Prologue
Lysandros Demetriou, commander of the Sparnean naval fleet, looked out over the Alabar Sea and smiled. He always enjoyed feeling a light breeze tugging at his beard and being able to smell the salty sea air.
His first mate, Cong, one of the Western Peoples of Ch'in Tao whose ancestors had been caught as slaves for the Sparneans, walked up to him and saluted smartly, then said, "Captain, we will reach Parcrest and the Bay Marbyker in less than six hours' time."
Lysandros smiled again. "Thank you, Cong." The commander and captain of the ship Syracrusia turned away from his first mate and again looked out over the sea. "Once we reach Parcrest and make short work of those villagers, we will overrun the rest of that pathetic Salvedor--"
"A pitiful excuse of a country," Cong interrupted, and Lysandros nodded impatiently, then continued.
"As I was saying, we'll overrun Parcrest, then the ground troops and our naval fleet will part ways. We will keep sailing down the coastline while the ground troops utterly destroy the rest of Salvedor. Once we reach the edge of that land, we'll come together again to cut down those bloody--what do the people of Dulenvale call them? Ah yes--those nuisance 'Outsiders', and afterwards take Dulenvale for ourselves, which won't be hard after we kill all the Outsiders."
"Will we stop there, Captain?" Cong asked, head cocked to one side as his sharp mind took in the commander's words and was already processing information to consider the most efficient way to defeat the Outsiders.
"Of course not," came the sharp reply. "We will continue until either it is too costly for us to keep defeating the peoples for the time being, in which case we will immediately send for reinforcements, or until we reach our goal and bring all the rest of the Middle-world countries under our country."
"And if we fail, Captain?"
Now the commander turned back towards him, that cruel smile still etched on his face. "We will not fail, Cong. You can be sure of that. Or know that I will kill each and every one of you sailors with me, all the ground troops, and the other commanders as well before I am in turn taken by the enemy. And we wouldn't want that to happen to us, would we, Cong?"
Cong nearly flinched at the harsh words, but just managed to restrain himself and keep his face as impassive as ever.
"No, Captain," he whispered. "We wouldn't."
"Good." The commander nodded, satisfied with Cong's answer, and turned away again. "Ready the masts and anchor. And be sure that our dear nation Sparnea's flag is showing."
Cong bowed now and kept his eyes lowered in deference to his commander. "Yes, Captain. It shall be as you say." Then he walked off, boots ringing on the hard, dry deck.
Lysandros stayed by the bulwark for a long time, watching, waiting, for any sign of land. At long last, when the sun was almost directly overhead and the men were just settling down for a hearty noon meal, his keen eyes spotted the faint green spot on the horizon and he smiled again.
"May the best nation win," he said softly as the Sparneans gradually sailed closer to Parcrest. "And good luck to you Salvedorans. You'll need it."
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125,024 Literary Works • 672,882 Reviews
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
First Impression:
Anyway let's get right to it,
Okayy...this is a fun opening. It seems we've got a group of people just about to do some good ol' fashioned invading to a country here. Its a neat little moment, I think you manage bring these characters to life quite well there while building up sort of the general bits of info that we need to know about them. Through that dialogue we also get a sense of the kind of dynamic they have as people and that also works quite well I think.
Oh, well it seems I misread this particular captain. The opening there seemed to suggest we had a more relaxed atmosphere on board this ship and this crew were getting along nicely, but now it seems our captain is anything but a nice person and things are far more scary and generally more gloomy than it at first appeared. Hmm, now that does make things a lot more interesting though, so I'm loving that.
Hmm, well that seems set to be quite the bloody battle there judging from the kind of setup that we've got going on here. At any rate, this does make for a lovely little cliffhanger to end this piece on here. So far I am really liking where this is headed, and I think you manage to get readers invested here with this piece here.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall:
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Hiya Isabella! I'm SporkPunk, but you can call me Sporks. Or Sporky. Whichever.
I rather like this idea, though I'm not usually one for epic stories about wars of these kinds.
So, grammatically speaking, I couldn't find anything, really. And your writing is so polished, if there is anything to correct you surely don't need me to point it out.
As for the story, I'm hooked. I can't wait to read more, and learn what happens to the Salvedorans/Sparneans.
Hey Isabella!
This may just be me, but I think I would do without this prologue and just dive into the action in the first chapter! I mean, come on! A war is coming! It's intensely dramatic! So let us dive straight into the war... that way you'll hook us completely. It's a good thing, honest!