Medallion

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"Sometimes all you can do is protect those you love. And sometimes you can't even do that." —Tamox

Medallion is a work by amateur novelist Meredith Foster about coming-of-age, loyalty, trust, and a medallion. In the making since 2005, it's become the pride and joy of the author's works. At the moment it is unpublished, but can be read in its entirety online.

Set in an unnamed world, the story mostly takes place in an immense forest. Andreya Orifax, queen of the Ilviren people, is frustrated with her life and the responsibilities her position gives her; at the same time, her people are under threat of extinction from Kespa, who killed the previous rulers and is ruling with an iron hand. Dreya doesn't want anything to do with heroism, though - all she wants is to be left to do as she wishes. But after she meets a unique individual named Tamox, she finds herself facing the maturity she never wanted to possess.

The story has two halves, both of which can be enjoyed as a standalone work. One is the novella itself, the other is a series of vignettes and short stories featuring characters from the book and detailing events that happened before or during the story. Dreya, Anshi, and Saela's family feature prominently.

Not to be confused with the Jackie Chan movie The Medallion.

Available for free on Lulu.

Tropes used in Medallion include:

• A Friend in Need
• Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: the Medallion of the title. It's so awesome you don't even need to touch it to use it.
• Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Justified to an extent. Xarn and elves have their own fashions and preferences for clothing and color, so a few characters wear things that wouldn't be out of place in a Star Trek episode.
• Backstab Backfire
• Backstory: Plays a huge part in character relationships.
• Badass in Distress
• Bad Dreams: Make up the prologue.
• Battle in the Rain: Averted. Even though Chapter Six contains both a fight with a serpentine monster and a downpour, the two do not occur simultaneously.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Subverted. Dreya disguises herself as Kespa in order to escape from a dungeon, but when one of the Myrl questions her orders she decides it isn't worth it and just slaughters them.
• The Big Damn Kiss
• Big No
• Bio Augmentation: How Kespa gets her army and Tamox.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Dreya, Anshi, Kespa
• Bloodless Carnage: Averted. Characters are wounded and bleed in amounts normal for their injury.
  • Also justified with the Myrl and other creatures created by Kespa - they're kept alive by magic, there's no reason for them to have blood.
• Bound and Gagged: The Myrl do this to Dreya when she's captured.
  • Averted with Anshi, as she's left completely unrestrained in her cell. Granted, she was very injured, so they probably didn't think she'd attempt to escape or survive for long if she succeeded.
• Bridal Carry Dreya carrying Anshi's dead body
• Bring News Back: Dreya must take a message to Sirold because the Xarn culture is such that only authority figures are trusted by the king.
• Broken Pedestal
• Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: A poor translation of Dreya's species name, Ilvir (plural Ilviren, adjective Ilverin) into Integra resulted in most other races calling them "elves".
• Can't Argue with Elves: Averted. There are no humans in this story, neither are there dwarves. The one mortal race that is around, the Xarn, argue quite passionately with the elf-like Ilviren. And the Ilviren themselves are much more humanlike.
• Chekhov's Skill: shows up when Tamox teaches Saela how to fight.
• Collapsing Lair: Averted, actually. Kespa's fortress doesn't self-destruct, Dreya has to do it for her.
• Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: Dreya's need to explore led to her capture and near-death. Tamox's need to explore revealed an illegal Portal Pool.
• David Versus Goliath: For a good deal of the fight at the end. And after Dreya gets stabbed? You'd better watch out, Kespa. David's got a score to settle.
• Despite the Plan Dreya manages to ensure escape from Kespa's castle.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Dreya inherited her mother's Seer abilities, but only in a slightly dysfunctional way. She can't control them, and the one time she does dream of the future she has to struggle to figure it out.
• Dressing as the Enemy and the villain herself, in order to escape.
• Duel to the Death
• Ermine Cape Effect: Averted with Dreya and Melane, played straight with the other courtiers.
  • Especially Valeria.
• Fighting for Survival: the whole reason the Xarn are involved in the war. They enjoy fighting with each other too much to get seriously involved in outside conflict
• Fighting Your Friend: Dreya vs. Tamox in chapter six. She wants to see what he can do.
• Find the Cure: Anshi searching for the antidote that could save Dreya
• Forging Scene: To an extent in Aora's armory. Not as awesome as it could be though.
• Friendship Moment: Many, many times.
• Greater Need Than Mine
• Heterosexual Life Partners
• Honor Before Reason: After the final battle, as Dreya lay dying, Anshi decided to do something right.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: At first, Dreya never misses a chance to call Tamox out on his flaws. But after he plays an instrumental role in saving her, she defends him against Keplan.
• Impossible Task
• In the End You Are on Your Own: Dreya's climactic duel with Kespa. She holds her own pretty successfully, at least until she gets stabbed in the chest.
• Indy Ploy: Tamox's scheme to save Dreya
• Intergenerational Friendship: Dreya and Melane, Valeria and Aora
• Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality: Cassy's psi blasts. She can destroy anything not magically constructed, including people, if she's provoked enough, but she never uses it.
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Dreya learns this when she realizes that no matter her bloodline or destiny, she's not immune to the people around her being hurt.
• It Was a Gift: Anshi's knife
• It's Personal
• Let's Get Dangerous
• Love At First Punch: WOG says Mayara and Darys fell in love this way.
• Lovely Angels: Dreya and Anshi
• Meaningful Funeral
• Medieval Stasis: Averted. The epilogue of the book has Aora developing explosives.
• Mind Rape: What Kespa does to Anshi and Cassy, respectively.
• Mind Probe: Not of the flashy variety, actually. Just Kespa playing with the Medallion.
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: Aora's explosives. She attempts to use them in construction.
• My Nayme Is: Melane (pronounced "Melanie"), Krysty, Treyn (Train), Cassy
• No Ontological Inertia: Averted and justified.
  • When Kespa dies, her fortress remains standing, and it stays that way. The Myrl, however, draw their life energy from the Medallion and are given life by Kespa; when she dies they cease to exist.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Kespa's short story has her musing on the death of Krysty and her estrangement from family, nearly venturing into Jerkass Woobie territory.
• Please Don't Leave Me
• Power Glows
• Pietà Plagiarism: Tamox holding Dreya, Dreya holding Anshi
• Portal Pool: the Prolythe. Though it also acts as a communicator and a surveillance device.
• The Power of Friendship
• Prophecies Are Always Right: When it comes to Mayara's visions, at least.
• The Quest
• Restraining Bolt: Exists in all of Cassy's species for unknown reasons. It takes Kespa's Mind Rape for Cassy herself to take a level.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: the entire Orifax family is the embodiment of this trope, not to mention Dreya's role drives the plot.
• Screw the Rules, I Have a Nuke: Kespa's preferred negotiation technique.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right: Tamox's justification for going after Dreya during the final battle and convincing the others to tag along.
• Shout-Out: Meredith is One of Us, therefore her work is rife with nods to fandoms and fictional universes.
  • Anshi's mother Treyn is named after Train Heartnet.
  • An exchange in chapter six lifts dialogue from Peter Jackson's Return of the King.
  • When Dreya stabs a Myrl to avoid its questions, she mutters "Boring conversation anyway."
  • Sirold cuts himself during a nighttime fight, earning a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead.
  • After a narrow escape in Kespa's kitchen, Tamox demands to be taught how to defend himself against assailants armed with fruit.
  • Dreya's last words to Anshi reference a song called "The Sound of Drums".
• Space Whale Aesop: The message is actually supposed to be "Don't let life stop you from living". Whether that's clear or not remains to be seen.
• Sphere of Destruction
• Strange Salute: The Quirlwing greeting is a long, slow nod with eyes closed.
• Strapped to An Operating Table: Anshi, during her captivity, is immobilized on a table via Mind Rape. Since Kespa is a Combat Sadomasochist and Nightmare Fetishist, she keeps a lot of prisoners on tables.
• Succession Crisis: between Dreya and Valeria
• Superior Species: Tamox to the Xarn. Though it's not obvious.
• Talk to the Fist
• Time Skip: Krysty's death interrupts a spell in progress, sending Dreya and Tamox two years into the future.
• Time Travel: Used inadvertently because Dreya shot the person casting the spell. Going two years into the future? Fun...
• To Absent Friends
• Translation Convention: The characters speak Integra for the most part, a blend of the native Xarn language and Ilverin, Dreya's tongue. In fact, Integra is becoming the most common language, but the races still teach their native languages for posterity's sake
• Traveling At the Speed of Plot: Justified, as the trees in Quirlwing territory have a spell on them that shortens travel time to about 1/10 of its normal length.
• True Companions
• You Are Not Alone
• You Can't Fight Fate: Mayara's opinion of destiny..
• Zerg Rush: Kespa's Myrl aren't very skilled fighters, but the sheer numbers of their forces mean that they're a challenge to fight if you aren't careful.