Avalon mounted Baefire and headed in the direction of Nadar. Not wanting to tire Balefire out before she made a reasonable distance she set off at a trot. He was a pleasant horse to ride; his strides were nice and smooth. It didn’t take long for her to bond to his beautiful spirited temperament. She enjoyed a horse with a mind of its own, that is, if it respected her and recognized her as its companion.
It was a chilly morning to ride in and the sun had only begun to show during mid-afternoon. The heat that came from the rays of the sun warmed her and comforted her as she galloped across the never-ending hills that she had usually marveled at from a distance. Now it was nothing but a blur as she concentrated on how she would find Rolt. After hours of riding, the light began to fade and the darkness settled in. Avalon spotted a fire blazing in the near distance. She left Baefire a little ways away and crept closer to the camp. Hidden behind the bushes she escaped unnoticed by the occupants. Three men were sitting around the fire, eating a broth with selected vegetables and meat. She guessed it was squirrel, due to the hides that were thrown to the side.
“I’m telling you,” one of the man said, “We could make a fine penny off those pelts.”
The other groaned, “I already told you. Nobody is going to buy squirrel pelts when there is much warmer fur out there. Not to mention flashier. We’d only make a couple of shillings at the most, not even enough to buy a blasted wilted turnip from a merchant.”
“Besides,” the third man piped in, “Nobody would buy anything from you anyways. They’d be too afraid you infected it with lice.”
Mr. Lice scowled, “Like your any better, Gareth.”
“At least I’ve bathed before,” Gareth muttered.
A grin escaped the farthest man from Avalon. He sat there carving a figure from a piece of wood that didn’t quite have a distinctive form yet. She figured they had been sitting there for a while from the looks of the organized camp. She wondered whether they would welcome any strangers to join them. She soon dismissed the idea. There were three of them and only one of her. If they decided that they didn’t want her poking around in their business she wouldn’t have the advantage.
Deciding that she had enough, she began to withdraw but abruptly stopped with a start. Something cool and pointy pressed into her back, definitely unwelcoming.
“Don’t move, or I’ll skewer you,” came a sharp, hostile whisper.
Avalon furrowed her eyebrows; she hadn’t heard a sound behind her, not even a crack of a twig or stir of the wind.
“What is it you want me to do then,” she asked, raising her voice a little. She took the chance that the men were honest and would come to her aid if they heard her.
The person behind her chuckled, definitely female. The woman pressed her weapon harder into her back, causing Avalon to wince in pain, “Stand up and walk slowly to the camp. No funny business.”
When the men had heard Avalon speak they had reached for their weapons. Shock was evident on their faces as the woman walked in with her at sword point. The man carving the figure was the first to recover.
“Livona, what on earth-” he stopped in mid-sentence at the glare she gave him.
Avalon’s mind began to work, if she flattened to the ground, drew her sword and then convinced them she wasn’t a threat then maybe they would let her go. She pictured herself with her sword drawn; something told her that that wasn’t quite the way to convince someone you aren’t a threat. As if reading her mind, Livona disarmed her and patted her down for any more weapons with a pointed glare.
At least I don’t need my sword to bargain my way out, she thought to herself.
“Did none of you notice her spying on you?” Livona asked. Her tone implied that it was more of an accusation rather than a question.
The three men shifted uneasily. Avalon began to come to the conclusion that she wasn’t a woman you would want to trifle with. After a moment of silence Mr. Lice spoke up, “No, none of us saw her.”
Scowling, Livona said, “I figured as much. Gareth, go and fetch her horse. Head south and you should come across it within a few minutes.” Gareth nodded, casting Avalon a your-responsible-for-this look and headed off. “Bran, go get some rope and tie her up securely.”
Bran ran to their provisions and brought out a coil of rope. Avalon figured this would be the time to bargain her way out, it would be a lot easier to do before she was tied. She cleared her throat, eyeing the rope, “You know, there isn’t any need for that. I’m not going to run, in fact, I was about to be on my way.”
The woman scoffed, “Don’t take me as a fool. I know you work for Kuthrin. Why he’d send a woman, I don’t know, probably to throw me off guard.”
“Kuthrin?” Avalon furrowed her eyebrows, “Who is that?”
Livona gave her an appraising look before nodding her head in Bran’s direction. He took this as a signal and approached Avalon. She took a few steps backward without realizing it. “Look I honestly don’t know who this Kuthrin is. I haven’t even met the man.”
“Of course you haven’t met him,” Livona scoffed, “Few have met him. I will not take the chance of you working for him, even if what you say is true.”
Bran took her by the arm with a firm grip and spun her around. He then grabbed her and forced her arms behind her back. As he secured her hands none to gently, she figured he was a little mad at her for getting him and his comrades in trouble. She grimaced as the rope cut into her skin, causing pain to shoot up her upper limb.
“Stop,” Livona’s voice rang out, only this time it wasn’t one of anger. Avalon turned to face her; she had a face as pale as snow. “Where did you get that?” she demanded.
Avalon followed her sharp gaze and noticed that the medallion her mother gave her hung loosely around her neck. It must have fallen out from underneath her clothing when he grabbed her. Livona repeated her demand, more vital this time. Avalon’s mind began to spin, hesitant whether she should be silent or not. Suddenly, a light jab in the back disturbed her thoughts. Bran had drawn out his knife and was threatening her with it.
“My mother gave it to me,” Avalon whispered, “It’s not valuable if you’re looking for coin.” Truthfully, she had no idea whether it would catch a fair penny or not. She hoped her imprisoner didn’t know either but her narrowed eyes dashed her hopes.
Before Livona could voice her thoughts, a sound came from the trees as Gareth emerged with a horse. Wild eyed, Baefire side-stepped toward Avalon. He must have known something was amiss when his master never returned. Avalon took a step forward but Bran restrained her, probably afraid she would escape.
“Easy now, boy,” Avalon crooned softly, ignoring the tight grip Bran had around her arm.
Baefire, still skittish, jerked his head up and yanked the reins from Gareth’s grip. He then pranced over to the end of the camp and stood there, eyeing them with wariness.
During the commotion the man Avalon nicknamed Mr. Lice scowled at his companions while stretching his hand out in a soothing manner. “You’re scaring him.”
Noticing Bran’s grip relax and everyone’s attention on the horse, Avalon ripped her arm away from her capturer. He was stunned for half a second; using this advantage she planted a kick in his stomach. Knowing that the other two would be on her at any moment she ran, not caring which path she took.
Avalon dared not to glance behind her to see if she were being pursued. With the luck she had been getting, there was no doubt that they were there. Branches reached out for her from all directions as she stumbled through the trees. More than once she almost lost her footing to the treacherous stumps and objects that lay in her path. She could hear someone cursing the darkness but that didn’t stop them from gaining on her. With her hands tied behind her back, it was difficult to flee at full speed.
She surveyed her surroundings, searching for a place to hide. She spotted some bushes that would serve a good cover for the time being. Before she could veer off into that direction something wrapped itself around her legs. Pain coursed up her body as she hit the ground. She attempted to stand up but whatever stopped her held her fast. She reached down to her legs and a roughness met her fingers. It was a bolas that entangled her. How the thrower managed to aim for her legs in the dark, she hadn’t the faintest idea. Hearing her pursuers nearing fast she tried one last desperate effort to push herself up. It was too late. A figure loomed over her and shoved her back down with his foot.
“Nice try,” someone said. She identified the speaker as Bran.
Two more figures appeared behind him. One of them was the woman and the other was Gareth. She assumed Mr. Lice had stayed to take care of Baefire. At least she knew her horse was in good hands.
“Carry her to camp,” Livona ordered Bran. She turned her hostile gaze on Avalon once more, “You and I will have a little chat.”
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,804 Reviews
Hey! I read all three chapters, but I feel it is appropriate to only write a review here.
I saw that you asked if the story was progressing too quickly. My answer is no, it has a good course to it. It is good that you do not linger to describe, but do it as the actions and dialogue progress. That is a great quality that a story can have. I remember reading Candide by Voltaire, and I liked it so much simply because things happened all the time, there was never really a dull moment.
I noticed that you break the dialogue as soon as you can to tell us who is speaking and how they are saying it. You have a great feel for that, and do it in the most appropriate places.
In one or two places you used "your" instead of "you're", but that's nothing too big to worry about. You also used a few words that originate past the middle ages (the word "adrenaline" from chapter 2 comes to mind). This, though only slightly, takes away from the feeling of the setting. At the end of this chapter Bran said "Nice try." The meaning "good" of the word is fairly new. In the middle ages "nice" meant "stupid". I just wanted to point that out, even though the sentence keeps being logical either way.
The dialogue is fluent, the chapters end appropriately, there is not much bad I could say even if I intensively searched through several times.
I really like your story and I especially like the way you told it. You have not posted a chapter in five months, so I hope this motivates you to write some more. You certainly are capable of producing quality content.
Thank you for the review! I am glad you liked it. Thanks for pointing out the dialogue, sometimes I tend to forget those things.
Yes, I must get to posting another chapter! I'll let you know when I do..if you want?
Please! I would love to read another chapter!
Awesome. =)
Timmy has comeeee. He is here.
Hai
So I remember reviewing the previous chapters a while ago, so this is basically me catching up. Good thing, too. You review too much of my stuff for me to not be reviewing yours, too. <3 So I'll get started.
I've decided to go through this disjointedly, without an introduction to the review. Just jump in head first. Hang on. :p
So you told me you were worried your plot and story moved too quickly. And you're right. It does zoom through the story, almost without any present detail. That's okay. Really, this is your first draft. What's the goal? Put the story down on paper. That's it. If you've done that, at the end of the draft, it's a very very successful one. So don't worry about the pacing too much.
But if you insist on worrying about it, I'll go through and give you a few things to think about while you're writing.
First, telling versus showing. You have quite a bit of telling here, which can make the scenes flash by like they do. Let me pick out a part to show you what I mean.
So you told us the camp the camp is organized. Step back, and let your character look over the entire scene. Where are the horses? Where's the tack for the horses? If they've been there for a while, they must have a tent up. What does it look like? Do they have a stack of wood off to the side, with a neat fire? Water anywhere. All of those things and much, much more build to the ambience of a scene. You said the camp was organized, but you didn't give the reader a picture to hang onto while they read along. So spend a little while with this description, and build the atmosphere. That's your job.
There are places through here where your descriptions are amaaazing, though.
I won't talk about it too much, as they're obvious things you can fix with a bit of careful editing, but you have quite a few errors like the one above. Scan through and see if you can weed them out. c:
your should be you're
Punctuation is an amazing thing. You discredited its power in this sentence here and repeated yourself when the En-dash did a beautiful job. The En-dash (-) on the end of your sentence there says that your character stopped midsentence. It's basically redundancy to have the narrator tell us he stopped mid-sentence. So, really, this is another case of "show versus tell". You'll get much more better at it as you write. Just remember that you need to balance them out and not repeat yourself, and in time you'll see the spots as well as not fall into doing that. c:
Two sentences. I've threatened other YWS'ers with spankings for doing things like this. Remembeh Remembeh. These are supposed to be two sentences. Separate at eyebrows, where the comma is.
So I know I'm basically just going through and pointing out the few things I notice here. xD Lemme continue on. This sentence right here was fine, exceeept for one teensy thing. You're using passive voice here. When writing, always always stick to the active voice as much as you can. It's stronger and tighter. In this case, you want sat instead of were sitting.
I love that you have the horses and so much of them in this. Write what you know, right? You're doing a beautiful job with them.
You know the biggest issue you have here? It's not description, character development, or anything similar. It's the simple things that gives your chapter a sometimes awkward read. If the grammar and punctuation issues were resolved, this piece would be even better. It's an amazing chapter right now, and I love the scene and the character's spirit, but a bit of attention aimed towards the punctuation/grammar would be of a tremendous boost.
So a little thing like this:
Comma after something
Is an example of what I'm talking about. If you're not the greatest at spotting and correcting these errors, be patient. You will become so good, it becomes second nature. And these little errors are almost unnoticeable, anyway. >> They kinda become lost in the rest of this beautiful chapter. :3 If you want to become good at noticing them, read read read books and take note of how they place their commas and grammar. Also, read reviews. Many reviewers on YWS offer amazing advice, and even if it's not your piece, anyone can benefit from their tips.
Keep going with this. You got it. And let me know when the next chapter comes out, kay?
<3 Darth Timmyjake
Thanks for the review! It was awesome, as are most of your reviews. Yes, I must work on the 'showing' of things. I've tried but I hope in my second draft I'll be able to get the hang of it. Thanks for all the wonderful compliments. You can bet your bottom dollar that I'll let you know. Be prepared xD.
Thanks again,
Fire
Hello, steampowered here for a review!
Can I just say how much I’m enjoying reading this? I can’t wait to read on and find out what happens next! So let’s get started…
I think you meant to say “a little WAY away”.
There’s nothing really wrong with this sentence, but it feels kind of… clunky? Maybe a bit of rephrasing would make this easier to understand, for example “Hidden behind the bushes, she found herself able to observe without being spotted by the camp’s occupants” or something like that?
Can she really tell what they’re eating? Has she got some kind of super-sense which allows her to detect traces of meat and vegetables from a distance after dark? (Although that would be an interesting power to have…) I would personally just say “eating a broth” and leave it at that.
This is really minor, but it should be “one of the men said” and there should be a period at the end of this sentence.
You’re, not your.
You’ve used the word “figure” twice. Why not say, “She guessed” or “She assumed”? “She figured” is, after all, quite a modern expression.
Um… stopping with a start? That’s an… interesting… way of wording it. Why not just say, “but abruptly stopped”?
Shouldn’t there be a question mark at the end of the dialogue?
Why would she flatten to the ground AND draw her sword? Even if Avalon’s mind’s a bit scrambled at the moment due to everything that’s happened, I wouldn’t have thought she’d make up such a strange plan.
Hmm, a weapon with a pointed glare sounds quite useful, as you could skewer someone on it. Nonetheless, I don’t think that’s quite what you meant. Perhaps you could reword it so it’s something like: Livona disarmed her and patted her down for any more weapons, a glare on her face.
You’re, not your.
Why is Avalon contradicting herself? First she says she’s not going to run, that she’s going to be a good captive, now she’s basically saying she was going to leave?
Enough with this girl’s eyebrows. She’s already furrowed them once in this chapter…
None TOO gently, not none to gently.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading this, though it might need a little bit of polishing to make it even better. The story is really exciting and I’m interested to find out more about Livona, and what is going to happen to Avalon. Feel free to let me know when you upload the next chapter!
Thank you! I still have to figure out what is going to happen. I enjoyed all your nitpicks heehee. Thanks once again for reviewing! =)
Hey, Fire! I'm here to give you another review.
All right then. First up: something is bothering me about that part where Bran, Lice, and the others treated Avalon roughly. The thing is, it wasn't the treatment that I'm concerned about, but rather, it was Avalon herself. If I remember correctly, she sustained a wound in the previous update because of the fight with the wolf, but here, she acts as if there isn't anything wrong with her arm. I would understand the new characters, since she's unfamiliar to them and all, but I would imagine Avalon would've felt the pain even a little but, however, we have no hint of that here. It's just something to think about and take notice of. Another thing that I want to say is that there's still the general feeling of telling rather than showing. In the nitpicks (which I'll be getting to soon), I've added a sort of "tip" for you. We both actually suffer from this issue, but hey, if we practice, we'll get the hang of it soon!
On to the nitpicks. There isn't much I noticed, and most of them are typos, so good job! Rereading the piece with a careful eye will surely make these go away.
You made a minor typo on the horse's name; then I added a comma where I feel it was needed.
This is one of the "telling than showing" parts of this chapter I was mentioning earlier. For the line I quoted above, maybe a question like "how do they bond?" would help you out in describing.
"Escaped" doesn't really feel like the right word here, because by then, she should have been spotted before and held somewhere. Maybe you can swap it out for something else.
That should be "men".
The latter half of this sentence seems out of place. I suggest that you make this a thought of Avalon instead.
Those aside, I do like the Livona. She's pretty harsh, but I get the feeling that she and Avalon would get along just fine later on. For some reason, I think she's part of the Fallen -- or, at least, is working with them. Maybe she's even a relative? Haha.
Overall, I did like this chapter, but you could still improve it to make it shine more. Good luck, Fire, and keep writing! Please ping me when you update again.
Cheers,
EscaSkye
Hi! Thanks for the review. They are always appreciated. Your right, I completely forgot to add her injuries in there. I'll have to do that. As for Livona, don't tell anyone my secret xD, but I have no idea who she is. Some I'm guessing right along with you.
Thank once again,
FireBird99