Prologue

The small room only contained four humanoids: a middle-aged man appears to be on the brink of death, a dwarf and an elf wearing identical armor, and a humanoid dragon.

The walls were made of stone bricks, stacked carefully so every edge lined up perfectly. The floor was rough stone, partially covered by dried blood.

      On the dried blood kneeled the middle-aged man. His brown hair was shoulder-length, streaked with gray, and unkempt. What remained of his shirt was ripped, tattered, and covered with blood; some fresh, some dried. His hands were bound behind his back with steel handcuffs. He was on the verge of collapse, being held up by the guards at his shoulders.

      Both guards wore black metal armor, carefully polished with a yellow symbol on the piece of armor over the left bicep. The symbol was a dragon head, carefully engraved and painted. At the hip of the dwarvish guard, a warhammer hanged. The elvish guard had his dagger and his longsword still on his hip.

      The fourth humanoid appeared to be a man, but covered in red dragon scales, a tail, and a dragon-like face. Where his eyebrows should be was darker red scales. From under his perfectly white tunic, one could see where red scales faded into light gray on his chest area. He held a longsword, its point on the kneeling man's neck, not yet drawing blood.

"Whabur Quay," the dragon-man mocked. "The greatest wizard in generations, co-leader of The Intransigents, kneeling at my feet with a blade at his throat." He lets out a laugh.

"Ango," Whabur Quay started, but he was cut off.

"You will miss many things in a life you will not see. Your father died yesterday. You will not be going to his funeral. Your wife is pregnant with your child. You will not see this child. Or your wife."

"Corline..." Quay gasps as the dragon pushes the blade into Quay's neck, drawing blood.

"You will see none of  that," Ango sneers. "Should I take your wife to see if your child will have magic abilities like you? I bet it will. Even if it isn't as powerful as you, I can raise it as my own."

"No. Don't you have enough? You just gained Ub and Clute, and you still go after Piraton? You have thousands of people at your command. You have enough."

"Is that what your group believed? You believed I want and want? Isn't every man greedy?"

"Every man is greedy, yes," replied Quay. "But none as greedy as you. You want the power. Even when you gain Piraton, you will go after the sea."

"I have spent decades fighting for this world! Centuries! More than you would have ever seen! I'll give you one last chance, wizard: tell me where the objects are."

Quay spat at him, saliva hitting the dragon's left foot. "Never."

After a moment's hesitation, Ango took away the blade and sheathed it. "Let me tell you something, wizard. You will die today. I will let you choose whether it is by magic or blade. But I recommend you tell me where the objects can be found. What would happen if world is launched back into chaos when I am destroyed. The objects hold the keys to a stable world. Anyone sane would have told me where they are a long time ago."

"Are you trying to call me sane?" Quay inquired. "It won't work."

"Magic or blade."

"Blade. I'd rather it be done the old-fashion way. They way it was before you took over."

Ango nodded at the two guards who released their grip on Quay, leaving him to struggle to hold himself up. Looking up at Ango, Quay watched as he unsheathed his sword and raised it, prepared to strike.

"One can be found where two rivers meet in a long-forgotten forest, another with a well-trusted dragon. The most powerful one under the bridges to other bridges, and the last guarded in the heart of enemy territory."

Ango raised an eyebrow. "Is that all?"

"Yes."

"Nothing else? How about a defined place? The name of this dragon? What forest is forgotten?"

"Nothing else. That is all you will get."

Four hours later, Ango watched from his office window as the palace gardener added ash around the base of two baby oak trees, both up to his knees. Turning around, he went back to the task at hand: deciphering Quay's message.

Author's Note

What does everyone think?

Reviews

[brokenwriter]

Wow this is sooo f*****g goood

[Octi]

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[JayG]

Well, you did ask...

You're spending a lot of time on visual detail that's irrelevant, given that the reader can't see the room, and it would take ten times the amount of prose to make them "see" it (remember the saying, a picture is worth a thousand words? That's four standard manuscript pages to give them a STILL picture). Ours is NOT a visual medium. Nor is it fast. What a quick glance would show in person would take pages to describe. But were yo to do that, for every second they spent reading that description, nothing is happening in the story. As Jack Bickham put it: “To describe something in detail, you have to stop the action. But without the action, the description has no meaning.” And in this case, since the action has still not begun, James Schmitz's advice is even more on point: “Don’t inflict the reader with irrelevant background material—get on with the story.”

The problem you face is that all your training in writing, like everyone else, is in the techniques of nonfiction. You wrote endless numbers of reports and essays in school to ready you for employment, and the kind of writing your employer needs. But nonfiction's job is to inform, while fiction's goal is to provide the reader with an emotional experience. Readers don't want to know what happens, they want to be made to live it in real-time, moment-by-moment. And that takes an entirely different set of skills. Think of how much time your teachers spent on the elements of a scene on the page, and how to manage them—or even what the differences are between a scene on the page and one on stage or screen. Zero, right? But if you don't know what makes up a scene, and why, can you write one?

My point? It's not a matter of writing well or badly. It's that you need a few tricks of the fiction writer's trade. You, and everyone you know have been reading nothing but professionally written and prepared books since you began reading. So to please someone like that you need to know what the pro knows.

It's not hard to learn (though perfecting it takes time, of course) and the library's fiction writing section can be a huge help. But learning the tricks of fiction writing is necessary.

Sorry my news isn't better, but you did ask, so I thought you'd want to know.

[Octi]

Thanks for your comment, JayG. I understand some people don't want all the details, but I'm making it for my friends mainly and they like the detail. But thanks again for your comment.

[Onlyme]

I liked this interesting, different and detailed, good use of imagery held within all. Tight and easily readable. Great stuff.