Kolkor’s past
“Before I talk about the rest of your journey, I will show you Kolkor’s past. Beware though, for it is rough and brutal. ” said Angsuna. As he said this Arack, Damon, and the king, they all fell into a trance as they saw Kolkor’s past.
Arack didn’t know what happened as he watched the vision. He felt like he was there and not there at the same time. It was like when you go to a tall mountain and you look out and you forget what is up and down. He saw two dragons. One of them looked to be a child, and the other an adult. The child’s scales were all red, It had brown eyes and was about 7 feet in length. While the adult had pure black scales, but no red scales. The adult was about 20 feet in length. Arack wasn’t listening right now, but he noticed the adult was yelling. He tried to listen to what he was saying, but it just turned out to be growls and roars. But eventually, he started understanding it as if the language was inserted into his brain. The child spoke. “Why father, why do you reject me? I just want to be like you. You are what every dragon wants to be. Father, you are the chief, so why can’t I try to be like you?”
“Because you don’t understand what it means to be chief. I was almost just like you when I was young, but I had one thing you didn’t and that is what qualified me to be a good chief.”
“YOU DON’T KNOW ME, FATHER! SO DON’T ACT LIKE YOU DO. IF I WANT TO BE CHIEF. I WILL BECOME CHIEF AND I WILL RULE THE DRAGON RACE BETTER THAN YOU DID!”
“Son, if I were you I would stop right there and fly away. You don't want to mess with me. I can be very different than you think.”
The child lifted his lips and snarled at his father “You. Can’t. Control. Me.” The child started to turn to walk away, but his father stopped him with his tail.
“You can’t just snarl then walk out on me like that,” he growled as his anger visibly rose.
“Are you sure about that? I think I can if I want to.” he ripped his father’s tail off of him and started walking away again.
Now his father was furious, and the child knew it without even looking back. He had a look of fear in his eyes as he readied to fly away as fast as he could. He bent his legs and spread his wings and jumped. He was about 5 feet in the air when he felt a sharp pain in his tail and crashed back to the ground. He looked back and saw his father had his claw pinned on his tail onto the ground. “Don’t disrespect me like that, or there will be consequences.”
“Fine, Father.” he snarled at his father. He left and flew away. He was so angry at his father. His father didn’t understand him. After his son left, the father went to hunt for food.
The vision started to fade as a new one started to appear. This time the son and father were older, but it was definitely the same two dragons as they just saw. The two dragons were out in a giant field. The field was about 500 feet in diameter. By this time Arack had guessed the small dragon was Kolkor. Kolkor was now about double the length as he was in the last vision. He was almost the same size as his father. They were both staring at each other right now. Kolkor’s father spoke first. “Focus on the energy around you. Once you feel it collect it and when you feel ready release it let it flow out of you. Remember that your element reflects your soul. Your soul works like a filter”
“Yes, father” Kolkor closed his eyes and focused his mind on collecting energy. Wind started all coming towards the young dragon. The wind was bending the grass and was still getting stronger. Kolkor could feel the power around him. All of a sudden something changed, the grass started to die and storm clouds were gathering over the dragons. Then Arack noticed Kolkors scales were changing from red to black. It started slowly but it started speeding up until he only had red around his eyes, paws, and the tip of his tail. There still were random red scales but not much, only 15 to 20.
Kolkors father looked scared. “ You are now forbidden to use this power ever again. It could be dangerous to others.”
“What do you mean it could be dangerous, I could learn to control it, and I could use it carefully. I promise father I’ll be careful.”
“It doesn't matter Kolkor, even if you train it will still put others in danger.” Kolkor got mad at this comment and his anger snapped as fast as you could blink. He roared in pure anger. He released all of the energy he collected and a beam of pure darkness barreled out of Kolkors mouth towards his father. His father jumped out but wasn't able to fully dodge and hit his tail. The beam kept on moving towards the forest leaving a path of pure death. Everything the beam hit immediately withered and died. His father was laying on the ground. Kolkor figured out what was happening. His blast had poisoned his father and he could feel it pulsing through his fathers veins. He didn’t know how but he just knew that it was there, like he could sense it.
“Wh-y Kolkor? Wha- what did y- you d-o.” his father said weakly. “I’m sor-ry, b -but your hatred is too mu-ch for me to handle” his strength faded until he had no energy.
“Goodbye, father.” At these three simple words Kolkor had sensed it. There was no longer any life in his father. His father was dead. He walked away to tell his clan someone had murdered his father. And yet again the vision was replaced by a new one. This time Kolkor was surrounded by many other dragons. The dragons were all ages and sizes. What looked to be the oldest one was on a big boulder. He looked like a big tree and had moss covering his body. It looked like everyone respected him. “We have a problem at hand, we are now cheifless. We must fix this problem quickly.” he told everybody calmly.
“But who is going to be the chief now? Technically it should be Kolkor but he is too young.” yelled another dragon in the crowd.
“It is still our tradition, and so now Kolkor is our new chief until he dies or retires.” said the old dragon. That's when Arack realised why the dragon was so respected, he was the former chief. He remembered once in school they taught him that dragons could live for millions of years. He wondered how old the old dragon was, then imagined the darkness and power he felt in his dream. Arack focused back onto the vision,now Kolkor was on the big boulder.
“I promise to you I will lead you through the best age of dragons ever.” he assured the crowd. The visions started to fade.
“The other dragons called his time of ruling ‘The Age of Death.’ Kolkor was known as ‘The Poisoner.’ Kolkor is the very reason why the dragon species is so small these days. Let me show you a glimpse of what it was like in that time." Arack saw visions of fields covered in blood and dead dragons. Kolkor stood in the middle of it proudly. He saw Kolkor sneak into caves and poison dragons. And Arack saw him on the boulder from before speaking to a crowd of frightened dragons. Arack and everyone else was pulled out of the visions back into reality.
“I lived in that time. It was pure torture, you only thought about survival and not to get on his bad side. You could always feel Kolkors pure hatred radiate from him.”
“Why didn't anyone just fly away? If it was so bad you could have just escaped.” asked the king.
“You couldn’t, Kolkor had eyes everywhere and they would kill you if you tried.”
“Well now, let me reward you and help you if ever so slightly.” Angsuna said. Angsuna closed his eyes and his golden scales started radiating a gold aura. Angsuna opened his mouth and out came an orb that was on fire. It barreled straight towards Arack. It hit Arack right in his stomach. He felt a sharp intense pain and a burning sensation. He fell to the ground. His vision started to fade.
“Oh, I forgot to mention, he might be like this for a while.” with those words Arack blacked out.
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125,012 Literary Works • 672,842 Reviews
Hey there! Plume here, with a review!
I think I read the first chapter of this a while ago, but it's definitely been a while. Sorry if I mention anything that I already addressed in the first chapter or if I question topics that have already been explained. Anyways. On to the review!
I really enjoyed this chapter! I think the flow was very nice, and it was super cool to see the origin story for Kolkor. It was cool how you displayed it too; I loved the different cuts between scenes to show Kolkor's progression and how cruel he was even as a younger dragon. Nice work!!
One thing I really liked was the plot. It started off pretty normal, and I thought I was just going to be getting a type of villain origin story, but that ending was pretty shocking!! I'm curious if this means that Angsuna isn't on Arack's side after all, or if he is on his side and this is just a strange way of showing it. The twist did surprise me, though. I also liked hearing about Kolkor, too. It seems like he's the villain in this story, and I'm curious to see whether Angsuna is on his side.
Specifics
Couple things here: I think you could honestly make this one sentence, as anything more might be a bit overkill. There's also a lot of very specific information here, especially with the measurements. I think it would be good enough just to say they're large. It's kind of hard to imagine exactly what 20 feet is while you're reading a book, you know?
One thing I also noticed was that a lot of your dialogue punctuation was a bit off. Just a reminder that when there's a dialogue tag, you need a comma, and when there's not, you use a period. I think you might benefit from just a readthrough or some proofreading just to catch all of those tiny mistakes.
Overall: nice work!! I think you've got a very compelling plot so far and I'm excited to read more! Until next time!
Hi KWN,
Mailice here with a short review !
I can still remember reading the first chapter. Some names are familiar to me, but I don't have a complete overview of everything. So let's start with what I noticed.
I think it's good that you decide to show a bit of the past so early on, because it's definitely important to give the reader a connection with it but also to build sympathy to give the characters a story. I think you did a good job with that. I also liked the way you tried to describe some things, but I think you need to start going into more detail. What colours do you see? How does the "thing" feel when you touch it? How does something smell? It's not always about you adding units of measurement; that would be more for a play where you set the stage.
I liked your dialogues, they were flexible and dynamic, but I also think that sometimes you are better off inserting who is speaking. In the argument it was sometimes understandable, but as a reader you always have to have a support every few dialogues where the reader can hold on.
Otherwise, I thought it was a great chapter. Main point of work is still a bit of description to make the world itself more vivid, otherwise it's a solid start!
Other points that caught my eye :
I understand what you want to say with this sentence, but I think you should definitely rewrite it so that it doesn't seem so obvious. For example, you can say that they see a mist that thickens and figures appear that are related to Kolkor's past.
I would just switch paragraphs here for a moment, as you are transitioning from a description that shows a representation that serves to explain, and the actual continuation of this "vision".
Here the "It" should be written in lower case.
Instead of giving the length in a unit of measurement, you can also try to describe it by using a house, for example, or a carriage to give the reader a better visualisation.
Instead of always giving units of how big everything is, you could describe it differently and give details of what it looks like, what's growing in the field and what the surroundings look like. I think units of measurement that are given in an approximate form belong more in a book for architects.
Have fun writing !
Mailice