~1100 words
Jay turned back to the cave, its mouth gaping darkly. Shep was somewhere inside of it. Jay wondered where he had gone. He glanced down at the sheathed dagger in his hands, shrugged, and stuck it in his waistband.
When he stepped inside the entrance to the stone arch of the mouth, shadow engulfed him, and his eyes slowly adjusted from the brilliant white of the snow outside to the inky blackness of the inside of the cave. A path led into the cavern's gullet, and he could see wet footprints-- Shep's-- leading down into the dark. Jay had no matches. It would be hard to see. He placed a hand lightly against the right wall and bravely walked forward.
"Shep?" he called, and his voice echoed back at him. Even his quiet footsteps echoed.
What if the cave branches? Jay thought, his blood running cold, and Shep took the left wall? Jay stretched his left arm towards the other side of passage way, and both of his fingertips just barely touched each wall. He continued walking like this, calling every now and then, until his arms ached from being constantly spread. The cave hadn't branched yet, and Jay hoped it never would. He closed in towards the right wall again, and started walking faster, calling even louder for Shep. Soon, he broke into a run. He could see nothing, but the floor was smooth, and he was panicking. His breathing grew labored, and with every gasping breath he took, he heard it again a hundred times from the echoes.
Jay realized that he was running and breathing so loudly that he wouldn't have been able to hear a response from Shep. He slowed to a stop, and called "Shep!" at the top of his lungs.
A voice that sounded like it was right behind him murmured, "is that you, Jay?"
He jumped in surprise, whirling around, but of course he could see nothing.
There was a bright flash of light that hurt Jay's eyes, but soon he realized that the light was coming from above him. He saw Shep's face peering down from the top of the left wall in the passage way.
"Did you miss the stairs?" Shep asked with a goofy smile. A sheep's face poked over the edge, and then another. Soon, all four sheep were gazing down at him, placid expressions in their ovine eyes.
So this is where Cabot brought the sheep, thought Jay.
Jay had been running in a circle. Stairs set into the left wall led up to a sort of island of stone, encircled by the cave Jay had been running through. In the center of the island, there was a hatch set into the ground. All this was illuminated by a sputtering candle.
"The hinges have rusted shut," explained Shep. "I'm glad you came. I can't quite bust it open by myself."
Together, Shep and Jay grabbed part of the handle that was attached to the hatch, and pulled upwards with all their might. There was a crackling sound, as the rust cracked, and then, suddenly, the hatch came up with a bang!
The inside glowed with a faint, bluish light, and Shep looked relieved.
"This is a good sign," he said. "I thought there might be a sheep here, but nothing so far looked that magical. This light, however, is probably the best hint we have about where our next sheep is hidden."
"There are two sheep left, right?" asked Jay.
"Yes, and since we found the king, Reyus, only the gardener and the cook are left," Shep answered, then lowed himself into the hole the hatch created, until only his fingertips grasped the edge. "I can't feel the bottom," he said, his voice a little muffled. "I'll have to drop."
"No!" Jay started to say, but Shep's fingertips had already disappeared. He heard a cry of surprise from the hatch, but when he looked in, he couldn't see anything but the bluish light.
"Come on down, Jay," Shep's voice called, rising from the hole. "You'll be fine." He sounded far away.
Jay took a breath, and then dropped through the hatch. He fell a few feet before brushing against a steeply sloped wall. The wall began to lessen in steepness, like a slide. Soon, Jay was skidding to a stop at Shep's feet. He blinked. Though the bluish light was dim, he could see clearly. The path they had come from led straight up, and the path in front of them led to what looked like a stone table. Either that, or a coffin.
The sheep started sliding down the wall as well, bleating in surprise.
Shep and Jay approached the stone slab. It was covered in strange markings. "What does that say?" asked Jay.
Shep squinted at the carvings. "I'm not sure. It's not written in any language that I know."
They came close enough to touch the slab, and Jay realized it was an altar. It had holes in the corners for candles-- there was still some wax drippings left in them from the previous user-- and two grips that looked like they were supposed to hold the sacrificial weapon. Shep examined the entire perimeter of the altar, knocking on a few places, prodding others. He returned to Jay and shrugged. "I'm not sure what to do," he said.
"What if we put candles in the holders and lit them?" offered Jay.
"Sounds like a waste of candles, but I don't have any better ideas." Shep rummaged through a knapsack and produced four candles. Soon, they were put in their respective places and lit.
Nothing happened. Jay sighed. "So much for that."
Shep inspected the altar again. "I think we need to put something there," he said, pointing at the stone grips.
"But what?"
"Some kind of weapon, I believe," Shep answered. "Unfortunately," he started, picking through his pack again, "I'm a pacifist."
"What about those thieves at Salim's inn?" Jay pointed out.
"That was an exception," Shep said airily. "Do you think half a sausage would work?"
"I doubt it." Jay shifted his weight to his right leg. He felt something pressing against his hip. The dagger! So that trip to Earth wasn't for nothing after all. Jay removed the dagger from his waistband. The glint of gold caught Shep's eye.
"You have a dagger? What luck! Quickly! Put it in, boy!"
Jay slid the dagger out of its sheath, and snapped it into the stone grips of the alter. It fit perfectly. A rumbling started, and Jay could feel the ground shaking a bit. Suddenly, the top of the altar was pushed away, and within it...
A sleeping sheep rested on the stone at the bottom.
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125,021 Literary Works • 672,740 Reviews
Hey Widdershins!
Happy review day!
So last time when I said I was going to review as many chapters as I could in a day, I remember my complete failure. I am here to try again and I am determined to do more than my pathetic two this time round. So we'll see what I get done
What I liked about this chapter had to be the way they found the other sheep. It wasn't like it was panicking or anything, but simply sleeping in there restfully. I am wondering how they are going to get out of the cave-thing-chute they just slid into without any regard of how they are going to escape. But otherwise I think this was a good chapter that showed Jay's persistence when it came to finding Shep, and I liked the way the two worked together in this one. I wonder how they are going to find the final sheep and if anymore trouble is going to approach them in the future. But for that I would have to keep on reading.
I doubt that Jay is the kind of person who has tucked countless daggers into his jeans. So what I want to have here is a bit more detail on his part. How does it feel to have something foreign pressed into his side/back with every movement he makes? Does he feel like he is doing something bad, having a weapon tucked away, or does it not faze him because he knows that he would never use it wrongly himself? It's only a small action but if it's for someone who hasn't done the sort of things before, I am sure it would be a bigger moment to them.
I would cut out the 'of the inside' at the end of the sentence there, because you already use the word inside once and we don't really need it here at all. So basically, it's a bit of repetition and doesn't add anything for me.
I actually don't have anything more to say here! A very good chapter and I liked it a lot
Deanie x
Hi there! Noelle back for another Review Day review!
This is the kind of description I like to see! It really gives me a good idea as to what the cave is like. It's not really much, but it ends up really giving off a good image.
Do we really know that Cabot is the one who brought them here though? Salim said that it was a thief, he didn't name a name. And since he asked Jay if he knew who Cabot was in the last chapter, it seems like Salim doesn't recognize him. I feel like this is something you want to tell us as the author so you gave Sam the knowledge. That's fine, but he has to have proof and nothing that I've read so far led to the assumption of Cabot taking the sheep.
Why is it that the sheep followed them down? It seems a bit random to me, there's really no reason to it. Unless of course, they somehow knew that another one of them was down there and it was a bit of foreshadowing? Oh, was it because of the wall changing? I didn't catch that the first time I read through. Even so, it's a bit confusing.
Ah, another sheep! Now there's only one left!
I don't have anything else to say! I always write the shortest reviews for your chapters because I just enjoy reading your novel so much! I really do look forward to reading every new chapter. Since I enjoy it so much I'm not really looking for anything constructive until I really think about how unhelpful my reviews must be.
bad NoelleOnto the next chapter!
Keep writing!
**Noelle**
Hello, darling! Let's jump right in; I haven't read the story leading up to this, so this will be a solo content review.
To begin with, your very first sentence is incorrect and potentially very confusing, as you have a misplaced modifier. As it's written now, it looks like Jay's pronouns are "it/itself" and Jay's mouth is gaping darkly, because the modifier modifies the subject of the sentence, not the object. If you changed it to something else, you could also improve on the prose directly following that, as it's dry, imparts no sense of emotion, and is extremely repetitive.
That's a lot of words to say "When he stepped into the mouth of the cave, his eyes took a moment to adjust". Some of them are excusable; some of them are not. "Inky blackness" and "brilliant white" are extreme clichés and should probably be eradicated. Just "darkness" and "blinding white" would even do, considering snow blindness is an actual thing. The first prepositional phrase chain is like three miles long, from "inside" to "mouth", and needs to be cut down drastically so readers get a sense of where they actually are. Not to mention, as the mouth of a cave is the entrance, the entrance to the arch of the entrance? That makes no sense.
Such emotion. Very wow. In all reality, I feel nothing, and I'm pointing out this part in particular because you literally have to tell the reader that Jay is panicking—or else we wouldn't have been able to figure it out on our own. You need to edit this entire section. The last sentence is better than the other two, but seriously.
This is a consistent problem throughout this chapter. I have no clue what's going on, but you shouldn't rely exclusively on how the reader feels about the characters from previous chapters to make them care. You should have tension in your prose, and you should have emotion permeating your words. Diction is just as important in prose as it is in poetry, clichés are just as much to be avoided, and as it is half of these words look like they were simply thrown on the page in an effort to reach a word count, not in an effort to tell the story.
And suddenly, the reader was bored by a cliché onomatopoeia! "Suddenly" does you no favors here, and the exclamation point is a cheap way to get emotion out of the reader. You don't show your characters exerting any effort; you just say they tugged at it for a bit and then you give them a reward. No blood, no sweat, no tears, and most importantly, no tension. As it is, it feels like you're writing a Dick and Jane how-to-read book.
Tension is not a bad thing. Tension means that there's something at stake, that there's a reason for us to care about what your characters are doing and why they're doing them. Tension means that your characters have to work for rewards and improvements, and the readers are much more satisfied with the reward in the end. As it is, I'm getting nothing out of this chapter. It's quite literally useless, and while it may serve some story purpose, it feels like you're just handing your characters whatever you need to advance the plot on a silver platter.
It's called hand-waving, and it's not a good technique.
Keep writing!
Timmy heeere :3
HI. So it feels as though I'm late in coming to the party, but I'm not too late, I suppose. Just a few days. But, anyway, let's begin. This chapter was good good because it finally gave a purpose to their entire trip to Earth, which before seemed so pointless. So many chapters of the book had no point anymore, now that the dagger was rendered worthless - so no point to their adventures on Earth. This chapter gave them a purpose, and filled the void there. Tis good. ^.^ Nothing should feel as though it has no purpose.
I don't know why this part seemed out of place and odd to me, but it did. I think it may have been the matches that did it. >< Perhaps something more an, um, I forgot the name. >< A stick thing with cloth or fuel around it. You know what I'm talking about. But matches can just burn out with a puff of wind or if he takes a jerky step.
WAIT. You mean that Shep couldn't hear the racket coming from the cave beside him - all the frantic running and such? Seems odd that the moment Jay yells for him, he answers, but when he's running all around the cave (the sound echoing to everywhere, like the description said), Shep doesn't hear a thing. Seems like he should have heard him beforehand.
Jay is such a dumb-dumb. Running in circles. ha. Anyway, you have had been running in this sentence, and two sentences afterwards, you say the same thing over again. REDUNDANCY ALERT
Um, what?
It is very very hard to believe that Shep is a Pacifist, because, well, he just doesn't seem like one. I pulled out a section of the previous chapter, where Shep fights Cabot. And his character overall just doesn't seem like someone who wouldn't fight others. He's a gentle person as a rule, but he also has a temper and also seems like a guy you don't want to mess with. I don't know. It just seemed rather odd and out of place in his character.
Okay. The first part established that Shep was the one in question - who we're focusing on at the present time. So, the he said no longer has a purpose, since its only job was to inform the reader who was talking.
The tagline here seemed a bit odd because he didn't point it out as much as he asked Shep about them. Not a statement or a pointing out of something, but rather him questioning his actions.
Could feel is passive voice, which I have seen quite a bit in this chapter. Always, always try for the active voice - felt. And a bi seems tacked onto the end of the sentence, like it doesn't belong. Perhaps instead, you could spend another sentence describing how big this shaking really is? More of a focused description of the rumbling and shaking?
In a few places in this chapter, there is a feeling like we're set back away from the scene - and not pulled in close. And I think that's because, while your descriptions are doing very well in this chapter and I can see everything with clarity, you don't explore very often with your descriptions. Remember the five senses! Like the sentence above, it lacked depth. I could see the scene before me, but in a two-dimensional way. So with the sentence above, the top of the altar was pushed away (or did it slide away - nothing pushed it?), but we never heard it hit the floor? Little bits like that build to the overall picture and scene and make it more.
In all honesty, this may be your best chapter so far. I love the descriptions (even though I did complain a bit), and I felt like this chapter was given to the reader better than usual. You played on the darkness very well, too, something I always find difficult. I felt his apprehension, saw the dark, and yet had a good picture of the cave besides. How that worked, I don't know. But it just worked. And now I'm curious if this cave holds more than just sheep, and how Cabot had enough time to put the sheep inside that altar and come out and ambush him. I think that will just be something we'll be left wondering until the end of time. xD Does this mean they have all the sheep? O_0 Is this the climax of the book? *trembles in seat* Is it here? I'm going to have to sit tight until the next chapter to see where this is going, but it seems as though the story is coming to its peak - or at least will be very soon.
Looking forward to next week already.
~Darth Timmyjake
you're not late if you're the first one to show up, mate.
Wait, so is it not clear that Cabot did not put the sheep in there? The sheep was put there by the Enchantress when she scattered them in the first place. This was like, the episode with the dragolinx. Was it not hard enough? Should I have them battle another monster? Make the puzzle harder?
And the pacifist bit was humor. Shep's not really a pacifist, he just doesn't carry any weapons.
No one gets my humor D;
Anyway, thanks for the review~
OH. It was humor? I think I didn't get it because Jay seemed to accept it as the truth. Perhaps if he didn't believe him at all?
It's not clear because Cabot just came out of the cave. Perhaps leave the mystery open for this chapter, and find some way of discovering who put him in there?
Oh. I suppose I'm not late, then. xD