Breaking Hevn: Book One
White Fist & Two Dogs
This was the beginning. It will be again.
A couple-three presidents ago, I self-published this story.
It was awful.
This episodic restoration remains true to my original vision with as many novice blunders filtered out as I can realistically hope to recognize.
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White Fist
At Helmouth's Door
Into Helmouth
The Oldest Enemy
Tu'chah-j'toc
Two Dogs
In The Middle of Nowhere
Reverie ———
Reverie ——
Reverie —
Nowhere Man
On The Tablerocks
Far From Hevn
No Refuge
Guardian Down
Woebegone
The Pilgrim
At Hattie's
The Well
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PART ONE
White Fist
At Helmouth’s Door
I am standing upon the edge of a sheer promontory overlooking Helmouth, waiting for the black sun to lift above the edge of the world. I am waiting for a sign. I have been waiting here twenty-three turns. ...
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Into Helmouth
I have the sensation of falling. My descent is roughly the width of my outstretched hand, but I plop with a graceless, reflexive jolt into a resilient surface. It was a moving target, after all. I am in ...
Read
The Oldest Enemy
Two large spheres are laying on a worktable as I pass beneath another glowb, this one dark. Three smaller orbs rest on a nearby surface. They brace a squat thing bristling with tubular appendages, each finding attachment to ...
Read
Tu’chah-j’toc
Perhaps for the last time, I breathe wholesome air and remove my Face. I am answered with a silence so profound I can hear my own heartbeat and the grating of the Blue’s rough hide as he shifts ...
Read
PART TWO
Two Dogs
In The Middle of Nowhere
Cast your gaze down here, if you will, and see the lone rider whose trail leads him through this long, winding, wooded canyon. You can well believe this is no route he would’ve chosen for himself, but the crows showed him the way, you see, and they’ve never steered him wrong before. ...
Read
Reveries ———
There’s a place in your head where memories are packed away, like old photographs. Some of them are grown fuzzy ...
Read
Reveries ——
One cool morning as summer is turning the corner to autumn before Jonas’s eleventh winter, Standing Elk has a dream. ...
Read
Reveries —
Say now, this here card’s face down. Ain’t that interesting and borderline mysterious? Reckon it to be the hole card, ...
Read
Nowhere Man
The blackness takes on shape and definition. It hops in front of his eyes, picking at something on the ground near a boot someone has left lying about. The boot has a leather cord wrapped around it at the graft, braided back upon itself as if it was intended to remain there. Several more similar shapes are ...
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On The Tablerocks
Jonas’s route to the top of the tableland presents an arduous climb with a cumbersome load. Hand and footholds are unreliable. A jutting stone may have nothing but a skin of soil to hold it in place. A sturdy-looking plant near to hand may be deeply rooted, or barely so, and so many of them have teeth. ...
Read
PART THREE
Far From Hevn
No Refuge
I have lived nearly a yonn, fifty-three yarnn, to be exact. The last dozen of them have been in the personal service of our Nee’m, The Fayne, Lord of the White Order, Master of All Hevn. ...
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Guardian Down
Reluctant gradations of awareness begin to return without the slightest suggestion of urgency. The first perceptions to infringe upon the heaviness is the trickling of water over rock and a distant melodic trilling, familiar, as though ...
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PART FOUR
Woebegone
The Pilgrim
Wind whistles tunelessly, but with unrestrained enthusiasm outside and through tiny gaps around the windows and doors of a large common room. A breath of fine dust puffs into the space and hangs in the pool of yellow light ...
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At Hattie’s
Hattie Pruitt has begun to worry, and that worries her a little. Before the turning she’d been a dreadful fretter. Why, she’d lie awake all night sometimes, anxious about the silliest things. Afterward, nothing seemed to bother her anymore. ...
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The Well
Shading her eyes against crystalline morning light with her free hand, Hattie makes her way to The Well with her wicker-sleeved jug. The woven basket handles are generous and would make for comfortable carrying even if the jug was ...
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