This is a Dead Story, I have lost all motivation and drive to do anything with it, posted to get some feedback on how it's written or anything else you may think of of it.

It was a dark and stormy night... actually it wasn’t, that’s just how all stories like this are supposed to start innit. Okay, let me try this again; it was actually a rather pleasant morning, the sun just peeking over the horizon, casting dazzling refractions in the sea, the sky shifting from a delicate pink to a rich blue marred only by thin, wispy clouds leaving patterns in the heavens that reflected the beauty of the surf below them, and a gentle breeze, barely strong enough to ruffle your clothes, but still brisk and refreshing the way the sea breeze is meant to be.

Not that I was in any position to admire it, being as I was, ‘fighting for my life’ against a quartet of my father’s pet goons. There weren’t a real threat to me though, it takes more than 4 emancipated Black-lungs to take down a trained battlemage, just a pesky irritation ruining a perfect morning on the seaside at South Ward.

Wait, I’ve done it again haven’t I, you have no idea what I’m talking about do you. Right, from the beginning; I am Amarantha Græy, born Auckland Græy, second son of Cuthbert Græy, King of Berniesland. Got given as a ward to Lord Keegan (Master of the Fortress of St. James and Lord of Eldon and of Monk’s Tongue) as collateral for a trade deal when I was 4, some political smeg went down that I really don’t care about and I wound up thrown out into Eldon’s scratlands just before I turned 7. Got taken in by the mystics that live in the shadow of the old walls, discovered both who I am and my aptitude for the magics, taught me the arts and helped me become me and... stop interrupting!

...Oh, how does this all matter to you? Well once I’d given daddy dearest’s punks a bit of a beating and gave ‘em a good zapping with my wand, this weird guy that had been watching it from on the wall starts clapping. And when I say weird I mean wee-ird, bloke looked like he was wearing a whole outfit of way-back-when gear, and not the rugged stuff, a brilliant white wormthread tunic and flawless grey woollen jack and trews. The sorta stuff daddy and Keegan only had a couple of bits of and only ever wore indoors when dealing with each other and their ilk, ya know stupidly expensive smeg.

So richboy, his names Hrothgar, you’ll meet him in a bit, is standing there congratulating me, looking at me like a prize marrow at the harvest fête. Kinda skeevey if I’m being honest, and says he's got a job for me, lass like me that usually means something filthy. There I am, me blood is up, had me morning ruined, and it sounds like he's propositioning me, well I did what any right minded girl would do and shot a thunderbolt at him.

What's that look for, there’s plenty of magic staves in the armoury here so it shouldn’t be a surprise to you. Right, so it should have killed him, or at least knocked his pompous arse off the seawall onto the beach, but he just stands there looking bored. You ever get that, when the guy you’re fighting straight up ignores you, kinda kills any momentum from building up.

Ah yea, the job, well we’re sat in it arn't we, he needed a full on traditional adventurer party to get in here, needed me for all the magic locks in here, needed my old boss for all the mechanical smeg... my boss? Oh right, not mentioned him yet, yeah, well you keep asking me to jump ahead, he's the ald gadgey over there in the leather dungarees, come on Hackworth giz us a wave. That’s about as much as you’ll get outta him, he’s still a bit hacked off ‘bout us dragging him away from his normal work.

Hrothy isn’t that bad, once we got past him sic’ing some of my daddy’s goons on me to get them to find me for him. Man like him doesn’t do anything he doesn’t need to, and with the sorta scratch he throws about, he can get most of what he needs done done by someone else. But then there’s peeps like me that he can't just pay off, at least not with wonga, we need something better... That’s private! I don’t know you anywhere near well enough to tell you anything about what he's giving me.

Well ‘Shields isn’t really an appropriate place to discuss the really serious things like this, and he wanted me to introduced him to Hackworth, so we took a cuddy cart into the Eldon and negotiated on the way. The job seemed pretty simple at the time, come here and open a few doors, bit niave really, if he’s gathering a party to make a play for a way-back-when vault like this one, of course everyone else important is going to take notice.

Now stop trying to get up or I’ll hafta give you a dose of night-night juice. Cryo-stasis is one of the nastiest magics I know and if you get up and moving to quick you’ll do yourself a mischief.

‘What is it a about the magics that makes its wielders all turn so... odd.’ It was about the only coherent thought I could make about Amarantha Græy as we took one of the most peculiar train rides of my life. As far as I could tell, the train appeared to have been made from an old auto-carriage with the top cut off and an equally antique caravan hitched behind it, the teamster sat where the engine would’ve been and a trio of tiny pony’s pulling it. It became easier to tune out her manic ramblings as we went into one of the old underground Metro tunnels and I was genuinely surprised at just how well it had survived compared to the bits of London and Paris’s systems that I’ve seen.

Note; easier doesn’t mean entirely, “...so he's all excited about restoring it, going on about how its wicked fast and all that, and he's never thought about how to get the smegging thing into the water from his workshop. He's a mile from the river up on the steep side of the valley with the most intact bit of the way-back-when town in the way. Hey, if you've never seen it before you'll wanna get this sight properly.”

And that's as far as I got with it, other than a bare skeleton of a plot.