NaramYesh
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Country: USA
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 Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:40 am Post subject: The Hills of Elam |
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Thank ya for the kind reviews everybody. I've tried to cut out alot (though perhaps not all) of the descriptions and words that I felt were unneeded, as well as correct some of the grammatical errors.
-Changed the format. It may be easier to read this way
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Through sun licked landscapes she wandered, a luminous form crafted of the most fabulous river pearls, with fine-stranded hair hewn from the blackest ebony. Undaunted by the noon‘s simmering heat, she traversed the barren wastes of Elam toward the low hills girdling the eastern horizon, leaving tendrils of dust in her wake. No sound resounded in all that desolate country, but for the chiming of lavish adornments wrapped about neck and arm.
She strode among the crumbling skeletons of palatial manors, where obscure dynasties once held court; no heed was paid to the wondrous carcasses of rotting ziggurats that rose around her, nor to the watchful jackals that haunted them. For enthroned upon those low hills sat the thing that had drawn her far from her home in Ctesiphon; a decrepit turret of great antiquity that sat lording over the plain with an ominous majesty.
She walked along the dusty path that wound around the hill, where she paused at the tower’s arched entrance. From behind the rusted gates the priests emerged to greet her, in their grime stained robes and veiled faces, those foul old men of the hills. No hand was laid upon her; she merely followed her hosts into the yawning blackness of the citadel. In a small chamber lighted by a single torch, she was given haoma to drink, brackish looking and sickly sweet in taste, and left to sleep on a bed of straw.
In a feverish slumber, she dreamed; mounted upon a chair of gold she sat, queen of a thousand satrapies. A multitude of richly dressed servants carried her through a dazzling metropolis of shining marble and lavish gardens; No city on earth could match it’s glory, not Imperial Constantinople, nor Royal Ctesiphon. Commoner and noble alike prostrated themselves before the opulent entourage. Flower petals of a thousand colors descended from rooftops to greet her, and she in turn lifted jeweled arms to grasp them as they fell; but, to her surprise, they had no substance to them. It was as if they were made of painted air. Puzzled, she began to lower her arms, only to find that it could not be done. She no longer sat, but stood, and the cheers of adorers began to turn into a monotonous chant.
The shining city had faded, replaced instead with a dim room, wreathed in smoke clouds and reeking of a foul incense. A dozen filthily clothed shapes circled about her, their faces hidden by shrouds of smoke and silk. In their hands they held open ancient tomes, from which they recited in unison their blasphemous dogma in a language that had died to the outer world long ago.
Terror was now beginning to take hold of the woman. Arms and legs were spread apart, chained to ceiling and ground; she struggled against the iron shackles, but to no avail. With pleading cries, she begged of Mithra protection, and mercy from Immaculate Ardwisur; but within that unhallowed chamber, divinities of light and righteousness held no sway.
Then, out of the haze of fell the lash, across her flawless physique; skin of pearl was alchemized to ruby, as deep ditches were opened, irrigating the white surface in warm streams of blood. Flesh was forced to give birth to bone; screams of torment now joined the droning choir of the priests, interrupted only when a torrent of putrid bile heaved itself from her throat.
As suddenly as the flagellation began, it ceased. She was taken from her bondage and carried towards a great stone trough, suspended by levers and ropes above a gapping hollow in the room’s center. The chanting had stopped. All was silent. The men had formed around the trough where she now lay. From one among them issued a voice, strong and steady, the voice of one who has great authority. And in the Pahlavi tongue, he said:
Hail to the Lord of Meslam
King-reaver, stalker of the moonless night
Hail to Anashtih
Who turns daggers of sons to necks of fathers
Hail to Ahriman
Who mars that which is good in creation
To this hallowed triumvirate we give
Libations of the blue blooded
That our Monarch may be sated
With the recitation of the verses finished, they poured salt and dead lotuses over top of her sanguine body, bringing out fresh cries of pain as it filtered into wounds; with a steady creak of ropes and levers she escaped her tormentors into the abyss, the catacombs of time obscured dynasties, where the dark became not just an absence of light, but a material one could nearly touch.
Soon the trough hit the rocky floor below. Her lonely sobs of grief echoed throughout the tunnels that honeycombed the walls of the boundless cavity, where hidden alcoves held brittle bones. But soon her echoes began to take on a new voice, one of a doleful moan, yet not of a quality entirely human. It quickly became apparent that these were not her own echoes she heard, but the vocals of another, as if they were in answer to her own distress. She began to tremble now; for what living man could dwell so far beneath the earth, in this world of decay? Then, as if to confirm her own misgivings, there came not the sound of footsteps, but of a grotesque thumping, like something that does not travel upon limbs, but moves with the undulations of the bodily trunk. The wretched half hominal lamentations drew closer, her eyes even now beginning to discern the thing’s distant bulk through the gloom. She managed only a feeble wail of horror as it clumsily fell upon her, giving off it’s own triumphant howl at the sight of the scourged offering.
As a sickle moon rose to take it’s celestial throne, and the ziggurats stood in latent grandeur, jackals sang their cacophonous madrigals to the night. The world above remained oblivious to the grisly sacrament that had taken place, where the noble-born was given up to the Great Beneath, far below the hills of Elam. |
Last edited by NaramYesh on Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:14 am; edited 5 times in total |
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King of the North
Junior Writer
Gender:
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Joined: 09 Mar 2008
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Country: USA
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| Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Through sun licked landscapes she wandered, a luminous form crafted of the most fabulous river pearls, with fine-stranded hair hewn from the blackest ebony. |
Okay so this sentence confused me. Is the landscape crafted of the most fabulous river pearls or is she? Because with the next part it seems your describing her.
| Quote: |
| No sound resounded in all that desolate country, but for the light foot falls of the lone figure, and the chiming of lavish adornments wrapped around neck and arm, as they knocked about with her movement. |
Take out the commas after figure and arm. There are actually more comma misuse throughout your piece but I won't have the time to point them all out. I will try to come back and do it later.
| Quote: |
| they had no texture to them |
I think the word substance would work better here.
This was well written, with the exception of some of the punctuation, and could definitely be taken as a prologue. A couple of suggestions would be to watch your wordiness and make sure you have the correct punctuation as that can seriously dampen the flow of a story.
If you ever write more I will be sure to read it. |
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GryphonFledgling
How you've turned my world, you precious thing...
Novelist
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| Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 8:16 pm Post subject: |
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You have nice writing here and your descriptions are masterful, but the story gets a little lost in them. You write like I write, with a great deal of lovely words. The problem is for both of us that we tend to use the words a bit too much.
This was some great stuff you. I just got lost in the oodles of words you used. Streamlining it would make it much easier to read and would make the piece a bit more elegant.
As is, however, I couldn't find any grammatical errors, so good on you there.
Very nice. I'd love to see a longer piece with this in it.
*thumbs up*
Keep writing!
~GryphonFledgling |
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