'... What is this place?'
Louis awoke when he heard Eden's voice in the dark.
He did not speak, and could hardly manage to breathe past the pain in his body. you can be a bit more specific here. Pain in his chest? Pain in his heart? A new kind of pain he’s never felt before? Was it sharp or heavy or numbing? To really make us feel it, you have to know how to describe it. 'Underworld,' replied a deeper voice than even his own.
'I didn't know it still existed,' she whispered.
'It has always existed,' the voice sighed.
'Did you live here Before?' she asked, 'When it was still secret?'
'I never lived here, no,' he replied, 'But I'm very familiar with it now. I've learnt all of the entrances and exits... It is a very convenient place when you wish to live unknown.'
'It's kind of... Spooky down here,' she remarked after awhile, 'It's almost like we're being watched.'
Louis opened his eyes, clenching his teeth together. Why was he clenching his teeth? Pain? Frustration? Anger? 'Your friend is awake,' said the voice.
Eden was quiet and did not move or even look in Louis' direction.
She was sitting nearby on a chair, staring into a small fire which had been built on a hearth.
He looked around the room, noting the low ceiling and the icicles that clung to nearly everything. There was very little in the room, maybe a semicolon here instead of a comma a table in the corner and a few stools around it. There were two cots on the other side of the room, stripped of their blankets.
The walls were plain brick, as was the ceiling and the floor. The dilapidated wooden door that lead outside was barred shut and the little window beside it hid behind tattered curtains.
And then, Louis saw him.
He knelt close by, his head tilted toward the door. His build was lean and muscular and broad lean kind of conflicts with broad. I always thought they were opposites. Did he have small slumping shoulders but a strong muscular chest? Or a thin feeble waist but heavy, broad shoulders? Or something else? What are you trying to say?. Louis glanced at the tops of his hands. There was no inking that linked him to a gang or a community of any kind. But there were markings on his skin. Black lines criss-crossed his forearms and neck, the only skin that was exposed in the burlap tunic that he wore. In the fire the lines seemed to glimmer like onyx stone in sunlight. The last sentence could be rephrased to sound better. The strange lines seemed to glimmer like onyx stone in the light of the fire. Or something like it. There was a blindfold over his eyes and manacles around his wrists. Louis noticed felt? a bruise on his cheek and a tear in the lobe of his ear.
This was a fierce creature, Louis could sense his fighting nature. But he also sensed something else. What made him feel that way? This is just a pet peeve of mine, but when people in books say things along the lines of ‘I sensed an evil aura’ or something like that, it makes me want to vomit. There has to be SOMETHING that gives a person that sudden impression. Maybe Louis caught on to his slow, calculated breathing patterns, or maybe the man clenches his fists, or maybe there was just this strange glint to his eyes, or maybe it was the fact that the man wouldn’t make eye contact. Well, I probably ranted a bit more than I should’ve but hopefully you get what I’m saying. It was like standing near a bolt of lightening, being in the room with him. There was no threat from him, but his hair stood on end and his heart beat as though he had just run ten miles without stopping. It was all so... Discomforting. lowercase discomforting. And I liked how you said his hair stood on end just being next to him, as if it was like standing near a bolt of lightning (btw you misspelled lightning again, you’ve done this in a previous chapter. You spell lightening, as in ‘the lightening dawn’, not ‘a bolt of lightning’. However, the rest should be left out. You said ‘it was like lightning. There was no threat from him…’ To me lightning is a threat, so your comparison is off. Is this making sense? 'Who the fuck are you?' asked Louis. spat Louis? I kind of imagined him saying it in a harsh voice. The other shifted his weight slightly and then stood up, saying, 'I prefer to be called Zayn...' Yay Zayn! Louis watched as he walked to the duffle bag in the corner of the room. I had to read this three times for it to make sense. The ‘he’ is confusing. Do you mean that Louis watched Zayn as Louis walked over to the corner of the room? Or do you mean Louis stayed put as he glared down Zayn as Zayn strode across the room to the bag? To me, just cut it out and simply tell us that either Louis or Zayn got up to cross the room. While Zayn rummaged through the bag, Louis closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. His chest filled with a sharp pain at the action.
Zayn came back with a bottle of water, half-filled, and knelt beside him, 'You heal quickly for a Wolf of your size.'
'Violet...?' asked Louis.
'The baby?' Zayn asked, 'She didn't make it...' He shook his head.
Louis grimaced, feeling as though his heart was caught in a vice. He swallowed, unable to breathe.
'I'm very sorry,' Zayn whispered.
Eden was quiet.
Louis' lip began to tremble, and tears welled up in his eyes. It was agony, pure, undiluted agony. She was all that kept him moving, breathing. And now, even she had been taken away from him, leaving him empty and cold. What would become of him?
For now, all he could do was writhe in his heartache and self-loathing. like this sentence. Zayn set the water beside Louis and moved away from him.
It felt like days, but it had only been a few hours that passed. Loyis whoops drifted in and out of sleep and sanity don‘t you mean insanity? I imagine whenever you wake up and are forced to remember what happened, you go a bit insane, listening to the fire pop and crackle. Between all three of them it was the only sound in all of Underworld it seemed. cross out it seemed After awhile, Eden had dozed off in her corner of the room.
But Zayn continued to pace, and then pause to play with the pendant of his necklace, and pace again, and then stop to check on Louis for a few moments. The electricity of being near seemed to be increasingly more intense as time passed. This last sentence needs to be rephrased too, I think. ‘The electricity between them became more intense as time passed.’ Or something else. I didn’t like ‘increasingly more’. They’re like, the same thing, and it sounds awkward. Louis watched him, wary of this stranger. Though, no comma there was no stranger that he did trust, this one was different, mysterious. Somehow, even though they had not spoken hardly a word to one another, it was as if Zayn knew everything about him. He felt exposed, which gave him a sense of fear.
'Can I ask you something?' Louis asked. His choice of words surprised me. Coming from the person who blurts out ‘Who the fuck are you’, he now asks politely ‘can I ask you something’. It just seems strange. 'I suppose that all depends on the question,' Zayn replied. nice response haha 'What are you?' he whispered.
'That can be a complicated subject, Wolf,' Zayn muttered in reply, squatting beside him.
'I don't think I'll be going anywhere anytime soon, Thing,' Louis pointed out.
A slight grin crossed Zayn's lips.
'Years and years ago...in my world...' he began, 'Just as Time itself was begun began?, the gods and the goddesses descended from the heavens and chose separate regions of the world. There they created their own mortal races to their own liking, and they allowed these mortals to care and protect their regions.
'Each god or goddess then created a league of beings to protect the mortals and their land when it came time for them to ascend once more to their homes in the heavens. These were called simply, "Divines"... They were sons and daughters of the gods and the goddesses. These Divines made it possible for cities to be built and civilizations to flourish. They never aged, and so their knowledge was sought by the mortal kings for many reasons. And that is what I am. A Divine.'
Louis stared at him for awhile.
'It is all very difficult to believe, I know,' Zayn huffed, standing up again.
'It shouldn't surprise me at all considering...' Louis allowed him to fill in the blanks.
He looked at Eden when she stirred in her sleep. All he could feel toward her now was contempt and anger. Huh? Why?? Zayn shook his head, 'Don't blame her.'
Louis looked at him, surprised.
'She was only doing what was necessary to keep herself alive a few more days,' Zayn whispered, 'Anybody else in her situation would have done the same thing.'
'She was apart of my pack,' Louis growled in a low voice, 'I trusted her... And she stabbed me in the back.' Huh again. Am I missing something? Did you totally redo the last chapter? Zayn shook his head, 'Nobody can be trusted, you know that. You were betrayed by your own brother... Don't think I have not heard your story, Louis Graham.'
'It's different,' Louis muttered.
'You're right,' Zayn said, nodding, 'It is worse to be betrayed by your own blood.'
'I expected it from Ira,' Louis grunted, 'That's the difference.'
Zayn nodded slowly, 'Then you should learn to expect it from everyone...'
They were both quiet.
Zayn licked his lips, absentmindedly caressing the dragon pendant.
'Where'd you get that thing?' asked Louis.
'It was a gift,' he replied flatly, sitting in the corner.
'Who is she?' Louis asked, assuming correctly that the gift had come from a woman.
'My life mate,' he replied.
'Your wife?' he said.
'No...' he sighed, 'Marriage would mean we are bound by a vow and a band of cold gold... This is means much more than a few promises that are doomed to be broken.' a nice take on marriage here. Louis nodded, 'I see...'
'No...' Zayn sighed, shaking his head, 'You do not see... You do not understand... You never will be able to until you experience it for yourself...' I like what he says here, too.
Louis was quiet.
'Siobhan...' Zayn murmured.
'Where is she now?' Louis whispered.
'On the other side,' he replied.
'Oh...' Louis breathed, 'I'm... I'm sorry...'
'She isn't dead,' Zayn said, 'She is on the other side of the Door...'
Louis looked at the door and then at him, 'I'm...I'm not following...' This is confusing for a second. ‘Louis then glanced at the old rusted door off to their left, and finally shook his head with confusion, “I…I’m not following.” I don’t know really why it tripped me up. 'It's a long story, Wolf,' Zayn said softly.
'Like I said before,' Louis told him, 'I'm not going anywhere for awhile.'
Forgotten
A scream made its way up from the depths of Ira’s chest and tore from his throat when searing pain shot through his body like hot iron. His eyes popped wide open, the agony hot and relentless. Hands clutched at him when he shot upright, shaking and screaming as the pain drove him to near insanity. The hands forced him back down to the ground and held him there even as he struggled against them.
Gasping for breath, he looked around frantically, and was shocked to find he was in a tent, surrounded by familiar faces. Among them was Vanessa, the color gone from her lips and the her cheeks awash with pallor. Her blue eyes were full of fear and sympathy for him.
‘Be still, sir, we’ve got to splint your leg,’ one of the men said.
He was suddenly aware that Vanessa had slipped her hand into his and was running her hand over his hair, trying to comfort him.
‘What the hell?’ Ira groaned through his teeth, ‘What happened? Where’d you all come from?’
‘The real question is where the hell did you come from?’ the other said.
Ira pushed himself up, gripping his side. It could not have been a dream, or even a nightmare, he had too many broken bones and bruises to prove that. But how did he get back to the Surface? Where was that...thing? His memories of the underground were opaque, only flashes of the events remained clear. The monster that had attacked them, his men dying, the creature who came to their aid, and then blackness everywhere in between.
He looked at Vanessa, and her expression [said] she only remembered the same.
'I don’t know...’ he muttered, 'I don’t know what happened...’
'We found you both and a couple of your team just outside the camp late last night,’ the man told him, 'Pete and Johnny were in bad shape...they died this morning... What happened?’
Ira swallowed and looked at Vanessa, feeling a shudder roll through him. What had maybe italicize had? happened?
'I told you, I don’t remember...’ Ira muttered, 'Let’s just get the hell out of here.’
'It’s so different...’
Zayn stepped into the mall, his bare feet crunching over the broken glass. Shafts of light streamed in from the broken windows and jagged holes in the ceiling above, caved in from the immense weight of ice that it was never meant to bear.
'What have I done...?’ he whispered to himself with a shudder.
He folded his arms across his chest. I don’t get this line. Are you saying that he was folding his arms from the cold or for something else? It’s unclear.
The mall was empty, completely abandoned it kind of goes without saying that if the mall was empty, it had been abandoned. . In a city such a thing was rare, especially one as large as San Diego. How far did Their hands reach?
A cold wind howled through the empty corpse of the mall, sounding lonely and forgotten. The banners hanging from the second level rustled slightly, a hollow whisper in the quiet. The columns supporting the crumbling ceiling were cracked, a few of them broken into mounds of decay.
There were a few sites where scavengers had camped, judging from the circles of black on the floor surrounded by empty cans and crumpled wrappers it‘s also pretty unclear what you mean by the circles of black. I’m assuming you meant that the people were burned where they stood, but in a world with magic, it can be really anything. It’s pretty vague. . The food court had been purged of every last crumb of food,nothing remained.The clothing stores’ shelves were bare save a few threads that were not fit for wearing any longer. Here and there, shops had been converted into shelters for living, but those had all been long abandoned.Signs that once humanity had once tried to thrive here. But it was obvious that they had failed a long time ago and abandoned all hope. The last two sentences aren’t very smooth. You could combine them to something like ‘Although there was clear evidence of humanity thriving in the area, it was obvious that that was no longer true.’ or something. I don’t get why you said humanity ‘abandoned all hope’ when it sounded like at first They had killed them.
Nothing could survive long with Them so near.
The raven swooped into the mall through a gap in the ceiling and lit sat? onto his shoulder with a rustle of feathers. When she landed, her talons appeared to sink into the black lines that marbled his skin until it seemed that she had grown out of his shoulder.
'It’s empty then,’ he sighed, taking a step forward, 'They must have kept the demons from escaping Underworld after all...’ He reached a hand up to stroke her soft black feathers, Dark tendrils wisping off of her at his touch like black smoke, 'It’s just you and I, no comma now comma Shi.’
The blue mark on his chest gave a bright pulse, causing his skin to prickle. The dragon pendant that hung from the necklace around his throat glimmered slightly as well. He pressed his lips together, 'And You...’ why would you capitalize you? You’re only referring to Siobahn, right? Unless since she’s a god her name gets capitalized.
He led the way across the main floor of the mall, stepping over the debris. His footfalls made no sound on the cold tile.
He stepped onto an escalator and walked up the motionless steps, his breath freezing on the cold air. He smelled traces of blood wafting from the second floor. The scent was faint, but it caused his nostrils to flare and his blood to rush, like a predator who had scented prey.
On the second floor [there] were signs of a battle, more than likely between scavengers who could not share a find. There were a half dozen bodies lying in pools of blood, one in the fountain, two behind the customer service desk, and three behind various benches and a map of the mall. More empty shells were scattered across the floor, glimmering in the light shining from above.
Zayn wrinkled his nose and walked to a body lying behind the desk, his fists clenching and unclenching. He knelt beside the man and unlaced the boots on the body’s feet and tugged them off, as well as the three pairs of woolen socks that he wore. He inspected the pants the man wore, and then took those as well. He gathered up the clothes and snatched the cap from the man’s head as he went on to the other bodies. They were all too full of holes to be of any use.
He approached a department store; the windows had been covered with boards of plywood and pieces of cardboard box. Words were painted on the glass that read “The Haereesan Famlee Rezidinse”. Beside that, was a warning “BeeWayr- Bleed”.
Zayn entered the residence, finding the darkness there to be a welcome comfort after spending so long under the light. But that was soon countered by the stench that filled the room.
Four humans, a man, a woman and two young girls lay on the floor covered dried blood that tracked from their eyes like tear stains, their mouths comma and their noses and ears. They were all emaciated, their thin faces frozen in expressions of anguish.
Zayn was unphased by death, semicolon he had seen too much of it as well as inflicted it upon other others far too many times for it to burden him. Even in the very Beginning comma death was what life was to everyone else around him. He was cold, callous, and even ruthless that way. However, these people were dead because of a disease that would never have become the epidemic that it was now if the They had never been brought into existence in the first place this sentence is so confusing x) ‘However, these people were dead because of a disease that would never have surfaced if They had not carried it. And They would not be here if the Threshold had remained shut.’ I don‘t know if this is still what you were going for, but what you had confused me. . If the Threshold had never been opened. If it had never been closed...
He bit his lip, and then proceeded to approach the man.
Shi left his shoulder for a mannequin [and] watched him try on the clothes, most of which were loose after his time in captivity I am being so picky today, sorry! But what are you trying to say by the clothes being loose? Are you saying that he lost weight after being starved in captivity? And so he misjudged the size of the clothes he took off the man? You‘re not saying that Zayn‘s clothes were looser, you said that the new clothes he was trying on were loose because of his captivity. Does this make any sense? . After donning the pants, the boots comma and the shirt with a picture of a palm tree and script above that which read “Sunny California", the cap, a hooded jacket. and a pair of gloves, Zayn could have passed as an ordinary scavenger.
She watched him rummage through the quarters with intelligent, no comma black eyes, only straying from him to investigate the slight movements of shadow caused by the drafts of steady wind pouring inside. She was perched on the arm of a naked mannequin across the room, waiting for him to find decent clothing before they began their trek across California, and across the entire United States.
He picked up a suitcase hidden under one of the counters and cracked it open. A few cans of food dropped to the floor and he bent to pick them up, only to falter when a sudden pain tore through his body. He clutched his side, his lip curling into a snarling grimace.
Shi’s feathers ruffled suddenly, concern taking over her gaze. She crowed when dark, nearly black blood oozed between his fingers.
'I’m alright... since I’m tired of ellipses, use a comma’ he breathed aloud. They both knew it was a lie.
He swore under his breath as the wounds They had inflicted, as well as the pain, slowly began to reappear. His flesh was like paper to a flame.
Blood pooled on the floor beneath him as though he was a victim of the Bleed, and his senses became muddled as his stomach churned and his head became light. He rolled onto his back and leaned back against the wall, breathing heavily. Shi was at his side in less than a moment’s notice, watching him like a mother fearing for a sick child.
He gave her throat a gentle stroke with the back of a trembling finger, reassuring her.
Words were of no real use between them. She could sense his emotions as clearly as though they were her own. It was the same for him. They were the closest of comrades, bonded by spirit and mind so closely that they were nearly one and the same.
He fumbled with the can of food that had fallen, slickened by the blood coating his hands. When [it] clattered to the floor again and rolled out of his reach, Shi hopped after it and caught it in her talons. She flew it back to him and used her claws to tear off the top.
The scent of fish filled his nostrils. Shi flitted to her perch on his shoulder and watched quietly as he used his fingers to scoop out the flaky, pink flesh and put it his mouth. He did not bother to chew, but swallowed it whole after spitting out a needle-like bone I‘m wondering how this would work since you have to chew the fish first to find the bones. He offered a piece of meat to Shi, who snapped it up in her beak hungrily.
They ate together in silence, their first meal since they were captured, and as hideous as it was, it was food, and they were starving.
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