Kill your darlings, p.1
Kill Your Darlings, page 1
L.E. Harper
Kill Your Darlings
First published by Shivnath Productions 2023
Copyright © 2023 by L.E. Harper
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
L.E. Harper has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.
First edition
ISBN: 978-1-7923-6660-4
This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy
Find out more at reedsy.com
Dedicated to the darlings I couldn’t save:
Medusa, Skylo, and Oreo.
Contents
Foreword
Prologue
Map of Eldria
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
About the Author
Foreword
This book contains depictions of mental illness, including depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and self-harm.
Other warnings include adult themes and content such as language, fantasy violence, and character death.
While there are many fantastical things in this book, I wrote from a place of truth. Herein, I offer my deepest truths—truths I am not proud of, truths that I believed would do more harm than good if I spoke them aloud.
For years, I’ve suffered from depression. On these pages you’ll find—between all the dragons and magic—an account of how I spiraled to rock bottom. You’ll be exposed to dark and sometimes visceral descriptions of mental illness, including self-loathing and self-harm. You’ll hear an unkind narrative voice, for the voice of depression is one that twists the truth, turning you against yourself.
I understand these descriptions may be triggering for people who, like me, have hit the bottom, and have punched through to sink to new and unfathomable lows. These content warnings are provided to help you decide if this is a story you want to read.
Although my book descends into darkness and examines the internal narrative that can lead to suicidal ideation, it’s ultimately a tale of hope. When I read the words I wrote, they remind me that I am more than my darkness, more than the sum of my mistakes, more than the traumas I’ve sustained. I began writing Kill Your Darlings as a love letter to myself, at a time when I felt no one else in the world loved me; but I honed it, revised it, and edited it, hoping it could serve as a love letter to the people out there who’ve suffered as I have suffered.
I wrote in the hopes that speaking about these topics would pave the way toward de-stigmatizing them. I recounted my emotional journey in the hopes that others would feel less alone. I described my internal battle in the hopes that one day these battles would be treated with kindness and understanding, rather than ignorance and dismissal.
As with all groups, people with depression aren’t a monolith. My journey may not resemble yours. I’ve told my truths as best I can; that’s all any of us can do. But if you’re like me, and mental illness has lied to you, distorted your reality, and stolen your joy, then know I wrote this book for you.
I know the battles you fight—and I believe you can win.
All my love,
L. E. Harper
Prologue
Six Months Ago
How do you end a story you’ve grown to hate?
I stare at the unfinished paragraph on my laptop screen, lost in my own private universe of misery. Sticky summer air wafts into the Starbucks whenever someone opens the door, but I’m oblivious to the city bustle. Chewing my lip, I scroll through my document to the beginning of the end—the final chapter of my manuscript. My gut twists at the thought of reading these words for the umpteen-billionth time. I’m so tired of this book.
Another gut-twist, this time one of churning guilt. Of course I’m not tired of the book I’m writing. I’m just tired.
Bone-deep exhaustion, an unpleasant side effect of being an adult, has ruined everything. I don’t want to write anymore. The magical spark that fueled me has been snuffed out. The passion that once burned through my veins has turned to sludge. I’m unmoored, adrift, disconnected from the things I used to love.
Leaning my elbows on the brown tabletop, I scrub my hands over my face. Frustration simmers in my chest, but it never grows hot enough to boil. It’s lost its power. I’ve lost my power.
I reach for my phone to check my notifications. Nothing since last I looked forty-five seconds ago. Duh.
In need of reassurance—or distraction—I start to text Eric. I’ve gone so far as to unlock my screen and navigate to iMessage before I stop. I close the app and put the phone face down on the table. Bothering Eric (also for the umpteen-billionth time) won’t solve my problems.
“Okay,” I growl under my breath. “Concentrate. Just do it. Just write.”
I don’t write. Trying to force my brain to cooperate makes it rebel. Stupid fucking brain—but unfortunately, it calls the shots. As a compromise, I read instead. A little refresher before I work on the ending:
Cendrion banked away from the sheer white cliffs, his ribbed wings taut against the smoke-thick air. Kyla leaned left as the dragon tilted right, gripping one of his bony neck spikes to steady herself. Though his muscles knotted and strained beneath her, she wasn’t afraid; they’d been forged together in the heat and horror of war. He’d die to protect her, as she would for him.
A pang of sorrow speared her heart as she thought of the friends she hadn’t been able to save. She could afford no more failures.
Clenching her jaw, she brandished her sword and swiped at a shadowbeast soaring past overhead, opening its belly with her blade. The demonic creature emitted a horrible squeal. Inky-black blood spouted from its wound as it plummeted through the aerial battle toward the river moat far below.
“One down,” said Cendrion.
“A million to go,” she muttered.
As Cendrion pulled out of his sharp turn, another shadowbeast approached. Its undulating, spiky form grew visible through the acrid smog of combat. Kyla’s heart leapt into her throat.
“Thraxwing!” she screamed, hunkering low on Cendrion’s scaled back.
The thraxwing opened its jaws and spat venom, emitting twin jets of pitch-black acid. Kyla and Cendrion acted as one. In a practiced move, she sheathed her weapon and he pulled his wings in tight, sandwiching her between them. Cocooned in silken skin membranes, she remained in place as he rolled in midair, evading the deadly liquid.
He shot past the thraxwing, twisting to attack it from the rear. The shadowbeast shrieked as Cendrion’s pearly fangs closed on its tail. With a vicious wrench, he yanked the dark monster toward him. Kyla ripped her sword free once more and thrust the blade deep into the thraxwing’s sable flesh.
A grim smile of satisfaction fluttered across her lips as the demon went limp and dropped.
Cendrion swiveled his serpentine neck to flash her a grin. “Nicely done,” he called, revealing teeth stained black with shadowbeast gore. He rolled again, angling north, skirting the clifftop battle.
Unbidden, a chill swept through her. Her knuckles whitened around the hilt of her sword. The Eldrian people were fighting so she could have this one final chance to end the war. So many had died to bring her to this point, including—
A deafening roar from Cendrion jolted her to her senses. A shadowgryphon had swooped in while she’d been lost in her ruinous thoughts. Its serrated beak had clamped down on the dragon’s wing.
Panic flooded Kyla. For a fraction of a heartbeat, she was frozen. That heartbeat was all it took. Cendrion tried to pull free from the gryphon’s clutches. A sickening snap rent the air, audible above the din of clashing armies. Diamond-white scales distorted as his wing broke, buckling around the shadowbe
“NO!” Spurred to action, Kyla sank into her inner consciousness and connected to her magicsource. In her mind’s eye, she glimpsed glowing power and seized it. Whipping one hand toward the gryphon, she channeled burning energy from her soul, directing it through her veins and out from her body.
A searing beam of lightmagic erupted from her palm. Her blast caught the gryphon between its eyes, killing it. Its smoking corpse fell away, but the damage was done.
“Cendrion!” Bile burned her throat as she stared, aghast, at his mutilated wing.
Kyla did the only thing she could think of. She wielded once more, weaving lightmagic threads around her and Cendrion. The threads tightened, and a blinding flash enveloped them.
For a moment, she was as vast as the universe, expanding infinitely in all directions; then she was small and compact again, and she and Cendrion were elsewhere. She’d teleported them to an empty pocket of space on the Midgardian Mountains.
Cendrion’s momentum carried him forward. His paws hit the rocky earth with a jarring thud, rattling Kyla’s bones. He tried to slow himself with a few galloping steps but lost his balance and crashed, his underbelly scraping along the uneven ground.
The impact propelled Kyla past his neck. She tumbled into an awkward dive. Though her sword clattered away, she managed to roll out of the dragon’s careening path. He skidded to a halt at the edge of a cliff, sides heaving with exertion, eyes squeezed shut.
Their flashy entrance drew the attention of a horde of nearby shadowbeasts battling Eldrian ground troops. A hundred pairs of lightless eyes glinted with collective, hive-mind malice as they landed on Kyla. A hundred jaws opened wide, thirsting to rip into her and Cendrion.
“Halt.” A different voice spoke, booming across the sky like thunder. It hummed in Kyla’s ears and vibrated in her ribcage, making her heart quiver with terror. She knew that voice. It haunted her nightmares.
“Leave her,” the disembodied baritone continued. “She is mine.”
The shadowbeasts stilled and withdrew, resuming their assault on the Eldrian soldiers. Their master had spoken; they had no choice but to obey.
Stumbling upright, Kyla flung herself after Cendrion. She fell to her knees by his head. His muzzle crinkled in a snarl as he forced his eyes open.
“It’s time,” he said. His voice was thick with pain, guttural with resolve.
She bit her lip and nodded. They’d achieved the goal of the battle, albeit at a steep cost of mortal blood—they’d drawn their archenemy out.
“He wants to end it, too,” Kyla murmured, blinking sweat and dust from her vision as she scanned the skies. “He wants to destroy us as much as we want to destroy him.”
The problem was, she wasn’t sure she could destroy him. He was the most powerful wielder ever to walk the face of Solera. He’d bested them in every direct confrontation. He had murdered—
“There,” said Cendrion, again wrenching Kyla from the suffocating grasp of her thoughts. The dragon tipped his snout north.
Following his gaze, she saw a cloud of darkmagic had billowed across the heavens. Whorls of spectral black energy extended from the seething mass like grasping claws. Reaching. Searching for her.
Then five, ten, twenty flaming shapes sped over the cliffs, arrowing toward the darkmagic. A contingent of phoenixes had veered away from the main division to intercept the advancing spell. Though they were too far away for Kyla to identify, she knew in her heart that Rexa and Fyr’thal led the charge. Those two brave, flickering forms at the helm of the firebird formation could be no one else.
They wouldn’t have abandoned their division without leave, not in a battle where the world’s fate would be decided. They must have been ordered away by their commanding officer.
Breath hitching, Kyla scanned the brutal clash on the ground. It should have been impossible to find the Commander-General amidst the chaos and carnage, but like a moth to flame, her gaze was drawn to him.
“Valen,” she breathed, her heart swelling.
He stood on a high ridge a hundred meters from her, holding the line against a vicious onslaught of shadowbeasts.
“Valen,” she repeated, raising her left hand. A silvery ring gleamed on her index finger. It warmed against her skin as its communication enchantment took hold, drawing power from her soul to magically transmit her words to Valen’s ears.
Atop the ridge, Valen paused. His head turned. An electric jolt rippled through her as their eyes met.
“He’s here, Kyla.” Valen’s voice, deep and husky with emotion, sounded as clear as if he were standing beside her. “He’s come for you.”
“I know.” She was ashamed of the crack in her own voice, the way it wobbled with fear.
“You can do this,” he said, as if he sensed all the unspoken things she longed to scream: that she wasn’t ready, that she was tired of fighting, terrified of failing.
Swallowing her reservations, she glared at the shadowy miasma in the northern sky. The phoenixes were making a valiant effort to keep it at bay with their firemagic, but their power would not be enough.
Only Kyla could win this war.
Growling, Cendrion shoved himself up on shaking limbs. She stood as well, hands curling into fists. As one, she and her dragon moved forward. Legions of shadowbeasts parted before her, clearing a path along the cliffs. As if they were inviting her onwards, leading her to her dark destiny.
Kyla suppressed a shiver. Reaching inside herself, she embraced her magicsource and
. . . and what?
I’ve reached an impasse. I know how the story should end—the hero triumphs over her evil nemesis. That’s how people expect it to end. How they want it to end.
And gods, I want it to end that way, too. In my trusty notebook, I’ve listed all the important beats I need to hit:
Kyla and Cendrion rally
Cendrion gets magically healed and he’s all better
They save Rexa and Fyr’thal from darkmagic at the last minute
Kyla masters her lightmagic in the nick of time and she saves the world
Kyla and Valen share a passionate kiss atop a mountain of corpses LOL (it’s fine tho because they already won so who cares about the body count)
They all live happily ever after and Kyla and Valen get married and have four kids and Cendrion becomes king of the dragons I guess because I need to tie up his storyline somehow and people want some stupid sappy garbage so there it is
Easy enough to outline, especially when I’m being a dumbshit about it. But whenever I try to write that saccharine, perfect ending, my brain rebels. Again and again I’ve tried. I’ve imagined a thousand happy endings, each worse than the last. Vapid, unbelievable, meaningless. Filled with rainbows and sunshine and love, yet devoid of truth. Like a rose without thorns, beauty starved of passion.
An epic, empty story.
My iced coffee sweats on the table, its perspiration bleeding dangerously close to my laptop. Sunlight glares through the window behind me, beating onto my back and making my document difficult to read. Despite the heat, I shiver.
It doesn’t have to be realistic, I tell myself. It’s fantasy.
If only I believed in happy endings. Then I could write something brilliant, something my beloved characters deserve. Something that will sell millions of copies and get a movie deal and—
“Stop,” I mutter aloud. Thinking those thoughts is a great way to hurt my own feelings. The real world doesn’t work like that. It’s never as easy as the stories make it seem. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m so tired of this—and of everything else.
Where’s my movie deal? Where’s my Prince Charming? Where’s my dragon BFF and magical powers that make me special, someone worth knowing, someone worth loving? Why should Kyla Starblade get the guy and the glory while I’m stuck here, working on a book that’s brought me to a dead end?
The frustration within me, which has been simmering for years, finally reaches its boiling point. It erupts—not into full-blown anger, as I’d expected, but into steely, self-pitying determination.
