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Young Writers Society



Dust: Chapter one

by polkadotph


I'm 14 years old and have been working on a novel series called 'The Black Rose Series'. I'm still on the first book though, its called Dust and I'm working on chapter 6 in it (15,743 words). This is a fantasy located in an diffrent world called Aldenora. YES there are unicorns, but they arent the adverage unicorns. They actualy serve up a position in the plot. This chapter is united to please try to get pass the mistakes that might be in there.



"There it is again, that word. Now just say what it means." Annaria whispered under her breathe. She pushed herself against the door even more with her ear flat against the cold wood. Yet the wood was thick enough where all of the voices where muffled and it was hard for her to hear an complete sentence. "What will...do in that type...the only thing to do is just seal..." said a female voice, clearly enraged. Annaria bit her lip and leaned against the door even more.

"That can't be our only option you know, we can always...that animal would do..." Said a man's voice, clear and calm.

Annaria heard somebody slam on something then started yelling, then soon everybody else joined in. "Come on, I already know about all of that, now make it clear enough where I can understand the rest." Annaria grinded her teeth together in frustration. Everybody...They all have been keeping this stuff away from me on purpose. But why? If it's that important then why did they keep all of that away from me? Annaria stopped listening then bowed her head down. She drew a breathe in and slammed her fist into the door. "Why, what's so important about all of that stuff anyways." She could feel the tears welding into her eyes. Seconds later the commotion stopped and a dead silence covered everybody.

Annaria gasped, knowing that they must of heard her then backed away from the door slowly with a single fist on her chest. Her heart started pounding and she stood there, frozen of whether she should run, or stay there. Seconds later, the doors flung inwards and there were a few kings and queens sitting around a long rectangular table, and a king standing up with his hand outstretched in front of him, and his orange ring glowing brightly. She locked eyes with his striking orange eyes and instantly ran down the straight hall without hesitation.

"Well this isn't good at all. Elisi, please sound the alarms. And also tell your guards to even kill her if that's necessary." Said the king.

"You don't have to order me around, King Varrinar, I know very well what do in this situation, especially what will come next." Elisi said while she glared at Annaria still running down the long hallway.

One by one, warning bells started to ring throughout the castle walls and echoed into the large expanse of the golden meadow. The sounds of these bells made Annaria lengthen her stride through the meadow, ever so slowly coming closer to the stable. Her breathing quickened, and her pace started to diminish. For a moment, fear threatened to overtake her, they seemed so close. I’m not going to make it in time; I’m not going to make it in time… Annaria thought in near panic. The guards were already in full chase, their menacing blades out, glistening from the sun’s rays. Setting doubt aside, she pushed forward, and in what seemed like endless time, but in reality just moments, Annaria found herself at the stable doors, and without pause, swung the heavy wooden door open. Adjusting her eyes, and ignoring her pained lungs, she sprinted with the last amount of remaining stamina, abruptly stopping in front of the unicorn’s stall. The deep yells that came from the line of guards started to become clearer, and louder.

Annaria swung the heavy stall door open, and greeted Distreigh. He placed his soft nuzzle into her hands and nickered when he didn't find a treat for him. Annaria smiled then grabbed the bridle that hung over a fresh bale of hay and slid it through her arm. She patted Distreigh on the shoulder then maneuvered in front of him. She gently smiled then rubbed his forehead, her fingers separated around his dark horn. Stop it; I have no time to waste. Annaria quickly thought, and slid on the bridle and smoothly navigated the warn leather straps around the horn. Having no time to prepare a saddle, she decided to go bareback, even though she hated it. She stepped onto the bale of hay and swung her right leg over Distreigh’s back and gathered the reigns in her hands. Loud footsteps filled her ears, and she froze. Her body became heavy and her head started to spin. "Daze spell...crap." She covered her face with her hands and cringed, trying to see if there is a way to dispel it. She only read about it in books, but she used to doubt that she never even had magic at all. Until now. Soon her head started to clear and she gained focus on everything.

“Stop right there!” yelled a guard that came rushing toward the stall. Annaria kicked Distreigh, but as soon as he fully stepped out of the stall, the guards were already right next to her. She closed her eyes then screamed. She put her arms in front of herself as a shield. A massive wind force flew right into her stomach. It was strong enough to knock her off from the back of Distreigh. She rolled a couple feet away and gasped for air.

"Don't you think that's a little rough?" said the guard right beside him.

"If it means were protecting this land, then I'll do whatever it takes." He walked forward, going around Distreigh then right in front of Annaria which was still on the ground. Annaria shook as she tried to lift herself up, but it was no use. She turned her head toward the guard and was greeted with an open palm inches away.

"Please, don't hurt me anymore. I did nothing wrong." Tears started to weld in her eyes and her heartbeat became faster.

"Your death is just inevitable, and will come sooner than you think. So why not just end it now, and end the suffering that you could very well inflict on everybody?" Rocks started to appear around him. All of them were about the size of her head. He closed his hand and the rocks swiftly conjoined together right beside him. Annaria scooted away from him with tears falling down.

"Besides, you are trying to destroy the world at this moment." His hand raised up in the air and the large rock floated right above his palm. No...No..What is even talking about? I can't die right here...

Annaria put her hand over her head and screamed, "No!" She quivered in fear, yet nothing happened. She only heard rocks falling onto the stone ground. then it got quite. She opened her eyes and saw a hooded man dressed in a grey cloak. He was standing right over the man's body. The other guards were also down, and Distreigh was gone. She sat upright and gazed at him.

"I have to say, you have quite a loud and long lasting scream there." He turned around then bent down to where he saw her in eye level. Those lavender eyes, then he's just like her, so he must be good.

Annaria was still quivering. "Are they....dead?" She gulped at felt chills run through her body at the near thought of it. The one thing that Annaria hated most was death, and the sight of weapons covered in blood.

"Don't worry, there not dead. But there are more guards coming, plus Spirit Wolves. We have to hurry. He grabbed Annaria's wrist and pulled her up from the ground. They rant toward the back door of the stables. Annaria stopped as soon as she saw the forest.

"Are we going into that forest?" She looked up at the man and he nodded sternly. He looked up into the sky. In his eyes he saw a cloudless maroon hued sky, and a bright orange sun.

"What a beautiful sky." He slightly grinned.

"Well it's just the same old bring clouds and the same shade of blue. Nothing special really. Anyways why would you--"

"Well I like the way I see it." He looked at the ground he could faintly see a glowing line seeping through the dirt. He grinned even more then pulled Annaria forward. It didn't take long to enter the darkening forest. They both went deeper and deeper inside the forest. As each minute passed, the dark maroon sky turned a brighter shade of red. And the land below slowly started to shake as a green light was emitted from the dirt. Everybody else could see the changes. Expect for Annaria.

The man briefly stopped and let go his grasp on Annaria's arm. Annaria felt completely drained of energy. She fell to the ground from exhaustion beside him.

"You did your pat well. But now there's no use for you anymore." Said a whispery, ghastly voice. Shivers ran through Annaria and slowly, she adverted her eyes from the ground and up to the man. In front of him was a grey shadow that had depth and took a form of a human being. It also had white eyes. Annaria had Goosebumps all along her arm. She felt cold, and frozen from just a glance at this thing. Seconds later the man fell down to his knees without a word. Then the rest of his body fell down. Annaria saw his face then her eyes grew wide.

There were large gashes all over his face. Some of which were exposing bone. Blood streamed out of his wounds and his mouth. His lavender eyes were still open. As Annaria took all of the damage in, she screamed. She pushed herself away from him, and the creature. When she felt a tree hit her back, she didn't move at all. Her body shook violently and tears flowed from her eyes. Sobs escaped from her mouth. She no longer had enough air for anymore screaming. She covered her mouth with both of her hands. She wanted to look away, but she couldn't.

The misty figure stood right over his body. Its white eyes were gone. More fear entered her body and her heart rate continued to go faster. She couldn't tell if the thing was looking at her or not. And she thought that she was next to go. Several howls were heard nearby. Then there were voices of several guards.

When the guards and the Spirit Wolves showed up, they all un sheaved their blades. They could see the grey misty figure as well.

"Such naive humans." Said the misty figure. The white eyes appeared again. It floated over the body and straight toward the guards. The Spirit Wolves, all snarled and bared their long ivory fangs. One of the guards yelled and swung his blade at the thing. It went straight though. He grimaced then started to swing his sword at the mist-creature multiple times, steadily becoming more frantic, but to no apparent effect. Then, without hint of force or action by the mist creature, the guard came suddenly still, eyes wide with alarm, his breath caught midway, freezing the other silent spectators. He coughed trying to regain his breath, only to stare in shock at the blood that spitted out, and eyes still wide open, silently fell to the ground, dropping the sword. His still open eyes stared up in frozen death.

All the others gasped then took a step backwards. More tears fell down Annaria's cheek. She pulled her knees in and covered her hands over her head. She closed her eyes and tears still continued to flow. The chain of screams and yelps echoed through her ears. She knew what was happening to the others, but could not bear to witness.

"Stop it!" Annaria's muffled scream pierced through the air. The last body fell to the ground with an echoing thump.

"Annaria... Be quiet for now." With those words Annaria looked up at the mist-creature. It raised what looked like an arm straight of Annaria. A loud crack was heard from her left arm. Annaria screamed loudly from her own pain. She fell sideways while cradling her broken arm.

Between large sobs she managed to say, "Somebody...Valndra...Anybody...Please help me." Annaria whimpered as the pain grew.

"Nobody is going to help you. Not when the sky is quickly turning a brighter shade of red, the cracking of the ground ever increasing, all is in turmoil. No, no help will come, not when I'm here." It's voice became more eerie then.

Annaria, in a soft voice whispered "You just wait, I know somebody will come." Her broken arm started to slightly swell. She let out a whimper as her arm started to throb. Looking off to the distance, she murmured "There's no way she would leave me alone."

"Silence, child. It's not time yet. Save your energy until then." The shadow faced a palm at Annaria again. A chain of sickening cracks were heard. Annaria screamed even louder than before. The bone of her index finger of her right hand was completely shattered. She never felt real pain before. Yet this was too much for her. She started to cry even more. What once just a few drops of tears seconds ago were now screams.

"Preparation," The shadow looked away from the red sky and directly toward Annaria. Slowly it floated toward her. When it got about two feet away from her it stopped moving. "For something that curses everybody that sets foot in this world." Annaria didn't know what to say. Instead she tried to stray farther away from the shadow. It was useless though. She was pressed firmly against a large tree. It was hard enough to have enough energy to even move at all. Why do I feel so, weak?

Around the shadow a mixture of white and blue flames danced around it. "Please..." The shadow held out its misty arm straight at her head. The flames ran up its side and down its arm. it all conjoined around its hand in one, large ball. The heat reflected off of Annaria. Beads of sweat started to form on her forehead. "Don't do this..." The flames shot out of its hand and went directly inside Annaria's head. Seconds passed with not the slightest of sounds.

Annaria took in a sudden shaky breathe of air and clutched at her chest. Then she coughed up some thick blood. The shadow laughed to itself as it saw her red pigmented eye started to glow brightly. Slowly the pain started to grow inside Annaria.

Then from different directions, long howls were emitted from the darkness. Her lips broke into a slight smile. I know you'll come.



THANKS FOR READING <3 Im hoping that one day this would be published and if you possibly want to read more, then just email me for any chapters you want (keep in mind I'm still owrking on chapter 6 o:). Theres so much information to grab in this novel so it would be easy to understand everything so I hope that it didnt sound too rushed at all, if it did then just comment that it did, once again, thanks! :)) PLus in my mind this is just a wonderful story with great life leassons and just awesome character developement throughout the whole thing.




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Fri Jul 20, 2012 11:17 am
Rydia wrote a review...



Hi, here as requested :)

Specifics

1. The names. Okay so you have a key which help a little, but there isn't really a place for those in novels and the names are just absurd. You can make names unusual but still easy to work out how they should be pronounced. Take 'A Game of Thrones' for instance. There is 'Tyrion', there is 'Sansa'. Neither of these names are ones in daily use, but they are easy to pronounce. If you give your characters names that are difficult to pronounce, they will be forgetable characters because the reader will skim over the name every time or it will become a string of varying syllables. For example, I'm never going to pronounce Annaria as 'un-nar-e-uh'. It will be 'Ah- Nah-Ree-Ah' in my head. The others are Val, Zee, 'Yur-rah' and 'Tseh-ree-oh'.

2.

Her breathing quickened, and her paste pace started to diminish.
This is awkward sounding. I'd suggest, 'and her pace slowed' instead.

3.
He placed his soft nuzzle into her hands and nickered after when he didn't find a treat for him.
Another part that's awkwardly phrased - you need after or when, but not both.

4.
Annaria quickly thought, and slid on the bridle and smoothly navigated the warn worn leather straps around the horn.
That's the last typo I'm going to pick out - you need to make sure you proof read this, or ask a friend or relative to.

5.
Was she becoming scared, or is there a spell being casted upon her?
This breaks register and seems almost like a comment from you, the author, to the reader. Instead it needs to come from your character. Show us her fear and then present us with her theory about magic. Show us how her brain reaches that conclusion.

6. The description of trying to get through the door is very slow and clumpy, it doesn't belong in an action scene. It makes the appearance of the guards seem very tame. You need some shorter sentences and your longer ones need to be faster paced and pack more of a punch. The reader should have their heart in their throat by now, wondering if she's going to get away.

7. Hmmm, it doesn't seem very genuine that she'd have no idea of the meaning of half blood. I'd like to see her at least recognising that it suggests she's half of something and half of something else. I also think you should have started this novel off somewhere else, inside the castle. Show us her trying to work out what that means and show us how she's treated, then her resolve to escape. That would be far more interesting and give you a chance to build some much needed tension for this scene. Because without that, it's rather flat.

8. You seem to have suddenly switched to another group of characters. I think you need more warning of that or more indication. I'm also not sure if you've written enough yet to be switching characters. Usuaully I'd advise at least a full chapter for each of the perspectives, otherwise we'll soon forget your main character, who we've barely met. We don't even know her personality yet, whether she's fierce or cowardly, quiet or loud. It's too new for switching and introducing more people.

9. Okay you're doing too much telling. We don't want to hear what's going to happen, not in so many words. We want to see it happening and have maybe a short, simple warning. Maybe even a mysterious one that leaves much to the imagination. What we don't want is everything laid out for us by a character's thoughts. It makes what should be a frightening or fascinating scene into a tedious one.

10. Characterisation

You need to work on this. Your Zee is your best character (the guy with the x name) because he seems to be more human than the other two, we know he's afraid and we know he fears that they can't do this/ that he won't be competent enough. That's good. But this chapter is driven too much by its action and not enough by its characters. Action is fun and essential, cool rituals, sparkly jewels. It should be the characters that lead though because that's your connection with the reader and right now I feel very disconnected.

I feel like I'm standing here and you're over there, shouting at me about magic words and really big danger. But there's nothing to bridge the gap. It's characters which do that, characters which make us care about these events and this action. So work on yours, give them their own ways of speaking, tell us how they move, how they look. Show us how they're feeling and let us taste their fear and their worries, both every day and moral. Zee is worried about the world ending, but he should also worry for himself, for any family he has. He needs some selfish thoughts as well as honourable ones.

11. There's too much soppy romance. You've got to build up to that. We don't want to see a relationship already perfect and in full swing, we want to either see one that's established but has issues and tension, or one that hasn't yet started to build that we get to watch flourish. If you start off like this, you'll only have us making gagging motions, trust me. I'm as romantic as the next reader, but I want my 'perfect' romance toward the end of the novel, not now.

12. Cerio didn't think to tell him about the hawk earlier? That's a bit useless!

Overall

Okay so I think my main issue with this is that it's too much to put into one chapter and that you spend a lot of time telling rather than showing. Instead of explaining everything to us, just describe what's going on, what the characters say and feel and then allow the reader to make up their own minds about who to trust and what sort of people these are.

There's some stuff I liked. I think you've got interesting ideas with the magic and the jewels, but I'm not actually sure what was going on at some point. Was someone trying to destroy the world and they stopped it? Is it still happening? The only part you really made clear was that there are hybrids and they have the strongest magic and Annaria is a hybrid. You sort of lost me with everything else.

So what I'd advise is stripping a lot of this away. A novel's first chapter should be more about the characters than the plot of the novel and only give us a taster of what's to come. It should also concentrate on one main character or one group of main character so I'd advise you to expand the first scene, or better still, write the events that heppen before then and leave these other characters for the next chapter.

Hopefully that's given you a few things to think about. I'll probably look at chapter two tomorrow,

Heather xxx




polkadotph says...


Thanks for the lovely review, best one I had yet. I actually had started it out with Annaria inside the castle then having the guards chase her then, but it didnt work out so well. Anyways, I always knew that writing about this world and its magic would be difficult for the reader to get a hand on this and that, without giving everything away at once. Also Annaria knows that there is magic in this world, but doesnt know anything about her own powers at all. I want so sure if I should tell the reader about that on the first chapter, because it will require a large explanation that will of course kind of give alot of things away. And I've tried to avoid that. Even though I had edited this, it was only a grammar editing, not so much of the writing part. But I will keep what you saw in mind though, expecialy on the character part and the switch and everything. Oh yah about the names, before they came to Aldenora they had regular names like Amanda, Victoria (Valndras old name), and etc. Thier names had been changed because of the very old language that was spoken in Aldenora. So all of the names mean something in the old language of some sort. Also the Half Blood thing is alot to explain, but that does come in the middle ish end of the story, actually after when she requires knowlege of her magic (she isnt the only Half Blood you know, actually in the nexy book the reader will see more ;3). So yah, even though the magic stuff is alot to explain, I'm trying to expand it throughout the whole book.

So once agian, thanks for the review, and I just finished chapter six, I actually really like that chapter. Probaby it shows the magic in action kind of. But theres still more magic action in chapter seven. :)



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Tue Jul 17, 2012 11:09 pm
DarkShanne wrote a review...



I think you have very much potential; I'll start with the obvious spelling mistakes that need to be fixed before anyone takes you seriously when looking for a publisher, and character development does need a bit more work and I can tell I'd like the story as a whole just from what I've read so far, and look forward to reading more. As for this being published I believe it has promise, but remember no ones gonna publish an unfinished story ;). We do live in a society where young people aren't quite taken as seriously as we'd like, but I'm sure by the time this book is finished, edited and ready to go that you will be old enough that a publisher would have a hard time ignoring you, persevere my friend and keep up the good work!




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Tue Jul 17, 2012 4:36 pm
stevie415017 wrote a review...



I wish you would discribe the charactors more. I have noticed a few word choices that could be better. I still have very little knowloge about this "change". Also when a person is talking you end the "" with a , not a . What did she hear? I might have missed it but it was not very clear. I do like the story but i belive more detail is in order. If you fixed the mistakes in the story then i would read it. Keep up the good work and i will be happy to help you out if you ever need, ok? Chow!





What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.
— Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu