Warning: This work has been rated 16+.
It all started when I was seven years old and my brother was nine years old. Our parents had just died in a car wreck and my brother and I have been living off the street for about four months now. Well my brother and I really are special little kids because we were born with what are called spirit hearts. So we have more than one heart, I have three spirit hearts and my brother has one called an ultimatum heart. With my brother’s ultimatum heart he can copy anyone’s spirit heart and everything about them. Well we both also have our parents’ wind hearts.
Many people have come to kill us since we are considered weak with our parents dead. All that have come for us never went home again because brother and I made a promise to protect each other no matter who came after us. After all the people that came to kill us I was able to open one of my spirt hearts to the point that with my wind magic I could listen to what people were thinking through their breathing and muscles. It became funny to us how many different people came to kill us but we never even thought that someone would defy orders to protect two little kids, we never thought someone like her would come after us.
She showed up, just like all the others, in the dead of the stormy night but it had felt different. I don’t know how else to say it but she was different. When she came up to us, just like always, my bother moved in between me and the girl that has come to fill in another grave. Then, the last thing anyone could ever have thought would happen, out of nowhere she fell to the ground crying. You all know how over protective an older sibling can be, well that was how my brother was when I ran past him and went up to her. He reached for me yelling at me to stay away from her but she really was different form the rest. I don't know how I could tell that she would not hurt us, it was like a voice in my head telling me it was okay.
That was when she told me that she couldn't kill two little kids. She had decided that we would go back with her to her family for a pardon. So we could live with her and be safe, we could learn to master a fire heart and be just like her. My brother didn't trust her because just like your parents tell you as kids, don’t go to places you don’t know with someone you don’t know. Well that is just what we did, I had to convince my brother to trust her and go with me instead of living off the streets.
Well, in the end my brother wasn't happy about it but I told him I was going with or without him. Finally, we made it back to her house and both my brother and I were stunned to see how big the estate was but then she told us that it had to be large because it houses every member of the family as well as the branch families. So the girl left us with some of the maids in order to tell her grandfather what had happened and why she made the choice that she made. Needless to say, the maids never had to deal with two dangerous boy seeing that we were able to give them the slip in a place we know nothing about. The bad thing was that the room we slipped into was also the family’s meeting room and she was in there explaining what had happened to her Grandfather.
Her Grandfather was not too happy about us barging in on the meeting. At first he started to attack us because he still did not know who we were but when my brother stepped in front of me, he copied his fire heart. Before he could even attack us my brother had put a barrier around us and I already started my wind magic ready to turn the barrier into a weapon. I could tell how surprised he was at how fast we turned his attack back at him, it might have ended there with someone dead if the girl’s mother had not walked in and said that she would take us as her kids.
So, that was how my brother and my lives really started. For the next four years we have trained to be able to work with fire without help. My brother was a natural at it but it took me a lot longer to fully control. By the time I was eight I had full control over the fire heart and I became the family’s trainer and tester. It was fun for me being eight years old and I got to test the families that wanted to join us as well as train them to be better. Many people did not like the fact that my brother and I had come so far from being picked up off the street.
All in all, it was funny how fast my brother and I built up reputations with other families. I never unlocked the powers of my third spirit heart, at least at that time. With my position as the tester I got to meet many different people and I made a lot of enemies in the meantime. It was hard for people to join the family when they had to fight me to get in. I became untouchable in a fight due to my constant training, but I had to come up with a way to take it easy for others to join the family. So I decided to not hold back in a fight and to make my decision on how long they could survive my attacks. The hardest part was that I was a master in both wind and fire magic. I even worked with my newest ability to the point that I can understand someone’s feelings without even trying and I could fully read someone’s mind if I focused on them.
It was all fun and games and life as normal for us until the day my heart died.
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125,020 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Heyo Shadow, Flite here for a review.
I noticed that you have a lot of telling in this chapter, in a way it is all telling and no showing. When I say telling I mean that you tend to repeat your sentence structures and their length. There is a very flat and mechanical voice here due to the lack of description in here which also fails to invoke emotions. A good story is never just telling or showing but a well-balanced combination of two. To show you what I mean, I'll just take the first paragraph as an example.
That starting paragraph could be improved, especially with that first sentence. You want to reel the readers in, and that sentence screams info-dumping and possibly a long, dreary tale. Point being, it's mundane and cliche. Second sentence follows the same voice, you could combine those two and show us, incorporate those details into the setting and actions. Tell us how rough the streets were and what sort of trouble they ran into. On this note, wouldn't it be more realistic for the kids to be taken into foster care or at least care of some sort. What kind of country are they living in that allows kids to live on streets after a car accident? What about their relatives. Now, see the part I highlighted in green. That's massive info dumping and telling, you told us who these kids were but how about showing us their powers instead? Also, what do you by spirit hearts, wind hearts? You don't have to go full on explanation, just a brief sentence or two will do the trick for you.
You also tend to start your sentences with pronouns or conjunctions, try and vary your starting and structure a bit. Overtime, it becomes monotonous and boring to read. Imagine someone speaking at the same pitch, writing is like speaking in a way. You have to have your rise and falls. Words like, makes this sound more like a school essay than a story.
When you mentioned the girl, I think you should have expanded on her a bit more and ease her introduction a bit. It was a bit sudden and I had trouble accepting that just because she couldn't kill that made her different from the rest. Once again, this is why description could come into use. Learn to breath life into your descriptions. When your protagonist ran over to protect her I found that slightly unrealistic too, despite the motherly/fatherly instinct I would think that he would be more cautious after all those days of living on the streets. And ironically enough, he would choose a stranger over his brother?
Then the same show and tell applies for the estate, I didn't feel anything even though there should be because that was a pretty big confrontation but everything was smoothed over quickly. Narrating as if they were facts, use those chances to develop your characters because right now I can't relate to your characters at all. I can't see or feel their emotions, I don't know much about their history so it's like grasping at air.
The ending I felt was also rushed, so many things happened and there were no explanations. It was like a summary for the later chapters than anything else. Remember that you don't need to tell us absolutely everything, I would really like to know what happened in those four years that made the protagonist into a master and wind and fire magic. What does the powers do, etc.
You've got a good idea here, one that's packed with potential but you just need some time to get on track with it. If you've got any questions, please feel free to ask me.
-Flite
Thanks for the great review. There is a lot of work that I knew i would have to do because I already wrote more to the story. I knew I needed to work on the characters more but I never thought of just using the back story to explain the kids choices more. Thanks again and i will put up the new one once I finish fixing it.
This story looks interesting and would leave a good number of people wanting for more.
I do like the angle of this story being from a couple children with very little knowledge of the world and leaving things to being told from one of the brothers.
A see a couple of problems with grammar mostly, you could need to place a couple of commas here and there to help break the sentences into being more concise and easier to read.
Also, there is a problem with the pacing. There are places in the story where it seems to slow down, but then it speeds up abruptly and my pacing of the story gets lost to me. (This is mostly a personal problem, or I am not experienced enough with this kind of writing style)
Anyways, the story appears compelling to me and I look forward to your next works.
I hope you enjoy your stay here and keep up your works.
Thanks this one was hard for me to keep the pace constant but thanks for saying that. I did not notice how much the pace jumps at times.
This is a really good story, definitely unique way of magic. I really look forward to it and would love to know when you publish the next chapter. I noticed a couple typos here and there, but minor ones that don't make it hard to understand. A few words I would have chosen different for a different flow, but every has there own writing style. Other than that I thought it was really good though.
Welcome to YWS by the way, since you joined in the last couple hours.
Thank you, it is one of my older ones so still need to do more editing to the rest of it as well.