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This exercise stems off one single sentence. This sentence can be switched around, things can be omitted, or even changed. After writing as much as you can on this sentence, post what you came up with and a new sentence for the next person. Below is an example.




The sentence for the next person:
She woke up and looked around at the stone walls, wondering where the hell she was.

I'll have a go. I'm going to stem off of yours, sort of like the plot.

Sentence: She woke up and looked around at the stone walls, wondering where the hell she was.

She woke up and looked groggily at the stone walls surrounding her, wondering where the hell she was. She quickly took inventory of her surroundings: cold, slightly slimy stone walls, cold but dry stone floor, slightly less cold scratchy pallet, upon which she sat, iron door, barred from the outside, iron-barred window high up in the wall, dark void for a ceiling. She came up with one conclusion: dungeon.

Of course it was a dungeon. Where else would those filthy mud-eaters put their one and only (for then and ever more) master mage? Yes, she was a master mage. So why had she been captured? Shouldn't a mage be able to detect these things? Well, ordinarily, yes. Unfortunately, magic drains a person's strength; even a master mage can collapse from exhaustion if they use too much magic. That was what she'd done.

When the king of her land was killed...murdered...assassinated...the country had rebelled against Tiernan, their rival country, who had thought the king's kindness to be weakness. Everyone had fought. The master mage had fought with everything she had until she could no longer remain standing. She had slept in the woods where she had fallen, her comrades protecting her (for if she had been moved, she might have awakened and used too much more of her magic). The Tiernans had killed those who protected her. They must have had one of their own hedgewitches set a sleep on her and then taken her.

The master mage was brought out of her thoughts as the door clanked open and three burly, red-bearded men, each of them seven feet tall, entered the room. They were clothed in rough animal skins, some still wet with blood, either from the animals they had come from or the war raging at the countries' border. She stood shakily in an effort to look calm, collected, and (above all) defiant.

"You are too weak to fight," the first man said, his voice like nails on metal. He laughed, and the mage shivered uncontrollably. The first man turned to the others. "Kill her," he said, and stalked out of the room.

The mage took a step back as the other two advanced, heavy war-axes in their hands. Their grins were demonic, and the mage could see their teeth, filed to points, when they opened their mouths to laugh. Their red, forked tongues lashed out at her as their eyes...red as the blood they shed...surveyed her body, no doubt envisioning it bloody and mangled.

The torture lasted for only two hours, feeling much like two hours in hell would feel. Even then, she died not of a fatal blow, but of a loss of blood. All through those two hours, she uttered not a sound, and when she felt her life draining from her, she spit on the men with the last of her strength and laughed. With that laugh on her lips, she died. She had had the last laugh, as she had said she would back in her home time and again. It was truly the last, for as she died, she threw her magic out and bound the laughter of the world to her, to die with her. From that day forward, there was not a single laugh to be heard.

In her home, she was honored with the other dead on the day that the war was won. She was honored and mourned by those who knew her and respected by those who didn't. Carved on the wall with the names of those others who had died to save their country and avenge their king was a name, her name. Karuna, Master Mage and Sister to the King



Erm, that was longer than I expected. Whatever. The sentence isn't too great. Sentence: In that single moment, there was silence.