Murtagh Spork: Part 2 Chapter 10 - Softly Creeping...

[ultimate_cheetah]

 

Hello, everyone. This chapter is quite short.

The chapter starts with Murtagh lying awake at night. He uses his mind powers to check if everyone is asleep, and then creeps to a chest, using the word for quiet, Maela, in the ancient language to make sure the lid doesn’t creak. He then gets his sword and other things out of the chest. He leaves behind the guard uniform because he doesn’t feel comfortable wearing it, although he admits to himself that it could help him avoid attention. We don’t get any clue why he doesn’t want to wear the uniform, let alone why that reason is strong enough to make Murtagh do something to make the mission harder. 

He then sneaks out of the barracks. There’s a tense moment where he trips over a cot in the dark and a guard stirs, but he makes it to the archway leading to the tunnels without incident. 

He does not use an invisibility spell. Maybe he doesn’t know one. But he also doesn’t use Maela to muffle whatever noises he could make, which is something we know he can do.

 Murtagh goes down some stairs and gets to the tunnels, which he thinks are made by humans instead of elves, which is what a minor character had said earlier. He sees a secure door that’s guarded and realizes that’s where he has to go. He needs to get past the guard, though, and the guard is warded against magical attacks. He uses the Name to get past the guard’s defenses, and then puts him to sleep. He catches the guard, but the pike the guard was holding falls on the ground. 

Murtagh does not use the quiet spell at this moment either.

He pauses to see if the noise got attention, though no one comes. He watches a spider as he waits at one point, looking at it in disgust. Why he even notices a spider on the wall is a mystery to me. Anyway, no one from the barracks is coming. Given that Murtagh descended an entire set of stairs to get to the tunnels, I wouldn’t be too worried. I do wonder why there aren’t any more guards in these tunnels, though. If I was keeping werecat kittens in a creepy basement, I would definitely make sure the entrance was well-guarded.

Murtagh goes to the door, and it doesn’t open, because it is locked. Murtagh’s about to use magic, but decides to search the guard for keys instead, and, sure enough, the guard has one. I find it funny that he’s an untrained magician, but jumps to magic for mundane things. He opens the door and goes in. The chapter ends. 

I don’t really have anything else to say about this chapter. It should have been incorporated into the next one. I don’t really know why this had to be separated out. Also, if I were Murtagh, I would be using the quiet spell everywhere. I can excuse him not using the invisibility spell, since he may not actually know it, but after the first tripping incident, come on. 

The chapter also managed to be repetitive, even with this small number of pages. Twice, Murtagh accidentally makes a noise, and waits to see if guards come/anyone is awake. Twice, nothing happens. Makes him seem kinda clumsy, honestly. Also, that’s a moment that kind of needs to be used sparingly. Once was plenty. 

Also, there's an elipsis in the chapter title for some reason. It isn't necessary.

Anyway, next up is The Door of Stone with Snarkbotanya

Comments

[epistler]

The timeline is basically impossible to keep track of. For one thing it just seems to be spring for the entire thing until after the war, when winter FINALLY bothers to show up. Plus we've got Elain's pregnancy which is wildly out of whack but does at least indicate that less than a year has passed between book one and the early chapters of book four. "Overlong pregnancy" really doesn't tell us anything meaningful.

I mean I tend to get timeline issues too but at least I go back and fix it later! And when I had a pregnant character she gave birth at the end of one of the sequels after being impregnated early in the first book so now we have it confirmed as to how much time has passed. Then time is further marked based upon how old her child currently is.

I actually think he should have led with the illusions he used against Nasuada!

The really sad part is that in many ways torture via illusions and nightmares is WAY more fucked up and if used properly can fuck up the victim ten times more effectively than boring generic whips and hot pokers. And it's a better option if you don't want to accidentally kill the victim, too, because if you do it properly you can convince them they're in agonising pain while leaving their actual body untouched. The worst thing one of my characters went through wasn't being starved and beaten in a dungeon; it was descending into trauma induced psychosis after the fact.

[pangolin20]

Exactly! Given how easy it is to keep track of the timeline is some places, I think the larger time skips could have been covered well, too.

And yes, that'd be much more safe and effective. The part I was thinking of was especially the gaslighting; using it on someone like Thorn from hatching would have meant he had a quite hard time getting out of Galbatorix's control.