bladespark | I am definitely posting too much

At the knock on his door Aidan put down the book he'd been reading and rose. He felt mildly puzzled, Luke had said he might stop by tomorrow, they'd been seeing each other on a fairly regular basis for nearly a month now, but he wasn't expecting anyone today. Perhaps it was Lyra, though it was a little early for her, she usually closed down her shop and had her supper before visiting, and it wasn't even dark yet.

He swung the door open, to find a total stranger standing on the other side. It was a roe deer, young and with a modest rack of antlers, dressed as a tradesman of some kind. Aidan's attention, though, wasn't on that so much as on the crossbow the man was holding, pointed directly at his chest.

Without a word the deer fired, and Aidan had no time to dodge, the bolt took him in the center of his chest, directly through the heart. Pain blazed from the spot and he crumpled to his knees, hands clutching at the bolt's fletching, which stood out only a few inches, the whole length of it sunk through him. His hands felt weak, but he struggled to grip the crossbow bolt anyway. If he could just pull it out he'd heal. But he had to pull it out, else he might die.

"Now I shall have the chance to rectify my earlier mistakes," said a soft, deep, familiar voice. It was a voice Aidan heard in his nightmares, and he looked up to see that the deer had stepped aside and Bishop Loverde was standing there, his pale-scaled form filling the doorway. Aidan felt almost like he might faint. This had to be a dream, a nightmare, it surely couldn't be real.

Loverde reached out, his clawed hand touching Aidan's forehead, and the last thing Aidan saw was the dragon's sharp-toothed smile as the world faded to black and the nightmare claimed him completely.

Ah ha ha hahah! It's here! I am writing it right now! The moment I've been working towards for more than a year! The final confrontation, the climax, the all-is-now-revealed moment. Admittedly, most of what is going to be revealed will be stuff anyone who's been paying attention as they read would have at least some guesses about, but still! Aidan himself is going to be rather shocked, he's been a bit preoccupied living through it all and hasn't really managed to fill in the blanks properly.

The story is 90k words right now, and will probably clock in just under 100k when it's done.

Ohgods. And then I will edit it, and submit it to a publisher, and for once it won't be "Here's some shit I wrote, reject it if you like" it'll be "Here's my baby, please love it." Aiee!