Fear

Fear is a powerful motivator. It's an interesting and difficult piece of emotion to slip into stories and novels and tales, but at the same time, fear is often what motivates characters and people in general. Fear if they do not do something, their situation will worsen or change to conditions they do not approve of. Fear if they do not protect what they love that it will be taken from them. Fear that they will be harmed, fear that if they do not act, no one else will.

Lonlor Swift is a character who, for two books and half of the third one, is driven by fear. It rules him and shoves him and wraps it's noose about his throat and refuses to let him breathe. And at first, I thought that this fear, this insistent panic that he feels, that increases as the books go on, as he plunges farther into this journey, was what makes him weak. Was this force that I had to get rid of, because how could the savior of the world tremble and cry and shake when faced with the villains? How could he buckle and bend and waver under the weight of the world when he was crafted to carry it?

Easily.

Lonlor is mortal.

He may have pointed ears, but Lonlor Swift, savior or no, is human.

Case in point:

Voices.

Fast approaching voices, and footsteps along with them. He froze, his arms trembling, and the distant thrum of a familiar noise hounded a new, terrifying facet into the situation.

The sound of waves.

Waves crashing against a shore.

Sener Island.

“I know he hasn’t awoken, wiseman,” a high voice was saying. “But what are we to do with him?”

Closer and closer-

The owner of the second set of footprints had no time to answer. With a frantic shove, he lifted himself off of the cot with a hiss between his teeth when the edges of his vision blackened. The next thing he knew he was hurtling toward the floor, slamming into it with an impressive thump and knocking the cot over on it’s side. He gasped as his shoulder slammed into the ground, and immediately curled into a ball, tears pricking at his eyes as the darkness covering his vision thickened.

“What was that?” the first voice asked from outside.

“I think he’s awake,” the lower tone of a male answered dryly.

No, no!

His breaths came heavy and quick, adrenaline spiking through him. His eyes snapped open as the two figures entered the tent, and he immediately attempted to get to his feet. It was a pathetic display, as though he willed his body upright with all the gusto he possessed, the most he accomplished was wavering, air whooshing in and out of his lungs as the strangers stared at him in surprise.

The man started forward with a noise of protest.

“Stars above, boy!” he cried. “What’s in your head?”

“No,” he breathed, his wild eyes catching a snippet of a worn face and wide brown eyes. “Get away.”

His voice was so light, so choked, that it was lost to the air as soon as he spoke.

“Come, up you get,” the stranger instructed.

The beaten figure felt a hand brush his shoulder, and with a strangled cry, he whirled away, crashing into the fallen cot.

“Don’t touch me!” he called out, cowering as deeply as he could into the stiff woodwork. He turned his face away, his posture submissive, his eyes downcast as he began to tremble. A droplet of water curved down the side of his face, his chest heaving as his raspy breathing filled the large tent.

“Child,” the voice of the man said. “We are not going to harm you.”

“Played that trick before,” he gasped pitifully in response. “Please, just leave me alone. Please…”

“Boy,” the man’s voice sounded closer, and he flinched, curling his screaming arms around his sides until the weight of them thundered new, fresh anguish across his mid-section.

“Just kill me,” he begged.

Lonlor is so frightened out of his mind that it drives him to do what I've always wanted to define him: Survive.

What and how does fear drive you and your own characters?

(cut short because I really should go to bed. Like, really really.)