A big market square opened in front of them, brimming with people. Stands advertising fruit, vegetables, meat, and clothes laced its edges. Citizens ran by to get their daily needs. The wonderful sounds of laugher and joy from both young and old. The unique scent she had once been so familiar with filled her nose. She realized it had been too long since her last time in Asgard.
‘’May I take your horse while you stay in the city?’’ a stableboy asked, coming out of nowhere.
Lea gave a sign with her hand to come closer, and leaned over to whisper something in his ear. From her hand, she gave him a coin of silver, dipped in gold. It symbolized five silver coins, or a half-gold coin. They dismounted the horse, and the boy spoke again, ‘’Ah, I see. I will do as you wish.’’ He accepted the coin and led the horse away.
She turned against Jacob. ‘’Look, I know you are very shocked about everything, which has happened lately, but I have to go for an errand.’’
‘’Wait, are you going already? Where will I go?’’ He asked her, raising his hands as if he was completely helpless.
‘’Hm, take these and go buy some equipment.’’ Lea said and handed over some coins of both silver and gold. ‘’Look for an inn called The Wild Dragon and I’ll meet you there.’’
He didn’t really say anything, just took the coins she gave him. He looks helpless.
Her eyes switched from Jacob to the sky, taking a glance at the sun. It stood high now, reminding her what time of the day it was. She looked at Jacob again.
‘’Okay… I need to go now, so I’ll meet you at the inn?’’ Lea asked him, trying to hide her impatience.
‘’Yes, I think so.’’ Henry nodded, and seemed to understand.
Now as we’re done with that part, there is room for some family time.
She turned around from Jacob, leaving him all alone, and started walking the path. Daub and wattle covered numberless of old houses. Most of them had a squared shape, but some more rectangular. They we're almost as if a big wall had been created, and then seperated into many pieces, seeing as the houses had no space between them. The further into the city they came, daub and wattle turned into stone, and stone turned into dressed stone.
The city was populous, one thing for sure. In fact, one of the biggest cities in the whole realm of Luxterria, and the greatest one in the whole west. She soon met another gate, with the same defence as earlier: Two guards by the gate and two archers on the parapet.
The inner gate to the castle.
Asgard consisted of two main parts: First, the city itself, which had taverns, inns, the market square, and all kinds of shops. Every citizen which did not have a family of high status lived in that region.
The second part had the castle (not too big, but big enough to be called one), where all those of noble birth lived during they stay. For a long time, the kings and queens of the west had used it as their main residence. Someone had chosen Kings Hill, though it is only a castle, and not a city.
When she arrived at the gate, the guard to her right spoke, ‘’only those of noble birth or people at court can pass this gate, woman.’’
These guards think they know everything.
She drew of her hood, revealing her identity. ‘’I suggest you to let me through those gates immediately; otherwise you’ll regret you wouldn’t.’’
He who had talked to her started blushing. ‘’Pardon me, I had no idea.’’ The man gave sign to open the gates, and she went inside.
A bright and colourful garden met her. The moment she entered, she could smell the fragrant blooms planted in dark soil. On a small hill, someone had built the castle. There are many tales on who actually built the castle.
Someone claim it was built by those of Grimtol Hold, known for being the experts on stonecutting. They even live inside the mountain. Other’s like to believe the people from Burmstone built it, but Asgard is definitely older than those stones.
The moment she was going to the castle, a servant came by to water the plants and keep it perfect and trimmed.
‘’Pardon me, I wonder if you have seen the King?’’ Lea asked one of the servants in the garden.
The servant turned around, surprised to see her. ‘’Oh, the King?’’ She looked towards the sun, and thought for a while. ‘’I am not sure. Perhaps you could check the seaside?’’
Seaside? It’s only a lake... I guess you could call it that as well.
‘’All right, thank you for your help.’’ She said with a smile on her lips, giving away a short nod.
‘’You are mostly welcome!’’ The servant replied.
Eleanor started walking again towards the lakeside. Asgard wasn’t really any harbour city, despite the fact that it had a small one. Many chose to ride or walk through the woods instead of taking a boat or a ship into the city. The lake was of course more comfortable, but comfort has its price.
Voices filled her ears. It had been a long time now, since their last meeting. Perhaps a year? A servant stood by a green and thick hedge, ready to bring whatever the King and Queen wanted.
‘’You will have to wait here, so I can tell the King and Queen of your arrival.’’ The girl said and turned around to tell the royals.
‘’You have a visitor, your Grace,’’ Lea heard from the servant.
‘’Oh, bring him in,’’ the king said.
She walked up the steps of grey stone, and revealed herself.
‘’Eleanor!’’ her mother called, carrying a little smile. Lea did not smile back, and her smile faded.
If they only knew...
Her father was more worried than her mother. ''Did you travel all alone?'' he almost shouted at her in worry.
‘’Father, Mother,’’ she spoke with a darkened voice, looking at each of them. ‘’I bring dark words from Kings Hill.’’
One thing, don't worry about the opposite quotation marks(?). I know they are wrong, but it's right in my document!
End of chapter
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141,249 Literary Works • 674,330 Reviews
Heya, Zontafer! Go Blue!
How can I review now? Laure covered everything I wanted to say, and more.
The exposition's fleshing out beautifully. Setting, solid. Characters, just so. With typical fantasy, there's little need to develop the characters' personalities. They're more so defined by their actions. Christopher Paolini's Eragon was a cardboard cutout until the last book, where to overcome an obstacle, he wrapped his personality into a name. So I trust you to develop them later.
And I can't stop admiring the pacing. It's so extraordinarily well-measured. You took care to fuse scene with narrative and to balance out dialogue with narration, while isolating the dialogue. The last is necessary to engage the reader. Did I mention the flow? Everything flows so naturally, especially the dialogue; it's well-varied in addition to the dialogue tags.
I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I just love, love, love the title. It's unique in a way that most speculative fiction titles aren't. Does this story include dragons? Argh, I can't wait!
This kind of rings like The Fellowship of the Ring. It kicked off with the hobbits visiting The Prancing Pony inn in Bree, and "Asgard" sounds like "Isengard." As a LOTR fan, I'm excited as to where this will go, and how many other subtle references you'll insert. Awesomeness.
Onto the nitpicks!
This you composed in cinematic storytelling. The result—a collapse in perspective. It's subtle, but not enough to glide past my eye. It sounds like a modern advertisement advertising nothing ...
I'm being brutal here. Leave it or keep it, I suppose; I doubt that others will take notice. My main qualm is the second prepositional phrase. It's being overworked, trying to connect clauses that don't correlate: "Stands formed the square, with citizens running by." Your insertion of "the square" also established redundancy. It was used in the previous sentence. My suggestion: "A big market square opened in front of them, brimming with people. Stands advertising fruit, vegetables, meat, and clothes laced its edges" or something vaguely along those lines.
"Was" plays an ambiguous predicate. This is also a great opportunity to insert description: "Laughter and joy choked the air,". That was a lame example, but you get the gist.
Dialogue tags shouldn't be capitalized. They're part of the sentence. The only exception is if they begin with proper nouns.
I might as well mention the apostrophes that're serving as quotation marks. It's fine if you use them. Actually, more than fine. They're neat. But stay consistent; I spotted genuine quotation marks: ‘’Pardon me, I wonder if you have seen the King?’’ Sure, they're composed of apostrophes as well, but they don't match up. The Control+F function is handy in times like this.
This sounds a little redundant. I think you can omit the introductory phrase.
I'm not certain what's supposed to be conveyed here. Do you mean "covered numerous old houses"? (I cut out "built a long time ago" because the word "old" already implies that.)
"First" doesn't need to be capitalized, as it kicks off a dependent clause, not an independent clause.
"Of" should be "off."
Here again you shifted perspective. Now the narrator's directly addressing the reader. It strikes me as a little abrupt. I'd recommend inserting a transition to ease us in there.
Accidently inserted a period here.
I know I nitpicked this pretty hard, but wow, this blew me away. My eyes were glued to the screen. "Fantastic job" doesn't quite cover it.
Keep up the great work! Looking forward to more!
Haha, thank you for review and your kind words! ^^
Well, if you read the prologue you will get an answer to one of your questions.
And trust me, you're not being brutal at all. If you're not honest, this doesn't help me anything at all.
Thanks again!
- Zontafer
No problem!
And I read the prologue, and I was blown away. God, I can't wait to see where this is going! Amazingness.
Hi! Happy Review Day! Just to warn you, I haven't read the other chapters. I know, it's lame. This is my favorite thing that I have reviewed today. It is easy to read and fun to try to guess what will happen next!
Since you got such a long review from Laure, I'll try to just pull out some things I didn't notice in her review. There were three little redundancy issues. Once, you said "From her HAND, she HANDed over a coin of silver," It just seems like you repeated yourself. Then you said, "The inner gate to the castle, she thought" The first part was in italics which means that she is thinking it, right? So you don't need "she thought". And lastly, "‘’Father, Mother,’’ she spoke with a DARKened voice, looking at each of them. ‘’I bring DARK words from Kings Hill.’’ Again, you used the word "dark" twice.
Once or twice you switched from past to present tense. I would just read through it again slowly to find those.
There were just two more weird things. The servant said, "mostly welcome." The normal phrase is "most welcome." And then, you said something like "On the hill, someone built the castle". It flows better to say "Someone built the castle on the hill."
Anywho, that's all I have! I might go check if you have anything else I can review!
Thanks for your kind words! ^^
The 'on the hill' thing was a sentence I had war with Microsoft Office Spellchecker >_>
Thanks again!
- Zontafer
Laure here for a review! So, I have read all your previous chapters but didn't review them because they already had good reviews. As to why no one is reviewing this one,I don't know. So, I'm going to point out the technical things first. Then comment on the style, content and characters and then I'm going to give you an overall summary. o.o Also, Lea is the King's daughter!? *dies* I might alter her drawing a bit then. xP
So, I'm going to start right off with the technical things about the plot. First of all was when Lea asked Jacob to meet her at the inn. It is very unlikely that Jacob will be able to find an inn without any sort of description in a strange city. I also noticed the use of Henry during one sentence, I know that Jacob's technically Henry. But to us or to Lea, since this is written in her POV, Jacob is still Jacob. Also, you need to fill up the logic holes. Because I doubt Jacob would be able to find an inn in a strange place with absolutely no description about what it looks like or where it is. So, Lea could have told Jacob to wait for her in another distinguishable place and you can use this opportunity to describe Asgard. The one thing that fantasy author can sometimes omit is the description of their surroundings, which is essential for creating the mood, atmosphere. The same with Lea, as she walked to the castle. Describe what was around her, the architectural style, the clothing of the people, the daily activities.
Secondly, the servant. How would a simple servant, whom was keeping maintance for the garden. (Also, keeping the leaves shiny and new doesn't sound quite realistic for a living plant. xP, is like she's caring for a plastic plant. So maybe true, the servant was trimming the leaves, or she was pruning the leaves or something.) I doubt the servant would know where the king is, I mean the servant can probably direct Lea to someone of higher nobility. Which raises another question, if Lea is the King's daughter. Shouldn't she know whom to ask for this kind of thing? Then again, on the way to the lakeside. Describe the castle, and what's in it. Just two sentences or three will be enough to create a picture.
The meeting.
'The man said,' That man is the king right? So why not use the king. Then, there was the reaction of her parents. Shouldn't her mother at least express some kind of worry, what about her father? The whole greeting -my-daughter-whom-has-been-away-for-one-year seemed really short to me, I think you can expand it. And show us Lea's charcters or a small back story as to why if she went away. Since I'm on characterization, I will point this out as well. I noticed in all your chapter, you have a tendency to tell a lot of things and not showing. You also tend to gloss over details and emotions, so what we end up is this really light understanding on our character. Characterization is when you reveal a character's inner thoughts, motives, personality and action. I don't notice much here. Except a simple sentence or two on what Lea is feeling. I will give you a tip, you can achieve characterization by making good use of dialogue. Their tone of voice, how they act, where there eyes look, their posture can suggests subtle hints to their personality. Another, which is a bit tricky. Is adding small snaps of stream-of-consciousness. But because this is a third person POV, it is harder. The same thing for your world-building skills, you state a sentence or two about the city and then move on. So we only get a scratch of what's going on.
*cracks shoulders* Ok, I'm going to shut up soon, don't worry. xD.
Thirdly, your word choices. I know you are not of English background and nor am I, so I won't nitpick much. In fact, I will only use one example.
''Eleanor!' her mother called, carrying a big smile. Called, I'm sure her mother is much more excited than that. Once again, you could show us how excited or happy she is. Like maybe, her eyes lit up or crinkles formed around her eyes as she smiled or beamed motherly. Also, she's carrying a smile. On where? On her face, so don't forget that. Though, carrying a smile in one's arms is quite amusing. xD.
Ok, so. That was long and I'm sorry if I spammed this review with my lectures. So, now I can say what I liked about this chapter! One of the things I like about this chapter, is that you seem to know exactly where you are going. The story is moving forwards in a steady pace with plenty of action so the readers don't get bored. I know you can us imagery because you've written some good ones in your previous chapters. The general pacing was good, but you can expand in some places and do not gloss over the details! Also, build up your characters! If you want, I can help you with it. I'm coming to like Lea as a charcter because she's independent and Intelligent.
Keep on going with this, Zont!!
-Laure
OMG LAURE YOU'RE SO AWESOME!!!
This _really_ helped me _a whole lot_!
It wasn't spam at all!
The inn thing is something he will ask for in the next chapter, and I'll point it out.
I totally agree with you that I can expand this chapter with more description of Asgard.
About the last sentences - Well, I tried to leave a little 'cliff-hanger' at the end, instead of adding so many sentences. I do agree with you that I can put a little more dialogue from her mother and father before she says anything.
There was another thing I was supposed to say, but I forgot it.
Also, it would be so awesome if you send me a short pm about building up characters!
Thanks a lot again!!
- Zontafer
sent* e.e
Awesome! Glad you liked it! ^^ Sure, I will send you a PM after I reach out on all of my grape vines.