can also learn more about the novel, Destiny Seeker, here. Don’t forget to comment below if you’ve got a snippet to share as well! Compliments and constructive insight are equally welcome.
Interesting snippet, very foreboding. (A few words missing in some of the sentences.) The forces are certainly marshaling here.
I’ve found the missing words and made sure they were in their proper places. 🙂 Thanks for reading!
I like this, but to me it feels a bit rushed. I’d like to pause where the hunting dogs attack the guards – you don’t have to add blood and gore but give us a sense of what Gilly saw from her vantage point. Did the guards rush the dogs in formation or was it every guard for himself? Could Gilly hear anything? And yeah, some words missing. This scene is a good start, just build on it.
Yeah, it looks like consolidation efforts to meet the 10-sentence rule definitely messed up some of my verbs. I’ve cleaned up most of what I could find. But in my original document, I’ll give the dogs their day. Thanks for your input!
I particularly enjoyed the phrase ‘the long and reaching sky’. It seems like the way a bird might think about the sky, reaching down and beckoning her to flight.
Man, flying powers would be so cool.
I feel a little sorry for those guards…
In the “extended” version (the one that’s longer than 10 sentences!) Gilly isn’t very happy about the circumstances, either.