Young Writers Society

It was a night of blood. Fire swallowed the small village hole. A madman's laugh could be heard. A desperate father takes his only child into the woods, telling her not to move. The father rushes back to his already hopeless village. While the young child cried. Now knowing she will now only see her family in memories.

But she remembered her fathers words, and stays put. A wind passed the girl and the stench of blood and death is blown from her village. Sometime later she fell asleep not knowing that two people had been watching her. A boy, around the age of seventeen, with dark blond hair, blue eyes and a handsome face. He gently stroked the girl thick long dark hair. His heart going out to this little girl that has been through so much in such a short time. A girl, about a year young than himself, with long shiny black hair just stared at the girl showing no emotion.

"Pa..." the girl mumbled coming to from her sleep. "Who are you?!" she backs away as she sees the two people.

"No need to be frightened my dear," said the boy. "My name is Reamia. What is your name?"

The little girl looked at the boy. He wore a dark purple robe and also carried a staff in his right hand. She looked up at the girl who wore a ripped white tunic and brown trousers, she noticed that she was in men's clothing.

"Alic...my...my name is Alic," the girl stammered.

Reamia gets on his knelt and looks at the girl with a gental smile. "You see my friend here, she may seem mean and scary but shes nice inside." the girl manged to let out a little giggle. "Her name is Sebri."

The girl, now identified as Sebri, looks at the small timid girl. Alic gasps as she sees Sebri had two different colored eyes. Her left being blue and right green.

"We are special, just like you," Reamia said to Alic. "Let me see your hand."

Alic put her brown gloved hand behind her back, reluctant to show what had been placed on her palm.

"Please Alic," Reamia insisted gently.

Slowly, but surely, Alic held out her hand and let Reamia remove the glove. He smiled at the lime green tattoo of a dragon that was drew onto her hand.

"Alic. Myself and Sebri have this same tattoo," he held out his hand showing the same marking. Sebri did the very same. "Together, we are meant to stop evil. However first we have to find three eggs."

"You mean d-dragons?" Alic's face lit up.

Reamia nodded. "Yes child. One for you, one for me and one for Sebri. So will you join us?" he held out his arms for the girl.

Alic smiled but she had tears in her eyes and she let herself into Reamia's warm and welcoming arms. She still longer for her family back but at least she wouldn't be alone.

Ten long years passed and the girl grew up to be a strong and elegant eighteen-year-old. However she still had not fulfilled her dream of seeing a dragon.

"Reamia?" Alic rode up next to Reamia on her horse. "Where are we going again?"

"I've told you, we are going to the village named Reno. Their are people their whom we believe have our eggs."

Sebri came running beside on her own horse. "Yes, like the last village, and the one before that and the one before that," Sebri had always been snappy and liked to tease Reamia. "What do you think, Alic? Ten gold coins says this one is just like the other."

"I'll take you on that bet." Alic had been running out of gold but she still always took on Sebri's bets, it was an addiction of hers. "Sebri, what dragons are there again?"

Sebri sighed and rolled her eyes but she told Alic. "There are three class of dragons," she held up three fingers. "Firstly you have the fire dragon," she put down one of her fingers. "Then the air dragon. Last the water dragon. They represent the three elements. There is no earth dragon as it is where each dragon comes from. As do all of us."

"There are no other dragons?" Alic asked tucking her wavy brown hair behind her ears.

"If there are, we don't know about them," Sebri said shrugging.

Reamia looked at the horizon judging the journey to Reno about one more day. He then looked back to Alic. He remembered that first day he saw her. She looked so small and timed. Now, she was a young beautiful girl. Stunning would be the proper word to expresses how Alic looked.

A small twig breaking made Sebri stop in her tracks. Nothing could hide from her superhuman hearing. Alic had found that out the hard way, whilst she was trying to sneak a sweet treat from the pockets during the night.

"What is it?" Reamia said stopping his horse and looking around.

"Somethings coming this way," she jumped of the horse and took out her twin daggers. "Something I plan to cut up," she gave off a devilish smirk thinking about this next kill she planned to do.

However it was no monster that emerged from the woods but a man. The site was still shocking. "Help..." blood burst from his mouth. The man was covered in bruises and blood. He was beyond help.

Reamia jumped off his horse and caught the man as he fell. "What happened? Who did this?"

"Quewa clan...." was the last words the man breathed from his blood soaked lips.

Alic suddenly shook with fear, sorrow and anger. "Those bastard!" she charged off on her horse to go looking for the people that kill her village in cold blood.

"Alic!" yelled both Reamia and Sebri with concern.

Sebri swiftly put away her daggers and jumped back onto her horse. Reamia closed the mans dead cold eyes and muttered a few words to respect this one whom had passed. He jumped onto his horse and rode on following Sebri.

Alic's heart was pounding, her pulse quickened, stomach turned and tears ran down her face. Quewa Clan where murders. Scum. Evil. People that didn't deserve to live, according to Alic's thoughts. Alic could smell the blood of her village people. She could hear her fathers words.

Stay here, Alic. Don't come for me. Stay!

"Pa," a single tear made its way out Alic's eye and down her check.

She kicked her heels and the horse rode faster. She knew Sebri and Reamia would not be pleased with how foolish she was acting, but their yells could be a reward for later once she watched the leader of Quewa Clan's flesh burn. She could picture it now. That filthy bastards flesh falling off, him begging for mercy which Alic would not give. She allowed and evil smirk to sneak its way onto her lips. Alic knew what she would do to this madman that took everything from her. But then again she would thank him. If it wasn't for him Alic would of never met Sebri or Reamia. The two people that raised her.

"You're going to die," she whispered, closing her eyes as she reached the blood and ash smelling village.

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This is just an extremely short chapter. It really is just introducing the three main characters for the moment. Hope you enjoy!

This was good and believable. Keep up the good work!

Overall I must say I like this story.I like how you went straight into the action and didn't waste anytime,lol.I really like how you write, it has a sort of flows in a way, but sometimes I felt certain sentences are awkward.

Gamergirl wrote:"Your going to die," she whispered, closing her eyes as she reached the blood and ash smelling village.

It's supposed to be You're instead.

Gamergirl wrote:She smiled evil.

This feels a bit awkward to me maybe you could say "An evil smile crept on her face."

However I find it interesting and I do like the characters.The only thing I would say it work on the sentences that are a bit awkward. Good job!

This is really interesting. I have been looking for a good medieval fantasy like this for quite some time now. A sorta LOTR thing i like hope to see some more chapters in the future! XD

Hello.

To be honest I'm not very impressed with this, but looking beyond the flaws I see some potential for this story provided you are willing to work hard. So let's begin, shall we?

The one thing that bothers me the most is how predictable this chapter is. You have a doomed hometown™, an orphaned main character, and a duo of strangers who are obviously good guys because one of them is handsome and the other has unusual eyes, and that's just in the beginning. These are some of the oldest tricks in the book and while it is possible to make them work this story isn't an example. Why doesn't it work? Because there's not much else holding the story up, like characterization. Characters are often what make or break a story and I don't see much personality right now. The only purpose your characters serve is to move the plot along, not to entertain the reader with their conflicting character traits such as stubbornness, ignorance, or pride.

Another thing that makes these characters fall flat is that they're not sympathetic, meaning that the average Joe can't pick this story up, read about these characters, and say, "I know exactly how Alic feels at seeing her hometown being destroyed," mostly because the majority of us haven't had that experience. Now this doesn't mean you have to cater to the experiences of the common man, but what you do need to do is show how those events affect the character(s) in question. How does she cope with the loss? Do her methods of coping annoy other characters? How do they deal with her emotions? How do their reactions shape who Alic is as a person? The ten years between the destruction of her village and the actual plot would have been the perfect time to show these things, but given how the story is set up that might not be practical. But even if you won't narrate that time you still have to answer these questions since they will affect what kind of person Alic is ten years later.

You can argue that you do show how Alic feels about the destruction of her village when she finds out the Quewa clan is in the area, and you would be correct, but that moment also falls flat since the destruction of her village fell flat in the first place. Not to mention that shining single tears have been done already, but that's beside my point.

If you want to make the destruction of her village work then you have to make it stand out from all the other doomed hometowns that come standard with most fantasy novels. It's not going to be easy considering how often it's done and I'll admit that I don't know how to do it either, but if you do manage to pull it off successfully then that will be an achievement.

The second thing that bothers me is the exposition, especially after the ten year time skip. You portray Alic as an idiot just so you can establish what the characters are doing, where they're going, etc. This really hurts your story since it undermines the intelligence of a character early on, and if you continue this pattern throughout the plot it's going to grate on your readers' nerves, especially if characters shown to be intelligent become dumb for the sake of exposition. Instead of forcing exposition in places where it's really not appropriate or effective why not create situations where it would make sense to have it? We already know that the characters will be searching for the eggs thanks to the intro so we already know what they're doing. We can also infer that the group has probably traveled far and wide in search of them and probably discuss where they'll go next if they don't find anything in one location. This is a reasonable place to establish where they're going and why without making anyone look stupid. Of course, there are other methods you could use, and I suggest you get creative and see what works best.

Next is your description, particularly in the first portion of the story. Everything is divided into short sentences, making the writing seem choppy. In case you don't understand what I mean when I say "choppy" try to read your first paragraph out loud, taking care to stop every time there's a period. Does this sound natural? Can you imagine someone speaking like this in real life? Chances are the answer is no since people like to use things called commas and conjunctions to connect sentences that have related subjects. Find sentences that can work together and merge those to create a smoother narrative. You may need to completely revise sentence structure to do this.

Finally, your grammar. There are numerous grammatical errors in this story, including but not limited to, improper dialogue formatting, spelling errors, and tense shifts. Most of these seem to be oversights instead of a lack of understanding of grammar so you shouldn't have much trouble fixing them. I suggest reading out loud since that makes it easier to find these mistakes as well as to make sure you're using the proper spelling and formatting for plurals and possessive nouns.

There's more I would have liked to mention but I think it's best if I only highlight the biggest issues so you don't get stressed out trying to fix all of them at once. Keep in mind that every mistake you make is an opportunity to learn and grow and that every story, no matter how many cliches it has, can become something great in the right hands with enough work.

You're welcome to PM me with any questions or comments.

--Dover