//Authors note: Sorry for the long wait (if anyone was waiting for this), I wasn't really active on yws last few months and I don't have any smart excuses. Chapters 4 and 5 are already finished and 6th is on the way so I'll try to post them during the next week. There are some grammatical mistakes, so please correct me.
Ch. 3
I felt fresh coldness drip over my face. I was blinded by the whiteness around me, even though my eyes were closed. It reminded me of the sun back in Heka… The dripping continued… My head got so cold I got a headache… I opened my eyes to see what’s going on and at first I didn’t see anything, my eyes still need to focus and the light makes it hard to do. After several minutes I could see clearly, and I indeed had something to see.
I was in some kind of a cave, there was ice everywhere, it was polished so much that it worked as a perfect mirror. It was reflecting sunlight everywhere. The light melted the ice above me and it dripped right on my face. I saw pieces of my tent scattered all over the floor. What happened?
I looked up, and saw a hole on the celling. The rock our tent was on has probably collapsed and fell here, along with me and Mriasa. Then I thought where is she?
I stood up and looked around. I've already lost Halnau, and I don’t want to do the same with Mriasa, even though I don’t know her that much. I walked towards the entrance of the “cave”. I noticed there were a lot of ice stalactites around the opening, they must have formed because of the light that was reflected melted ice up there. It felt like any gentle breeze would make them fall on me and kill me, so I swiftly and quietly got past there. At the entrance of the “cave” was a platform on which I could walk on. I looked down, and I could see the side of the mountain disappearing in the clouds below. I looked up, and I saw where the rock ,on which our tent was, was.
I wanted to call Mriasa, but I feared that my voice could trigger an avalanche. I went back in to the “cave”, I looked around a little bit, and then I saw something white amongst the mirrors. It was Mriasa. I ran towards her to see if she is ok. She seemed fine, but she wasn’t moving at all. I noticed she hit a rock with the back of her head. Her head was dented on the back. I was scared.
I dragged her outside of the cave, where I could see easier. I shook her, hoping to wake her up, but nothing happened. I was going back and forth, not knowing what to do. If she dies, I would probably be stuck here forever and I would probably die too!. Suddenly… I heard some buzzing from behind. I looked back and saw Mriasa moving on the ground, I ran to her as fast as I could.
“Mriasa!” I yelled, “Are you alright?”
She stayed quiet for a moment…
“The rock our tent was of has collapsed… We fell and you hit your head! Mriasa, can you hear me??”
“Huhhh? Who… Ahh, you… Henox? What…”
I was relieved.
“Mriasa?? How do you feel?”
“Fine, fine, don’t need hep…” She mumbled.
She started to stand up, but she seemed shaky and disoriented, shortly she began to fall, but I managed to catch her.
“You need to sit down, and rest.”
“No! The Krad…”
“No need to worry, no one can find us here.”
“Where… Where are we?”
“Well, I guess I don’t have any idea.”
Now, some time has passed since she woke up, and she was still lying there and resting, and I was looking around for a way for us go climb down. I never saw a stranger cliff ever, it was entirely made of ice, and when I think about it, it looks rather impossible. How could this much water come this high? Everything was so smooth there wasn’t any place to hold on.
I saw some clouds coming near, last thing we need is rain, or snow.
“Henox?” I heard Halnau say.
“Yes?” I replied.
“I know where we are…”
“Where?”
“Flech has a system to warn the other big villages in case of a Krad attack. There are “Mirror” caves on the east and west side of the mountain, like this one, and they would reflect sunlight towards Heka and Lagu so they would know to get ready. They opened this one this morning. The rock our tent was, was holding onto the roof of the cave, and when the door was opened, the roof got weaker so it collapsed and we fell. But other mangians forgot about these, so they didn’t know what the “light in the mountain” means”
“So, is there a way we could get out from here?”
“Well, I think there is supposed to be a pathway entrance trough the mountain hidden amongst the mirrors.”
“Neat! Let’s go!”
“Alright, I just need to find my backpack, it must have got stuck on the top of the cave, when we fell.”
“Alright, are you sure you can climb up there? How’s your head?”
“I’m fine, trust me, I have gone through many things worse than this.”
“Suit yourself.”
I honestly had no idea how was she planning to get up there, because, it was literally a hole in the celling, there weren’t any walls near it. Even if there were walls, they were so smooth and polished, it would be impossible to climb them. The only way I could see possible is to climb the rock that fell with us, and jump on the roof of the cave, but, she would need to jump really high to get to the hole edge.
She looked around, searching through the remains of her tent. She picked up some ropes and cloth and tied them together, making one big rope-like thing. She looked at her waist where she had a belt (which I have just noticed it was there, probably due to its white colour and shape that went perfectly with her body), she took some kind of a stick and pressed its bottom and something went up from the top, she bent it making a some kind of a pickaxe. I was amazed how resourceful she was.
“Neat.” I said.
“Trust me, you haven’t seen anything yet.” She replied.
“You have to tell me where you get all your stuff.”
“I don’t ‘get’ my stuff…” She replied while tying the rope to the handle of the pickaxe making a little grappling hook.
She started to swing it. She threw it to the edge of the hole once, twice and the third time it finally grabbed onto something. She pulled the “rope” to check if it’s safe and nothing happened, so she started climbing it. She did it pretty fast, in two seconds she was already up on the roof! I heard her steps above as she was searching for her back pack. I was wandering what she meant when she said that she doesn’t get her stuff.
After a short period of time, I heard her coming towards the edge of the hole. That’s when I heard the loud cracking. The first thing I thought was: She’s gonna fall! But as soon as I started running towards where she was standing to catch her if she falls, a large chunk started to fall along with Mriasa, it was four times my size and it would definitely kill me if it falls on me. I immediately changed direction of running but after some time of running in place I slept and fell. The large chunk of ice fell right on my right foot. Mriasa jumped and grabbed the rope that was on the other side of the hole. I made a horrible sound when I realised I could feel my joints once again. I think it more from the shock of feeling such coldness at once, than from the pain from the hint in my right foot. Mriasa immediately jumped on me and covered my mouth, at first I was struggling but then I realised her intentions.
“We have to be quiet”, she said.
“Yeah, we don’t know when the next avalanche will be”, I replied.
“It’s not the avalanches I’m worried about, the Krad are a bigger threat.”
“The Krad? Yesterday I taught they were instinct!”
“Yeah well, looks like you were wrong.”
She helped me lift up the chunk of ice, and It was going really slow. Some time after, it became obvious that we couldn’t lift it, so Mriasa decided to use one of her pickaxe thingies, and hit the ice till it brakes. This, however, turned out to be a better idea, and the ice soon broke. Then I realised my foot was fine and I could walk normally.
“You found your back pack?” I said as soon as I stood up.
“Yep, and conveniently, everything is fine inside.”
“Now we just need to find the way down, right?” I asked.
“I guess, If something else doesn’t turn out to be wrong.”
The cave wasn’t that deep at all, but the mirrors which were everywhere made it really hard to see where the hole is. It looked hopeless, we have been searching for so long, that the sun has already came to the middle of the sky (The day lasts 34 hours, so is the night). Good thing Mriasa had lots of water, in containers which didn’t let the water freeze. I couldn’t wait till we get to the jungle, where it was warm and nice. We both hopelessly sat on the side of the cave, exhausted. The weird spinning in my head started to show up again. Ohh, not this again. I thought. Once again, the darkness has spread from the sides of my vision till I couldn’t see anything. Again, I saw something, I wasn’t really quite sure, when I try to remember, it seems as it was something really special and exciting. Then I felt myself shaking, my vision was returned to me, and I’ve noticed the sun was already setting in the mountain behind us. Mriasa was lying unconscious next to me in a weird position. I saw some light reflecting at me from the sun, but then I remembered that the sun is in the opposite side of the entrance, and no sunlight could enter. I stood up, and walked towards the place where the light was coming from, and I noticed that it wasn’t reflected, it came from inside of it, but it came just from this one block that was in front of me, nowhere else, I found that strange. Then I started to think, and remembered that the most part of the mountain where we are is ice, and light can go through it, this must be a opening behind the wall of ice in front of me. The sun wasn’t yet gone behind the mountains and it could still shine through the ice, revealing the pathway behind.
“I can’t believe it was here all along! Mriasa! Wake up!” I came to her and shook her as hard as I could.
She woke up instantly, as if she was waiting for me to wake her up. I showed her the light and I explained her my theory.
- There’s only one way to find.- She said.
I knew where she was going, We took a few steps backwards, and ran to the light as fast as we could, and the ice shattered and we fell into the hole beneath us. It got darker as we fell. I noticed a ladder standing on the wall of the hole while falling, I grabbed it holding Mriasa in the other hand, and a few steps broke instantly till we stopped. I felt like someone tried to rip my arm of, I couldn’t take it anymore. Mriasa grabbed on the ladder quickly, and I felt a lot lighter. So we continued down through the hole on the ladders, it was a long way down. At some point, the ladders started to bend until they formed a set of stairs downwards, it looked really peculiar. The stairs at first were steep and slippery, but then they got longer and easier to walk on. Even though we were so deep, there was still some sunlight reflecting, just enough so we could see where we were going. But after some time, it got so dark that we couldn’t see, but just then, we noticed a light on the end of the tunnel! We started to run towards it, after several hours of climbing down, we were finally going to have some rest!
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,027 Literary Works • 672,774 Reviews
Hi! Cricket here for a review!
Yes, yes, I totally remember this story and I'm glad to see it back. Please keep in mind that since it's been so long, I may make one or two mistakes when it comes to your storyline and the like. Hopefully not, but just a warning. ^^
So from what I can see here, there seems to be a problem with bringing out your ideas in a clear fashion. For instance, you sometimes have two to three ideas in the same sentence. When writing that is a big no-no. A sentence is supposed to equal one idea, and that idea needs to come across in the most clear and precise way that you possibly can. For example, right here:
We are basically discussing three things. 1) That he was in some kind of a cave. 2) His surroundings, which are ice. 3) What his surroundings look like.
Now, the sentence can only be one idea! So how would you fix that and make it into one idea? It's rather hard to keep your sentences precise, so don't worry if you don't get it at first. Look at your sentence and try to determine its purpose. What is it about? Is it about somebody's hair? Or is it about someone picking up something? What is the purpose of it? Once you've determined what you want that sentence to accomplish then you write the sentence with that idea in mind. Remember precision of the idea is extremely important. Your reader can't focus on three ideas while reading one sentence at the same time. They will just get confused, and irritated.
Although you do have and to help tie the two ideas together, these are still two separate ideas. #1 She's helping him lift a block of ice. #2 The work is going really slow.
See? You have to take apart your sentences and make sure that they are one idea. Does this make sense? If it doesn't then please tell me and I'll explain further. :c
While we are discussing grammar and style....
I was noticing that you sometimes have an uncommon amount of ellipsis (...) throughout. While this is a stylistic choice, I would highly recommend being very choosy when picking as to where to place them. For instance, in the beginning you have a spot where there is three ellipsis in a row. Ellipsis is good for basically one thing, and that is to signify a trailing off. It generally shows that your character is confused. But an overabundance of the ellipsis just means that you're overdoing the overall effect. In order for the ellipsis to bring across the desired effect, you need to use it sparingly so that it will jump out at the reader more. It will have more significance for the reader, upon seeing it.
I remember from before that you used this type of dialogue punctuation. But from what I can see here, you are also using the English quotation marks, and if I'm not mistaken, but are these the French quotation marks? Seeing as this is an English speaking website, you should really make sure that everything is English based, as somebody seeing this will just get confused. So make sure that you are consistent with your quotation marks all throughout.
A good way to separate thought from the overall narration, is to use italics. You have the thought process here, but there is very little to distinguish it from everything else. Where is she? would be in italics, so that we know from that, that it is in fact the thought process. Make sense?
This is more of a stylistic choice than anything, but I would highly recommend not using suddenly at the beginning of a sentence. 'Suddenly' is basically just implying that something bad is going to happen, and that isn't exactly dropping any hints.
Slight issue with your dialogue tag. She shouldn't be capitalized, as it's a common and not a proper noun.
Overall, I would have to say that this chapter has its ups and downs mainly when it comes to the grammar. Besides the grammar though, you are showing that the plot is moving forward exceedingly well. Not only that, but I absolutely love how you give such exact and precise detail all throughout. Occasionally, I would find myself thinking that there was too much detail here or there, but never was there too little. In my opinion, that is actually what you should aim for, as you can always cut out a little, but it's extremely hard to add to it without ruining the overall flow. Excellent work here.
Anyways, I hope this review helps you out. If you have any questions, then please PM me or whatever suits you best.
Keep writing!
~Cricket
Hello there, Henox. I’m Niraco and I hope that you are having an awesome, awesome review day this nice little Sunday!
Now I’ll be honset I went into this not having read the previous chapters but I actually might go back and read the first and second one.
Anyway, lets jump into this review shall we!
I really liked how you worded your imagery here. Describing the ice as a mirror, while slightly clichéd, is actually a very nice and solid imagery. It gives some life and colour to your words. Keep up things like that as it really makes your work stand out.
I’d be careful with your dialogue.
I found this to be very dry and I actually had to read it once more as I didn’t really know who was speaking. Try adding some more actions instead of just talking. Perhaps Henox was gesturing for Halnau to sit down. Halnua maybe shook her head. Little actions like that add to a work.
Other than that one piece of dialogue I liked how the characters interacted. It was very believable and as readers we get to see more of the characters we enjoy and become more attached to them.
I also like how the main character thinks. At times it’s somewhat humrous and it’s a joy to see how our main character ticks and their thought process through out the novel.
All in all, this was a very nice piece. Even though I was somewhat confused as to who these characters where and how they got into the cave. However, I still found this very enjoyable to read. Keep up the great work and happy review day!