How Gods Bleed
By Shane Porteous
Copyright 2011 Shane Porteous
Cover Image Copyright 2011 Christopher Richards
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Dear reader,
Before you begin reading this book I have a confession to make. I have never really been a big fan of werewolves. Now before you send me hate mail (just kidding, feel free to send me hate mail) please keep in mind that I have never hated them. I just have always found demons and the like to be far more interesting. I suppose it has to do with the general concept of the lone wolf (no pun intended) identity that most werewolf tales consist of that has failed to really garner my personal interest. So you may be wondering if this is the case than why have I written a werewolf story? A good question that hopefully I will be able to give an equally good answer to.
While I was spreading awareness about my first published book Rasciss (more on that book a bit later) I came across another debut author by the name of Jeff Shanley. His book was called Mathion: book one of the Mavonduri Trilogy. Now without filling the next ten pages with descriptions, in a nutshell Mathion was a Lord of the Rings styled story where werewolves played a major part in the tale. Now as I have already said I have never been a huge fan of werewolves but the overall concept of Mathion was very intriguing to me. For although werewolves in fantasy is hardly a new concept I had never come across a fantasy story where werewolves were one of the biggest factors. Mostly, werewolves play minimal parts as servants, slaves or worse yet, pets of other supernatural creatures, most notably vampires. After informing one another about what our books were about we agreed to cross promote.
Being a man of my word when Mathion was released I bought a copy with the intention of reviewing it. In all honesty I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, after all there is so many werewolf stories that even with this new concept my expectations weren’t exactly high. However as I began reading Mathion I discovered one of the most enjoyable and brilliant stories that I have ever read. Jeff Shanley had taken the time and the effort to quite literally write an entirely new history for the werewolf or “Kanin” as they are called in the Mavonduri world. Beyond this brilliant re-imagining of the werewolf legend I discovered a sweeping epic that was far more character driven than most that I have read. These two factors combined with the immense passion that could be felt through his words, Jeff Shanley had written one of the greatest stories that I had ever read. For the first time in a really long time I had read a novel that I thoroughly both enjoyed and appreciated.
I was so impressed that after writing a well deserved 5 star review of Mathion (its very first review ever I might add) I wanted to do something that I had not done since I was 12 and Dragon Ball Z had come to Australian shores. I had a great desire to write Mathion fan fiction. I sent a message asking Jeff permission to do so and graciously he gave me his blessing. Needless to say I was ecstatic and began planning out a concept. However, the initial concept changed seemingly over night, to a story that at best would be 40 pages long to a story that would be a novel all of its own. I was so excited about my idea however I merely accepted this fact and looked forward to the concept of writing a fan fiction novel.
But as I really began to think about my story, plotting out its chapters and inventing a whole cast of brand new characters I realized something. Ultimately fan fiction should stay within the boundaries and rules of the original work. Mathion in many ways is a traditional story with clear-cut protagonists and antagonists (trust me tradition is one of Mathion’s greatest strengths). My story would have blurred those clear cut lines and shown the characters of Mathion in a far different light to what they were ever intended to be shown in. Knowing my ideas ultimately could never work in the Mavonduri world I wrote Jeff back explaining my reasons why I could not write my fan fiction idea. He didn’t write back to me at first, personally I can not blame him, after all I would feel pretty bad if someone had told me they were going to write fan fiction of my story one day and then not do it even with an explanation.
Honestly I did indeed feel very lousy but I simply would not feel right changing his characters so drastically. So I re-read Mathion enjoying it as much the second time as the first and tried to come up with new concepts for Mavonduri fan fiction. But alas all of my ideas carried similar flaws to the first and I had to concede defeat.
Like many authors I had many of my own stories to tell just waiting to be written. So I turned back to my now overflowing folder of story ideas and began writing one of them. However try as I might I couldn’t get Mathion or rather the concepts that I had come up with for my fan fiction out of my head. No matter which one of my stories I tried to write the muse kept pulling me back to these ideas. In vain I tried to ignore the ideas, after all I had three novels that I had been trying to write for years. But as any writer shall tell you if you don’t have the muse then you can’t write good stories.
I accepted the fact that in order to move on creatively I would have to put these ideas on paper. But the original fears and concerns that I had never went away and I knew that I could not put my ideas as fan fiction. To ensure that I did not hurt the integrity of the Mavonduri world or its 40,000-year-old history I would have to write a completely separate story placed in its own unique world. The end result is the story you are about to read.
While How Gods Bleed is not and should not be considered a true reflection of Mathion, for Mathion should be judged on its own merit. It would be dishonest and simply unfair not to openly admit that Mathion was the biggest inspiration behind How Gods Bleed. So I will end with this:
Mathion: book one of the Mavonduri trilogy is available from:
www.barnesandnoble.com
www.amazon.com
Enjoy!
How Gods Bleed by Shane Porteous
Prologue
The Rodovic war was the bloodiest and longest conflict of its age. Fought between the kingdoms of Gatavoi and Belrondia, it was a war that lasted for three decades. But it was on the fields of Marga where the most important battle of history was fought. Over one million warriors from both kingdoms waged a battle more ferocious than any other. By the 11th day the battle had come to a bloody end and only a single man still stood. Cada Varl, a soldier of Gatavoi. But after seeing so much blood and death Cada Varl had lost his humanity.
As he began to wander the land aimlessly, wolves, drawn by the smell of blood and death came to the field and feasted on the flesh of the fallen. Such a feast of human flesh made the wolves hunger for more of the same taste. The wolves followed the wandering Cada Varl attacking him upon nightfall. As the now mindless man lay there with the wolves savoring his flesh he witnessed the full moon and its light reminded him of whom he once was.
With his memories restored the desire for survival returned and using a simple spike of silver worn around his neck he injured one of the wolves. Seeing their meal was now ready to fight back the wolves stirred and fled from him. Though he now remembered his humanity the light of the moon was not enough to make it return and so he remained immortal, a shell of what he once was. Though he had been able to save himself from the wolves, their tastes remained and having fed on the flesh of an immortal they now carried a piece of him inside them.
The wolves attacked villages, cities and anywhere else where humans dwelled. Those who were attacked but survived were infected by Cada Varl’s immortality, twisted and combined with the spirit of the wolves. From this hybrid of an infection the survivors became monsters, neither wolves nor immortals, but something in
between. As the wolves continued attacking villages so the monsters continued to spread until only after a few short decades they had become so numerous that the west belonged to them. The very few humans that one way or another survived the rise of the monsters fled into the east and thus the continent of Noonsva became divided between the lands of the werewolves in the west and the lands of man in the east.