Flailing

Art by Rae Johnson, original story by Leland Masek, editing by me. In between some of the larger posts, I wanted to give a look into the creative process we use for War Torn/Rale. The story was the concept we used to flesh out the idea of this character’s–Judiah’s–death scene, a pivotal moment in the history of our world. Your context is certainly limited, but that’s the intent–what do you glean from these images and words?

Forty hands with forty daggers will find the hole in Judiah’s unbreakable flesh.

And that is what happened.

Judiah, False God of Wind and Time. Was stabbed in the armpit by a random, thrashing, dying girl. With a blade from her grandmother, meant for crops, a tiny, cutting blade. As he held her down and lowered the Arm of Justice to her skin, turning first her hair, then her scalp, to ash, as if caressing her with love. Her random flailings hit flesh like stone over and over, the sound of steel chipping at rock ringing out, nauseating, infamous in Judiah’s wake of destruction. Until a strike landed wet and hot in her hand.

And Judiah’s eyes opened wide. And he blinked. And the Arm of Justice drifted inward, obliterating the poor child’s face as he fell, dying.

The blade had found a gap in his uncanny invincibility, a gap that had not existed the year before, a gap that grows from magic wearing thin. But Judiah had never known his tools well enough to become careful. And like that, his powers of Wind and Time, which had made him God-like for twenty years, simply and utterly failed him.

Top Image: Flailing, by Rae Johnson, commissioned for War Torn/Rale