Quinn cocked her head and stared at the evening gown neatly spread out on her bed, laughed, and then returned to the books spread out before her. She was busy learning about the morphology of spiritual beings. Far more important than some gala.
Overstuffed bookshelves lined every wall of the room; the only spaces free from shelving were the grand fireplace and the door. Even then, there were still books neatly stacked on every other available surface in the room, sometimes the stacks reached nearly to the ceiling. The only other furniture in the room was a sturdy desk and an elegant four-poster bed, covered in plain white sheets. The fireplace and burned down to embers, which gave off the only light in the room.
There was a knock at the door followed shortly thereafter by Avery’s voice. She bid him to come in, without looking up from her work. The door swung open a few inches, and then thumped against a heavy leather-bound tome. Avery sighed, and then reached around the door to remove the obstruction, casually tossing it onto a nearby pile, and then stepped into the room. He navigated around the piles of books, following the path he’d insisted Quinn put in, and then finally peeked his head into the room. Avery was dressed in most of an exquisitely tailored suit, shoes shined to a mirror finish, and gold cufflinks bearing the family, seal which glinted in the dying light. “Alright, the coach should be here in fifteen minutes and—“ he stopped, looked to the dress still neatly laid out on the bed, and back to Quinn. The dirty nightgown stuck to her unnaturally pale skin, her dark hair was greasy and unkempt. He tried to speak, but a stream of strangled noises was the only thing to pass his lips.
Quinn finally acknowledged his presence, and spoke without looking up from her book, “yes, that, I’m not going.” She casually closed the book and reached for another.
Avery struggled to keep an even tone, not wanting to upset his sister again. “We went over this; you need to be there tonight. This is important.”
Quinn shrugged and continued reading. “You do it.” She said, with the infuriating tone of a child asking for the impossible.
Avery swallowed his anger, and pulled himself back into a clear headspace. “I—I already explained this Quinn,” his voice was cool and soothing, “you’re the head of the college, and their child, you need to at least make an appearance. Now please, just get dressed so—”
“I’m not wearing that,” she said, reaching for another book, “the color is wrong.” Avery tried to see say something, but she continued. “There is a slight excess of yellow pigment, which means this dress is not white. I will not wear it.”
Avery looked at the white dress on the bed, and then back to Quinn. “The dress is white, you’re just imagining things.” Avery bit his lip upon realizing what he just said.
Quinn stiffened up, “the dress is not white.” She repeated the phrase over and over. Avery swore and backed out of the room, shutting the door behind him, and holding it shut. From the other side he could hear loud thumps as stacks of books fell to the ground, and above it all he could hear Quinn repeating the phrase over and over, her voice becoming an incoherent scream, and then it was silent. Avery stood there until he heard the front bell ring, signaling that their cab had arrived. Avery sighed. “Alright Quinn, I’ll be back later. Your dinner is in the kitchen.” No response. The bell rang again; Avery shook his head and headed for the front door, hastily fixing his suit as he went.
Avery paused for a moment to look himself over in the hallway mirror, to reassure himself that everything was perfect. Upon seeing them for the first time, few could tell that Quinn and Avery were even related, much less siblings. Avery was Quinn’s opposite in nearly every way, while she was tiny, almost skeletal in appearance; he was tall and well muscled. Her face had an uncanny, almost unnatural appearance. While, he had the perfect combination of strong features and expressive eyes, the kind of face that people would get lost in. The kind of face anyone could find something to love about. Few people expected such an awkward and ungainly child to grow into such a handsome adult, and no one could have predicted how quickly it happened. Whenever anyone mentioned this to Avery, he simply laughed and claimed his genetics were both a blessing and a curse. The bell rang again as Avery was fixing his hair for the fifth time. He examined the style in the mirror and wrinkled his nose in disgust, but decided it would probably be fine. Probably. He tucked the comb inside his jacket, and answered the door.
The cabbie huddled under the umbrella while the rain beat down around them, in the distance a burst of lightning lit up the night. He said nothing, but held out the umbrella to shield Avery from the storm. The ride was an uneventful half an hour; Avery spent the time rehearsing the speech he’d prepared for Quinn’s inevitable absence. He didn’t actually expect her to come, but way she’d brushed him off still hurt. He’d hoped that she’d at least show up to respect their parents, considering how much they doted on her. Avery shrugged it off and once again vowed to stop trying to figure out how Quinn’s mind worked. He bemoaned the fact his magic didn’t work on her, imagining all the problems it’d solve.
The cab came grinding to a stop, and the driver knocked on the window. Avery opened the door and stepped under the waiting umbrella. The driver coughed, and unsubtly gestured to a tip jar on the inside of the door. Avery smiled put something in the jar; the driver looked inside the empty jar and smiled wide, then thanked Avery profusely for his generosity. Avery smirked as the two men walked to the door, the flood of magical energy lingered in his limbs for a moment, before finally dissipating. Upon reaching the door, the driver thanked Avery one last time for money he’d seen the mage put in the jar. Avery just smiled, and assured the man that it was the least he could do.
He turned his coat over to the doorman, and took a moment to collect himself before entering the gala. His heart was pounding in his chest, and he still felt the rush from enchanting the cab driver. It felt so good to be around people, real people, again. It felt so good to be in control.
Avery stepped into the main room with no ceremony, and slipped into the sea of elegant dresses and immaculate suits. A few individuals caught a glimpse of him as he entered, and began to grumble about the conspicuous absence of his sister. Avery noted the dissenters’ faces, and made a point of visiting each of them personally, drinks in hand and a smile on his face. When asked about it afterwards, none of them could remember what exactly Avery had said, but came away from the conversation deeply satisfied. After dealing with the problematic guests, Avery began to flit about the room, making a polite appearance here and there, passing out compliments and adding his two cents to dying conversations. Avery was in his element, and within an hour the room wrapped around his finger, the conversations ebbing and flowing according to his whims. He felt good, better than he’d felt in a long time, he’d even had time to slip into the bathroom with one of the junior professors; a stunning woman he thought was named Diana.
At half-past the hour, he took the main stage and tapped a fork on his glass to call the room to attention. The strain of captivating so many people had began to take its toll, his lungs burned, and sweat rolled down his face; not that anyone would notice. The room grew quiet, and all eyes focused on him, and he began to speak. “First things first, Quinn sends her regards. She really wanted to be here, but unfortunately she is quite ill at the moment.” Avery felt his grip loosening, and a few murmurs rippled through the crowd. He took a breath and concentrated on the crowd, bringing them back under his control. “I’m glad to see so many of you here to honor my parents; I know many of you had strong feelings,” he spat the word at the crowd, “about them. Like you,” he gestured to a man with graying hair and a thick beard, one of the dissenters from earlier, “I know for a fact that you and my parents constantly butted heads, so I’m thrilled you were willing to make an appearance.”The man smiled, oblivious to the contempt Avery injected into every word. “But that’s enough about you, as I said, you all already know about my parents, so I waste much more of your time praising them.” Avery paused and wiped away a few beads of sweat. “The one thing I know about my parents, is that they cared for this college more than anything. Every waking moment was spent running this place, building it up, trying to make it something great, and for that, I will always remember them. I’ll remember the long nights they put in, the holidays they worked, the vacations they never took. So, I’m glad this college has finally agreed to honor them for their considerable sacrifices.” Avery willed the crowd to clap, and they did.
Avery quickly took his bows and left the stage, letting one of the board members come up and formally unveil the statue, which would be placed outside their library. He barely remembered the rest of the ceremony; his mind was blanketed in a thick haze as he recovered from weaving such a powerful enchantment. He continued to talk and mingle, but did so as an outside observer, watching his body go through the motions while he was somewhere else. It’d been a long time since Avery had pushed himself this far, the feeling was intoxicating.
The rest of the night wound down fairly quickly after the speeches concluded. Avery considered finding Diana, and letting her take him home; but he remembered what happened the last time he stayed out all night without telling Quinn, and then decided against it. The rain had stopped when he finally left the gala; a cab was already waiting for him, and he climbed in the back without a word. As he collapsed in the back seat, Avery realized how tired he was, and fell into a deep sleep.
Avery found himself on a mountain overlooking Xi, he could make out the entire city from his vantage point, including his family’s mansion. As he stood there, days passed in the blink of an eye, he watched his parent’s library raised from the ground in a matter of seconds. Looking off into the distance, he saw something steadily approaching from the east. He strained his eyes, but couldn’t make out what it was; and then he blinked and it came into view. Sand. An unbroken front of sand slowly and steadily expanding from the east, consuming everything in its path. In a matter of minutes it reached the outer edge of the city, he watched as it consumed the walls, turning them into orange sand. He blinked and it had consumed everything. There was only a featureless expanse of sand where the city had once been. He blinked again and it had engulfed the mountain he was standing on. He tried to run, but the sand gave way beneath him, and he tumbled down, down, down. He lay on the sand, starring up at the featureless blue sky. He blinked and there was nothing.
Save them.
Avery awoke as the cab lurched to a halt. He sleepily climbed out of the back of the cab, placing a few coins in the tip jar, and stumbled towards the front door. He opened the front door and saw Quinn, dressed in a white tunic and carrying a backpack, standing there in the dark waiting for him. The two locked eyes, as if they both had the same thought.
“We have to save them,” she said quietly.
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125,020 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Hello.
Haven't read previous parts. Just going off what I see here.
First off, your descriptions. They err on the side of repetition, with "the room" showing up six times in two paragraphs describing, well, the room. It makes the work dull to read because there's no variety. I'm not saying to grab a thesaurus and find every synonym for "room" there is, but instead consider reworking the descriptions completely so you don't have to say it so often. You don't have to keep saying "the room" to have readers remember what you're describing.
The PoV switch was a little jarring, as subtle as it was. I would have preferred having Avery's perspective the whole way through, or maybe a scene break, just so it would be a little cleaner. Especially because, right now, I feel you're missing out on a lot of emotional impact from the soft transition. That period of distance from both of their minds is a fairly critical moment of characterization, where we see Quinn resisting and Avery... well, we don't know what Avery feels, because it's distant and he doesn't really reflect on the matter.
Which brings me to how that stands out for how much he reflects on everything else. There are only two very small conversations in here and one speech, making this almost entirely description and "transportation", as I shall call it.
By "transportation" I mean you are showing things simply to fill in gaps, or at least it feels like it. Without any real interaction in here, without actual conversations and people and, well, a scene, the prose feels pointless. I figure these are very important meetings, considering he undergoes an enchantment and has to resist it, but because they are so buried in dense paragraphs that are nothing but description and moving from place to place, it's lost on me.
Focus more on action than introspection. Actions are what drive novels. Choices are what drive novels. Right now, everything is just sort of happening. The characters aren't doing anything but moving around, and there's only a choice at the end— when you have a ripe opportunity for dozens of choices in the ball. It feels like such a wasted opportunity that I'd cut it entirely, or beef it up to the point it feels like it has more of a purpose than just 'here is a speech and here is how my sister is wrapped up in her own world because she missed this Important Event'. Right now, it doesn't feel important. The characterization is lost in more ways than one.
I know you probably want to get to the good parts, the parts you think are more interesting (the saving people from sand does indeed sound very interesting), but one thing I learned over the years is that if you don't treat every single thing your character does as interesting, your readers will get bored.
Everything you include in your story, no matter how small, should be at least interesting. It doesn't have to be action packed, it doesn't have to be tense, but it should reveal voice or establish alliances or reveal worldbuilding depth. Something important. Right now, the ball scene feels more like it's just shipping the characters place to place, and you could cut 80% of this without losing any important information. Either make the 80% important by beefing it out with interactions, or cut it.
Overall, this felt more like notes than it did a story. Richen it. Don't be afraid of unpacking long parties and conversations, even if they feel like a detraction from the plot. You could end up discovering a whole new layer of conflict you didn't even know existed and makes the story so much better. I am already very curious about what's going on, but because it's so introspective and compact, I can't really get into it. I want to get into it.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
~Rosey
Sadly, I didn't find this as compelling as the first two parts. I mentioned in my review of Chapter 1.1 that the piece was compelling, partly because you managed to make you characters "come to life". You did it the same in 1.2 with Zira. I feel you missed the mark a bit with Avery, who isn't nearly as interesting as the first two are. I find him rather spoiled and pretentious, although with the "fixing his hair" bit, that was most likely your intent.
Characters aside, I thought the plot stalled a bit, as you included far too much description on trivial things like characters that are more than likely unimportant to the plot. Granted, it's still early, but until the very end, nothing of key note happened apart from mountains of description. Description is fine on it's own, but it was aided previously by the gritty, fascinating world you created. This chapter is more of a contemporary, indoor setting that all readers have seen a hundred times. I fear the dialogue has taken a drastic step down from the first part. How did we go from deep discussions about life and death, to warriors murdering cowards in bars, all the way to the color of dresses?
The story did pick up at the end, but then it was already over. I figure that was the corrosion they were talking about in the first part, so we'll see. The plot is still very interesting to me, but this part definitely felt weaker than the first parts did.
A few nitpicks:
And what burned down...?
yeah, this whole paragraph isn't needed to me. This is because I can't imagine much more of the story is taking place here, so I'd rather you cut to the nitty gritty of what you've got the readers hooked on.
This is an overly thick paragraph with a whole bunch of nothing.
The ending is as gripping as the rest of the story, but the first parts don't really do anything for me. keep it up, looking forward to the next part, but take your time and don't rush, heheh. Good luck ^^