Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language and violence.
All seemed lost. The land was plagued with darkness and despair, a grey, bleak sky looming over it. An everlasting sensation of dread and nothingness emanated from the very mutilated, war-torn ground the people treaded upon. The only light that blessed the sky with its presence was bursts of magical energy from the godly war that ravaged the realm. This dreadful ancient era lasted for centuries and was known as the Gelderin Ages.
(2 days before the seal)
The village of Gorin was one of the few that survived the destruction brought upon by the godly war. Gorin held many different races. Humans, dwarves, elves, and halflings roamed the streets, living in harmony. Amon the population was a powerful guild of wizards, rivaled in magic ability only by the Grand Lord of the village himself. This group dubbed themselves the Brotherhood of the Pegasus. Feldarin, a proud father and the strongest of the brotherhood, peacefully meditated in his magic sanctuary. Hundreds and hundreds of mystic tomes adorned the rune covered walls. A circle of candles surrounded Feldarin, their green flames lighting the dim room. Without warning, Feldarin’s teenage son Gelthon burst through the ancient oak doors, tears streaming down his pale freckled face like small waterfalls. The booming slam of the doors disrupted the ritual, yet Feldarin hardly flinced.
“Why father? Why!? Can you not recognize the consequences of going through with the sealing of Malum? The townspeople will die! Mother will die! I will die!” Gelthon bellowed. His rage-filled screaming simmered down to a whimper. His clenched fist loosened and his hand lay limp by his side.
“You will die.”
Feldarin rose from his relaxed state and sauntered to where Gelthon stood. He rested his hands on Gelthon’s shoulders in sympathy.
“Gelthon. You know this must be done. Lumas, our god of good, and his counterpart Malum have been battling for centuries, destroying everything in their wake. According to the Grand Lord of this village, the battle will reach us in two days. This is our only chance to rid the realm of this godly maelstrom.” With a warm grin, Feldarin embrace his son in fatherly comfort. Gelthon’s tears soaked the shoulder of Feldarin’s scarlet mage robe.
“Fret no longer Gelthon. Cease your tears. Everything will be fixed. We will be the saviors of the new world,” Feldarin reassured.
“I trust you father. I hope you will make the correct decision,” Gelthon mumbled. With that, he sulked out of the sanctuary, climbed the spiral staircase of the house and hid away in his room.
A feeling of grief flooded through feldarin’s entire body. Why must my own flesh and blood go through this? Unfortunately, he had no time for dwelling on his life and his son’s, as he had more pressing matters to attend to.
…
Feldarin sat on the stone steps of his enormous house, pondering his next move to keep the villagers safe. Few people populated the barren, gravel street. The few people that walked the streets donned glum looks, frowns visible from miles away. The clock tower tolled five as thunder-like booming and bursts of magic energy emanated from the sky 20 miles away.
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
It's pretty cool! Maybe needs something added/ edited here or there but it's a rough draft and hey that's what they're like. maybe a bit repetitive with " from miles away" and "sky 20 miles away. "... overall it's cool though.
Most of what I have to add has been said below, uses of "very" and some redundancy slow the reader (ew i sound like a rubric what have i become), and the emotional transitions were rapid. I can't judge that though because my first chapter is a mess. skskssksksksks
Nice names, capitalisation error in "A feeling of grief flooded through feldarin’s entire body." but I think you know what to fix there. It's a rough draft, small stuff like that doesn't count as much, but I've gotta get those points somehow lmao. Will likely keep stalking this!
Hi! I'm going to do this the way I have been recently neglecting, and go paragraph by paragraph then give you my general opinions at the end.
Okie Dokie, paragraph numero uno,
"All seemed lost. The land was plagued with darkness and despair, a grey, bleak sky looming over it. An everlasting sensation of dread and nothingness emanated from the very mutilated, war-torn ground the people treaded upon. The only light that blessed the sky with its presence was bursts of magical energy from the godly war that ravaged the realm. This dreadful ancient era lasted for centuries and was known as the Gelderin Ages."
This opening paragraph was okay. But just okay. We don't like 'just okay', we want awesome! (I'd say I'm done with the annoying little persona, but I'm not so deal). The opening line 'All seemed lost' is cliche at best, uninteresting at worst. I can see what you were trying to do here, but it just didn't work out. That line, by itself, is fine, but I would try putting it later in this paragraph. With it here, it reads as filler and we really, really don't want that, if you were to put it later after describing the desolate landscape and the godly war above it. In addition to all that, the use of the word 'blessed' here is a little jarring and doesn't quite fit with the rest of the tone when you describe the light from the battle in the sky. Instead, I would write a line somewhere along the lines of 'The only light that shone down on the hopeless land from above was the blasts of magical energy that tore through the endless grey like shocks of magical lightning' or however you imagine it to look, this is just what came to mind for me.
Also, something to keep in mind, pretty much every use of the word 'very' in this entire work is unnecessary and reads as amateurish. Most of them could easily just be cut out, and those that couldn't only require the changing of one or two words, so it's not that hard a problem to fix.
Onward! To the next paragraph!
"The village of Gorin was one of the few that survived the destruction brought upon by the godly war. Gorin held many different races. Humans, dwarves, elves, and halflings roamed the streets, living in harmony. Amon the population was a powerful guild of wizards, rivaled in magic ability only by the Grand Lord of the village himself. This group dubbed themselves the Brotherhood of the Pegasus. Feldarin, a proud father and the strongest of the brotherhood, peacefully meditated in his magic sanctuary. Hundreds and hundreds of mystic tomes adorned the rune covered walls. A circle of candles surrounded Feldarin, their green flames lighting the dim room. Without warning, Feldarin’s teenage son Gelthon burst through the ancient oak doors, tears streaming down his pale freckled face like small waterfalls. The booming slam of the doors disrupted the ritual, yet Feldarin hardly flinced."
"Hundreds and hundreds" could be just hundreds, or thousands if you so prefer, writing the same word twice in a row is a big no-no unless necessary and here it is not. This whole paragraph is primarily exposition as well, and yeah, I know the readers need to know this stuff, but you could try to scatter this information into different parts of the narrative and dialogue or find a clever way to portray the information other than flat out saying it. Doing that would make your readers less inclined to get bored and click away. A good rule of thumb I usually stick to is to tell the readers what they need to know without them knowing that that's what you're telling them. It basically means to disguise important information inside scenes so that the reader is perfectly entertained by other things that are going on.
Moving on, "“Why father? Why!? Can you not recognize the consequences of going through with the sealing of Malum? The townspeople will die! Mother will die! I will die!” Gelthon bellowed. His rage-filled screaming simmered down to a whimper. His clenched fist loosened and his hand lay limp by his side."
Whoa! Slow down there honey, what? If you're going to have a big exposition dump, then at least tell us what the freaking heck 'sealing' is, and why it has such dire consequences, and literally anything about it other than the little sentence at the beginning there in parentheses. Also, it would have done you good to tell us why we should care about these people before putting their lives in danger, just sayin'.
"“I trust you father. I hope you will make the correct decision,” Gelthon mumbled. With that, he sulked out of the sanctuary, climbed the spiral staircase of the house and hid away in his room."
Okay, I realize that kids are known for /mostly/ trusting their parents, and for their less-than-stellar self-preservation instincts, but really? Is this kid really willing to die by his father's hand without any kind of fight? And what about his mother? Is he willing to let her die like this? No matter what the alternative, even if said alternative is them dying anyway, no one I would ever want to root for is going to just lay down and die. Maybe you were going for a self-sacrifice kind of thing, but this kid letting his own mother die along with himself is...I honestly can't begin to describe my problems with it.
And I'm going to have to cut this short. The piece wasn't bad, but it wasn't all that impressive either, so keep writing and you'll improve tenfold!
I'm in the shop at my school right now for experience week (long story) and my leather bracer just got done in the glowforge, so I gotta go finish that little project. Bye bye now!
I think this could really go somewhere, and I want to see more. But what it's missing is detail. The boy goes from crying to simply accepting in sentences. But keep writing this. I'd totally read it.