Sci Fi & Fantasy / Dark Rivers Of The Soul - Prologue
Prologue
“Trimmel…put that chair down, before you break something!” Max demanded forcefully. “You could get a splinter…we’ll have to pay for damages…someone’s going to jail before the night is─” he didn’t get a chance to finish ranting; a stein collided with the back of his head violently, he went down like a sack of grain.
Trimmel grinned; he loved to fight, almost as much as he loved women. With a loud roar he smashed his heavy wooden chair into the back of the person closet to him, it was beautiful the way they went down, all arms and legs in a lifeless heap.
Why can’t I just go into a tavern and have a simple drink and avoid getting assaulted by nameless brutes in every town I travel? Qualm wondered, staring at the floor painfully, his bruises had bruises and they were starting to complain.
“That’s it!” he groused as he rolled over to his back, just in time to see a Dwarf preparing to smash another chair against his delicate body, this one looked like it was aimed for his head. “Not today you nasty little man.” Qualm stated with a wave of his hand.
Trimmel was moments away from pounding the elf’s head in with his chair when a massive force struck him in the chest, propelling him across the tavern, breaking a few tables along the way and knocking over chairs. He hit the far wall hard enough to expel the wind from his lungs, sending him to his knees and bottles to the floor where they shattered.
That got some attention.
The tavern started to shake.
Chairs, tables and broken glass that riddled the floor in the center of the tavern started to make its’ way outward. Bottles started to explode violently but the glass fell straight to the floor when it reached a certain point in the room. Tables cracked down the center and all points of exit outside the tavern slammed shut.
The fight was ending quicker than it had started.
“Who comes to my town and wreaks havoc?” boomed the air itself.
Everyone pointed at Trimmel.
“Hey…” he shouted indigently, “did not!”
The air itself began to crackle with electricity, it pulsed with a life all its’ own, the crowd backed as far away from the center of the room as they possibly could.
Qualm felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end; he had a very bad feeling indeed.
Max started scanning the room for plausible escape routes and inched his way along the back wall…it would do him no good, no one was leaving this room anytime soon.
There was a loud thunderclap and a bolt of electricity bounded from the center of the room outward finding every breathing person inside the tavern, picking up speed as it passed, until it reached the center once more. The bolt exploded in a blinding flash of light.
When Trimmels’ eyes readjusted he had to look twice to make sure he wasn’t seeing swamp gas visions or worse. No way a child has power like this! He thought to himself.
A human child of eight or nine stood there in flowing robes of crimson and dancing light, the child had Jade colored eyes that held more wisdom than the years his body portrayed and hair a deep black it was almost blue.
The child had two guards in full black body armor of some unknown origin; all you could see were their eyes and they were like death incarnate. No weapons were evident on either guard, but that didn’t mean anything.
The child pointed at Trimmel and staid one word, “You.”
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This is definitely a good hook. Even though it is a prologue, you’ve given some interesting information here. Trimmel seems to be a character that will be well worth taking the time to read about. And Qualm, he says so much about his personality without really saying anything at all. The mage in the form of a little boy? I am intrigued. There are some grammar things that need to be edited, but they should take care of themselves with a quick rewrite. One thing that jumped out at me was the glass that fell “straight to the floor” when reaching a certain point. I reread it and understand it now, but that is something that you really want to avoid having your reader do. Unnecessary pauses can take away from the reader experience. And this was one of those instances. Maybe try to describe that a little differently. Another thing that I saw was the very last line. ”staid” should be “said”. Other than those two things, I don’t think you need to do much else with this. Good job.
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You said your intent was to hook me into reading on, I can’t be much of a judge of that as I don’t read typical fantasy, so I wouldn’t choose to read a book like this based on the back cover blurb.
However the fast-paced, action-packed style is an excellent way of grabbing your reader’s attention. I would just dive straight into this as the start of chapter one and forget about having a prologue – as the fantasy convention is to stuff boring world history or backstory into a prologue, and this is anything but dull.
There were a couple of things that jarred me out of reading the story:
1 – Who was the point of view character? Is it Max, Qualm or Trimmel? I understand that the intent is to introduce these guys as the main characters in this scene and maybe in the whole story, but the narrative goes from Trimmel’s viewpoint to Qualm’s from paragraph to paragraph. This is disconcertingly quick. By all mean use different viewpoint characters through the telling of the whole story, but give them a whole scenes or even whole chapters each. I would be tempted, personally, to use a single viewpoint character for this whole sequence, and to use Max as that character. He isn’t that involved in the fight and hence has the opportunity to see all the action and to notice the tavern shaking, where Trimmel and Qualm might at first be too engrossed in the fight.
2 – Unnecessary verbs and adverbs with respect to the dialogue. It looked like you and your thesaurus were spending a lot of time trying to avoid using the word ‘said’. This can be a bit over the top sometimes and takes the reader out of the enjoyment of story into being aware of the mechanics of style. Use ‘said’ generally and then when you do use ‘demanded’, ‘groused’, ‘boomed’ and ‘shouted’ they’ll be more effective.
Watch your apostrophes, and there’s a couple of spelling mistakes that spellcheck won’t catch:
‘indigently’ -> indignantly
‘staid’ -> said
Other than that it’s a good action sequence that will grab the reader’s interest.
I noticed that you are writing third person omniscient. You do pretty well, but I would recommend separating the paragraphs in a way that suggests a POV switch. You went inside Trimmel’s and Qualm’s head.
This line made me laugh, “Everyone pointed at Trimmel.”
collided with the back of his head violently (adverb should be next to the verb)
Overall, it was an entertaining piece :)
Interesting, especially for a prologue, and I’ve got only one thing to say as advice: show, don’t tell. I hate it when my writing teacher says it to me but most of the time she is right. If no weapons were on either guard and that didn’t mean anything, then find a way to describe it so that the point comes across without you saying flat out that it didn’t mean anything. It adds depth. Other than that, good start.
I found that clear, quite action-packed, and it made me want to read more, so suppose all is good :) You even get a slight sense of Trimmel’s character. I also like the way it ends at a cliffhanger.
I also liked the three-character thing. I’m sorry, I’m quite inexperienced at reviewing, so I can’t actually find anything wrong with it…
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