The sun blinded Claude as he slowly pulled opened his hazel eyes. The pleasant yet uncomfortable smell of roses filled his nostrils as he gazed up to the wondrous blue skies, marveled by the seagull-like creatures flying among the pearly white clouds in the unforeseeable distance. He looked around at the lime green grasses he found himself in, seeing that he was in a long and empty valley with an unfamiliar feeling in the air.
His stomach churned when he realized what was missing. “Ethan…?” he asked worryingly. “Ethan, where are you?”
Ethan scratched his midnight-haired head. Dark red marks surrounded his olive eyes where his glasses were before. “I…I’m right here,” he said in a weakened voice, sitting on his knees.
The two of them sat together in silence for several moments. Claude exhaled, his beady eyes surveying the green grasses further, longingly stroking the petal of the strange flower that smelt like a rose. “I always hypothesized that there were worlds other than the ones we live in,” he said. “Could this be it? Are we in a whole new world?”
“Look!” Ethan pointed to two shadowy figures in the grass. “People are coming. Should we…should we run?”
The two girls approached Ethan and Claude. One was slightly older than Ethan, the other quite a bit younger. Both their skins were a bright shade of lime green, the same color as the surrounding grasses. “I told you someone was yelling!” the younger girl said.
When the two girls saw the skin colors of the boy and the adult, their jaws dropped in awe.
“You two stand in front of the princesses of Elymore,” the younger girl said. “The daughters of King Mason himself. State your names and the reason that you’re here, or face trial and execution.”
“My name is Claude Vilean.” The schoolteacher swallowed and bobbed his head. “This is my…son, Ethan.”
“What?” Ethan whispered. “Why did you tell them that I’m your son?”
“Just play along,” Claude whispered back.
A large, grizzly man with pale green skin marched through the grass, approaching the four with a long sword drawn. “Princess Perl! Princess Rucy! What’s going on? Who are these guys?”
Rucy, the older girl sighed. “It’s nothing, Butch. Just—”
“Take them to the castle,” Perl, the younger girl demanded, folding her little green arms.
Claude, Ethan, Rucy and Perl were both led through the center of a rich and majestic city, buildings and roads carved out of shining silver stones. Men and women and children of all shapes and sizes watched on in both shock as Butch lead them through the lustrous city of Hyguard.
At the tail end of the long walk stood tall a luxurious, monumental castle made entirely of gold. Even the sidewalk fronting the castle had diamonds encrusted inside of it.
Butch nodded to the three green-skinned guards, all brandishing large blades. The guards nodded back, allowing them inside of the castle.
Claude and Ethan found themselves in an awe-inspiring throne room, the red and yellow rug beneath their feet encrusted with rubies and sapphires. The marble floor was abstract yet gleaming so that they could see their reflections in the tiles. The dark blue walls were covered in strange paintings, dozens of armed guards standing with their backs turned against them.
Butch lead the four up to the royal throne, where a
marshmallow-haired man wearing a golden robe sat confidently, surrounded by two
more guards. “King Mason,” Butch greeted with a salute.
The king stroked his magnificent beard, nodding his lime green head before the
group of people. “So you return with my daughters, and bring unfamiliar
visitors along with them,” he sighed. “Butch, I thought you took them to play
in the fields?”
Butch nodded. “Err, yeah. Sounds about right, your majesty.” He scratched his hair. “They got out of my sight for a second, and when I found them again, they were talking to these two strange-skinned fellows right here.”
“Is that right…” The green king chattered his teeth. “Very well. I trust you well enough that you knew it was safe to bring them here. You two. Step forward. State your names, ages, and where in cythis you came from.”
Ethan looked at Claude, then at the two princesses, then back at Claude, who proceeded to step forward. Ethan followed forward as well, opening his mouth to speak.
Claude covered the boy’s lips with his palm. “My name is Claude Vilean. Age fifty-three. I’m a wandering salesman,” the teacher lied. “My home is wherever people have money to spend.”
“Claude Vilean?” King Mason scoffed. “I told you to tell me your name, and give me two?”
“You misunderstand,” Claude calmly responded. “Claude is my first name, and Vilean is my last name.”
“You have two names?” The king laughed heartedly. “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of. Ahem, you there. Child. Tell me your name.”
Ethan scratched his head. “Err, I’m Ethan Vilean,” he
shrugged. “Age eighteen.”
Claude smacked his face.
“You’re a bit short for your age,” the king mused. “Tell me, where are you from?”
“I’m a wandering salesman, just like my father here.” Ethan glanced over towards Claude, then back at King Mason, trying to gauge the transparency of his lies. “My home is wherever people have money to spend. Just like him.”
King Mason nodded. “And what’s the matter with your
skin?”
“Err, well, you know—” Ethan started.
“It’s a rare birth defect,” Claude interrupted with yet another lie. “Our skins aren’t the same color as yours because of it.”
“Interesting.” The king nodded his head. “So you are mumblings, same as us?”
“Yes,” Claude nodded. “We are…mumblings. Yes.”
King Mason exhaled. “Interesting. Most interesting. With the conflict going on up north, you could just be enemy spies sent to probe my castle for weaknesses. Perl, step forward.”
The young girl nodded, parting her ponytailed brown hair out of her bold eyes. “Perl here has an exceptional gift for telling whether or not people are trustworthy,” the king explained. “She’ll decide what to do with the both of you.”
Perl folded her hands behind her back and licked her lips with her tongue. She marched back and forth in front of the two gentlemen, pacing with a fiery confidence radiating from her each and every step.
She paused in front of Ethan. Looked deep into his green eyes. The marks from his glasses were now faded away. She tilted her head.
Meticulous steps towards Claude. She turned and faced him. Looked into his baggy, brown eyes. The wrinkles on his forehead bobbed up and down as she intensified her stare. And he didn’t blink once.
Perl turned towards King Mason. “The boy is harmless. The older one can’t be trusted.” She turned and faced Claude Vilean. “Send him to be executed.”
Claude opened his mouth in horror to see if he could find mutter any sort of word, but two guards grabbed him by his arms and began dragging him away from the throne. “Wait!” he yelled, kicking and fighting as the guards forced him towards the door. “No, no! Please!”
“Mr. Vilean…” Ethan pouted as tears escaped from the schoolteacher’s eyes. “I’m sorry…”
“Ethan! Please! Make them stop! I don’t want to die! No!”
Ethan reached out for Claude, but Butch held him back. The middle school student watched helplessly as his science teacher was carried out of the castle, headed for an unavoidable death.
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138,236 Literary Works • 672,088 Reviews
Hello again!
Well, this was certainly very different from the first chapter
Positives-
I really love the concept for this book because I haven't read many books that start in our world and then suddenly move to a completely new one. One of the things I love about books set in worlds other than our own is learning about the people's culture and the world, how it differs from our own. I also liked the ending a lot, you seem to be pretty good at them so far, because it left me wondering if you are actually going to kill him off. In most books, I assume they wouldn't but I have a feeling this isn't like the books I have read.
Improvements-
Okeydoke, so I have quite a few improvements here, not because it was bad, which it wasn't, but I'll explain that here. I'm from Britain so we have a royal family and they are a big part of our lives. This means I have an understanding of how royalty should talk. They don't really use contractions such as "It's" that one of the princesses uses, it would "It is". I would suggest typing into youtube The Queen speeches and watch a few, it might help a little. Also, I feel the way Butch speaks to royalty is a little off, I feel he would talk with more respect. So it would be "yes" instead of "Yeah" and "Men" instead of "Guys", though if that's part of his character I understand. "cythis" needs a capital. Also after the princess says "take them to the castle" part, there is a time difference so make a slightly bigger gap between those paragraphs, just helps the reader know. Other than that really good job.
Overall, really liked this chapter and will continue reading. Keep writing
Bruh! NOOOOOOO, they can't kill Claude!!!! What the heck! Anyways....
That was totally unexpected! But hey, this is literature, expect the unexpected, right?
Okay there were a few tiny things I noticed. The lime green people are called mumblings right? Well, when there is a people group, the name should be capitalized like this: Mumblings.
Then where they're whispering you have that italicized. I had to figure out if they were using telepathy. Just put it in quotations just like you would if they were talking normally. The character development is going super fast, but don't let it get ahead of you.
Otherwise, it was great! Keep it up!
Noooooooooooooooooooooo!
Okay, you're obviously not REALLY going to kill Claude off, though, right????????
RIP Claude
How does it immediately register that they're in another world? I mean, I get that Claude had hypothesized that and they went through that portal thing or whatever in the last chapter, but... So far all you've described are normal things.
Roses, grass, sky, seagulls (or at least things that look like seagulls from a distance). Really there's no reason for them--at least for Ethan--to suppose they're somewhere not totally normal. I mean, I'm guessing after going through some weird portal, they'd maybe be unconscious or disoriented for a bit?
In which case a "where are we" moment is completely valid, particularly from Ethan since he was not the one hypothesizing about other worlds.
So I know later on we get to these obviously non-human people and their magnificent city, but early on it would help to either describe the landscape as obviously different from Earth OR show Ethan, at least, going, "The heck are we?" and Claude going, "Not sure, but I think maybe another world," and Ethan going, "What? Nah" and Claude going, "Yeah, dude, totally."
Except they wouldn't use those exact words.
Also, you could do both. If the world is sufficiently different from Earth, you could also show Ethan going, "Where the heck are we?"
Because really, why hasn't he asked that question? Is he not remotely curious about that? Or does he actually just completely accept Claude's initial assertion that they're in another world?
This is Kaos here for a review.
I felt like there was an excess of ellipses and exclamation marks, though I may be a little biased as I hate all forms of any of them almost always. It makes the characters feel a sort of melodramatic because you don't show their emotions in any different way or attempt to switch it up so that you express that a character is loud or a character is distant with words or body language. I've sort of said this before but still stand by this, but body language does most of the speaking for someone, or rather, when writing people forget to take into account that there are other ways of talking instead of it being just verbal.
I liked the tone that you set up with this chapter, but the sense of description overall seemed to be the weak point of the chapter. Sometimes it was there more than others and the majority of the time it isn't really there.
The characters are probably the highlight of the chapter, as they feel distinct and have their own personalities. Even though they still feel like characters, they do have something about them, like the tiny quirks you add in that make it better. My suggestion is to rather try to just write them rather than trying to kind of make them under an archetype. Make their decisions waver, like the decisions of real people do.
I liked the atmosphere that you were aiming for, but I disliked how it turned out. Rather than it having tension it all kind of fell apart by the end of the chapter instead of building up due to the dialogue feeling iffy.
I hope this helped and have a great day!
Hi! Shea here review!
First off, really good job here! The story has great substance and the characters are well described. I applaud you!
Now just some suggestions to help your story along! "The pleasant yet uncomfortable smell of roses filled his nostrils as he gazed up to the wondrous blue skies, marveled by the seagull-like creatures flying among the pearly white clouds in the unforeseeable distance", although I like how descriptive this sentence is, it's a bit long. Try to separate the sentence right before you say "marveled". Also, it seems a bit odd that Claude cannot see Ethan to begin with, but Ethan seems to be right next to him. Just make those details a bit clearer. "Midnight-haired head" can just be "midnight colored hair".
"Marshmallow-hair". Exactly what is marshmallow hair? The color? Or how it looks? Just clarify this! "Ponytailed brown hair out of her eyes", how is her ponytail in her eyes if it was pulled back for that reason? "She takes meticulous steps" instead of just "meticulous".
Overall, really good story! Lots of nice word flow and descriptive words. Only try to take in my suggestions and this story will be amazing. Keep writing and I hope to hear more from this story!
Shea
thank you for the wonderful review