"I, for one, have an idea that he will never bring this journey off…" – The Odyssey of Homer
“If you’re going to shoot me, boy,” Gralt said, gruffly shifting off his slightly age bent back the bundles of fire logs he’d been carrying up to the good witch’s house. “I’d kill me before Nyleth sends her wolves for me. Been feeling them at my heels these days.” Looking out at the burning village, he almost forgot his anger at the Shepherd’s son for being late to pick up his mother’s wood-share.
They had to trust the boy. They had no other choice. But as the night fell, and the chill came with it, the growing fear in Galdaya and Agatha’s chests grew hard to ignore.
The slave girl shook as she walked toward the two groaning, whimpering Savv Macthal had left before her.
I shadowed the entrance just as Muinn decided to take things into his own hands. He was stronger than most, from his having started apprentice work at the forge, under his ma. Most. I almost smirked. Then I remembered that that was the problem. He was only stronger than most. And he feels he should be more.
Macthal’s eyes narrowed and he felt his skin getting hotter. Lora put a finger to his lips before he could part them and give voice to that building heat.
When he fell back to his fore limbs, the songs had started. Sounds like the bone flutes of the Ancients, from before the tribes were split, played a tune at Ayer direction.
“You’re taking too long,” he said, talking around the place where he bit his screeching mask. It made her freeze mid-step to hear his words half garbled by the weak sound leaking from the mask with his breath. Macthal clicked his tongue. She was scared. Terrified. She felt her blood boiling though and that was what moved her to kill.
Do not be afraid of adding to your setting's origins hints of evil that allude to the acts that will eventually represent the opposite of your tale's thematic arguments.
The dark of every complete world is full of secret, slithering things, looking out covetously upon the lives--or the flesh--of those that live in the light.
The more layers of tension a writer can create on the basis of a thematic exploration; the more they can articulate their perspective on a moral argument through the drama of increasingly forced to interact elements of the characters' worlds, the more compelling any perspective the writer has can become.
Vault of Orendathos 