I recently had a new idea for a novel, and only just got around to writing the prologue. Here it was, enjoy!
My breath became labored. Loud and huffed, I couldn't keep quiet. Was I hearing things right? I peered into the large office to the right of my frozen body. The Captain sat leisurely with his feet atop his maple desk, a menacing grin on his face. The man in front of him shared the same facial expression. He stood with his hands tucked into deep pockets, a deep, damnable laugh quietly escaping his curved lips.
"The King will never know." The man sounded rough and old. I panicked. I recognized his voice.
"Poison, the perfect way to assassinate. How long have we been able to craft it?" The Captain asked. I heard the scraping of wood on stone and the scuffling of newly shone boots. I didn't need to look to know that he was pacing the room. I gripped the bricks in the wall behind me tightly, if they knew I was here, I was just as dead as the King soon would be.
"We just received the recipes from the bordering provinces, sir. But there is one problem." The man replied. Fear permeated in my body as the shadow of the captain grew on the wall in front of me. He was in the doorway. I longed to just jump up and run, I had heard enough.
"And what, exactly, is that, Mordimer?" Mordimer! I felt as is my heart had stopped. The traitor was still alive and living, still serving the king. I finally clued in. All along, Mordimer had wanted to kill the King. Now he had method and motive. He had killed all of the other higher powers, but had never even been accused. I knew better.
To run was all I wanted now. I slowly got up out of my sitting position, ignoring the harsh sound of the traitor's voice as he explained to the Captain the only problem. My name was mentioned. I froze.
"What does Elon have to do with this, Mordimer?" The Captain asked, obviously intrigued. I peered around the corner one more time.
"Does she still believe that this 'gang' is in favor of the King?" I watched as the Captain nodded. Mordimer's grimace widened. "Then she'll be the perfect candidate. We both know very well how the King favors her. And what will old daddy dearest do when he finds out that she poisoned the King? That she was part of the rebellion?" Tears began to sting my eyes. I shifted in my position.
Laughter filled the hall. In unison the Captain and Mordimer laughed. They had done it. Tricked me, and came up with the perfect plan of assassination. I let a small cry of pity escape my lips. Everything went quiet.
I panicked. My mind was shouting run, run far and run fast, but my body wouldn't move. The Captain rounded the corner, his hands neatly held behind his back. I looked up at him, my breath becoming even more labored. He reached out to grab my arm, a look of anger and frustration evident in his stone-like gaze. I took a step away from him, but he only followed me, slowly unsheathing his knife.
"Come now, Elon, this is for your own good." He said quietly as he grabbed my arm and pulled me closer to him. His knife was soon on my throat, slowly pressing down harder. "We can't have you risking our operation."
Anger lashed out of me. I lifted my free hand and brought it to his cheek, slapping him with all the force I could muster. This man I had loved, not like a parent. I had devoted my life to him, and here he was, willing to kill me. His knife pressed down harder, drawing blood. I couldn't take anymore. I lifted my leg, kicking him in the groin. I had seen people do it many times, and it had proven effective. He yelled out in agony and dropped his knife, releasing me. I turned, refusing to look back, and ran down the hallway.
It seemed as if the stairs had been working for the Captain. I stumbled as I ran down them, rolling down more than I had run. Despite the pain, I got back up and continued through an even longer hallway. The mansion had always seemed too small for me, but now it was too big. The doors were too far away.
Servants clogged the hallway in front of me, blocking my way. I didn't have time to stop, soon the Captain would be upon me, along with Mordimer. Fear was what was driving me to continue. Without stopping, I shoved through the group, not noticing the trap laying just beyond it. Many of them stumbled to the floor, the others stayed standing, but all screamed as I shoved through.
"Elon." I stopped just before I ran into Mordimer. How had he gotten in front of me? I looked behind me, the Captain was advancing.
"What do you want?!" I screamed, attempting to shove him out of my way. I stopped when he grabbed my throat.
"You know something you shouldn't." He said, tilting my head backwards. I dug my nails into his hands. He smiled evilly as he removed one hand from my neck and dug into his pocket, removing a small, black flask.
"What is that?" I heard the Captain ask. He was standing beside us now.
"Just watch." Mordimer replied, forcing my mouth open. He opened the small flask and poured some of the contents into my mouth, releasing my throat. I began to choke. It tasted of rotten fruit and tree leaves, but the taste soon evaporated.
I tried to get up and run as soon as Mordimer moved out of the way, but my legs became paralyzed. Soon the rest of my body couldn't move. I couldn't speak. My mind began to scream. Mordimer had poisoned me.
"What was that?!" I heard the Captain yelling. Mordimer began to explain to him the effects of the poison. Paralyzation, death. That was all I heard.
I soon became aware that I was shaking. Panic was enraging around me, people scurrying and yelling. My consciousness soon began to fade. Mordimer's smiling face was the last thing I saw before I cut out. That evil, sharp grin.
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Canary word: Present
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,857 Reviews
It was good, I enjoyed reading it. It had me hooked and everything but, like the others above wrote, the villians are a cliche type (sorry). And the protagonist? Who is she? Whose her daddy dearest?Why do these villains want to kill the king? I'm sure these questions will be answered in the chapters to come. Please do write more. I must know what happens next!
So she's not going to try and stop it? That seems odd.
Where does her daddy fit into this? Where is he in the king's circle of advisors/servants? The way it is now it's hard to tell who her daddy is.
Who grabbed her? Also, with the "I screamed" the exclamation point isn't needed.
This seems like a very good idea. As Jiggity mentioned, put some more thought into your villains. Why do they want to assasinate the king? Who do they want to replace the king with? A huge cliche is when villains just want to take over the world/kingdom/city just because they are evil.
Another thing, if she's dieing, how can the story continue? Perhaps this is just the protoype of the poison they want to use on the king and it failed? It's pretty much that question that makes me want to read more!
Very nice cliffhanger. :D
I like where you're going with this. I'm not a huge fan of the "plot to assassinate king" story, because I've read it so much, but I'm intrigued with this one. Keep it up. :)
Critiques wanted? oh boy! i get invited to poison pen something.
alright here are my nit-picky problems with this.
first off i think this can be broken into two sentences. secondly don't use leisurely. first off its redundant after the feet up image. second off adverbs should only be used when necessary and this time it aint.
A little too much description here. i think damnable can go. quietly probably could because its an adverb
if you don't want to let go off this expand and create a scenario that brings all these images to mind.
first off tightly can go. second off break into multiple sentences. if you want to make the reader understand the "tightly" part put in one of those sentences something like "the bricks left impressions in my palms. And who has bricks on a ship anyway?
permeated in my body isn't good English. Actually it doesn't make sense at all. sorry.
felt what? i think you mean "as if"
but the whole paragraph makes little sense you may want to rewrite it.
take obviously out. it is redundant. it seems to me that if he asked he would have to be intrigued wouldn't he?
oh we aint talking about a ship here are we. my bad
first, too big, break it into sentences. second evilly is a little too blunt. it sounds unprofessional. try to go at it a little more subtly. maybe something like "he smiled a sadist's smile" ? (although i admit, that doesn't sound so great either.)
i don't think the word you're looking for here is evaporated. I never heard of a taste evaporating.
also. i think it should be noted in a first person story that it is usually not good to swap first person perspectives from one person to the next. so killing off your character in the prologue isn't a good idea.
nice, i think this piece will do well, cant wait to see the rest of it. try to get some subtler descriptions in there however
Thank you for the advice, and I'll definately read up on the Knowledge Base about the dialog issue.
To answer your question, no, she isn't a princess, but that will all be explained in the upcoming chapters.
small nitpick but no one ever has the 'same' facial expression. Similar, I think, works better.
deep and quiet don't really go well together. I suggest removing one of them.
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try and vary your sentence structure a little more, especially in tense moments. 'I panicked, recognizing his voice'
Unless he is heretofore known as 'The Captain' - uncapitalise 'the', please
More than one actually. First off, dialogue should end in a comma. Uncaptalise 'the' once more. Also, permeated is misused a tad here. Swap 'in' for 'from' and even then, I think the phrasing is still somewhat awkward. Suggested revision:
semi-colon instead of a comma
delete one of these redundancies
the dialogue thing is a recurring problem. Unsure of all the rules? Check out some helpful articles in the Knowledge Base
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Mostly, I found the villains to be standard, even as standard, cliche villains go; these ones have nothing going for them. They even have the evil laugh! Which, unless in a satire, should never be used honestly. Because of the lack of depth, substance, etc in these villains and their plot for that matter, this was a bit of a chore to read.
It's got to be engaging and interesting. It certainly can't be about two evil men smiling and laughing evilly as they congratulate themselves on their evilness and their perfect plan to kill the King and thus further validate the aforementioned evil. While an innocent, and as yet unknown individual (who is she anyway? Unless I read it wrong, was she a princess? I certainly hope not; the notion that I princess could run screaming through a mansion and not receive help is fairly far fetched. The notion that she could even be alone and no doubt missing (according to anyone else that is) without an alarm have being raised is again, far fetched but then I'm not sure if she was to begin with so that's okay.
My advice is to give some depth and originality to your villains and to generally try and take this somewhere different, somewhere new. Good luck with it.
Cheers