Chapter 6
The War
King Ethav Irelith, Base of Mt. Fuhehl, Etrieth
300 Years Ago, Battle of Etrieth and Ethav
"Halt!" Ethav commanded, holding up a hand. "We're here."
Marvin Judith, the sturdily-built leader of the Dragon Corps, rode up beside Ethav on his sleek black gelding.
"My Lord, were we not headed for the summit?" Marvin asked.
"We were," Ethav said.
Marvin paled.
"I'll die before I see your dungeons!" a man shouted.
"That's our cue," Ethav muttered. He turned his heavy black draft horse to face his men.
Ethav took a deep breath.
"SIEZE THE TRAITOR, ALVIN ZHENG!"
At once, black and silver uniforms were dismounting and swarming the man.
Alvin Zheng wasn't known for cowardice. It was for his brute strength and skill in Thei-Ko, the deadliest art known to the people of Ethav.
A man jumped on Alvin's back, placing him in a headlock. Alvin threw a fake elbow strike behind him, then hooked the man's ankle with his own and tripped him. Alvin turned and stomped on the man's stomach.
Alvin spun to meet his new attackers.
The next two ran at him from his flanks. Alvin threw a kick to his side and destroyed the man's knee. He turned around in time to grab the second man's head. Using the momentum he gained by spinning, he jerked the man's head to the side and heard a snap. Alvin threw him to the side, knocking over four other men.
The Military Police continued attacking him, to no avail. Each set went down like children.
"Archers!" Marvin shouted.
The men finally began to regain their wits and those with bows drew them.
"FIRE!"
Alvin ducked and rolled, picking up a shield from a fallen man. He came back up on one knee, the shield pressed against his shoulder to gain the most cover.
Volley after volley of arrows were shot, but the man refused to budge. Nor was he hit.
"Our of arrows, sir!" an archer shouted. More followed suit, stating their quivers were empty.
Ethav growled. Fine then, he thought, dismounting.
"ARCHERS OF ETREITH AT TWELVE O' CLOCK!"
Ethav turned with a start. His brow furrowed in confusion. "There's no arch--" he spun around
His hard eyes met a gold uniform stained with blood, a sword peeking out from the center.
Herbert Irelith, Ethav's own son and heir.
Alvin removed his sword from the boy. Herbert tumbled top the ground in a heap. Ethav turned red with rage.
"No, sir!" someone shouted.
"Seize the king! Protect him!" Marvin bellowed. Guards in black and navy blue uniforms--the Dragon Corps--surrounded Ethav. Two men on his flanks grabbed his arms. Ethav tried to shake them off him, but they were too strong and their numbers too many.
"My Lord," Marvin said to him, "you can't go running out into battle with a main like Zheng. You need to stay where you're protected."
"My-my son. . ." Ethav said softly. "He-he killed my son. . ."
"I know, sir," Marvin replied gently. "I'm sorry about this, Your Majesty." He drew his sword.
Somehow, Ethav's eyes dilated more. "What are you--" the hilt of Marvin's blade struck Ethav's temple, and his world went black.
Prince Edmond Ryall, Stowering Palace, Winterhold
Two-Hundred-Ninety-Two Years Later
(Or should I say: Eight Years Ago ?)
"Mother, it moved! I felt a kick!" Edmond said happily, removing his hand from his mother's swollen stomach. He bounced with the joy only an eight-year-old child could feel.
"I know, I felt it too," Elenore said with a laugh, flipping her auburn hair over her shoulder. "The doctor says that I should be delivering in another two weeks."
"So am I gonna have another brother? Or maybe this time it'll be a sister?" he asked excitedly. His mother smiled at him, the way she always when she told him something he didn't want to hear.
"Not another set of twin brothers," he moaned.
She giggled at his response. "No, dear," she said. "There's no way to tell if it's a boy or a girl."
"Oh." Edmond suddenly felt a great interest in his shoes at that moment.
Elenore leaned over as much as she could, placing her face almost level to Edmond's.
"I feel like this one is a girl, though," she whispered with her usual playfulness.
Elenore groaned and stumbled backwards, her face paling.
Edmond looked up sharply. "Mother?" he asked tentatively, stretching his hand out and stepping forward. "Mother, are you hurt?"
Her hand began to curl into a fist and release. Once, twice, three times. It didn't stop. Her arm began to twitch.
"Edmond, my boy!" Alexander said, walking into the room. His characteristic smile broadened as he approached his son, lifting him in his strong embrace. He glanced over at Elenore. "My love--"
His smile faded once he saw Elenore's condition.
He looked at Edmond with with raw horror in his eyes. "Fetch the doctor!" he said urgently to Edmond, setting him down and rushing to his wife. Alexander swept up Elenore in a princess-carry.
"I'll take her to the royal chambers." began to walk off.
Edmond stared in shock and confusion. He didn't dare move.
Alexander looked behind him and saw Edmond, unmoving.
"FIND THE DOCTOR!" he shouted.
Edmond yelped and fled from the room in search of medical assistance.
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Canary word: Present
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,804 Reviews
Hello!
)! Anyway, let's dive right in, shall we?
Snazzy here for a review (trying to catch up for RevMo...
I'm not sure if this is a typo (with the "It's", and then nothing to follow), or if you meant for Ethav to be interrupted. If you want him to be interrupted, you should write it something like this- ("...to face his men. 'It's-'") However, if he was being interrupted, I'm not sure why he would take a breath in the next sentence... This little tidbit just lost me for a while.
By repeating the word "Alvin" throughout this paragraph, you made it very, well, (forgive me for repeating) repetitive! We already know from the first sentence that you're talking about Alvin doing the actions, so we only need his name that one time for the most part. Try replacing some of the "Alvin"s with pronouns, or other words for him. (He, the man, the prisoner, etc.)
Now, if this is supposed to be humorous, I would keep it as is, but the writing so far up to this point has been rather serious, and the whole "or should I say: Eight Years Ago" thing kind of breaks it abruptly. That being said, I do like it - where the author inserts clever/witty little sayings that makes the reader laugh every so often (Adam Gidwitz did in "A Tale Dark and Grimm"). I just didn't think it matched up with the rest of your writing.
Other than that, this does seem interesting! I would like to know how the two stories have to do with each other, and that "Alvin" guy seems really intriguing.
~Snazzy
Happy RevMo!
(Sorry for taking so long to respond, it's been a while since I've had the time to visit Young Writers.)
My comment on (Or should I say: "Eight Years Ago?") was an actual question. I'm not sure if it would be more confusing to the reader to say "Eight Years Ago" or "Two Hundred Ninety-Two Years Later." It takes place eight years in the protagonist's past but it's years after the the flashback that just took place.
First I want to review the first part of this chapter, which I found confusing. To be fair, I haven’t read the previous chapters, but considering that the first part of this chapter seems to be a flashback into history, I don’t think that’s the reason I was confused.
To start with, this bit.
It sounded from the opening paragraphs like an army marching into battle, so I wasn’t sure why a man suddenly shouted “I’ll die before I see your dungeons.” when he realized the army wasn’t marching all the way to the mountain’s peak. And then said man began fighting with his own army, who, by the way, seem kind of pathetic. An entire corps of archers can’t manage to hit a single guy, even upon using up all their arrows? Wow.
I mean, I know the king shouted that the man in question, Alvin Zheng, was a traitor, but…the whole thing is befuddling. Did the king know the whole time that this man was a traitor? If so, why did he allow Zheng to follow the army for so long? Or did Zheng give himself away by shouting about dungeons, in which case he’s a brilliant fighter but not too bright?
Along the same vein, it seemed weird when Marvin said to “seize” the king. I realize he was just trying to prevent His Majesty from jumping into the fray to avenge the prince, especially considering the killer in question is crazy good at fighting and probably could’ve killed the king. But “seize him” made it sound like an arrest. Especially when he clocked the king on the head at the end of the scene (even though I know that was also to prevent His Majesty from joining in the fight).
On the note of the prince’s death, we could see more from the king about that. You seemed to jump around viewpoints a little—starting off with the king and then focusing more on Zheng during the fight, which I feel like might just be because you enjoy writing fight sequences and wanted to get up close and personal for that, but then you sort of switched back to the king. It made it difficult to sympathize much with any one character, especially since I have little idea as to how any single character felt or thought during the whole thing. Presumably the king was sad when his son was killed, but I want to know more about that. Ethay turns red with rage but then that’s all I really see from him. Is he the kind of king to let himself show strong emotion in the midst of a battle or the kind of king who would immediately collect himself so his soldiers don’t see him as week? If the first, we should probably see more strong emotion, more of a struggle when his guards grab him, or more indications of anger, or tears, or something. If the second, maybe we’ll just see his jaw clench or maybe we’re privy to his thoughts and see that he’s struggling to maintain a kingly disposition when he’s just seen his son killed.
Between this bit of history and the next scene being “eight years ago” in terms of the main story, it felt more like a first chapter than the continuation of something. It’s all right to use flashback, but how much of it do we really need to understand the main story? Try to balance it out so that we have a time and character we’re grounded in, so the flashbacks fill in important details or answer questions we have about the story.
Hey! First off, thanks for the review!
So, it seems you're confused a bit about what is going on, no?
There are a lot of things I'm not explaining in this chapter because I'm going to have a series of flashback chapters, each one answering questions from the previous chapter and adding more. I'll be writing one about every five chapters or so.
And, both of the flashbacks are beginnings of a new story.
The writing style I'm using in these flashbacks is a style I just recently learned how to handle in my creative writing class, and somewhat inspired from the flashback chapters from a series called the "Stormlight Archive" by my personal favorite author, Brandon Sanderson.
Thanks for your review! I'll work on King Ethav's emotions and such. . . Actually, I might just make this whole chapter from Alvin's point of view.
Anyhow, thanks again!
-Jay