Young Writers Society

As Thirilight dodged the wild swing, he wished yet again that he had brought along Wordy; the sword would have made dispatching this particular opponent much more convenient. He ducked beneath another wild swing and watched with amusement as the girl was sent spinning off balance by her oversized blade.
“Watch where you’re swinging that thing!” a man, taller than Thirilight and far more massive, yelled shrilly, grabbing both of the crazed sword-swinger’s arms and halting them before she could swing again. “You almost hit me!”
As the second man held his opponent at bay, Thirilight took the opportunity to look the girl over. She was young – no older than thirteen, and far too young to be fully skilled with a blade – and scrawny. By all accounts, she should not have been able to lift the heavy broadsword she was currently brandishing. From her present stance, stiff with indignant fury, and from her earlier feat of strength, Thirilight observed that she was very determined, a fact made exceedingly apparent by the way she glared at him with her widely set eyes.
Determined, but unskilled, Thirilight surmised, and while normally she would not have been a threat, these were not normal circumstances – Thirilight was currently unarmed, his dagger having been lost in the waist-high grasses when the girl’s wild charge had overturned his flower basket, and the presence of numerous burrows made the ground too treacherous to risk running. The best option, Thirilight swiftly ascertained, was to try and reason with the girl – at best, she would stop attacking him; at worst, it would buy him enough time to reach the treeline and make a run for it.
That decided, Thirilight returned his full attention to the girl just in time to witness her viciously kick the other man between the legs. “Now that was a low blow!” he called out, appalled and feeling sympathy towards the other man who doubled over, clutching at his crotch.
The girl, Thirilight couldn’t recall her name, ignored his remark in favor of single-mindedly charging him again.
Thirilight dodged the sloppy swing with ease and began trying to reason with her as she recovered from tripping over a burrow. “Look here, young lady!” he said, holding his empty hands out in front of him. “I’m unarmed! There’s no honor in killing an unarmed man!”
“You would know, you murderer!” she snarled, whirling about for another mad assault.
Thirilight skillfully danced out of the way. “I think you’re making a mistake.”
“Ridding the world of evil is no mistake!”
“That wasn’t the mistake I was talking about.”
Frustrated by all her misses, the girl whirled around on her heel and stomped her foot. “Just die already!”
“No!” Thirilight shouted back, bristling with indignity. He happened to like staying alive, thank you very much, and no insolent little girl was going to change that. He sidestepped another wild charge.
They continued to bandy words for some time – he trying to convince her not to kill him, she insisting that he had to die, both of them becoming more and more irate as the other refused to listen – as Thirilight carefully worked his way towards the edge of the meadow. When the pair had at last entered the long shadows cast by the treeline, Thirilight congratulated himself on a plan well executed and was about to make a dash for the trees… when he stepped into the mouth of a rather deep burrow.
Seeing her chance, the girl mustered her flagging strength and charged Thirilight with a triumphant war cry.
Despite the large sword headed for him, Thirilight remained quite calm, certain that the talisman he always wore around his neck would protect him from harm. Instead, he focused on regaining his balance and working his foot free of the burrow. As it was, Thirilight was unpleasantly surprised to find that the girl and her blade were still headed straight towards him when he glanced up after successfully freeing his foot. Considering the speed at which the girl was running, she and the sword should have already been deflected by the talisman.
Thinking quickly, Thirilight conjured a blinding flash of light as he sidestepped, but to no avail; the girl’s wild stab caught him through the abdomen.
The force of the thrust sent Thirilight crashing to the ground, the temporarily blinded girl landing partially on top of him. Dazed by the fall, Thirilight tried to sit up, the blade embedded in his torso not yet registering. Almost immediately, the other man was by his side, shoving the girl off of Thirilight and holding him still.
As the world reeled around him with a surreal, ringing clarity, Thirilight was distantly aware of the girl’s triumphant cry. He watched, uncomprehending, as she yanked the sword free before he reached down to touch the gaping hole in his abdomen.
Thirilight stared blankly at the dark blood staining his hand, the shock preventing him from feeling the pain. His unusually sluggish brain finally catching up with current events, Thirilight’s last coherent thought before he fainted dead away was, There goes my liver.



Perched upon a convenient log within the safety of the trees, Zarina watched the girl’s assault on Thirilight. The sea witch wasn’t particularly concerned about her grandson’s safety; he was easily dodging the attacks, and she had noticed how he was subtly working his way towards where she waited in the woods. Besides, the experience would teach the boy the value of always carrying a spare weapon, inconvenient or not.
Zarina’s lack of concern promptly evaporated as her vision returned to reveal her grandson impaled upon the girl’s too-large blade, and it felt as if the sword had pierced her own heart instead with a twisting, wrenching motion. She was unsure how much of the water in her eyes was due to the earlier flash of light, and it took all of her self-control to keep herself from rushing headlong to Thirilight’s side. It would do him no good if she were to fall as well.
Blinking back her tears, Zarina recomposed herself, a plan to rescue her foolish grandson gently coalescing in her mind like raindrops in a nimbus. With a deep, calming breath, the sea witch fixed her hair, dabbed at her eyes, and located the path to the meadow. She would walk out of the forest, an innocent old woman searching for her tardy grandchild, and promptly suffer a fit of hysterical grief upon seeing him dead on the ground. Once the two would-be murderers came close enough in an effort to console her, she would kill them and bring Thirilight home. A nice, simple plan.
So Zarina hobbled out of the forest on the path to the meadow, making a show of shading her weak, old eyes, and calling, “Thirry! Thirry! Where are you?”
When she was close enough to hear the frantically whispered discussion between the two would-be murderers, Zarina held up a hand to her ear and shouted, “Is that you, Thirry, dearest?”
The whispers fell silent, and there was a familiar groan.
Zarina shuffled towards where she knew her grandson lay, prattling all the while. “I know it’s you, Thirry. No point in trying to hide. You’re not out here with the baker’s daughter again are you? You know how I feel about her, and you promised me you’d pick those flowers…”
Zarina’s shock was completely unfeigned; she had been expecting a nasty wound, but nothing approaching the degree of damage she saw before her. With an unplanned shriek, the sea witch hurled herself towards her grandson, her far too pale and bloodied grandson, and cradled his head in her arms, even as she used her arts to clot the wound.
“Thirry, Thirry, Thirry. Oh gods, not Thirry! Not my only grandchild!” she cried to the heavens, tears streaming down her face before she remembered that there were two others nearby, two others responsible for her grandson’s dire state.
“You…!” Zarina snarled, the ground beginning to heave as she called up the water below to swamp the two fools who had dared harm her grandchild. “You did this!”
The man quickly backed away and dashed for the cover of the forest, pointing at the girl and shouting, “She did it!” as he ran. Zarina did not heed him; she had been watching. She knew he was the girl’s accomplice, and so the vengeful sea witch turned the earth beneath a nearby tree to mud, causing it to uproot and topple upon him.
The aura of magic swirling so thickly about her that she could almost see it, Zarina turned her attentions to the girl, who was shaking like flotsam among shoals. The sea witch leveled her strongest drowning spell against the child… to no effect. She tried again, to no effect, and realized to her enraged frustration that the girl was being protected from magic by a talisman of some sort; her spells could not harm the girl.
But what of daggers?
Zarina pretended to collapse from exhaustion and promptly broke down into a sobbing heap of forlorn grandmother, surreptitiously watching the girl for signs of guilt and remorse. She found them, and so cried harder, blubbering, “Why? Why? What did he ever do to you?”
“I… I…”
“I what?” Zarina shrieked, lunging forward to grab the girl’s coat in her weathered hands, dragging the child down to her level. “You what?”
The girl’s mismatched eyes were wide with panic and uncertainty. “I…”
The sea witch buried her face in the girl’s shoulder, ignoring the oversized amulet that hit her face, and sobbed even louder, one hand letting go of the coat to grab at the knife she kept hidden in a secret breast pocket. Taking only a moment to steady her hand and check her aim, Zarina stabbed upwards, piercing the girl’s heart from below.
As the girl slumped forwards, lifeless, the amulet around her neck slapped the sea witch in the face again, and she grabbed at it out of anger, only to feel the telltale buzz of enchantment upon it – it was likely the talisman that had shielded the girl from magic.
Knowing her grandson would want to have a look at it later, Zarina yanked the overlarge piece of gold and ruby off the girl’s neck and turned to check on her grandson, only to find him in worse condition than she had planned, and worsening rapidly.
Cursing everything and everyone – herself, her grandson, his failed talisman, the girl, her sword, her amulet – Zarina began dragging her unconscious and now completely unresponsive grandchild to the glade they had made into a temporary portal back home. All the while, she prayed that she would get him there before he died, or, if she did not, that Merimer was close by.

Bonjour.

Firstly, like I said, intimidation. What you have is a tight, thought through piece that basically works very well as it is right now. You were right to be happy with it.

There were a few things I found that could be changed for the better, but they are minor! Most of them revolve around just cutting down on a couple of things, which is pretty easy.

Firstly, commas. I'm honestly in a complete dilemma about your comma usage, because part of me is aware that they're most likely all correct, whereas another part of me wants you to cut down on them completely. Like I told you, it's a simple problem but the amount of commas affected my reading experience. It felt jerky in some places and you could just smooth that out a little more.

For instance, there is one sentence here which is awkward, whereas the rest is actually lovely. I'll bold it for you.

As the second man held his opponent at bay, Thirilight took the opportunity to look the girl over. She was young – no older than thirteen, and far too young to be fully skilled with a blade – and scrawny. By all accounts, she should not have been able to lift the heavy broadsword she was currently brandishing. From her present stance, stiff with indignant fury, and from her earlier feat of strength, Thirilight observed that she was very determined, a fact made exceedingly apparent by the way she glared at him with her widely set eyes.

This paragraph is actually a prime example of your exquisite sentence structure and the parts where it just gets a little too much. Keep it dialled down a tiny bit more and you're good to go.

“Watch where you’re swinging that thing!” a man, taller than Thirilight and far more massive, yelled shrilly, grabbing both of the crazed sword-swinger’s arms and halting them before she could swing again. “You almost hit me!”

Unnecessary parts in the bolded phrase. You'll notice I'm seriously nitpicking here, but this tight enough to merit small adjustments.

I could go on and point out other places where I feel as though you've overdone it slightly - whether grammatically or whether there is just a word or two that could be removed or unchanged, but honestly that's not productive. This is your pet, you know it. You will be able to tell better than I can whether you can afford to change things around.

Also, I think that following on from that your writing could just be more relaxed. As I've said, it's tight and thought through. This doesn't mean you can't play around with it a little more. Perhaps the reason I felt like I was paying too much attention to grammar as I read through it was because you pay a lot of attention to it (/you're very skilled grammatically). I honestly don't know if this is helpful or not, but I just have the urge to tell you to chill out a bit when writing.

As far as pacing goes, it was good. One paragraph that I wasn't entirely fond of was this one:

They continued to bandy words for some time – he trying to convince her not to kill him, she insisting that he had to die, both of them becoming more and more irate as the other refused to listen – as Thirilight carefully worked his way towards the edge of the meadow. When the pair had at last entered the long shadows cast by the treeline, Thirilight congratulated himself on a plan well executed and was about to make a dash for the trees… when he stepped into the mouth of a rather deep burrow

It held a complete change in pace - to the rather bland first sentence you have here. It was jarring and entirely noticeable. You could have quite easily just had them exchange a little more, or changed the first sentence around to make it so that you didn't feel the need to mention dialogue. You can mention the irateness, but what use is the first part?

Latter half of the chapter went perhaps slightly too fast for my liking, but that's just a personal thing and it actually works very well. Like the majority of the story, you've obviously thought about it and there's nothing I particularly want to point out except for the fact that I enjoyed it!

In general, wonderful. Fitted together like a puzzle, no huge problems and nothing that you can't sort out very quickly. Thank you for leading me to this piece, although I'm sure I would have found it eventually. All I can say is that I'm sorry I can't be of more help here.

PM me if needed,

Amy