My Novel

[Rahl]

Every once in a great while I sit down to write in my novel. Tell me what you think of it's first chapter.

The Dark Wing of an Angel

          Darkness… Life devouring darkness… Suffocating darkness. A chill as deep and as shrill as the deathly black that surrounded him. Staring into eternal depth of night, no hope of light or life again he drifted once more out of consciousness…
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          A soft light covered the barren grass below her feet. Tall mountains flocked among the heavens in the distance for as far as could be seen. Dark clouds rolled across the evening sky as Rianne took her evening walk. The darkness cast down by the shadow of those ever-present clouds left the earth cold and bitter as feel that welled up in her heart. Darkness that only seemed to add to the loneliness that had built up inside of her.

          The dark clouds seemed closer as the sun began to set, she would have to go back to her mother soon. Night was a deadly time to be out, temperatures low enough to turn entire lakes into blocks of ice in hours. Fires did little to help dead chill in the coming of darkness and wood was scarce, the king haven taken most of the wood that was left in the barren wasteland to fuel the hundreds of roaring fireplaces of the palace.

          Rianne walked on, her feet cold from the chilling breathe of the wind. She liked her evening walks. It gave her time to think and remorse for her lost father. He would take her on long walks when she was a child, teaching her of right and wrong, reciting her favorite tales of adventure and historic battles. Her father was killed fighting in the last rebellion against the horrible king Abdiel. Abdiel was a feared ruler to whom all other men where as slaves, a man who would feast at the finest table near the largest fire eating the fruits of all of the Third Kingdom’s labor. To disobey was death, though even death would seem a reprieve. Even so her father had once said “If given the choice: A chance of a free world and a greater chance at death or a life of enslavement and starvation. I would choose the chance for the freedom and warmth of my family without hesitation.” Her father was a great man she thought to herself as she strolled along the base of the jagged mountain.

          Her mind on her father, she trudged on not looking where she was going and tripped over something on the ground. She fell face first into the cold dirt covering her already dirty rags of a dress with even more stains. She fussed as she lay there thinking to herself about how she should have watched were she was going so as not to ruin one of her better dresses. She crawled onto her knees and looked behind her to find what she had tripped over.

          Much to her surprise it was a man laying up against the rock it would have seemed mortally wounded. The man was tall, slim, and had muscles that were well shaped and defined. He was a man with long black hair that ran down past his shoulders and to his lower back, a man with handsome facial features. He wore a black, torn and bloodied shirt, with a pair of torn black pants. If a man could be called beautiful, this one would have been. Had he not been covered in blood she would have thought the man an angel, fallen from heaven to bless the eyes of all who were to look upon him.

          She reached with a finger and laid it on his bruised but perfect hand, the top of his long fingers seemed still warm yet there was a dead chill in the air. It meant that blood was still circulating through him, something her father had taught her. She took her hand and softly stroked the side of his warm cheek.

          His eyelids shot open and she threw herself backwards in surprise. His eyes were dark, black around the outside but swirling into a dark blue and then a deathly black dot in the middle. Those eyes seemed so horribly evil… Yet in some strange way they were also the most beautiful she had ever seen. Even though she had at first seen a heavenly figure, now his eyes shown completely contrary. The depth of the darkness that filled them seemed to pull what light and life around her into their swirling divinity. Again his eyes closed and fell limp against the cold rock once more.

[Fisherson]

I have to say from what i've ead you're very good!
I like it so far,keep it up!

[A Forgotten Legend]

"The darkness cast down by the shadow of those ever-present clouds left the earth cold and bitter as feel that welled up in her heart."
?  The sentence in general confuses me.


"Darkness that only seemed to add to the loneliness that had built up inside of her."
This is not a complete sentence. =P.  Seems more like it should be,'Darkness, that only seemed to add to the loneliness that had built up inside of her, *rest of the sentence*'   But I'm thinking you really meant, ' (The) Darkness added to the loneliness that had built up inside her.'

"Night was a deadly time to be out, temperatures low enough to turn entire lakes into blocks of ice in hours."
The second part is a bit off. Maybe 'Night was a deadly time to be out, as the temperatures low are enough to turn entire lakes into blocks of ice in hours.'  Also, I'm thinking it should be 'is' and not 'was'.

"the king haven taken most of the wood that was left in the barren wasteland to fuel the hundreds of roaring fireplaces of the palace."
'The king had taken most of the wood to fuel the hundreds of roaring fire places of the palace.  Now, all that is left is a barren wasteland.' Maybe?

Ok, i'm gonna stop now and say some things, I do like your story.  But, I've pointed out some things that could be better/fixed.  I'm also having trouble figuring out if this is in past or present tense.  I'm think present because of some sentences like this one, "Dark clouds rolled across the evening sky as Rianne took her evening walk."

Try to make it all match.
I'll continue my critique another time.

[Phayre]

It's okay, but a bit heavy on the flowery prose and not great with the plot revelations. It ind of breaks the flow, right in th middle of a prologue, to start doing cursory detail about the history of the kingdom and her father and all. Maybe wait on that a bit.
Also, what's with the novels? Can't we just say story until it's actual novel length?

[Moosetroop11]

"Night was a deadly time to be out, temperatures low enough to turn entire lakes into blocks of ice in hours."
The second part is a bit off. Maybe 'Night was a deadly time to be out, as the temperatures low are enough to turn entire lakes into blocks of ice in hours.'  Also, I'm thinking it should be 'is' and not 'was'.

"the king haven taken most of the wood that was left in the barren wasteland to fuel the hundreds of roaring fireplaces of the palace."
'The king had taken most of the wood to fuel the hundreds of roaring fire places of the palace.  Now, all that is left is a barren wasteland.' Maybe?

Actually, these suggestions are much worse than the original, AFL :p You're changing from past to present tense all the time.


Rahl... It's good, but not varied :p You describe everything in much the same way, and like Phayre said, sometimes it disrupts the flow of the story you're telling.

I think you need to take more time over it. The reader's bombarded with imagery and we need to have a sense of time and get a feel of the emptness of the place she's walking.

Overall it's pretty good writing though.

[A Forgotten Legend]

really?  crap.
Sorry then.  I though I fixed that. o.o

Hm...

EDIT:  The first one, yeah I did mess that one up, but the second one, i dunno.  I'm saying that the king had taken it (as it happened in the past), it I'm speaking of it in the future.  I'm confusing myself here actually.   Maybe I should just take all the critique out of my post?

[Rahl]

       Well since the first chapter went over pretty good. Here's the next one Ch. 2:

       He opened his eyes, his back no longer against the hard jagged rocks for which it had been accustom for so long it seemed, but instead against a soft mat of straw laying on the floor in the darkness of some small room with no windows. The rooms only source of light coming from beneath a patched blanket covering the doorway. A small fire it seemed burned just beyond in the other room.

       A woman pulled aside the blanket and entered the little room. A glint of light struck the side of her face and he realized at once it was the same young woman he had seen at the base of the mountain and the same young woman who had touched his face. She was lovely young woman of around twenty-eight years old. Her smooth skin and beautiful eyes gave her face a very soft glow in the small light of the flickering flame that hardly seemed a fire at all. She wore a ragged and dirty dress that was torn and patched in places. She walked with bare feet and her hair was mussy and tangled looking as though she didn’t even care to fix it.

       She held a bowl in one hand and a somewhat dirty wet rag in the other. She placed the wet rag across his chest. It was warm and felt good against the chill that filled the room. She looked up and saw that his eyes were open, and jumped back a little but them leaned forward looking into his eyes.

       “How do you feel?” she asked in a sweet voice

       “Better.” He managed

       “Well it may not be much but this is a healing salve my father taught me to make when I was a little girl.” She said with a sympathetic smile,

       “Your okay now, I think you’re going to make it- though I’m not entirely sure how… You were seriously wounded. How long had you been out there like this?”

       “For as long as I can remember…” he said in a weak voice

       “You remember nothing before this wound?” she said bewildered

       “No.” he said

       “Don’t even remember what did this to you?” she asked

       “No…” he said distantly

       “Well you’re lucky to be alive, you know. It’s a wonder you not frozen solid after spending all that time out there in the wastelands.” She said finally as she turned back to her healing salve
The ointment stunk of dead fish and moldy bread, and burned to the touch. The wound made a small sizzling sound as the ointment, it felt, seared into his flesh.

       “What is your name, that at least you should know.” She said sternly

       “Sorry, no.” He managed to get out through the moans of pain

       “Well, we can’t have you without a name, now can we?” she said still working at rubbing the salve into the wound, “We’ll just have to call you Azariel. It’s a good name. It also belonged to my little brother…I’m sure you wont mind it until we find your real name.”

       After about ten minutes of painful searing treatment she was satisfied and decided the wound would heal back properly. She placed the bowl on the floor and took the now cold rag from his chest and back to the fire warming it once more. When she finished and had the rag warm again she came back into the room and placed the rag on his head, using it to wipe the sweat off of it.

       “It not very warm in here, I’m going to pull you to your feet but you have to help me walk you to the fire. I carried you for two hours earlier today. You could at least help me a little now that your conscious.” She said with a smile and a wink

       She took him under his arm and pulled him to his feet, even though it didn’t help because his legs were stiff and he could barely manage to move the at all. But she had hardly expected to be able to help much in his condition, so she pulled him along with his arm around her neck for support.

       She sat him down by the small fire in the main room of her small house. He barely managed to sit up at all, three times she had to reach over and put her hand on his back to support him so that he wouldn’t fall over and bump his head against the hard dirt floor.

       “The fires not much, but its all a poor servant mother and her young daughter can afford.” The mother said offering as much a smile as she could manage.

       The dark haired man merely nodded and continued to stare at the fire. What he was thinking Rianne couldn’t grasp but she could sense a grim determination within his eyes that only seemed to be innate within the dark stranger. A deep reservoir of thinking and comprehension she had only ever seen within one other person, her father.

       They sat in silence for several moments, Azariel staring at the fire, Rianne at him. She watched as he slowly began to move his fingers up and down, flexing them back and forth, until he could flex them all at once and then clenched them into a fist. He began stretching his fingers and twisting his wrists until he could do so without much difficulty.

       Rianne could see that he was trying to work the soreness and stiffness from his joints as he started moving his arms back and forth making grunting noises as his muscles twisted and turned around.

       “Perhaps you should lie back down and get more rest.” Rianne’s mother said in a soft voice.

       “No, I think I’ve slept enough.” Azariel said in that displayed no emotions.

       “But in your weakened condition its best if you get your rest so that you can recover your strength.” She said

       He was now flexing his legs, moving the joints in his knees and ankles. “No, the sooner I can get myself moving the sooner I can build my strength back, and remove the burden I place on you and your daughter.”

       “No burden at all, we don’t care to share our little hovel and a small fire with someone who needs it most. You may stay as long as you need to recover.” She said

       “No, you would be better off if whatever did this didn’t come to finish the job while I were here.”

       “We’ll hear none of that. You’re going to stay with us until your better.” Rianne finally said “It’s the only right thing we could do… and it’s what my father would have done. Besides I don’t feel like tripping over your dead body out there again.”

       He sat there in silence, only looking at the little fire, smoldering the little dirt pit that had been dug in the floor.

       Then with a final nod he conceded.

[Rahl]

Chapter 3:

        The next morning he woke once more on the little straw mat. Though he could barely tell that that the sun had come up at all because it was nearly as dark as it had been the night before, but there was defiantly no change in the fact that the cold acrid air still bit at his skin sending constant chills through his spine.

        He looked around and he was in the small room he had been in the night before. He couldn’t remember how he came to be back in there the night was a blur, and he remembered little of what the two women had said to him.

        Near the door was a small dead branch that had obviously been put there so that he could use it for a cane to help him in getting around.
He crawled over to the door on all fours, inching his was through the gut wrenching pain of moving his muscles, moving the stiff joints in his arms and legs. He took hold of the wall and pulled himself up and wrapping his sore fingers around the crude cane. After he pulled himself up full length he leaned against the wall placing his hand on top of it.

        After a moment or two of labored breathing he slid his shoulder against the wall he stretched toward the door and moved his left foot in front to hold his weight while he moved the end of short cane forward. He grasped the edge of the doorway and pushed the point of his cane forward through the opening and ducking under the little ragged cloth that served as the door.

        The mother and her daughter sat around a semi-round rock in the right side of the room eating what looked like a very poor breakfast.
When the daughter saw that he was awake and out of bed she jumped up to help him walk so that he would no longer have to use the wall as support. She led him to the little rock table so that he could sit at one side of it. After making sure he was able to sit up by himself she walked over to the little fire and came back with a little poorly woven plate that looked almost empty from a distance, but as she sat it on the table in front of he could see what looked like a scrawny piece of meat, of what kind of animal he wasn’t sure he was brave enough to ask, and a slightly rotten piece of fruit.

        “It’s not much but it’s all we can get out here in these wastelands. The dark clouds never go away and little sunlight ever gets through, so are crops are poor and what little good harvest we can manage the kings takes as his own.” The mother said in a saddened tone. “So we try our best not to grow anything too good, so that we may keep enough to live.”

        Azariel, as he supposed he was now called, nodded and went quietly eating the disgusting food on the plate before him. The taste wasn’t even the worst part. What little food there was only served to make his hunger even greater.

        After he was finished eating he was hungrier than before he started. As he sat there he began to flex and stretch his legs, working out even more of the sore muscle that seemed to engulf his body. He began to wonder if there would ever be again a time when he could walk without cringing from every step.

        “Perhaps you and I can go for a short walk to help you stretch and strengthen your muscles a bit more, if you think you’re up to it.” She suggested

        He looked over to her anxious face, “Yes, that would be best.”

        The walk was very strenuous and the amount of effort put into every step would have seemed so enormous that it would have been unbearable, had it not been for his cane and ever vigilant walking companion who would grab him around the shoulders should he begin to fall.
He wondered at why someone should go through so much trouble to help him recover his strength. There was something about the girl that seemed to gnaw at his insides. Something strange with which he could have sworn he would never have felt before. No matter how helpless she seemed she was always so optimistic. She seemed to compel him to stay even though by his very nature he would have walked away, put her behind even though she seemed to be the reason he was still alive.

        As he hopped along on his short walking stick he could not bring himself to look up so he merely stared at the ground gritting his teeth from the pain of every movement. The sky was dark even though it seemed to be midmorning. All around them as they walked there was endless and barren tundra. Frozen grass stung at his bare feet, and the chill air that raised the hairs on his arms stung at his lungs as he took in every breath. A glimpse around made life seem as hopeless as look in Rianne’s mother’s eyes. Life would seem only a burden being out in this horrid wasteland half-starved and completely frozen.

        The razor wind began to blow harder and seemed to cut completely through his skin and turning his very blood to stagnant ice. Even the small fire inside the little hut seemed a welcome site as they approached it on there way back from the morning stroll. Any shelter at all would have been a reprieve from the harsh weather outside. To imagine the girl carrying him back through such conditions, which could only have been worse the previous afternoon.

        “So how was your walk Azariel?” Rianne’s mother asked

        “Cold.” Azariel replied blandly

        The walk had actually helped a lot, some strength had seemed to return to him and soreness seemed to have numbed out a bit. He seemed to fall over less and less as he walked on his cane, becoming more coordinated with his movements and less disoriented with his fingers.

        “Your recovering faster than I would have, but I’m just an old woman.”

        “I suppose.” Said Azariel

        “Come over and warm yourself by the fire dear boy, you look to be an ice sickle.” Said the mother

        “I think I’m going to go find more wood.” Said Azariel

        “But you just got back.” Protested Rianne but before she could say anything further he was walking out of the door.

        Azariel wanted to be left to himself for a while even if it meant being away from the comfort of the fire in the little hovel. For some reason he felt better when he was alone. The Silence seemed a welcome friend, and promise of solitude dire need. Not that they were cruel or dislikable, they were the nicest people he would imagine he had ever met.

        As he walked through the ever gloomy shadow of what seemed to be around noon he searched for a place where there might have once been trees. For uprooted spots where even the trunks of trees were taken to build the small fires that warmed the many small hovels like the one Rianne lived in. After what seemed an eternity of walking he found a place where once a forest had stood, though you could hardly tell because of the serious deprivation of wood.

        How could people live like this? Would some rather not die than live in starvation and freezing cold? How could it be so that the weather could always be this cold? He couldn’t remember a thing from his past but he knew there was no way it could have always been like this.
He trudged on through upturned dirt brooding through his troubled thoughts. He knew he wasn’t the kind of person for charity nor was he the kind to stay anywhere for any long period of time. So why was he staying with these people. He knew he was a burden to them and only made it harder by having another mouth to feed. Why should he care about these people and what good would it do him to worry about their troubles instead of his own.

        And why was he always thinking about this girl Rianne. Why did she even matter to him at all? She was not the most attractive girl in the world, she never fixed her dirty brown hair and never even bothered to sew the dirty rags he thought might have, at one time, been a dress. Was it something in her hey grey eyes or perhaps something about the way that no matter how gloomy the weather she always found a way to find the good in any day? No, of course not, beauty was shown on the outside. But for some reason he felt intrigued about her. Whether it was her ability to just keep smiling no matter how starving he knew she had to be or just the way he sometimes caught faint hints of small eyes looking his way, he couldn’t know.

        The wood Azariel found was pathetic, nothing more than twigs and small withered branches but at least it was dry and there was enough to make a small cooking fire with. Rianne had found a few mushrooms and some roots earlier that she said they would be able to make a decent stew with.

        The stew wasn’t too bad but knew it probably was the best thing he had ever tasted before. The night was cold and most of the wood was used to get the fire hot enough to boil water for the roots. They decided it best to save the wood he had brought home for the next day. The cold was so intense that it sent intense chills throughout his entire body. How anyone ever slept through anything so horrible he thought he would never understand.

        It was pointless trying to sleep apart from the cold and pain the still plagued his body his head was filled with too many questions to get any sleep. He needed to move around, to walk and think about where he was and where he was planning on going. He needed to be able to move under his own power again and be able to leave this people to their lives in frozen poverty. Azariel knew the best thing for him was another walk. Besides, he thought to himself, it was so bad inside it really couldn’t be much worse outside.

[Rahl]

Chapter 4:

             Darkness… black eyes that seemed to take away all light around them. Eyes so endlessly deep and dead that they seemed to draw her into the underworld itself. But she felt as if she wanted to be drawn in, only to be eternally bound to such eyes. The temptation was overwhelming, temptation to become lost forever in the bliss of desires in which they silently preached from within…

             A distant roar seemed to echo within her mind as Rianne sat bolt upright in a cold sweat, her heart seemingly pounding a hundred times a second and her mind going in a thousand different directions all at the same time.

             The last thing she could make was brightly burning torches and burly faced man in front of her with his knife drawn and held across her throat before a dark sack was roughly pulled over her head down to her neck where it was tied tightly with a rope.

             She struggled to get away but the man that had had the knife at her throat grabbed her wrists with his rugged gigantic hands twisting them painfully behind her back and binding them. She felt around with her foot until she found a man’s leg in front of her. She then thrust her foot forward to where she judges the man’s groin to be, and by the startled grunting and the sound of the man’s torch dropping against the wall she knew she had hit her mark. She pushed her self back upright with her bound hands behind her and heard the man still behind her laughing at the other. She tilted her head forward and lashed it backward slamming it full into his groin and he fell to the floor as well. She started getting to her feet as best she could, the smell of burning wood where the man had dropped his torch moments before filled the air.

           The first man though had regained his senses and came running toward her. “Stupid bitch” she heard a pained and angry voice yell right before the butt of a dagger slammed into the back of her skull, knocking her unconscious to the ground.

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             Azariel walked through the cold and barren wasteland, trudging ever on lost in his thoughts, his mind in he clouds and his eyes upon the ground. His joints were beginning to heal faster with every walk. A few more, he thought to himself, and he would be completely normal again. What would he do once he was again able to care for himself? Would he stay with Rianne and her mother and tend pitiful gardens for the rest of his life, gathering what wood there was left in this hell only to have to freeze to death every night anyway?

             No the simple life of a starving farmer was no life for him. He was more than that, more than Rianne or her mother. He wouldn’t suffer the life of a peasant. He would go somewhere far away and take everything he needed. What good would it do for him to stay? There was nothing for him, no future except to die young and bony. And there was no way he could find any of his past here.

             Yet why did he feel some small compulsion to linger? There was nothing of value. Nothing purpose for him to even want to stay here. She’s not even pretty, he thought to himself, and she was so dirty all the time. He was so deep in thought that he didn’t even notice it was actually growing somewhat warmer around him.

             Azariel hadn’t wasn’t how long he had been out and had at first believed the light to be coming from a newly rising sun, but when he looked up saw that it was still daylight but was amazed to see a blazing fire roaring high into the chilly night air. Outside the burning house lay a small dark shape its shadow cast in his direction removing it from view.

             As he drew closer he saw that it was a woman battered and bloodied lying among the frosted house crying and covering her more serious wounds.

             Rianne’s mother spoke as though every breath cost her more than she would have paid had she not needed to say her dying words. “They took her Azariel. Abdiel’s men took her. I tried to keep them away but they just beat me within an inch of my life…” she coughed even more blood over the front of her already drenched shirt. “Please Azariel find her before the king can…”

             The old woman lay there drenched in blood as her arms went limp, her head turned to the side, and a last bit of blood frothed out of her mouth, her last breath of air exhaling from her lifeless lungs.

             Azariel stood in front of the woman he had only met mere days ago but, who from the first moment she saw him had accepted him into her home, and shared what little of everything had with him. Anger flared in him, not an anger born of hatred for another or of envy of what they had, but anger of pure righteousness. He walked away only stare back into the face of the woman who had without question or doubt trusted confided in him, and only to see her eyes stare at him. Eyes that could not see, eyes that would never see again.