Oct 15
Aldain, Ch. 7
Author’s Preface: The next three or so chapters of Aldain (I’m thinking 7, 8, and 9) will be a little something different. I’m pretty sure they’re a bit long by the standards I’ve established so far. Additionally, they try to get across several important visuals with as few words as possible. I need the few of you who read this to really step it up and tell me what worked and didn’t work in this chapter and the ones that follow. If anything was unclear or confusing, please let me know in a comment ASAP.
Thanks,
The Drewcifer
I sit in my bubble of magic watching my infant universe expand and cool, kept safe from its birth-throes and the hazards of vacuum. I idly watch as plasma begins to coalesce into proper matter while I browse the aethernaut’s memories. They’re mildly interesting, but the rookie hardly even knew Maxwell. One thing interested me, though. He’d once caught a glimpse of the Lady Duchess of Carlisle, Maxwell’s wife. She seems familiar to me, but I can’t tell much from the brief and blurry image from the aethernaut’s mind. . .
My concentration is shattered by deafening silence filling my head. My alarms in the pocket realm have been triggered. I drop back into my world, once more leaving this one to grow.
“What’s happening, Maguerite? Please tell me this is a false alarm.”
“Not a false alarm,” is all she says.
I’ve reappeared in the so-called “crisis room.” The large enchanted table that dominates the center of the room is already active and displaying a 3-d map of the demirealm. Our pocket reality is larger than average, since it has to house our entire nation. It consists of a landmass around the size of Australia in a sea of a size somewhat indeterminate, due to the nature of the demirealm.
Six flashing dots on the east cardinal point are rapidly making their way inward toward us. The guard captains rush into the room and I start giving orders.
“Captain Nelfas, form your men up into a defensive position on the castle battlements. Garnell, your men are currently on wall duty, so you and your guards will be under the command of Captain Nelfas until this battle is resolved. Maguerite, you’re in charge. I’m going to head them off. I’ll activate the castle defenses as soon as I’m clear.”
Everyone is moving. Maguerite takes command, barking out orders to those in the room and issuing castle-wide commands via magic.
For my part, I leave the castle and take to the skies. I say a certain word under my breath and the castle seems to fade away. Its defenses are active, obscuring it from sight and protecting it from magical attack.
Satisfied, I head East at top speed. Soon I can see them and it’s exactly what I expected: Six aethernauts, the markings on the A-boats identifying them as Carson’s men. That fits. Carson’s the only one in that band of M-space stupid enough to attack us so brazenly. The kid has guts, but his indiscretion is going to kill him before he can capitalize on that.
Not today, though. I have no intention of taking prisoners to find his co-ordinates.
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Landmass in a sea of indeterminate size, not see. Other than that, looks good. I don’t see any problems with your descriptions. Then again, I tend towards brevity.
“My alarms…have triggered” or ‘have been
triggered’? Australia? Odd reference if this
is a non-Earth setting (as might be ‘East’).”The guard captains
rush into the room [,] and I start giving
orders. “Soon I can see them [,] and it’s
exactly what I expected: [s]ix…”
Sight of forming universe: functional.
intriguing w/o being poetical.
Image of 3D map: concise. understandable.
Overall, this chapter’s vastly more action
than vision.
I tend to over-edit rather than under. Cheers
for some diverting reading. I’ll be back.
@ Kyle:
You seem to be assuming that the Prime Material, the word proper, as opposed to the pocket reality that the action has centered in so far, is not our world. I will spoiler a bit here by saying that it might be.
Other than that, thank you for the readership and for the grammar and style pointers. The way Aldain talks about the alarms will be amended. If I recall correctly, I think that adding commas before those “ands” would be an incorrect conjunction splicing technique. Or is it the other way around and they’re run ons the way I have them? I’ll wait for a follow up comment from you or possibly commentary on it from the others to change those. I’ve always heard that a colon is no different from a period: It must end a complete sentence and the next word should be capitalized and part of a complete sentence. There are many times I have wished to be free of this limitation. Perhaps I should just be more bold and make the punctuation my bitch?
Margareet is kind of an ugly word, and reminds me of an old female bird.
Re: Australia
No matter whether the world is Earth or not, if it’s a spoiler to say it might be, then you’ve just given it away to all of your readers. Either they’ll realise the setting is Earth, or they’ll think you made an amateurish mistake. In my opinion it would be better not to use it as a point of reference – is there really *nothing* else you can use?
I’m going to assume from your username that you came here from Pages Unbound and not from my typical circle of friends. The very brief description of the story there explicitly mentions that the world is in fact Earth. I qualified that as a minor spoiler back when I wasn’t sure how secret I wanted that to be. Nowadays though, I’d almost prefer that people figure out that Aldain is from our Earth as soon as possible. So the short answer is no. There really isn’t anything else I can use. Or at least nothing else I want to use.