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Sithsaber
Apr 8, 2014

by Ion Helmet
Another storm was brewing in EndRiver.  It sputtered strangely in the distance; more proof this was no ordinary rainstorm. At times its lightning behaved like inverted fireworks and fell from the sky in intricate patterns tinged yellow or blue. At other times the streaks floated in like stray aurora, leaking contrasting colors through the blackened rain clouds. Unlike common cyclones which came in quickly and swallowed everything in their path, the storm and its lights held fast to the southeast, and gave a dim visibility to everyone and everything in that direction.

 

A silent man headed towards it. He shambled onwards with the weary gait of someone who had limped along for miles, and fully expected to continue to limp along for many miles more. All around him were signs of distress; mangled trees, littered debris and cautionary markings were scattered pell-mell across the landscape. He didn’t notice; he was too worn down with fatigue to step over the broken branches or look up with trepidation at the disorder in the night sky.

 

The Man's name was Jonas; he was a Retriever. His current assignment was supposed to have been an easy one; the son of a wealthy patron had gone out to find himself, and what with all the trouble down in Endriver his father had thought it wise to cut that journey short. The Retriever had been told where to go along with a hefty advance and a sign of credit meant to grant him free lodging throughout the area. The job should have only lasted a few days: he had been walking for 12.

 

At first the delay had been intentional. The Retriever had never been rich man and would not pass on living like one. He slept early and woke late, and travelled at a pace that purposely increased Oliver’s head start. This inaction proved to be a mistake.

 

News of any kind grew scarcer the farther the Retriever travelled, increasingly replaced by signs of confusion and paranoia. In one town a simple bar fight had led to the inexplicable deaths of all those involved, in another  rumors of well water contamination proved true as the town folk who drank of it fell prey to frenzy and hysteria. Glowing predators were said to stalk the roads, eviscerating anyone in their sight and leaving no traces of the kills save for their curdling screams, which had allegedly sunk into the land. Adding to this was the coming of a storm the likes of which hadn’t been seen in the area for centuries. With all this strangeness going on it was understandable that folk were too busy worrying to notice the presence of a well to do traveler. Oliver seemed disappeared in the tumult.

 

All of this made the Retriever nervous. He made a mistake dragging this assignment out, and would probably suffer for it. He had wasted most of his funds, and would probably never work a job again after botching such a simple fetch request so completely.  Spending the rest of his cash on provisions, he hoped the seemingly random assortment of goods would weather him through any and all situations that could befall him in the budding chaos. The piece of him that remembered missing meals almost wished he’d get a taste of whatever force was ravaging the countryside.

A week’s hike led him to luck and the last operating outpost that side of the frontier, which reported the passing through of a man matching Oliver’s description. Oliver had seemed sullen, revealing nothing but what could be learned from nervous eyes and the fidgets of a man more comfortable away from the vestiges of society. The Retriever thanked the teller and hurried to out to find the youth, ignoring warnings that it would be best to seek shelter rather than chase a dead man.  Why the Teller wrote the boy off for dead didn’t come to the Retriever’s mind until well after he left. The Retriever had been too engrossed in his self assurance that he wouldn’t return a failure.

-2-

A few more days of wandering shook this surety. He hit a wall of rain almost immediately after leaving the outpost.  The next 3 days of being soaked alone in the woods left the Retriever drenched, dejected, and incapable of picturing success. The boy would never be found; perhaps it was best if he returned to his patron, told him a plausible tale of his son dying in the undoubtedly well reported confusion engulfing the east, and then fleeing with the cash before the distraught man had the sense to check his ledger.

 

Machinations would need to wait for rest. The sogginess was sapping his spirits, and threatening to bring on illness that could prove fatal if left unattended. The Retriever cursed the rains and got off the road to look for shelter.  He cursed more when none could be found, and decided to throw a tarp over himself and wait for the tumult of water to die down. He realized this was counterproductive as the mud turned to fluid muck and began to rise. With a groan he began to struggle up before noticing something strange about the ground. It was pulsing. A low rhythm beat all around him, albeit a weak one that was inaudible in the dampening patter of the rains.

 

The Retriever refocused himself and found that the ground wasn’t the only thing throbbing. What he had written off as a headache was an actual disturbance that subtly shook the forest like an unseen wind. The vibrations felt strongest from the southeast, and led to a weed-less clearing that had a great grass covered mound at its center. It seemed that the mound had been hollowed out, and its doorway glimmered with a pale blue light. Blinded by the discomfort of excess moisture and atypical levels of inquisitiveness, the Retriever went inside.

-3-

 

The mound’s interior was small, and smaller than what would be imagined at first site of the artificial hill that jutted from the clearing . It was strange in its simplicity; there were no mosaics or trinkets signaling its purpose, merely smoothed stone and a pervasive sense of emptiness.  Perhaps a trick of the light had given undue significance to an Improvised Rondavel which had been stripped in anticipation of flooding from the storm: Or perhaps not. The Retriever returned from his musings as a burst of energy rolled through him, bringing along with it a surge of light that came from a previously unseen corner of the room.  Jutting from it a concrete passage led into the depths, and beckoned with shimmering lights and a dream like atmosphere that made the Retriever feel like a fly drawn to the flame.  He was nervous now; as a child the Retriever had heard tales of ancient portal graves that served as witches’ lairs: his thoughts warned of a number of terrible things now lurking in the barrows below. He continued downwards when he convinced himself his own imaginings were the source of the sinister air that had begun to fill the complex.

 

Yet the Retriever remained apprehensive as he ventured deeper into what was revealing itself to be a megalith in the middle of what was supposed to be virgin forest. The burrow was narrow and blatantly decrepit; all that remained of its past purpose were dust and cracks well into the process of falling sway to the weathering that would soon threaten total tunnel collapse. Curiously no signs of recent habitation could be been inside the mound. Everything appeared purposefully untouched, as if the vermin and spiders knew a reason for shunning this place that the Retriever did not.  He began to feel certain that it would have been better if he too had stayed away.

 

Even odder was how nothing was kicked up by the vibrations that grew more powerful and erratic the farther the Retriever traversed. The pulses couldn’t be ignored now; their intensity had increased as had their strange tempo. Whenever a baseline began to emerge the pulses would scatter and collapse as if they issued from an instrument played by someone with raw potential but no instruction in the craft. The light remained more or less constant, only brightening and dimming along with significant breakdowns in the beat.

 

Eventually the pathway ended at a crossroad. To his left and right were passages that had caved in well before he had arrived. Directly in front of him was the source of the light which blinded him with its intensity before snapping into the more mundane smolder of a campfire. Wooziness assailed him as his eyes adjusted to the unexpected shift in lighting that had just taken place. The Retriever had begun to think the rains had left him seriously ill; or all the strangeness of the mound had been a providential ruse meant to lead him to assistance.

 

The way to warmth was a small parting of earth that led into a cavernous alcove.  The Retriever squeezed through, driven on by an urge to both know what was beyond his line of sight and to tolerate it in exchange for the heat he desperately craved. Once inside The Retriever could sense the presence of something unseen. In discovering what it was, he immediately regretted not allowing it to remain hidden.

 A well dressed but otherwise unremarkable gentleman had been leaning on the wall near the chamber’s opening before being brushed aside by the reckless interloper now left dumbstruck by what was in front of him.  This “man” barely noticed the intrusion.

 

-4-

 

Two men no longer accustomed to the presence of others had just bumped into each other. One had the look of weariness about him, and carried himself as if gripped by fever. The other seemed normal enough. He was well dressed and a bit pale, but in almost all other regards appeared to be just another person looking for a way out of the wet and cold. This illusion of normalcy stopped at the eyes. Those eyes were wild and inattentive, and burned with a blue fire that went far beyond charisma or genetics.

 The Retriever looked into them and was transfixed. He could barely think in this things presence. The once man came out of his stupor and looked back at the Retriever. One set of eyes threatened to expunge all light in the other. The only reason this ocular devouring stopped short was because the Once Man became distracted by a trick of the light that flickered from off to the side. The Retriever took his opening and began to ease towards the exit.

 

The Retriever cursed himself for being so unlucky while blessing the powers that be for his chance at escape. Unfortunately his chance was too brief to be capitalized on. The Once Man no longer appeared normal. His eyes had been crushed and were replaced by small pale blue dots; the waning of their intensity revealed their owner to be in disheveled rags which slid off his now emaciated frame. His face began to brittle as if stabbed by the silent rebukes now filling his head. The pulses stopped and were replaced by swirling explosions that now visibly swam around the Once Man before being sucked down his throat. The Retriever knew flight was out of question once the Once Man began to scream.

 

The room shifted again, this time dragging everything into an overwhelming dreamscape of alien sound and sight. The Retriever would have collapsed and waited for his eyes to adjust to the strange gleam if dread hadn’t reminded him that he wasn’t alone in this place, which caused him to throw blindly himself into a crevice he had noticed on the way in. Eventually he opened them to witness the place had changed. A shade more white than blue enveloped the room, eradicating any other hue in its path. The chamber was pure stone and covered in sparkling moss that slithered along with and away from the vibrations’ epicenter.

 

It was obvious that the thing before the Retriever had been the source of the chaos engulfing the east. The Retriever's slothful search for a spoiled adolescent had led him into the midst of a rite that transcended the destructive properties of the pure and profane. “This is what I get for wanting simple” was what he frantically repeated while he rummaged through his things and waited to see whether his intrusion would warrant a death sentence.

 

Apparently it did. The Once Man’s shout grew in perplexity as the swimming imagery subsided. It took a while for the Retriever to understand that what he was witnessing was inhalation merged with gasps of pain. The light receded into the Once Man’s mouth, leaving all in darkness save for the blue aura that shrouded the monster, and a faint yellow glow that clung to the Retriever. Jonas didn’t have time to marvel at this; the Once Man had begun to heave, and was puking out monstrosities.

The first wave of monsters fell to the ground with a wet plop, and convulsed in a bubbling sack of their own viscous “flesh” before bursting out of the wads of meat and assuming forms that had terrorized the children of EndRiver dreams for centuries. These things were all barely humanoid in appearance; one sprouted pincers from its man like mouth and stood semi erect like the forest dwelling ancestors of man who had been hunted to extinction over thirty years ago, another tore its arms and legs in twain to release thin hair like appendages that propelled the beast with lunges and shoves, and the last was a hunch back whose hump burst to reveal a tangle of spider legs that lifted it into the air.  The creatures were all translucent, and all obviously hungry for the Retriever’s flesh.

 

                After a moment of wobbling confusion, the monstrosities lunged at Jonas and raced towards him like hungry (and insanely vicious) new born calves. The Retriever quickly reached into one of his bags and poured an arch of salt as a ward. The salt didn’t really have any power save for purifying the floor, and the lines were uneven due to the lack of steadiness brought on by the Jonas’ illness and fear. He fumbled in his pack as the terrors of his youth grew nearer until He pulled out a embroidered cloth and threw it down on the salt just as the monsters were nearly upon him, causing their vanguard to convulse as if burned by a hidden wall of fire. Unfortunately he knew that the apotraic ceremony wouldn’t hold them off for long.

 

Another wave of monsters were beginning to form, this time taking the form of the furless wolves that had no doubt been  the ones decimating the refugees and travelers along the road. They were skinless and covered in sores, and numbered in the dozens.  At that moment the cloth began to sizzle, revealing that Jonas’ instinctual sacrament was a stop gap and not a solution to his predicament.  The Retriever reached for his gun. He couldn’t kill the bodiless horrors, but he could at least deprive them of a struggle. The Retriever looked one last time at the fiend at the other side of the room. It was still screaming, and had begun to sprout tentacles from its mouth. Oddly enough the tentacles were bound to the shifting monstrosities that currently sought to tear the Retriever (and everyone else soon enough) to shreds. This gave the Retriever a desperate idea. He marked himself, aimed the pistol, and fired. The Once Man’s throat was blown to bits.

 

-5-

 

The light-show abruptly ended with the Once Man’s passing. The entities wobbled and dissipated, leaving the Retriever alone with a camp fire and whatever it was that was now dead. The Retriever blinked and was surprised to see that the corpse had reverted to the form of the well dressed gentleman. A quick search of the cadaver’s person proved the ironic suspicions that had been forming in the back of the Retriever’s mind. It took a week for him to haul Oliver’s corpse back to the customer. The Retriever didn’t bother consoling him through the shock of his report or the anguish brought on by the sight of his son’s decaying body. He merely advised him to sear the corpse’s mouth shut after paying his fee in hard cash.

Sithsaber fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Jul 11, 2014

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Sithsaber
Apr 8, 2014

by Ion Helmet
Pasting this over from my phone might have hosed with the formatting. I should probably also edit the climax.

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

I read through the whole thing just now. I could give you bit-by-bit feedback if you want, but here's what I saw.

1: You need to work on showing. Let's look at this excerpt:

quote:

After a moment of wobbling confusion, the monstrosities lunged at Jonas and raced towards him like hungry (and insanely vicious) new born calves. The Retriever quickly reached into one of his bags and poured an arch of salt as a ward. The salt didn’t really have any power save for purifying the floor, and the lines were uneven due to the lack of steadiness brought on by the Jonas’ illness and fear. He fumbled in his pack as the terrors of his youth grew nearer until He pulled out a embroidered cloth and threw it down on the salt just as the monsters were nearly upon him, causing their vanguard to convulse as if burned by a hidden wall of fire. Unfortunately he knew that the apotraic ceremony wouldn’t hold them off for long.

Another wave of monsters were beginning to form, this time taking the form of the furless wolves that had no doubt been the ones decimating the refugees and travelers along the road. They were skinless and covered in sores, and numbered in the dozens. At that moment the cloth began to sizzle, revealing that Jonas’ instinctual sacrament was a stop gap and not a solution to his predicament.

There's a number of individual issues that all come together to make this excerpt a lot flatter than it has to be. You've got a lot of long, wordy sentences here for a scene that's about action. You've got instances of weird word usage when something less complicated would be clearer. You've got some mechanical (spelling/grammar) errors, notably that you misspelled 'apotropaic'. (If you pull out a thesaurus word, don't misspell it.) For something that's supposed to be strange and surreal, you don't let you character's point of view show in the way you describe things. The details are strange, but the way you're telling it is very straightforward. Your protagonist's personality doesn't come through in the writing because of stuff like the last sentence. 'Revealing' that it isn't working? Revealing to who? Why are you just saying 'it revealed it wasn't working?'

If it's revealed to him it might sound like this posted:

His handkerchief began to char along the edges. The ward was a mess and it wasn't going to last. He had seconds, at most.

If it's revealed to the monsters, it'd be more like this. posted:

There was a skittering roar from in front of him. The creatures twisted their limbs in terror and peeled away from the ward scrawled across the floor. But then, they stopped screeching. They drew closer, like they were taunting his defenses. The cloth was sizzling away, and when it was gone, they would be on top of him.

These are one-minute rewrites but I hope you get the idea I'm trying to convey here. Giving us details like 'the cloth is being destroyed and the spell will be broken' works better when you put it in the context of a character's understanding of the world. Instead of just telling us what things mean, you allow a character's thoughts to illustrate for us not just what it means but their reaction to it. Notice that in my rewrites, I never even said that destroying the cloth would end the spell, but it becomes clear that's what's going on.

2. You like semicolons too much.

quote:

The Man's name was Jonas; he was a Retriever.
The second clause doesn't give me further elaboration on the first clause. Here, you should split the sentence: The man's name was Jonas. He was a Retriever.

quote:

His current assignment was supposed to have been an easy one; the son of a wealthy patron had gone out to find himself, and what with all the trouble down in Endriver his father had thought it wise to cut that journey short.
Considering the length of the second clause, I would split the sentence. His current assignment was supposed to have been an easy one. The son of a wealthy patron had gone out to find himself, and what with all the trouble down in Endriver his father had thought it wise to cut that journey short.
But since the second clause is an explanation, you can also use a colon. His current assignment was supposed to have been an easy one: the son of a wealthy patron had gone out to find himself, and what with all the trouble down in Endriver his father had thought it wise to cut that journey short.

Just don't use a semicolon.

quote:

These things were all barely humanoid in appearance; one sprouted pincers from its man like mouth and stood semi erect like the forest dwelling ancestors of man who had been hunted to extinction over thirty years ago, another tore its arms and legs in twain to release thin hair like appendages that propelled the beast with lunges and shoves, and the last was a hunch back whose hump burst to reveal a tangle of spider legs that lifted it into the air.
Here, you're introducing a list of things. This is also a job for a colon. These things were all barely humanoid in appearance: one sprouted pincers from its man like mouth and stood semi erect like the forest dwelling ancestors of man who had been hunted to extinction over thirty years ago, et cetera.

Most of your semicolon overuse was in the first category, though. Whenever you get to a semicolon in your editing pass, take a moment and see if it wouldn't work better with some other kind of punctuation. When you're writing your rough draft, semicolons seem to work in more places than they really do work.

3. You leave stuff unexplained that should be explained.

But didn't I say in number one that you tell too much? Yeah, I did. This is one of the reasons why writing is hard. It's your job as a writer to make sure the readers can follow your plot and characters. I think, though, that it'd help if you followed the advice I offered in number 1 and focused on writing from the mental perspective of your character. From time to time you dip into it, but you never get deep enough to give me an idea of who he is or what he knows. There's a weird storm. Is this unusual but a known occurrence, or is this completely strange? He finds an underground burial mound with a dude inside. Again, how weird is this? I don't understand your world as well as I should, because for the most part, you leave out the way your character understands the world.

I get that you're going for a sort of surrealism here. The key to surrealism, though, is not in weird stuff happening, but in the way the characters react to it. Surrealism works off of the disconnect between the way we'd react to something and the way we see the characters reacting to it. If you haven't done a good job of conveying the reactions or thoughts of your viewpoint character, then we don't know what's supposed to be normal or strange in this world.

The takeaway from this not about explaining worldbuilding or plot points, it's about making sure the readers know how the character/s feel about what's going on. To bring it all the way back to number 1, you don't have to explain how the ward works, but you should get across (via showing your character's actions, thoughts, and emotions) the urgency of the ward about to fail.

4. You make some weird vocab choices.

This ties in somewhat with number one, but there's a lot of points where I get tripped up on odd words or phrases that you could have removed with an editing pass. I'll offer a few examples.

quote:

Unlike common cyclones which came in quickly and swallowed everything in their path, the storm and its lights held fast to the southeast, and gave a dim visibility to everyone and everything in that direction.
You mean a glow?

quote:

A few more days of wandering shook this surety.
You mean confidence or certainty?

quote:

Machinations would need to wait for rest.
Plans?

quote:

Blinded by the discomfort of excess moisture and atypical levels of inquisitiveness, the Retriever went inside.
He was blinded by being unusually curious? (BTW unusual curiosity is a way better way to say that)

quote:

Wooziness assailed him as his eyes adjusted to the unexpected shift in lighting that had just taken place
Woozy is a sort of silly, slang-like word. Assailed is a fairly formal word. Putting them together there seems unintentionally jarring.

quote:

He marked himself, aimed the pistol, and fired.
I really don't know what definition of 'marked' you were going for. Like, he steeled himself? 'Mark' in the context of firing a gun seems like he's firing at himself.

5. Miscellaneous:

This thing with parentheses.

quote:

After a moment of wobbling confusion, the monstrosities lunged at Jonas and raced towards him like hungry (and insanely vicious) new born calves.

quote:

Oddly enough the tentacles were bound to the shifting monstrosities that currently sought to tear the Retriever (and everyone else soon enough) to shreds.
Don't do it.

Also, that 'Oddly enough'. Take it out. It draws attention to itself more than it should. This goes for most conversationalisms, which is a word I made up. They include:
-oddly enough
-strangely
-what with all the
-with all this
-a number of
-even odder
-normal enough
And ones that I didn't see but are worth mentioning:
-a sort of
-apparently
-seemingly
-quite
These are words that sound good as you're writing because they sound like you're getting into a conversational tone. But what you're actually doing is putting word fluff around the words that actually give you meaning. Unless you're deliberately trying to evoke the speaking style of someone who's really chatty, don't do this, because it'll hurt more than it helps.

Also this line:

quote:

Jutting from it a concrete passage led into the depths, and beckoned with shimmering lights and a dream like atmosphere that made the Retriever feel like a fly drawn to the flame.
A dream-like atmosphere is enough of a cliche without following it with a literal cliche. e: and are flies drawn to a flame? Regardless, it's not enough of a twist on a cliche to make it worth saying.

In Conclusion
There were a lot of words in here. I'd say that half of them were necessary for telling the story, and that's being generous. You have the basic structure of a conflict, so that's good, but you need to work on your characters--I didn't get any sort of a feel for your protagonist, and without characters, a conflict is going to seem hollow. Your point of view felt disconnected from the world. Also, there were a lot of grammar and structural/word choice problems that could have been fixed with a good editing pass. Don't discount the benefits of editing.

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