Rise of the Order 3.2

< < Back to Rise of the Order 3.1

One of my absolute favorite parts. An explosive battle ensues with two powerful Gate-keepers.

It was a hundred paces or so to the gate, and Gallet covered it in a matter of seconds – just as Hace opened the door, swinging inward on its hinges to let Red in.  She took Red hard in the back with her left shoulder, slamming him into the heavy door flinging Hace to the far wall before he knew what hit him.

Hace was trying to recover his sense when Gallet’s blade took him and he fell to the ground wide eyed.  She turned back in the small guard house to see Red face down on the stone floor, legs still halfway out the door.  The root enhanced strength of her shoulder slam had broken the man’s back.  He’s sightless, wide eyes stared out above a mouth open for a scream that he would never again have breath for.

She dragged the man into the room and closed the door, latching it.  With her crown gate opened, Gallet could sense nearly eighteen individuals within the keep – all but three were visiting their dreams. There may be a few guards around the compound but the Lord was a proud and private man; the servants that he kept lived in the keep and by all accounts his personal escort met him at the gate.

The Keep was the same granite color as the inner city but created in a more utilitarian style.  The walls were vertical.  A strange green plant clung to the side of the wall climbing all the way to the battlements.  The main entrance was approached by a steep, narrow flight of stairs – only wide enough for two men to walk abreast. The ground of the courtyard was tilled soil and small, exotic plants were framed by wood boxes displayed between pathways.  Gallet had never seen anything like it.  Its beauty sent a shiver up her spine.  None of these plants were native to Kanton, who’s foliage consisted of the strongY’ell wood trees and grasses and fungus that survived beneath the forest’s canopy.  The color palette of the country side was greens and browns; the vibrant red, blue, and indigo colored flowers in the garden were a sharp contrast.

She made her way into the courtyard, at first carefully scanning the ground to avoid stray twigs that would snap giving away her position, but she soon realized the grounds were well kept; the paths swept clean and the planter boxes checked for unwanted intruders on a regular basis.  With the two guards dead the interior grounds were deserted.  From here, the keep looked much smaller than it had always appeared from the outside.  In her mind she compared it to a man: puffing out his chest to the world, but when he finally let a woman into his confidence he appeared much more innocent and childlike.

She strode up the long staircase with muted footsteps to approach the vine covered walls.  She tugged at them, testing their strength, then began to pull herself upward toward the second level where the Lord’s study lay.  Her root gate had been opened continuously for far too long now she realized as she pulled herself upward onto the vines.  Her lungs bore an unquenchable thirst and the air she made no dent in the deficit she had acquired. Soon, she thought between panting breaths.  Her target was near and soon she could rest.

The battements were clear as she finished her climb.  Just ahead, over the first story entrance, was a door that led into the study.  She opened it and the heat from the fireplace washed over her.  She hadn’t realized the full extent of the pressure she had put on her body until she entered the room; the chill in the outside air had kept her temperature down but now she felt dizzy and fever sick.  The sweat pooled in her leathers and stained the cotton tunic she wore around her breasts. With the stress on her body overwhelming her, she fell to one knee, barely noticing the man’s profile sitting in the chair in front the fire.

“This day was bound to come.” He spoke in a powerful bass, the sound of his voice rattled Gallet.  He didn’t stir from his seat, he simply continued staring into the fire, a book closed in his lap.  Gallet had never been inside but knew the layout from former children of the Ministry who reported to her about the happenings in the keep.  Their intelligence was invaluable to her, but lucky as some might have seen it for the children to be taken into the Lord’s keep after growing up in the Ministry, Gallet knew it was the Lord’s lust for young girls.

The room was long and rectangular, the walls covered in books from floor to ceiling. The only furniture was the ornately carved chair the Lord sat in and a small round table beside him.  It would have seemed odd to Gallet, if she’d had the energy to think it, that a room of so much space be occupied by so little.  In her world, space – a place to simply be and exist – was a luxury.  She had carved out a small amount of space for herself in the Ministry, but what little she had was given to the children.  This room spoke volumes about the values the nobility of Kanton had – while the peasantry lived in boxes in the commons, Kanton’s Lords lived in wide empty spaces.

“The lives of men are so petty.  While they fight one enemy, they allow themselves to be occupied by another,” the Lord said.

Gallet’s laugh was sickly, “Yes.  Petty, Gorn.  The rock we use to smash our foes cuts us in the end.  The rock changes hands countless times but men like you never learn to respect the tools you use.”

“Heh, externalizing an internal conflict,” Lord Gorn said as he stood from his chair, still facing the fire.  His hair was short and peppered with gray but he maintained the physique of a man half his age.  The fur lined neck of his form fitting coat clung to the sides of his chest and showed the definition of his chest and abdomen.  He turned and faced her now.  “Like it or not, Kanton’s alliance with the Order is a mutually beneficial arrangement. You’ve seen first-hand: children have a purpose, they go to sleep with food in their bellies.  The city is no longer under constant siege by the golem and we retain a fragment of our former lives here.

“You struggle with abandonment all your own don’t you, Mistress?  You were orphaned by the Sundering, weren’t you? It must have been a difficult time for you – living in the streets.  Perhaps you cannot bring yourself to believe that your ‘rock that cuts’ is the same as the hand that feeds.” His smile held no mirth as he went on. “Surly, if Mommy and Daddy hadn’t gone away, life would have turned out better – sunnier.”

Gallet was unable to speak but every breath she took came out as a growl – a growl full of rage that consumed her completely.  She stood, facing him; each of them holding the strong confident posture of a predator.  Gorn sighed, relaxing momentarily.  “So be it,” he said and the fire from the hearth burst in violent rage.

Gorn’s hands focused a swirling yellow light at his sternum – the solar-gate – and then as with the force of his hands, the fire leapt from the hearth driving straight for Gallet. She dove, rolling over her left shoulder to avoid the blast which struck the book shelf behind her, it too becoming consumed in flames.  Gorn was preparing another blast from the hearth; she had to keep moving to avoid his attacks.  Two fireballs struck just behind her as she ran to the far end of the room before cutting back towards Gorn and his chair. 

She pulled her sword from the sheath, striking, but Gorn was too fast.  His lithe movement anticipated her every sword blow.  Her attacks distracted him from channeling his power gate, but his martial skills were equally impressive.  Gorn conceded no ground in their exchange.  He side stepped Gallet’s thrust, moving inside her reach striking her with a two-handed blow that knocked her off balance.  Then he was crouched low with a sweeping kick and Gallet fell to her side – the short sword falling out of her hands.  Gorn was upright again channeling his power gate; the flames in the room all seemed to grow in intensity. 

He looked down at her with a feral grin.  “I have sacrificed too much for my city; my kin, my friends, my soul – you’ll not take that away from me!” 

His arrogance steeled her to her oncoming fate. Her root gate lent her the power of the earth; though she had been using it to this point to increase her strength and endurance, if she released her control over the gate it would consume her completely.  She couldn’t avoid the barrage of fireballs Gorn was preparing; the power gate gave him command of any heat source in the room and with each new fire he started his power grew.  She grabbed the sword from the ground and rose in the fastest motion she could manage, releasing the constriction she had imposed on her Root-gate and suddenly she felt the unstoppable surge of earth roaring through her.

Fire streaked through the room from four points, slamming into her body, splashing against stone that once had been her flesh.  Her sword thrust forward, the final defiance to the man who had killed so many innocents; the man who had defended his treatment of her children in the Ministry; the man who had executed her mother and father.  The sword’s blade was buried half way into Gorn’s chest, piercing his heart.  His expression one of shocked denial.  He squirmed for a moment, trying to free himself from the upturned blade but her stone grip made it impossible. As blood trickled down the edge of the blade, he slowly slumped forward.

The earth had consumed her but her goal had been achieved.  Though she gave her life, maybe the people of Kanton could wrestle free from the grip of the Order without Gorn’s political influence.  In her last moments, the keep burning all around her, she opened her Pineal-gate a final time to enjoy the happiness she had hoped to create amongst the people she loved so much.  Instead she found that once again, she was the rock in the hands of a master she had never seen coming.

Rise of the Order 3.1

< < Back to Rise of the Order 2.2

The threat given to the boy had taken a toll on Gallet, in so much as she could hardly believe that she would have killed the boy had he not done what she demanded.  As soon as she was sure he would do as she asked she fled into an adjacent alley; the swell of her own emotion nearly overcoming the focus gained from battle.

Kanton’s keep was raised far back into the mountainside, pulled up and shaped from the earth in the same way as the town square had been.  Though the town had sprawled outward to accommodate the demands of a growing population, Gallet was now headed into the most defensible part of the city.  The city guard held to a defined patrol pattern however, and their guard posts were easily avoided.  Any who stumbled on her path would suffer death, she couldn’t afford the city guard rallying on her position. Her plan was relying on Kayne to draw the bulk of the army back to defend the Lord’s manor – she couldn’t afford the city guard raising their own alarm foiling her ruse.

She didn’t know how long it would take for Kayne to reach his captain.  He was likely to be at the northern gate able to receive messengers from his archer in the city and the patrols combing the forest.  She had certainly over compensated, scaring the boy the way she did, but she had to be sure her threats were taken seriously. In the end, the encounter was a silver lining to her eminent death; she had saved another child from the hands of the Order.

A wall surrounded the inner city and another the keep itself. Watchmen stood at the parapets of first portal with the keep wall holding a retractable metal gate.  For the captain of the company to act on her ploy she had to make him believe there were fifty men waiting inside for him.  An impossible task for a lone woman but until the day she had come face to face with the Son of Order, she had never met another gate keeper with as many gate affinities as she had.

Many had an affinity for a single gate – and those gates could be focused and honed to do incredible tasks.  The root-gates for example, used to raise the keep directly from the mountain, came from keepers with only one affinity.  Having multiple affinities was extremely rare and when discovered the Order would swiftly take them to join in their cause and be showered in riches for their loyalty or to meet the hangman’s noose. Gallet never let on the true extent of her power but would never have given into the allure of riches anyway, her thirst for vengeance ran too deep. The position of Head Mistress came with the discovery of her cadre of street orphans so long ago. She claimed a modest crown-gate affinity and was never questioned again.

 As the night went on she would have the luxury of darkness as the moon dipped behind the mountain, casting a shadow over the whole city well before morning’s light touched the eastern horizon.  Time was precious however; Venara needed Gallet to watch over her, just as when they were children. 

Her right shoulder was swollen and nearly immovable now, she would have to leave her root gate open to retain any ability to use the limb. The task ahead would tax her to the point of irrevocable exhaustion, but it was now or never.  She moved out of the last shadow as the guardsman turned to pace back towards the far opening in the wall.

With her root-gate opened, her legs swelled with increased strength.  She leapt up the side of the wall, it’s smooth surface had no hand or foot holds but her upward momentum was sufficient to reach the ledge. She landed in a crouch and ran bent forward, her height obscured by the merlons along the wall.  The guardsman recognized the footfalls behind him just in time to turn and see sword flash from scabbard.  His head landed with a plop even before his body had completely turned to face her.  A stool sat at the far end where he would sit between patrols. Against the battlements lay a large wooden crossbow.

Adrenaline fueled Gallet and her instincts took over.  The crossbow had no string, but used a coiled wire spring drawn taunt by a hand crank.  It was a heavy weapon meant for sieges not infantry and taking it with her would cost her more time and energy than she was willing to spend on it.  Her root infused strength let her pull the cocking mechanism back without the need for the crank; she grabbed one of the oversized bolts from the quiver at her side, checking the fletching, before steadying herself on the wall.

The bolt was poorly crafted and the arrow would veer.  She opened her Pineal-gate and saw the missed trajectory of the bolt before she fired.  It was an easy enough matter to compensate for the poor craftsmanship if you had the ability to peer into the future.  Gallet’s shot took the man across the battlement in the chest and he fell with a grunt.  She left the crossbow, sneaking down the battlements staircase unseen. 

Within this wall the upper crust of Kanton’s citizens resided.  All the buildings were pulled from the ground by root-keeper architects and their ornamented rooftops showed that the people who had built it were not just powerful keepers, but artisans as well; something that had been lost to Kanton since the Order began its occupation. 

No building was shaped the same; the city itself was organized in perfect harmony of space and structure.  The wide streets gave plenty of room for drawn carriages while leaving room for the pedestrians.  The main street held three story homes, their stone the color of granite as if the keepers had pulled the soul of the mountain from the ground to give birth to these masterpieces.  The only single story building in the inner ring of the city was a grand hall.  A wide dome was carved with ornate ridges and at the front supported by two pillars was the crest of Kanton facing the street.  Gallet hesitated as she saw it for it looked much the way she always imagined it should have as a child, when the inner city was filled past capacity and refugees took shelter in the grand hall.

She slid easily through the city, knowing its every inch having survived the harsh life of a street orphan.  It wasn’t just the grand hall that looked cleaner – the streets seemed to shine in the moon light.  It was hard to believe that since becoming Head Mistress, living blocks away in the outer city, she had not been able to return to the streets she had grown up on.

She frequently stopped in a shadow before crossing the path of a patrol.  The upper class were much less likely to be out past curfew, but the majority of guards found their way to the inner city streets to keep up appearances.  Even with the number of guards on patrol, Gallet avoided them easily.  The nobles enjoyed the increased patrols and the guardsmen took the inner city postings to avoid duty near the commons where they were much more likely to encounter trouble.

Turning the corner she saw the gates to the keep were closed, as they were every night after curfew.  A door was carved into the stone to the left of the gate and candle light flickered from within. A guardsman leaned against the gate facing away from Gallet talking to someone on the other side.  She crept closer trying to eavesdrop on the conversation.

“… a day off in two weeks! And I haven’t heard anyone else who has neither!”

“Aye, he’s been a prickly bastard since that last group of dignitaries was through here.  ‘course, it’s a good thing you got this route tonight, otherwise I’d be boots-up-asleep!”

“That’s not a half bad idea if you do say so Hace.  You’ve got a deck of cards up there haven’t ya?”

Gallet could see clearly enough that the man behind the gate was rubbing his chin, contemplating the implications.  “I ‘spose I do at that, but tired or no I ain’t one to go derelict of duty just cause the Lord’s lost his oats.”

“Hace, there’s a full company of the Order’s solders at the outer city walls.” He said, rolling his eyes.

“And a damn Daeva’s wings flying about.  I’ll not sit about and have One of Chaos sneak up and slit my throat just so you and I can play cards on duty, Red.” Hace said.

“Oh come on, Hace!” he said, drawing out the syllables “I’ve got money this time!”

“You still owe me from last time—” Red made to reply but Hace just kept on, “and I ain’t takin’ them paper marks neither!” Red gave him flat stare before looking side to side and pulling a pouch from his side and tossing it in his hand.  The clang of metal on metal was obvious to Gallet’s ears then Hace said: “Well why didn’t you say so?”

Hace disappeared from the gate and Gallet jumped from the shadows, knowing it was her only chance to get inside the walls.

Productivity, Impulse and the Sloth Demon

Productivity

I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I know I’ve got a big problem dealing with my impulses: especially when I’m trying to be productive. Writing, music, painting – they’re all creative endeavors that require a steely amount of self-motivation but our reservoirs only run so deep. You obviously don’t just need to be a creative type to have a desire for productivity it could be a work to-do list; it’s summer vacation and it’s cram, cram, cram all the stuff in that couldn’t get done during the school year; or you could, very simply, be like me and my friends and want to juggle the demands of a job, a blog, a book or two, a screenplay, lifting weights,  and an album into your life all the while trying to maintain a healthy relationship with your family, friends, and spouse.

I don’t get something from each of these categories done every day, mind you. When would I sleep? But it brings up the first good point about being Productive:

• Know your priorities.

Priorities are everything. We examine and adjust them every day, but we don’t always take into account our priorities when it comes to the tasks we tackle every day. If you’ve ever had a deadline looming over your head, you know what it’s like to take a hard look at your priorities and start throwing things out the window that are just not important.

David and I once wrote two drafts of a screenplay, five drafts of a teleplay and one start to finish screenplay in three weeks. We actually had a deadline of four weeks, but we finished early and had time to get a lot of feedback before submitting them. In that case our priorities were pretty clear: we wanted a job and it was do or die to us. You understand really quickly what you have to do and what you simply want to do when these kinds of deadlines come around. If you don’t have the “luxury” of having a deadline imposed upon you here’s a couple tips for listing your priorities:

• Figure out your necessities vs your wants.

Necessities are simple, but obviously essential. You need to eat; you need to sleep (a little); you need shelter. To have food and shelter most of us need to have a job. So with those things in mind, list To-Dos for each of those things you may have in a day. Groceries, pay rent, go to work etc. These are things you have to do to survive and you accomplish them very early on  your to-do list. Our wants are most often the things that we want to be more productive with, but we can’t discount the things we do as part of our necessities as productive. Remember, if you’re dead you can’t be productive at all.

Next comes our wants. For me, I’ve got a novel I want to finish before I go back to work in the fall. It consumes the majority of my productive time (that and the blog). The problem with wants is they aren’t really dangerous to our survival if you don’t complete them to the extent we’d like. This is why it’s hard to write books and make records and beautiful paintings – it’s not imminent to our survival and let’s face it, we all want to have leisure time (we’ll have to talk more about leisure).

• Focus on one project at a time. Don’t stop until you’ve completed it.

It’s hard, if you’re like me, and your brain is full of big projects you’re dying to complete and you feel like no matter what you do you’ll be dead before you could ever finish them all (let alone get people to see and appreciate them). The reality is no one will ever see anything you do if it never gets finished. When I was younger I worked on hundreds of projects that never saw the light of day because I had split my attention among too many things or I wasn’t ready to release them out into the world yet.

That fear will kill you. I don’t care how perfect you think you can make a product if you just hang on to it for a little while longer, if you never let anybody see it you may as well have had a negative productivity (this idea deserves its own blog).

Don’t worry if it’s not the greatest thing in the history of the universe. If it’s only your first or second project chances are it won’t be that great – there’s a sense of pride that can’t be taken away from the act of completing a project. That’s the whole reason to be productive in the first place.

Impulse

I can tell you from experience that there are certain impulses that are really difficult to deal with. If you didn’t know, I’m an alcoholic.  I’ve been sober for over a year and still I have urges to drink. It isn’t easy, but impulse control is the most effective way to increase your productivity.

We’ve all got impulses we need to get a better handle on. Check Facebook more than twice a day? Got your eye on those salty crackers in the break room? Maybe you’ve got writers block and you think you have to go pee again for the eighth time in an hour. Whatever it is for you, it’s distracting you from your priorities.

A good way to get a handle on our impulses is by forming better habits to begin with. A great way to do that is by creating a reward system for yourself. I found a tool recently that I use every day called HabitRPG.

I'm a powwfuw Wowwiuw!

If you’ve ever played World of Warcraft you’ll understand why I like it so much.  It game-afies your life in a way that offers you rewards for being productive and completing the goals that you set out for yourself. List making is always a great way to goal set and reward yourself for productivity.

Sloth Demon

This is where your impulses and your productivity collide in a very peculiar way. I started calling it my Sloth Demon after a character in Dragonage: Origins. Think of sloth as one of the seven deadly sins. We think of people who are lazy, don’t work, possibly hedonistic. Sloth is the sin that keeps you from producing.

Here’s the problem with the Sloth Demon: I wrote a lot of papers last minute in college. The best part about writing a paper last minute is that you’re on a tight deadline. The worst part is that you don’t have time to goof around. I remember very clearly, one deadline looming afternoon, a paper I particularly didn’t want to write. I walked into the kitchen and stared at the pile of dirty dishes in my sink and though, “I have to get these done, they’re driving me crazy. I’ll never finish this paper with these dishes in the sink.”

Now, here’s the thing: what do those two things have to do with each other… at all?! The dishes were by no means holding me back from finishing my paper. The kitchen was, admittedly, messy but it had been much worse in the past. So why did I have this intense impulsion to do the dishes when something so important as my graduation from college was at stake?

If you have a list ranking your productivity items from greatest urgency to least you’ll find that the ones at the top are likely the ones you want to do least – otherwise you would have done them before they became urgent. Now, Sloth Demon is your buddy. Sloth Demon is your pal. It doesn’t want you do have to do that terrible, nasty task you’ve been avoiding. So it convinces you to do a different task from the list – one that’s more appealing.

The really dangerous part about Sloth Demon is that you feel as though you’ve been productive after it has tricked you into doing something you shouldn’t have been doing. Did the dishes in my kitchen need cleaning? Absolutely. Could it have waited until I had finished my paper, there-by completing something tangible to show the world? You betcha. Doing the dishes could have been the second most urgent thing on my list, but in doing them before I completed my paper I was less productive than if I had waited to do them until after.

It’s a bargain we make with ourselves. I’ll do something I really don’t want to do in order to avoid doing something I want to do even less.

Always have a To-Do list and make sure you’re comparing it with your priorities. Your priorities are going to affect the order of your list. A well-ordered, organized list is a productive list.

Take care of small tasks and chores immediately before something urgent arises. If you have a messy desk and a project deadline, if you aren’t completely pulled off task by the Sloth Demon, you’ll be distracted and unable to focus on your project completely. Clear your environment, clear your head. As above, so below.

Always reward yourself for a job well done. It’s the best way to make the next day bearable. No matter how productive we are, there will always be another project around the corner, another goal to reach, another land to conquer. There’s got to be a reward at the end of the tunnel to make the grind worth it. Externalizing rewards is a great way to help yourself along, but the real prize comes from the satisfaction of a job well done.

Just to be clear, the Sloth Demon is not a real thing - physical or spiritual. It’s a concept. Designed to identify a behavior I had trouble dealing with. Please don’t run around, blessing your house in hopes of scaring the Sloth Demon away. You’ll have already been tricked away from your productivity by it. 

^_^

Your 20s are for Narcissism and Why You Need to Forgive Yourself.

There are so many articles being shared on my feed these days about selfies being linked to mental disorder and narcissism its staggering. I get it, selfies are a thing, I’m old, I have to deal with it. But it’s not just selfies: the whole world is wrapped up in itself. We talk about a rampant lack of empathy among peers, and the dating game… don’t get me started! (warning, I’ve already started). The problem is, for those of us in our late 20s and 30s, we find this intense dislike and frustration for the people who are maybe five years younger than us because suddenly something changed and we’ve forgotten why, when we were in our 20s, we acted the way they do. The reality is, we need to forgive ourselves in order to let our younger counterparts do the things that they need to do to get to the place we’re in.

Having spent ten years in my 20s I think it’s safe to say that I’m an expert on this topic. 

First of all, what’s a selfie? If you’re reading this and don’t know, you’re probably going to laugh at the advice I’m giving and want to give me some of your own. Believe me, I’ll take it! That’s one thing I’ve found is after 30, you’re much more willing to take the advice of  your elders. But here’s an example if you want to keep reading.

The duck face, in it's natural habitat

Here I am, giving the duckface. It’s really a classic. I feel that my left side is really my best profile and the way my lips protrude from my beard gives the opposite sex the idea that I’m super confident and sexy. I found that the Losdales filter really brought out my eyes. I hope I get a bunch of likes!

Sarcasm aside, this is what we’re talking about when we think of narcissism. “Look at me! Notice me! FOR GOD’S SAKE SOMEBODY PLEASE NOTICE ME!”

It’s a dance, and you’re doing it because all of your peers are doing it. It’s not really peer pressure, it’s more like you and each of your friends are massive, hydrogen fueled stars in a PULSAR galaxy. Gamma ray bursts (selfies) are firing out of that galaxy so brightly that the rest of the universe (the rest of the universe) can see it, but at this point we all know what’s going on, so we kind of ignore it.

But, if you’re another one of those stars in the galaxy, you pay attention to that gamma ray and you want to be a part of it. I’ll drop the metaphor. You see your friends getting attention: you want attention.

Now because I took a metric-butt-ton of selfies in preparation for this blog I feel the need to share them.

Mom photo bombed
me

I like coffee with my writing, so does
 my Dragon

I really do think my left
side looks best!

So are selfies the cause of narcissism or are selfies the result of narcissism?

Let’s consider the evolution of social relationships for a moment, shall we?

As sexual being, our physiological need is to mate. For males, generally, it’s to accumulate wealth showing females you have the resources to care for off-spring. For females, generally, it’s to show sexual fertility showing you’re able to produce children. We can clearly see these differences when we look at examples of different genders posting selfies.

 If you look at DanBilzarian’s Instagram (Not safe for work) you can see two things.  Pictures that display a great deal of wealth (ability to care for children) and the sheer volume of women that surround him (women are more likely to approach a man who other women have already vetted). Now I use Dan (sorry bro, you're just a great example), who's in his 30s, as an example here because of the reason this narcissism exists. Our 20s are when the majority of the population finds a mate and posting pictures on the internet is a great mating display that can reach a wide audience. 

Now if we take a look at only1aadrea's Instagram, we'll see some different characteristics. Her selfies are about beauty, adventurism, nurturing, and because of those things: fertility. 

What do the two have in common? They're both looking for mates - sexual partners to be more precise - yet they approach it in vastly different ways. Now I don't want to go much deeper than that about why, in nature, men trade resources for sex while women trade children for resources but suffice it to say, when women are pregnant and nursing they are effectively disabled and have a very difficult time gathering resources for themselves. Our modern world has been able to alleviate some of these pressures but from an evolutionary perspective, we have had this idea bread into our physiology and psychology for thousands upon thousands of years.

Men, on the other hand, are physically incapable of having children. So the trade is made willingly.

Check out David Stewart's page, if you haven't already, as I'm sure he's got something more in depth written on this subject.

For those of us who have exited the narcissism of our 20s, why is that? More than likely, we've found a mate, we've found a career, we're having children. This also explains why society wasn't seeing this phenomenon fifty years ago. Besides the fact that selfies and the internet and Instagram weren't around, the majority of people were having children in their early 20s so had no need for this mate attracting, narcissistic streak. Plus, if you have children, I don't think you really have the time for narcissism.

Now, I'm by no means suggesting that rampant narcissism doesn't exist for other reasons. For example:

Mom photo bombed me, so I selfie bombed her!

So if you're post 30 and you're frustrated at all the childish behavior on the internet, what do you do? Well the most important thing is to forgive ourselves. We've all had our share of stupidity and the sooner we can forgive ourselves for it, the sooner we can let other people live their lives and make the same mistakes we needed to make. Life is about making mistakes - if we lived in a bubble and never allowed ourselves to fail there would be no opportunity for growth.

But if you're young and want my advice remember just Las Vegas's slogan: What happens on the internet, STAYS on the internet. Just ask Beyonce.

It's over 9000 shares!

Frankly, we're all children until we're dead. If we give each other a little slack and remember that life's learning curve is pretty high we'd all be a lot nicer to each other. We're going to be learning new things until the day we die, just ask my 95 year old grand father, Chuck, who recently started blogging! 

Selfie on my friends, selfie on.

Rise of the Order 2.2

< < Back to Rise of the Order 2.1

Gallet continues her march toward the heart of Kanton, while the Matriarch considers the debt she owes to her sister. Thanks, as always, for reading!

She couldn’t be absolutely sure of tonight’s outcomes, even with the use of her Pineal-gate – each interaction created a complex set of variables that could lead to a different future. She simply found an outcome that suited her, uncertain as it was, and she planned to follow it to the end.

She made her way to the stairwell near the bell tower.  The winding passageway would shelter her from the moonlight briefly and so long as she heard the Matriarch’s wings she needn’t worry.  The skirmish had created plenty of commotion above the city square. A patrol would likely be closing in on her position. 

She made her way from corner to alley, alley to doorway in her quest toward the heart of the city.  The rust hew of the buildings slowly gave way to more granite ornament. The closer she moved to the heart of the city, the more the solid stone composed the majority of the buildings.

She rounded a corner as she started making her ascent up the hill towards the old keep’s high walled gates when she caught sight of a patrol.  Two guardsmen walking through the night shoulder to shoulder.  Their centurion helms gliding with a practiced march.  They wore ring mail, the kind a duelist might wear; protecting from slices but worthless to a blunt weapon. Now is as good a time as any, she thought.  Their swords were still in their scabbard and their eyes didn’t waver from their path; she could have easily slipped past them but she had been waiting for this opportunity.

Darting out of the shadows just as they passed, her unsheathed her dagger plunged deep into the guardsman’s neck.  He gasped silently as the knife pierced artery and esophagus, blood sprayed her hand but the man was already falling to the ground as she reached her hand back to grasp the short sword at her hip.  She drew in time to see a boy, just past his sixteenth dawn, sword drawn and shakily staring at her. He’d not even drawn his sword into guard position; he just stood, shocked.

It was recognition she saw in his face. She slammed the flat of her blade across his – dropping  it with barely a start, he never took his eyes from hers.  She knew him, of course; he had left the Ministry less than two months ago, drafted into military service.  The men who volunteered younger we told grand stories of spreading light and order to a land engulfed in chaos.  Like most his age, he jumped at the chance to make a name for himself in a war he would never know the true meaning behind.  Staring at the panic in his eyes, she knew he would have died not even knowing what it meant to live if she weren’t the one to catch him off guard.

She opened her root gate and grasped him by the chain tunic, lifting him off the ground.  He sputtered softly but was too stunned for anything more.  The stinging smell of urine wafted from the lad as she stood staring up at him.  She let her sword hang limply to her side; the wound in her shoulder had bled completely through the bandage and now burned with renewed vigor.

His mutters began to get louder and Gallet was forced to shush him with the tip of her blade to his ribs.  The boy nodded quickly in understanding, tears formed gently around his eyes; any moment he might start sobbing and pleading – she needed to make this quick.

“Run to the gate. Find the captain. The Lord’s Keep is under attack by legions  of chaos.  He must disengage from the target and retake the Keep.” She paused, waiting for recognition but saw none, the boy must have been in shock.  She lowered him to the ground slowly – the strength in his legs failing him as he fell directly to his knees.  She knelt down softly in front of him.  She knew Kayne well.  He was such a happy child, even in the face of the brutality of factory life; it was impossible for Gallet to see him as a solder. He would always be one of her children. 

“Kayne, you must do this.  Take my message to your captain, you’ve seen at least fifty with your own eyes and fear for the Lord’s safety.” A spark of recognition lit in his eyes and he nodded curtly before she went on, “Once you do this, run, to the west.  If you reach the base of Sunder’s Peak my friends can help you.”

His wide eyes looked up at her with shock, “Mist-st-st-ress Gallet, I can’t do that!  I’m a p-p-part of the Order now.” Anger made its way into his blubbering.

She stood then, her full shadow casting over his weeping face and murder shown in her eyes. “You’ve made an oath that you cannot possibly comprehend.” She said with the rage of a mother disobeyed. “Flee now. Reassert your life as your own or you will have me to contend with.”

He balked back from her with a sob.  He nodded then, not in acquiescence, but in relief.  He was a child, after all.  She hopped that he would have a chance to find his will before others tried to take it from him again.

She backed away and pulled the knife from the other man’s neck, wiping the blood off on her leather bracers before handing it to Kayne, hilt first.  He flinched back from her as she pulled it free, covering his eyes. “Show this to the Matriarch.  She will know what it means.” The rough iron of the hilt was wrapped in cloth stained from years of blood and grime; on the hilt bore a simple, rough carved sigil stamp: a circle around two over lain letters, GV.

He reached out, accepting the offering between sobs.  When he looked up to apologize to the only woman he’d ever wanted to call mother, he found himself alone in the moon lit bathed street.

*

The archer’s assault upon the sky had come in waves but the Matriarch knew Gallet was wreaking havoc in her wake.  Her wing song emanated into the night, and though she was little more than a shining black smudge in the night sky, the song  gave the solders a target.  She couldn’t maintain an altitude greater than the arrow’s range for the chill and lack of atmosphere would begin to suffocate her, and the children.  The Order’s recurve bows were only as accurate as the men firing them, but she dared not test them further than necessary.  She had avoided enough close calls thus far to respect the training the Order gave their men.

She hadn’t seen Gallet armed since they were children.  In the days before her wings began to sprout, the Matriarch had been sickly – they told her later it had been her body storing energy to bud her wings upon adolescence – Gallet had been the one to gather food, to interact with the world. Gallet brought so many of them together, sharing scavenged resources and creating a sense of family – of safety – for the first time in the Matriarch’s life.

That knife had been her first impression of Gallet. The street-toughs had pinned her down, taking her shoes anything else that was loose. If not for Gallet they may have raped her and left her for dead. She had been a child, just past her sixth dawn. Gallet had appeared, sent by the creator himself, her avenger barely older than she with that knife in her hands. She was so small back then, it had looked like a sword. It had been a hard life but Gallet had given her everything. That simple knife had been the champion of their entire world. Weeks later, she had seen the initials on the base of the knife from its sheath in her belt asGallet was tucking her into bed. “What does G.V. stand for, Gallet?”

“It stands for Gallet and Venara, little sister,” she said with a smile. “Now it’s off to bed, I need you to find your strength for me okay?”

It had taken years before the Matriarch did find her strength. When it came so did her clan and she abandoned her sister in her time of need. Time had hardened Gallet and the Matriarch felt a tinge of guilt. Gallet had honed herself into a deadly duelist – the way the sword looked at her hip was all the evidence the Matriarch needed of that.

The past must be left in the past, she thought. All I can do is repay a debt that can never be repaid. It was an uneasy thought and the details of Gallet’s plan, or lack-there-of, worried the Matriarch.

If there were as many solder’s as Gallet had asserted, her distraction would not be enough for the Matriarch to escape unpursued, and the Order finding their roost was not an option.  It had taken her two days to approach Kanton by foot through the forest.  The road from Kanton that led to Sunder’s Peak went north for miles, circumventing the forest before turning south east.  If they planned to march on her it would take days.  A clever captain, however, would set patrols out into the forest; not expecting a Daeva of course but for the culprit to flee through the woods.  Whatever the future held, she could not let herself be pursued.

In that moment, she longed to have Gallet’s ability to glimpse into the future.

The children did not stir in their harnesses. She was approaching the eastern boarder of the town, still at the beginning of her flight, and the burden in her arms was wearing on her.  She remained focused, keeping her eyes turned down scanning the streets and roof tops for archers ready to open fire the moment she entered their view but the streets were empty.  If her experience had taught her anything, it was that no escape was simple and a careless laps in focus could cost her, and the children, their lives.

To Rise of the Order 3.1 > >

Rise of the Order 2.1

< < Back to Rise of the Order 1.2
Gallet makes her way into the city, giving the Matriarch - Venara - a chance to escape with the children.

Gallet was already a block north of the dormitory when she heard Venara’s wing song pass over head.  Though she had planned on being her friends distraction, she needed Venara to act as bate in order to sow confusion amongst the veteran guard.  Solders were in the city limits but she did not know where.  The Son had known about the Matriarch so there was bound to be archers posted at the city limits as well as, she hopped, here on the upper levels of the town square.

The moon was directly overhead now eliminating shadow except under direct overhang.  The square was a sort of court for the Children of Order.  A single red stone building encompassed it, pulled directly out of the earth by keepers of the Root-gate centuries before.  Where once was a bustling place of commerce, now was the home of endless bureaucracy.  The balcony below the bell tower had once been a used by auctioneers. Since the Order’s take over, it had been used as a priest’s parapet where disciples would preach the love of Order to the masses, quenching the fires of chaos and bringing unity to the outlands.

The only way they sought to quench the fire of chaos, however, was burning and pillaging everything she and her family had known for generations. Fight fire with fire, she thought, and we all get burned.

Venara’s wing song rained down on the square, the sound of a thousand crystal goblets humming with vibration; Gallet saw the guardsmen clearly, rising with the sound. It was a single squad, no more than six.  Gallet scanned the rest of the squares roof top and saw no movement.  She made her way to the west end of the square to begin her night of revenge.

Her modest attunement to the crown gate allowed her to feel the six men’s exact location even when she lost them from her vision ducking under the overhang of the square.  It was this same skill that found her the Head Mistress position with the Ministry and how she was able to keep Venara from sneaking up behind her.  Some could communicate this way, as the Son of Order had to organize this resistance, but she took the skill she had and used it to her best ability.  She jumped, swinging from one of the circular drainage posts connected to the roof and lifted herself onto the platform above.  The song of wings over head was the perfect cover to any noise she made.  The archers knocked arrows just as they came into her vision.  They loosed, headed straight for the Matriarch but she had seen them, diving with a sharp pitch to avoid them. 

The archers knocked again as Gallet leapt over the guard rail.  The first in the line knew he’d not turn in time to fire his arrow and slacked his bow while reaching for a belted knife.

He misjudged Gallet’s speed.  Tapping her root gate gave her a surge of strength she took into her legs, closing the distance in a matter of seconds.  She slammed her forearm into the bridge of his nose while halting the hand trying to draw the knife. He staggered back, blood coming from his broken nose as she slipped the knife from his sheath and drove it into the chest of the man next to him before he could lose the arrow toward the Matriarch.

With all the men in her sight she closed her crown gate, focusing instead on her third eye.  As the gate opened she watched as the companies sergeant drew his long sword and thrust it directly into her abdomen: a vision of the immediate future, one she could use to her advantage.  Before the thrust came she fell to her hands and hip, throwing a foot up and under the sergeants thrust striking wrist and pommel. With the crunching sound of the impact she knew the wrist was broken, as surely as the sword falling limply from his grasp did.  She wasted no time taking up the weapon, striking down two of the archers who had kept their focus on the Matriarch.

The guard with the broken nose began to run, seeing his comrades routed; Gallet pulled her last throwing knife from under her right arm with a backhanded fling, striking the man in the neck where no coif was there to protect.  He gurgled a final breath and stumbled to the ground. 

He third eye gate did not warn her of the coming arrow until it was nearly too late.  She swung sharply to the left and the arrow struck her in the right shoulder instead of just above her sternum.  She let out a grunt exchanging sword from right to left hand and swung the blade cutting through the beautifully hewed recurve bow and it’s wielder’s right hand. 

Bringing her sweeping blade around for another pass, she cut the man’s throat and he gurgled silently before falling forward.  The sergeant was behind her now on his knees, pleading.  She didn’t hear his words; every man was forced to serve The Order, but so long as they didn’t resist that command she found little room in her heart for pity.  Opening her root gate wide, a swirl of red light at the base of her spine, she sent her boot laces first into his face with the force of ten men.  His sputtering gasps followed him as he soared over the guard rail to land on stone floor of the square.

She panted heavily then; the arrow still protruding from her shoulder.  She kneelt down to catch her breath.  Opening her root gate so suddenly left muscles aching as they were overstrained from the boon the earth gave them.  When her gate closed, which it must else irrevocable fatigue overtake her, she was left with an adrenaline surge that made her light headed.  Venara’s wing song still hummed through the air.Gallet looked up to see her, wings beating hard against the air, regaining her altitude and making her way towards the perimeter of the city to the east.

She reached up tentatively to her shoulder and touched the arrow shaft; the arrow heads she saw lying about the ground were flat as daggers.  She gritted her teeth and tugged at the arrow.  It lurched and then slowly pulled out of her shoulder.  The arrow wasn’t tri-tipped, which would tear her muscle apart as she pulled it free, but the head was made of a porous stone; it ground and tore at her muscle tissue none the less as it worked its way free.

She watched as Venara flew over the commons, the large outermost part of the city.

The commons were a relatively new addition. Kanton was the most defensible position in the region, with the surrounding forest to the east and the sheer cliff face of a mountain range that wound in a crescent shape around the south west. The commons became the housing district for all the refugees after the Sundering. There was no money to channel the rock from the earth into living spaces: all of that had gone towards fortifying the walls.

Thinking about the Sundering always brought a shudder. She took the knife from her belt and cut off a strip of cloth from one of the fallen solders tying it around her shoulder wound to slow the bleeding. She had been a child of no more than six when the ground shook so violently that the earth of her family’s ranch had torn from beneath her feet. It had gone on for hours. In the end, their home destroyed, her family packed up what little they had left to start their journey to Kanton.

Then the golems appeared. She shuttered at the though – though it could have been from the blood loss.

Kanton’s councilmen begged The Order to come. The beasts seemed to attack at random then, crushing mercilessly anyone who crossed their path. Her family had avoided them without knowing, simply trying to avoid bandits and other opportunists come to take advantage of the confusion sown from the earthquake. It hadn’t been until they reached Kanton’s gates that the stories started to take shape, and the reality of what the golems were set in. The City Guard was stretched to the limits posted around the perimeter of the city, there hadn’t been a wall built then, and Gallet and her family huddled in the streets en mass with the other survivors.

It took four months. Gallet cried every night, but her father rallied the refugees together, organizing what semblance of sanitation and resources they could to survive. When the army arrived they brought with them Root-keepers who pulled the stone directly out of the ground to form the wall now surrounding Kanton and placed the guards around it.  With the golem threat pushed from everyone’s minds, a collective sigh of relief washed over the city. But it was then that the real blood bath began.

The Order referred to The Sundering as an incident of Chaos, and cast their dogmatic eyes upon the entire city. To banish Chaos from our lives, they demanded an oath of fealty. The council resisted to begin with, but one by one concessions were made. In the end Gorn, the Order’s most adamant supporter, was made Regent – Gallet found out later that his opposition on the council was relieved of their positions after their… execution.  Her father led a rebellion after they declared Kanton, and the lands surrounding it, property of the Order. She never saw him, or her mother, again.

Thinking of the past always brought a swell of emotions back, but she had long sense passed the point of tears. No, tears had gotten her nowhere. Anger was a much more suitable emotion for action. There was nothing more she could do for the wound in her shoulder; she had to press on to make sure Venara wasn’t pursued.  Instead of following Venara’s path toward the edge of the city however, she turned to the cliff face – the backbone of the city – to the heart of the Order in Kanton.

On to Rise of the Order 2.2 > >