AN ELONGATED ABBREVIATION (Pt 1)

by Jay Squires

AN ELONGATED ABBREVIATION
(Not unlike cliffs notes for):
BOOK III
OF
THE TRINING
CHAPTERS 1-19

Faithful readers of The Trining: As you are no doubt tired of hearing, approximately the last one-third of Book III did not survive a computer crash. I'm in the process of re-creating them. Two chapters are done, but before I post them I thought it might be wise to provide the new readers a cliffs notes type abbreviation of the first 19 chapters of Book III. It will have the added benefit of being a kind of refresher for those who have been reading it all along. This is the first of three parts, to be posted (I hope) in consecutive days. I am promoting for enough FanStory cash to make it worth the readers' time.

Please understand it is not intended to have any of the dramatic build-up or character development of the original. I'm afraid, without much dialogue, it might be soporific. I hope not.

Finally, I trust the green highlights won't be too distracting. They will identify the characters, places and terms that are defined in the Author's notes.

# # #
(Part 1)

General Doctrex becomes conscious enough to hear Medic Braims Glassem and Special Colonel Eele Jessip discussing the wisdom of having him transported back to Camp Jerri-Fibe to recover.

Eele won’t commit to it.

Doctrex, who makes his consciousness known to them for the first time, assures them he is going on. His troops were already behind schedule, since his mysterious gash in his side (perhaps caused by the fall from his crossan, Rain Spirit II), had rendered him comatose. The rest of the army had been divided into eight units, fanned out, but all are prepared to meet at the Plain of Djur, near Glnot Rhuether’s Palace of Qarnolt, in about ten days.

Eele leaves to return to his troops while Braims stays to attend to Doctrex as they leave.

Doctrex’s first meeting place is to be with the Profue brothers, who had gone on with their troops weeks earlier. Giln Profue had messaged him that Zurn (the brothers’ intellectually challenged adopted brother) had indeed deserted to be with them. Doctrex had suspected as much.

Doctrex’s troops arrive to find the weary, but elated, brothers who had successfully defended their camp against the Pomnots, and one of the dead brutes had been dragged into camp and was ready to be examined.

Meanwhile, Doctrex reminds the brothers, concerning Zurn, that the penalty for desertion during wartime is death.

He privately interviews Zurn and determines that he fully knew he was deserting when he concealed himself among his brothers’ troops as they left. But Zurn felt he had to be there to protect them from danger—as when he snuffed out the flaming soldier during the earlier fireball attack. Doctrex concludes he was deserting to go into danger, not escaping it out of fear.

Until he can be tried, Doctrex decides Zurn will accompany him as he continues on. The Profue brothers would then proceed after them and unite with them several days later.

Before Doctrex’s troops leave he attends the examination of the dead Pomnot, one of Glnot Rhuether’s expendables. At over six-and-a-half-feet tall and weighing more than three-hundred-and-sixty pounds, he is truly a brute, harvested for killing.

Doctrex and his troops continue on.

From the beginning Glnot Rhuether—using his powerful magic—had invaded the minds of many soldiers, including Doctrex, usually in their dreams, (which all but Doctrex stubbornly insisted on calling visions). But the closer they get to the Plain of Djur the more his magic is manifesting on a grand scale.

Now that Doctrex is waiting for the Profue Brothers to arrive, Glnot Rhuether invades the soldiers’ subconscious minds, en masse, clothed as a wholly different kind of Pomnot, the imaginary creature their parents warned them about as children, (the equivalent of the Bogeyman), who hid under their beds waiting to carry them away. With mass hysteria rampant in the camp, that imaginary foray, it turns out, is a diversion to keep them from the actual attack, a few hundred yards in the opposite direction. Once they finally do battle there, Doctrex is wounded in an arrow storm.

When the Profue brothers arrive, Doctrex is recuperating. The brothers and one of their soldiers are ill, and near death. Medic Braims bring the brothers to health, but the other dies. Meanwhile, Doctrex’s wound heals, though it would leave him with a limp.

The day before all the combined troops are to proceed onward, Giln and Sheleck tell Doctrex of a simultaneous sleeping vision they had the night before. It was an elaborate prophecy in lofty language about how the brothers’ troops would be destroyed but that Doctrex would arrive at the Castle of Qarnolt for the marriage of Rhuether and Axtilla. Doctrex tries to assure them Rhuether is only trying to undermine their confidence.

They decide they are ready to continue on. Doctrex leaves behind fifty soldiers and several of Braims’ medics to treat the remaining injured until they are able to join with them later.

Doctrex decides to talk to his troops before they depart. The men are left feeling a renewed brotherhood and respect, but just before they get the order to march, a soldier tumbles head-first off his crossan.

Braims says he was probably dead before he fell. He reveals the bizarre results of the autopsy. There was no blood whatsoever, and when he opened him up, the room was filled with the scent of the pink blossoms, endemic only to the southern province. Later, Braims confesses he is hearing voices in his head. He hears: "One will die for every three men who fall." Doctrex is able to convince Braims he isn’t losing his mind, but meanwhile, others are hearing voices in their heads as well. One, by the name of Gotzel, confesses he not only hears the same message, but an additional one: "Keep the count. Be alert!"

They must continue on, even with the fear affecting the morale of the troops. Doctrex is planning to speak again to the men that night.

In the meantime, there is a horrible blizzard twenty-five miles from Rhuether’s Qarnolt castle. When it subsides, Sheleck reports that during the midst of the blizzard he heard the call, “Man down.” Doctrex gives him permission to form a search party. While the men are shoveling snow in preparation for their encampment, and dragging a huge cache of limbs and tree trunks from a protected side of the cliff they would be camped against, Sheleck returns to tell of two empty saddles but no bodies found. They make a renewed search.

Sheleck’s second search results in the discovery of one body. Doctrex has Sheleck and another soldier take the body to Braims in secret—also swearing the others who were with him to secrecy. Since one of the empty saddles was from the brothers’ troops and one from Doctrex’s, he has the brothers take role for theirs and Engle and another soldier take role from his troops. Both return reporting all are present and accounted for.

The mystery deepens. When Braims comes to Doctrex’s tent with the result of his examination, he is flustered. He hands Doctrex the I.D. from the body. It says, “Doctrex” on it. Braims goes on to describe the bizarre incident of poking the bicep of the partially thawed corpse and witnessing the entire arm turn to powder.

Doctrex asks Braims to stay while he has his talk with his men.

With all the men assembled, Doctrex begins by admitting his fear that the last 25 miles to the Castle of Qarnolt will test their courage like no other time. He persuades them to own up to their personal fear and with simple eloquence tells them they must fight on in spite of their fear. He gives them the example of how Rhuether had got into so many of their heads so they saw Pomnots, that were wholly imaginary, climbing up the sides of hills intent on gobbling them up. He went on to show that the very soldiers who helped them overcome their fear and see it as just that, might be the ones to need their help this next time. They were brothers, ready to help each other.

He brings the subject around to the voices some were hearing in their heads. He says he wonders if there are those who are keeping it heroically secret. He asks who has been hearing voices. One person speaks up. It is Braims. When he tells them the content of his voices, another pipes up. It is Gotzel. With his confession, others come forth.

After summarizing the variety of magic that Rhuether employed, including Lesn’s feat of impossible physical strength and his friend Morz’s unexplained explosion, the phantom birds that attacked them and one of which carried the missing Advance Intelligent Men's, Arz Makel's head in its talons, Doctrex advances a theory. He feels that as powerful as Rhuether’s magic is, he suffers under a division of attention, and his inability to sustain illusion. The larger the illusion, the more he is weakened. They need to look for ways to use his weakness against him.

That night, he hears Giln outside his tent calling his name. He invites Giln and Sheleck in. Sheleck is in shadow. Giln tells Doctrex about how the men are planning a mutiny. They feel Doctrex is dangerous. The troops want a father-figure leading them, not a brother. Sheleck breaks in to tell him the men also feel Zurn should be executed or put under constant guard. Giln is being distant and formal. He says the men feel Doctrex is a fraud. Giln laughs cruelly.

Doctrex hears Engle calling out to him. He realizes he had a dream, or vision.

The next day, on the final leg to Qarnolt, they are to encounter Rhuether’s most ambitious magical extravaganza to date.

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CHARACTERS AND TERMINOLOGY FROM THE GREEN HIGHLIGHTED TEXT

GENERAL DOCTREX: Protagonist, Leader of Kabeezan Army.
MEDIC BRAIMS GLASSEM: Doctrex's Chief Medic. Headstrong.
SPECIAL COLONEL EELE JESSIP: He and his men are reason for Doctrex's mission to rescue them.
CAMP JERRI FIBE: The Last Kabeezan outpost. Center for training & weapons.
CROSSAN: Equivalent of a horse
RAIN SPIRIT II: Doctrex's crossan
PLAIN OF DJUR: Where All Kabeezan Armies were to reconnoiter before final attack on Glnot Rhuether.
GLNOT RHUETHER: Master Magician who intends to conquer Kabeez
PALACE OF QARNOLT: Where Glnot Rhuether lives with his aleged bride-to-be Axtilla, Doctrex's love.
PROFUE BROTHERS: Knew Doctrex before he was General. His closest "brothers" in army.
GILN PROFUE: The oldest Profue Brother (Lieutenant)
SHELECK PROFUE: The youngest Profue Brother (adjutant Lieutenant)
ZURN PROFUE: Adopted brother to Profues. Mentally challenged.
POMNOT: A huge beast (Rhuether's expendable Killing machine)
POMNOT (2ND MEANING): To Kabeezans the equivalent of the bogeyman, threats of whom parents used to use to discipline children
AXTILLA: Doctrex's love, who is Rhuether's prisoner, and alegedly his bride-to-be.
GOTZEL: One of the soldiers who, along with medic Braims, heard voices (Rhuether possessed.)
ENGLE: Doctrex's courier after his first courier became an AIM
AIM: Advanced Intelligence Men -- specialized troops who performed surveillance and espionage for Kabeezan Military.
LESN: One of the officers of the Kabeezan Army who, when possessed by Rhuether, performed impossible feats of strength. Committed suicide when lover, Morz, died.
MORZ: former officer, Lesn's lover, died when he exploded.
PHANTOM BIRDS: Gigantic "Magical" Birds that dropped fire eggs on the troops.
ARZ MAKEL:An AIM (Advance Intelligence Man) who died while spying and was "magically" in talons of one of the phantom birds.

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A chapter in the book THE TRINING Book Three

AN ELONGATED ABBREVIATION (Pt 1)

by Jay Squires

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