Dec 19, 2015

Black Stained Winter: Chapter 12 - "Exit the White"

The black stained assassin rushes forward with knife on his hand. His eyes look feral and focused on the man before him, ignoring the lady with fire floating around her. He moves fast but without elegance. His steps are heavy and too powerful, leaving behind series of cracks on the ground.

But, with that kind of kicking power, he’s already in front of his target in no time. This time, unlike Vahn previous sudden burst of speed, Rick is ready. He’s prepared and unfazed by the speed the assassin shows. With ease, he blocks one of Vahn’s attack. Yet, without any pause Vahn releases another attack. And another. And another.

More prepared than before, this time Rick can handle this kind of barrage of attacks. Each of the attacks is handled with no discernable difficulty. With more control of the battle, Rick able to confidently throw counters. But, even with losing most of his reasoning, Vahn still able to handle Rick’s counters and delivers counter-counters.

The two men continue to trading blows. The speed of their execution is so fast and hard to follows. To untrained eyes, they look like a blur and looks fuzzy. And even with their superhuman speed and senses, every now and then an attack connect, both from Rick and Vahn. Some of Vahn’s attacks slip through Rick’s defenses and so do Rick’s.

Although the two of them get hit a lot of times, but the damage resulted is different. Vahn is using his knife to attack, thus each time it went unblocked a long wound cut through Rick’s skin. And his punches hit Rick’s face several time too, leaving his nose bleeding.

Rick’s punches are more powerful than Vahn’s. It hits Vahn several time in the face and body; it even breaks some of Vahn’s bone. Yet, every time Vahn get hits, he stays unfazed. He doesn’t stagger nor slowing down. It’s weird how Vahn able to withstand all that attacks without getting hindered by it.

And then, Tama, who all this time watching from the sideline waiting for opening, notices something. She notices that Vahn’s left arm is already broken more than twice, yet he’s still using it vigorously as if it’s never broken in the first place.

“Mister Hobo! He can heal his wounds almost instantly!”

Dec 11, 2015

Black Stained Winter: Chapter 11 - "Enter The White"

“So, this is your real form?” Rick asks Tama followed by taking a bite from bread on his hand. He still can’t wrap his head around the fact of Tama’s real form.

“Yeah, this is how I truly look,” Tama stands and spins a bit while smiling, showing off her now-adult-like body. Her long pink hair and blue Japanese kimono sway around as she slowly spins.

“Hm,” Rick averts his eyes and looks slightly up to the trees. He’s not really comfortable looking at such a beauty as close as this.

“Oh, oh!” Tama leans forward to Rick who’s sitting down eating his bread, “My memories has returned too! I guess the black thing clouded it or covered it or something.”

“That’s great news!” Rick looks happy from the news. Tama looks happy seeing Rick happy. 

She finds a good spot and sits in a kneeling position on the ground, “Alright then, what do you want to know, mister?”

“Hm, let’s see. First of all, where are you from and why are you here?”

“That’s easy to answer. Tama comes from Spiritrealm. There are gates scattered all around the Spiritrealm that connected to Earthrealm. And just so you know, I’m one of the designated guardian of one of the gate,” Tama looks very proud as she says that.

“Although,” she continues, “I don’t think the gate I guarded connected to this particular area. The gate should be connected to a place called Japan.”

“Huh. That’s really far away from here. How did you get here?”

“That’s a really good question. I’m not really sure how I get here either. Hmm…” Tama closes her eyes and appears to be thinking or trying to remember something.

Dec 4, 2015

Announcement: My Blunder, Chapter List, and No Chapter This Week

Hello and welcome to 'Wings of The Ravens' (WotR) website. This is the author speaking, Benard HP aka mrBenz.

This is the first announcement and non-story post since the start of the series and it is needed because I made a very bad blunder.

I've mentioned in several place that I write WotR without a proper outline and doesn't really have rigid draft or planning. This means that although I have visions and basic ideas of how the story will go, I make the details and chapters on the way. This also sometimes ended with new ideas suddenly pops and then added to the chapters and even some chapters started like that.

You see, I've had a 5 month hiatus between chapter 5 and chapter 6 which was the time where I lost motivation to write even though I want to continue the story. This, unfortunately, resulted in me forgetting that chapter 5 actually ended around two in-universe days after the start of the series. Since I already wrote chapter 6 halfway before the hiatus, when I finally get motivated again I just continued that and didn't bother to check chapter 5. I ended up thinking that it still the day after chapter 3 and chapter 4 not happened yet while in fact it's already two days and chapter 4 is already happened.

This resulted in the wrong chapter 9; it was written thinking that chapter 4 hasn't happened yet and thus (SPOILER) Aqua is still unconscious and Ren's sister, who was mentioned in chapter 4, is still there. Of course, if we're looking at chapter 5 we would know that this is wrong.

Thus, I wrote a new chapter 9 with the correct timeline. I already post it right before this announcement. It contains a new and different story of Ren but still the same story of Rick and Tama. There's only a slight edit and adjustment to correct the time on Rick's part of the story and the whole Chapter 10. The old chapter 9 is still online for the sake of completeness and a reminder of how stupid I was.

Another news, based on suggestion of a good gentleman on the comment section, I included a 'Chapter List' page that listing all chapters in chronological order. It will be updated each time a new chapter released. You can find it on the Navigational bar under the title banner on each page.

And last, a little unfortunate, but the result of day's mistake and rewrite of chapter 9 means there will be no chapter 11 this week. The time needed to check my mistake and find a way to fix it was actually need more time than I expected. Please expect chapter 11 to be released next week as usual on Friday.

That's all for the announcement for today. Thank you for reading and please continue to support Wings of The Ravens.

Black Stained Winter: Chapter 9 - "Red Blood and Black Mist"

The sun is already high. But, as like any other day in winter, the sun is unable to make people warm. And such is the condition of one small room in a certain building in a certain part of the city. A young woman, sitting in the bed with her arm bandaged, is looking at one side of that room. There resides one small device that glowing red and radiating warmth all around the room.

“It’s one impressive little device,” Aqua, the young woman, is impressed with the portable heater. She’s curious about how the device work, but the pain from her injuries is winning against her curiosity. She decides that it’s better to just rest for now. She could ask the owner of the room about it later.

Aqua then turns her head to the book on her lap. It’s a ‘novel’, Ren said to her. A book that contains a fictional story created to entertain its reader. There’s a similar kind of book in Demonrealm, but novel is different. In Demonrealm, story books tell stories of grand adventure, heroic achievement, and grandeur. Yet, this particular novel she’s reading for example, although it tells story of achievement, is telling story of someone that’s insignificant to the world. But, to her amazement, it doesn’t lessen the excitement of the story.

She’s been reading this book since this morning when Ren went out. He said that he’ll be gone for a while, yet it’s already hours since he left. Aqua’s glad that she asked for some books before he left. With the help of general English dictionary and her basic English knowledge, she can learn quite a lot about Earthrealm simply from reading a book.

Although she’s having fun reading, but Aqua’s not too comfortable being alone. As a princess, she usually had companions almost all the time. Plus, it’s been a while since she had her breakfast. She’s not hoping for Ren to be home soon, she just want him to bring her something to eat.

*click*

Aqua looks to the door when she hears the door’s unlocked. The door opens and there he is in his red jacket and pink scarf. Ren comes inside and closes the door behind him. Aqua is about to comment on his lateness but then she stops herself when she notices something. There’s blood dripping from his arm and staining his white shirt. Aside from the arm and gaping wounds on his stomach, there’s also small cuts and bruises here and there.

“Ah, I’m back,” Ren greets Aqua in a nonchalant way despite his condition.

“Wait, what happened to you?” Aqua closes her book and put it on her side.

“Hm? Ah, this? Nothing much. Just got into a fight,” Ren removes his scarf and hangs it in the hanger near Aqua’s scythe.

“Why are you act like it is nothing? That wound,” Aqua points to Ren’s stomach, “looks really bad!”

“Wait,“ Ren turns toward Aqua as he about to removes his jacket, “Are you worried about me?”

“Of course, I am!” She answer without hesitation, “if something happens to you, who would take care of me while I’m in this condition?”

“That’s a valid reason, I guess. Ugh,” Ren flinches as he remove his jacket. It seems that the sleeve of his jacket is sticking slightly to the wound on his arm and hurts a bit when it’s pulled.

“Hey,” Aqua calls Ren.

“Hm?”

“You need help?”