A Secret Man of Blood

Bonus Material: Sig Speaks 7

Author's note: this is a bonus chapter, written with amusement in mind, and is not an actual continuation of the story. When it comes to competitions or awards, chapters labelled "Bonus Material" should not be judged as part of the story. Thanks for reading.

***

"You're so shallow," Gary tells Sig. "You're every stereotype of a Dwarf turned up to eleven."

"Hey! My father was a stereotype, and his father before him, and his father before him, and so on! I come from a long line of stereotypes. And I bet you can't name one incident in which I've been shallow..."

*

Concussive blasts rain down on Sig's axe from a giant masked enemy wielding a scythe, the Dwarf barely blocking the ferocious assault. A kick sends Sig to the floor, the enemy lifting his scythe to finish the job.

"Wait Wait! Wait! If you're going to kill me, at least take off your mask first so I can rate your face out of ten.

After a pause, the masked warrior removes his disguise, revealing a hideous warthog head laden with tusks and a mucus-covered moustache. Sig covers his eyes.

"Man! You are one seriously ugly motherfucker! Three out of ten, at best. You stink too! Put that mask back on and kill me now." After a brief pause. "...Do you want to go out sometime?"

*

"...That's desperate, and desperate is the opposite of shallow," Sig argues. "I'm whatever the opposite of shallow is: I'm dense."

"You'll get no argument from me."

"You know what I meant," Sig smiles. "I value personal qualities above all else. Any woman I date has to be kind."

"I imagine she does: going out with you is a form of charity."

"You can take a break from persecuting me, you know," Sig grins.

"I'll take one day off a week: like God...or Craig David."

"Wow, that's a joke with an extremely limited appeal," Sig teases.

"So, I shouldn't include it in the story?"

"Let's just say I'd save it for the bonus chapters."

"I'm going to talk a little about the geography of The Continent, which is the largest landmass in the world of A Secret Man of Blood. Separated from Samaria by one thousand miles of the sundering sea, The Continent stretches for well over thirty thousand miles east to west, with Taburnia in the far west and the Scrovengi in the far east. One of the primary regions of The Continent is Midgard, a large sub-continent bordering the Great Red Forest east of Taburnia.

"Midgard contains no political or military superpowers, but has a population of over a billion spread across almost a hundred nation states, some of which are large and others practically city-states. It is perhaps the most racially-diverse area in the world, with dozens of non-human races and no one race or nation capable of dominating the others at present. The city-state of Dunpool, featured in A Secret Man of Blood, is located in Midgard but is also a part of the Samarian Empire. One-hundred-and-fifty years before A Secret Man of Blood, the human supremacist leader Cleon—"

"Total cunt," Sig whispers.

"One-hundred-and-fifty years before A Secret Man of Blood, the human supremacist leader and total cunt Cleon launched the Cleonic Wars, a series of conflicts in Midgard most comparable to the Second World War or the Napoleonic Wars. Over ten million people died, though Cleon and his Goths (natives of Gothrond, the country Cleon started his revolution from) were eventually defeated, but not before establishing a political philosophy which exists to this day—Cleonism, which is essentially fascism.

"The reason I mention all this is because part of Book Two takes place in Gothrond, Cleon's former homeland and formerly the strongest bastion of humanity in Midgard, it fell into decline and division after the great dictator's defeat, though is now recovering some of its former strength. New political ideas are developing in Gothrond, and the wider world, which could be even more explosive than the rise and fall of its former ruler."

"Good story, Papa G," Sig says.

"That is not becoming my nickname."

"Whatever you say, Papa G." Sig continues, voice suffused with cheer. "Anyway, I've got to go meet this girl I've been seeing. I think I'm in love."

"You've only known her for two days!"

"It'll be three days tomorrow."

"Yes, Sig, I know how mathematics works." As Sig runs off, Gary turns to the reader. "I'm going to be writing a synopsis soon, so I was wondering how you guys go about writing yours? Do you go through every chapter and try to distil the essentials from each one, or do you prefer a shorter summary with a more general tone? What kind of word count do you aim for? With regards to the Wattpad description of your story, I presume you approach that more as a blurb than a synopsis? What kind of information did you prioritise for it?"