I started dipping into my writing archives last week, and now look where I ended up! Tribe of Liars is an extensive world created by our family. It’s a gaming IP with detailed character backgrounds, all unrealized or in process.
The following is the opening to one of my unfinished short stories or novellas detailing two of the characters. It’s fiction, which is a strange writing beast to me. I prefer the leanness of screenwriting. However, I’m in a weird blogging lull, burned out on generating content. And I genuinely believe that creative work needs to breathe in the world rather than stay locked in a folder. So, here goes.
Gage and Wrigley (Chapter One, Part One)
Gage is generally considered good-looking. You really can’t get around that; people treat him with the preference the beautiful generate. Your definition of handsome will define how his beauty manifests, though, so create him as you will. What you can’t get around is his mechanical ability. This guy likes to engineer stuff.
Right now coffee and sausage cook over a campfire. Look closer. What’s the contraption next to the breakfast? A boiler uses steam to power an experimental crossbow that you now hold in your hands and are prompted to shoot.
In case you couldn’t tell, you’re in a tutorial.
You’ve got a steam-power meter for a beginner’s weapon. When you press the x-button you ratchet a clumsy mechanism into place. Right trigger to release the valve that sends steam to the piston, and away your arrow flies toward your target.
Try hitting an acorn in that oak tree over there.
Checking that the tubing was hot and the steam ready, Gage angled the crossbow to point into the branches of a nearby oak. A magazine of arrows, each with a piston behind it, tilted into position. Aiming at an acorn in the tree, Gage prepared to release the valve to the first firing pin.
A gray squirrel hopped along the branch and grabbed the exact acorn Gage had sighted. As the squirrel ran back along the branch, it looked directly at Gage.
Okay.
Blinking, Gage hiked up his goggles and gave the squirrel a dirty look. He rotated the crossbow on its base and found another acorn. The squirrel dropped from a higher branch, plucked the acorn out from under Gage’s nose, and jumped into the foliage.
“Look, you little . . . This better not be what I think it is.”
Again he lined up a shot. No hesitation this time. Gage released the valve, steam pushed into the piston, and it smacked the arrow. The arrow flew true, headed right for an acorn, when the squirrel dove past and stripped the acorn out of the arrow’s path.
“What!” Gage shouted. “You crazy damn squirrel, what are you doing?”
The squirrel sat on a branch and looked at Gage. “What do you think you’re doing?” it said. “I’m trying to gather my breakfast.”
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