His eyes were wide open, too wide open. The irises around his pupils were all but visible. His arm seemed to have a mind of its own, zooming through the air, bringing the hot whip into contact with her already charred skin.
She screamed.
Nidara bolted up from her nightmare. After months from her rescue, the nightmares haunted her yet.
She heard the wind whistling in through her open window. A storm was brewing. She got out of bed and stood beside the window for a moment. The air calmed her crazed heartbeat.
She was scared. Every time she had that dream she woke up scared. She did not know what it was exactly that frightened her. Was it his eyes? Or was it his stiff movements? Or was it the reality that the Keed she had known would never do such a thing?
The wind howled louder, ran faster. She latched the window and went back to bed. Tomorrow was a big day. The first court meeting after the fall of Xelop's army. She would need her energy, not to mention her sanity.
However, as she slowly drifted off to sleep, she could not forget the sincerity in his voice when he asked for his second chance.
I understand we will find out how many lies you have told us, Keed, tomorrow.
~~~~~~~~~~
They sat with the demeanor of their blood; the King and his two daughters. Nobles and advisers slowly filed in through the mahogany double doors of the throne room. It was the first court session after the ambitious Xelop's almost successful invasion.
"Novara," the King said quietly, "do you think it a wise decision to question Keed as a mere witness?"
"I think it naturally called for, Father," the younger princess replied. "It is only common sense as he claims to have exclusive knowledge of the matter. It will, undoubtedly help us to conclude if his testimonies are, indeed, true."
“What say you, Nidara?” the King asked.
“I have no opinion of this that I would rather share,” she replied.
It was a sickening matter, she felt. To be talked about behind your back was very miserable indeed. As much as she knew that his actions claimed public contemplation, she also knew how it felt. Even if his actions confused her at times as well, she would rather contemplate it by herself, and leave him to his devices. Only time could bring his true colors about. No amount of prattling could bring about anything.
“But it is, Sister,” Novara said, “that you are the one who approved him the right to attend court. Is it not so?”
“Yes it is. What do you make of it?”
“What do you intend to achieve by this?”
“Naught more than what you intend from this discussion.”
Novara seemed unconvinced but turned her attention elsewhere. The session was to start any moment. Everyone had already arrived.
All the nobles and the Kings advisers seated themselves at their respective positions. The royal announcer cleared his throat.
“Let the Yawenin court begin!”
Discussions concerning the problems that subjects all around the country were facing were brought up. Solutions were sought. Different ministers or nobles were given responsibility for different tasks. But as many problems were solved, double the number remained unsolved. The most pressing of these problems was the issue of the Exile-camp. The people there were not Exiles. No one wanted them to be Exiles. Their behaviors rendered them Exiles. This was one big scar Xelop had left. There was no way of solving this problem, no way of embracing theses formerly loyal citizens, no way of consoling their families; until now.
Keed claimed he knew what the matter was with them. He claimed he had been under the same influence, and that now that he had finally broken the barrier, he could try to help them.
Barely any of the court members trusted him. However, he had as many admirers as he had rivals. While his rivals waited for him to show his true colors and prove they were right, his admirers waited for the truth and sincerity they believed in to prove themselves.
It was the Minister of Defense who asked the question. “Keed, as we all know you have valuable information that could help us with the exile camp. Share with us, what did you learn while you were supposedly under the spell yourself?”
“First,” Keed started, “I must be sure that every one of you know, I could not have learned anything while I was under the spell.”
“So, when did you acquire this knowledge you claim to have?” Novara asked.
“I acquired this knowledge after I was significantly outside the influence. It took me a lot of time to break free of the mystical shackles holding me in place.
“Xelop used people’s weaknesses and made them their strengths, albeit in a wrong way. He made use of feelings such as frustration, paranoia, and many more. Once he knew he had honed their hearts’ desires to fuel their rage for his personal use, he turned them into an army of his own.”
For a moment the entire court was silenced. The newfound knowledge was being digested in the fastest ways possible.
“This is not helpful at all when considering a solution for our impending problem,” Novara said.
“How did you break the spell?” Nidara asked.
Keed seemed hesitant.
You are holding back. You cannot possibly hide forever, Keed.
“The spell has something to do with loss or deprivation. Oftentimes victims do not even know what it was that made them a target…”
“But you knew?”
“I would not say I knew. I would say I guessed. As it turned out, I knew myself better than Xelop thought I did. Or, perhaps I just knew that particular aspect of myself better.”
Another few minutes of silence followed. Another few minutes of churning the knowledge passed.
“And what was that aspect, pray tell?” the King asked, now unable to bottle in his curiosity.
Keed hesitated once more.
“The need and desire to protect princess Nidara,” he replied at last.
As he said so his eyes met hers for a brief moment. His irises were fully framing his pupils once more. Once again, the solemn tone of his voice urged her to forgive him, pleaded with her, that maybe he was only being foolish after all, that maybe he really did deserve the second chance. She saw repentance in them.
“Once again,” Novara interjected, “how can this information help us tackle the problem at hand?”
“It is eminent from Keed’s account that we must find something akin to strong desire or passion and help them out of this accursed trance,” said the Minister of Defense.
“It is obviously not economical for us to delve into each person’s deprivation or loss,” Nidara stated. “We could, however use their relatives’ help.”
“How?” the King asked.
“That, Father, is something we must work to find out,” Nidara replied.
~~~~~~~~~~
To be continued…
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140,793 Literary Works • 673,688 Reviews
Hi again Confused! Here for another review~
This was another lovely chapter! I enjoyed reading it very much, and your prose continues to be strong and on a whole well written. I also really liked getting to understand more about Xelop and the things he did, and how he forced all these innocent people into working for him. I'm excited to learn more about it!
As with the previous chapter, I'm still kind of reeling trying to figure out exactly what's going on. What the reader really needs is some strong, clear context. Perhaps this could all be fixed by a prologue (I can't believe I'm saying this cause I typically loathe prologues xD) that gives the reader a brief insight into what the war was like. This could be a scene of Nidara in captivity, of Keed working under Xelop (either still under his influence or after he becomes aware of his situation), or even a more omniscient view of the war happening in this world. We just need something more to understand the root of the current conflict, which in this case happens to be this massive war that has severely impacted so many of our main characters.
The only other thing I can point out now about this chapter is the addition of several new characters such as the King and Novara. I love the introduction of new characters, however it doesn't so much feel as if we're introduced to these characters as they just kind of appear and start doing things. It's a great technique to allow readers to understand a character as the story goes, rather than dumping a laundry list of info about them all at once, but I think we need something more about these characters to understand them better when they're introduced to us. Right now, we run the risk of them becoming talking heads (characters that the reader can't picture fully, so it's just like a bunch of floating heads talking to one another o_o) which isn't what you want! Something simple like one or two unique and distinguishing things about them for the reader would do the trick.
Otherwise I enjoyed this chapter! I'm even more intrigued as to what will happen next, and I'm excited to get on to read the rest. Thanks for sharing, and keep writing!
-Lauren-
Thank u for another fabulous review, Lauren! See this is just lke drafts, even though they seem like pretty much completed chapters and stuff. I'll be rigorously editing them and will fix these problems.
Thanks again for the review. You have no idea what this means to me!
Thank u for another fabulous review, Lauren! See this is just lke drafts, even though they seem like pretty much completed chapters and stuff. I'll be rigorously editing them and will fix these problems.
Thanks again for the review. You have no idea what this means to me!
Of course, dear! Drafts are the best things to post on YWS, cause you get so much great perspective for when you go back to revise. ^^ I'm glad you plan to keep working on this!
Hello again ConfusedGlasses!
Absolutely amazing! I absolutely love it! Although I did find one small mistake in your story. "embracing theses formerly loyal citizens," these? I don't know. I love it a lot... I might even add it to my favorites! I am about to read the other chapters. And I shall not tarry on those either. I love your work!
~Kelpies
Thank you so much @Kelpies
Hi there!
This is an interesting and informative chapter. I'd like to praise your dialogue a little bit: it is great and helping reader get into the formalities. I think writing a courtroom scene is really though, and here you did it very well.
I like your storyline too. First, I thought that Xelop was an opposing country. Now I guess that he is an mage of some kind. I'm a little bit confused, as you said that Keed is his commander. Did you mean that he was his commander, and now he broke free from his spell? I get that it is that way now, but something from within the first chapter made me confused about that. Maybe you should go through it again, but maybe it's just me.
I think there are only two places from the first part that you need to work on, first being the very first sentence. I think you should re-structure it so that it has stornger impact. Saying "wide open" two times doesn't seem to have that impact that you probably want. The other part is the last sentence of the first part. I think it would be much better this way: "I understand that tomorrow, we will find out how many lies have you told to us, Keed. Or, if you insist on that sentence structure, it would make much more impact if you put the point behind the Keed, and put "Tomorrow" as the lone sentence, in the next paragraph.
I really like it, you can inform me when the next one is out, I'll gladly give you my review!
-Alchemist
Thanks a lot dude!!!
Hi; Fiery here with a bit of a review.
Right away, you have an interesting bit of description. There are just a couple of things you may want to change.
Look at the first sentence. No doubt it would flow more easily as, "His eyes were open much too wide" or something. And then in the next sentences, I'm wondering if you meant to say his irises were all but invisible.
It might be that you could combine all three questions into one. Thus-
"Was it his eyes or his stiff movements, or the reality that the Keed she had known would never do such a thing?"
Same thing here- you could easily replace that first period with a hyphen.
I'm not sure what this means, exactly. Maybe you misused the word "demeanor", or maybe it's just my odd way of seeing things.
You already told us that in the previous scene, so go ahead and nix it.
I'd change this to read, "It was a sickening matter, she felt, to be talked about behind your (or one's) back." It's only personal preference, though; take it with a grain of salt.
A very odd sentence structure. I'd suggest rewriting it in one of two ways:
On the other hand, maybe you just wrote it that way thanks to the structure of your native language. That would certainly spice things up.
Allow me to indulge in one final thought. I read the first chapter and, for a second, thought that Xolep was the name of a different country. Perhaps you should explain where he's from so there'll be no more confusion.
Thanks a lot for the review! Now just to explain some things, and confess some things, I tried to combine the modern style of short, simple sentences with the formal sounding language, so that sort of explains why I didn't place hyphens where you suggested me to. And by the way, this isn't my native language. I come from a remote country in South East Asia.
Any way, thanks a lot for the review once more, and I promise I will try to improve. But Only if you promise to read my next chapter *wink*
Hey Confused!
Took a few days, but I've finally returned to your second chapter.
I really liked your first chapter, especially the two characters it mainly involved. You wrote them well and there were a lot of good hinting towards their background. Now, in this chapter we get even more insight into their history, and we find out that Keed's influence may have turned him more brutal than I initially thought.
In fact, I really loved how you conveyed all of that through this recurring nightmare. It's simple, immidiately grabs the reader's attention, adds greatly to both their characters and is a fantastic opening to a chapter. Good!
Other than this, the rest of the chapter dealing with the court meeting was okay (despite courtroom scenes being quite dull). I did like Nidara's sister a lot though, she seemed quite levelheaded. She also had good dialogue.
Alright, I'll just write as I go along:
Edit
Unnecessary.
Edit
Just shuffled the words around a bit.
I didn't like how you used 'scared' twice here. Maybe substitute the second one with startled or terrified?
So, I get the feeling that we're pretty much just reading up on the fallout of another story here. A potentially more interesting story. I guess you wrote this because there are too many stories out there dealing with the rise of big trouble, rather than dealing with the aftermath of it.
But I'm sure this can still keep the excitement levels high. But for me, stuff would have to happen. I'm not too excited for courtroom drama. Maybe this Xelop guy is still alive, and he is planning a harsher return, and he's got even more villainous people backing him up this time? Or maybe the people under this spell is the start of some sort of zombie uprising? I'd be up for either!
Suggestion
I think this reads better.
Suggestion
I have noticed that your dialogue seems to be a bit empty. Not the dialogue itself, which is pretty good, but rather the way you present it. I'd like a few more dialogue tags and character cues to indicate who is talking at all times.
In this example there aren't that many lines that go by without you indentifying the speaker, and since there's only the two of them speaking that is alright. But I'd still want some more.
Just some small tags will do:
Small example, I know. In addition though, you can also use this to describe more about the setting they're in. As of now, I could really use some descriptions of this place.
Exiles, exiles, exiles. We get it. (I think you see the issue here
Edit
So, though I'm unsure of the exact time period this is going for, they wouldn't have Ministers of Defense etc. In these sword and sandals/sorcery pieces, it's mainly just the king and his aides and advisors.
The rest of the scene is pretty good. There's not really much I can comment on. I did like Keed's explanation of Xelop's powers and how he exploits people. Pretty neat.
I do think this last line was a bit off though. The solution they need to try out seems pretty obvious. Try to connect them up with their relatives and see if it breaks it. Alternatively, ask their families for advice on what could break the spell.
I guess we'll see more of this in the coming chapters. Hope it leads to something good soon though, this plot alone, about these people under the spell isn't too exiting so far. And less courtroom scenes.
You should continue this series, tell me when you do.
Keep it up!
Cheers
Birkhoff
Thanks once more Birkhoff! I really appreciate how you go out of your way to point out the mistakes I made and the places where I could improve. I think this is what every person here on YWS deserves.
Although I sometimes feel a little hurt at how people don't think my writing is good enough, I'm gonna take your advice and try to improve. This is sorta my first time writing this kinda historic-fiction stuff. I'm best at writing Shoujo stuff, if you know what I mean. Anyways, thanks a bunch and know that you made my day. You will be the 1st person I tell when chapter 3 is out!
Hey Glasses! RoyalHighness has arrived to review!
Wow, another great chapter! I love the elegant diction of your characters! It really makes the story believable and a little more real.
There were a few sentences that could use some rewording:
"Discussions concerning the problems subjects all around the country were facing were brought up. "
I had to read this four times to figure out what you were saying. Maybe cut down on the complicated sentence structure And just tell your readers what's going on
"Every time she had that dream she woke up scared."
There's nothing mechanically wrong with this sentence; I just think you could word this a little better.
Okay, on to what I like.
I like the development of the relationship between Keed and Nidara and I like the inner conflict Nidara lets us see.
I like the hook you started off with, because it not only gives us another glimpse into Nidara's past but it also starts us hitting the ground running.
Speaking of running, I love that the wind, "ran faster." Use figurative language devices like this more often!
Overall, it was a pretty solid chapter! I give this eight stars of ten!
Thanks a bunch man! Once again you made my day. Yeah so I think I'm going to go over the chapter after I'v written some more. My head is swimming with ideas! Yup! be ready for the next chapter!
Hi there! Noelle here for a Review Day review!
I read chapter 1 first, but since you had a lot of good reviews on it, I figured that I'd just review this chapter and add in anything I'd say about the first chapter here.
First things first, I feel like this is the second book in a series. There is a so much detail in your backstory that I feel like I missed a whole other book. Have you written a book before this? Or at least thought about it? Because with the backstory you have now you basically have it written. Seriously. I'd love to read something about the war and how it began and how Nidara and Keed were friends before this. It would make for a great story.
So onto the story at hand. Like I said, there is so much backstory and that's wonderful. There is no part in either of these chapters that I'm at a loss for information. I do hope you keep this up in later chapters. You'll make it far in your novel with that ability.
As for grammar and spelling, I have nothing to comment on. I didn't find any mistakes or anything I think you could do better. I noticed that your dialogue is quite formal, but I guess I'm okay with that considering they're all royalty. Usually I'm not a big fan of this because it's not all that realistic. Do you go around saying, "Oh yes, I do believe that I must use the bathroom. Please pardon my absence". No, you say "I gotta pee". But I have a feeling that your story takes place in an early time in history. Or at least, it takes place sometime in the past. The only person I think you might want to consider changing their speaking style is Keed's. His seems too proper to me seeing as he's not royalty or anything.
That's all I got for you. In future chapters I'd like to see a bit more description. I think you're lacking some here. You're focusing so much on the story and the characters that you're missing what's around them. Do keep up with the backstory as you continue. I think it's great.
Let me know when you post the next chapter! I will gladly read it
Keep writing!
**Noelle**
Why thank you so very much for bringing my work out of the green room!
Sorry. Did I sound too formal?
Anyway thanks a lot for the review! I will think about the surroundings more. It's so much easier to ignore them you see. But this is a challenge I have to overcome.
And to answer your question,no, I didn't write a previous book. I was thinking that maybe I could put that stuff in with flashbacks. Or I could write a prequel/prelude. I don't know.:p
Yay, you wrote a second chapter! And for the first time ever, I have suggestions for you. Here they are:
(1)
"She heard the wind whistling in through her open window. A storm was brewing. She got out of bed and stood beside the window for a moment. The air calmed her crazed heartbeat."
This paragraph is completely comprised of only simple sentences. Farid Sir would freak. More sentence variety, man.
(2)
"They sat with the demeanor of their blood; the King and his two daughters."
Hmmm, I love the poetic vibe! But the thing is, not everyone might get it. It would be nice if you elaborated a bit more more. Like, just add a sentence after it, describing HOW they actually sat (I mean, describe their facial expressions, their posture, their elegance...you get the idea)
(3)
"Only time could bring his true colors about. No amount of prattling could bring about anything."
Here the sentences seem to be in the wrong order. Bring the last sentence before the first one and make according changes, and it will flow better.
(4)
First Nidara says “I have no opinion of this that I would rather share,”
But then Novara says “But it is, Sister---" The dialogue doesn't quite match. But what is? What does Novara mean when she says "it is"? I think you made an inadvertent mistake here.
(5) Here you have two paragraphs:
Novara seemed unconvinced but turned her attention elsewhere. The session was to start any moment. Everyone had already arrived.
AND
All the nobles and the Kings advisers seated themselves at their respective positions. The royal announcer cleared his throat.
No need for the separateness. Just make it into a single paragraph.
(6)
"No one wanted them to be exiles. Their behaviour rendered them exiles" would sound better as something like this: "No one had wanted to exile them. However their actions called for otherwise." I suggested the word 'Actions' because it expresses a fuller meaning than 'behavior' does.
(7)
"There was no way of solving this problem, no way of embracing these formerly loyal citizens, no way of consoling their families; until now"
The 'until' now doesn't seem to fit here. Maybe you could write something along the lines of: "At least that's how it'd seem. But now was the time to come up with a solution."
(8)
"It took me a lot of time to break free of the mystical shackles holding me in place."
I love how you used the word mystical here! But it should be "mystical shackles that HELD me in place" since it happened to Keed a long time ago.
(9)
"Another few minutes of churning the knowledge passed."
I dont know what you mean by "churning the knowledge". Perhaps you could express it more understandably?
(10)
“And what was that aspect, pray tell?” the King asked, now unable to bottle in his curiosity.
PRAY TELL! I love that you used it! But it should be just "bottle his curiosity" without the 'in'.
Okay man, that's about it. I hope you were able to read this entire review....now that I look back at it, it seems extremely messy. -_- And I know, its really long. :p But be thankful that my brain actually allowed me, for once, to give you suggestions because usually I can never come up with any. And of course, don't write EXACTLY like I suggested here. Make them BETTER than I suggested, got that?
There are also some other minor errors, but keep it up! This piece is great! I warn you, do not stop writing this thing. B|
~mprome~
wowowowowow..! hey thanks man! I'll take out time to make this better. do you think the endings a bit off though? i wasnt exactly satisfied with it...
tell me about it, k?
Yeah...the ending man. It just seems like the wrong place to end a chapter. Write more, and end it with a cliffhanger or after something interesting happens during the meeting....like i dunno...Keed accidentally spills his drink on Nidara? :3 Hehehe