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Young Writers Society


12+ Violence

The demon maiden chapter one

by Oxara


I landed from my teleportation at my squad’s house, up in the clouds to avoid detection along with a lot of magic wards. I walked inside, and found Leo laying on the coach.

“Give me a beer, Leo”

Leo entire entire presence and body reseanted a sharp and strong person. His body while strong had no visible signs of muscles. His eyes gleamed with a dark blue. His black hair went to just above his shoulder.

“Why should I do that” he said with a sharp glance towards me

“Well because you like me," A glance told me that was a no, "How about this, whoever killed the most demons, with the normal rules get's the other a beer.”

“Sigh, it’s not a contest you know. But fine I’ll play your game, but if I win I don’t want a beer, I want that nice little bit of fancy demon leather you got off that tier two boss today.”

“Dam, did our little coward mage tell you about that?” He only shrugged in response“Alright you have yourself a deal.” A quick thought appeared, anyone who uses ra’oxa is mage, meaning I'm a mage if I use my powers that use ra’oxa. But I dismissed the thought and counted the number of demons I killed.

As we revealed our numbers, a grunt echoed from me as I ripped my precious leather from my belt and handed it to him.

“Thank you” he said with a grin more devilish than any demon I killed. I made a vulgar gesture towards him, he simply laughed it off.

The door opened, and Galizure scrolled in. He was handsome in a way that ruined all but perfect males. His jaw line was set at a sharp angle. His neck and body having slight signs of muscles even with shirts on. But that was modest compared to the sheer power that resented form him. The demigod angel, that is what he was called. No god blood ran through his vain, there is only two creatures that still have that blood. No one in the human kingdoms have that blood, not even the god angel, Sabrael.

He glanced around the room, locked eyes with me and laughed slightly. “What did our little demon, lose to Leo again? I told you to stop making such foolish bets, and just for your laziness too.”

“He’s the only demon here”

“Oh? Who has demon blood in their veins?”

“Only for power you know, if anything I’m more of a vampire. I can gain power form normal magic too you know.”

“I have yet to see it, anyways I know you like destroying demons with their own power’s.” He winked at me. I nearly scoffed, but it was the truth.

“Better than believing in some magical light.”

“Hey it’s not just some light, it’s as I have said. It’s the holy creature, Strirdraz which we have used its essence to give me the powers of angels. It’s like your powers, as a, dumiche. Instead of blood and power it’s essence, got it?”

“Yea yea, but my powers are way more cool than yours.” I summoned a bunch of green fire throughout the room to emphasis the point. He extinguished the flames with a flick of his fancy light.

Something hit me then. “Wait the god angel has real angel blood flowing through his veins right? Just as I have demon and ra’oxa through mine?” He glanced at me, his surprise written on his face. I haven’t seen that face in years, when I climbed the ranks with a “useless power” and turned it into one of the most powerful.

“Well yes, but he is not a dumiche. He was originally embedded with essence like me. But one day, he came back from a mission with holy blood, he’s told me that he visited urtha, the holy lands. He told me to not be blinded by the light, I don’t know what it means, But I do know that we are told many things about the light that are false, but that’s all I know. Oh and don’t tell anyone, any of you.”

We all nodded our heads, not daring to make a comment. Footsteps started to echo, as the smell of hot glazed chicken, a luxury as it stands with our one single city and its limited surrounding towns and lands, hit our noses. At last Adonael appeared out from the shadows, his powers of elements making him naturally blend into the shadows.

Adonael was a good guy, he cared about everyone else. He was the closest thing we got to a druid, one of the many diffrent tpyes of demon hunters lacking for our elite team. He wasn’t muscled like Galizure, more resembling a teenage boy. However he still looked strong, still resonated power like we all did. The only difference between our squad, our leader Galizure seer presence would send any lesser demon or human sprawling on the ground in fear.

“Dinners ready guys.Oh, Sorry Lesiksa, I’ll get your food, after I set this down.”

I nodded. I wished I could find a demon with Adonael powers, with those powers of blending and elements; but it wasn't a very demonic powers. I quickly teleported a beer form the pantry, one of the very few things I eat or drink that the rest of the squads do.

“You know you can call me Les right?”

He blushed and started to run back into the kitchen. When he returned the entrancing smell of demon infused crocodile, cooked with demon herbs, invaded my nose. I bit at it eagerly, it tasted better than last time Adonael made it. “Man you are the best, god it’s so good. You really didn’t spare any thought for saving these species did you?”

“Nobody likes demon spices, their often burnt as fuel and even then in rarity. So it’s cheep, hard to get a normal supply route here, but still cheap. The crocodile did not share that cheapness, but the difficulties were the same. But your are cheaper than any of us.” He said with a big grin on his face.

I coughed on a bone form the crocodile, it causing slight burns in the back of my mouth. Burns, that a full demon would never receive while eating food. The bone soon disintegrated with my inner demon fire.

“Slow down please.” Adonael said, with that innocent grin on his face.

“So Adonael, how can you be so pleasant and happy up here, but down there be so vicious to demons.”

“Simple your my friends, and allies, a team. The demons are the enemy.”

“And you don’t see me as one?”

“A demon?”

“A enemy.”

“Of course not, I know your powers aren’t always easy to control. Not since you,” he paused to think about the next few words, “trained it to be for fighting. I know sometimes you want to take over more power, weather it be creature, demon or simply energy. Or us if you get really desperate. But you have controlled it, and will continue to do so.”

I snatched a single glazed chicken form the community bowl and bit into it, it tasted bitter, raw, almost wrong to eat. I nearly threw up but it made me feel closer to these people, as though that inner demon was gone for now. A special treat for me, I only eat this food once in a while, but when I do I hate it.

I flashed him a grin. Out of us all, he had the most character outside of being a warrior, a demon hunter. He grinned back, with that pleasant warm smile.


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232 Reviews


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Wed Mar 20, 2019 9:55 pm
LadyBug wrote a review...



OK, so I was snooping through your portfolio. Uhhhhh, I mean just looking at the fantasy genre,totally minding my own business...... and I decided to give this a try because the title caught my interest.
Look, I know this is old and your writing has probably gotten better but I'm still just going to review this for the sake of reviewing fantasy.
Don't judge me.

WHAT I LIKED:
The idea, it seems pretty original. Each paragraph made me wanna read the next.
It flowed pretty well, I'll give it that.
The amount of detail you put into this is overwhelming. I had a clear picture of everything and I really love that.

WHAT I DISLIKED:
Honestly, just read through it and you'll see the spelling mistakes. They almost made me wince.
I got a bit confused.
I really want more of a backstory.
Though it flowed pretty well, it had some choppy or run-on sentences.
You switched tenses a bit. i do that too, but I try to read it out loud. That really helps.

I'm sure your writing has improved in later chapters (It's good right now) and again, I'M SORRY THIS IS SO OLD!
But hey, I'm definitely going to read the rest of this series because I think the plot is amazing
and I hoped you've gone somewhere with it.....
Bye-bye,
Jade




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Sun Aug 05, 2018 1:16 am
ExOmelas wrote a review...



Hey, I'm here. Will probably leave grammatical and spelling stuff, but I'll still do nit-picks like picking up on particular sentences or plot details. Will do overall stuff afterwards.

Nit-picks:

His body while strong had no visible signs of muscles. His eyes gleamed with a dark blue. His black hair went to just above his shoulder.

This is a sentence structure thing I want to address now because I saw it when I accidentally almost reviewed chapter 3 as well. I am not a fan of the way you often start sentences in very similar ways. I'll point out the chapter 3 example when I get to it, but it just makes it kinda stilted to read.

“Sigh, it’s not a contest you know.

People don't usually actually say "Sigh" out loud.

Overall:

1. worldbuilding - I don't really understand the differences between all these powers that are talked about. This seems particularly important in terms of "ra'oxa" which seems to mark the main character out as different from the others. If when a new term is introduced in dialogue, there could be a sentence or two of narration explaining that in the context of the world and why it's significant, that would be really helpful.

2. setting - For the first half of this it was very difficult to picture where it was taking place. It seemed to be inside, but other than that I wasn't sure. Just consistently make sure there are details about the setting that remind me where we are, also if you can, try and make them in some way interesting in terms of the plot or character. Somebody sitting down on a table to think, somebody stamping around on hard wooden floor.

3. more in between the dialogue - It was often unclear who was speaking, again, mostly in the first half. While you were good at introducing new characters when they arrived, because there were several of them and I don't really know them well enough to just be able to tell who is talking. Dialogue tags would be useful for this, but stuff about what the characters are doing during this conversation would also make them feel more real.

4. point of plot - I'm not entirely certain what the hook is here. The world seems interesting, but why is the story starting here, on this particular day? Your characters' lives have not started now, but whatever is going to happen to them in this novel is starting ideally now. I don't really see what the Big Thing is meant to be.

However, I do enjoy the dynamics of the dialogue and how comfortable the people seem to be with each other, as well as the way that's intertwined with the main character being somehow an outsider, which I'm intrigued to read more of the intricacies of.

Hope this helps,
Biscuits :)




Oxara says...


Alright alright, I am really sorry it took me this long to respond but I had fences to put up and bfa lauch (a game thing), and sickness. Anyway's I'm sorry and I do appreciate your reviews. So you pointing out to me the sentence structure thing helped. I know I am still doing it, but I am trying really hard to get out of it, and having it pointed out helped a lot. In fact I always knew my sentence's were pretty clunky and I knew I have a lot to work on, so this is just one step I can take to improve that.

So I am going to tackle your overall point by point

world building- So I actually was thinking about world building when writing this, however I also didn't want to overwhelm the viewer with a bunch of terms and a just a lot of world building. So I was trying something new with trying to world build, while also make it feel natural? Clearly it didn't work as well as I wanted. And now that I have re read all of my chapter's I have decided I either need to add a prologue, or to edit these chapter's. I am leaning toward to prologue especially now as you are reviewing it, and have already read it.

Setting- So I am always nervous with setting or rather descriptions of them. I either don't describe them enough or they are just too clunky, and it seems this suffer's form the first. I will try to work on this in the future, and any tips I would love to have (yes I have looked at yws pages, however I find that someone can help with specific problems, but of course no pressure or anything :), just you reviewing is more than plenty)


Dialogue- In terms of tags, I normally add them, I am not sure why I didn't, and I think I missed them in another chapter or two. However to the movements of character's during dialogue, this is something that I kinda needed to be brought to my attention for me to realize I need more of it. In the future I will try to add it, though I will have to learn it, so it might be clunky, but then again most of my writing is.

Plot- I introduced it here to introduce the reader to the world and character's. In terms of a hook, I deleted part of this chapter and I think that it kinda minimized the hook. However it didn't have that great of a hook to start with, so when I create a second draft and have more of a idea of the plot I will make sure to add more of a hook.

Just to be clear, this is not ignoring or trying to make excuses for any of the issues you pointed out. Just trying to acknowledge I have recognized them as a problem and will try to fix them in the future. However I am sure I still have a lot of problems, and won't be able to fix most of these until time passes, especially as a pretty newish writer. So I am just trying to say you have helped me a lot, and am really considering everything you have said. I really do appreciate it.

Again sorry for the late response.

Thanks you,
Oxara



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Wed Jul 18, 2018 2:54 pm
soundofmind wrote a review...



Hey Oxara!! I'M FINALLY HERE TO REVIEW!!

Okay, so from the get go, it did feel a little jarring. You take us right into the action, and while there's nothing wrong with in media res I think you could do it a little better! I know you talked a bit about how introductions were hard for you in reply to fearful's review, so I thought maybe we could talk how to make it easier for a reader to jump in right off the bat.

I think one of the things that makes it hard in the very first paragraph is readability. There are a few tense issues and little nit-picky grammar and punctuation things that you could touch up to really help make it read more smoothly.

For example! Let's take this sentence:

He was a soldier of the castle, he was not prepared to fight any demon alone, and if I'm hunting it even more so.

Right now, it feels clunky. You've got three commas and it almost feels like a run-on. I feel like this is two sentences smushed together so instead I'm reading this and not really able to take a proper breath. Also, "I'm" doesn't match all of these other past tense verbs you've been using, so it takes me out of the story for a second. It's also unclear for me what the it is that this MC is hunting. I want to assume it's a demon, but I can't be sure. Here's a suggestion for how I would reword this to make it a little easier to read!
He was a soldier of the castle, and he wasn't prepared to fight any demon alone. And if I was hunting them, he was just in the way.

And this is totally just a suggestion to give you an idea, and you don't have to use this word for word or at all!! But hopefully that gives you a bit of an idea of what I mean? And of course if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

As for making it easier for us to hop into the action, I almost wonder if it would be better for you to start out with something where the main character is describing the battle, since it sounds like this opening line of dialogue is her turning around after slaying a demon or something to look at this soldier.

So maybe like a: "Blood splattered onto the ground as I slashed the demon across his chest, and as he fell to the ground a human soldier stood behind him, gawking."

Something like that would be a good lead in to her opening line.

Albeit, the whole "woman warrior" being an oddity does feel a little bit hackneyed as an overall concept, but I think you could do it well. The soldier blushing feels a little out of place on a battle field though. I would think in the midst of bloodshed and action a soldier wouldn't really be thinking "wow attractive lady," but that's more my personal preference. Maybe this gal is really just that drop dead gorgeous. IDK!!

“Sigh, it's not a contest...

I'd just say he sighed! Most people don't audibly say the word "sigh," lol.

But that was modest compared to the sheer power that resented resonated (or radiated, but not resented) form him. The demigod angel, that is was what he was called. No god blood ran through his vainveins, there is were only two creatures that still have had that blood. No one in the human kingdoms have had that blood, not even the god angel, Sabrael.

Again, some tense issues and stuff here that continued enough through the whole paragraph that I just decided to uh!! Show you how to clean it up!! ahsgkshdgkj

Also it looks like this whole following conversation is a whole lot of info we're given about the world and its magic!! And while it's very interesting... it almost feels... kind of forced? I wonder if there's a way to make their conversation flow more naturally? Because some of the information they're including in their speech sounds like stuff they wouldn't normally have to explain to each other since it sounds like they both understand how the world works. But then again, I can't be 100% sure.

Then again, in the same vein, I do feel a little thrown off when they start throwing out all of these terms like dumiche that's not very well defined. I guess I don't know how to really solve that, but I just thought I'd point it out that for me I felt some confusion.

I'd also like to get some clearer descriptions on the environment they're in? Even if it's just small? I feel like, especially in the beginning, I know that she's fighting, but I don't know where. Then she transports to a house, but I have no idea what it looks like.

...Oh and don’t tell anyone, any of you."

Lol this sounds like a little last minute thing to tag on to the end of that. Like "oh I'll just explain all of this to you but OH WAIT ALSO IT's A SECRET." Idk I guess I just feel like... if it was so secretive he might talk about it more in a way that it is. Like, maybe he whispers, or says this on the front end, or something.

“Simple. yourYou're my friends, and allies, a team. The demons are the enemy.”

“And you don’t see me as one?”

“A demon?”

“A enemy.”

Oooooh, I really love this exchange! I love how it builds the friendship between Les and Adonael.

I also love the inner conflict you introduce about Les being part demon but not full, and I'm excited to see how that affects her throughout the story! I'm sure it's a big part of who she is and I wonder if it'll cause problems for her down the line practically or in relation to her confidence in her identity. But I think I'm really starting to like Les after her talk with Adonael especially.

But okay! So! Overall, I think it would be a good idea to run this chapter through a word processor that could easily detect a lot of the spelling and grammar errors to clean that up, because I think that alone would greatly improve this piece! But I also think you could work on finding a more natural flow of the story that feels less choppy and quick. Don't be afraid of pausing and letting the MC tell us how she feels about other characters. Like, more than just describing what they look like physically. I do know I myself am guilty of doing this though too, lol, so take that with a heaping bucket of salt.

And yeah, I really like Les, and I love a strong female character. She seems really cool and kind of cocky, and it's great. <3 Keep writing!

-sound




Oxara says...


Ok first of all, I was actually going to delete the first Paragraph. When I was editing it(yes I edited it briefly) but I was messing with it and just left it in there for now and was going to come back to it. Personally I didn't know how to do the transition form the battle scene to the house. And I don't like the entire introducing a strong female protagonist as I did,though I don't even think that's important anymore. Also the entire battle scene didn't convey what I wanted as you told me. I could write on it and have it do it, but I don't even think it's needed. The thing is I didn't write this first paragraph, I wrote it for a word war, which gave me the idea for this story so it just feels out of place to me.

%u201CSigh, it's not a contest..." I don't know how I didn't catch this in my editing. But thanks for pointing it out.

In terms of introducing/not introducing stuff for the reader, it's always hard for me. And I kinda figured that out so I planned whenever i got timed to write a prologue, pre-chapter thing to explain everything I haven't.

In terms of english error's, I know it's something I'm working on, and I just have to work on it over time.

Thanks for the review, and let me know if you want me to tag you in the future for this. And I do hope to edit chapter two today or tomorrow, But I also have to catch up on my camp nano so I don't know.



soundofmind says...


No problem! And I don't think I can commit to following another novel right now just cause I'm already following quite a few, but I might stop by to review it every now and again! And no worries about editing right away. You can edit things based on reviews in however much time you want! There's no rush <3



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Wed Jul 11, 2018 6:15 pm
Fearful wrote a review...



Hello Oxara,
I was smiling and tearing up at the same time while reading this (latter because of allergies, probably), and I loved how you wrote this. :D I love this world that your story takes place in already, because you add in a lot of terminology and describe the characters really well. The only thing I would suggest with the terms you've used is to maybe explain them a little more. At the beginning, I feel like I kind of just jumped into the middle of the story, and I haven't really been introduced to anything yet. I would suggest having maybe some more descriptions concerning the demons, or maybe a little more background on the demon tiers, powers, etc. I'm really curious to see where this goes (I see you have another chapter already), and it seems to be giving off some medieval fantasy vibes, which is amazing. At the beginning, when the protagonist is fighting a demon, I just feels like it transitions really quickly to the scene at the squad's house, so I suggest expanding on the demon scene or just removing it maybe? Otherwise, this was a pretty well written story, there were just a few mistakes in spelling, grammar, etc, reading through it once or twice should help you find those. I would quote the main ones, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet...Reading it back to front may also help, just a little tedious.
I like the concept a lot, so I look forward to seeing you expand on it and write more about this world.
Sincerely,
Fearful




Oxara says...


Hey thanks a lot for the review.

So I am really bad at introductions, it just something I'm working on. I just can't introduce them naturally. I mean the best I am getting right now is those descriptions of them as I did in here. But I feel like I made the relationships between them pretty clear, which is progress for me. So it's just a matter of experience of trying to be able to do it naturally. However I'll do a little bit of a chapter 0.5/1.1 to explain everything better. Well I'll do it when I get a chance, I'm leaving tomorrow for a four day trip so maybe not for a while.

And in terms of the transition form the demon battle scene to the squad house, I thought it needed improvements and had (well still do) no idea how to improve it . And I asked around about and some people said it was fine, so I'll leave it for now and maybe try to refine it later. But it definitely need's work

In terms of grammar/spelling, I know. Well, one this is my LMS so I'm trying to push this out within a week so these things will slip through. I did read to try to catch it maybe two to three times, But I'm just bad at getting them, so sorry if it made it confusing.

Anyway, thanks for the review it really was helpful. And welcome to YWS. I'm pretty new as well, but if you need help give me a shout and I'll try



Fearful says...


I love how you just took this all really well. :D Thanks for saying thanks for the review, it is my first (maybe you can tell). Travel safe!




You have been de-shenaniganed.
— WaffleCat