Published November 2, 2013
~~Ky~~
Everything is so bright and sunny, like, I haven't seen anything so bright. Cynthia and I are in this beautiful green field. Cynthia's arms clutch me tightly so I have trouble breathing a little, but how can she be scared? We'll be alright, and everything seems fine here. This field has super tall grass with flowers of every color, size, and shape. We just happen to be on a nicely mowed path.
"Which direction should we go?" Cynthia asks. The path splits in two in front of us.
"Hmmm," I respond, studying both paths.
The path going left looks promising, but for some odd reason I don't want to take it. It looks just like the path to the right, but something about just seems...weird.
"Right!" I beam proudly since Cynthia is asking for my help. I have never got asked to help.
Cynthia starts walking the right path, still clutching me tightly, and her arms and chest feel kinda damp. I glance up at her. She keeps darting her head left and right and over her shoulder, as if to make sure nothing is going to attack her. Squeezing out of her tight grip, I climb onto her shoulder. Out of nowhere I sense a deep rumbling. What the? It's starting to make the fur on my back rise. Suddenly the world doesn't seem so pleasant. The same feeling I'd get when the Old man would reach for the remote to turn on the window of horrors suddenly claws my heart. I look behind me, but Cynthia doesn't seem to have noticed the noise, yet it gets louder. Actually, it seems more like the revving of a lawn mower. Huh.
"Dear Keys," I swear, What is that noise coming from?
Just as I think that, the noise rages at top volume, and sounds like someone banging a spoon against a rock. Cynthia hears the noise too this time and glances over her shoulder. Her pace quickens. Suddenly, I realize it was the right decision to go right as something huge hurdles down the left path and straight towards us.
"HOLY KEYS!" I scream and Cynthia takes off without looking back.
"OH MY-!" she blurts.
I cling to her shoulder for dear life, claws digging into her jacket, pressing my body as closely to hers as physically possible. Now at highest volume, the racket is awful, like a lawn mower that is mowing rocks. The noise rips through my sensitive ears. Fear's claws rip down my back and chest, leaving behind a cold trail that makes me shiver. We're going to be ran over for sure! Already its clear the thing is gaining on us. One quick glance behind exposes the creature: a huge metal, spiky thing with blood-red slits for eyes and huge, pointy dagger teeth. Eek! Even though it has no legs, it is obviously faster than Cynthia in the long run. I have got to do something! I don't want to be eaten alive! Think! Think! Wait, that's right. I'm a ryg and therefore have elemental powers of some sorts, but I don't know which kind I am. Well, I have to try something. Quickly, I look at the monster eyes and open my mouth. I think of energy of some kind and try to imagine it forming into a ball between my teeth. Some how I can feel the ball forming, growing, it has a slightly warm feel to it. It feels as if I am trying to contain an uncontrollable energy that is ready to run rampant. Focusing on the monster, I thrust the energy ball towards beast with as much force as possible. Hastily my weapon crashes right between I-Have-A-Problem's eyes and confuses it. It looks confused as if it is trying to figure out what just hit it, and that slows it down. I do it again, and again. The attacks don't do much though.
Wind whooshes upwards as we fall spontaneously and I tighten my grip on Cynthia. For a moment I look ahead. Cynthia has jumped down onto a bridge and is still running, but she's starting to pant and slow down. She can't be tired now! Desperately she races across the bridge before falling to another, where she must go the opposite direction to reach the next gap. After a few more bridges, we hit the ground and through a tunnel to another series of bridges that go up instead of down. Knowing this is making her more exhausted, I hope desperately for a way to give her the energy she needs, and out of nowhere I start feeling drained of my own energy. Now she seems to be less tired, I realize. That's weird.
Behind us the bridges crash violently. Our friend has decided to come back. Oh poop. Cynthia must've realized the thing's reappearance, because she sprints faster. I transfer a little more energy to her. Maybe I can slow this piece of rotten waste down more than my efforts before. I shoot another energy ball, but in one of its eyes. It roars and stops for a moment to recover, but it isn't long before it's after us again. I shoot its other eye and get the same reaction. Instead of going forward, though, I-Have-Some-Serious-Issues bangs around in all sorts of directions. Giving more energy to Cynthia, I turn around to see where we are heading. We're heading into a series of bridges stacked on top of each other, of course. More sprinting. More energy gone. Ugh. Unfortunately for us, the bridges are formed into a vertical maze of some sort.
"Up or down?" Cynthia pants.
"Er....," I don't even know where we are, let alone where we are heading. Both ways seem good. On one paw, going up means avoiding that monster. On the other hand, going down won't use as much energy as climbing upwards. I say, "Up."
With haste, Cynthia climbs upwards. The bridge above extends, lucky for us. When Cynthia reaches the end of the bridge, I tell her to go up again. Then down. Then up. Then up again. Then down. Somehow I manage to guess the right bridges or something. Cynthia slows to a stop. This bridge didn't extend any further. She picks me up from off her shoulder and pulls me close.
"Hold on Ky!" She says, and she jumps off of the seventh bridge from the ground. Poomth! Cynthia's knees buckle as we hit the ground. Before us lays a huge cave building thing with an entrance barely big enough for Cynthia to walk into. I donate more energy to Cynthia. With this, she gets up and trudges into safety. Once in, she collapses onto the structures floor. Never feeling so tired in my life, I rest my head against Cynthia's chest. Its like a pillow, I think warily and let my eyes flutter close, How am I so tired?
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140,790 Literary Works • 673,688 Reviews
Heya. Well finally some of the special powers of the Ryg race is being brought to light. I think this revelations, seeing its importance, shouldn't have been trivialized this much though. It was all really kiddy and goody, which I sense is intentional though. I can see that you can see all this clearly in your mind, but it was all just too fast-paced for my mind to keep up with the quickly changing environments and all that. The progressions were way too fast for me. Also, I would like some more details on this sphere of energy. What kind of energy is it? And I think Ky summoned this power too effortlessly, seeing it was its first time using it, and it didn't have a clue of how to use it. I can see that you actually rushed through this chapter in tying, maybe because of the rapidity and chaos of what you were trying to capture here, as there are quite a few grammatical glitches.
As for your sound effects, they seem a bit over-the-top to me, but I actually like this style! This adds some amount of creativity and identification to your writing style, and it makes me visualize the story in comic or manga form. This is a very exciting chapter. The action has begun!
Keep writing, and I will keep reading
Adam-Clay.
Thanks
And OMG the sound effects are so cheesy <XD I'll try to explain the loveliness of ryg powers better in the future.
Hi. I am The Raven, Knight of the Green Room, and I will be reviewing your work at this moment. My review will be divided into the sections 'What Is Good' and 'What Needs Improvement/Suggestions'. Now, without further delay, let's get right down to business...
What Is Good:
1) You have shown that you are unafraid to experiment with the form of your text, which is good. I like your use of sound (inasmuch as it can be expressed in text) and italics to represent character thoughts and emphasis. This lends some fluidity to your work, and as a result i don't feel a lot of hindrance in reading your work. But unfortunately, there's still hindrance in other forms...
2) That said, your initial 'sound effects' has done its job. It's actually quite chilling for a fantasy story with characters that could throw energy balls. Well done.
What Needs Improvement/Suggestions:
1) However, there are moments where it would fall short, especially after the 'RRRRRRRR's. For example...
It is unclear what you meant by the 'screech'. Is it your character shouting 'screech'? Because that would be strange, comical (in a bad way) and overall unbelievable. Or is it something making the 'screech' sound? If that is so, what was it, the worm thing? Why would it screech? Or is it the way the character is screaming? I'm more inclined to believe that 's it. However, it simply does not work. It should be described rather than phonetically transcribed. Even if you want to phonetically transcribe a scream into text, that's not exactly how I would envision it.
And then there's this. The reason why 'RRRRRRRRRRRR' worked is because it is not cliched, and it is actually alien and open-ended enough for it to get my mind working on what it actually is. Whereas, 'RAWR' is overused, cliched and tired. It brings to mind parodies and satires, corny and campy horror B-movies, or Halloween. Try to imagine something new, like how a terrifying metal worm thing would sound like. Sometimes, the lack of sound could work just as well.
The same thing goes for many other sound effects later on, such as 'whoosh!' and moderately, 'crash!'. Sometimes, it's better to just describe in the narrative, rather than to create these sound effects.
2) The grammar in your story currently requires revision, a lot of it. Your story would consistently veer from present tense to past then, and then back again. This is a glaring oversight that it's one of those things that took the immersion out, though it's not the chief perpetrator.
3) I'm afraid that the idea of a huge worm does not strike me as something fresh and new. It's used in a lot of works. Or oversized spiders, or oversized anything. The bit about it being made of metal, or seemingly made of metal is a nice touch, but unfortunately, it brings to mind robots, or some kind of a cybernetic organism, or heck, some people might read transformers into it (like me) - it ruins the mood, basically. Then there's the bit about having those evilly evil red eyes of evilness. It doesn't get more blatant than that. I believe it is best to move beyond the Tolkien mode of creature creation - you can have creatures that are horrific, but don't make them horrific for the sake of it. Make their horrifying nature natural.
4) The power that your protagonists have... Or rather the way you put it... Even when one is transferring energy to the other, I feel that the way your character describes it is too straightforward. It almost had me thinking that your characters operate on Windows 8 or something, and could see an energy bar in the lower right hand corner of their vision. It should be described in a more natural way. How would you feel if you transferred energy out of yourself? Lethargic? Drained? Something like that, right? Or does it actually feel pleasurable? Or even painful? How does it feel like? Is it as if a faucet in you is turned on and water gushes out of you?
5) The action sequence. It's basically just the worm chasing one character or the other, and your character throwing energy balls at it. While there is nothing inherently wrong with that, again, it is the way you describe it. It seems that you are just going through the motions the way even a sports commentator would distance himself from. Try to describe more via the five senses. Try to describe even the minutest details of what is going on. In a hairy situation, or at least in some cases, we tend to get hyperaware and hypersensitive. Why not simulate that?
6) The part about the bridge and the clowns. First of all, it came too suddenly. The transition needs to be smoother, and more time spent on it. Then of course, there's the idea of a bridge full of clowns. I mean, sure, it's fantasy, but that's something that would have trouble even fitting into Alice in Wonderland! Moreover, what purpose is there to have a bridge full of clowns? What does it mean? What narrative purpose does it serve?
I'm afraid that's all I have for you... I hope I've helped. Keep writing!
This is really great! But I think what you missed out on is the inverted commas when the beast screeched.
good luck with your next few articles, keep up the good work. 
Thanks