Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language, violence, and mature content.
The Warriors Code
No Warrior shall ever kill their kin
No Warrior shall ever attack their kin
No Warrior shall ever desert their kin in time of great need
No Warrior shall ever train more than one apprentice[
No Warrior shall ever engage in a marital relationship
No Warrior shall ever have kin of their own
No Warrior shall ever have the abilities of a mage
No Warrior shall ever use an innocent for their own gain
No Warrior shall ever hurt an innocent
No Warrior shall ever break the Warriors Code
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Aisha
Running
8/2/508
I am running. The realization smashed into me. Why am I running? I heard the howl of a creature behind me and something running through the shifting sands. I kept running. I am in the desert, it is the middle of the night. Dust kept flying into my eyes as I continued to bolt across the sand. A fiery pain consumed the right side of my face. I could barely see in front of me and I was being chased by something. But what though? Suddenly the crashing behind me grew louder and a chorus of howling began.
No, no, no I thought. More of them?! I continued to run through the sand until I tripped over a rock and hit the ground. A golden circlet fell off my head and clattered to the sand. I looked at it. It was a circle of gold with a small red teardrop jewel hanging from the front. Something tugged at my memory,
Then faces flashed through my mind. A woman with dark hair wearing that same circlet smiling down. A grief stricken man standing in front of a casket wearing black and a golden sword with a ruby. He was clutching that circlet. A long howl that sounded close to me shattered that brief stillness. I jumped up and bolted. My foot caught on a rock and I smashed into the ground. Everything went black.
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141,718 Literary Works • 675,606 Reviews
I heard 4revgreen’s cry for help, so I’m here to review a bit more than I usually would. Starting with this chapter :3
A stray bracket has been spotted among the kin!So far I’m on board with the rules but… hm no martial relationships, huh? That is peculiar. Also I am not sure what “kin of their own” means here specifically. I mean, yes, yes they shouldn’t spawn children etc but the way you phrase it is a little awkward since we have been talking abt “do not do this to your kin” the entire time and now comes the “btw, you aren’t allowed to have kin anyway haha so guess the previous rules are irrelevant anyway!”
Hmmm I am also wondering about the mage thing. So are naturally gifted magicians immediately excluded from the warrior order or are they allowed as long as they don’t use the magic?
That is a confusing set of rules that I’m sure will not cause problems later on XD
So if I interpret the date correctly, this takes place ~70 yrs later than the prologue? (who knows how long a year is tho!)
I love the name Aisha :3
Ah is our girl dreaming? Suddenly being thrown into a run without knowing why?
You had her own the ground before so she basically gets up and immediately crashes again which… feels very inelegant, writing-wise, unless you want to have this sound comedic. Maybe you can have her just stumble and keep going in the first instance?
I love the description of the golden circlet.
Tho, I feel like this feels more like a prologue than what came before XD It was very short.
I also had the thought that maybe you could space out the Warrior’s Code over the coming chapters? Like maybe you could use each rule of the code as the intro for the current chapter and maybe try to tie whatever happens in the chapter to the rule? (It doesn’t have to work perfectly, just invoke the spirit of the rule?)
I really like that idea actually, about spacing out the code. Yeah. I wrote the code late one night and never really looked back over it.... Thanks for the ideas!
Okay so I went and reread the Code.
1. Yes, there's a stray bracket. I'll fix that.
2. I'm kicking myself for using the word kin. Its supposed to be something like fellow Warriors. Not kin. I'll fix that too.
3. Naturally gifted mages are technically illegal and aren't allowed to be in the order.
4. Originally this story didn't have a prologue but I was trying to world build so I wrote a bunch of prequel chapters and realized that the one about the egg could work at the beginning.
5. The name Aisha, (eye-ee-sha), is Arabic and means she who lives.
Oops, sorry, I accidentally commented helllooo
Hello!
Hello! I was very intrigued by this first chapter and seeing The Warriors Code at the beginning piqued my interest even more.
This is a really solid start to a larger story! It starts right in the action, disorienting us the same way Aisha is, and it escalates at a good pace throughout. The circlet is a really good hook that gives us something to work with and try and guess what it might be and where the story might go. I do think some of it verges on telling us the emotions rather than showing. For instance, "The realization smashed into me" tells us imemdiately rather than lets us feel it if you build up how this realisation came about rather than opening with it, but that's just my opinion!
Observations whilst reading:
I love how we just jump right in, in the middle of action. It instantly brought me into the world. I do think there's a danger in mixing present-tense thoughts with a past-tense narrative. I think it makes more sense to have everything in the same tense, or you risk accidentally slipping up and mixing them.
There's some really great sensory detail here. "Continued to bolt" is slower and clashes with the "kept flying" beside it, so "kept bolting" (or just "bolted") matches the pattern and moves faster. However, then we have kept twice, so maybe there's a better way!
For me, these internal moments undercut the tension of the rest of the piece, which is very fast-paced. They would be great in a chattier, more YA piece, and maybe that's what this will become, but maybe if the chapter was a bit longer and more spread out, these moments wouldn't feel so undercut to me. Also, if it were a bit longer, we could better get to know Aisha, and her internal monologue could help establish her character more.
Oh, okay, this sets up some of the mystery of the world. Who are these people? Is this her past, her future, or the present? A memory? I must find out!
I'm really looking forward to the next chapter, this was really great and an exciting read!
Thank you! At the end of the whole story I'll bring back the Warrior's Code and it'll mean a lot more by the end.