The Lich of the Ancient World

by Verathuum

Can't Sleep

Trixie suddenly awoke from her sleep quite abruptly, almost as though she was shaken awake. Perhaps she had a bad dream? It was possible since she couldn’t seem to remember it. When she looked around the room, she noticed it was still dark out. Celestia, conjectured goddess of the sun, hadn’t raised her amber jewel just yet; and Luna’s pearl moon hung lazily in the obsidian sky. Feeling she couldn’t go back to sleep even if she tried, Trixie decided she would get up and see about making herself some tea from the barkeep’s supply to help her sleep. If she left some bits on the counter for him, he surely wouldn’t mind.

As she poured the ground tealeaves into her cup, she used her own magic to bind the air into water which she brought to a boil by using fire spawned in her hands. After she finished the hot brew, she still wasn’t tired so she decided she would expend some energy by going for a walk, even if it was cold outside. Draping her old stage cloak - which she kept as a keepsake these days - over her shoulders as a type of jacket, she went outside into the cold night air.

As soon as Trixie was outside, she got a good glimpse of the full moon. It was at its zenith, so it was midnight which meant Trixie had only gotten about an hour of sleep. She decided to just pass that notion off as she walked: it didn’t matter anyway. She looked over the ocean and thought she saw the fog or steam the barkeep was talking about. She mused to herself for a few minutes about it when she saw a small boat and its oars. It surely wouldn’t take that long to row out there, make sure there was no island and come back. She wasn’t even tired anyway, but she quickly remembered her task at hand: trying to get sleepy so she could go to bed, and she quickly turned her head from the fog. Her curiosity would not get the best of her this night, or any other.

Immediately betraying herself, Trixie strode quickly to a nearby dock and got into a raft. She would be back in an hour or so, so she saw no harm in just borrowing the raft for the time being. With little hesitation, Trixie began slowly rowing her way to the island.

Along the way, she saw no signs of any kind of seamonsters, although she did see several fish near the shore, and they were about four or five feet long and very fat. Maybe when the drunk saw them, the fish appeared bigger? She internally laughed at the drunk’s fantasies and continued her way to the fog.

The ocean was calm, and reflected the moon beautifully, which illuminated her surroundings much better than she anticipated. She could still see the cloud of fog in the distance and she continued her journey. Even though she was almost certain that the drunk’s story about the seamonster was a fake; the constant thought of such a creature kept her momentum up.

After a while of rowing, Trixie wasn’t sure how long exactly, she finally reached the fog. She could clearly see where it began and where it ended, as if it was being kept in a confined area. She ignored the fog and kept rowing into it. Inside the cloud, the visibility was much lower than Trixie anticipated, and she could barely see more than ten feet away from her raft. Still, she continued against her better judgment, and soon she could see rocks poking from the water. Exactly as the barkeep told her, the waters were very shallow like the rocks implied; and if it was daytime, Trixie could probably see the bottom.

She continued until her raft bumped into something. She quickly turned her head around and saw that she had actually bumped into a cliff. She looked around, but the fog kept her vision obscured; she couldn’t see more than four or five feet away in the dense cloud. Still she imagined the cliff as part of a very big island, and that the island used to have a beach, but it was since eroded and now was just a cliff. Trixie pulled the oars in and looked closely at the rocky cliff. It was smooth, but there were strange markings on it. Not pictures or words, but scars, as if from magic. She examined them more closely and lost all doubt that those markings were natural. Even though her experience with erosion was limited, she could see the engraved scars of magic, insisting to exist despite the possible centuries of weathering.

“It almost looks like it was meant to be like that,” Trixie thought as she remembered the artificially cut stones from the numerous crypts she ventured through, “Like someone cut the island like that. I wonder who would be powerful enough to do that, and why would they even want to?”

Even so, the cliffs were at least twenty feet tall, and she didn’t bring any ropes or any kind of climbing tools with her. After some thinking, she decided she would try the gravity spell she learned about while hearing of Twilight’s adventure in the Crystal Empire. With some concentration and determination, she felt her weight shift from the raft to the stone walls where she landed with a soft thud. She stood upright and saw the world sideways, meaning the spell had worked! She rejoiced until the realizations of the world completely sideways set in, which made her very uneasy. Still, she thought, “Take that, Twilight!”

Doing her best to ignore the fact everything was the wrong way, she carefully walked up the stone cliffs. When she reached the top, she made her way onto the grass while still holding onto the cliff to keep herself from sliding along the ground. She cancelled her gravity spell and her weight shifted back to normal. She stood up on the grassy ground and looked inland. Even though there was a full moon, the many trees and fog blocked its light so she could barely see in. Curiously, the fog didn’t seem to touch the island, but instead made a type of shell around it. She sparked a small flame in her hand which gave enough light that she could easily see around her. She began her walk into the island, and small pockets of fog sat in ditches and other low areas, making this one of the creepiest ruins she’s ever been in, especially since she was alone. Regardless, she had a lot of questions about this place, and exploring was the best way to get them answered. She walked keeping her guard up even though it was unlikely she’d run into anything more than an owl and whatever animals might still be left on this island, if any.

As she made her way into the dense foliage, the moonlight waned until it was almost too dark to see without her magical torch. She spawned another fire for the sake of comfort, even though common sense told her there wouldn’t be any animals on this island that could harm her: they would have died by now, and whatever birds decided to make this island their home would leave her alone.

Soon, she found her way to the castle, and as she went inside, she could have sworn she saw a solid white line encompass the entire structure and disappear; but it happened so fast that she wasn’t sure if it really happened.

“The fires just reflected onto the castle walls for a second when I walked by them,” Trixie thought to herself, “That’s all.”

She continued her way into the crumbling castle, and made her way into the main foyer. There were a few holes in the walls that looked like they used to hold windows, and small bits of weathered glass still lay under the holes. Trees and other foliage were well on their way to reclaiming this castle back into nature. She continued her way deeper into the castle, seeing that any furniture had rotted away and was reduced to piles of dirt. Scraps of metal still lingered, disfigured and weathered, but still metal nonetheless. That really gave no indication to Trixie how old this castle was, or how long it’d been sitting dormant.

Author's Note:

Any and all feedback is highly appreciated.

Comments

[TheLordSiffer]

Whew, jeez, I always feel like a dick when somebody asks for feedback and I just sort of don't want to bother, so for once, I'm gonna give you a little something something.

The most basic, go-to advice you'll see people on this site give to authors is "Get an editor". I, of course, would always stress that you should get a competent editor, but, y'know, that's a thing. Point being, get an editor. And make sure he's competent, I think there are some groups for that or.. something, I don't know. Now, main beef.

Firstly, internal dialogue, I always prefer thoughts to be written in italics, it's such a great way to just key the reader in that "This is a thought". Don't think people will get confused just because italics can also refer to words that are stressed in a sentence, those are usually isolated and within the bounds of two quotation marks. Likewise, when you want to stress a word in a thought, just un-italicize it. It works like that, yo.

Secondly, there's a bit of an expectation drop in between your summary and your chapters. The summary goes straight into the meat of things, giving you the gist of it on a platter, and while I went "Awesome! Lichness, yo!" I also went "What in the name of Zeus' third nipple are we doing in a bar?". Given that you gave away the scenario that gives birth to the plot very specifically, but then decide to start the story off behind that sort of just makes me sit here and feel really, really antsy. "I was promised a Lich, goddamit, and I shall have it! I don't want to hear about this!" Where you keeping the good, saucy stuff, bro? You could, instead, just say "But Trixie's search are about to come to an end, and her troubles about to start" or something in the summary and then the picture would serve to hold interest, mayhap.

Thirdly, I'm not exactly awestruck by the vitality of your writing. This is a bit of a gray-area, and just commenting on it might make me a bit of a douche, but there's a lot of "She/Trixie did/felt", and it just feels a tad dry. I also feel that Trixie, as a character, could use an injection of her loudmouthedness, not necessarily towards others, but more when she's alone. I can't quite explain it in grand detail, and that makes me lacking, but the story just feels a tad lackluster, like it needs a hook, or a strong personality. Maybe build a tad more on the barkeeper dialogue, make it less contrived exposition and more interesting, dynamic. Make it more back-and-forth, give Trixie some more actions during the dialogue and have her ease the knowledge out of him.

If you have questions, ask, and we can discuss it. The concept sounds really, really good, but I'd hate to see it crash and burn, I'd much rather help you polish it up a bit so it can get a tad bit popular. Also if possible make your chapters a tad longer? I know a lot of people are fond of 3-7k word chapters, as an average. I prefer 20k word chapters, but that's just me.

Now, I'll leave you to it. Ho~!

[Verathuum]

3849626 Good advice, and very much appreciated .

Regarding getting an editor, I've been doing the best I can w/ editing my stories since I'd rather have no editor than an incompetent one. However, if you wanna take up the job, you're more than welcome.

About the description, I've seen a lot of stories that give parts of the plot way into the story in their back-cover summaries, so I'm not sure if there's much wrong with it, but I'll see if I can change the description around a little bit. Or I may just make the first chapter a prologue.

I agree, my writing style is a little like an encyclopedia and I'm glad you pointed it out; you're not a douche for it. No doubt characterization is a big problem of mine that I've been trying to fix. Personally I prefer shorter chapters, and that reflects obviously; still to each his own.

Again, thanks for the feedback and the editing position is open if you wanna take it.