I am a writer. This is some clever wordplay. History will vindicate me.

Just a 'due dilligence' sort of update. Still chugging away at the manuscript, I'm hitting the half-way mark this weekend in between fireworks, burgers, and debauchery. [Ahem - America.] I'm going to reward myself with a large glass of chocolate milk and the weirdest possible scene that will irrevocably destroy the very novel I'm trying to write. I'll keep it short though - 500 words tops.

I did hit an important personal milestone in the manuscript, I drew a map of Corinth.

I know it doesn't seem like much, but that little thumbnail rocked me back on my heels a bit. In the vast tangle of the stories I tell, Corinth and the country of Gilead itself feature most prominently. They are symbols for me - heroism, the golden age that is lost, the naive hope I felt as a child when I read the tales of Arthur in the pages of King, White, and Mallory.  But more than that -- in a way I fumble to express - it's the fulcrum, the place where my world turns. Like a time traveler, I've seen this place in the future, I have walked its halls before in the moonbeam past. I, myself, have lead the armies of darkness to its walls.

So it's strange to arrive here again, on the back of a sky-cycle with Xenon and Mercury. And drawing the map, my silly little scribble made the city real again - made it real NOW in this moment that my heroes and villains will meet in its cobblestone streets. 

Eesh - this got weird and soppy? Sorry, folks - this is the hedge wizard you hired. Sometimes you pull the rabbit out of the hat for the crowd and sometimes the rabbit pulls you into the hat.

Here's a little snippet, the first sight of Corinth for you. As always - tell me what you think! Here on Inkshares, or come yell at me on twitter @gderekadams

The sky-cycle cut through the clouds and Xenon laughed as a sudden updraft blew the hem of her half-cloak right over her head. She pulled the fabric free with one hand while keeping her other hand steady on the throttle. Mercury grabbed the flapping cloak’s edge and jammed it down into the edge of her piloting sister’s belt - it had become a tediously common occurrence during their days of flight. They would be humming along, magenta light spooling out behind them, goblin eyes wide at the vast and beautiful landscape beneath them, then WHOP - faceful of cloak. Xenon snickered as her younger sister grumbled - her cloak was perfect for travel and investigating clammy ruins or burning sands - but it patently was not intended for the air speeds that Tobio could reach.

“Take off the cloak!” Mercury spat in her ear.

“Nope!” Xenon laughed, and straightened her goggles. Something about the way it flapped against her shoulders just felt proper and just -- plus the wind’s bite and the high altitude made the skies a fierce torrent of cold.

The last silver-white vestiges of the cloud bank parted and the city of Corinth lay before them, like a child’s plaything. The surrounding grassland green, broken occasionally by outcroppings of sheer granite and thin copse of oak and elm, smashed up against the graystone walls of the city like a verdant wave. Xenon took a long breath of cold fall air and wished she could make her eyes go wider. The city walls were vast slabs of granite, surely quarried from the surrounding countryside - but each slab showed a hundred scars. Scorch marks, cracks wide enough for a goblin to stick his hand in, a pockmarked graveyard of abandoned steel rusting away in the walls, arrowheads, lances, halberds, and glaives - all flung by the champions of evil come to lay siege to the crown city of Gilead. Time itself seemed to be the greatest beast savaging the high walls, the simple erosion of rain and sun had widened the gaps between slabs to the point where industrious soldiers were working know to construct wooden palisades and gates in between the dwindling granite. Corinth was a city that had known the hammer and the breaking of stones, and every shattered line of building or errant cobblestone street carried the memory of the days when darkness had beaten down her defenders and made vicious festival in the home of the righteous.

And yet the sun shone down on Gilead’s capitol as if it could not remember Night. From every tower, every high place, the brave blue flags flew and snapped in the wind. Blue for the sky, where the priests of the Nameless God teach that all valor is recognized. A white circle, for the will of the heart that cannot be broken. Inside the circle, three blue swords crossed. Rage, fear, despair -- all bound by Faith. Xenon turned the sky-cycle into a slow banking arc across the northern face of the city, information running through her head. Gilead had never been her speciality, but there were things that any scholar worth their salt knew by heart. The small country, really a city-state with allied territories across a small corner of the continent of Eridia had managed to involve itself in far more than its share of history. The Dragoon War. The MNO Incident. The Sandwich Rebellion, where Carroway broke free of the domination of the dwarven empire of Sypria. The Swords of the Faith, found in every major conflict for hundreds of years. Always on the side of Good. The goblin’s academian brain quivered at this last thought, a shallow mealy-mouth platitude. It was the sort of statement put in children’s history texts, not the thing a true researcher would accept at face value. Tobio flew lower across the spine of the city and she shrugged off her quibble. Of course it’s hard to assign such gross qualifiers as ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ to historic events - but I think it’s a reasonably safe approximation to assign to the Red Wizard and his armies. The Knights of Gilead have always answered the call of any other country in peril, and nearly lost their own country many times. This is the place where I’ll find help with SHAME.