Ever heard of Cerenthicar the Mighty or Perasonia the Majestic. Both great people with pathetic descendants; but they had something in common. On their births it was foretold in a format starting similar to this, “Beware all great Kings and Queens, tyrants and enemies, nation and peoples, of a leader born this day...” The seer was simply declared a fraud. Life went on until the good overcame the bad.
But in my case, the King listened to this seer whether it really be true or not. I had just been born a moment before this fortune teller brought this matter to the King. Outraged and furious, he demanded that every child born within the last three days and for the next three days must die. I was one of those.
It was believed that if good was born in an evil place or visa versa, that place would, supposedly, be a place only fit for ghosts. The only way to destroy the “evil” that had been born there was to smoke it out. So, without further adieu, my father set our home ablaze...
My question was how he figured out that I, out of many others, was the person spoken of in the prophecies.
*** *** ***
“Kill it!” Thundered a voice as smoke filled the atmosphere.
A tired women put tender arms around the baby. “I can't! Xia must live or I will die with her.”
“Are you my wife or are you swine? You should be happy when I'm giving you a chance for life.”
“Please, are you truly that much of a coward?” she bullied, “It's only a baby.”
The midwife intervened, “Zecar, you-” she coughed as smoke filled her lungs, but that was not why she stopped. It was the cruel expression on the man.
“Speak again and I will personally rip out your tongue and feed it to the vultures.” Turning to five tall and alert figures he barked, “Get Zecar and follow me even if you kill her in the process! And bring me the baby!”
Without a seconds delay, four of them picked up the woman by all her limbs violently while the last stripped her of the child. Being a newborn infant, all it could do was cry, displaying signs of discomfort. The figure handed the screaming baby to the man.
Speaking firmly to the child he said, “Well, well. I never thought I'd ever end up murdering my own child. Weird isn't it, how everyone is afraid of you. Even my most trusted adviser and read and reread the signs proclaiming that it is you. Yet, I don't understand why my daughter would turn against me.” Zecar had stopped squirming to listen, while the midwife was unreadable. “I had hoped for a son, but such thoughts have rotted to see what an ugly child I have.”
It was true and could not be denied, but no one had longer than a second to notice this. The man dropped the child, who painfully landed head first on the hardwood floor with an echoing thud. Zecar screamed uncontrollably and fought with even more vigor as if any hope still remained. A tall muscular figure put an end to this by using the flat side of his sword to knock her unconscious. A burning beam fell at the west end of the room snapping reality back into the man. “Move out!”
The figures followed the man across the room and down the marbled staircase completely forgetting the midwife. Almost calmly, she waited until they were gone, then she walked toward the queen size bed filled with luxurious and comforting pillows laced in gold, ignoring the limp child on the floor. She bent over and looked under the bed into the darkness.
“Xia?”
A small cooing replied.
End of chapter
Continue to next chapter Xia - Chapter 1Points:
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.
140,210 Literary Works • 673,042 Reviews
Hey Omi1! Silver here!
Your story has alot of potential. I can feel the escence of a really interesting world here. As dD4RKR4VEN mentioned though the baby killing reminds me alot of the story of Moses and the pharoh. Also this might be nitpicking but I think it might have been better if you hadn't revealedd straight away that Xia is the child of the prophecy. It's only the prologue and I think it might have been more interesting for readers to find this out at a later stage. That might just be me though. Beside that I think you're onto something here
Silverlock
Thanks, I definately agree with you on that, if I ever go back to writing this, I'll change it around for sure.
"Both great people with pathetic descendants; but they had something in common."
maybe its just me, but i found this sentence a little weird. Only because they both have in common the fact that they were both great people with pathetic decendants...and then you go on to say they have more in common. I think maybe for the beginning of that sentence it should be differences they have just so it makes a little more sense.
"Zecar screamed uncontrollably and fought with even more vigor as if any hope still remained" Is 'Zecar' in this sentance suppose to be his wife? or did i misread it?
Anyways, other then that i love it!
Haha, this was one of those things I was telling you about... where I didn't bother editting before publishing...lol. Yup, Zecar was his wife.
Hi, I am The Raven, Knight of the Green Room, and I will be reviewing your work at this moment. My review will be divided into the sections 'What Is Good' and 'What Needs Improvement/Suggestions'. Now, let's get down to business.
What Is Good:
1) You've set up a pretty good world right at the beginning over there, a world with its own style, troubles and wonder. I especially like how you've managed not to slip into the fairy tale genre accidentally by introducing a degree of darkness, speaking of which...
2) I thoroughly enjoyed the darkness that you've introduced into your world. I like how a mother and child was sacrificed for the sake of Xia, not to mention how babies are getting killed for the sake of maintaining the political status quo - moral ambiguity's good for a little mind exercise on the part of the readers, not to mention a little debate and discussion on the side. I, for one, would be interested to see how this will all play out, how it will be resolved (or not), and for how long could this moral ambiguity sustain itself.
What Needs Improvement/Suggestions:
1) I feel that the name 'Xia' is very exploitative. From the looks of it, this fantasy world is not one based on Chinese or any east Asian culture, but the connotations of the name 'Xia' indicates overwise. It is the name of a mythical dynasty in China, and of course, it is a Chinese name. This would lead readers to expect all of this, and they will be disappointed. I cannot imagine the name 'Xia' existing in an anglocentric fantasy world either.
2) The part about killing babies born three days before and after the day the prologue is happening reeks of that bible story involving the Hebrew slaves in Egypt with Moses somehow surviving a trip down a river to be miraculously picked up by someone affiliated with the royal family there. While this is not bad in itself - taking inspiration from the Bible or other preceding epics/fantasy/religious texts;heck, J. R. R. Tolkien and his buddy C. S. Lewis did it with their famous fantasies - but there will be a chance that the originality of your work will be jeopardised. The fact that taking inspiration from preceding works has pretty much been done countless times aren't helping.
There are two ways you can go about this. The first way is to carefully manage how you take inspiration - don't copy wholesale;that would be plagiarising at worse and condemning your work to being derivative at best. Instead, try to develop those ideas you took from preceding works in whole new directions, the way that we human beings evolved from some single-cellular organisms.
The second way is for you to trash your novel and think of something new and fresh without referring to previous works - the way that different ancient cultures across the globe developed radically differently from one another because they are isolated.
3) Technical issues with your language. Your novel's prologue begins with a punctuation mistake. It is a question, not a statement, so there should be a question mark at the end of your first sentence.
Your diction slipped there a little. All of a sudden, the word 'format' pops out from nowhere. Your work is fantasy, not science fiction. That word does not belong there. You need to have a more mythical, otherworldly and ancient tone to your narrator's voice. The world's classical English literary tradition would contain a lot of examples. Instead of format, why not prophecy? Why not folklore? Why not even ballad, a song, or something?
There are some grammar mistakes littered throughout the narrative. I am not one to concentrate on proofreading, as I am doing a review as a reviewer, not proofreading as a copyeditor. However, I'd suggest that you go through your work once or twice again.
4) I feel that there is more to your narrative than what is currently written. Fantasy stories are about showing us a world entirely different from our own, with its own unique rules and properties. You shouldn't be afraid to describe everything generously - that's simply the way of fantasy. Do note that this does not mean creating huge chunks of paragraphs though. Instead, go for quality in words as well.
Tolkien did this to the extreme, inventing entire languages, continents and races of creatures, mythology, folklore, culture, etc. As such, a single word from Tolkien would be worth a hundred in regular fiction. You could try going his route, or if you're not up to it, go for a more balanced approach.
For the time being, your work lacks flesh. There are far too many one liner paragraphs and few-liner paragraphs. I can't envision how the world is like either due to the lack of descriptions.
Anyway, that's all I have so far. I hope I've helped. Well, see ya. Keep writing!
Yup, wrote this forever ago...didn't think I would ever want to continue with it, but I'm actually very interested in doing so now. I had published this before proofreading (bad idea ;P) and I was able to catch most of the diction, grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. But thanks for the review, I really appreciate your thoughts and ideas regarding this.
Oh, and I totally didn't know Xia was Asian, I will have to change that... suggestions?
It's up to you haha, I have no suggestions. You know your character best
I'm glad I've helped.
Wow, this was really good! It definitely got my attention right away and made me want to continue reading. I especially like that at the beginning you explained the situation, yet left it open and vague enough to cause me to want to read more. The story is compelling and I am excited to see how it develops. The characters are realistic (except the dad....he just seems too evil. But, maybe it's just me.) and they react to each other very well. Your dispersion of hints about what is to come into the story was great, and I was able to pick up that the dad was most likely a soldier, advisor, etc. of the king. The ingenious planning of the mother to hide her baby under the bed added depth to her character and shows us just how clever, loving, and perceptive she is. However, it also seemed to suggest that they live in a brutal society because of her willingness to just kill another baby to save her own (but that displays her motherly love in a distorted kind of way). You also got me curious about how they could tell that she would be the foretold "leader". I can't really say anything about grammar or spelling, I wasn't paying particular attention to that. I like just focusing on the story. Great job!
Thanks, I think you read more into it than I had intended, but that's not a bad sign, right?
Oh, ha ha....well I think it's a good thing because when the reader can read further into the story than you intended, it shows that the characters and story are reacting to each other organically (as if on their own, if you get what I mean). The characters are coming "alive".