A cold wind blew past the three dragons as they stood in the training grounds their scales gleaming in the morning sun.
"It is up to you, what you want to do next Grimbell. Join the arena and see if you find a dragon you can trust in this war with their tribe. If you can't find anyone than you may go to Sky Mountain, the dragons there will explain your mission further." Riptide said, a look of pride quickly washing over his face.
"Okay. The arena begins next week, and it will go on for a week.” said Grimbell.
Raygal grinned and said, "Well get ready for some training young Sir! I'm going to have some fun with you!"
Riptide shook his head and gave a long sigh.
"Okay Raygal! What about Windstride and Wavermel?” questioned Grimbell.
"What about them?" Raygal asked.
"Won't you be training them too? As usual?" replied Grimbell
"Yes I will, but I can always find time for you young Lord!" Raygal beamed, "Unless you want your father to train you?" He said grinning in an evil manner.
Grimbell went to Raygal and whispered in his ears. "He's right there. Did you forget?"
"Nope, not at all!" Raygal said loudly.
Riptide only glared at the old dragon.
"I'm sure if you ask him he will say yes." Raygal insisted, as he nudged Grimbell with his shoulder. "Think about it."
Grimbell thought for a moment and replied "um... Maybe later."
Raygal turned to face Riptide. "I'll be heading back to the kingdom now my King, I have training to do with the other two." With a small bow he takes to the air and flies off towards the sea. Riptide looked over at Grimbell not sure what to say.
"I'm coming too!” he said.
Riptide followed after the two dragons.
The three dragons dived into the water, Riptide taking the lead by swimming into a current that sped up his movements. Small fishes scattered as they saw them pass, their scales shining in the bursts of sunlight that came through the water.
The three of them swam past coral of all types and colors. Soft sea grass brushed against their under bellies as they dipped into a deep canyon. Making a sharp turn to the right then up the three of them made their way onto a small beach in the center of a hollowed out island after swimming though a dark tunnel. Sunrays streamed through the trees and covered the top of the island. A large waterfall could be seen to the far right crashing into the water around the beach.
Grimbell said, "This place has looked a wonder every single day since I can remember."
Raygal laughed, "It does that to you. Now where are Windstride and Wavermel? I don't want them late for their training." He hissed to himself scanning the rocks.
"But they are right here Raygal!” he exclaimed.
"Are they playing the fool again?" He arched an eye crest looking over at Grimbell.
Riptide looked towards Raygal, then at Grimbell.
Windstride looked at his master and said, "Raygal what took you so long?"
"Yeah!" Wavermell added.
Raygal let out a nervous chuckle. "I had a little training with Grimbell."
Windstride gave Grimbell and turned to Raygal. He said, "Let's start,"
Raygal nodded, "Yes, yes."
Riptide laughed. "Sorry we kept Raygal for you guys, Grimbell challenged him and you know how he is." Spreading his wings, he shook all the water from his body.
Wavermel said with an unpleased look. "Yeah that we know."
"Oh dear Raygal, looks like they won't be holding back on you today." Riptide said, wishing them luck he took to the air and flew to one of the stone platforms.
Raygal could only hiss after him. "Yes I can see that!"
"So what are we doing today? We haven't done any combat without magic in a while."
Raygal chuckled with a sly look in his eyes. "Well then why not do some today? It wouldn't hurt, besides the King wishes for Grimbell to train without his powers, so it would help if he joins our training today." he looked over at the dragonets.
Wavermel and Windstride stared at Grimbell again with irritation. Windstride's expression turned into an evil smile. "I'm going to enjoy beating you up."
"Oh we will see who beats whom up." replied Grimbell with a grin.
Raygal sighed, his mood from before suddenly gone, "Right then, I'm going to change this up a bit, I want you three to fight against each other without me, and I will watch you and point out where you need improving, is there a problem with that?"
Before anyone could say anything Windstride charged Grimbell. Grimbell dodged and grinned at him.
Raygal stepped back and watched the two, letting them begin.
The two took turns at attacking each other. It went on for a while till Grimbell caught hold of Windstride's wings and began to spin him around at a greater speed than with which he had spun Raygal earlier.
Just when he was about to hurl him at the ground, He felt a blow to his head. He heard a thud as Windstride hit a wall nearby. "What just happened?” he thought. It was Wavermel.
Raygal sighs. "Grimbel, they swapped places, you would have seen that if you were watching!!"
"Actually master. I created an illusion and they assumed that I was just watching them fight. I'm surprised you fell for it too."
Raygal snorted a stream of fire, "I thought we agreed no powers, this was going to be a test of strength, and you cheated!"
Wavermell replied, "Actually I didn't. I didn't use my illusion for combat. It was outside the field the entire time. Also, I put mud on my body and I thought it would be a very bad trick but it actually worked on them. Then I just kicked Grimbell and he did the job with Windstride for me."
Raygal growls. "But you still used an ability, instead of fighting him yourself, that was the point of this lesson, no tricks, just strength." he lets out a sigh.
"It may have been a trick but strategizing on the battlefield is also strength. I watched them fight each other senselessly and took advantage of that." She replied and turned to Riptide. "Isn't that also strength Lord Riptide?" she asked.
Raygal turned to see Riptide - who had flown down to join them, "My Lord I didn't see you there."
Riptide walked past Raygal over to Wavermell, "Yes that is a key element in a battle, but, this was to show Raygal that you could handle yourself without your powers. No matter how good they are you will always end up getting into combat that requires strength and that alone."
Wavermel looked down. She was disappointed but tried her best not to show it.
Riptide put a wing along her back. "In time you will understand why we do these things."
End of chapter
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141,249 Literary Works • 674,330 Reviews
Happy review day!
Some little typos first...
I would put a comma before Grimbell, I find that reads better.
Again, I would put a comma after Grimbell.
This is a pretty long sentence. I would break it up by saying something like Making a sharp turn to the right, then up, the three of them swam through a dark tunnel, and immerged in the centre of a hollowed out island. They made their way onto a small beach, and shook the water off their scales. Or something like that.
Gave Grimbell what? Also, there should be a period at the end of this sentence.
I really like Wavermel's character. Even though she "cheated" she knows how to fight smart, not hard, and seems more clever than Grimbell and Windstride who both seem cocky and arrogant.
Again, I'm sorry for all these typos, but I don't have much to say on the characters or plot. I will say, however, that I'm not sure why Raygal keeps mentioning how Grimbell is getting special treatment. Clearly Windstride and Wavermel are envious of him, but Raygal seems to keep provoking them.
On to the next chapter!
-Gnomish
Thanks for the review Gnome
Thank you for the review!
Hey FlamingPhoenix! Hope you don't mind if I swing by for a review today
I haven't read the first chapter of this, so if I miss anything or make any comments I otherwise would have not made had I done so, I apologise in advance!
Good job on this line! It's not the first chapter so I'm not as interested in its hook, but you did cover 1) characters (the three dragons) 2) setting (the training grounds in the morning) and 3) sensory description (cold wind), so kudos to you for having a solid first line here!
(I am going to point out there should be a comma between "grounds" and "their" though :p)
I'm going to try not to get too caught up with grammatical issues (I personally don't find them very useful?), but I'm just going to mention here that there should be a comma after "replied", and the "Um" should be a capital U since it's the beginning of dialogue!
(You're also missing some periods at the end of your sentences, which you'll want to wathc out for!)
This sentence switched from past tense the present tense (In other words, this should be "With a small bow, he took off [into the air] and flew towards the sea." I would remove "into the air" since it's already implied, but it's up the you!)
I'm not entirely sure whether you're intending to write this as an omniscient narrator? If you are, ignore that I pulled this line. If you aren't, then the prose should only stay in Grimbell's point of view. In this particular line, you're showing us how Riptide is reacting, but if you're trying to write this from Grimbell's perspective, he wouldn't know that (unless Riptide stated it, obviously), so it should be described as something more like "Grimbell glanced to Riptide, who met his gaze but said nothing."
Hopefully that makes sense? I have a really bad habit of straying into other characters' heads when I'm writing from a specific character's point of view now haha it's more apparent to me when I'm reading.
I'm not sure who says this? If it's Riptide, then he does know what to say and that last line is obsolete regardless of perspective, and if it's Grimbell, you should probably attach his name to it since Riptide is both the last and next name mentioned and (I think?) they both use he/him pronouns.
Very good description!!
an... eye crest?
This would be the correct punctuation that you missed earlier! The only issue with this one is now that last comma should be a period
What mood?
Another little switch of tenses! "He let out a sigh" <- "He" should also be capitalised, but other than that, it's good.
You have the skeleton of a very interesting story here, and I'm always down for any stories with dragons.
However! There's a real lacking to the flavour of the prose? Much of it is dialogue, and dialogue tags. You had a couple good paragraphs and the first line that had good description, but otherwise there wasn't much else. What do the training grounds look like? What about the cove to more detail? If Wavermel put mud over her scales to disguise herself, then why is that never mentioned?
Also, I'm still unsure what point of view/narrative style you're going for, but I already mentioned that in detail. Regardless, you don't really ever mention how the characters are feeling and, when you do, you tell us how they're feeling. "She was disappointed but tried her best not to show it" could be "Disappointment slumped at her shoulders, but she did her best to keep her chin up and not falter so that no one would notice." That gives the reader a more visceral and physical sensation of how Wavermel is feeling in that moment, and how she handles disappointment in that moment specifically. I'm sure you've heard of "show, don't tell", and this is one example of where you'd want to lean into showing your reader how the character is feeling, as opposed to telling them what they're feeling.
Even if there was more description and substance, I would still advise to cut back on the dialogue tags and only use them for clarity of who is speaking. If you introduce a character with an action or otherwise announce their presence at the start of a paragraph, then dialogue shouldn't need a dialogue tag to clarify who's speaking. Dialogue tags add flavour when the context of what is being said/the situation doesn't make it clear enough, but should generally be used sparingly or they become too distracting from the story.
One more thing I'd recommend is reading your dialogue out loud (and even prose for that matter) to see how well you like the flow of the conversation. Does it sound as you want it to? Does the dialogue sound natural to your characters?
Overall, with some revising, you have a colourful story on your hands (with DRAGONS!!)! I hope you go far with it
If you have any questions about anything I mentioned, please don't hesitate to ask!
I hope you have a wonderful day!
Thanks for the review @Gravitem and I are still getting into the feeling of writing together, but I think we're getting a lot better. But I'll keep what you have said in mind.
Hello Flames!
Hope you're doing well. I'm here to drop off a review for you. Let's get started without further ado.
Alright, now, I like that we're slowly getting more and more description of what the surroundings look like. I'm really excited about that! And you've got a talent for that, which I love so much. If you could pepper the rest of the chapter with more descriptions, you could give your chapter more meat, if you know what I mean.
I'm just hungry, I'm sorryOur two new characters are interesting! Very interesting! Especially Wavermel, heh. I'm getting a very smart-dragon vibe from her. I'm hyped about the fact that maybe Wavermel will be accompanying Grimbell in his quest. Is he taking Windstride as well? Or only one of them? I hope both of them!
Since this was a sort of short chapter, I don't have much else to say. Your pacing is okay, but I do suggest to slow things down a tad. And I suggest you quickly look over your piece before posting to avoid minor errors.
Alright, that's it for my review! I hope this helped in some sort of way. Lemme know if you have any questions.
Keep on writing!
~Liberty
Thank you for the kind words!