Sci Fi & Fantasy / Firewall Trilogy-Book 1-Prologue
Queen of Demons: Prologue
The wispy morning glow had just started to touch the eastern horizon as she climbed up the sand dune towards the warm water. Summer was touching the ocean with its tenderness giving it that peaceful warmth that sank into a person’s weary bones. Her bones weren’t weary but she had lost hope, hope that her baby and her life would ever be free again. She turned back mournfully to look at her home, the city of Meridian. It looked vibrant in the distance.
Her gaze returned to the ocean as it crashed furiously on the sands. As the salty wind whipped at her face, tears stung her eyes. She was only 18 and really the onset of her power was a bit late but she could feel it as soon as she could feel the child growing within her stomach almost as if the child had blessed her with the powers. She never told her husband about the powers for fear he might turn her in, but then it was out of fear for losing everything that kept her going. Now in her final desperate attempt to be free she had climbed and struggled away from her town to this sand dune in the hope that she might call some help from the depths of the earth itself.
If she returned to her town with the power that was already beginning to build inside her then she would surely be turned in by the guards and the Collectors of Immerin to the nearest Sia school. It was as a Sia that she would lose all of her life and her freedom, as a Sia a woman has no freedom, a woman is merely a slave and her name would be lost because she would be transformed into another person.
She couldn’t help it any longer, the tears came like a downpour and with it her ability to even stand. Her knees buckled and she toppled into the sand.
“My name is trissa Cerendale.” She mumbled as she pushed herself onto her knees. She continued to repeat her name to the ocean in a fevered chant trying to hold onto the last vestiges of her life and her sanity. Trissa stood finally willing the tears from her eyes and strength back into her soul.
It was this moment that would define her life and her child’s life, if nothing else she must try for her baby’s sake to be purged of the magic she felt. Perhaps there was a way to cover up her powers so that she might live a normal life but even as the thought passed through her mind she knew that there was no such method. Strands of golden hair blew into her eyes and she sighed softly, the change had already begun to take hold of her form, her hay colored hair had begun to turn silver, it glinted in grey strands in the morning sun. Her soft grey eyes glazed over as she awakened all of the hidden and devious power inside her being. The power welcomed the air, the sand, the ocean into itself and into her body.
Trissa had never felt so alive! With her eyes she saw the light of the sun as if it was a million shards of a shattered rainbow scattered against the horizon and her skin tingled with the electricity of the power gracing her skin. A tone, haunting and eerie slid from her pink lips to greet the rising sun and with the tone came an ancient stirring from within her bosom.
Somehow the words, long forgotten by fear and time had found their way to this woman’s soul and beneath the earth It moved for the first time in thousands of years to answer her call. The being stretched in its fiery coils and then began its ascension to the land, to the call of the woman. The being could not remember the last time it had heard a human call, really the being had no recollection of the last time it had interacted with humans at all. Now it rose like the sun to greet the woman and answer her plea.
When the tone had faded from her lips she knew that she had called the Bonding correctly although she did not know how she had accomplished this feat. The one thing she was sure of was the fact that every wizard within Meridian town limits had felt her awakening and were most assuredly on their way to strip her of her former life.
Trissa smiled in the glow of the morning sun, the being she had called, though he had rested in his ancient slumber undisturbed would come to her, already she felt him rising from below the ground.
Nestling herself in the sand and pulling her skirts around her knees she waited patiently for the being. She was afraid what the Saud, the demon, would look and act like, she couldn’t imagine being very happy if she was awoken after thousands of years. All she could do was hope that the Saud, was amicable to humans and that it would understand her need, for the need was great. The sun crept closer to breaking the edge of water, the sky was already discarding its heavy dark skin for the lighter tones of the day. Into the sun she gazed until it left spots in her vision and she feared she might lose her sight altogether. She didn’t want to let go of the image because if her plan failed then this might be the last beauty she would ever look upon. In her heart she knew that there was no greater hell then being separated from her husband and her child forever by the Collectors of the moon, not even a horror this Saud could create would even begin to equal the life of servitude she would live on earth.
He rose through the waves as the sun peaked passed the horizon and in the glory of the full orange light he appeared to her. He would have looked like a man if time and slumber had not caused his appearance to look so ashen, as if he had been laying in a fire pit for a millenia. In the dawn, his skin began to glow red until his body was enveloped in flame and then he alighted next to the woman on the sand, who seemed ready to flee at the sight of his light works.
She stood and squared her shoulders defiantly before him and he felt in her heart a spark which couldn’t be matched even by flame. He bowed gracefully and as he returned to his prior stance his skin extinguished and left only handsome copper skin and dark raven hair. His eyes gleamed red, like twin lakes of molten fire and his body was bare and unclothed before the woman.
Trissa smiled slightly at the Saud that stood before her and then cradled her stomach comfortingly in her hands. Her impossible task was almost complete all she needed was the Saud’s consent to begin the Bonding.
“I am the flame, why have you woken me to meddle in the affairs of the men who have forgotten I exist?” His voice was crisp like the crackling of a fire on a cold day. It was then that he noticed her full belly, the woman was close to delivering and he wondered with quiet admiration if it was for the child itself that he had been risen.
“I-I need to bond with you.” Trissa cast her eyes down quickly and rubbed her belly to feel any movement for support. “I will do whatever it takes to be one with you and you with I even if men outlaw our connection. I risk death itself by calling you here and if you comply we must begin the ritual soon.”
The flame smiled mischievously, so the times have changed since last I had visited men, the flame could easily remember a time when bonding with any Saud was legal and even encouraged. As he understood it, many Saud and humans alike agreed that growth and strength could only be obtained when they worked in unison but then men were always fickle things.
“You wish to be my winding? You must understand that if you become my winding you commit whatever child lies inside you to the bond as well, since you are both as one at the moment.” His eyes became two brilliant flames which grew brighter as Trissa considered his words.
“I must risk it flame, I commit myself and my child to your will if that is what it takes. We will be your winding. Begin the ritual!” A fury grew in her face and expression, a need that burned greater than any flame, it was in this will that the Flame saw what he needed.
He didn’t bother to speak to her because words were irrelevant, her spirit was the fuel for which his fire would burn, she would become the wind that stoked his blaze. He moved quickly so as not to alarm her and gripped her by the shoulders, with a deft motion he sliced his arm open and drops of searing liquid dripped down to scorch the sand instantly turning the grains into glass. Through his eyes Trissa understood what needed to be done and she bent down to be anointed by his blood.
First, with his left hand he smeared two fingers in the wound and then marked her forehead, her skin reacted to the heat instantly as it scorched beneath his finger’s touch. Then he pressed the wounded arm to her lips and she took it eagerly and began to suck the very essence of his fire into her belly. Suddenly she drew back from his wound, and he could not understand why. Immediately he wondered if he had begun the ritual properly because he had never performed a bonding ritual with a human before. He stared down into her eyes questioningly and inside them he felt a heat growing between them, the connection was complete albeit weak at the moment but it was not that feeling that inspired fear, it was the look of alarm in Trissa’s eyes that shocked him. She toppled backwards onto the warm sand gripping her belly as if a monster was about to emerge and the flame fell to his knees beside her as understanding dawned.
Trissa screamed to the morning air and clutched at the loose ground for purchase but her fingers slipped right through the sand. “ The baby!” She wailed as another contraction ripped through her body.
Perhaps the ritual had invoked the birthing but despite this detail the baby was coming. The flame stared helplessly at his partner who now writhed in the sand uncontrollably trying to calm her breath into a steady puffing rhythm but instead her body was heaved into another throe of spasms. Her veins felt as if they were pumping molten lava under her skin and she knew that the bond had been completed but it seemed that the completion came at a price. As she gasped for air in the sand she wondered who would survive the birth, the baby or herself.
Trissa spread her legs towards the morning sun and prayed to the creator that the baby would be born healthy and then she pushed with all her strength. The daylight stretched its hand all across the land and the fire in Trissa’s spirit burned harder and faster as the bond gained strength. In answer to the growing connection between herself and the Saud the fiery burn of her blood only rose in temperature, until it felt as if her skin might melt off her bones.
Trissa reached out and grasped the flames hand, “Help me, this child is a part of you too.” She screamed as the fire surged through her lungs stealing the very breath from her body.
For a whole hour the flame and his winding struggled to birth the child on the beach. He peered down to see a little head breach the air and then the shoulders slid from Trissa’s body. With her last ounce of strength she pushed and the flame delivered her child into the morning sun.
He smiled into the tiny eyes and glanced at Trissa, “We must move quickly Trissa because I sense men are on their way.”
Trissa grabbed his arm roughly, “Let me see her flame.” There was a note of urgency in her voice and a tenderness that belied a need that could only be fulfilled once.
He bent towards her with the child in the crook of his arms and Trissa smiled. She leaned her head back into the sand again and exhaled and a weight lifted from her shoulders and body. The flame felt her soul leave her body and under his breath he whispered a small prayer to the creator. All he was left with on the beach in the hot morning sun was a little baby, all that was left of his first connection with humanity. He knew that the child was as much his as it had undoubtedly been the woman’s and he vowed to himself to watch over the child for as long as she lived. He kissed the baby’s soft cheek and then tore the gown from the woman and wrapped up the child. He laid her in the sand beside her mother. In the distance he could hear the pounding of horse’s hooves as they struck the ground but he lingered near the child, wishing to spend a few more moments by her side.
He noted, as the waves beat repeatedly on the shore, that the child had not cried once, even now she cooed up into his flaming red eyes. Even the site on which she had been born was turned to glass due to the immense heat radiated from the bonding and birthing. All the ground he stood on within 3 feet of the dead woman was clear, crystalline glass. Amazement, struck the Winding flame, he had never birthed a child before nor had he ever bonded but the circumstances of this birth seemed pivotal. Whatever the marking of this earth and the moment meant he knew one thing, that he was intrinsically tied to whatever would happen to this child from this moment on and he felt as if he owed the woman, Trissa, at least that much.
With a grimace he spotted the entourage of men galloping at full force towards his location on the beach. He dared not wait a moment longer and he smiled sadly to his baby as he disappeared into the earth again to lay in its warm core. Although he had pledged his life to protecting the child he understood that her place, at least for now, was with her kind. When the time was right he would make himself known to her again and he would relay the story of her birth and the courage of her mother to the child.
The men reined their horses as they spotted the dead body of a woman laying on glass on the beach. Apparently a great amount of heat had been generated in this spot, so hot that it had turned sand into glass. The Collectors all stared in amazement and then one of the soldiers bent towards the wizard, “I thought that women could not touch fire and yet a great amount of fire was conducted under that woman.” His voice trembled with fear because he knew what a woman yielding fire meant.
The men behind him seemed to get a whiff of his fear and some of them turned their horses away from the woman laying on the ground.
“Don’t be foolish!” The wizard snapped, “The woman does not control fire, she merely tried to bond a demon who did and you see what happens to men and women who go against the law. They are punished and killed by even trying to harness the power of fire. The creator outlawed man from fire for a reason, because in fire is where the power of darkness lies.”
Some of the men in the group nodded agreement as the wizard unseated himself from his horse. A whimper emerged from the woman and some of the men gasped and reined their horses backward. The wizard turned an acid gaze back to the men, for collectors they seemed timid. Typically collectors were used to taking women from their lives and dealing with the women who could harness magic. For some reason the Collectors of Meridian seemed on edge and the wizard could not figure out why.
Saylsin rubbed his sweating palms on his plain brown woolen robes. The one thing he feared was matching strengths against a powerful demon. Yet there was nothing in sight except for the woman. Another whimper emerged from the woman’s body and Saylsin strode up beside her. The woman was undoubtedly dead, she had been for awhile but there was a child beside her laying on the cooling glass wrapped up in her mother’s torn skirts. He picked up the child, and cradled it in his arms.
“You men are afraid of the dark one himself rising from the sand you fools! It is only a child, the mother must have attempted a bond to hide her powers so she could keep her baby. Instead her child is motherless and the demon long gone. At least the demon spared the child’s life.” Saylsin made his way back to his horses and men. “We’ll take her back to town and attempt to find the father, get the body, I am sure her family will want to give her the proper respects.”
Saylsin shook his head sadly, it seemed a shame to lose a woman in a meaningless tragedy like this. He understood why families were loath to discover their daughter was cursed with the ability to touch magic, no one really saw magic as a blessing anymore unless of course it was their son who received the gift. Even then the gift was given so rarely to any child anymore that it was a shame to lose even a woman who could touch magic and pass the gift. Saylsin turned to the horizon remembering his days in wizardry school, the old teachers would tell tales of how the halls were full of men and boys bustling about or studying magic. Now the halls of the Sia and wizard schools stood vastly empty and many of the schools were empty of any human life, their secrets and treasures locked away for centuries due to a decrease in students.
As the men bundled the still scorching body of the woman into the torn remnants of her skirts and onto a horse Saylsin held the child in the crook of his arm. Her eyes had opened to reveal a startling crystalline blue that was mesmerizing. Sighing the wizard thought to himself, pray little one that you are not cursed like your mother so that you may live long peaceful days.
In the distance beyond the men’s sight a flash of brilliant fire light erupted to greet the dawning sun as the men rode away from the place of birth. It served as the first sign, the first greeting to the child by her new demon ally and the beginning of her new life.
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A good begining. I get a sence of how the world is in the mother’s thoughts about losing her lifestyle and place in society. The fact that you bring in the bonding is a nice touch. I think it needs some added focus to bring it together a bit more, adn a touch of grammer work would not be remiss. Long sentances with multiple prepostions make it clunky in spots, but not too badly so. I hope to see more of this story as it evolves. Good luck
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This is very good. I could sense all the conflicting emotions Trissa was feeling. The way you described the wizarding school reminded me of the Library in Alexandria and all we lost when it was burned. I want to learn more about the child and the school and unlock its secrets.
Never let anyone tell you that someone else owns a title and that you can’t use it (unless it contains a trademarked word, of course). Titles cannot be copyrighted, and something as commonplace (for this genre, anyway!) as “Queen of Demons” shouldn’t make anyone automatically think of someone else’s book unless they’re somewhat lacking in the imagination department themselves.
Okay. Rant w/supportive advice ended. On to the review:
I get the feeling that you’ve invented a whole world, with a complex culture, as the setting for this story. The prevailing attitudes toward magic and the people who deal with it are particularly interesting to me. I want to read the rest of this story and find out more about this world. (Finding out what happens next is, for me, a secondary consideration. Not your fault, so don’t see this as resulting from a flaw in your story. I think my brain is just too full for today and I’ll have more interest in your plot at another time.)
You have some places where commas are missing, or you have run-on sentences, or something needs to be capitalized. This doesn’t get in the way of reading the story, but it is something you’ll need to go back and fix eventually.
“My name is trissa Cerendale.”
-First name is uncapped.
”...were used to taking women from…”
-extra space between TO and TAKING
Good job here. I loved this idea, and where this is going.
You’ve got a wonderful imagination and I’m looking forward to reading more, almost as if I’d bought this as a book and found that it didn’t have the second chapter.
I think you could improve it by lengthening the death of Trissa. (Seemed a little sudden.) Great work though.
Stay with it!
“My name is trissa Cerendale.”
Captitalize! Oh yes, I know we all hate being told of these little mistakes but they really help. You kind of lost me in the first part, the description is wonderful but watch out because sometimes the story just disappears in it and cause confusion.
”...Saud, was amicable to humans…”
Good use of uncommon words but the comma isn’t needed there, it kind of threw me off for a moment. I like the description of the demon, it is very lovely and flowing _ and we all like flowing.
”...whatever it takes to be one with you and you with I even if men outlaw our connection” Okay, I had to re-read “with you and you with I” a couple times through before I understood it so either you might want to make that more clear or you just need to add a comma somewhere that I can’t remember right now… so have fun thinking that one out.
Other than those few errors. I loved it! It was amazing, the whole story really drew me in and I just couldn’t stop reading after the baby was born. I do like how the personality of the demon changed from big and booming to almost caring. I cant wait to read more of this story. You are obviously and amazing writer and you did a wonderful job on this.
I like the opening paragraph, it has just enough hook to make me wonder what has happened to his lady and her baby, and the not weary but lost hope part gives me a nice insight into her character.
The only thing is, we lose a lot of that mystery in the second paragraph where I think you get a little too into the backstory. We are taken out of the action of her escaping to see into her past, and it seems a bit forced.
When Trissa is something this ‘being’, which I think could use a better description than that, even if you are trying to leave it mysterious, it seems disconnected. We see that he has been summoned, and then she sees it, and we are told again, as if we weren’t told already. It seems to be redundant at points, or perhaps out of order.
When you mention the COllectors of the moon, after already mentioning other groups and unknown things in this world you have created, I feel like we’re being shown too many new things too quickly without any explanation to ground us. You mention the Collectors of Immerin, the Sia, a Bonding, demons, now this, and it is a lot to keep track of, even more so because we know nothing about any of them.
When we see the Saud you say, “he alighted next to the woman on the sand, who seemed ready to flee at the sight of his light works”, and then in the next paragraph she stands defiantly before him. Seems to contradict itself. In fact, you do that a bit through this next part. The characterization is inconsistant. First you say “Her impossible task was almost complete” but all she had done was walk to a place and call someone without even seeming to realize it. Then, one who was a second ago defiant stutters and can’t look this Saud in the eye when she speaks.
When you are describing her birth you go from one sentence from the flame’s point of view, and then to Trissa’s point of view, and it seems awkward.
Just a question too, how does she know she had a girl?
When the Collectors arrive and you say, “Apparently a great amount of heat had been generated in this spot, so hot that it had turned sand into glass.” I think you are restating what is obvious to the readers, what you just said in the paragraph above. Sure, it may be the first time teh Collectors are seeing it, but we were just told this information, and getting it again in this seemingly new manner seems very strange.
All in all, it was a good start to something, and I’ll be interested to read more about what happens to this baby. Though I could have done with a name, perhas one that the Saud gave to her.
Essentially, you have the makings of a really good story. At points it has a raw power, but it is very much an uncut jewel. The plot itself is intriguing, and you have some interesting circumstances, and reasonably good pacing.
Your biggest problem is that of sentence structure, and of punctuation. You need to clarify your imagery, and present it cleanly. Beyond that, to really develop the story you will need to work on your characterisation. You get very descriptive, and seem to forget about the characters themselves, and a logic to their feelings. You need to dig deeper into their emotional lives, really get inside them and how their feelings develop, and then reveal that inner reality. As it stands, she seems to go from fear and despair to power to caution, to total assurance in calling up a demon, something awesome that hasn’t happened in over a thousand years. Somehow, this really doesn’t ring true.
As a first para, you lose a bit of power in being over-wordy, and not creating a compelling enough hook. Part of that is a lack of clarity. The first sentence is not powerful. It also creates spacial displacement.
_ The wispy morning glow had just started to touch the eastern horizon as she climbed up the sand dune towards the warm water. _ – water is generally down from a dune. “Climbed up” is redundant. “climbed” is enough.
_Summer was touching the ocean with its tenderness giving it that peaceful warmth that sank into a person’s weary bones. _ – Technically, you need a comma after “tenderness”, but the main problem is being too wordy, and a little confused. “A mild summer sun warmed the ocean, a peaceful warmth that sank into one’s weary bones.” – Part of the confusion with your sentence is that it is unclear whether the summer or the ocean has the peaceful warmth. I’ll also note here that unless sun is hot, and the water is in a closed body like the Mediterranean Sea, large bodies of water generally stay cold. “Tender” summers generally don’t heat oceans. If the summer has the warmth that sinks into bones, you need to restructure your sentence. If the ocean has it, your character has not arrived, so how would she know?
_Her bones weren’t weary but she had lost hope, hope that her baby and her life would ever be free again. _ – Not a bad potential hook, but the sentence is passive. It would be stronger without having to make the contrast with weariness. Leave such “literary” plays for later in the story. Technically, there is a comma after “weary”.
_She turned back mournfully to look at her home, the city of Meridian. It looked vibrant in the distance. _ – You need to set the hook of the last sentence. These just take the reader in another direction.
In the next sentence, you have a “furiously crashing” sea, which is dissonant with the “tender” summer sea of the very first sentence. Waves don’t generally crash furiously unless there is a strong wind.
This paragraph also is a far worse example of lack of punctuation than the previous one. Learn to use commas. Their lack is a feature of your writing, and makes reading difficult.
It was as a Sia that she would lose all of her life and her freedom, as a Sia a woman has no freedom, a woman is merely a slave and her name would be lost because she would be transformed into another person. _ – This is a run-on (should be broken at least once after “her freedom”) and far too passive in voice for what it is saying. Your narrative voice is third-person impersonal, and in this case, it just loses you the “grab” you need your a prologue. You could try something more like: _She fled from this doom. As a Sia, she would lose her freedom, lose all possibilities in life. A Sia woman is merely a slave, with no freedom. She’d be transformed into another person.
This is definitely a piece to keep working on. The thing you will need most is to get beyond the circumstances in the story to the hearts of your characters. Do a lot of reviewing, and notice both what works and what doesn’t in terms of creating engagement.
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