The cloth that covered Luna’s mouth and nose did little to alleviate the stench of death and excrement. Above her head, water dripped from ancient stalactites that clung to the vaulted roof of the tunnel. The light from her torch seemed afraid to go too far through the thick, steaming atmosphere.
Behind her, Vil-Odek’s sandals splashed on the brick floor. She tried not to think about what they splashed in.
Sci-fi
Planet of the Sorcerer: Chapter Thirteen
The ground as they approached the tree crunched dry underfoot, dead leaves and branches from trees that had tried to live on the meagre offerings of sunlight and nutrients not absorbed by the Refuge itself. More than once, Luna thought she saw a flash of white bones under the cover of the leaves. But Toridd always urged her forward before she could look again.
Planet of the Sorcerer: Chapter Twelve
Luna hadn’t seen anything like the animal in the cage opposite her before: it was reptilian, with rending teeth and many limbs. It extended a forked tongue and tasted the air with a rattling hiss. Luna was held between two guards, each one holding a wrist in a long claw contraption.
Planet of the Sorcerer: Chapter Eleven
The old man stood on top of a big outcropping overlooking the waste ground. The city loomed high in the distance, but his squinting eye was not focussed on that but rather the wooden cart that rattled towards him, kicking up a high cloud of dreary dust. He gestured to the younger man who was lying flat on the rock basking in the sun.
“Look,” he muttered. “They’re dropping off a new crop.” He sat down cross-legged and watched philosophically as the cart drew to a halt, and its driver stood up and kicked a body out of the back of it.
The young man sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Looks like a rich girl. They don’t exile them often. Wonder what she did?”
Planet of the Sorcerer: Chapter Ten
Luna felt an immediate sting of sickening anticipation as the doors opened. The Alien. Vo-Vakis’ arm looped in hers was suddenly no longer a reassurance but a trap closed tight, one she had walked into with open eyes and told herself was the lesser evil. She pulled – tried to pull – away, but he held onto her.
“I know you’re nervous,” he whispered, continuing their inexorable procession towards the ballroom. “It’ll be alright.”
Planet of the Sorcerer: Chapter Nine
“Pek-Tchat, on the council?” said Vo-Vakis as if the thought itself was amusing. “He’d rather die. He’s no friend of the council. Says they’re too…” he struggled for a word Luna would understand. “Too nice, I suppose. Too… forgiving of the underclass. If he had his way, I think he’d stamp them out.” Vo-Vakis related this as if it was as normal as talking about the weather.
“And you work for him?” said Luna. “That doesn’t sound very nice.”
Vo-Vakis shrugged. “Got to work for someone,” he said.
Planet of the Sorcerer: Chapter Eight
”Is it true, then? That you fell from the stars?”
When Luna had come to she seemed, against all probability, to be at a garden party. She had slapped herself a couple of times, and the sunny terrace on which she rested had stayed resolutely, irritatingly solid. She had been at these kinds of parties before, as a server, and she had hated them then. After the first slap, one of them came and hovered at her elbow and caught her hand when she tried to stab herself in the leg with a fork.
Planet of the Sorcerer: Chapter Seven
There was the sound of thunder coming down the stairs, and the door of the room burst open as Luna put her hands behind her head. She knew cops. In their gold-edged, fitted uniforms, they looked out of another time than the farm people that Luna and Asta had come to know.
“Get them!” said one of the magistrates, who must have been the leader.
Planet of the Sorcerer: Chapter Six
A hand on her shoulder pulled her away, and Scar spat a few words. Somehow, Luna knew that he was trying to see if she spoke any of the language. She scowled and said nothing. She would be damned if she was going to let him break her. A ringing slap from the back of his hand made her cheek burn, but still she said nothing. He threw her aside with what must have been an exclamation of disgust and she hit the dusty floor of the barn hard.
In her own way, Luna began to learn the language herself then. What else could he have been shouting at her but “get up”?
Planet of the Sorcerer: Chapter Five
The farmer shouldered his rifle, and two of his friends stepped forward and dragged Luna out of the tent by her shoulders.
“Hey!” Asta shouted, scrambling towards her, but Luna held out a hand.
“Don’t provoke them!” she said. The farmer was now talking animatedly, gesticulating towards a field on the plain below them which was filled with livestock – giant boars, rumbling around the pasture and butting each other gently. “I think he thinks we poached our meat from his farm.”
“But-” Asta began, and then stopped herself. She tried to remember what little she had learned about uncontacted peoples in history.
The fact she kept coming back to was how badly it usually went for the civilised folks in those stories.
The Write Stuff 