Well yes, I got writers block, this has been lying around for about a year now, so thought everyone who wanted to could add to the story as it will never be finished otherwise.

It will be an interesting experiment.

Just don't type in Text Speak please :)

Darkness swallowed up the daylight again and still Abbey lay there, like she had been for the past four days.  She had given up even struggling to stand on the second morning when the sun had finally baked the blood soaked earth dry underneath her.  Abbey closed her eyes as the cold of the night seeped into her bones, she was even getting used to that, or maybe she was just one step closer to death.  The lacerations all over her legs didn’t even hurt anymore, she was numb from the waist down, she hadn’t had the strength too look at her legs for the past three days and they had stopped bleeding, at least she thought they had stopped bleeding. 

Abbey opened her eyes wearily as a dark shadow moved close to her, she pulled her sword too her side as she heard the heavy breathing of a large animal, she was not quite ready to become some scavengers dinner, not whilst she still had enough strength to life her sword, even though she couldn’t have moved her lower half if  her life depended on it.  The shadow sniffed on one of the many stinking corpses nearby.  Abbey felt her stomach wrench as she heard the tearing of flesh and the crunch of bone close too her, she let her sword fall too her side, glad that there was nothing left in her stomach to throw up.

(Cool so far. I wanna see where this goes.)

An icy wind rippled her clothes and made gooseflesh rise on her skin, its temperature seeming a personna of death. The thought of death had crossed her mind countless times, but it didn't worry her. It didn't send a cold flash of fear through her. She knew it was coming and it was something neither her nor anybody else could help. Everybody died. She had learned that.

Abbey closed her eyes, but visions flashed behind her lids and she snapped them open again. She didn't have the strength to do much else, save for move her sword a little if need be.

*Thanks Nessie for writing some, I want to see where it goes too, I hope people write a bit. *

Abbey opened her eyes as the dawn of the new day broke across the sky, she tried not too look at the half eaten corpse a little way too her right, but she could smell it.  The bodies where strewn all over the battlefield, most of them wore the same colours she did. Abbey half wished that she could close her eyes and die or that the swords had hit her heart, she managed a grim smile, but she had fought and fought until she could no longer stand and they had left her for dead.

Abbey watched the sun climb slowley into the azure sky where it hung burning brighter and fiercer as the hours ticked buy, she wondered why they had not come back too look for prisoners, normally that is what happened and then the prisoners where either tortured or sold in the Slave Market.  Abbey sighed, given the choice she would rather they didn't come back she would rather starve to death out here alone.

Neat!  I'd love to participate.  Also, Fireelf, have you ever tried writing in present-tense rather than past?  You seem to have a good stream-of-consciousness style to your writing, so it would probably suit you really well.

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The smell was the worst of it, Abbey decided.  The numb horror of death - of knowing who had died, or who else might be lying half-dead not a few steps away - had yet to hit her.  She felt strangely detached from it all.

It was going to be a terrible death, if no one came for her.  She didn't relish the idea of slavery or torture, but lying on the battlefield until infection stole her mind and burned through her wounds wasn't far better.  The light filtering down from the sun was too bright.  She wished it would go away.  Sunlight had no place on a decimated battlefield.

 As if on cue, a shadow fell over her eyes.

 Abbey stared.  It took her a few moments to recognize the shape amidst the sudden shadow, the shabby outline of a man.  Or woman, maybe.  It was hard to say.  Long dark hair fell around a black feather mantle, and a pair of pitch-dark eyes stared inquisitively into her face.

"Not quite dead, are you?" the figure asked, cocking his head to one side, like a bird.  A great big raven made man.

"No.  Not quite," she agreed.  Her voice rasped up from her throat.  It cut like shards of glass.

For a few long moments, then, the figure simply regarded her, and Abbey lay in the shade cast by his mantle.  Her fingers were cold against the hilt of her blade.  She'd only have one move, she knew.  It wasn't much of a chance.

 Then the figure moved, and the light came streaming back in his departure.  Footsteps shuffled over the earth behind her head, beyond her view.  They were moving off.  Abbey wasn't sure if she was relieved or disappointed.  The figure was probably taking her only decent chance of survival with him.  She turned - or tried to, anyway.  Her hip dug into the earth and her muscles protested the movement, and when her wounds screamed bloody murder at her, she gave up with a gasp and fell back.

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.  The footsteps kept on their way.  Then there was the sharp rap-tap of something hitting the ground.  Like a tossed stone.  She didn't think much of it.

At least, not until the smooth little marble landed beside her, and flashed with the telltale crackle of magic.

bitowurd thank you so much for writing :)  I have done a few stories inthe present tense, this one just popped out the way it did :)

Abbey tried to make her body move, her fighters instict was to roll away from the  crackling magic, but she couldn't make her lower half move and ended up with her upper body twisted away from the crackling ball, and her legs in the same position they had been for the last few days.  Abbey's grip on her sword tightened so hard she felt the cold metal of it's hilt dig into her palm.

The sound sent an instinctive feeling of danger through her, and she struggled to move away again. The muscles of her legs protested and ignored her, staying in place. She didn't know who the figure was, or what the magic would do, but she didn't like it so near to her.

"Who are you?" Abbey choked out, her voice still hoarse with covered fear and disuse. She wasn't sure if the figure was even still there, though.

She got no answer.  Instead the sound of a high-pitched whine filled the air, and the magic grew, sparking in the corner of her eye until she felt it begin to crawl across her tattered form.  Fear began to win against bravado and better judgment, and she sucked in frantic breaths, her free hand scrabbling across the dirt as she tried to move away.

"What are you doing?" she tried to ask.  But as the first word passed her lips, she felt a great, shuddering force cut through her.  The magic burned like a red-hot knife.  It robbed her of breath, seeming to crush and cut, to push and pull all at once.  Her vision swam.  Something yanked sharply against her blade, and tried to tear it from her grasp.

She would not let go.

Her enemies could cut her legs out from under her.  They could crack her skull, snap her spine, break every single bone in her body, but she would not be unarmed.  As she struggled it felt like every force in the world was fighting against her.  Her hand burned.  But the hilt stayed real and solid in her grasp.  The air seemed to burst and shatter around her.  A moment later, everything simply seemed to sigh in defeat.  The pain stopped as if it had never begun.

A pair of pitch-black eye stared at her.  There was something... off.  Wrong.  For a few disorienting moments, she couldn't place what.  It seemed like she was staring out from behind a large glass pane.  Then a giant hand reached towards her, and plucked her up in a manner which suggested that she had just become very, very small.

The size of a marble, in fact.

Abbey masked her sudden panic as the slow dawn of realisation set in, she actually reached out and tapped something transparent, yet solid and cold, like glass.  Abbey looked down at her hand still clamped rigid onto the hilt of her sword, the knuckles where white.

Abbey found herself engulfed in darkness as what appeared to be the fingers of a hand closed above her head, she wondered if she was dreaming, delarious from the baking sun and infected wounds.  Everything felt so surreal, she wasn't even panicking anymore, her natural curiosity was beginning to kick in, if it was a dream she had nothing to lose by exploring it, if it wasn't, well she would have died in torment anyway.  

Light poured back onto her head suddenly and she was momentarily blinded by it before it was blocked out again, she saw the glittering, ebony black eyes staring intently at her again.  Abbey automatically lifter her sword in a defensive position, before she realised that she couldn't feel any pain and she could move her legs.  Abbey kicked the glass tenatively, still thinking she was having some sort of wierd dream,

"What is going on?" she asked no one in particular in utter bemusement, her voice sounded normal, she wasn't hungry or thirsty.

"Interesting," her dark-eyed captor replied.  "You kept your sword."  He sounded surprised, and also like surprise wasn't a tone his voice was accustomed to taking.  Abbey swallowed, weighing her options, and trying to figure out what she should do.  If there was anything she could do.  The glass in front of her felt strange but impenetrably solid against her hand.

Something shifted, and she balked.  The glass moved against her palm, and shadows alternated with light as the giant hand seemed to roll her prison between its fingers.  Her position stayed the same, however - only the glass moved.

"...Perhaps it's a good sign," the figure determined, and then the light disappeared altogether as she found herself tucked into the lining of an enormous shroud.  "I have need of a strong warrior."

A chill ran down her spine.

With an impetousness born of fear, Abbey raised the end of her blade, and struck against the glass barrier.  The sword rebounded harmlessly off of the surface at the first try.  Gritting her teeth, she adjusted her grip, and gave it another swing.  However her injuries had been healed, she could move again.  If she could move, she could fight.  And while he may have just saved her, she didn't trust this... wizard?  Sorcerer?  Carrion-stalker?  Whatever he was.

She struck again, and again, until her hand should have bled from the grinding of the metal hilt against her palm.  But it didn't.  Instead, she rode in the darkness, unexhausted and strangely bouyant, for an indeterminate length of time.

When the blackness finally receeded, she had almost given up.  The giant, gloved hand returned, and when it was gone again, Abbey found herself set upon the surface of a grey stone table.

Abbey stuck the glass with her sword again, this time out of sheer temper and frustfration, she didn't like being in any kind of prison, her instict was to find a way to escape, but her effort where fruitless for now, even if she had boundless energy all of a sudden.  Abbey lowered her sword and had a good look at her surroundings.

The grey stone of the table went on in a perfectly flat line for a very long time, but beyond the table Abbey could just make out shelves and solid a solid stone wall.  Abbeys brow furrowed and she turned around, she couldn't see her dark captor anywhere near by, she let an unbidden shriek out and jumped, almost hitting her head on the glass dome above her as he materialised behind her, standing next too the table, his long, black feather mantle making a strange whispering sound as it settled around him.  Abbey tutted she wanted to know a few things, one was who he was, was why he had taken her and what he intended to do with her now he had her.

 Abbey put her hands on the glass closest too the figure, she didn't give him a chance to say or do anything,annoyed seeming having been taken on some sort of a whim and helpless,

"What am I doing here, who are you and what do you want?"  she growled at it, trying to look outwardly as if she had some control of the situation she found herself in. Abbey was surprised and disconcerted again when the dark figure let a wry smirk cross his face,

"Patience," came the voice, the black eyes where coal like and shining, like a birds, she couldn't read anythign from them.  Abbey felt an unbidden shiver crawl up her spine.

(I loved the whispering on our mysterious stranger's feather mantle, Fire!)

The temperature seemed to drop around her.  It was noteworthy, because it was the first time she'd noticed the temperature at all since her capture.  Slowly, with a long and pervasive crawl which reminded her of winter, and hunger, the siren-song of her own death, the cold sank into her bones.  Her breath stuck against the glass surface in front her.

The tip of her sword frosted over.  Veins of frost began to trickle down the blade.

"What is this?" she demanded in sheer, frustrated confusion.

The figure across the table leaned closer, then, and she saw something metallic flash from a chain around his neck.  It was gone as quickly as she'd noticed it.

"You know the trade of this world," he said.  As he spoke, the spider-thin lines of frost began to appear on the distorted glass of her prison, as well.  Daringly, she reached a hand out towards it.  It was like touching a wall of ice.  "We all rely upon death.  Warlords and kings, soldiers and warriors, every simple peasant or butcher, each needs a touch of death in order to live."

The cracks of frost grew bigger before Abbey's eyes.  Again, she felt the telltale crackle of magic in the air around her.

"Stop death, and you stop life," her abductor continued.  "Your army falls; my ravens feast.  Your body rots on the battlefield - and your soul is at my disposal."

A sinking feeling struck through her chest, at that, a feeling seperate from the cold.  "My soul...?" she whispered, in spite of herself.  It was hyperbole.  It had to be!  She looked down at herself, at her uninjured form, whole and well and... and not quite right, either.  The strange buoyancy, the absence of her wounds...

"I'm dead?" she wondered, her gaze fixing and stopping on her weapon.  The one thing which felt truly solid.

"You were dying, yes," the man agreed, and even still, the cold seemed to grow.  "It was simple fortune that I came upon you when I did.  As I said, we all feed upon death around here. Though my vocation is somewhat more... involved than most."

Dark magic, Abbey thought, and as if on cue, the cold seemed to catch her and freeze her still.

"You'll have to keep for a long while, I'm afraid," her abductor continued, even as she realized that she could no longer speak to ask him questions, or move, or even seem to draw breath through her lungs anymore.  A second later, she couldn't even move her eyes.  "My buyers tend to come when they will.  But a warrior - yes, they'll pay for you in full, I suspect."

Then he turned, and Abbey could do nothing but watch in horrified silence as he walked away.

The room grew dark around the tiny marble resting upon the workshop's table.