Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language, violence, and mature content.
For Tenyo's LMS contest. Enjoy and whatnot. Word Count; 890.
Chapter One
The throne room was silent as Kaisar slipped into through a hidden door. He readjusted the tapestry before anyone could glance his way, eyes seeking out Arjana first. The Tahirnan prince stood beside his mother on the dias to his left, and when their eyes met, Kaisar inclined his head. Arjana turned back to his mother, leaving Kaisar feeling suddenly bereft. He hadn't been in Samira for very long, but it was long enough that he'd gained some measure of freedom. As long as he did as Arjana commanded, which wasn't hard. After all, they were lovers.
Kaisar cast a curosry look over the gathered nobles. They were unusually subdued, which was appropriate. Someone had just tried to kill the Emperor, and they had failed. Siavash still lived, for the moment, but who knew for how much longer. The Emperor had tried to kill the assassin, and Kaisar had finished him off. He'd been lucky Arjana had sent him to check on the old man. Kaisar's gaze narrowed. He didn't like the man, but that didn't mean he wanted him dead. At least, not yet. Even if Siavash died, he would not be free.
He drifted away from the wall, dusting off his clothing even though the blood was bright, staining his hands red, and would not go away. It was the assassin's blood, and the Emperor's--and his, but no one needed to know what had happened yet. The blood was sure to draw looks, but no one questioned the Prince's curr. He let a grim smirk turn up his lips as the crowd parted for him. Some of them cried out when they saw the blood. Kaisar ingored them, coming to a stop below the dias. He knelt stiffly, not bothering to hide that he was injured, and bowed his head. The wound to his side was shallow, but it was bleeding heavily. Still, he had sought out Empress and Prince instead of the palace healers. That could wait.
Arjana turned towards him, eyebrow raised. Kaisar watched him from beneath his eyelashes. The nobles gather knew he was barely tamed. If only they knew the truth--that their prince was plotting the Empire's downfall. What a dangerous game they played.
"Kaisar," his prince said, tone expressing mild shock. "What's the meaning of this? You're covered in blood." He paused, seemed to reconsider Kaisar and this time, both eyebrows rose. "Are you bleeding?"
"Yes, your highness," he muttered and raised his head. "It was...unfortunate. The Emperor was attacked as I entered the room." He paused, closing his eyes. He hated bending to the Tahirnans, but Arjana wasn't as cruel as he appeared to be in front of prying eyes. "It was an assassin; he wore clothing in the style of the Cherani tribe and weilded their wild magic." He swallowed, trying to push the pain away. If this didn't make the nobles trust him, then nothing would. "They fought, the Emperor was struck but the assassin did not go uninjured." He opened his eyes and pressed a hand to the wound in his side. "He tried to flee, so I finished him off. Emperor Siavash had cut his neck. The assassin was bleeding out, but he still had enough fight to stab me first." He smirked. "I finished the Emperor's work."
The other man let it show that Kaisar's actions impressed him--which they probably did, since no one liked the Emperor. "That is...unfortunate," the Tahirnan prince murmured, settling back on his heels. "How fares my father?"
"Still alive," he replied, never taking his eyes off his lover. "For now."
The crowd broke out into murmurs, whispering about the Emperor and the assassination attempt. They ever dared to speak of him. Kaisar turned to glare at the nearest pair of nobles who had begun to whisper that he was involved in this plot. The two women dropped the issue immediately, backing up a step. He grunted, satisifed, and returned his attention to his prince. Beyond Arjana, the Empress was sitting stiffly. He admired her for living with such a brutal man for so long.
Arjana snorted and stepped closer to him. "Kaisar, you may rise and tend to that wound. I would not have my dog injured now, would I?"
Kaisar inclined his head and stood as stiffly as he'd knelt. "Thank you, your highness," he murmured and turned for the doors that were directly behind him. It gave the gathered nobles a good look at the state of his clothes. He knew what they'd see; his boots, shiny and slick, his shirt and breeches soaked to the skin in blood, and there had been a lot of it. Kaisar grabbed the hilt of his sword tightly. He would not let another slip by him again. Not today. He hoped they knew better than to try to corner a wounded dog.
As he walked stiffly towards the doors, he could feel Arjana's gaze burning a hole in his back. At least he was alive. Kaisar slammed the doors behind him, ingoring everyone else as he did so. He knew he was a sight; blood bubbling up from beneath his hand with every movement, and leaving a trail on the floor. Arjana was going to give him an earful later. Kaisar grinned. He was looking forward to it.
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,808 Reviews
Decided to follow, since I see a lot of potential in you as a writer. I know this excerpt was posted three and half years ago, but I thought I'll still critique. That said, without further ado...
I found the beginning to be quite underwhelming. I think this chapter would have been a lot more interesting and mysterious if it began with Kaisar walking in on the assassin and Emperor fighting. This way, you immediately have the readers on their toes. After Kaisar finishes off the fleeing assassin, he and the emperor have an unpleasant chat displaying not only their personalities, but also their relationship.
There are loads of things revealed in this chapter that we don't yet need to know, and would be better revealed later through showing and not telling. For example, I would keep Kaisar and Arjana's relationship a secret until later, when the latter "gives him an earful". That would be your perfect chance to establish their relationship via spoken dialogue.
Furthermore, we don't need to know yet that they're plotting against the emperor, nor why. That said, you killed what could have been a compelling mystery.
Overall, I like your writing style; it is very fluid for the most part. However, you need to get better at killing readers with suspense.
See mine (notes) and /*edits*/ below.
In a nutshell: Show, don't tell. And always keep in mind that mystery and suspense are excellent motivators.
Hello! Well, you know why I'm here (I would hope), so allow me to start on this review.
Starting from the beginning (as people normally do), your first paragraph feels a little stuffy. I know you're getting the reader settled into the setting and characters, but I think you might have included a little too much information in one go—you introduce us to Kaisar, hidden passages, the throne room, Arjana (and the place-moniker of 'Tahirnan'), Arjana's mother, Samira, and the fact that Kaisar and Arjana are lovers, all without letting the reader take a breath. Wow.
I'd probably split the first paragraph up into a few and add some space between the actions; perhaps you could move Kaisar's description of the nobility to a spot in between him stepping through the hidden passage and him catching Arjana's eye—that way, the reader is introduced to him through how he sees these nobles at first, rather than "here's a lot of information I am the prince's gay lover".
A note: How does he feel about these nobles? You tell us that they're subdued, but there's no hint of how Kaisar perceives them. If he's a guard who just saved the emperor's life, perhaps he might be paranoid ("he couldn't know which of them had ordered the attempt on Emperor Siavash's life") or angry ("how dare they show their faces or be dressed up when the emperor nearly died"), or have any other emotional reaction. Would he be relieved that none of them had been targeted as well? Would he be sour that they all made it by unharmed?
As a result of this first chapter, while I know what's happening, I don't know what Kaisar is feeling about this. And I know that your point of view changes, but this is something integral to every character: How does he feel? What does he see others as, people deserving of respect or absolute swine?
I want to have a deeper connection to this work than I do. You do a good job of showing character emotions when they're directly interacting with others, but your descriptions feel a little lacking, perhaps because it's in third person and we're not quite as close to Kaisar as we might be a first-person narrator.
Either way, while this chapter may have left me a little wanting, I found it a pleasure to read. I hope to continue.
Scar! Anne here with reviews for you. Happy Review Day!
Let's go with... nitpicks first.
'In', not 'into'.
Too many prepositions! It's fine grammatically, but is painful to read. You can remove 'to the left'. Also, 'dais'.
Too wordy. Perhaps you could remove the 'suddenly'.
Saying 'for the moment' is enough to imply the latter part of your sentence. Cut the 'but who...much longer'.
You use 'man' for emperor too much, and it's too repetitive. Change the second 'man' to emperor.
Gathered, perhaps? I have no idea what you mean by this sentence.
This isn't strictly grammar, but it would sound nicer if you said 'and the emperor' and used an Oxford comma before your 'but'.
I think that 'ever' was supposed to be an 'even'. Also, confusing pronoun usage. Is the 'him' Arjana or Kaisar?
Redundant. If his clothes are soaked with blood, you don't need to say that there was a lot of it.
End of nitpicks.
Alright. There were two major things I noticed. Your sentence structure is painfully repetitive. It's mostly an independant clause followed by a dependant clause, perhaps with a preposition in between. Change it up a bit. The second is that you capitalise Emperor. You don't need to unless you're saying 'Emperor Siavash'. After all, one doesn't write "The old man was actually the King'. That just looks... odd.
I think you could use some more description, especially of Arjana. I have no idea what these characters look like, and it's easy to interject little things here and there 'he stared at me, eyes like coal pits', or 'the blood made his skin look pale', etc. Other than that, lovely characterisation. You could also afford to describe the room a bit more- and speaking of the room- why are the nobles even there? Why are the empress and Arjana there? Royals don't- and can't- sit on their thrones all day. Even if the royals pulled a Louis XIV and required the nobles to stay at the palace for part of the year, they wouldn't sit around and chat. In fact, throne rooms are really only used to receive visiting dignitaries and/or hold important meetings.
Finally, you have a teensy plot hole. You mention that the cut is shallow, but your description of a shirt soaked through and blood bubbling would really only happen if an artery was hit. Just be less dramatic with that, and you'll be good.
Hope I helped!
~Anne
Hey Scar, here to review. You know how mean I can be with the reviews sometimes, I'll try to be just as horrible to you, because I believe this will be for the best. Firstly, I want to clear up some things that I feel is detrimental to the story. I mean LMS is an excuse, but hehe, I'm still going to rip.
First up is the fact that you have nobles gathered around at the time of the assassination. Unless there were some coronation or event, nobles don't gather around to chit chat like celebrities. They are the rulers of the land and they have busy schedules, unless these nobles are...ornaments of the emperor's.
The second point is that you repeat one time too much. Once in dialogue and once not, but the same thing. It bores. Switch it up, use the space to tell different aspects of the story. This way you can go into different details at separate times.
Thirdly, I know it's rushed, but spellchecker, princess!
Alright, moving on.
This isn't a grammar mistake, although I usually point them out when I see them. The thing that troubles me about this sentence is that it is awkward to read. As I always suggest, if it is awkward, split.
Suggestion: Readjusting the tapestry before the gathered rabble of nobles had time to notice him, he then adverbly sought out Arjana.
I think in this way you kill two birds with one stone.
The latter part sounds wrong to my ears. Shouldn't it be "it was long enough to have gained a measure of freedom"? "That" somehow detracts from the sentence, but this is just my two cents.
Thai Po.
Compare with
The words "finish off" and "kill off" are too frequent in them and they seem almost identical. Fro his own point of view, this might be just fine, but we readers have no such sentimentality. This type of brief report fits the later dialogue, but when Kaiser is thinking to himself, I believe it appropriate that he would think of the most jarring image in his mind rather than a rational sequence of events. Perhaps to him it was the feel of the assassin dying in his arms, or the shards of glass embedded in him, or the emperor bleeding life onto the floor. These are images that stick in a person's mind, no matter how experienced they are in death. Ask any doctor. Think to yourself about how the fight was sequenced, and choose something impactful to throw at us.
Contrast with
Exactly what was lucky about it if the prince is plotting the empire's downfall. I haven't read the other chapters, and perhaps the prince wants to destroy without being emperor, but it makes so much more sense for the emperor to die if the second quote is true.
"Dusting"? Does one dust off blood, or wipe it? I understand creative liberty, but this is too creative.
[quite]Kaisar ingored them, coming to a stop below the dias.[/quote]
Daipors.
I want an explanation for this devotion, considering that
The two just don't mix. Was there a threat of death if he did not report? Was he having a devious plan underneath? We want to be connected to kaiser's predicament, but we can't if we don't empathize with him.
This kind of revelations, or motives need to be built up towards. Can't stand up to the torrent of speculation.
Spellchecker!
Welcome to the world of nitpickers.
Will see you in the next chapter.
G'day! It's the Chirave Canicthus here to review your work!
First off, I kinda like how you put this right in the situation. It made things feel more urgent in a way, but also threw us right in. One of the problems with that is that one can use too much exposition so the rest of us can start feeling around what's going on. A bit of that is going on here with talking about how Arjana and Kaisar are lovers. It's not that much, but I kinda don't see how needed this info is. :/
It took me a few read-throughs to get that Kaisar was faking his story, but that's because I'm pretty much a skimmer until I get caught up and go "What happened?" and go back a few pages. But yeah. It was a bit confusing, but once I read it slowly, I got it. Well, except for one thing. Was there actually an assassin or was it Kaisar that did it? Because he said that he didn't want the king dead yet, but then there probably wasn't even a Cherani guy... (Good job for making me ask questions, Scar!)
In general, I really liked this. It was a bit confusing for me, but that's kinda me being me. I'll be reviewing more of this, so yeah.
Keep Writing,
*Chirave flies away*
Oh, there really was an assassin. How do you think Kaisar got stabbed? It certainly wasn't the Emperor.
Well this is interesting. I usually don't like fancy words, but that's just me, to start off with, I'm sure we'll find out what they mean later in the story, (I review as I read).
I like the words you use, even though if I was going to read a full novel filled with these words, I'd need a dictionary nearby for every 20 words.
The first time I tried to review this I couldn't get myself to do it, after the first paragraph I died and just went out, but I'm giving it another chance, and it seems it's better, I just wasn't patient enough at the time.
It sounds very high fantasy with all the words you use, which I like.
The second paragraph of the story in is what got me hooked, and that's what has gotten me interested, so nice job!
This is well done, I love you descriptions and the only thing I really didn't like is that it's hard to get in to, but that's just me.
Hey Scar.
I was trawling through the LMS forums looking for something to review and I saw this in the Week One submissions thread, and I thought I'd give it a shot. The reviews below mine are pretty awesome, but hopefully I'll have something fresh to offer.
Your writing style suits the story you're telling really nicely. It's got that high fantasy kind of vibe to it, so the reader gets that quick understanding of what's going on, and what kinds of things to expect.
This might just be me being a little thick, but as I was first reading through I wasn't 100% sure whether 'the prince' and Arjana were the same person or two different characters. By alternating what you called him, it kind of made things a little bit confusing, so I wouldn't mind a little bit more clarity there. Take this bit:
Although it does, when I checked again, say that Arjana is the prince in a pretty explicit way, there is still, I think, a little room for confusion, as it isn't entirely obvious whether 'his left' refers to Kaisar's, or Arjana's. It's a tiny little thing, but it did throw me off for the rest of the chapter.
I think you handled the short length of the chapter pretty well. Although you could have done a little more fleshing out of setting and characters, I didn't find that it felt like it suffered for being shorter. It had just the right amount of plot content.
You maybe could have offered a little more context earlier in the chapter as to what was going on in this society. The attack on the emperor seemed to come out of nowhere a little, and I didn't really have enough understanding to really feel that it was a significant thing.
Sometimes I felt like the order of some of your ideas was a little iffy. Not horrifically so, but just enough to make the chapter feel a teensy bit more disordered than it should be. Ideas-wise, it jumped about a little, so maybe try to let the ideas develop, then flow into each other a little more smoothly.
That's about it from me. This chapter was a pleasure to read, and I'm looking forward to seeing where things go. Any questions, let me know.
Hey ScarlettFire! It's been a while.
Now onto your work. I really liked it. It felt clear cut and got right to the point. And I agree with Filte, that you definitely know what you writing about, which shows and makes it a really easy read. This could have been longer but despite it's short length you give us a preview of what's to come, who the protagonists are, and possibly who the antagonists could be.
As soon as the chapter starts you kind of thrust the reader right into the action. Maybe it would help describing the setting a bit more. Although I understood the setting and where they were, it would have helped a lot if you were more specific.
Despite the vague start you reveal more and more the deeper I read which I really liked. It's sort of like unraveling a bandage, the more you take off the more you see. In this case it was the more I read, the more I understood was going on.
There were some parts when reading, that went on tangents, I think Filte below me already spoke about it so I won't go into that.
There were some spelling mistakes like "ingoring" which made it feel as if it was rushed, and that rushed feeling took me out of the story a bit. The writing was good but it didn't necessarily feel like a chapter. More like a preview. Working on the length could give the reader a more detailed and specific view of what your trying to convey. As Filte mentioned, the characters felt a little emotionless and stiff.
Despite that, i'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the chapters as the plot is very interesting and could pull me in very quickly.
Send me a message if you have any questions!
Thanks!
Imaginator17
Heyo Scar,
I'm here because nano giving me a headache,I'm here for a review. This is a relatively short chapter so I'll try to keep the review short and sweet. Anyways, let's start off with some of the positives.It's obvious you know what you're writing about, and you're comfortable with it. From the setting to the tone of voice, it resonates a very reassured aura. You've planned this out, you've world-build and you're good to go. Despite its short length, you've portrayed the character interactions quite well weaving in subtle hints to their true emotions beneath their ostentatious relationship. Most of your word choices are quite succinct and on point, I like the descriptions in here as well. It's not bogged down with useless information but gets the point across. The plot itself is also quite well-paced, cliffhangers are always appreciated.
Most of the time anyways.So let's move onto the few problems I had with this chapter. The first major problem I had was the lack of setting and background that should usually be present in a first chapter, I'm not saying that every first chapter needs to do this. But it's always good to provide the readers with a good sense of the setting of the novel and allow the reader contexualized the rest of the novel.
Let's take the opening paragraph for example. Was there any reason Kaisar to slip via the hidden door, for a moment I thought he was the assassin. Judging by what happens with the rest of the novel, I don't quite see why a private entrance was needed.
So I felt a bit lost whilst reading this, he slipped into the palace, he seeks out Arjana (nice names by the way) but then it sudden jumps to some history that is not relevant at all to what is happening at the moment. Why would Arijana turning away from him leave him bereft? Just because they were lovers? Wouldn't it make more sense if this was used to explain why Kaisar entered via that hidden door?
Whilst I'm on this tangent, this sense of placelessness permeates through this entire chapter, there is a fair amount of dialogue, some description, action and then internal dialogue and repeats in a different order. I feel that some further explanation of the tribes and races would have be nice, maybe drop a few hints here and there. Their emperor has just been assassinated...but why is everyone so calm. I feel like this isn't because of fear or they don't care, but just because they think it might be rude to speak outloud or something. I want to see some more interaction between Kaisar and others, include some history into this so it's not just purely action.
Onto some technical things:
I noticed that you tend to use this template quite a bit in your writing. It's not terribly dry because there is a certain rhythm to it, so good job. But I'll just bring your notice to it. [Action] , [action], [description of his sort], and [action].
I would aim and bring in some other sentence structures for some variation. Other than that, I think this chapter was quite well-written. There were a few places that could have been potential info-dumps, but you controlled it very well.
So far, the plot is interesting and the characters are promising. Looking forward to your next chapter! And as usual, if you've got any comments or questions, feel free to ask me.
-Flite
Generally quite good, but I feel that it was too short. With Kaisar, his actions were kinda cardboard-ish? A bit too surface. And the nobles didn't really show that dislike the Emperor, just that they didn't want to talk about it because it was disrespectful.