‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Veris asked.
‘Of course,’ Felaris answered.
Felaris, Veris, and Seya walked across the hallway of the second floor. They had been following Hazir, one of Arafel’s best friends and had even waited for him during his class. When he asked the teacher’s permission to go to the toilet, Felaris took this as an opportunity to corner him and urged them to rush to the male toilet at the corner of the floor.
Veris now stood beside the door while Felaris and Seya hid in the toilet rooms. Felaris didn’t want Hazir to freak out when he saw a girl here, but Veris had to be near the door. Felaris waited. She didn’t like being in the male’s toilet - it had a slight arrencis stench to it, an addictive substance senior male students like to smoke - so she hoped Hazir would enter soon.
After she thought of that, she heard the door cracked before it was softly closed.
‘Liyez, reza et micima. Kiveris sheli er kiveria, an stes tirfemi tirriki,’ * Veris whispered.
Felaris exited her hiding space and saw the door had been covered by hardened earth. She heard the door cracked from behind her and knew Seya had appeared too. Hazir stared at them with widened eyes, his back against the wall near the door. Veris moved closer to Felaris. The three of them faced Hazir.
‘You’re Arafel’s friend,’ Felaris said. ‘I want to ask some questions.’
Hearing that, Hazir relaxed and smiled flirtatiously to her. ‘Whatever the Scarlet Queen ask, I answer.’ He paused. ‘Although I’m afraid there’s nothing much I can say that hasn’t been known.’
‘Ridiculous. You’ve been quiet since Arafel’s death,’ Felaris hissed. ‘Now, tell me, Arrapian, what did Arafel do before he died?’
Hazir glanced around before answering her.
‘There’s no use to escape,’ Felaris said. ‘Seya has put a spell outside of the door. Everyone but you who tries to enter this room will be pushed away by a wind. You better answer now if you want to get out quickly.’
Hazir gulped, then sighed. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘During that day, before he died, he was anxious.’
‘Anxious?’
Hazir nodded. ‘We - Arafel, Bardel, Zefos, and I - had fun playing blessings-required games on the field. Arafel always won when it came to racing - he was a Wermin-blessed, after all - but when I dared them to flirt with a girl, well, I still lost, but Arafel lost horribly.’ He smiled. ‘His face was beet red when trying to ask the girls for a date, and he stuttered. We always knew, but it was fun to see him flabbergasted once in a while.’ The smile faltered. ‘His death - it was unfair.
‘At night, Hazir looked like he wanted to get away from us and finished whatever we were doing. When we asked him why he was acting weird, he only said something would happen tonight. We didn’t know what was it, and no matter how much we pestered him, he only shook his head and said it was too dangerous.’ Hazir frowned. ‘If it was too dangerous, he shouldn’t get involved with it in the first place! I can’t understand why he had to get into troubles, risking his life on things he couldn’t fully understand.’
Felaris bit her lip. Arafel was a risk-taker. And when Hazir said about Arafel not wanting to share anything, she suspected Arafel did that to protect them if something went wrong. He wanted to venture into whatever he found by himself without putting others at risk. ‘Did he say something about the Restricted Area?’
Hazir’s frown deepened. ‘The Restricted Area? Why would he want to go there?’
Arafel didn’t tell them that too, Felaris thought. He did tell Sensa he went there, but he didn’t say what he found. I guess he thought he shouldn’t tell anyone about the Restricted Area afterwards. ‘Nothing. It’s just that, him being a risk-taker, I thought he would enter the place too.’ She waved her hand, dismissing the topic. ‘Okay, so he said something would happen. What then?’
‘Well, he left us,’ Hazir whispered. ‘From the setting of the sun to the rise of the moon, we didn’t see him until the next day. The staffs found him in the third floor’s male toilet in - in the horrible state that you found too. And that’s all I know, that he was found dying at the toilet of the right section. He knew something would happen, and yet - and yet -’ He closed his eyes, squeezing tears out of them. ‘The three of us - Bardel, Zefos, and I, blame ourselves for his death. We should’ve done something when he acted weird, when he left us without telling us why. And yet - and yet we thought it was nothing big.’
Felaris kept her silence for a moment. ‘Are you sure this is all you know? No other details left behind?’
Hazir stared at the floor. ‘It’s all I know. I wish I can tell you more, but Arafel was being secretive.’
‘All right.’ Felaris nodded at Veris and he undid his spell. The door was not tempered again. Hazir was about to leave when Felaris added, ‘Next time you speak to a girl, don’t tell her she’s a queen. It’s an obvious lie.’
Hazir stopped but didn’t turn back to her. He left the toilet. Felaris, Veris, and Seya left the place too and went towards the dormitory of House Wermin.
‘The same place again,’ Felaris said. ‘The male toilet. Do you think it’s a coincidence, Dayel and Arafel ending up there?’
Veris shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s a coincidence. There must be a reason why they were put there.’
‘But what could it be?’ Seya asked, twiddling with her ponytail hair. ‘What makes the male toilet a perfect place to leave them?’
Felaris looked at Veris. He shook his head. She gritted her teeth. ‘I don’t know either. But I know this: the Restricted Area had something to do with Arafel’s death. Maybe he went there that night to find out what would happen and those were in there hurt him because he saw something he shouldn’t see.’
Veris frowned. ‘That’s a stretch. The Restricted Area’s at the back of the castle, second floor. He was found at the right section of the castle, third floor. It was a long way going to the library.’ He paused. ‘What if…’
Felaris glanced at him. ‘What if what?’
‘What if the male toilet was the nearest place to leave him? What if the place he went at night was near it?’
They were at the door of the Wermin dormitory. Felaris frowned. ‘The second and third floor of the right section of the castle is the place for Research, for laboratories. I don’t see why he had to go to one of those.’
‘That’s because we don’t know the reason why he went wherever he went,’ Seya said, reminding her. ‘There’s still a lot that we have to find out. We haven’t asked Bardel and Zefos yet.’
‘I guess it’ll be something we can think of tonight,’ Felaris said. She opened the door, revealing an excited first-year student bursting out of it. She barely managed to avoid from being hit by him. The smell of plants greeted her. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow, Veris.’
Veris nodded, then left. Felaris and Seya entered the dormitory. It was a huge place with many junctions and the rooms placed at both sides of each junction. Sometimes you would see students running around and laughing. Most of Wermin-blessed students were free-spirited lot; some of the older students could be found flying with their wind spells. Fortunately, these bursts of enthusiasm stopped now, the setting of the sun.
When they arrived at their room, they entered it. Seya laid on one of the beds while Felaris sat another. They had been roommates since the start of the year, and were friends even before they entered Quasar Magica at Quasar Elementica. They shared everything now; it didn’t matter at which bed they sat. Felaris usually took the right side, however.
‘So,’ Seya said, yawning, which was weird since she’d done nothing tiring, ‘we’re focusing on Arafel’s friends for the time being?’
Felaris could catch Seya’s unspoken words. ‘We can deal with Ilami latter. She didn’t seem to know me or at least what my family name meant. Alyosha didn’t tell her about Arafel, I would guess.’ She laid on the bed, appreciating its fluffiness. Earlier, she complained how it was too soft; now, when she had a lot of things to do, she found it comforting.
* Translated from Natural language: Earth, rise to my command. Cover what should be covered, and stay as firm as a rock.
End of chapter
Continue to next chapter Chapter 7.2: FelarisPoints:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
140,681 Literary Works • 673,591 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: Soo...at first glance it appears that we're starting to move into the next stage of things here, starting with Felaris whose launching her little investigation to see if there's more information to be discovered on her brother's death. I do like that, and even poor Ilami can then get some time to make some friends at least as strong as Felaris has here for when Felaris turns her attention to doing something to Ilami.
Anyway let's get right to it,
Oh wow, this is like a proper operation and everything it appears. The entire gang is together and they all seem to want to hunt down this friend of Arafel's to figure out what happened. Well I'm happy that Ilami will not be immediately getting hunted down at least. It looks like Felaris will first focus on the friends and what they might know.
Ohh wow, this is some properly coordinated stuff I see, they've gone all in by commandeering the men's bathroom of all places and then now sealing this person in pretty much to the point where he will have to answer to whatever questions they ask or he's not going to be able to leave.
Okay....is Hazir really that oblivious, just cause he recognizes the person, he actually relaxes, it is very obvious by this point especially with the sealing of the door and just the current location of the meeting in general, that this is not a simple social call.
Hm...he gave in very easily there once he learned he had no escape...I wonder why it was then said earlier that the friends were being tight lipped. Were they really not asked with any kind of pressure earlier? And with how easily he says this, I feel like it's almost harder to trust him, this might well be some kind of pre prepared lie after all cause he cracks at the very first sign of a threat and starts blabbering.
Okay...for one there's a small mistake there, it sounds like Hazir thinks he wanted to get away from himself. Other than that, this is a very interesting picture there. I don't know why he felt the need to go into detail about the whole games they were playing, they don't seem to do much to explain Arafel's anxiety from before his death and just kinda serve to lengthen the story with unnecessary memories....it almost sounds like maybe he's trying to stall for time...its a wonder why Felaris didn't interrupt him when he was saying that first part. At any rate though, the second part is much more relevant sounding and very intriguing, Arafel clearly had an idea of whatever he was getting into and went through with it anyway...even if it appears he didn't even want his friends involved in it.
That's another interesting detail. So this suggest Arafel didn't maybe fully trust his friends, I mean if you were about to break some rules and do some dangerous usually the first and only people you tell are you closest friends...also Felaris choosing to hide the bit of information she has is interesting. I wonder if maybe she doesn't fully trust Hazir's story.
Hmm, I don't know how genuine any part of that story really was. It seemed to be a bit too easy for him to tell. If he truly blames himself in part for Arafel's death, you expect him to show a bit more emotion about the whole situation here.
Felaris choosing to burn him one last time before leaving is very in character for her there...xD. I love that he got a little bit of a rebuttal for him terrible attempt at doing a bit of flirting...although that bit of flirting once again suggests he doesn't care for Arafel's death like he says he does. If he did, the first thing he should've done is maybe apologize to Felaris to what happened for Arafel, not flirt with her.
Considering what we the reader's know of the Restricted Area, I'm very inclined to believe a lot of people could be killed in a lot of interesting ways inside that depending on what unfortunate thing you happen to stumble upon.
Ooooh, that is a good theory being presented there too, I almost didn't think of that possibility, cause I personally trying to figure out what sort of secrets one could find in a bathroom...but hmm, these folks are pretty sharp here, I have a feeling they'd juat have to ask a few more of his friends and they could perhaps crack this case here.
Hmm...this is a nice little end here. The whole mission sort of atmosphere fades away and then it goes towards these one going into her dormitory and just kinda looking for a place to mull things over and catch a rest.
This honestly feels like a perfect point to end a chapter on, although I can see that this chapter isn't quite done just yet so I'm gonna assume that perhaps we run into another one of Arafel's friends before this chapter is done.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Overall, this makes for an interesting start to this whole solving the murder type of arc we have got going here, you can see quite how seriously this is all being taken by Felaris and her friends...some peeps could be in trouble if they don't tell the truth. Anyway that's all for this part.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Hi, Lightsong. Nice to have a new instalment so soon after the last one!
Nitpicks and Minor Points
Stick a comma in after 'friends'.
I think 'cubicles' might be better, as it's a bit more specific.
Not a nitpick. I loved this little note of worldbuilding.
Tenses. And I think you mean 'she heard the door crack open' here. Otherwise it sounds like the door is being broken into pieces or something.
This line needs rephrasing. I don't get what you're trying to say.
I don't understand why he relaxes when he hears that. It's a pretty ominous thing to say given the context, and you'd think the prospect of talking about a deceased friend might upset him a bit. If he'd been at ease and unruffled from the start, I wouldn't think the flirting too odd, but it's the fact that he goes from being afraid and then suddenly at ease that's so strange.
Watch your verbs and tenses. 'Ask' should be 'asks' and 'hasn't been' should just be 'isn't'.
Missing word. Should be something like 'There's no use in trying to escape' or 'It's no use trying to escape'.
I thought she'd walled the door up with earth? Why would you need the wind spell as well?
This bit of dialogue seems a bit...limp. It's like she was trying to be threatening but hadn't figured out what to say before she said it. I think it's the 'quickly' that really downplays the impact of the threat.
1) I'm assuming you meant to put 'Arafel' rather than 'Hazir', seeing as Hazir is the one talking.
2) I'm a bit confused by the second part. Do you mean that Arafel wanted to get away from them and he also wanted the others to stop what they were doing for some reason? Or do you mean that Arafel wanted to get away from them and interrupted what they were all doing?
Tenses. 'Shouldn't have got' is what you're after. Though I think you write with American English, so I guess it would be 'shouldn't have gotten'.
This bit is confusing. I feel like you're trying to say that he left as night fell and they didn't see him until the next morning, but the moon rising isn't really indicative of a new day. When the moon is full, it rises as the sun sets. It might make more sense if he said he didn't see him from sunset to sunrise or something.
'Staff' is a collective noun and doesn't need an 's' on the end.
I didn't like this bit that much. It feels like we're being told about his grief rather than properly seeing it for ourselves. I never find it particularly believable when characters talk in exact detail about how desolate they feel about something - it feels fake to me, because grief is a messy thing.
It's also completely at odds with how Hazir was acting earlier. His mood is all over the place. First he chops between being anxious to being flirtatious, then he starts weeping. If he was so upset by Arafel's death that talking about it was enough to make him cry, why would he act so flippant and flirtatious when Felaris first introduced the topic?
Should be 'could'.
Remember what I said in an earlier review about For The Audience dialogue. The bit in bold feels like a neon signpost telling the reader the exact location of the toilets, and it feels strange for Felaris to say. If she just said 'The research laboratories are right by the toilets. I can't see why he'd go there' then it would be a bit more natural.
Didn't she perform a spell earlier? I'd assume that could tire her out, given that Aleveri was exhausted after healing Gael in the previous chapter.
Overall Thoughts
1) I like that Felaris' goals are becoming more solid and that we're steadily learning more about what Arafel was doing - I do very much want to know why he was killed. I feel like these goals may well converge with Ilami's at some point, especially given Gael's risky encounter in the Restricted Section, but I guess I'll have to wait and see on that front.
2) Seya and Veris need more fleshing out. They feel like void characters at the moment. While you don't need to dedicate entire subplots to them, I think you need more moments where we get an insight into their individual personalities and quirks. It would be good to see Felaris talk with them about something other than Arafel every so often, because it would help us get a sense of their day-to-day friendship. It might be good to see the Seya or Veris appear by themselves in one of Ilami or Gael's chapters, just to give them independence from Felaris and establish them as their own character. You don't want them to just feel like props in Felaris's search for the truth.
3) Don't be afraid to make characters behave abnormally in abnormal situations. One of the common pitfalls for a lot of writers (myself included) is to think that a character's main personality trait has to be present no matter the situation, otherwise they aren't acting like themselves. I see this with Hazir - because you've established him as a flirt, you feel like you have to have him flirt with Felaris in this scene, even though it's completely at odds with the rest of his behaviour. It doesn't really make sense to have him anxious, then flirty and calm, then crying his eyes out over Arafel's death. There's no consistency with it.
When approaching characters, don't just ask yourself 'what is this character like?' Ask yourself how they behave in different contexts. Figure out what kind of person they are when they're upset, when they're happy, when they're stressed, when they're afraid. It might be that Hazir is a flirt day to day, but the moment he's in a threatening situation he becomes anxious and loses all confidence. By contrast, he could keep up his flirtatious behaviour even when discussing upsetting subjects because he'd rather hide behind bravado than deal with his emotions. The point is to be consistent within each context. Don't have a character be devastated one moment but unruffled the next. Figure out how they typically react to certain situations and work from there.
4) I'm glad that Felaris is taking a more measured - but still determined - approach to finding out the truth about Arafel's death. I feel like it makes her more three dimensional as a character. However, I would like to get a better sense of what her relationship with Arafel was like when he was alive, because we know very little on that front. We know she's desperate to avenge him, but we can't actually relate to how much she misses him - we only ever see her anger, not her sadness. I'd like more information about what kind of things she and Arafel used to do together, how close they were, whether they were similar or different to each other. If you lean harder on the emotional reasoning that Felaris is doing what she's doing, she'll become more sympathetic. She already strikes me as someone who gets angry because she doesn't know how to process her loss and grieve properly, so it would be good if that was explored a little more.
5) Like Mea, I liked the bit about Arafel being dared to flirt with a girl. It gave a nice little insight to the kind of friendship he had with Hazir and the others.
I'll call the review there. I love how the mystery is developing and unravelling and I can't wait to see where it will lead. I think Felaris is a strong character and her behaviour is consistent and believable, even if I would like to see her humanised a little more. Can't wait for the next bit. Until then:
Keep writing!
~Pan
Ooh, thanks for the review! It's very helpful. o.o *take notes*
And I'm back again.
This was a solid part overall. We learn valuable information and the characters continue to come through strong and clear in their actions.
Felaris and her friends are very... forceful when it comes to getting information. xD I can't help but wonder why they don't just ask, though I'll freely admit that it's definitely in Felaris' character to get information by coercion like this.
The first part when they were blocking the door confused me a bit - basically I just had to read it a couple times to understand what they had done and what positions they were in. So try re-working that to make it flow better.
I liked the little story about what Hazir and Arafel were doing before Arafel died - it really helps to humanize him and makes the reader care more about the fact that he's dead and what that means.
My biggest critique is how Hazir's emotions are handled while he's telling what happened. They just don't feel as strong as they should, considering that this was his friend who died unexpectedly and horribly. I feel like we need to see more of him struggling to hold himself together. And "unfair" seems like much too mild of a word to describe his good friend's death. Even if he doesn't want to appear weak in front of Felaris and the others, he should have more passion.
Something I still want to know is how long ago this happened. If it was further in the past, it would make Hazir's muted reaction seem more reasonable, but so far everything else seems to indicate that it's happened fairly recently. I'd really like to get a timeframe for this.
Something that confused me is that I thought they knew for sure that Arafel had been in the Restricted Area before he died, so the male toilets couldn't have been the nearest place to leave him. Are they suggesting that after going to the Restricted Area, he went to the labs?
But really, this was a very strong part overall. I'm going to leave it at that because I think my writing is getting more incoherent as I go on. xD Can't wait for the next part!
Thanks for the review! Well, Felaris is two years younger than Arafel, so his death happened two years ago before she entered the academy.
Well... I guess I'm not clear about what they're hypothesising right now. On Day 1, Arafel went into the Restricted Area. On Day 2, he went somewhere else and they assumed that place must have been near the male toilet, which meant it had to be one of those labs. On Day 3 was when the staff found him in front of the toilet (though Felaris didn't see this as he was put somewhere else when she met him).
Ah, that makes a lot more sense!
Hi there Lightsong. This is Kays here dropping in for a review on an early Monday morning and even though I'm extremely tired I also hope to squeeze in another one after this before the wave that is school whooshes over my body and takes my smart juices away that are my ability to review coherently. That being said, I have a question about the novel--are we capping out at three perspectives? Will there be more in the future?
I personally hope that this doesn't reach higher than four because I fear that the individual characters won't have as much time on the pages to develop and grow and for the reader to get attached. That's an important part to remember when writing multiple perspectives because the author can learn to favor writing a character or to and end up leaving out the third--balance is crucial.
Delving further into how balance is crucial I'm glad that this chapter is in the perspective of Felaris because I'm starting to feel as if I know a lot more about Ilami and Gael than I do Felaris. We see in the opening scene that Felaris is interrogating another person named Hazir with Seya.
I'm confused by this paragraph. We see in the first sentence that Hazir is being addressed but later on in the paragraph there's 'Hazir frowned'. Fix that part up to the correct name in one place or the other. We see that in this chapter we learn more about Felaris's core motives and to be honest here she doesn't seem as malicious as she did before which is nice. I'm starting to learn the reasons for her actions are based on the death of Arafel. I have more trouble keeping interest with the chapters from Felaris but maybe this next one will be more interesting even though I of course didn't despise this because this is solid enough.
If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask! I hope I helped and have a great day.
Thanks for the review!
Hmm, well, I've decided to keep the perspectives at three, though I'm not sure this would be permanent. If the plot demands, there might be another one or two more, but I'd make sure to make those from the characters that have been introduced.