Alright, gonna start out with this new story. I will get to commenting on other people's stuff. I'm only now winding down from the past week or so (grad applications, writing seminar, and lousy calculus class). I've already gotten feedback on this (this is actually the piece Brandon Sanderson looked over) so I know specifically what I'm looking for. I'm just grabbing more people's opinions.
Chapter 1
The prisoner had never known that many gnomes. The Shintaur Protectorate, surrounded as it was on two sides by different kingdoms was still notoriously isolated and very few of its people ventured out of their native borders. The only experience he had was over two decades past in one of the taverns of Verdesberg. There had been three of them, Fists, by the color of their simple red warrior-robes. Guards for a merchant caravan he had assumed.
They had all three been content to sit in the corner of the common room and drink their ale, while ignoring everyone else. A man who had drunk far past his fill had approached them. He could still hear the man’s raspy voice drawl out over the common room that Shintaur was so named because the shins were the highest part of a human’s body the gnomes could ever hope to reach. The gnomes gave no visible reaction, and the man, obviously disappointed that they wouldn’t react to him, stumbled around the bar until the bouncer finally tossed him out.
The man had been out the door for no less than ten seconds, than the Fists had hopped off their stairs and shuffled across the floor. They had passed right next to where the prisoner had been drinking, and he remembered noticing the tallest of them barely could look him level in the eye, even though the Fist was standing, and he was sitting. They said nothing to each other or to anyone else as they shuffled out into the blinding cold of the dark winter night. The prisoner never saw any of the Fists again.
The drunk on the other hand, he did see again the following morning. The Fists had jumped him as he had stumbled through the foggy back alleys of Verdesberg. Every bone in his legs and arms, every rib in his chest had been snapped cleanly. His head had been twisted so far around his neck that he was looking down his back with those sightless dead eyes and his face had been smashed into such a pulp that the prisoner only recognized him from the garment he wore.
That had been another lesson he put into his rulebook. Don’t give a gnome reason to believe you have besmirched their honor. They had no qualms about killing those who did. Even Gromli, sitting in front of him, was very particular about dealing with other people, and he hadn’t even been born in Shintaur.
The rest of the prisoners seemed nervous, as if an atmosphere of certain despair wafted over them like a fogbank coming down from the mountains. But it wasn’t from where they were. It was from what they were about to do. The prisoner looked to Gromli, his cellmate for the past twenty years.
Gromli made eye contact with him. That was all that was needed. Step one. The prisoner hurled himself at Gromli, flying across the table and grabbing the gnome’s neck in his hands. Dishes and utinselves were launched into the air by his frenzied assault and clatterd around him as he snarled at the gnome.
“You gnomish doorstop! What the hell did you call me!?” the prisoner said as he shook Gromli like a rag doll. Gromli arced his back, and landed a solid kick into the prisoner’s face. A blinding pain blasted into him and his vision faded to white. Not so hard, you idiot! The rest of the prisoners in the commissary had swarmed around them almost immediately as they cheered on the fighters. Some knew what was happened, most, the unreliable ones, didn’t.
His vision came back to him and Gromli punched him again in the kidneys. The pain was intense, perhaps even a little more than was necessary, but they had to play the part.
“Impotent barbarian! I’ll kill you!” Gromli snarled between clenched teeth.
Before the former merchant’s guard could throw another hit, the prisoner slammed his fist into the gnome. The prisoner was well into his fifties, but he had remained youthful and fit even in the wasting depths of the Tomb. Gromli twisted out of the way, but the blow still glanced against the gnomes arms, sending him cartwheeling into the crowd.
Whistles blared out over the din of the melee. The guards were coming. Step two. One of them, a big brute named Dolf, surged through the prisoners, before stopping to see just what was going on. Dolf was not a complex man, nor was he prone to long periods of quiet contemplation. The big oaf pulled out his guard club, and hammered it into the prisoner. He hit the ground, the wind knocked out of him. Now is the time, Gromli, he thought through murky vision. If the gnome decided to back out now, he could, and the prisoner would be in solitary for a very long time.
The guard planted a hefty boot into the prisoner’s side as he roared some obscenity at no one in particular. He reached to kick again, when suddenly Gromli was in the guard’s face. Dolf stumbled for a second unsure what to do, and the gnome slammed his fist straight into the man’s chin. The huge man fell as if pole-axed, hitting the ground with a massive whump.
The prisoner knew it was now his turn to rally the men. The prisoners had gone quiet. Those who knew what was coming looked weary but ready, while those who did not seemed shocked. Two guards who had followed in after Dolf stared with wide eyes at the guard’s corpse. The prisoner felt pain all over his body, both from Dolf’s blows, as well as Gromli’s. He raised the club Dolf had once carried over his head.
“Freedom! To the surface!” The rest of the almost two dozen prisoners roared in response and without any motivation turned on the still stunned guards, beating them down with their fists. The prisoner rubbed his bruised cheek.
“Was it really necessary to hit that hard?” he said to Gromli.
The gnome looked at him unapologetically. “You said make it real. I did. Where do we go from now?”
The prisoner said one word. “Up”.
Step four was now in full swing. After seizing the commissary, the mob had run rampant in the lower levels. The prisoner had personally commanded him, like it was back in the old days, before he had ended up here. This was an army, and he was their general.
“Step four is done?” Gromli asked, eagerly. The gnome had already shown a great supply of strength. The prisoner would have thought Gromli was a Fist by the way he fought, and he suspected the gnome had not been fully forthcoming about his past after seeing him break two guards twice his size within a heartbeat of the other.
“Step four is done,” the prisoner said. Advance to the surface was now their objective. He hadn’t seen the sun shine for twenty years. The smell of fresh air, the sounds of wildlife, anything beyond the echoing stillness of this former dwarf ruin was completely alien to his senses.
“You know where we’re going?” Gromli asked. The gnome ducked out of the way as a squad of snarling prisoners raced after a guard who had been playing dead and had broken for cover.
“Of course. I memorized this place on my way down. I don’t forget things like that,” the prisoner assured the gnome. He should have escaped a decade before now. Maybe even less than a year after getting in. That had been right after… Leeya… His vision faded from the present chaos of the prison in full riot to a pastoral scene.
The fields of grass stretched on as far as the eye could see. The Deolatia Mountains loomed out of the distance far to the northeast, while the Altaen Ocean twinkled in the opposite direction. Him and Leeya, just the two of them, out enjoying the countryside. He could still see her youthful features in the sunlight. Her smile and that sweet laugh warmed his heart and he wanted nothing else. He had no cares for the armies in the field that he commanded. The memories of the horror and the carnage of the Meatgrinder Fields far to the west had fled out of mind, leaving nothing but happiness.
Their horses seemed to share their jubilance and excitement as they raced across the grasslands. They came into a forested area, to take shelter from the bright sunlight flooding down around them. They were only maybe five miles away from his estate, when the cockatrice snuck up on them. It was a mangy animal whose domestic tendencies had flown away years ago. It looked the sort of the Lorhal cavalry rode, but Lorhal was at least a thousand miles to the east as the crow flew, and probably double that when one navigated around the Norden Sea.
The massive bipedal bird startled the horses away with its initial charge. The prisoner had stumbled for his sword, when Leeya strode forward, determined and courageous. He yelled for her to stay back. She stood firm against the animal, staring it down in the same manner a Lorhal cavalryman would to an unruly mount. What happened next was still nothing more but images that flashed through his mind like a chaotic collage of memories. The bird vanishing in a flash of bright light. Keeya screaming as her arms were wreathed in unearthly blue flames. The smell of smoke in the air, and the taste of metal in his mouth.
The prisoner suddenly realized that Gromli had slapped his face several times. His thoughts faded back into reality. Gromli gave him a wary look, taking a step back from him.
“Are you alright, boss?”
“I’m fine. Why are you standing around here? Let’s get moving,” he snapped.
Gromli gaze narrowed in annoyance, but he nodded a moment later and turned to head for the surface. The rest of the prisoners rallied around him. They were not the people he once would have associated with. Murderers, Western Legion sympathizers. Public enemies. The worst of the worst, that the Blackwell Dominion wanted buried away in the Tomb. But even then, the very worst, the cosmic touched would not be found here. There was only one solution for them that the druids had long since settled on.
He drove the thought out of his mind. That was the reason he had spent so much time wallowing in his
own filth in this dank Daiya forsaken pit. He had moped and scraped over what had happened. Turned into nothing but a hollow shell. But now? Now he had purpose.
He followed the tunnels, almost by instinct, heading higher and higher through the labyrinthine network that the dwarves had left behind as their only legacy. A bestial roar stopped him in his tracks. He grimaced as he turned down the long hallway they had just arrived at.
“Druids,” the prisoner spat.
“They’re coming quicker than I thought,” Gromli noted.
“No matter. I expected they’d probably try to force their way back down this soon,” the prisoner said.
The two druids burst into view a moment later. One had already shifted to a massive bear with gangly white hair that fell of it’s body to the ground. It’s eyes glowed a ghostly blue color and it’s long sharp claws dripped red with the blood of those that had gotten in the way. The other druid was still retaining his human form. He held his druidic scepter loosely with one hand, while he scanned the area. His eyes immediately caught the prisoner standing in the hallway.
“You. I knew you would be at the heart of this. I did wonder if you ever were going to develop a spine. But then again, I never would have expected such a pitiful cosmic consort to ever amount to anything!” the man spat.
The prisoner kept his anger in check. Once he would have blindly rushed forward to try to throttle the man to death with his own hands. But in the depths of the Tomb he had learned… patience. Lying on a bed for untold hours, never knowing when it was until the guards came by, declaring it was now night, had taught him patience. When one had nothing to do, one was never in a hurry for anything.
“Lorn Hyrkan,” the prisoner muttered the name of one of the Warden’s chief lieutenant. A sadistic barbarian of no class or culture. He glanced from the one druid already shifted into beast form. He didn’t recognize it, but he knew it was another of the Warden’s cronies.
“There are two druids in front of me, but I only see one feral animal,” the prisoner said, locking eyes with Lorn so that the man knew exactly what he meant.
Questions:
1. Does calling the main character "The Prisoner" seem odd or detrimental to anyone. It was a design choice because it is supposed to be ambiguous at the start. Likewise for what he looks like.
2. What about descriptions for the place?
3. I know the flashbacks stop and break the tension. The first one at the start I really like, but probably is placed oddly. The same for the flashbacks for his wife. My question is, is the break detrimental to the plot? I'm trying to figure out how to work this, since the first doesn't necessarily have to be there, but the second has to be in this chapter.
4. What about his wife? She's very ambiguous. she exists literally to die and give him motivation. One reader commented she didn't care for her.
5. How about descriptions for the setting? It's supposed to be a dwarf-hold converted to a prison.
