Time seemed to stand still as the Shang Fu's stinger zoomed towards Zoltar’s exposed spine. Suddenly, there was a blast of air as an ice blue rocket slammed into the Shang Fu, flinging him off Zoltar’s back. The force of the collision knocked Zoltar off his feet. The hard sand hitting him flat in the snout as he tumbled onto the beach. It got up his nose and he released an enormous sneeze, tossing sand in all directions.
He heard bones crack behind him and he hurriedly got to his feet. Zoltar whipped around to see the Shang Fu hanging limp between an ice talons vice like jaws.
She dropped the Shang Fu and spat, “Pathetic little creatures.”
She slowly, with caution, walked over to Zoltar, her spiked tail ready to strike if needed. Zoltar stood still. He knew how dangerous ice talons could be, with their ice breath and claws like shards of ice. If he acted aggressively in the slightest way she could lash out. The only thing to do was to stand still and wait for her to decide whether or not he was a threat.
After a few seconds, the ice talon asked in a voice like icicles jingling together, “What's your name?”
“I-i-it’s Zoltar,” Zoltar replied quickly, daring to lift his eyes for a moment to have a look at her. Ice talons could be very aggressive and strike out for no reason, so he was still rather cautious of her. Until he'd figured her out a bit better, he'd be careful what he said and did.
The ice talon was a beautiful dragoness with a crown of silver horns on the back of her head gleamed in the dim light and a trail of ridged white spines ran along the length of her back. Her long tail swept from side to side, the four large spikes on the end of it leaving deep gouges in the sand. She shook out her magnificent wings, the scales shining like millions of small moons.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as she cocked her head, looking Zoltar from horns to tail with her shimmering gold eyes. They were deep and unreadable like that of the sun and made Zoltar slightly dizzy after staring straight into them.
“Prison Dark Claw sent me here for stealing and then trying to escape prison,” Zoltar lied. He wasn’t allowed to tell the truth, the shadow talons plans were always to be kept a secret. He'd been told this important shadow talon rule since the day he'd hatched. Prison Dark Claw was a pretty convincing lie since they had the other map leading through the Misty Maze and that they dropped troublesome prisoners on to the island instead of keeping them in jail.
“Me too. The boar headed dragons sent me here after I tried to escape,” the ice talon hissed bitterly, whipping her tail. Zoltar had to duck to avoid accidently been skewered by her sharp tail spikes. She didn't seem to notice that her tail was waving dangerously close to him, so Zoltar took a few steps away from her lashing tail.
“So how long have you been here?” Zoltar asked, now that he was a safe distance away from her tail spikes.
“About four months, I think,” the ice talon replied, sitting down on the soft sand, her tail neatly curled around her talons.
“May I ask what your name is?” Zoltar requested, relieved that her tail wasn’t waving all over the place anymore.
“It’s Felistia,” she answered, slightly batting her eyes as she looking up at the sky and adding, “Would you like to come back to my cave? All the dragons dropped on the island stay there since it’s a little dangerous after dark and I really don’t want to have saved you for nothing.” Felistia smiled slyly and yet it had a touch of softness.
'Strange,' Zoltar thought a little confused, 'In my experience dragons normally are a bit more cautious around new dragons, especially one from another tribe, but then my only comparisons are the shadow talons. Maybe dragon tribes outside the shadow lands treat each other differently and are more willing to help one another?'
“Yes please,” Zoltar responded enthusiastically, not wanting to sound suspicious. He'd be wondering where he'd stay the night on the way over from the shadow lands and had decided on roosting in a tree, but know he'd just been offered a place to stay. Sure Felistia was a new dragon so he'd be careful, but how dangerous could she be compared to the Exltron, which would most definitely come out at night. He'd just stay the night and decide in the morning whether to find a new place to sleep.
“Follow me then,” Felistia shouted as she opened her wings and leapt into the misty air. She flew towards some large rock columns a few kilometres from the beach.
Forest carpeted the valleys surrounding the pillars and the echoes of birds calling to each other rang through the damp air. Feathery clumps of moss fluttered in the breeze as they clung to the sides of the tall rocks. Cracks and gouges covered the columns like scars on an old dragon of war. Small caves carved out of the craggy rocks surface were everywhere like deep black holes leading to another land.
Felistia hovered over one particularly large cave. It was high above the dark forest and was well hidden by the vines draping over the opening. She tucked in her wings and disappeared into the black hole. Zoltar followed her through the slimy creepers, which slid along his scales as he walked into the cave.
Zoltar breathed a column of fire, its orange glow lighting up the cavern. Cracks scuttled across the amber walls like small amazon rivers on their way to the sea. Olive green moss flowered all over the ceiling, their delicate tendrils wet with dew. Small streams of water run down the caves sides, their ripples shining gold in the fires light. Brown stalactites hang from the ceiling. Small beads of water fell from their sharp points onto the floor, their hollow sounds echoing through the cavern.
Felistia was standing in the far corner, her scales gleaming like white gold in the flames orange glow. Next to her was a burly sea talon. The sea talon hissed at Zoltar. Flinching, he snuffed his flame down to a spark and then a puff of smoke.
“How are guys going to see anything?” Zoltar asked, looking at the fuzzy shapes of the two dragons in front of him. He could see then quite well in the amethyst light shining from his eyes, but shadow talons were the only dragons in Megalonia to have nocturnal vision. Sea talons and ice talons were practically blind at night.
Zoltar saw the sea talon roll her eyes in an exasperated way, before there was a flash of brilliant blue light, blinding Zoltar temporarily. After a few moments he opened his scrunched up eyes and blinked away the tears streaming from them. The sea talon was standing in the middle of the cave and every scale on her body was glowing in an eerie turquoise light.
“Wow, I didn’t know sea talons’ could do that,” Zoltar exclaimed excitedly. 'Wow, that's so much cooler than the stupid acid fangs the shadow talons have,' Zoltar thought excitedly.
“It’s to help us when we are deep sea fishing. The water down there is black as ink since the sun can’t penetrate the water that far down and it attracts fish,” the sea talon explained in a matter-a-fact voice.
“What's your name?” Zoltar asked, hoping to gain a little of the sea talons trust and to stop her from looking at him as though he were a small bug on the wall.
“It’s Shiraku,” Shiraku replied brashly, lying down on the cool cave floor, her scales still shimmering in a luminous blue light, “yours?”
“Zoltar,”
“I'm going to bed,” Felistia stated loudly. She shot a look at Shiraku and arched her eyebrows when the sea talon didn't respond, " You too, Shiraku. You know how grumpy you get when you don't get enough sleep."
Huffing to herself, Shiraku closed her golden eyes as she curled her head under her wing and began to snore. Her scales slowly dimmed back to a dark blue in the caves shadows.
Zoltar yawned, his mouth opening so wide you could see the back of his throat. It had been a long day and he had very little energy left. He was glad to be on the island though and meeting Felistia and Shiraku had been an unexpected, but pleasant surprise. It was nice to know that he wasn’t alone on the island.
Zoltar stared out through the vines hanging from the cave entrance. The forest was dark and gloomy. The sun had fallen behind the mountains and dusk was crawling over the island. Eerie calls were floating through the humid air, their sounds warped by the dank wind that was blowing over the trees. The two full moons were slowly rising over the mountains like antique silver dishes on a star studded table cloth of cobalt blue.
Zoltar looked up at the twinkling stars and sighed. It was going to be a long year.
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125,007 Literary Works • 672,816 Reviews
Hello again! Here, have my 600th review!
I'm definitely curious to see how she develops and what her role in this plot will end up being. I'm assuming she'll be pretty bad ass and cool because she's your namesake and everything... 
Quite intriguing! I'm glad some new characters got introduced because it would be quite boring only having one character go on this big mission! Oh and hey felistia! I see what you did there
Five minutes is a really long time to just stand there and stare at one another...
This is just a typo, but I think you meant "look" instead of "looking".
I can tell you like her
I think I would reword that second sentence a bit so you don't have the immediate repetition of "eyes". Also, you want the subject and the action first. The way it's worded now it sounds like the eyes are the subject, but really it's Zoltar because he gets dizzy from staring into her eyes.
"...her shimmering gold eyes. Zoltar became slightly dizzy after staring straight into her deep and unreadable eyes."
When was this decided?
Why? What purpose would that serve for her? And how does he know that?
This sentence (continued from my last quote) is pretty long and gets a bit repetitive (you mention the lie twice). Where can you break it up and/or condense it?
I would do a question after "here" instead of the comma because what's inside the dialogue is a complete sentence and what's after is also a complete sentence. There are other instances of this throughout as well.
This struck me as a bit odd. She saved his life but she doesn't know him at all. Inviting him to her house is very personal and could be dangerous for her. Why does she trust him? Why does she invite him? Is she really just trying to be nice? Because ten seconds ago she nearly swiped him with her tail and ten seconds before that she was pretty aggressive and questioning him. All she needed to feel safe was for him to "tell her where he came from"?
I would add in some more thoughts here about how he feels about this situation. Same with what I said about Felistia. They just met and this is a pretty personal offer. How does he know he can trust her?
And I would put his thoughts in italics and get rid of the ' ' because it makes it easier to differentiate what are thoughts and what is dialogue.
Now he's thinking about it, but why after he's already agreed to go with her? To me, this would be part of his thought process of agreeing to go with her.
There is a lot of the word "cave" in this paragraph. Any way you can cut that down?
The dialogue feels a bit awkward to me. It feels a little stilted and scripted rather than natural. Natural dialogue can be super hard to achieve and my best piece of advice is to listen to people (or dragons since you're felisitia and you live on/in Megalonia...) and study how they talk. Think about inflections and mannerisms and responses and transitions and stuff like that. Right now I feel like it's topic. new topic. without a lot of transition or development within each topic. Really try to get into these heads and visualize how these conversations would go. You do such a nice job describing, so maybe think of it as describing the conversation (but while still showing the conversation). Not sure if that made sense at all
This is just recapping stuff the reader already knows because we just read these scenes, so you don't need it here.
This seems like a good place to stop for the night. Like your characters, I'm a bit sleepy. :p
I'll pick this story up tomorrow (hopefully...)! Seriously, I'm really going to try to be all caught up by the end of the month. You requested this so long ago and I feel bad it's taking me so long!!
As always, let me know if you have any questions or if anything I said was confusing!
Thanks again. I have gone back and rewritten chapter 6 to make it longer and I have fixed all the mistakes in the other chapters. Your reviews are always helpful and I look forward to the next one. Have a great day.
If anyone deserves some reviews, it's you, felistia! You've done a great job reviewing thus far.
Oooh!
Each paragraph should have a subject and a purpose. When you start a new paragraph, that normally means that you're switching subjects. Now, if it had said "Zoltar smiled slyly," that should be in the next paragraph because Felistia talking and Zoltar smiling are two different subjects. But what you have here is Felistia talking and Felistia smiling, so those two things should be in the same paragraph.
Dude. Stop being so good at writing. That description is beautiful!
Your major, major strong point: descriptions. I love that! Descriptions are my favorite part about writing, especially gorgeous nature depictions like yours. Thanks to your excellent skill, your readers will be able to see the pictures of the scenes and creatures you've painted so expertly with only your words.
On the other hand, your dialogue isn't quite as flow-y. Mine is never either, so once again, we're on the same page. If it helps at all, read your character's words out loud so that you can make the dialogue sound as authentic and smooth as possible. A lot of it, though, is about where you place your dialogue tags. (In case you don't know, dialogue tags are the "he said," "Zoltar replied" parts.) I might've mentioned this before, but I've found that you oftentimes place the tag at the end of the character's sentences, which kind of defeats the purpose of the tag, since your readers won't know who's talking until the very end.
For example, instead of saying, "Blah blah. Blah blah blah. Blah blah," Felistia said you'd want to do this: "Blah blah," Felistia said. "Blah blah blah. Blah blah."
And sometimes, you don't need a dialogue tag at all. In an exchange between just two characters, you only need to use tags once every few lines. Try reading a conversation without certain tags, and see if you really needed them or not.
In other words, I really really love where this plot is going! I absolutely love Zoltar's sweet, innocent character, and I love that he's not perfect. He's not quite strong enough to fight off the monsters in this chapter, something that makes him such an authentic character because, even though he's a dragon, he's far from perfect.
Excellent work! I'll see you in Chapter Nine!
Thank you for the wonderful review I will be sure to work on the dialogue.
Yay! I was right, new characters!!! Felistia and Shikaru!
Anyway once again you nailed it with the descriptions ; good job!
And wow, Felistia seems a bit weird. I mean Zoltar thought that dragons are cautious about new dragons, but she acted normal with him. She even invited him to her cave. :O I must find out more about her. (I love strange characters!)
Zoltar seemed to be amazed by the two dragons abilities. I have a pretty good feeling that he would team up with them.
I did find few mistakes, (really small ones)
“How are guys going to see anything?” Zoltar asked,
Well, I think that this part is a bit unclear. I mean I understand what Zoltar means; but still you could add something into it,
"How are you guys going to see anything?" (Just added a 'you'.)
“How long have you been here,” Zoltar asked, taking a few steps back from her lashing tail.
There should be a question mark at the end of the question.
Anyway, you did a great job, and I can't wait to find out what happens next.
Keep writing and good luck!!!
First of all, I'm so, so sorry for my unforgivable lateness to review this. I've been busy nowadays, and when I were not busy, I tended to review other pieces. Sorry about that. >.>
Anyway, without further ado, let's shred this to pieces, shall we> >:] Nitpick moments.
Spoiler
I believe you mean 'spine' instead of 'spin'.
The repeated use of 'blast'. For the second one, try to use 'released' instead.
'to' instead of 'the'; otherwise, the sentence won't make any sense.
I'd separate the part where Zoltar observes her to a new paragraph since it's not related to the dialogue.
Missed a question mark there. Some other questions also missed it. Reread this chapter to notice those questions that have no question marks.
'below' isn't needed. Saying the cave high above it already implies it to be below the cave.
Is there such a thing as white gold? If it's white, it's white. If it's gold, it's gold. Maybe you're saying the gold is whitish, or you can say it's pale gold.
Onto the actual story.
I think this can do as an interesting turn of event. It seems like Zoltar's going to search the ruby alone, but the addition of Felistia (;)) and Shiraku implies they'd join him in the search. However, since Zoltar lies about being dropped as prisoner, Im not sure he's going to tell her about the ruby since it'd expose his lie and make them suspicious of him.
Saying about them being suspicious, I'm disappointed Felistia (and by extension, Shiraku) isn't being careful around Zoltar. Yes, she helps him against the Shang Fu because Zoltar seems helpless, and Felistia seems to be the kind that's glad to help others, but he's still a stranger to her. One that's possible to pose threats and dangers to her. I'm surprised she'd freely say about her status as a prisoner, and take his words about him being one instantly. What has Zoltar done to gain such trust from her?
Your description is as lovely as usual, although right now I think Zoltar's been under developed. It's chapter eight already, and the only thing I know about him is he's brave enough to save his clan and dislikes Hisster. That's all. There should be more layers through his personality, and this could be shown by having him give his thoughts about the surrounding, Felistia, and Shiraku, and whether he thinks they would interfere with his mission or not. Simply put, inner monologue. Take a break from describing for a moment, and start writing 'Looking at Felistia, I wonder if there's more to her than what she seems to be. If her saving is more than that...' See, these are all his thoughts, which would help us decide more about his personality. You need this.
In general, the chapter shown the plot moving forward in an unexpected way. In terms of plot, it progresses in a steady pace. Keep up the good job!
Thanks for another great review. I will be sure to go back and add some thoughts and to fix the mistakes.
Hola again felistia =) I'm here to give you some more tips and advice on your awesome dragon story.
Okay, so a little bit of a nitpicky thing, the name Tsunami. Over the whole of this story I have been reminded of the books Wings of Fire by Tui T Sutherland, and not only does using the name Tsunami, who is one of the main characters in those books, seem to tell people "Copy alert!" it also seems out of place. In earlier chapters you have given your characters unique and interesting names like Hisster, Zoltar and Felistia (congrats on putting yourself in ur story =D) so a name like Tsunami just doesn't fit. I would suggest, if you still want to keep the name, look up the word in some different languages. Though mostly tsunami is mostly the same in every language, there are some cool translations like Cunami, Ts’unamis and Hǎixiào (both of these could be fixed to be really awesome names, like Cunari, Sunamis and my fav, Haixao.) So yeah, really nitpicky but still important in its own way. I use google translate and baby name sites all. the. time. to look up suitable names for my characters.
Also, again with the sort of fan fic feel, please please PLEASE can felistia or another dragon be a moon talon? Though it makes sense to have ice talons and sea talons and all that, it is REALLY similar to The Wings of Fire and unless you're going for fan fic, it would be better if you added some action in from some of the more unique tribes (like you have done with the howler dragons) because this is a cool story and I'm sad to see it start to throw on the cloak of another book. A bit of intertextuality is good, but too much makes it seem like you're copycatting.
Alright, enough about all that. There are some small grammar mistakes, but nothing that can't be fixed with a good peruse of your work. I might sound like a teacher when I say this, but try reading your writing out loud. It really, really helps when you read things out loud, and it will help you find and repair those tiny grammar mistakes.
Alright, here's some things that could use some improvement: one thing that was a bit strange, you likened Felistia's scales to small moons. Though this doesn't need fixing, I would suggest, since she is an ice talon, to chnage that to something more icey, not so moony.
Another thing, this, “It’s to help us when we are deep sea fishing. The water down there is black as ink since the sun can’t penetrate the water that far down and it attracts fish,” reads out a little weird, like Tsunami is saying the second sentence all in one big gulp of air. Maybe try something like "It's to help us with deep sea fishing. The water down there is black as ink since no sunlight can penetrate all that water, so the glow in the dark scales help us see our prey. Plus, glowing scales attract fish."
I think HolographicLadybug has caught everything else, so byes for now =)
Don't stop writing!
Thank you for the review, I will change Tsunami's name, but I need an ice talon and a sea talon in the story for reasons I can't tell you yet. They are really important to the plot. Most of the book will be about different dragon species. I will fix the grammar mistakes.
Oooo, now I'm interested =P
I am too! (Well, even more than I already am)
Greetings! I, Holographic Ladybug, am here for your review!
Things are getting really awesome at this point! Not to mention that your use of description was FANTASTIC.
I've noticed that elements in your story are really starting to look like Wings of Fire. (i.e. the description of Felistia and Tsunami, Tsunami's name, and your use of dragon tribes (is that what you called them).) Is that intentional or just a really creepy coincidence?
However, this is a review, so there are some things that I've noticed that I must point out.
1,
'Zoltar looked behind him to see White Claw hanging limp between an ice talons vice like jaws.'
I'm a little confused here. There's something at the end that just isn't right to me. I'm not sure what. Maybe it could just be me, I don't know.
2.
'She slowly, with caution walked over the Zoltar, her spiked tail ready to strike if needed.'
You probably forgot a comma after 'caution'. The sentence doesn't make much sense, otherwise.
3.
'“Prison Dark Claw sent me here for stealing and then trying to escape prison,” Zoltar lied.'
I'm also a bit confused here. Yet again, I'm not sure what.
Those are just little things that affects your story in very tiny ways. It doesn't hurt it overall--it's still awesome, isn't it?--but there's always a little something.
I hope I've become of some use to you!
-HolographicLadybug
I do read a lot of the wings of fire books, so I might have picked up the style, but I have no intention of ripping it of. The story is completely different in many different ways. I have a few things that a line with the wings of fire like the dragon tribes and some of the characters names, but that is about it. Thank you for the review and following my story.
Ah I see now. I do agree, the story is completely different than Wings of Fire.
I'm very excited to see what happens next!
Hello!
Now, for the review! 
Another fantastic chapter! Description here is good, and not over-done in any part! The ending sentence wrapped it up quite nicely.
I think you should use a different word other than sneeze here. Maybe something like "It got up his nose, his nose erupting in an enormous sneeze,..." Or something like that.
I think the adverbs that you included makes it sound like you repeat a word. (even if you don't) Maybe instead of cautiosLY, you could change it to "with caution". Just a thought.
Before, I imagined Felistia as a cool, sly and mysterious dragon. Then this makes me think she is fun, and goofy. It kind of contradicts with her own self. I would keep it one or the other, but her personality can be funny at times, just I wouldn't imagine it here.
I think you should transition more into this (instead of "and then"). Maybe just put a comma, and say something about the blue light blinding him temporarily. The "and then there" just seems a bit...off. (if that makes sense
Other than that, this is a great chapter!
~Snazzy
Stay awesome
Thanks for reviewing again. I will fix the mistakes right away. Oh by the way I have posted the next chapter.