Fog blanketed the ground, concealing the advancing army. Alexis stood in front of the gates of the Academy of Mage. She stood tall and radiated the power of her heritage. Her eyes were a deep blue, burning like cobalt flames. On her back perched two red and black wings. She stood with an army behind her, preparing to rid the world of one of two most powerful mages of the current century. She had a staff strapped to black cloak that sported her symbol, a half human and half demonic. Her fingers curled, tightly around the lock on the magically fortified gates and yanked hard, shattering it. She let it fall, thinking, satisfied, ‘It’s time you’ve paid for your crimes, Allen Quing.’
With that signal, the battle began. With a silent look to Izuzu, she motioned the fighters to follow on her march. She swung the iron gates open and roared, “For the Freedom of the Halflings!!!!!”
With eyes blazing she took to the air and swooped into the school. She took the route to the Headmaster’s office. She could hear the shouts of her comrades behind her as she skidded and turned left, her left hand pulling free her staff. She could feel her magic pushing, fighting to be unleashed.
As she reached the door to the headmaster’s office a gust of wind sent her flying back. Crashing to the ground, she saw Allen standing there. He held his own staff, his eyes a bright red. The look of hatred and greed in them disgusted her as he hissed, “I will gain my immortality!! All I need is you!”
Alexis stood up, her eyes flaming as she silently sealed the room from others, before she hissed, “Fat chance, Allen! I will beat you.”
He grinned, avariciously, “Your soul will become mine! I will have it!” With that he lunged, sending a wave of vines at her. She quickly dodged them and sent her own attack back.
The two continued this elegant dance of attacks back and forth, dodging and striking. The rhythm was set, neither of them really landing a good hit. Soon however things began to get heated. Alexis unleashed her power and the castle began to shake, with a lunge she attacked. The staff sliced Allen’s arm, leaving a large gash from his elbow to his wrist. With a roar of rage, his magic reacted, slamming into her head, sending her crashing to the floor once more. She laid there dazed, the blow knocking all the air out of her lungs.
As she struggled to breath, he took out a knife, driving it deep in her stomach. With a startled gasp of pain, she kicked him hard in the face, desperately to get away. Yanking the knife out, with a cry of pain, she tossed it away, lodging it into the cracked stone walls.
The two lunged at once, their magic finally fully unleashed. The pressure of the magic sent the castle crumbling.As they two fought the hallway began to crack and fall around them. The ground caught fire and the soldiers all stopped. They watched the fight, in awe. Soon however their courage came back and they fought once more. Swords and staffs clashed. The two paid no heed, continuing attacking and dodging.They were lost in their own struggle for power. Alexis hands gripped the red oak staff of Allen’s, tightly in her grasp. Her fingers dug into the wood as she yanked it out of his hands; causing two things to happen. Alexis tossed the staff behind her somewhere amongst the rubble of the now fallen castle. He stumbled toward her, causing her to yank him to her face by the neck of his cloak.
She grinned, as he tried to flee. Speaking viciously, her eyes burning with the flames of hatred and anger, “I wouldn’t try fleeing, or I will make my revenge all the more sweeter.”
She grinned, impishly at his terrified look, inwardly thinking, ‘Finally the battle is over.’ She gripped her staff and focused on his life source. With a painful scream, he slid to the floor, as she snuffed out the flames of his soul. He laid on the ground, lifeless. She felt the world spinning as she swayed, her fear growing as she whispered, “Forgive me, Mother, Father....you didn’t wish for a daughter who plotted revenge.”
The once proud castle now lay in shambles at her feet. The towers had crumbled, the walls lay in ruins. The shrubbery in the courtyard was burned and broken; nothing was left standing. Hot coals and ashes floated around on gentle tufts of wind. The walls were cracked, stray fires licked around their ruins. The Entrance Hall was now the only structure still standing, at least somewhat. It lay in ruins because of her and the clash between her and her enemy. She stared down at the once great mage, and let out a quiet sigh of remorse. Soon however, her remorse faded as she remembered what he had done... what he had done to her family. Anger washed over her in great waves, enveloping her entirely. She had nowhere to go.
She looked around, broken bodies of those who had fought with her and against her lay everywhere. Her eyes watched closely for something, anything. She could detect subtle signs of life amongst the fallen. She saw several struggling, their chests rising and falling. She looked for her staff. She spotting it several yards away, laying beside a fallen but still alive mage. Her mind finally taking in what she had done, she had finished off one of the people manipulating her.
As she moved towards it, she heard a familiar voice shout, “Alexis!” She ignored it in favor of picking up her staff.
As she knelt, she could see the radiant power just rolling off of it, her power. Her fingers absently traced the elegant runes engraved all along the smooth red body. As she picked it up, she felt comforted by having it close by, the instrument of her capability. She held it in my hands, lovingly, for a few moments before placing back in its rightful place. Strapping it to the back of her black cloak, She finally acknowledged her love, Izuzu.
“Yes?” she asked, her fingers brushed, trembling, against the forehead of a fallen Element Mage. His eyes were closed, his breathing come out in short gasps. She could tell that a rib was broken and had punctured one of his lungs.
Her hands began to a soft red as she closed her eyes. She felt doubts cloud her mind. 'What will I be able to make a live out of nothing? Will I be able to save the injured? Is Hope ok?' She thought almost losing control of the magic, which would kill the man. She could see what was wrong with him in her mind as her hands carefully probed and wandered his rib cage. She thought solely on repairing his ribs and lung. She blocked every thought, every emotion, every single distraction out of her mind and watched in her mind as it slowly began to slide back to its place. A gold light soon covered her mind and she knew he would be alright.
Izuzu rested her hands on Alexis's shoulders, her eyes bright with concern. Alexis smiled up at her, saying, “It’s finally over. Forgive me, Izuzu.” She fell sideways to the ground, the wound to the stomach finally taking over her.
As she fought between consciousness and darkness she could hear Izuzu scream, “Hurry up, Hope!! She’s relapsing!!”
Vaguely,she remembered how this all began, praying to whatever god out there that she would wake again.
‘Please, let me come back. I have to come back for her, my love.’ She thought as darkness took her away from the pain in her stomach that was spreading. She could feel the poison and the bad cells moving, and felt her heart give in.
End of chapter
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141,415 Literary Works • 674,394 Reviews
Hi! I'm terribly sorry I didn't come as I said I would earlier. I had a couple of weeks of no computer, and I can't review without a computer. D: Anyway, I'm here now, and that's all that matters!
I'll go ahead and give you a grammarcheck as promised.
Grammarcheck
Bold are corrections made within the text. Other formats (underline, italics, color) are explained after the quote!
Italicized: I've noticed already there's not much variety when starting sentences. Notice how many she-stoods you have alone! Besides that, each sentence starts with either "she" or "her," and that gets very repetitive. Try to work with some variety. One way to help this is to lay off the descriptions. I'll admit right now that I absolutely love how you described some of her aspects. Unfortunately, they're buried behind some of the annoying repetition.
In addition, so much description bogs down the beginning of your piece. It gets tiresome, and it's probably best, in this case, to start with fighting. Skip all this and get right into battle. That's much more interesting. Just a suggestion though!
Underlined: More repetition. This is one that stands out to me probably because Papa Hut was always quick to point it out to me. Anyway. Lots of of-thes, especially when they're in the same sentence. Try to shorten those sentences to get rid of the.
Red: The description was weird here. I still don't know what the symbol looks like. At this point though, it's probably not important to identify. Do that later when things slow down and we're introducing characters in a much quieter setting.
Orange: The "thinking, satisfied" was weird. Just choose one! I'd pick "thinking" since the dialogue after it should sound satisfied already.
Eek! It's not proper grammar to use all those exclamation points. Just one is necessary!
Italicized: So each sentence has to start with a subject followed by a verb. That's what consists of a standard English sentence, and it's how it should start every time. In this sentence, if we start with these transition phrases like "with eyes blazing," all you have to do is put a comma after it. That's one job the comma has! It separates phrases from the sentence itself. Take out the phrases, and the sentence should still have a subject and verb and the sentence should still make sense. So that's how that works!
Underlined: Each sentence starts with the same word in this paragraph. Variety! Switch up the sentences a bit!
Italicized: Just want to praise you for getting it right here! You have the comma properly after the phrase! In the previous sentence, you didn't. So be sure to plug that one in.
Underlined: Just one exclamation point! The words themselves plus the character should make the sentence as dramatic as you want it.
Italicized: That's a huge phrase. Make another sentence or rephrase this one. I had to read it twice to understand the sentence, which is never a good sign. D:
Italicized: You don't need a comma before most adverbs if at all. It's just describing the grin, so why break it off?
Italicized: Not sure if this is an appropriate word. From what you told me in the previous paragraph, it didn't sound elegant at all. Either choose a different word, just get rid of the word, or describe the battle beforehand to be more elegant. xD
Underlined: "However" is one of those transition words that automatically tell you it needs a comma. Just like the phrases I mentioned before, it should be comma'd out of the sentence. ;D
Red: A couple things here. First of all, the comma joined two independent sentences. That's a very common mistake, for some reason. xD Don't do it! Periods are your friends. Don't give commas the satisfaction. :[
The second thing is the comma I added in the sentence. Another common mistake is not knowing when to put a comma with those conjunction words like "and". Here's the trick: If there are complete sentences on both sides of the "and" (that is, a subject and verb on both sides), then you need a comma. In your case, you have "Alexis unleashed her power" and "the castle began to shake". Both are independent sentences with subjects and verbs in each. Therefore, you need that comma to separate them since you used "and"!
Orange: Two phrases here, and that just makes the sentence longer than it has to be. Shorten it by deleting one. Or just rewrite it to make it read more smoothly.
Green: Just like the orange. Two phrases. Choose one or rewrite! It gets longer and irritating to read, which isn't a good thing. D:
Italicized: XD Silly goose! "breathe" is the verb you're looking for. "Breath" is just a noun.
Underlined: So this is where grammar can get complicated, believe it or not. You have a phrase of him taking out a knife, yet in the same sentence, he's driving that knife into her stomach. Eek! Two completely different actions occurring at the same time. Best pick one and go with it. Two sentences, if you want. But not in the same one like this.
Red: Too obvious. Just delete it. Of course she wants to get away! You'd want to say something if she actually enjoyed it. xD But it's too obvious if she wants to get away. Just get rid of this phrase.
Orange: There are a lot of parts in this sentence. An in all honesty, you could get away with deleting two of them. If you just had "she tossed it away, lodging it into the cracked stone walls," it would make more sense and read much more easily. Try separating this into two different sentences instead. Or just use my suggestion. You won't have to copyright. ;D
Italicized: This is one of those obvious statements you could do without. Just delete it and continue with the fight.
Underlined: This is a common mistake that some people may even argue? But it's grammatically correct to put an apostrophe here. You correctly put an apostrophe-S at the end of Allen ("Allen's"), but because Alexis ends in an S, all you need is the apostrophe. That's also how you pronounce it to. xD It's weird!
Red: Now, there are a few ways of writing this. The first way is to just delete "causing two things to happen". Another way is to use a colon after that phrase. However, I don't think this is needed because the last sentence in this paragraph doesn't seem important enough to mention in a list of two things that happened. In fact, it's more of a cause-effect relationship between the two happenings. After the staff was tossed aside, she grabbed him by the collar. She didn't grab him by the collar because of yanking the staff from his hands. Maybe him falling into her arms due to her force in yanking the staff. Basically, just rewrite this whole bit.
----
I'm afraid I don't have the time to finish this. However, I did mention a few points that you can, hopefully, apply to the rest of your novel. If you have any questions or requests, don't hesitate to come find me.
Keep writing!
Jabber, the One and Only!
My point was too bring what starts to happen at the end but this isn't exactly what happens. I don't know how to explain it at all x.x I honestly don't know how to. Just suffice to say this isn't what its going to end like. I'll clear that up in the end....if you don't mind. Hope that doesn't give anything away x.x
Not bad... My thoughts going through:
"Fog blanketed the ground, concealing the advancing army." If they're concealed, how does she know they're there? Does she just know ahead of time that they're on their way, or are their shapes just partly obscured, and she can still kind of see them coming? Or is she a part of this army?
"On her back perched two red and black wings." Wings perching? Birds perch, but wings on their own do not... I don't think.
"strapped to black cloak that sported her symbol." A black cloak.
‘It’s time you’ve paid for your crimes, Allen Quing.’ -- It's time you pay for your crimes, Allen Quing.
"she skidded and turned left." Skidded? She's flying? What's skidding? Are her feet dragging along the floor, or does she push them against a wall to help her into the turn... Contrary to the physics present in most cartoons, you can't really skid in mid-air. xD
“I will gain my immortality!! All I need is you!” This makes it sound like he's the attacker, even though he should be on defense right now, correct? She's the one attacking, and while he can still be after her/power/immortality/whatever, I feel like he should be a little more off-guard than this...
'Alexis stood up, her eyes flaming as she silently sealed the room from others, before she hissed, “Fat chance, Allen! I will beat you.” '
First of all, at this point I'm not entirely sure about your setting, but the phrase 'Fat chance' seems kind of out of place.
Second, she's got an army behind her. I know she probably wants to face him alone and battle for glory and honor and all that, but to actually seal the doors... What's her army doing right now? Looting the place? Battling thugs? If this is a school, where are the students and are they caught up in this fight? If they are, do all of them deserve to be? Are some of them innocent? What's going on outside this room? Anyway, I think it'd be more believable if he sealed the door.
Dialogue feels a bit stiff, strange...
"The staff sliced Allen’s arm." How? Is there a blade set into its surface? A sharp, jagged edge? Or is it one big splinter?
"With a startled gasp of pain..."
'Oh, my! I've just been gutted! I'm startled! And I'm going to keep fighting as if it has no effect on me whatsoever, even though blood is gushing out of my body and my head is starting to spin...'
"The ground caught fire and the soldiers all stopped. They watched the fight, in awe." I thought the soldiers were all sealed out. And yes, the walls are crumbling, but did that break the seal? Also, WHO ARE ALEXIS'S SOLDIERS FIGHTING? I think this needs to be more clear.
When she kills him, she does this mood swing thing where at first she's overjoyed to be killing him, and then all of a sudden, snap-of-the-fingers, she's sorry and guilty and dying all out of the blue. And then later she gets angry again.
"The Entrance Hall was now the only structure still standing, at least somewhat. It lay in ruins because of her and the clash between her and her enemy" Wouldn't this be the epicenter of the damage, meaning it would be the one thing that's absolutely NOT left standing?
Oh! o.O Didn't realize Izuzu was a girl.
I would've thought the stomach wound would bring her down a lot quicker... Unless she did something magicky to stop it. Speaking of, why didn't she heal herself first instead of the guy with the punctured lung?
For a prologue, this has a LOT of action, and allusions to things that have already happened. It feels more like the end of a story than the start. Also, I get that you were trying to be dramatic... But I think you took it a little too far, to the point where I stopped believing it because you were trying to make every little detail so important and significant. You know what I mean? Crumbling castles, speaking to deceased parents, healing a man and drifting toward death as the one she loves stands over her... It all just feels like a little.... much. *shrugs*
Anyway, you definitely succeeded in gripping me, and making me wonder about the story... It just feels more like an ending than a beginning, in my opinion.
@Tenyo,
Yes I noticed that as well when I went through it; I just don't have enough time to fix it as it is..with school coming to a close. Am tired and writing is just not in me right now lol. I have a debate and stuff to do so I'll try and do it near the end of the year if I can get some time to relax ^^ Thanks for the reviews
Hey Kana, happy review day! Sorry it took so long to get round to this.
Let's see what chapter one holds.
First thing I'll say is that this is an awesome prologue! I was gripped from beginning to end, and it certainly gives your novel a kick start. The action scene is tense, the characters are interesting, and you've done a really good job in giving just enough information about this world you've created without revealing too much.
I'd suggest you run through and check for repeated words, that's the main thing that stood out. In several places you've repeated nouns/verbs a sentence or paragraph apart. It's one of those thing that you as the writer don't notice during its construction, but as a reader it stands out. If you need help as a friend to run through it to check first, but it's best if you get into the habit of searching and changing them yourself.
This same principle also applies when not starting too many sentences or clauses with the same word, it stands out a lot.
As for a minor nitpick; don't overuse punctiation, (as in if I were to do this!!!!) It gets your point across, but it looks ugly on the page.
This is a solid start
Thanks I don't know if I just misspelled that hahaha. I'll fix it XD Thanks for the review happy You liked it ^^
This is absolutely amazing! One thing though:
I don't know whether you wrote it like this because of where you come from haha, but to me this sounds better as:
"She quickly side stepped them and sent her own attack back."
Might just be me though (: Anyway I am planning on reading the other chapters now! great work!
Thanks for the review you guys!!! And Freewritersavvy I will be revising and tweaking this to be more grabbing once I have completed revising the rest of the chapters XD. Good luck and I shall look forward to reading some of your own works XD.
Great job! I am usually not a fan of fantasy 'magic' stories but I found this interesting. The only thing I would do is make the beginning a little more grabbing like perhaps starting with the shattering gate? Just a thought anyway, sounds like a good story keep it up!
Hello my friend! I dont like to mess around so im going to get right to it.
youre a great writer.
Overall:
Very captivating. It drew me in and the figurative language and suspense kept me reading. Im not a big fantasy-fiction fan but i definitly enjoyed reading this.
im kind of tired but i didnt see any gramatical errors.
keep writing, i'll finish the stories (through 7) tomorrow because its 10:30 at night here and i have to go to school tomorrow.
keep writing, i hope your day goes well tomorrow
Rae <3
Wow that is really awesome work
With the second one, lol, I'd cut it down a bit, it gets almost too long. But other than that it's good. You're already getting better with detail! =]
Thanks for the reviews guys I just need to take a break from writing this week and focus on my essays for history so I'll store the corrections till then. Good luck to you guys.
I recognize this! =] Sorry I couldn't help more. Fantasy is not my area of expertise. But anyway, I think the person that commented before me had a lot of valid points. You want the plot itself to really grab people right from the very beginning. And you still need more emotion. Physical and mental. The MC should develop more as well, unless that was left to the first chapter, because some pieces work that way. But overall I think it's nice you just need to develop a few things a little further. You should look around at different books and experiment with different writing styles. Maybe write a few pieces that focus only on emotions, and another that focuses only on the physical aspects, another with text, and then gradually combine them all. But definitely read around, try to find a style that betters your writing. Luck!
Hello, I haven't been on here in months, but I'm back!
Alright, let's get started...
General Impression
You have a nice, solid beginning; I didn't find anything seriously wrong with it. However, it could use some spicing up. Right now, we know that a big battle has happened and your main character is calmly reminiscing and assessing the damage around her. There isn't a lot of tension or urgency that hooks me and draws me into the story. It feels like I already know the ending of the story. The MC defeats her enemies and everyone is happy again. You should probably start off with a scene that creates urgency and leaves the reader worrying about the main character. You want to leave people wondering what's going to happen next.
Your grammar and spelling was amazingly wonderful, so no complaints there.
Nit-picky Things
"Slid" should be "slide".
The "now" is a little awkward in there. Try: A gold light soon covered my mind and I knew he would be alright.
Other than the things I mentioned, this was a nice prologue. All I would suggest you do is just spice it up a little bit; add some suspense.
Hope this helped!
- Jellybean