Furiko's Fantasy Novel Thing

All right, all right, settle down, Freezair, we're all supervillains here, we've all heard the mark-my-words speech before; you don't get the point.

... I think I need to stop marathoning The Venture Brothers. ._.;

And you got onto the second page!

Congratulations!

/messed up priorities

I'm watching this thread like a hawk, because I'm eager to see chapter two. ^_^;

ACTUAL OBSERVATIONS now that I've read this thang:

• I like Allie and Dare a lot thus far, especially Dare and especially their interactions. Hard to make calls on Lucy thus far, since she hasn't had too much of a chance yet to do anything but be introductory.
• I think it's sort of weird how Dare's accent just kind of... disappears. I know what you were going for, but it feels a bit discontinuous, like someone else has suddenly started speaking. It messes up the voice in my head I give her, which is kind of a petty way to put it. My personal way of handling it would be to give light hintings of her accent all throughout, instead of one Dialect Dump and then nothing, but some people really hate Funetic Aksent in any form, so...
• I have no qualms with "questing."

I just dropped in to brag about reaching 32, 000 words like the asshole I am. Also, I should have Chapter Two ready for tomorrow.

Oh, and 'Chapter Three' is like nine thousand words long, so I'm gonna divide it up into 3a, 3b, etc. for your convenience, even though in terms of a physical book I think they work better all as one. Sound good?

I'm excited.

Ahhh. I was under the impression this was farther along. So we're readin' v1, then!

I will take that as the very great compliment it is. :3

Heh. It's just, I know you've written things before, so I kind of assumed this was an older project. I can definitely see where you'd want to still edit things, though... Er, great, does it sound like I'm trying to take back a compliment? GAH! YOU'RE STILL COOL! THE COOLEST GUY! KUDOS! CHEWY BARS!

Oh, it's an old project, to be sure; I first got the start of the idea in grade ten. But I only started seriously writing it recently.

Now, something I'm gonna add to the revised draft of Chapter One that you might find helpful to know about the Imperial Military College and its adjacent Magical Institute: the cadets are not in the regular chain of command at all. They're given the rank of 2nd Lieutenant when they enroll as a courtesy title, and over the course of the five year program they can be promoted as high as Captain if their grades are particularly good or they go on a lot of quests or otherwise show leadership ability.

Likewise, most of the regiments you're gonna hear about in this book are student regiments, sorta like the minor leagues of the Eranmean military's actual regiments. Some of them have parent regiments with the same name, and some are independent entities that the real regiments can cherry-pick from.

However, the Magical Institute has an additional rule regarding this kind of thing: if the student fails one too many courses and demonstrates only the bare minimum of competence, they're demoted out of the officership the instant they start their obligatory three years of service.

All right, here's the long-ass second chapter to go with the long-ass first chapter. Alex, be brutal; your words cannot possibly hurt more than actually writing an action scene did. Seriously, this thing was a huge bore to write and I'm petrified it reads like it was.

Chapter Two

When Dare and Allie finally caught sight of the new girl, she was a tiny figure on a horse, far away up the block on the other side of the horde. The street the golems were spilling out of was wider than most in the district, and it appeared the clay forces were splitting up to take the boulevard in both directions.

“Shit,” Dare grumbled, and dismounted. Running out into the street, darting ably through the civilian traffic, she grabbed a fallen cadet who was in danger of being trampled and dragged him back into the by-lane. A pair of golems attempted to follow the two, but were repelled at the mouth of the street by an unseen barrier, sending smoky ripples seemingly through the air. As many of their brethren joined them and hammered on the shield, Dare propped the boy up against the wall of nearby building. “Lt Leto, Woodlawn’s City. What happened here?”

Coughing, he replied, “Lt. Abelard, Blackjacks. Lt.s Laramie and d’Askat were on their way up Deveraux Drive when they saw a couple golems heading down the street from one of the driveways. They tried to get to the house they were coming from to check that the creator had permits and a swarm just exploded out-” He started coughing again, and Dare handed him her canteen, from which he guzzled gratefully. When he had finished, he stared at the two girls in dismay. “Christ, did you say Woodlawn’s?”

“What’re you complainin’ about?” She laughed harshly. “The fewer people are around when we win, the better your chances of getting a medal outta this.”

“What the fuck kind of reinforcements are two people?” he said angrily, shoving her canteen back into her hands. “Where the hell are the rest of the Blackjacks? Fuck, where are the real soldiers? Not even Rochelle would say students could handle this!”

“You should have called the emergency line instead of the shift-change line,” Allie said coldly, holding up her own rune, whose dials she’d adjusted to the army’s main channel. Floating smokily under the reinforced glass casing, the interlocking symbols of the signature she’d assembled pulsed, indicating that the message had been received.

“What?” Abelard scowled. “Do you think I’m stupid? I didn’t call you.”

“Regardless, someone did,” she answered, “which in the absence of Captains Valmont and Zimmer makes me ranking officer here. And as your acting-captain I’m ordering you to climb onto my horse, ride back to the reinforcements and fill them in as to what’s happening here. Leto and I will do what we can, but it’s imperative that we contain these things as quickly as possible. Try to get a few teams back around to Deveraux to cut off the assembly line.”

“Captain? Twenty-three seconds left,” Dare said, eyeing the barrier with concern.

Allie nodded. “You heard the woman, Abelard; get moving.”

He did.

“Pull it back in, Leto,” Allie ordered, “you’re no good to me overextended.”

“Yes ma’am,” Dare sighed with relief as the shield snapped back to its usual position, hovering slightly above and around her body.

“Winding Wool formation,” Allie shouted, cleaving the first creature to approach her in half. “Once they realize we’re the only crafters still standing they’ll be all over us; we’re going to have to make a bottleneck with the bodies of the ones we bring down.”

“I can’t smash them all,” Dare protested, leapfrogging over the fallen golem to kick another’s head off its shoulders. One of its fellows swung a sword at her throat and shattered it on the shield; she promptly kicked in its knees. “They’re replicating too fast, it’s like that King of Mirrors crap all over again. Are you tellin’ me you don’t have a spell to pull ‘em apart til they’re dust? Earth is supposed to be your thing!”

Lady Woodlawn snarled, beheading two assailants, and cursed her friend’s good fortune in not having to put much actual strength behind her strikes; it made her useless at judging armour grades. “Disassembly would take too long . They aren’t normal pottery golems, Leto, the clay is cut with scrap metal or something.” She ducked under the arm of a third and lopped said arm off on her way to engaging her next opponent.

“How very stylish,” Dare scowled, lobbing an alchemical grenade into the street. The explosion it produced was satisfying, but the gap in the golems’ forces was filled in almost immediately. “What’re ya thinkin’, cap?”

“I’m thinking we’d better hope to god that Little Miss Jump-the-Gun has more sense than we do and ran away.”

-

Fear was normally the enemy of a good mage. Fear, unchecked, led to disorganized thinking, words misspoken, and often failure of the most basic component of spellcasting, intent. It was almost impossible to focus an enchantment into doing what you wanted it to if what you actually wanted was to not be in the situation in which you’d found yourself.

But Lucy, at this point in her life, was not a mage; she was running on instinct alone. And while in the face of the advancing wall of armed opponents half of her danced back and forth between paralysis and the desire to bolt, another, stranger half took hold.

A nearby sewer cover popped off its manhole like a cork, shot skyward by a jet of water. Waving both hands swiftly in a vicious arc above her head, Lucy curved the wastewater up and over to swipe into the approaching mob like the paw of a giant cat. The line collapsed into their fellows behind, and for a moment the approach of the golems was halted as the next row of whole creatures attempted to push past the heaps of broken bodies in front of them.

Immediately the able-bodied among the cadets in the street rushed their injured friends into the abandoned carts and over the saddles of those untended horses that were still available. She caught snatches of conversation as they went past.

“… know we had an Undine…”

“…see that?”

“… at that range! He’s gonna give them hell!”

Lucy paid them no mind; her every panicked thought was focused on the golems.

Kill them get them break them down down down don’t let them get any closer…

“Steady, Yala,” she said nervously. The mare snorted, as if to say, Yes, of course, I’m ''the one who needs to calm down, here.

Gathering a ball of the sewer water in her hands, wincing at the stench, Lucy concentrated and fired from it a dozen small bolts, each of which hit the nearest golem full in the chest. Its armour crunched inward, but it kept coming, trampling the brothers that’d fallen before it.

Her heart pounding, she tried to reach out again for that mighty knot of terrified energy in the pit of her stomach, but found to her dismay that the tension had dissipated too far, and the water she drew from the rain-swelled drains and hurled at the clay monsters had none of the desperate, devastating force of that first wild strike. She frantically searched her memory for any practice she might have gotten in drawing more power, and was finally horrified to realize she’d never done any. Her parents insisted her focus should be on learning how to pull her punches. It had been one of the few things they’d ever agreed on.

“What’s up?” the boy who’d been hurling shattering spells earlier shouted. He’d apparently moved on to balance and gravity-related spells, as the beams he shot were now directed at the feet of an increasingly unsteady right flank. “Where’d your juice go?”

“I don’t know!” she called back miserably. The golems were closer now; Yala’s ears were tilted back with unease, but she clacked a hoof on the cobbles defiantly.

The boy drew his sword and readied himself to engage the enemy hand-to-hand. “For the love of... pull yourself together, man!” He sounded disgusted. “You are an Undine, aren’t you? Your ancestors invented these fucking things! Are you telling me you haven’t any idea how to stop them?”

Anger coiled in Lucy’s chest. “Let’s try this, then,” she spat, and reached out to the enemy. She swept a claw-fingered hand horizontally through the air in front of them, and was shocked to feel something warm and feathery slide past her. Instinctively she snatched at it, and with the close of her fist the golems halted dead in their tracks. There was a harsh, brittle sound that ran up and down the ranks of the creatures, and all of a sudden a dozen of them sprouted cracks down their fronts. Spreading like the roots of a plant, the cracks multiplied until the monstrous clay-men collapsed into dust.

Slowly, her curiosity piqued, Lucy opened her hand. Like steam off a bowl of soup, a warm, moist vapour rolled out of her palm and up into the air.

But that’s... is there water in pottery? she wondered, incredulous.

Not anymore, came the follow-up thought, and she smirked.

The boy blinked over at her in amazement, and grinned madly, splitting his already-raw lip. “Now that’s more like it! What’s your name, rookie?”

“Lucy!” she laughed triumphantly, both hands now squeezing the simulated life out of the army before them. “Lt. Lucy Averill. Remember the name!”

“I’m unlikely to forget it,” he replied, taking out one of the golems that’d slipped past her with his sword. “I don’t know quite what you’re doing, Averill, but don’t stop.”

Unfortunately, absorbing what little water their opponents held took much longer than throwing water at them had, and it was much more tiring. Within ten minutes Lucy’s breathing became erratic, and her energetic swipes devolved into sluggish graspings.

And still, the golems advanced, the sun glinting off their swords.

“Hey, don’t you faint on me,” the boy shouted, throwing a grenade into the swathe. “Reinforcements’ll be here soon, there’s no shame in a tactical retreat to regroup.”

“No!” she snarled, redoubling her efforts. “I can do this!”

“Don’t be stupid, you’re about to keel over!”

“I’m fine!” she roared, her head throbbing with the steady pulse of an oncoming migraine.

“Then cover me!” he answered, saluting and running. “Best of luck to you, rook’.”

Lucy didn’t return the salute.

“Come on!” she shrieked wildly at the clay men. “The daughter of the mountain feels no fear!” It was a phrase half-remembered; a boast she’d spoken in a game of Rescue The Princess as a child. She laughed to think of it, her throat protesting violently all the while, and fell to coughing as golem after golem crumbled under her assault, and golem after golem stepped up to replace them.

Finally Yala’s self-preservation instincts overruled Lucy’s desire to crush her enemies, and the mare galloped up the street, falling back to the line defined by the lingering civilians.

Many of the savvier citizens of Delmore, the merchants and the College students among them, had already taken to the relative safety of the rooftops; a make-shift medic tent had been set up above a milliner’s. But the natives of Turtledove, far-removed from their siege-weary forebears and accustomed to the relative safety of life in one of the most prosperous parts of the city, were in the grip of a terror that had led them screaming into the very bottleneck their district had intended for their enemies. Children shrieked for parents and grabbed at any hands they could reach; husbands clutched their wives to them and elbowed one another out of the way, getting nowhere; a few people leapt for the balconies of the living quarters above the shops, clinging to the side of the buildings until others yanked them down to attempt an escape of their own.

It was a bloodbath waiting to happen; even Lucy could tell that it was only a matter of time. Golems were famous for going after spellcrafters – there was a reason for their durability against normal magic – but if her adventure tale-obsessed childhood had taught her anything, it was that they didn’t mind going through normal people to get to crafters.

It was then that she saw him.

He was young, around her own age, she thought. His eyes were hidden by immense goggles, and he was ushering everyone around him to the side-streets, shouting instructions, trying desperately to get them to disperse, to keep them from giving the swarm a single massive target. Every now and then he turned to the thick old book in his right hand and shouted at the golems. Whether he was attempting to order them to halt in Ancient Undine or simply goading them into focusing on him, she couldn’t tell. He wore a utilitarian black robe over his clothes that marked him as a civilian alchemist’s apprentice, but his boots were those of a gentleman.

“You, there!” she called to him as she rode up. “Do you have any way of stopping these –?”

He ignored her completely, dividing his attention between the book and the evacuation. He scooped up a wailing toddler who had taken a seat in the middle of the street and fairly shoved the child into the hands of a nearby woman, who looked surprised but held fast to the baby.

“- to a rooftop if you can,” Lucy thought she heard him say as he pointed up one of the alleys and stuffed his book into her marketing basket. “Find the brat’s family later.”

“I hope you’re happy with yourself, boy!” the woman threw over her shoulder as she ran. “You’ve doomed us all!”

Lucy’s heart pounded. He’s the one who did this?

Hot rage engulfed her, her headache spreading down her neck and shoulders, as her mind rolled through everything that'd happened for the past hour; the never-ceasing march of the golems like waves beating on the sand, every step like a lash tearing at the skin of her pride in what she had thought was her talent; the blind terror that gave her bursts of strength that faded as the fear did, only to return anew, til her stomach burned and her muscles ached from the stress; the shame of being totally unequipped to deal with something she’d practiced for for years; the dead and injured kids – kids her own age – covered in blood and vomit; Captain Mimis and Miss Leto, nowhere to be found, doubtless fighting for their lives; all these people, terrified and trapped, on what should have been a normal day.

And he did that.

All of a sudden, the knot of strength in her stomach was back.

But not from fear.

-

“These fucking things are too tall!” Dare moaned. She’d fallen into a rhythm of kneecapping a couple of the golems, beheading them, and climbing onto their shoulders to engage fresh foes behind them and repeat the process.

“Don’t even start with me, Leto; some of us here aren’t perfectly-equipped by nature for fights like this,” Allie yelled, already bleeding from a wicked cut on her right shoulder as she dove out of the way of a sword-swing.

“Oh, yeah, I’m the ideal candidate for this shit! I’m just havin’ a grand old time trying to bash in the heads of hundreds of opponents twice my damn size,” the other girl snarled. “I tell ya, cap, if they ever invent a sport that combines longjump, highjump and boxing I’ll be first in line to wear out all four limbs at once!”

“We’ve fought and killed far bigger things than these before, you lazy little idiot,” Allie said, grunting as she hurled a torso off her blade and into another golem.

“Yeah, one at a time!” Dare called back. “But this is just-” here she broke off for a few moments to shove an enemy and everyone behind him over domino-style, leaving her momentarily winded, “-depressing! You know what this is like? It’s like those stories Lord Zimmer tells about the third zombie outbreak when he’s drunk. We are in one of Grim Zim’s bitch sessions, Allie.”

“No, Leto, we’re in one of yours, now shut up and keep working. And don’t call me-”

Out in the centre of the mob there was a disturbance. Golems toppled by the dozen, swept away by some strange force. As they rose in a swell, those at the edges were caught by the same power, snatched, still-writhing, out of the reach of Allie’s halberd and Dare’s fists; it caught even Allie for a moment, before Dare wrapped her arms around her friend’s mid-section and hauled her out with all her might. Its quarry captured, the force hurled the crockery army high into the air, one by one, like a tree sprouting branches and leaves all at once; over the rooftops the two girls could just see that it had spread to the trunk of the enemy’s forces coming down Murray St. At this rate the entire swarm would be suspended thus in mere minutes.

“What the-”

“This is water!” Allie interrupted.

They looked at each other.

“I guess she didn’t run,” Allie said bleakly.

“We have to get to higher ground,” Dare said, eyes scanning the area until they found a fire escape, which she immediately took off for.

“Leto!” Allie shouted, hard on her heels. “Back to your position, now! There’ll be stragglers and reinforcements along the minute she drops them!”

“Her assessment said she’d never done anything even close to this big before!” the smaller girl yelled back down. “We have to make sure she doesn’t accidentally kill all the civvies along with the golems.”

Making a split-second decision, Allie followed her up the spiral stairs. “Worst comes to worst you shield them all from the initial backlash.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

The narrow streets of Turtledove made its rooftops ideal for shortcuts, and Dare and Allie made good time across them. The remains of that morning’s patrol of Blackjacks were already camped out on a few of them, along with civilians rescued from the crowds below.

“How’re you gonna get us out of this one, Woodlawn?” Lt Pinkwater called as she ran past, his arm in a sling.

“The same as she always does,” someone else hollered. “Pick up Leto by the ankles and shake her til an idea falls out.”

The girls ignored them both.

Finally they arrived at what had been the golem army’s southern front, and there they found Lucy.

She was standing with what looked like her horse’s bridle wrapped around her left hand; the reigns seemed to be tied tightly around the wrists of a boy in an alchemist’s over-robe and goggles. The horse itself was nowhere in sight. Both were staring at the strange network of water that lay before them; he in awe, she with pride tinged with sheer panic, her right hand clutching a swirling nexus of energy.

“Lucy!” Dare shouted, and stepped off the roof.

“Fucking show-off,” Allie muttered.

-

It was done. She’d done it!

Now what the hell did I do?! she moaned inside her own mind. She kept all her muscles clenched, terrified that if she relaxed any of them the water would suck back toward her and drown her in sewage, or worse.

“Lucy!” she heard someone say, and flicking her parched eyes over to her left saw that it was Miss Leto.

“Drop them!” the small girl called as she rushed over.

“I can’t!” Lucy croaked. “I called too much from the sewer! If it comes down now everyone will drown!”

“No, they won’t,” Dare said, shaking her head. “I can shield them, if it comes to that; it’s a power I have.” She laid a hand gently on the other redhead’s arm. “It’s you I’m concerned about right now. This water-circuit thing you’ve set up is only going to get more unstable the more you panic.” She pointed at the drains along the street. “Your fear’s pulling new water up every second; it thinks you need it to protect you.”

“I wasn’t afraid when I started that!” she said, hyperventilating. “I was angry!” Here she tugged at the bridle, and the boy was jerked forward with a glare. “He made those awful things!”

“And you managed to leave him in one piece?” Dare asked, impressed. But at Lucy’s newly-sprung tears she softened. “Hey,” she said, “hey, hey, hey...” and she stroked the girl’s arm. “You’re gonna pass out if you keep this up,” she said quietly, “and then everyone really will drown; the water will throw a fit.”

“Well then what do I do?!” Lucy shrieked, and the mighty tree of water trembled as her outstretched hand shook.

“You could start by not trying to deafen me every thirty seconds,” the boy put in mildly.

“Who the fuck’s talkin’ to you, shitheel?” Dare snarled. To Lucy, she said in a soothing tone, “Feel around the edges of the network til you find the furthest point.”

“Oh, yes, clearly I’m the one giving vague and unhelpful advice here,” the alchemist snarked, earning him a sharp elbow in the stomach from Dare.

“... I think I have it,” Lucy said, a flash of hope crossing her face.

“Good. Now, you feel where each of the golems are?” Lucy shuddered, but nodded. “Right. Now, think of your water – ‘cause no matter what,” the other redhead said firmly, “it’s yours, it won’t hurt you. Think of your water like a tablecloth, and the golems like plates on the table-”

“I can’t pull it all back at once!” she broke in, panicking.

Dare pulled back her hand and held up both her palms in a conciliatory gesture. “I know, I know, I won’t ask you to. But it’s not so bad to tug at it a little at a time, is it?”

Dare’s descriptions of the sensations coursing through her were comfortingly accurate; Lucy hoped that meant she could trust the girl’s instructions. Hesitantly, she did as she was told.

Immediately she felt the pressure lessen, and far in the distance she saw a full quarter of the erstwhile clay army drop simultaneously and smash on the cobblestones.

“There!” Dare said cheerfully. “Now you’re getting it. Try the next bit.”

The edge of the water-tree was visible, now; a shiver of terrified delight went through Lucy as she watched herself send the water shooting back into the drains and heard the satisfying shatter of golems dropped from on high. Without any prompting she rolled on, banishing the water and reveling in the obliterating crash, crash, crash of the falling golems, until with a final flourish of her hand, the last of the creatures plummeted to earth at her feet.

As one, the civilians burst into applause. A few of the Blackjacks even joined in.

A shower of relief poured over Lucy, and she let out a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. She wobbled on her feet, but Dare steadied her with both hands, and took charge of the bridle and prisoner both.

“You did good, kid,” the auburn-haired girl said with a grin, leading her to a table outside a cafe and seating her in one of the chairs. “We’ll make a mage of you yet.”

Lucy retched, and Dare held her hair back as she leaned back into the street to vomit. It made an unpleasant splash, and it was then that Lucy noticed she hadn’t quite managed to send all the water back to the sewer.

Out of a nearby alley, Yala cautiously approached her partner and, satisfied that she’d calmed down enough to be safe, gave Lucy a horse’s approximation of a peck on the cheek.

With a final sigh, Lucy fainted.

-

A few minutes later, Allie was sitting at the nurse’s station where they’d seen Pinkwater, getting her shoulder treated and trying to tune out her best friend’s chatter.

Dare, of course, was right on schedule with her normal post-combat manic episode. She’d always had them, though they’d been worse when she and Allie were children. They weren’t severe enough to bar her from field work; just enough to make her highly grating company for half an hour or so. She’d quickly moved on from the giggling stage into a jubilant rant, the theme of which seemed to be Our New Friend Is Awesome.

“This is what having an Undine on the team is like? This is fabulous! Did you see-? She must have been over a hundred feet away!” She hugged and lifted Allie excitedly, a sight that was not unlike watching a red panda uproot a tree. “Do you know what this means? We have ranged support now! Cover fire! Sniping, potentially!” Dropping her friend, oblivious to the presiding medic’s shouts of protest, she pumped her fist jubilantly. “Yes, yes, yes! Not even Karling’s personal guards can maintain control over that kind of distance! Can you believe-? A victory like this on her first day!”

“In case it’s somehow escaped your notice,” Allie said tartly, “she also abandoned her squad to play hero at the first sign of trouble, had a nervous breakdown that nearly got everyone killed, and flooded half the cellars on this street with sewage. That doesn’t exactly say ‘control’ to me.”

“Oh, like you didn’t panic on our first quest!” Dare punched Allie’s remaining good arm playfully. “Isn’t it nice to have someone overpowered working with us for once? I don’t know where you get off calling me the cynic with that attitude – look, you’ve even got a cool new scar to show off at Pinkwater’s mum’s tonight!”

“Forgive me if I’m more concerned about our new little discipline problem than impressing boys with scar stories,” Allie said with a roll of her eyes as they descended via the fire escape.

“Don’t let your father hear you say that,” the redhead snickered.

“All right, I’ll admit this could have gone worse,” the blonde allowed as they made the jump to the ground. “You could have convinced her to try lifting the painted sigils off all the damn things at once.” This last comment was in reference to an incident that occurred a month shy of Dare’s tenth birthday, when she’d buried herself in Allie’s old dolls to practice expanding her shield and ended up eroding the paint off their faces.

“The sigils are painted on?” Dare asked. She picked up what had once been a piece of a head and examined the glyph in question. “Man, that’s just sloppy.”

“Because the rest of this situation has all the hallmarks of professionalism you’d expect from a criminal genius,” Allie said dryly.

-

Lucy was still seated at the cafe under medical observation. She’d woken up mere moments after her fainting spell, insisting she felt fine, but then she’d ruined everything by sitting right back down again the second she’d stood up. Subsequently she’d been thoroughly poked and prodded and finally handed a tiny pouch full of pills, with orders to down two a day for the next two weeks.

As if I don’t already have a whole jar full of these from Mum, she thought sourly.

Aside from the medic on duty, her socialization options were limited to the prisoner, who was intent on refusing to acknowledge the presence of life on earth outside of himself; the cadet guarding him, who seemed to think he’d been sent to guard her, as he kept shooting fearful, angry looks in her direction; and Yala, who she couldn’t talk to in public without appearing insane.

So the smile she gave Dare and Allie when she heard the former’s cry of “There’s our little white-water siren!” was one of relief as much as of welcome.

“Thank you so much for your help, Mi- Dare,” she said earnestly. “Really, I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“Hey, I’m supposed to help train you,” the other redhead said cheerfully. “It’s no-”

Out of the corner of her eye, Lucy saw the alchemist boy slip loose of his bonds, conk his guard in the back of the head, and dash into the alley across the road, all in a matter of seconds.

Immediately Dare was after him like a rocket. “A-pa-pa-pa, where do you think you’re going, slick?”

“Dare, take Lucy’s mare, it’ll be f-” Captain Mimis stopped, and sighed a trifle huffily. “Eight years in a mounted regiment,” she said, shaking her head, “and her first instinct is still to go after people on foot.”

“Will she hurt him?” Lucy asked, surprising herself with the question. It’s not as if he hasn’t hurt plenty of people today.

The blonde shook her head. “No more than the City Guard would if they’d gotten to him first.”

A moment later they heard a triumphant “Gotcha!”, and Dare came back out dragging an unconscious alchemist.

“See, you have to bind them in a way that makes them easy to transport, but doesn’t let them get to their pockets or anything,” she shouted to Lucy in explanation as she set about tying the boy back up. “’Specially with alchemists.”

From the roof above her came a startled, “What in the-”

Dare whipped her head ‘round to glare piercingly at the newcomer, but soon relaxed. “Oh, good. Allie!” she called, “the forward scout is here!” She saluted the woman on the roof, then turned back to her work. “Sorry for the trouble, ma’am; Student Lieutenant Leto, Woodlawn’s City Cavalry.”

As Dare filled the scout in, Captain Mimis gave Lucy a sidelong glance.

“You got very, very lucky today, Averill,” she said coldly.

“I know, Lady Woodlawn,” Lucy answered meekly.

“No, I don’t think you do.” There was nothing of the sunny young woman she’d met over breakfast left in the Captain now, and despite herself, Lucy shivered.

“You placed your own life and the lives of everyone on this street in peril by going in with no training, no sense of your own limits, and against the orders of your superior officer. Dare told you to stand down, and when you ignored that command I repeated it. You directly disobeyed me.”

“I didn’t hear-”

“Because you weren’t listening,” Captain Mimis cut her off. “So listen now.” She glared down at Lucy from her full six feet of height, with the sharp, blue-green eyes Lucy knew had been the last sight of a dozen mad sorcerors. “Insubordination for any reason short of refusing to commit treason will absolutely not be tolerated under my command. Failure to do as I tell you in future will result in punishments as severe as I can make them. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Captain,” Lucy said, cheeks burning with shame and no small amount of resentment. Regardless of what could have happened, the fact was that she’d just saved them all. Couldn’t she just let her enjoy the moment?

“Good.” A little of Captain Mimis’ warmth returned. “I’ll see to it that your training schedule for the next two weeks leaves you enough free time each day to come down here and help with the reconstruction.”

At the far end of Murray St, a horn sounded. The blonde grinned at the redhead. “Now then, Lucy – the brass are here, so smile, and let’s see if I can’t get you a commendation.”

-

The officers’ cavalry was the only part of the real army that showed up; the scout Dare had spoken to had told her they’d sent in an infantry division to shut down the assembling-golems up at the house where the whole thing had started, but it appeared they’d been dismissed. The officers were a sight Allie hadn’t seen since the last major deployment to the Scarlet Archipelago, clad not in their dress uniforms, but in the durable gear Eranmean soldiers wore in the field. Though she would never admit it to anyone but Dare, she liked the plain field uniform far more than the formal custom ones high-ranking officers often wore; it was free of fuss and suited the decidedly rough looks of most of the professional soldiery, something which could not always be said of the customs.

A pair of generals rode at the head of the procession, one on a bay, the other astride a horse of a similar colour to Lucy’s Yala. Both were far past youth, but only the Marquis of Danforth looked it, with his thinning white hair and dry-skinned face.

The man beside him could have been his son; there was far more black in his hair than grey, and he wore his uniform with an ease that suggested he wore it every day. Allie knew that the pose was merely that, a part the man was playing; the Duke of Karling could not afford to make a hobby of war when there were matters of peace to handle on Eranmean soil. But she had to admit, with his dueling scars, his gift for alchemy and illusions, and his preference for plain-spokenness, Richard Karling belonged in the Magical Forces more than he did anywhere else.

Having reached the boulevard, a halt was called, and the few Blackjacks and spectators who hadn’t already approached the edge of their perches to see what was going on did so now.

No one spoke for a moment.

Then someone laughed, long and loud.

“Well, Karling,” the snowy-haired man said when his outburst had wound down to an occasional chuckle, “it would appear we were a little hasty in our assessment of Captain Mimis’ capabilities, eh?”

“So it seems, Sernine; we’ve become meddling old hens,” the Duke said, smiling, “rushing in to solve problems our chicks can handle with ease.”

A few of the Blackjacks glared daggers at Allie for this, but they kept silent, so she ignored them.

The Marquis dismounted, and she rushed over to greet him, clicking her heels and saluting as smartly as she could manage with a shoulder wound. “Good morning, General Sernine.”

The old man beamed at the girl and offered her his hand. “Stellar work as always, Allie. Your father’ll be proud to hear of it, no doubt.”

She shook it. “Thank you, sir, but it was Valmont’s boys who held them off, and Lieutenants Leto and Averill were instrumental in apprehending the target and wiping out the infestation.”

“Averill?”

“New girl, sir. Lady Hacken’s granddaughter.”

“Is that so? Well, that’s a first for that side of the family,” the general said, sounding approving. He looked around at the destruction, and eyed the dirty water under his boots thoughtfully. “Might she be the mysterious watercaller I’ve been hearing about?”

“She is, sir,” Allie confirmed. Thank heaven it’s just Sernine visiting, she thought. Dodged an arrow, there.

“Where is Lt Averill now?” asked Karling, dismounting as well. “A first battle like this merits our congratulations.”

“I shall call her over at once,” she replied, and turned to the cafe. “Averill!” she shouted. “Front and centre.”

She was halfway over before Allie had finished speaking. The girl was shaking slightly, though from fatigue or nerves it was difficult to say. Allie wondered again how someone with skin so dark could blush so noticeably; it was almost comical.

Lucy, for her part, couldn’t believe it. If she had been giddy at the prospect of working with Lady Woodlawn, she was absolutely thunderstruck at meeting the Duke of Karling in the flesh. The Karlings were nearly as legendary as the castle they were lords of; it had been an Evergreen Duke who had pushed the occupying Scarleters out of Eranme four hundred years ago and ended the First Civil War, and another had reputedly invented indoor plumbing. The family was ancient, so much so that their surname and title were still one. The man who loomed before her was as far removed from her social status as it was possible to be whilst remaining a mortal.

Taking careful hold of both her nerves and her riding-skirt, and ordering her legs not to give out, Lucy curtsied as deeply and elegantly as she could.

To her surprise, the general spoke first. “You have made a very promising start, Averill,” he said with a good-natured smile, “the like of which has rarely been seen in Delmore in over a century, if I have been informed correctly.”

“I have done nothing but my duty, sir,” she said softly, and was relieved when Captain Mimis said nothing to correct this assertion.

“Nonsense,” the Duke declared, in a rich, resonant voice that drew all eyes immediately to its source. “Very few cadets would have done as you did on their first day, and even fewer would have succeeded thus.” Karling’s lips were pursed as he continued: “I have no love for the sight of children in war, but you have acquitted yourself as well as can be expected and better. You have my gratitude for the service you have given,” here he raised his voice, “and, I’m sure, the gratitude of the people of this city.”

There were cheers from the civilians, but this time the Blackjacks did not add their voices to the din. Many looked as if the Duke had personally shoved a slice of lemon in each of their mouths and ordered them to chew.

She felt some of the tension ease off. “I hope I can continue to meet your grace’s expectations,” she said.

“Meet and surpass, you mean!” the general said with a chuckle, and turned to his old friend. “What says your grace? Has the child earned some small reward this day?”

“I daresay so,” Karling replied with a small smile, as if enjoying a private joke.

Lucy was awash with excitement and shock. My first day, and already a boon!

Boons were the currency of the class that avoided physical contact with cash wherever possible. The complex network of favours granted and owed, she knew, often superceded actual wealth or strength in arms in importance, especially at court. For a mere cadet to be so honoured was a rare thing.

“I-I thank you most deeply for your consideration, sir,” she stammered, curtsying once more.

“Have you anything in mind, my lady?” the Duke inquired.

Lucy’s mind drew an immediate blank. She knew that courtesy demanded that, as she was underage, she must use up this favour quickly; it would not do to have the Duke of Karling publically in her debt for long.

How would Lady Grenville use her first boon? she thought.

Her eyes slid over to the City Guard van parked nearby. After some wrangling with one of Sernine’s aides, a pair of guardsmen were shoving the now fully-awakened and struggling alchemist into the back of it.

“… If it pleases your graces,” Lucy said finally, taking care not to stutter, “I ask for mercy in deciding the fate of the young man responsible for this great crime.”

There was a flurry of incredulous whispering at this, and it came to a halt only when the Duke threw back his head in a hearty laugh. He smiled at her, and gave her a salute which she returned in a daze.

“Welcome to the Magical Forces, Lt. Averill.”

Well! I don't feel I'm all that qualified to offer any criticism, not being a writer myself, but I enjoyed this chapter.

The action scenes were... they were not dull; I found them somewhat difficult to follow, sort of the literary equivalent of Shaky Cam, but this is as much caused by my divided attention today as anything. I have some musings on the subject that I'll offer if you like; PM me and I'll chatter at you.

A good effort. Please keep it up. :3

Very nice. I find myself kind of treading water in the attempt to understand the world it's set in, but it's quite well written.

I discussed this with Furiko previously, so it may be that I'm swallowing the whole thing somewhat better than most. My own mental image of it is somewhat Renaissance-y; Gothic and Byzantine architecture for the impressive buildings, but simpler, but graceful stone and wood for the civilians (often in idealic two-storey houses) with a particularly Early Modern bent to the uniforms, arms and armour. Overall, the setting I imagine is where all the periods of the 16th-18th centuries meet.

Anyway.

The more quips like this the better. I like how some of 'em sound like old soldiers already.

As for battle sequences? There's no easy solution to them. We all know that a blow-by-blow is too predictable, evenly-paced and boring to work, so the rest of your approach depends on what you want to convey. In this situation, since your battle sequence is quite lengthy, I'm not going to make a recommendation. Instead, I'll note some structural ideas you could take into consideration.

Timing the information you express is something I like a lot. In The Lord Of The Rings, for instance, we seldom see a battle in its entirety with a few notable exceptions. Usually, we're given a cross-section. We get to witness the conditions before the battle, some of the action from a particular perspective, and then the aftermath. By splitting information like this, Tolkien forces us as readers to interpret the battles ourselves. The only "canon" information is that snippet we get from perspective; everything else has to be logically considered from other information provided. You don't have to make it so abstract, though. I might write something like

"Alistair noticed a new dent in his armour, where a blow must have escaped his notice in the adrenaline and blood."

Give us respite, because a battle doesn't have to happen all at once. You can have periods of calm where the fighting stop while both sides regroup, or you can have a similar respite where the perspective character is, specifically. Otherwise, you could simply have the characters move to where there's little or no fighting for a moment. Even the best, bravest warrior needs to rest after fighting. In reality, few people are fighting well after about five minutes in the melee — most are lucky to be fighting well after three. So troops of all kinds are often switched after an engagement, so the warriors who were at the front can get some relative rest by being at the back.

Of course, magic and guns change things a bit. By what you describe, however, magic can be intensely tiring. Even the psychological factors appear to be very similar to those found in martial arts, so I imagine the same "rules" apply. That said, you did well to make a big deal of extended efforts. Can't have magic be easy, now.

People don't talk much while fighting, although I'll forgive you that because many of those quips are quite amusing and, well, it isn't reality. All the same, you could combine this with the respite concept above and have all the endearing bitching take place between moments of action. Because this is fiction, you might take this less as "people don't talk much while fighting" and more as "people don't like to talk while fighting". So if you choose to take this one to heart, then don't use it too strictly. It's one of those Acceptable Breaks from Reality, if not done too much.

I think the most important concept is the first. Tolkien wielded that one like a master, and as a result, there was a sense of mystery about events we had witnessed first-hand. Boromir's final moments, for instance, weren't properly accounted for until into the final book.

Overall, the biggest concern with any battle sequence will generally be structural. The literal information is boring, mostly, so the trick is to present it in such a way that makes your audience tense.

In any case, I found the chapter quite fun, although your strengths definitely fall closer to social interaction and emotive description — which is probably why the post-battle part is the best.

I think she can get away with some Talking Is a Free Action, just because... y'know, spellcasters. When you don't exert yourself much, you can probably afford to be kinda chatty. Doesn't really excuse Allie and Dare, but my suspension of disbelief is pretty high.

Yeah, I wouldn't get too strict on that one. Just something to keep in mind.

edited 5th Nov '11 8:35:38 PM by MadassAlex

Anyone got anything else to say? I've got the first part of Chapter Three ready to go.

Chapter Three, Part I

Lucy smiled at the tall grey-haired guard escorting her.

"Thank you for letting me in to see him."

He grunted, and avoided her eyes. "Better he ends up with you lot than sticking around here; we had to move him to the basement as a disciplinary measure after a fight broke out while we were signing him in. He’s a headache we don’t need."

"What happened?"

He chuckled. "Who knows? Probably mouthed off to Beauchamp - he's who was on duty at the time. Can’t blame the guy; whiny brat. Probably would've smacked 'im m'self."

“Is he all right?”

“Oh, sure, alchemists are lousy fighters, most of ‘em, once you get ‘em away from their doodads; it’s the kid you should be worrying about.”

I was. "Well... I guess it doesn’t matter if he’s a little impertinent. I don't have to like him to work with him," she replied, remembering what Captain Mimis had said at breakfast.

“You’re insane for doin’ what you did, you know,” the broad-shouldered man said conversationally, tossing his keys in the air and catching them again as they walked. “I don’t know what the Duke offered you to get you to trade in your little prize to spring this kid, but whatever he said, it’s not worth it.” He stepped back against the wall to let a page run past. “The Laurences might be loaded, but I doubt getting their little embarrassment back out of the joint is the way to win their friendship.”

“Embarrassment?”

“Oh, yeah; famous story.” The guard grinned broadly, as if pleased at the opportunity to shock a sheltered young lady. “Katherine Laurence ran off with her father’s private secretary when she was seventeen; didn’t come home til she was in a box, and her parents got landed with her little bastard. That was around fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years ago, and from what I hear the kid didn’t have even the cheapest model hailing rune on him when he came in, so I doubt there’s any love lost there. Tell the truth, I’d be surprised if they weren’t hoping he’s dead in the gutter right now.”

No hailing rune? At his age? Lucy thought, aghast. She couldn’t have been more amazed if he had been brought in naked.

“So what’s the Duke got in store for little Hadrian?” He smirked. “If that is his real name.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well, he’s a Delta Amuan, isn’t ‘e. They’re usually called Fifth Son or Brilliant Jade or The Tiger Is Pleased or something, aren’t they.” He spoke the questions as if they answered themselves.

Maybe his middle name is the strange one, she didn’t dare suggest aloud. Like mine.

At the door to the cells he nodded at the young officer sitting guard over the locking system. The man tapped at a dizzying sequence of colours on the abacus of light beside him, and waved the two through before returning to his game of solitaire.

“He’s right down there; follow the stairs to the bottom, fourth on the right.”

“Thank you.”

"Just... don’t go soft on him, girl." His eyes weren’t even on her face anymore. “I know you people are all about talkin’ about things and… feminine solutions,” he said awkwardly, and she tried not to roll her eyes, “but young Master Laurence there only respects one thing, and that’s a swift kick in the-”

"I’m only half Undine, sir,” Lucy cut in. “And I thought you said he wasn't dangerous?"

The old man laughed. "Not that way he isn't." And he turned and walked back up the stairs.

-

The cell was small, with a wide pool of water in the far corner caused by something dripping overhead. The walls were bare and windowless, and thanks to the immediately-adjacent boiler room the unseasonal heat was even more oppressive than outside. The low cot bolted to the wall was far too short for its occupant. There were no modern lamps here; all the light came from thick, stubby candles outside each of the cells. Everything stank.

At least he doesn't have to share, she thought.

For a moment, the boy on the cot was silent. Then, closing the book he was reading, he sighed.

"So," he said, "they decided to play the honeytrap card, did they?" Lucy was startled; instead of the rapid-fire stew of contractions and dropped consonants typically associated with natives of the Old Capital, the boy’s accent was arch and precise. It spoke of an expensive education, probably in the Imperial Capital – which, given what she’d just heard about his grandparents, was more than likely what he’d received. Feobourg was a long way from Delmore when you didn’t have a hailing rune.

He looked her over, and after a moment laughed humourlessly. "No, no, I suppose not; they would've sent the pretty redhead if that were the case."

Lucy flinched, but bit back her first reply. "No one sent me," she said instead. "It was my own decision."

"Good for you. Wake me if there's a fire, I'm going to take a nap." And he positioned his hat over his eyes and leaned back against the wall.

"Hey!" She reached through the bars and snatched the headgear away. He lunged for it, but she smacked his arm aside with her other hand. Holding the hat behind her and out of his reach, she gave him a pointed look. "You haven't even heard what I want to talk about yet."

He looked disdainfully up at her. "Haven't I?" He got to his feet, wincing almost imperceptibly as he did so. Crossing his arms (another wince), he sighed. "Fine, then. Tell me."

Lucy's breath caught in her throat. Now that he was facing her and she could see him more clearly, it was plain that he was... well, for lack of a better word, beautiful.

Had Dare, for example, been in her position instead, the precise words she would have chosen would have been 'freakishly pretty', but Hadrian Lawrence's looks were exactly the type that fascinated Lucy; his delicate bone-structure, elegant even obscured by a broken nose and a swollen lip; his gold-coloured skin, so unlike her own dull brown or the cream of other Eranmeans; the way his dark eyes seemed to challenge her, to burn right through her…

Fantastic, Lucy thought with a sinking feeling, I've infatuated with a junior mad alchemist.

All of this happened in less than a second; when the initial shock had passed, Lucy spoke.

"I want to offer you a scholarship."

"Figures," he muttered.

"It'll keep you out of prison," she said, ignoring his comment. "I talked to his Grace; he’s willing to intercede with the public court and have you made a ward of the College, like-"

"If this is all you have to offer me, you can leave now," he said curtly, picking up his book and sitting back down on the cot.

Lucy was stunned. "Are you saying you'd rather spend the rest of your life in jail than help people?"

"I'm saying," he replied, in clipped tones, "that I will not be blackmailed, particularly by a pack of third-rate dictatorial stooges who throw childish tantrums when they don't get what they want. And as far as I'm concerned, the only thing that can help the people of this city is mass-cyanide ingestion." He turned a page, but it was clear from the glower he gave the book that he wasn’t taking in a single word.

She let out an involuntary laugh of disbelief. “This is insane! You think because your family is rich you’re untouchable?”

“Certainly seems to be the case where you and your friends are concerned,” he murmured, but she ignored him.

“The City Guard found a fully-functional lab in your grandparents’ basement full of designs for golems – the ones I fought today and the advanced plans you had taped to the bottom of your desk drawer! There was a homemade firearm under your bed, for heaven’s sake!”

“You say that as if they found a corpse lying next to it,” he said, amused.

“Considering all the corpses we did find in the streets they might as well have,” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “And that’s not even counting the testimony that’s been taken about your character - they’ve got your ex-headmaster on the record as saying you were expelled from school for testing one of your inventions on the students!”

“Hm. That’s imprecise,” he said, with the detached annoyance of a man coming across a typo in a newspaper. “I was expelled for publishing the results of that research under my own name instead of that of my supervising professor. Nice touch, though.”

“Look,” Lucy said, sighing. “I know you regret what you did. No, don’t even try to deny it,” she added as he snorted and tried to snipe back, “you aren’t fooling me with your I’m-so-above-it-all act. The whole time those things were advancing you weren’t gloating, or egging them on; you were doing what you could to help people get to safety.”

His face locked down, an amateur attempt at a poker face.

“You aren’t a bad person, Hadrian,” she said firmly, trying to replicate the voice she used in her head for Lady Grenville, and Princess Zolda, and even Lady Woodlawn before she met her. “And I want to help you. You don’t have to go to prison; you deserve other options.”

He laughed, quietly and bitterly. “I fail to see how my options could do anything other than constrict by enrolling in the IMC,” he said. “Especially the Magical Institute.”

Injured pride welled up inside Lucy. “It’s the single best school in the country, you smug little ass,” she said fiercely, all thought of dignity forgotten. “This is an opportunity most alchemists would do anything for! My father mortgaged our ancestral lands to pay my tuition, for gods’ sake!”

“Which proves nothing, save that you have a painfully narrow-minded father.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Given his rather blatantly obvious taste in women, it’s a little ironic.”

Teeth clenching, Lucy felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “Don’t you say another word, Laurence.”

“What is an Undine doing working for the Evergreen Duke, anyway?” Hadrian rested his chin on his hand in mock contemplation. “Setting aside your traditional taboos against using magic for combat, I was under the impression your kind were only considered essential to the good of the nation when strapped to a vivisectionist’s table-”

"That's enough!" Lucy’s voice rang off the bare walls and echoed up the hall. Every muscle in her face was twitching, so hard that she could taste her pulse in her mouth, and the boy's bitter smirk was sudden and triumphant at achieving a reaction. She shoved the hat back through the bars and smacked it onto his head. The smirk flickered into a frown of protest, but whatever he was about to say, Lucy was not in the mood to hear it.

"I can't believe I was worried about you, you bastard!" She tore her bag open savagely and rifled through it. “You know, when I saw you in the middle of that stampede, scared and trying to herd people out of the way while you fiddled with that-” she shook the bag in frustration, “- damned book of yours, I thought that maybe it was a bad idea to lock you away just for making one incredibly stupid mistake, but I’m sorry to have wasted your time, because I guess I was wrong!” Finally she located and pulled out the bundle of papers. Shoving her arm back through the bars, she dumped the sheaf into his lap. "Here! If I can go to the trouble of getting these drawn up, you can go to the trouble of reading them at least." She glared at him. "If you don't want to ruin your life any more than you have already-”

Lucy stopped short.

He was shivering now, and his breath was coming in clearly-visible gasps. Any trace of warmth had fled the cell. His expression still held an air of defiance, but it was clearly becoming harder and harder to maintain as his whole body trembled and his pores tightened. The pool of water in the corner had frozen solid.

Eyes wide with panic, all her anger drained, she reached through the bars and placed her hands on either side of his face (now there was outright fear in his eyes). She wasn’t the medical genius her mother was, but every child growing up in the mountains eventually learned how to prevent hypothermia and frostbite, one way or another.

Forcing her breathing to slow, she concentrated on the flow of heat through the water in her own body, feeling it writhe and flicker, and steadily sent the excess, that which she knew she had stolen from him, out the palms of her hands. Soon she felt the answering heat of his own water’s attempt to save him. Reaching for it with her mind, she tried to remember what her mother had told her about establishing and maintaining healer-patient rhythmic sympathy, cursing herself for having tuned most of it out.

The seconds ticked by, and the only sounds to be heard came from the clankings of the boiler room next door and Lucy’s eerie, detached humming.

When the colour had completely returned to his face, she let out a final sigh, and was unable to stop herself from smiling at him in relief.

Suddenly, the thought of exactly what she was doing hit her full force. She pulled back with all the speed she’d reached out. Hadrian Laurence said nothing, but he was staring at her with an unreadable expression.

Lucy did the only thing she could think of. She ran, cursing her temper and her cowardice all the way down the hall, up the stairs, and out of sight.

The boy stared down the hallway after her for a long while.

Behind him, the puddle began to thaw.

My apologies to the more sensitive among the non-penis-liking demographic.

When all the parts of Chapter Three are up, will you all be so kind as to let me know whether I should keep them all in another megachapter or divide them into separate, slightly-expanded chapters of their own? I feel like this sequence here needs more detail - their argument, I mean. I'm worried there's not enough build to the straw that breaks the camel's back.

edited 6th Nov '11 2:06:37 PM by FurikoMaru

Very nice.

I always feel awkward giving critique on good stories, because I kind of have two mental modes, that in which I'm analyzing a story and that in which I'm enjoying it. When I give critique, I always feel as if I'm somehow setting myself above the author of the story, which feels very awkward if I think it's better than I could have written, and anyway when I'm simply reading a story to enjoy it I don't have a verbal sense of what happened, but more a sort of gestalt that it's hard to translate into written impressions. So I end up in the situation where I can give good, helpful critique, or even feedback that indicates that I'm paying attention, only on stories that are shabbily written or otherwise knock me out of immersion. This to explain why I'm most likely not going to say much to new chapters other than 'good job'; rest assured, I quite like it and am following it.

Right, what alethiophile said.

For what it's worth, I like when the chapters are a little on the smaller end like this one; it didn't feel quite as long as the others, which is easier for me to work my way through, by far.

I thought the discussion was just the right length. It didn't seem unreasonable for her to lose her patience with him because he was being a fantastic ass. I think, though, you may want to give a little more insight into her line of thinking at the beginning of this chapter and the one before it regarding her reasons for going to visit him— up until she outright said she thought he deserved a second chance and could maybe be of use to society, I was just kinda sitting here going, "...so, what, she wants his cock, eh?" Which really just made the flowery description of how pretty he is more amusing when it happened, but... XD

On a more personal note, it's pleasant seeing these little snippets of prose you've shown to me in the past in their full context. :3

I'd also like to note that I'm ceaselessly entertained in knowing that even given how glacially I read, I'm still among the first to respond in this thread if I'm not off doing something else at the time.

edited 6th Nov '11 4:59:29 PM by Blackmoon

Other than what's already been said:

"Just". Not only do you use it too often, but the modern usage of this word, meaning "only", is quite jarring to see in what appears to be a medieval fantasy. Take most of these out to tighten up the prose, and if you absolutely can't, replace them. (Unless you're using one with the definition of "impartial".)

Adverbs. If used too often, these things give off the impression that the author is either 1) lazy because including adverbs automatically renders a sentence halfway between telling and showing, 2) padding dialogue tags unnecessarily, or 3) both of the above, simultaneously.

For example:

Since you are a decent writer, every single one of these adverbs save the last two can be removed without any impact whatsoever.

The one in the dialogue may remain. As for the tag, replace the adverb with a fact that shows how he didn't mean anything rather than telling what. Also, "let it slide" is another bit of modern slang that's too jarring to be in a medieval fantasy.

A scene in the first chapter where Lucy is with Dare and hears screaming. The only thing I have a problem with is Lucy thinking "There’s an adventure over there!", which sounds like she's looking for excitement instead of people in danger. Replace it with something a bit more appropriate like "I need to find those people."

The tone. It's somewhat uneven. The first chapter is pretty standard medieval fantasy fare with magical horses and the like. The second features a battle. The third features various intrigues, disciplinary actions, scandals, and details of the world which aren't quite explained.

The pacing. This is also uneven. We go from reading about a single character journeying to a new place for work, to the third chapter where: A battle has just ended, a whole bunch of people both named and unnamed are giving a lot of background information, the aforementioned people state various opinions on various things, and then another completely new character who was introduced at the very end of the chapter gets frostbite... while being disciplined?

It's a little too much for the reader to take in all at once. I went from enjoying myself to hopelessly confused.

There are various ways to fix this, but my personal mode of attack would be to cut out the first chapter, which is pretty much an info dump that moves too slowly compared to the later chapters. Then, since you have quite a crew here, all of the main characters get introduced one scene at a time along with a few aspects of the world.

Beginning with Lucy, of course. As the viewpoint character, she would get more emphasis, with greater length and detail to her scenes. And since she's new, you can just have her meet everyone as a convenient framing device.

edited 6th Nov '11 8:15:24 PM by Leradny

Not that my opinion has any real relevance here, but I can agree with most of those points except for the last two. I didn't have any real problem with the pacing, just because I like not having my hand held through worldbuilding and somewhat uneven shifts in tempo. While those are all good points you raised, those two seem like they could be kinda dangerous if applied inappropriately— making the story itself a little more "generic, by-the-book hero's journey fantasy" in the name of being more accessible. Granted, that's an extreme, and Furiko's good enough to not fall into it, but I feel like I should at least point out that the pitfall exists.

Can I ask what makes it seem medieval-y? I would prefer not to give that impression, seeing as this is set - in our-world terms - anywhere between 1880 and the end of the First World War. The characters and writing style sound modern because they are modern.

Also, re: Lucy: she was just looking for excitement. She's a very self-absorbed kid; I've already hinted at that fact a couple of times - note that the first things she thinks of when mentally cataloguing Hadrian's crimes are what he's done to her, personally.

Thank you for the note about Hadrian seemingly coming out of nowhere in the third chapter; I'll have to include a line where she mentions that they've taken his goggles away. I wasn't aware that that was so unclear.

I'm not going to cut back on using adverbs until a professional editor with credentials and experience orders me to. I like them.

edited 7th Nov '11 11:58:36 AM by FurikoMaru

I think perhaps you're running afoul of the assumption that fantasy == medieval, plus the fact that in a couple of places rather medieval-y words and ideas are discussed; see Questing, for instance.

I suspect a book cover that showed a non-medieval world would help immensely, but you may wish to keep in mind that this will be the default assumption of your readers and deliver a few short, sharp whacks around the head early on until they get it.

And you've picked about the same time period analog as I, which interests me. Mine is very much of the social structure that WWI definitively ended; the era of royalty and nobility. Sure, it staggered along for a bit after that until WW 2 killed the zombie, but that world was over for all practical purposes during WWI. That the conflict wiped out much of Europe's nobility on the battlefield had a lot to do with it; families who were keen on blood and glory got lots of the former drained from them.

*nodnod* Totally what I was goin' for! I wonder if I should talk about how weird it is to see a car when you aren't used to them, or something.

I kind of had this idea that SCIENCE! in steampunk might as well be ALCHEMY!, but I'm still playing with it, as you can see with the bit where Hadrian basically built a gun in his basement. I don't know yet if it's going to have much of an effect on the plot.

Blackmoon: With all due respect, if you are mistaking "organized exposition, clear introductions, and even pacing" for "holding the reader's hand" then I will have to respectfully disagree. Also, and I apologize as there is no way I can say this politely: I was talking to Furiko, not you.

Furiko: What with the castle setting and the large emphasis on horses, I assumed it was a medieval fantasy. But since it's not, you at least need some overt mention of cars, guns, trains, bicycles, and other fledgeling technology. Also, make Lucy more obviously self-absorbed from the start, and you're good.