Zoltar woke to the sound of snarls all around him. As he slowly opened his eyes, hideous, horned snouts focused into his vision. His heart nearly stopped upon seeing the sight. A large frill splayed out from the dragons’ heads, with a silver horn curving from the middle of their forehead and wickedly sharp teeth framed their beak like jaws, but it was their glowing red eyes that sent fear scuttling down his spiny back.
Memories of the previous day flashed before Zoltar's eyes, the Exltron's massive blood stained tail spearing down onto Mowzan's chest, its crazed red eyes ravenous for dragon blood. Zoltar swallowed the lump building up in his throat. He could have maybe saved Mowzan's life if he'd fought to protect him against the Exltron. But instead he had ran and survived as a cowered. If he didn't fight these howler dragons he would just be being a cowered again and would be proving to Hisster that he wasn't worthy of being a soldier. He wasn’t sure whether he could try to fight these howler dragons though. Each of them was his size and there where easily ten of them around him.
'Scorpus would want you to fight,' a small voice whispered inside his head. A spark of confidence lit inside Zoltar urging him on, 'It's time to stop being such a coward and to use the training Scorpus as taught you. You may not be like the other shadow talons, but you are still a dragon and these are just pitiful little lizards. Fight them.'
Zoltar snorted a cloud of black smoke, his amethyst eyes gleaming through the dark plume. He gave a low, threatening growl and pawed the ground tossing up ash and stones into the dragons behind him. The howler dragons let out a yelp of surprise as with a roar he charged into the black creatures, butting them out the way with his long horns. Zoltar thrust out his wings, flinging yowling reptiles through the air and into other howler dragons. Clouds of dark dust swirled through the air as Zoltar fought the howler dragons.
One large dragon sank his teeth into the middle of Zoltar’s tail. Zoltar bellowed in pain and whipped his tail violently, dislodging the creature. Another howler dragon leapt onto Zoltar’s back, digging its claws into Zoltar’s scales. Twisted his neck round, Zoltar seized the wretched reptile and tossed it across the grey plain, straight into Hisster, who had just walked out of another gapping tunnel.
“Zoltar! What are you doing?” Hisster thundered, picking up the howler dragon Zoltar had thrown. Zoltar and all the howler dragons stopped fighting to stare at Hisster.
“We’re being attacked, aren’t we?” Zoltar asked, staring at Hisster like he'd gone mad.
“No, you pin head!” Hisster yelled, marching up to Zoltar. "They thought we were intruders. I talked to them when I woke up. They were watching you to make sure nothing attacked you. They insisted on it,” Hisster explained calmly, although in his eyes he looked like he wanted to strangle Zoltar.
“Oh. Sorry!” Zoltar apologized to howler dragons sprawled around him. There was a wave of low hisses and snarls from the howler dragons, but none that Zoltar could hear properly.
The big howler dragon that had climbed onto Zoltar’s back scowled at him and whispered something to Hisster. Hisster nodded and whispered something back.
Zoltar only caught a few words like "new...just died...will listen...see chief". The rest was blown away by a sudden gust of wind sweeping over the desolate waste land.
Hisster motioned for Zoltar to follow him as he padded towards a hill with a gaping hole gouged out of the side. Zoltar tailed Hisster silently, his nerves still pumped with adrenalin.
'Nothing I do for this reptile is good enough. Honestly, how was I supposed to know that the howler dragons weren't attacking? I mean I appreciate the fact that he got the howler dragons to watch over me, but he is still treating me like I am defenceless. I may no have the acid fangs that all the other shadow talons have, but I can still look after my self. I'm not a small dragonet anymore.' Zoltar thought bitterly to himself as he walked down the tunnel after Hisster. His tail was burning and the scratches he had received were starting to sting as he walked.
It was dark inside that passage and full of ash and the smell of death. If it wasn’t for Zoltar’s nocturnal vision he wouldn’t have been able to see his paw in front of his face down here. He could hear the pack of howler dragons trailing them, their snarls and growls echoing off the burrows walls.
They finely reached a room after a few prolonging minoutes. It was small and lit by a few fire stones, which glowed dimly in the dark like red dragon eyes. There was no furnishings in the room, not even a bed. As Zoltar slowly scanned the area his eyes caught on a huge, dark figure standing in the corner.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,007 Literary Works • 672,816 Reviews
Hello again!
After reading this chapter, I'm kind of going back on my previous thought that chapter 3 was mostly unnecessary and you could cut large parts of it out. I still think you could cut parts of it out, and now I definitely think it should be combined with this chapter. These chapters have been shorter than the first two, and I think it would be better to keep things consistent. Obviously all of your chapters don't need to be the same length, but it would be good to establish a general feel for how long chapters will be so the reader knows what to expect. There will likely always be exceptions, and that's fine, as long as you're generally consistent everywhere else.
I personally don't care for sentences like the underlined one. To me, it makes it sound like you're setting up what's going to happen or you're preparing us for what's going to happen before it happens. I would rather see what happens and then see the reaction. So here, it would be something like: "As he slowly opened his eyes, hideous, horned snouts focused into his vision. His heart nearly stopped upon seeing the sight."
Who is Mowzan? I don't remember him being attacked...
This paragraph seemed to have two distinct thoughts. First he's remembering what happened yesterday and then he's wondering if he should try to fight the howler dragons. To me, these two thoughts don't connect. The bit about remembering what happened yesterday felt slightly out of place to me. He just saw the howler dragons and was thinking about his fear and then we go off on what happened yesterday, and then we come back. I'd rather stay with the howler dragons. I would also like his thoughts on whether or not he should fight them expanded a bit. Are there any other arguments for or against fighting? What way is he leaning? (I know you do a little more on this subject in the next paragraph, but I'd still like a bit more here).
I would do the little voice in his head in italics. I mentioned this in a previous chapter so I won't go into that again
[quot]
A spark of confidence lit inside Zoltar urging him on,[/quote]
You're doing a nice job of building the tension here. I feel a fight coming and that's exciting! My only minor qualm is while he's thinking all of this through, what are the shadow dragons doing? He woke up and they were sort of looming over him and he was scared, so what are they doing now?
Where was Hisster when all of this started? Why didn't he step in sooner or speak to Zoltar when Zoltar woke up?
They silently walked for hours? I know it only seems like it was this way, but how was this time passed?
And another cliff-hanger
I really like this brewing subplot with the relationship between Zoltar and Hisster. I think their dynamic is really interesting and Zoltar's need to impress but ultimately feeling like he'll never measure up is great. It adds a really interesting layer to each of their characters and there are so many interesting and exciting plot elements that could come from that (like Zoltar attacking when he really didn't need to :p).
Overall, nice chapter. Looking forward to continuing on! Let me know if you have any questions or if anything I said was confusing!
Thank you for another review. I will be sure to go back and fix the problems. My style in the beginning was to make the chapters relatively short so that readers would find it easer to get into the story. Then later on they would start to get longer. Thanks again.
P.s Mowzan is the replacement name for Shriken since you pointed out that Scorpus and Shriken's names were to similar.
Perfect!
Hello felistia, here I am on a roll trying to get in a review of your next chapter. I see that most of the reviewers here have written you pretty short reviews, so I'm here to try and top that off with number 7. Anyways, let's get into it, shall we?
I loved that we had an internal conflict with Zoltar and himself, like when deciding if he was going to fight the battle that he thought he wouldn't win. And bringing up Scorpus was a genius idea in his inner dialogue, because it makes it way more apparent that he actually quite really respected and obeyed his true master. You have to keep in mind, that because Scropus died in the prologue, the readers never really got a chance to actually see Zoltar's and Scorpus's relationship that much, and this is getting a gist of it, even though it's still described as a generic situation.
Anyways, on that note, since we are on Chapter 4, I was thinking of suggesting that you do a couple of flashbacks when you actually go back and edit this, whenever that maybe. It just adds the past flavour into Zoltar's life, and shows us the readers that he didn't forget what happened to him, because based on what I see right, I may amusingly conclude that Zoltar has like a short-term memory loss or something like that xD (perhaps an after-death sympton of some sort.)
Now, here's where I'll go into more detail:
For a second, I though that you meant Hisster right there, and I was a big confused, and throughout the whole chapter, you put in the hiss actually several times, which got me confused. Why don't you just leave it as "snarl"?
But other than that, this is a great type of sentence to jump back into another chapter. Action and suspense right since the beginning.
The flow of this sentence seems a bit off, and you do know, that although I do adore most of your description, this one just didn't make sense, because it felt like it was rushed. I would suggest exercising the use of commas here.
I just wanted to backtrack here a little bit, I think that I already understand that Zoltar is surrounded by a circle of monsters. You have repeated this in three sentence in only the first paragraph, so I would cut two out and go with one, so that the reader doesn't get bored of hearing the same thing over and over again.
I would prefer to maybe include ellipsis here in between the words that Zoltar catches, so that it just seems less chopped by the commas.
I think that this is quite obvious, since you practically said so from Chapter 1 that Zoltar has no say in the authority over him. I just don't understand why you're reinforcing this idea again, especially since Hisster was actually trying to take care of Zoltar by protecting his physical body. These couple of sentence kind of ruin the effect of a minor turning point in how I view their relationship. I wasn't expecting that Zoltar would actually change his feelings toward Hisster overnight, especially since he just experienced Scropus's death, but in his thoughts, I would have loved to see a hint of softness and maybe a sliver of gratefulness.
I know that you can be way less cliche than that, because you have proven that. Maybe try to give a sense of time between the entering of the cave and the coming to the room in a more numeric, or even mindful way that is more based on Zoltar's perky internal clock or something like that.
To be honest, I have read so many cliffhangers, and I find this one to is common, not unique at all it seems. I guess that I just feel like I wasn't left on the edge like I had wanted to be. My personal suggestion would have been to actually cut out that whole last paragraph and just end with the statement of:
I feel like that would be perfect.
That change in tone of monologue inside Zoltar's brain was kind of abrupt to be honest. I mean, here he was getting encouraged and pumped, thinking that he could defeat 10 monsters that were surrounding him. This was apparently done by the little tiny voice of Scorpus in his head. Then he totally changes tracks and put his head down silently in defeat and just follows Hisster around like a puppy dog. I think that it would be a good place here, to bring out more of what Scorpus actually honestly thought of Hisster, to bring out some more motives of why Zoltar was acting in these changeable tones and moods, within a couple of minutes.
Also, I do appreciate Hisster in a more wiser light now,(-even though he still acts rough and tough-which is natural and normal for him) as in before I thought of him as a cliche villian, and now for me he actually cares enough about Zoltar's safety that he drives a hard bargain and begs those "lizard monsters" to make sure that nothing happens to him. So far, in this novel, we have never seen side like that, and although Zoltar may not appreciate it now, I think that he may come to appreciate Hisster and their dynamic. It's honestly a great technique that you introduced this into the story finally. But again, refer to that one comment after that disappointing line that kind of messed up the effect. I would definitively go ahead and change that and it would make it very very much better. c:
That's actually all that I have for today, and I know that this is probably one of my shorter reviews, but that also because this was a shorter chapter. I promise that I'll be onto the next one very soon!
~P.S.
Thanks for another great review. I will be sure to go back and do some editing and fix the mistakes. Thanks again.
No problem. Only 26 more chapters to go
Hope I helped you.
Wow, I must admit, this chapter is pretty good.
I love Zoltar; he's a great dragon with a brave heart. And Hisser, I don't actually feel much about him. He's solid and strict. And I'm sensing that he doesn't like Zoltar much.
But he did remain calm when Zoltar attacked the howler dragons.
I'm puzzled; so I must read on to find out! Good job Felista. You caught me in a tangled yarn
Zoltars thinking; and you've showed what he's thinking, YAY! I love it.
And you even mentioned 'Scorpus', that's good. By doing so we won't forget what happened in the past chapters.
'Nothing I do for this reptile is good enough. It’s like he blames me for what happened to the mission to the island. There’s nothing I can do though, he’s the chief. Being an outsider doesn’t sound so bad right now. I am practically one anyway with the whole tribe acting as though I am another species of dragon.' Zoltar thought bitterly to himself as he walked down the tunnel after Hisster. His tail was burning and the scratches he had received were starting to sting as he walked."
This paragraph really helped me to build up a better idea about Zoltar and his relationships with the others. He seems to be neglected and depressed. You did a good job in creating that!
And oooh, great cliffhanger! First you puzzled me and increased my curiosity with that secret talk between Hisser and the Howlers. Now you leave me in a total cliffhanger... Felista your work is amazing!
Now I'm off to the next chapter, good job and keep on writing!!!!!
Writer12345
Thanks for the review. I am glad you liked the chapter.
Hey! Here for another review.
This sounds choppy. I would vary the sentence length, maybe combine a two to help the flow out.
There doesn't need to be a comma after "back".
Needs a period after "walked".
Hopefully I'm not repeating anything that someone else has said. Hope this helps a bit!
Excellent writing! I really liked this part:
I thought it was really touching.
Hisster's reaction was also very accurate.
The paragraph where Zoltar only caught a few words was also very well done
The paragraph starting with "Nothing I do for this reptile..." reads a little awkward, so should possibly be reworded
I also really liked the cliff hanger at the end. I'll be reading the next chapters soon!
Hey! Sorry for the very late review. I'm currently busy and have lack of motivation, nowadays. ;-;
Anyways, suggestions.
Spoiler
I have trouble with the dialogue tag. Obviously no one is whispering to Zoltar, and since it's in his mind, you should italicized it as if it's a thought. It's a mental whisper, after all.
One, and one only exclamation mark is enough to get through the point. The same goes to Hisster's dialogue afterward.
I think the dialogue sentences can be merged as one with the comma being replaced with a period.
Missed a "to" between "starting" and "sting", and a period at the end.
This is a run-on sentence; I would suggest switching the comma with a semi-colon.
Anyway, to the story in terms of plot and characters. I won't touch on settings because it seems you excel in that department.
Each of your chapter is unusually short for one, to be honest. I usually make sure my one subchapter consists of, at maximum, two Microsoft Word pages, and I have three subchapters for one chapter, which means six pages of Microsoft Word. Maybe you can at least make one chapter two Microsoft Word pages so that more can be put into them. This is optional, though, perhaps you're more comfortable writing this way. The pacing of the novel is nice too.
Anyway, I like Zoltar's bravery to fight the howler dragons although the odds are against him. This just shows he relies more on his impulsive behaviour rather than a thoughtful, logical one that would dismiss fighting quickly given he is against ten howler dragons. I would like to see this attribute of his being shaped more appropriately in the sense that it is not executed at times where it shouldn't.
The last part of the chapter intrigues me. I guess it is sort of a cliffhanger. Zoltar seems to know the dark creature, or perhaps the latter catches his attention because of its size and how he feels his presence very much, so I would like to know more about this character. It seems nice to know more characters being introduced since we only have two right now, in which one of them is brought to a bad light. I'm pretty sure the new creature we've seen is the chief and going to play a crucial role afterward.
That's all. Keep it up!
Thanks for the review. I will fix the problems as soon as I can.
As requested a review, all be it a bit late.
Once again I love your descriptions ‘Zoltar snorted a cloud of black smoke, his amethyst eyes gleaming through the dark plume.’ Is great imagery.
A slight inconsistency I picked up on was ‘Zoltar and all the howler dragons stopped fighting to stare at Hisster.’ Followed by ‘Zoltar asked, half way through clawing a howler dragon.’ You say the fighting is paused and then intimate it is still continuing.
Given the emergency of the situation I think it would be more natural for it to follow like this;
“Zoltar, Stop!” Hisster thundered, picking up the howler dragon Zoltar had thrown. Zoltar and the howler dragons stopped fighting to stare at Hisster.
“We’re being attacked.” Zoltar exclaimed/shouted back, glaring at the holwer dragons which surrounded him, with his hackles raised.
“No, you pin head!!!!” Hisster yelled, marching up to Zoltar.
'There’s nothing I can do though, he’s the chief what could I do what could I do.' Repeats the sentiment ‘nothing I can do’. Seeing as you have already said this at the beginning of the paragraph I would cut this sentence to But there’s nothing I can do, he’s the chief.
I like that you end the chapter with suspense.
I don’t know if I’ve said it already but I like the length you are keeping the chapters to, it makes for an easy, in-depth review.
Thanks for the review. I have changed the inconsistences.
Hello, yet again, felistia!
Yay! I'm the first one to review, and I'm caught up with you!!
Stop should be stopped.
I think here the three short phrases should be quoted, something like this - "Zoltar only caught a few words, like 'new', 'just died', 'will listen', and 'see chief'."
I would use italics on this thought, and "single quotations".
Is should be His. Also, even though you already used some description, I encourage you to use more "colorful words" to replace 'hurt' and 'painful', such as 'agonizing' or 'ache'.
Other than that, this was great! One of my favorite parts was this -
There's that humor I was looking for!
~Snazzy, Pencil, Penicillin, etc.
Stay awesome!
Thank you. I'm not good with humour so not all my chapters will have humour, but I will try.