Saltheart
Bitter Giant
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2006
- Messages
- 180
I need a critique for a beginning excerpt of a short story. I'm not worried about grammer, but mainly the flow of the story. Does it flow well? Is it too descriptive, or just enough? Any comments would be helpful.
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The desert sun is potent, and at the time we were suffering from the worst draught in centuries. Never since the first days of our people’s exile from the rest of the continent had we ever been assailed by Sunder or his servants, for it was under his wishes and those of the Unenlightened, as said in the book of our faith, that we left our homes and became nomads. Everyone around us was dieing or turning mad in despair, and our water supply was inadequate to nourish us all.
Chief Karkhow and his family’s bodies were one day found hacked apart, and nobody knew who had done it. But it still was a savage thing to do, and after the discovery that the last few pots of rations had been stolen from his household, our people, distrusting each other, divided into tribes and a great war had been declared by each for control over the well, which had but a few liters of water left. Our temple grounds became the cause of bloodbaths and our faith a distant memory from the past, present only in a distant, futile dream, unapproachable and unrealizable.
For several weeks this war lasted, and no victor had held any of the forbidden treasure long enough to take even the slightest of sips before being hewed from all directions by the other families. Before long, many siblings were fatherless and many parents childish, but that only made the survivors thirst for vengeance. Some had hired the mercenaries from beyond our realm to fight alongside them. These barbarians were ruthless and merciless and well equipped with arms and insatiable bloodlust that none of our people could hope to match, and they slashed their way through many families like gardeners through wild jungles, leaving behind them several trails of bloody corpses. Once their hirers’ thirst had been quenched, and the horror at murder had set in, and they paid the men and bid them to quickly leave in terror, the mercenaries simply pillaged their masters’ households and fled back to the wild lands from whence they came. This is how many a kin were lost to our people.
This is also how my brother had died after he set out from the cave in which we hid, and sought revenge for mother. Father told us all this in his illness as he lied in his deathbed, croaking for the relief of death; for when our people are ill our powers multiply. Father had to gift of far sight: he could see anything in the past, present or future, and distance became irrelevant as his body withered and his spirit trickled through freely through the old flesh. He was the last one with this gift, and the first to have seen the war to come, and had warned the people about the drought. But nobody listened, and so he traveled back and forth and prepared for us, his family, as well as any else who would come, the refuge that he stocked with bountiful ration and water before the draught had dried the wells and strangled the crops.
“Your brother is dead,” he told us simply that day, staring at the ceiling of the cavern. Though he made himself blind, visions of endless slaughter still haunted him, and had driven him to the point where emotions had no visible effect anymore. “He went in to claim vengeance, and now his corpse is burning inside our house. The mercenaries are in their homes and celebrating there newfound wealth, and the people who suffered because of his choices are hiring mercenaries too. They will share the same fate.” Then he was silent. “I wish to die, child. Will you please help your father?”
Sister screamed and ran out of the bedroom, and I said, “Father! Hush! Do not speak this way! It is not the way of our people! I will not help you commit this sin!” and he simply bid me to leave and mourn with my sister over the loss of brother, and to tell the others to equally divide his share for he wasn’t going to return.
After we all lit candles for him and chanted prayers and wept, sister said, “Brother is dead, mother is dead, and soon father will die too. We children will be all alone. We will die without them. It is best to just go and fight, and die.”
The other orphans saw truth in this, and cried and shrieked in fury. But I, the oldest, enraged, said, “We shall never fight, no matter what!” and I explained to them what I saw so clearly: that slaying others only leads to hatred, which in turn manifests through its deeds back to more slaying. I explained how fighting will not solve things, how fighting will only bring more misery to this war, and tried to explain to them how brother’s deeds were in vain; but they did not understand, and in anger yelled and evaded me. I could not follow them, for I had lost one of my legs during childhood.
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The desert sun is potent, and at the time we were suffering from the worst draught in centuries. Never since the first days of our people’s exile from the rest of the continent had we ever been assailed by Sunder or his servants, for it was under his wishes and those of the Unenlightened, as said in the book of our faith, that we left our homes and became nomads. Everyone around us was dieing or turning mad in despair, and our water supply was inadequate to nourish us all.
Chief Karkhow and his family’s bodies were one day found hacked apart, and nobody knew who had done it. But it still was a savage thing to do, and after the discovery that the last few pots of rations had been stolen from his household, our people, distrusting each other, divided into tribes and a great war had been declared by each for control over the well, which had but a few liters of water left. Our temple grounds became the cause of bloodbaths and our faith a distant memory from the past, present only in a distant, futile dream, unapproachable and unrealizable.
For several weeks this war lasted, and no victor had held any of the forbidden treasure long enough to take even the slightest of sips before being hewed from all directions by the other families. Before long, many siblings were fatherless and many parents childish, but that only made the survivors thirst for vengeance. Some had hired the mercenaries from beyond our realm to fight alongside them. These barbarians were ruthless and merciless and well equipped with arms and insatiable bloodlust that none of our people could hope to match, and they slashed their way through many families like gardeners through wild jungles, leaving behind them several trails of bloody corpses. Once their hirers’ thirst had been quenched, and the horror at murder had set in, and they paid the men and bid them to quickly leave in terror, the mercenaries simply pillaged their masters’ households and fled back to the wild lands from whence they came. This is how many a kin were lost to our people.
This is also how my brother had died after he set out from the cave in which we hid, and sought revenge for mother. Father told us all this in his illness as he lied in his deathbed, croaking for the relief of death; for when our people are ill our powers multiply. Father had to gift of far sight: he could see anything in the past, present or future, and distance became irrelevant as his body withered and his spirit trickled through freely through the old flesh. He was the last one with this gift, and the first to have seen the war to come, and had warned the people about the drought. But nobody listened, and so he traveled back and forth and prepared for us, his family, as well as any else who would come, the refuge that he stocked with bountiful ration and water before the draught had dried the wells and strangled the crops.
“Your brother is dead,” he told us simply that day, staring at the ceiling of the cavern. Though he made himself blind, visions of endless slaughter still haunted him, and had driven him to the point where emotions had no visible effect anymore. “He went in to claim vengeance, and now his corpse is burning inside our house. The mercenaries are in their homes and celebrating there newfound wealth, and the people who suffered because of his choices are hiring mercenaries too. They will share the same fate.” Then he was silent. “I wish to die, child. Will you please help your father?”
Sister screamed and ran out of the bedroom, and I said, “Father! Hush! Do not speak this way! It is not the way of our people! I will not help you commit this sin!” and he simply bid me to leave and mourn with my sister over the loss of brother, and to tell the others to equally divide his share for he wasn’t going to return.
After we all lit candles for him and chanted prayers and wept, sister said, “Brother is dead, mother is dead, and soon father will die too. We children will be all alone. We will die without them. It is best to just go and fight, and die.”
The other orphans saw truth in this, and cried and shrieked in fury. But I, the oldest, enraged, said, “We shall never fight, no matter what!” and I explained to them what I saw so clearly: that slaying others only leads to hatred, which in turn manifests through its deeds back to more slaying. I explained how fighting will not solve things, how fighting will only bring more misery to this war, and tried to explain to them how brother’s deeds were in vain; but they did not understand, and in anger yelled and evaded me. I could not follow them, for I had lost one of my legs during childhood.
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