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Posted By: SacredRaven Feb 07, 2005 - 08:46 am

This is my first attempt at writing anything of the Fantasy genre, I normally keep a Journal which has amassed to about 400 000 words of writing in the last two years. Any feedback you could give me on the extracts here would be greatly appreciated. I am aware that they probably don't make a great deal of sense as standalones but I have presented them this way in order to give you an idea of the kind of material that I write.

Any constructive criticism or feedback would be appreciated. If you want to read more, let me know.

Sacred Raven.

"They coiled themselves around the west face of the hill, as silent and deadly as a viper and by no means any less venomous. A procession of fifteen made their way through the throngs of dark figures surrounding them on all sides as solemn as the darkness of the night itself. The fifteen beaten and broken figures had been marched over rough terrain for days, witnessing the horrors of kin and friend murdered, beaten and mercilessly incapacitated before their eyes.

Tears worked their way wordlessly down grubby, blackened cheeks to the soft gray-ash mountain soil below their feet. Harsh shoving and the occasional beating hurried the broken and horror-stricken figures on a silent path upwards. Sleep deprivation had robbed the world of sanity, darkening the souls of the panic-stricken, almost-heartless victims. It seemed as if they had traveled forever, yet soon it seemed they would stop. Their fate was unknown, yet from the expressions of the group it was clear this sudden stopping was feared more than the horrifying rush of the last few torturous days.

At the head of the procession a broad-backed man tried to blot the images of the past, the events that had lead them to this place on such a dark and cold night. As the birdsong had barely begun to signify the beginning of a new glorious spring day, darkness had descended upon the single settlement nestled in the lowlands of Rosan. The first knowledge the humans had garnered of their slender, dark-skinned attackers was the screams of the dying and the blaze of torch fire alighting Spring-dried thatch rooftops. The airs brought death upon those who ventured from the infernos of homes, marksmen pinning down those foolish enough to attempt flight.

Screams filled the air. From the shadows emerged figure after figure; more malevolent than the darkness that once contained their shapes. Fire had spread, burning wood, thatch and the living all alike. Tormented wails of anguish had filled the air as cold steel tore through limbs and bodies, severing and mutilating in a night of sudden death. Families had watched as members had been cut down before their eyes, to turn pleading towards another blade.

The streets had run red with the blood of the fallen. Charred and desecrated corpses littered the streets, some bodies punctured with multiple arrow or quarrel wounds. Children cried and screamed over the blackened, bloodied bodies of mother, father, brother and sister. Smoke and ash filled the air, burning the eyes and scalding the lungs as places of home wasted away into soft-falling ash.

Some had fought back, of the hundred or still living on that night after the initial wave of violence. Twelve men had gathered together, standing among the wreckage of their homes, livelihoods, and horror-stricken eyes gazing into the faces of their assailants. A man bellowed a hoarse cry, charging forward as silent tears streaked his hollow, gaunt face. Others had joined him in a hopeless charge to reclaim what had already been lost. Blades flashed, carrying fatality between the two sides, yet the figures from the shadows were simply too many for the hopeless assailants. Whooping cries of chaotic victory, the merciless invaders challenged the previous peace of the birdsong.

In less than half of an hour, the fishing village of Nes’Kan had been all but annihilated. The shadowy and silent dark elves had rounded twenty of those still able to walk and had immediately traced their path to the mountain hill ranges north. Fires flickered at the skies, a pale imitation of the dawn rising in the skies above. Cajoling and prodding their sullen victims onward the company of elves withdrew, a brooding silent wreckage marking their wake.

Now that procession climbed their way slowly up the side of the gray-ash hill. Above them raged a bonfire, reminding them each of the fires that had burnt away the sanity of their lives but a session of nights before. The fifty or so dark figures around them had contracted as they reached the top of the hill, totally eliminating any possible gaps for retreat. More than one noted the blades drawn in warning to any gathering thoughts in such contemplating of the notion.

They were escorted towards that blaze, it’s orange-yellow spires communicating upwards to the dark night’s heavens. A child to the left of the procession whimpered and was greeted with a merciless blow to the side of the face. A crunch of bone sounded and the child was pulled back to its feet by ruthless hands. More than one of the manacled prisoners shuddered, some turning their eyes away unable to partake of the sight. None spoke out, fearing the similar treatment by their captors.

They were stopped before the fire and more of the shadowy figures emerged in front of them. None knew their purpose there, and they stood uncertainly shaking as the cold of the night winds chilled through to the bone. Previously serviceable clothes hung in rags, with more than a few of the bodies showing scars and wounds. Five of their fellows had not made it this far, their lifeless bodies cast carelessly from the track as the procession forced them towards to this final locale."

Posted By: SacredRaven Feb 07, 2005 - 08:48 am

"Notak Iziale bore an imposing figure as he stood surveying his troops as the procession halted before the fires. He was barely in his fiftieth year, young by his people’s standards. He was well muscled and broad shouldered, an expensively exquisite long sword strapped to his left hip adorned with masterfully crafted scabbard bearing his clan’s symbol of the snake. His brown eyes glanced upward to the small group of dark elves awaiting him, and he called out a short greeting to the leader of that small group. Dressed in robes of black, rivalling the night sky in their intensity, the small group’s leader trudged in a fatigue manner towards the young commander. The elf was lean, almost to the point of unpleasantness. His smile revealed age-blackened teeth as he clasped the young elf’s strong hand in his wizened old one.

“Greetings to you, Notak Iziale, I see your foray has brought us success. Your rewards will be forthcoming, my young friend. Tonight is to be a glorious night.”

Notak almost sneered at the mage‘s usage of “young friend“ but was quick to hide it. They were far from comrades, one just as distrustful as the other, but the mage was powerful and he would do well not to offend. The physically weak magic user grated on his nerves. He cleared his throat once before replying.

“We have returned with the sacrifices as you have asked, am I now to be enlightened as to the nature of your request? I have brought you what you desired and now I wish to know what you intend.”
“You shall see my impatient young friend, for tonight much will be revealed to you.” The old man began to turn to leave, irritating the younger elf with his cryptic answer and air of superiority.
“Worthless information garnered from a time-warped old mage? Such use you are to us all, old man.”
The mage turned cool eyes upon him, causing him to shudder someone deep inside his lower spine. The old man held some knowledge in those eyes, knowledge he found himself straining to avoid contemplation. The wizened figure paused another moment before responding.
“If you wish to know my purpose here, perhaps you should ask your mother, boy” he scowled, the last word rich in venom. He turned his back to the younger elf and walked back towards his group of acolytes, whom were amusing themselves by casually watching the proceedings as the dark elves and their captives milling around in preparation.
“What do you mean? Do you hear me, crinkled old fool?” When the magi failed to response his punched a richly mailed fist into the air. “•••• you to Hades!” he swore under his breath, turning away from the old lurching figure before him.

Notak grunted, irritated by the response, untrustworthy of this man. Despite his clan’s high regard for the powerful mage, Notak had never trusted him. It was something in his eyes, he decided. He drew his cloak tighter round him in a failed attempt to ward away the night breeze’s chill. Sannos was tirelessly misleading, an identifying character trait of his race. Getting a clear answer from the mage was frustrating at best, tear-chokingly infuriating at worst. Notak watched the mage walk away towards his comrades, his age-stiffened old form hunched over a deceptively weak frame. Despite appearances the young dark elf commander knew that had Sannos decided to personally play a part in the raid he would have accounted alone for possibly half of his best fighters and marksmen.

He glanced quickly around the hilltop, seeing the captives closely guarded by ten of his men. Others had broken into smaller groups still, smaller fires lighted from the larger as the elves sat to play dice, gamble, eat and rest. Some of the slaves cried soundlessly, others collapsed with exhaustion had sprawled onto the dirt beneath them, their clothes and bodies dirtied and worn. He saw nothing of importance there. His gaze travelled to the small group attending the mage as they examined and argued over matters of the arcane.

He knew something would have transpired by the light of the dawn here. The calmness and laughter of his battle-proved men did nothing to calm him; the arcane was a world unknown to him. Judging by the intensity upon the faces of the elderly mages followers as they bickered tirelessly amongst each other, it was going to be a long, long night."

"The raven soared tirelessly above the figures far below, appearing as but small dots to the bird’s greater vantage point high from the ground. With a short flutter of its wings the bird proceeded to circle downwards, bringing the figures into greater clarification. Two figures stood out from the throng of shadow masses below, both the evident leaders of those assembled below. The bird’s eyes hung upon the figures as it proceeded to encircle once more. Then, as abruptly as the animal had appeared, it took flight away from those below.

This was the fifth such encampment the animal had seen in the period of two days. She had watched as four other parties had escorted a small charge of humans into the mountains south of their homelands, no doubt merely following orders of their respective clans. Each group held no knowledge of the other, separated by their respective mileage, escorting weary and beaten charges to a predestined location. She had seen it all.

The raven spiralled lazily as it settled into an approach to the lowland plains beneath, the ground rising high and fast as the bird descended the air currents. The wind howled and shook the trees, oblique and repressive on this night of darkness. Stars held their noble radiance as a multitude of pinpoints lit the sky.

The raven began to change, slowly at first and then faster as the progression took hold of the small animal’s body. Where the bird had been seconds before stood a sleek and agile female, deadly as the night itself. Long, jet-black hair flowed carelessly down her back, a strange contrast to her deathly pale angled features. She growled softly to herself, recognizing the significance of what she had witnesses uprising in the last few days in the brooding mountains westward. Reflecting, she gazed to those distant points of lights in the horizon.

“What fools you must be to attempt this, to awaken what must not be awakened. Do you even realise the dangers you bring upon yourselves, the balance that you threaten to overthrow?”

There was no answer but the soft whispering of the winds."

Posted By: SacredRaven Feb 07, 2005 - 08:49 am

"Then suddenly, there is no longer any noise. The screams that had greeted the air moments before are subdued. Corpses litter the ground, some of the prone bodies groaning as Sutrios moves among them, finishing the job we began but what seems like moments earlier. It is then that I notice two of the other members crouched round a prone figure lying on the soil. I glance around for Soi’ Han, until I realize I cannot locate her. I look down to the figure on the ground. Its skin is white. Suddenly, my worst fear rages before my eyes, my heart rate soaring as I move towards her.

I watched her pass from this realm to the next. Around me, so much carnage, so much destruction but I was apart from it, I was no longer really there. The screamer slash had sliced apart her armor as if it was nothing more than parchment, and had scored a trail of scarlet along her thin nubile body. I could not believe that I am watching this, seeing the blood flow from the wound, bathing her body in a bath of scarlet. There was nothing, nothing that I could do. Suddenly none of this mattered, something else that changed me was lost to me. Lying right in front of me and there was nothing that I could do. Lying here, bleeding to death, passing in unconsciousness. I could do is lean forward and softly kiss those lips that I had kissed a million times before.

I watched the colour fade from her eyes and from her skin as she lay there. I watched as those purest blue eyes told me that she loved me one more time. In those eyes I remembered watching as my kin screamed and died horrific, painful deaths. I remembered watching as they inflicted as much pain as they received and the screams of creatures truly from the Abyss. The memory became almost substance as sound, nearly reaching my time-warped unhearing ears. Now I watched as one more person that mattered to me died. There was none of the tortured anguish on her features here. Just a silent, somehow strangling composure. I watched as she passed from this realm to the next. I watched until the blood no longer ran from her wound. I watched as she lay there, I watched as I realized I would never see her smile again.

I don’t know how long I knelt beside her, suddenly the noise around me seemed to fade and I looked around, the world blurred through seeing it with eyes filled with tears. My unit walked over to me, now down to just the four of us. I looked into their eyes, sending them my sorrow. There was nothing they could say, there was nothing they could do and they knew it. Those few who knew me so well, those who had fought with me, laughed with me, cried with me had nothing to say to me. I watched her die. I watched her die. I watched her die.

Again, the world changed suddenly. The shock faded a little with the emergence of anger, rage I had never known before. Why? I will never know the answer to that simple question, I will never know why this had to happened to one of the people that I was closest to, why it had to happen to one of the few of my lovers who has ever truly known something about me, seen something inside me that I have not shown to any other. My closest, who have saved my life so many times, who have helped treat my wounds, who have saved both my heart and head, helping to treat those self-inflicted wounds also, had nothing to say to me. The rage, the hurt, the tears and the unknowingness of “Why” silenced one more bond.

I spent the next few hours kneeling there, staring at her lifeless body knowing a pain that I had never felt before, knowing a sorrow that ripped my soul apart. Colour suddenly lost vibrancy; the food that Sutrios brought me had no taste. Emotion has no meaning. I had watched her die, watched her blood spill into the ground. Night slowly dawned, turning the ambient hues and brightness of the day into shadow and darkness, matching the world with the numbness of my heart. I truly felt nothing that night. Then I stood, and searched for wood for almost an hour, arranging a pyre for my dead lover and dead friend. I knew the grief of one who has lost something, which he needed in order to be complete. I tried to forget in the darkness what she had meant to me, I tried to forget how she had changed me. I tried to forget the pleasure of her kiss, how it both soothed and aroused. I tried to forget waking next to her each morning, in a world with times and places that made sense that had so much meaning. I tried to forget her smile and how I loved her in the darkness of the night and the darkness of my heart. I tried to forget.

And then I laid her body on the pyre, soaked the wood and her body in oil and made fire. As those flames reached the sky, burning bright against the purple and black night lit only by the radiance of stars I burst into tears. I sunk to my knees and cried. Cried until the body had burnt long ago, until the wood had burnt down to ash. Cried until the sky begun to lighten. Cried, because I knew that I could not ever forget her smile.

I know that I will never forget how the colour faded from her, or how I lost the knowledge of her beauty this day. I will never forget that. If there is anything to haunt me it will be this. Truly, I have never known the pain such as is the loss of the beauty of the ones that we love. There is nothing that will ever replace the simple beauty of a smile, the warmth and beauty of her body each morning and what I felt when I looked at her that made me more complete. I will miss her until the day I join her; good night, my love.
"

Posted By: SacredRaven Feb 07, 2005 - 08:51 am

The sudden influx of light and memory is a shock to me. It begins as a spiral somehow, twisting and warping itself around the fragmented remains of my consciousness. There is more to this darkness, it would seem. I can remember things that have passed before, but I cannot remember where they come from. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind my childhood springs before me, those carefree days of the past where innocence was once said to rain.

There is more too. I am standing before a great crowd of people, the great ceremony where my measure was finally presented before the local council as a member of the hierarchal military elite named as the Claw. I stood proud that day, protector of all that is sacred to my people; a tiny fragment of my higher racial collective. Faces stream into memory but I find such current difficulty in the recollection of whom they seem to be. There is something here but I am far to weak to discern what it could possibly mean.

I am aware of some sensation, movement like. Am I moving? Perhaps I am, but somehow I cannot care. The light remains at the edges of someone’s vision. Could that vision be mine? It seems a shocking possibility, especially after the revelation of the meaning of the continuing darkness. There was such utter peace in that place, a meaning and a purpose. Those two eyes drew me into a state that a million meditations have not seen fit to bring upon my mind. At that moment of time there could only be such a sense of blissful release and peace.

I cannot remember this world. It should make sense, I realize, but my mind brings forth but these fractured faces and distorted memories of time. I can do nothing but drift, the blessings of childhood rained down upon me in their oddly warped form. The rages of adolescence are relived in my mind, my life slowly passing before me. Emotions long forgotten well to the surface and I have not the means to diagnose them.

I can do nothing but lie here for a while. The stream is unwinding, where will this lead and what will it mean? It is but a memory of movement that I recall, the sensation oddly present as if it was now that I traveled to some place. That time was pain, delirium, a place in my past that is so shattered that no attempt to recall it could rouse it now. Two blue eyes stand out to my mind, bidding me someplace but I am not sure of where.

Vision begins to fade, the edges of light fading back to darkness.The radiance burns a path through me somehow, strangely and slowly. There is an odd sense of rightness here as the blackness warps to fading colour. I know there is something of importance here, yet I must be given time before that awakening. I resist for a second, and then let myself sink beneath the wave. Once again there is nothing but the peace of darkness and the essence of rest."

Let me know what you think... Thanks. Have a good 'un.

Sacred Raven.

Posted By: Bmat Feb 07, 2005 - 10:40 am

They coiled themselves- my first understanding, before I read on, was that somehow they bent themselves into a coil shape, then I noticed that the line coiled. If the figures had been marched, then they didn't coil themselves anyway.

mercilessly incapacitated ? They were disabled mercilessly....I think you may mean another word than incapacitate. especially since we know that they were murdered and beaten, to be disabled seems like a weak penalty.


Tears worked their way wordlessly down grubby, blackened cheeks to the soft gray-ash mountain soil below their feet. Too many descriptive words. In general it seems that descriptive words are overused.

The description of the suffering of the victims is very effective.

At the head of the procession a broad-backed man tried to blot the images of the past, the events that had lead them to this place on such a dark and cold night. I had to read this a couple times before I understood the meaning. When I read that the man was broad-backed and that he was trying to blot the images, I assumed that with his broad back he was trying to block the images from the others. But then I realized that his broad back had nothing to do with the blotting, and that he was trying to blot for himself. Do you mean blot, by the way, which means soak up, or do you mean block?

Paragraph 3 takes us back to the reason for the coiling line. I can understand that you started out with the coiling line to catch the attention of the reader. I wonder if moving the attack to the beginning wouldn't be just as interesting and would save repetition of the horrors that were experienced. This is just a thought. I almost think that the entire first part could be omitted since you describe for a second time how they are being herded.

The above are thoughts that occurred to me as I read the first post. They are simply another point of view. You are the writer and know what you want. A general comment is that your descriptions are effective. I understand the horror, the numbness and demoralization of the victims. Well done! I'd like to see fewer descriptive words and tightening.

I stopped at the end of the first post.