Baird awoke, with great effort, to the needle tip of Innya’s blade positioned between his eyes.
“You move, you die.”
Squinting against the world, he almost brought a hand to his face to rub away what felt like sandcastles in his eyes, but a flash of firelight off of the sword’s polished metal stopped him dead.
In that moment of blinding white something peaked, too quickly for him to grasp, and then bottomed out into a flat, aching nothing. Thoughts fled his mind in a rush that left him reeling - he could feel the memories on his scalp, itching as they scurried to hide.
Drool pooled in the corner of his mouth.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Emptiness began to crowd. The sound of it - a hollow echo, bouncing - crossed his eyes and set his world to swaying. From the flickering bright came flashes of color and shape. He watched as they danced, almost forming, until something sparked in the cavern of his mind - or, rather, didn’t.
“huh?”
“What did you say?”
“something’s wrong.”
“What language is that?”
“where am i?”
“Use words, dammit!”
While scrambling to sit up, Baird met a pair of narrowed jade eyes. Smudged across them was a smear of black, dark as oil and reflecting the orange campfire. The girl flinched when he met her stare, the tiniest twitch in her cheek, but had since set her heels into the turf and her mouth to sneer.
He blinked.
In that time, her sword was at his nose. If he wasn’t focusing, he couldn’t even see the sliver of blade, only the hilt gripped in her long fingers and a glimmer of air.
“do you speak mian?”
“Do you speak Sanguine?”
They paused.
“No,” Innya growled, taking a step closer, “I speak, you listen. No more of this whistling! You will do as I say or Gossamer will have your tongue.”
The sword seemed to twinkle in response.
Baird raised his hands to his chest and ducked his head in a quick bow. In doing so, the tip of his nose brushed Gossamer point. At the first peel of blood, two arms made of sand sprouted from the boy’s spine and, after stretching like wings, came back together to clap Innya’s blade.
It nearly snapped.
Baird screamed.
With a heave, Innya tore Gossamer free, severing both of the arms, and flipped backwards to land in a crouch. As soon as her feet met the ground she was off, sprinting behind the boy and pulling him into a chokehold.
At Innya’s touch, Baird’s once newling soft skin turned to shards, shredding her forearm as it dragged across his neck. A surprised howl tore her throat, but she grit her teeth and stood steady. Her other hand came up to grip his hair. Gossamer was making way to his throat when a fist crashed into her side, sending her sprawling away.
Mid-tumble, Innya twisted her body to land on all fours. Her taloned nails dug into the soft mud below and, using all the strength of her legs, she shot forward and tackled Baird to the ground. They came to rest with Innya on top, her forearm pressed against his bobbing adam’s apple. Thin strips of blood ran down her arm.
“Enough!”
The arms of sand came to an acute stop just inches behind Innya’s head. She could feel the heat of them on her neck, rumbling with hunger - a sound like waves breaking the shore. Impatient. In the sweat beading on her nape, she swore she could feel a panting and a flick of a tongue, some promise burned into her skin.
“please,” the boy sobbed, “please.”
Sand fell around them.
Baird’s skin returned to soft powder, rubbing off on Innya’s lacerations - even the shards of glass lodged in her turned into the beach brown sand of his skin. The girl slithered away, dropping her sword in the rush.
She watched, eyes wide, as the cuts on her arm began to mend. In a matter of seconds, it was as if she’d never been hurt at all, ever. Old scars vanished, knotted muscles loosened - stiff neck, sprained ankle, fractured rib, twisted wrist, sleep deprivation, her headache; it all went away.
Her chipped front tooth regrew. She pinched herself and it didn’t hurt.
Points:
Time spent:
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.
125,007 Literary Works • 672,815 Reviews
Hey there! MJ stopping by for a quick review.
Grammar first:
Hmm, I don't really like 'peel' to describe a bit of blood. Maybe 'trickle'?
Is newling used as a term for baby? If it's another adjective, there should be a comma in between the adjectives, and I would personally just take 'newling' out since it's a little confusing and doesn't add much to the story.
Firstly, I noticed that the characters weren't really formally introduced to the reader. You went from saying "the girl" to "Innya", and that made it a little confusing until the reader caught on. I would recommend just inserting a phrase, like "the girl, Innya," instead of just jumping into "Innya."
Secondly, the entire action scene was a little hard to follow for a few reasons. I didn't really understand what happened when Baird sprouted wings, and I still didn't know who everyone was and where they were and what was going on. To be perfectly honest, it was kinda a mess.
To summarize, I basically felt that your vocabulary was well varied, but there were tiny grammatical slip-ups and little words here and there that could be modified, added, and subtracted. This was a good first draft, but it was still pretty obvious to the reader that this was a first draft. And that's good. Your first draft is always just getting words onto the page and then working with it, but now is the time when you need to more closely examine the sentences and say, "How can I make this clearer?"
Hopefully this review was helpful! I tried not to be too harsh, and you have a good skeleton here, you just need to work with it and mold it a little bit before I would consider it an exceptional novel. But other than that, I enjoyed this chapter, and I'll be around and possibly review the next chapter! Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions
MJ out!
*poof*
What time is it? It's review time:
I'd love to learn more about this story in the future, so I hope to see you then for another review.
This seems like a very interesting concept, but I feel that some more context would be useful to understand what's going on. Trust me to dive headfirst into something I've never read before. Nevertheless I will try and interpret the story the best I can based on what I've read.
Language and Style:
From a technical point of view, the vocabulary is nice and varied and the description is detailed, which are both good traits for this genre of writing. However there was one sentence which I couldn't quite understand:
"In doing so, the tip of his nose brushed Gossamer point." I'm not sure if this is a typo or me just being dumb, but it kinda threw off the magical and mystical vibe the story creates.
Characters:
I'm assuming this is some kind of fantasy world, and that Innya is some kind of warrior there. Whether she uses her talent for good or for evil, she makes an interesting and realistic character. I'm not sure who or what Gossamer is, so I won't talk about her. (I think she's a girl? It was a little confusing.) Baird was interesting though. He must have been important for Innya to be chasing after him, and that bit at the end where he died was a little sad.
Plot:
This started off as the typical fight scene, and had good confrontation between both sides. The plot was hard to follow though, mainly because of the lack of context. The bit at the end with Innya's wounds magically healing was the most interesting part. If there is such thing as magic in the world you created, it'd be interesting to see how it works.
Other Notes:
Out of interest, I looked up Mian and Sanguine just to see what they were. The definition of Sanguine was the most intriguing though. here it is, straight from Mr Google himself.
sanguine
ˈsaŋɡwɪn/Submit
adjective
adjective: sanguine
1.
optimistic or positive, especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation.
"he is sanguine about prospects for the global economy"
synonyms: optimistic, bullish, hopeful, buoyant, positive, disposed to look on the bright side, confident, cheerful, cheery, bright, assured; More
antonyms: pessimistic, gloomy
(in medieval science and medicine) of or having the constitution associated with the predominance of blood among the bodily humours, supposedly marked by a ruddy complexion and an optimistic disposition.
archaic
(of the complexion) florid or ruddy.
2.
HERALDRYliterary
blood-red.
3.
archaic
bloody or bloodthirsty.
I'd love to know if this was deliberate or sheer coincidence. Naming things in fantasy stories is one of the most interesting things writers can do, and sometimes foreshadows future events. Tolkien does a lot of this in his work.
Overall:
This experience was very similar to opening a book at a random page and trying to make sense of the story. I loved this, but I'm sure I'd enjoy it even more if I knew what was going on. Now's my chance to go catch up.
P.S Sorry this took so long, I hope the feedback is useful.