View Full Version : The Dreary Screaming Of Leslie Levine
The Dreary Screaming Of Leslie Levine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NknmpdEEFI&feature=related)
2484
Set the morning after the melodramatic conclusion of The Complicated Unlife Of Malefor Kolwezi. (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?22946-The-Complicated-Unlife-Of-Malefor-Kolwezi)
I have travelled lands forgotten by man,
I have seen things you couldn’t dream,
I have walked the plume of hatred's chest,
And heard the Banshee scream.
This world is one of greatest horror,
Where we fight to feel alive,
Where the bastards stand upon our throats,
And only the strong survive.
Jack Ingram
The soft cry of a night owl roused Hallow from his sleep, and he spluttered and stretched and sent his book and goblet rolling from his knees to the floor with a clang. He froze, taking a few precious seconds to try and place where he was, before realising he was seated in his study’s chair and was quite out of harm’s way. He leant forwards furtively, and sighed at the liquid as it ran out of its vessel.
Red wine, rather like blood, was a complete bitch to clean out of a shag pile.
“What a fine start to the day,” he said begrudgingly, pushing himself out of the chair with an encouraging slap to the knees and a long exhalation of stale air. His hair was bedraggled and eschew, and he smelt peculiar, but he went about his morning ritual with all the legality of a nobleman.
As he stooped to pick up the open copy of Care and Feeding of a House Corpse he paused, half bent over with his hand outstretched, and remembered something he had come across during the small hours of the morning.
“Malefor…” he mumbled, biting his lip with concentration as he continued and picked up the tome. It felt heavy in his hand, as if it were bound in gold or scribed in leaden ink.
The last of the evening light streamed in through the open balcony doorway and the gentle and chill evening breeze fluttered through the drab drapes which kept prying eyes away from the machinations of wily necromancers. Hallow looked at them and made a mental note to address the dilapidated state of his home, but brushed them aside as he stepped out into the fresh air dismissively.
He looked out over the rooftops of Beinost, a maze of imposing ruins, tall towers, crumbling temples and ageing necropolis to the heroes of the Blade Singers, the vagabonds of the refugees and the dwindling pantheon of the Wanderers. Even to one so young, and one who found beauty in death, he could not help but be taken aback by the same panorama he woke up to every day.
“For such beauty to come from such devastation…” he whispered, shutting the book with a pincer motion and setting it down on the small trestle table he sometimes sat at to eat, away from the decadent scent of corpses and formaldehyde.
Of course, he was ignoring the low dulcet tones of the many spirits that wailed from said rooftops and rattled barrels in the cellars of the few operational inns in the city, and in between the dreary cavalcade, he could hear the distinct piercing cry of the banshee destined to touch Ashley’s soul.
This will not be easy on my already breaking mind...
Even if it were just for three days, until the new moon rose and sundered what he and Malefor had stitched together with painstaking love, the thought of being so close to the dreary screaming of Lesley Levine put the wizard’s teeth on edge.
“You will live,” said a familiar voice, steeped in morning alertness and floating up through the muffled shield of the study floor. Ashley rolled his eyes and stepped back indoors, leaving the shadows cast by the Tower of Owls and Crows to fade into the night without his admiration.
“Sadly, yes, I will,” he looked around the room for his master, until he dropped his gaze to the centre of the floor.
“You are floating in my wine,” he said flatly.
“I believe since you spilt it, it now belongs to the rats,” the liche retorted, turning around in the floor to take in the scattered goblet, bottle and the large stain with a knowing stare.
Ashley touted a disapproving stare, “would you get out of the floor please, we need to have a brief discussion before we rouse the simulacrum and tend to our banshee conundrum.”
Malefor rose, the bellowing tendrils of his tattered robes moving under his will to give the impression that the movement of air affected his body. He set down on the floor, his skeletal toes devoid of any boots or slippers, and crossed his hands in front of his chest. He cast a gentle blue glow over the book shelves in the study, and a diamond hue over the many strange occult instruments that rested on the large oak desk next to the balcony bay.
“A little light reading and suddenly you are the next Xem’Zund,” he said dryer than ever.
“Care and Feeding of a House Corpse,” Ashley said questioningly, walking to his desk to sit at it. It was the lesser used of the two, as he preferred the warmth of the library and the lack of a window to study by, but the study furniture was older, more demonic, more imposing and charismatic for a questioning wizard. “What do you know about it?”
He set out his hands over the lime green veneer and held them palms upwards. As he waited for the expression of curiosity on Malefor’s face to turn into a no doubt sarcastic answer, he closed his eyes and said a simple phrase of conjuration.
“Nalco,” his voice reverberated down the stairs in search of its target.
Malefor floated towards the desk and admired the swirl of shadow as the Grimoire Graviga appeared with a rush of air in Hallow’s outstretched arms. They dropped under its sudden weight, before he pulled his fingers away and let it thud onto the desk.
“A historical text, if my mind does not deceive me, which details the diary and chronicles of a rather peculiar…” he chose his word carefully, as if he held the person in question in low regard, “undead servant.”
Ashley nodded but maintained his focus on his book. He prized it open with gloved fingers and set it open on the third page, and read it silently, so as not to take down the tower with his early morning eagerness. He only had to read the line in his head to feel warm and fuzzy and self-important.
“What was his name and most importantly, why is he important in understanding our business?”
Malefor smiled, and bared his rotting teeth with an ethereal grimace. He had not spoken the name for decades, not since he had studied the tattered letters he had found in his long exile in the College Arcana library.
“Calvin Belverouge.” He said at last.
Hallow looked at him expectantly, as if he were peering up over the brim of his authoritarian spectacles. It was not often that he got the chance to outwit and outperform his master, so he relished every little detail of their exchange.
“He teaches us the dangers of succumbing to the need to impress your master, and indeed, to the perils of relying on servants to begin with, even if they are enslaved and bound to necrotic flesh.”
“Who was Calvin a slave to, exactly?” He applied a pressure to his words that was more charismatic than wizardly, still refraining from looking up as he scrolled his index finger over the pages of his Grimoire carefully. His brown hair glowed with a gentle shimmer as the liche stepped closer.
“Xem’Zund.”
Hallow smiled, but shook his head.
“The Death Lord Xem’Zund, greates-”
“No.” Hallow said firmly, turning his book around to show Malefor the spell he was looking at.
“Calvin Belverouge was a slave to death, and to the fear thereof.”
Malefor mouthed the title of the page and looked surprised.
Malefor took a moment to allow the impact of Hallow’s lesson to sink in. He mouthed the first verse from the page again, as if he were trying to decipher the impact it would have if he spoke it aloud. Wizards knew the power of words, and to read them from a book was to bring them life.
“Oh ye Knowledge-Holding Deities pray hearken unto me; Lead me on the Path, out of your great love.” He said, wavering syllables into long drawls of uncertainty. When nothing came of it, he almost seemed relieved.
The energy of his wizard's voice warmed the air.
“How does that prove my point?” Hallow asked, closing the Grimoire with a satisfying thud. He set it onto the desk and pushed it away before he leant back into the tall comfort of his chair.
Malefor visibly tried to work it out, but couldn’t.
“I do not know.”
Hallow had stayed up through most of the night to finish the entirety of the text, and he had devoured every word with abject fascination. The necromancer Belverouge had spent most of his long life trying to work it out; at least subconsciously, between long bouts of tinkering with fetid creations to raise an army for the Old One.
“When Calvin created his simulacrum, at least, so I am to gather from this,” he produced a half crumbling letter from the draw to his left, and set it carefully onto the veneer, “he came across a rather unintended side-effect.”
The liche remembered the details of the letter from his investigations. The creature in question was known as Lodekai, who took on the onset of ancestral memory through the creation of a new life from the fragments of the old. He pieced together various elements of common sense and intuition and frowned.
“You are worried that you will suffer the same fate, aren’t you?”
Hallow nodded.
“I am...concerned, to say the least.”
He had every right to be concerned, Malefor was rather unsubtle about his business when he went out to acquire ‘resources.’
“When you bound my soul to the spirit stone, you opened my mind to the dwindling but still present spirits of the people you used to create the simulacrum. It is well known, and Calvin documents the effect well, that when a simulacrum is created, there is every chance that the old spirits will remain, to fight the new occupant with every screaming bout of anguish they can muster.”
The Dagger Peaks Mountains had almost screamed in disgust as the necromancer experimented cruelly with his new puppet during the zenith of the Corpse War. The Blade Singer Council still sung long laments in the halls of Istien University for their long lost brother, bound to the dead thing’s form and used against them. Many high elf ghouls had perished beneath the might of their magic, but to kill someone who still retained all their memories yet none of the honour, it was a cruel fate to inflict on them, one far worse than death.
“You will not be bound long enough to suffer the same fate, though the ordeal will be taxing I assure you.”
Hallow leant towards the liche and highlighted a line from the note. He read it slowly, and clearly, and with dreary warning laced over every single breath.
“Unhesitant, unfailingly loyal, unflinching in their duties, lacking human decency and morals and commanding an intellect that rivals that of a free-minded human or elf.” He leant back again, and stared into Malefor’s glowing and pallid eye sockets.
The silence was, to be short, awkward.
“I get the distinct impression this is a moral lesson, and not a practical one.”
“I want to know exactly what and who went into making the simulacrum, Malefor. If I am to be attacked in the mind and soul by the memories of people long dead, I need to know how to distinguish between who I am, and who they were.”
“I remember every face.”
“So tell me.”
Without moving, the liche cast a spell over the desk which Hallow felt on his forehead. It was a wizard’s cantrip, not a necromantic one, a faint echo of the man before the fall into darkness. It tingled down his spine and warmed his soul, before burning out with a twang of pain.
“What did you-” Hallow shut his mouth with a snap as he was stricken with a wave of memories that were not his own, but were just as visceral as if they were, as if he had been there for every swing of the shovel and cut of the knife.
“The first was a girl; I believe she was called Hayley. She died tragically in a house fire, which explains the charred skin found on the simulacrum’s right leg and upper thigh.”
Malefor’s voice echoed into the vision with a rush of half-realised pain and echoes of regret. Hallow watched the lapping flames rush up around the brunette’s body and scour the memory from his mind.
“I can hear her scream!” The wizard exclaimed as his pupil’s turned a milky white with a red iris.
“That would be when she saw me,” the liche said, half sympathetically and half relishing the memory of that night.
Hallow found himself looking in the smoking window of the house and moving slowly over the threshold, watching the memory through Malefor’s eyes. He could smell the taint of the fire and the mix of flesh, paint and fear in the air, mixed with the half expectant feeling of an emotional and confused spirit. It was a smell he had become used to on his travels throughout the grieving streets of Beinost.
The glowing spirit of the girl stood over her corpse, crying softly, but almost sedated at knowing she had died relatively peacefully.
Hallow’s vision returned the moment Malefor stooped over the body with a saw.
“She was still grieving for her corpse Malefor!” he said angrily.
“She is still grieving, but she was a dim-witted baker’s daughter, so you will get nothing in your head except crying from her.”
“That does not make it acceptable!”
The liche snapped his fingers, and the visions knocked Hallow’s head back as they returned forcibly.
“The next was a guard, by the name of John. He died defending the walls against a revenant attack, his body torn from the battlements and left to rot in the fields outside Beinost. He will not be missed, but he had a kind heart and a kinder soul. We…talked.”
Hallow witnessed the last moments of the soldier as he tumbled onto the unwelcoming grass on the outskirts of the city. He felt the crack, and flinched and tensed every muscle in his body as the memory echoed into his senses.
“Talked?” Hallow asked, his lip quivering as he tried to fight the pain. He wasn’t sure if it was real or if he felt it in sympathy, but it tingled in his bones all the same.
“We talked mostly about his life, about his duties. I almost felt sorry for him, and he agreed to let me use his leg. Some of his muscles, too, a strong arm and a well-placed glaive strike to be had by all.”
Hallow plied some of his limited magical skill to break Malefor’s spell, and shook the colour back into his eyes. He was tired of seeing through another wizard’s eyes, having to live with him was bad enough. Taking a moment, he crafted a warming cloak from the Shadow Brand and wrapped it tightly around his shoulders to try and kindle heat in his shaking body. Divination often left the soul cold and the body colder, especially when it was forced upon you.
“Tell me from now on, you don’t need to let me suffer their fates,” he said bitterly through jittering teeth.
“I am telling you, so listen.”
Hallow opened his mouth to object, but closed it wearily in shock of Malefor’s compliance. He raised an eyebrow to show that he listening, and crossed his fingers.
“The third was the stallion, which you approved and helped kill.”
Which Hallow certainly could not deny, even with a well-timed quip or a forceful ethical tale in his strongest voice. He had been there, he had cut the knife over the dense muscular neck of the stallion, and he had even paid the owner for the privilege.
Malefor spoke again, before Hallow could defend himself, “Before you suggest it was acceptable because the stallion was lame, or that it was an animal, and thus does not feel the same way sentient beings do, I refer you to your precious book,” he jabbed a skeletal finger to the balcony, and the tome flew through the flurrying curtains into his ethereal hand.
Ashley furrowed his brow and tried to remember the other people that had been mentioned and chronicled in the semi-autobiographical account of necromantic slaves. There had been a menagerie of creatures’ asides Lodekai and the necromancer himself, all of which eluded him. He waited patiently as the liche flipped open the book and turned it so that Hallow could inspect the passage he had highlighted with a sparkle of effervescent energy.
“Zaz’thatal,” he read slowly.
“A crow,” Malefor said, as if it where the strangest and most peculiar thing he had heard in his unlife.
“Okay, so perhaps it would be wrong to suggest the stallion was somehow saving a sentient creature from having to go through the harrowing ordeal of incarceration, but the horse was lame…we merely gave it an opportunity to be of some service, and paid for the family who suffered from its injury to eat for another moon.”
Hallow had little use for the gold the Order paid him, nor did he have the time to spend it. He relished the opportunity to impart his fortune to those who did not have the means to survive in the wake of the war.
“At least, that’s what I keep telling myself…” A tinge of regret coloured his voice, which fell flat and short of the poignancy he had intended.
His enterprise, for which he was grateful, kept him comfortable, but when dead bodies came freely he had little need to pilfer his wealth. On reflection, however, it felt like a dirty, underhand deed.
“Will I start to speak like a horse?” Ashley said, without thinking.
“Don’t be silly, horses don’t talk, but you might develop a need to graze.”
“A woman traumatically killed, a soldier dragged from his post and torn to shreds, a lame horse with an eating disorder…I don’t think I can survive this ordeal without turning to darker magic than necromancy…” he said glumly, glancing through the curtains to the ever growing dark.
“These are just the beginnings of the simulacrum’s components…” Malefor said, after giving the wizard enough time to compose himself. “There were six souls tied to the spirit stone, not including your own.”
“Indulge me,” Ashley turned to the liche and stood, craning his neck to listen as he walked to the small cupboard on the wall behind his chair and pulled it open by its delicate, porcelain knob. He rattled the plates and cutlery inside and produced a silver tray with servings for two. “Build up my appetite and be done with it!”
He had inkling, a wizard’s inkling that he would need double rashers for breakfast just to get his feet out the door.
“Well, let me see.” Malefor watched Ashley as he set the tray onto the study desk and turned again to fetch out a large skillet and a salt and pepper pot. If liche’s could smack their lips in appreciation, he would have. “The majority of the organs, and the head, for that matter, belonged to a married couple from Eluriand.”
“Sorry?” Ashley said over his shoulder, balancing a small pot and a slab of pork in his hands as he set more and more onto the try.
“You’ve never heard of Eluriand? The capitol of Raiaera, a meritocracy lead by the Cora'Lindstra.”
“No, no, I meant sorry, ‘what where their names?’” The wizard said with annoyance, shaking his head.
Malefor furrowed his cracked brow, which teemed with dried flecks of skin and scabs, and brought a single digit to his lips.
“Diastral and Agnon, though their surname eludes me I am afraid. They were elves, the both of them, born in Eluriand if I remember correctly and separated during the war. If the evidence suggests what I thought it did at the time, they came together here in Anebrilith at a time when soldiers and officers in the Tel Aglarim still had time off for leave,” Malefor chuckled softly, “that respite unfortunately coincided with a brief passing through of the necromancer Savas Tigh.”
Hallow consoled himself for their loss, but had learnt the hard way about asking Malefor who his many acquainted friends and rivals were. They had agreed to let their mutual pasts be firmly left in the past unless duty called or necessity bound them to tell.
“So like Lodekai, there will be the memories of blade singers in my head?” Ashley sounded almost positive at the thought as he picked up his stacked breakfast try and teetered slowly across the study floor to the top of the stairs.
“Only the one, though if fate had given me the chance to implant elven blood and two blade singers into our creation, I would have killed them myself to do so. The woman was a whore, I believe, though she only confessed that fact to me after they were brutally killed.”
Ashley had no doubt whatsoever that Malefor would have done just that, and without flinching as he drove his surgical knife into a still beating vessel over and over and over again. He cut the recollection short as he disappeared down the stairs and made his way to the very bottom of the Tower of Ravens, to the entry hall and the seldom used kitchen he kept as a necessity.
“Bacon…” he mumbled to himself, the smell of the salted meat creeping into his nostrils as a welcome reprieve from the constant aroma of death that was impossible to cover anywhere except by his aga. “Think of the bacon, everything will be just fine.” He said to re-assure himself.
Hallow sighed without covering the fact as he leant on the door and was greeted by Malefor, who was floating above the small kitchen’s comfortable table. It was a poky room built in the once store room of the infirmary, which had one large bay window in the side of the tower to let in some light and two rows of cupboards on the left and right walls.
“You don’t need to follow me, heavens, use the stairs every now and then!” He slammed the tray onto the table and started to clear away the knives and chopping board and dirty bowels from the previous evening’s supper.
“I thought you would want to hear where I sourced the final materials for the simulacrum.”
“No…Yes, of course, bu-” Hallow sighed, dropped the dishes into the small slate block sink and ran the tap to give them a soaking, meaning to do them later, when normality returned and Malefor slept in the daylight. “Get it over with then,” he sounded deflated.
A wizard could not function on an empty stomach, and an irritable wizard often lead to the Fae being torn apart, the world’s aligning in the wrong way and people on the other side of the world sporadically dropping dead.
“The final soul belongs to a troll.”
Hallow dropped his knife.
“You killed a troll?” He said with a gobsmacked expression, jaw agog and eyes wide as dinner plates. It was an all too familiar sight for Malefor, who had counted the times he had managed to strike shock into his apprentice. “A troll I said!”
The liche simply nodded.
“How the devil did you manage that?” Ashley picked up the knife and shook his head in disbelief. Now that he thought about it, the creature’s arms were very muscular, and its upper torso was gigantic, giving it the appearance of a lumbering, awkward titan of flesh.
“You misinterpreted me, Ashley.”
“Oh did I indeed,” he stabbed at the pork, cutting it into uneven but think slices for the skillet.
“I said the soul belongs to a troll. A fact that has not changed since I removed the article from the troll’s body and, sort of…borrowed it.”
Every wizard knew, even the ones who didn’t study necromancy to the point of obsession, magical creatures were notoriously difficult both to kill, and to keep dead. To kill a troll, you had to particularly cunning. It was a plot that involved mirrors, turning at the right time and a convenient sun rise at the precise moment they raised their fists to squish you to a pulp, and it was generally agreed upon that trolls didn’t make good undead minions.
"How do you propose to give it back, then?" Ashley said, thinking himself clever.
"Easy," Malefor said with a wry smile as he leant forwards to give the bacon a sniff for old time's sake. "We burn the simulacrum's remains when it fades, and the essence of the troll will return to it's owner. You may however take on some of it's more peculiar traits during it's occupation."
"'Peculiar' meaning?"
"Oh," Malefor floated through the kitchen door salaciously and with a seductive aura that Hallow loathed. "You'll see soon enough."
He willed the door to shut with a slam just in time for the kitchen knife to spin through the air and embed itself deep into the back of the oak hinges. Ashley's frustrated shout bounced through the entrance chamber and followed Malefor up through the roof as he ascended with a cackle to find breakfast for himself.
The only thing that comforted Hallow as he retrieved his knife with a tug of sorcerous energy was the knowledge, the safety of knowing that it would all be temporary. Unlike Lodekai, who had been trapped in servitude until her master finally succumbed to the fate of all necromancers (if he had not yet fallen, it would not be long before the Council found him), he had the opportunity to be free of his burdens after he had performed the service he had been conscripted to do.
He sliced into the ham and cut himself another modest slice, before setting the blade onto the hefty chopping board he reserved solely for meat (hygiene was important for a living necromancer) and looked out of the window.
“A troll…a whore, a blade singer, a guard, a baker’s daughter and a horse…”
It was hardly the menagerie of talent, skill and honour he had hoped to have delivered to John Baldock for the purpose of temporarily reuniting him with his niece, but he guessed it would have to do.
He clicked his fingers, and the readymade kindling in the heart of the aga burst into flames, a well flexed cantrip surfaced from his mind long enough to remember it existed before it fell into nothingness beneath surgical precision and lung excavation. A plume of smoke seeped through the grill on the top of the red and well-kept aga, and set his nostrils twitching with the familiar smell of wood smoke before it continued upwards and out of the immense chimney which connected the many fireplaces in the tower together.
As he wove around the table, plucking leaves from the bunches of dried seasoning herbs that hung in between the pots and pans which were suspended from old meat hooks and bent rusty nails, he looked back over the conversation he had had with the liche in the study. It had, he thought, not gone quite to plan, but in the grand scheme of things he had seeded in the necromancer’s mind a vine of doubt. He would deliver his riposte and the point of Calvin’s erroneous life before they left and set Malefor silent to make the journey over the haunted city surface bearable.
“Trying to get through to him,” he said aloud, dropping the herbs into the skillet and carrying it with both hands to the aga, “is like speaking to dead people.”
The hiss of hot metal touching cold, cast iron and grease caked cooking utensil filled the kitchen with life. He skipped to the window and took down a small vial, which he uncorked and sniffed, just to make sure it wasn’t blood or worse, before he poured the sunflower oil in a spiralling drizzle into the pan.
It did not take long for the Tower of Ravens to smell like the Tower of Pigs, and the satisfying smell of bacon made Ashley’s stomach rumble and Malefor question what it was he was feeling. If he had not been mistaken, he was almost certain he felt hungry, but passed it off as a magical disturbance as he polished his knives and set about dissecting the unused stallion’s kidney to keep his mind occupied.
Whispers of cackling and happy whistling of a content house husband drifted out through the windows, over the wall, and into the haywire sounds of howling dogs, cackling vagabonds and the recently deceased.
Spoils:
The Tower of Ravens: Now features a kitchen, study, library, surgery room, store room and balcony at it's peak.
The Moral Schism: Even Hallow is becoming more and more uncertain of what the Orders moral compass is pointing at. His alignment is now True Chaotic.
Venessian
08-07-11, 09:28 AM
Where to start, where to start...
Is what I would be asking, if I didn't have a rubric!
Plot Construction
Story ~ 5/10 - When I started reading this solo I was all hopes and dreams for the future. I was in a city full of the undead, there was a colorful young enigma of a necromancer to greet me, and liches popped out of the woodwork (literally). Buuut, I'm really sorry to say, that I felt things went downhill from there. I found myself wishing you went into more detail on the backgrounds of the simulacrum's "borrowed" spirits. You really had something going there, but blasted right past them as if you had some more important information to get to (but I never found it). Over all, the story was really just one prolonged conversation between Hallow and Malefor with a single setting change. That wouldn't be a bad thing if executed masterfully, but this story was not. Don't be discouraged though! Your major talent seems to be in giving life (or unlife) to your characters, so read on.
Strategy ~ 5/10 - The one time I got a real feel for Hallow's competency as a wizard was when he summoned the Grimoire Graviga. Even Malefor kind of looked at him like "Whoa! Cool." Just remember to avoid using your powers for evil. And by evil, I mean cliche. I can't count the number of times I've seen/read an action/comedy where someone throws a knife at someone else for being snarky, and narrowly misses. It seemed like a bit of an overreaction for someone that was thinking of Malefor as "master" just a few posts prior. But I understand that Hallow was hungry, and maybe a little grumpy too. I must admit, I found a bit of enjoyment in how animated Hallow's actions are, even if it's something as mundane as fetching an item from a cupboard.
Setting ~ 6.5/10 - One of your strong points. While I thought that Hallow's home was somewhat under described, I enjoyed the sights and sounds of Bienost in your introductory posts. I knew where the furniture was placed around the room, and got a feel for the condition of it all, but it was very need-to-know basis. The setting did not go very far beyond the few things that Hallow himself interacted with. I have no idea what the rest of Hallow's dwelling looks like, or how it appears from outside. You touched on smell with formaldehyde, but try and draw comparisons to drive the point home. Few people may have ever smelled embalming fluid, but most people have smelled vinegar. The two are similar in scent, and will help your reader identify. Don't ignore tactile senses.
Total ~ 16.5/30
Characterization
Continuity ~ 8/10 – You're going to make a lot of hardworking people very happy if you keep using canon the way that you do. I read the previous solo before this one, as well as the judging, and I'd like to say that you delivered another segment that found a cozy little nook in the Althanas world. That being said, I had to lower your score in this area because I think you've done it better before. You left Bienost outside when you came in from the balcony in your introduction, and that's pretty much where it stayed. But, still a high score because it was a nice backdrop throughout the rest of your thread. Necromancer in a city of necromancy. Good job Hallow.
Interaction ~ 6/10 – This was hard to score for me. At first I wanted to say that Hallow didn't interact with much beyond conversation with Malefor, but I read through for a third time, and I suppose that wasn't true at all. While I didn't get a super clear sense of how it felt to see the world through Malefor's eyes, he did react to the enchantment, albeit, only briefly. Hallow manipulated the world around him. Although it was somewhat ordinary, one of the clearest images in the whole thread was the young wizard simply carving himself a piece of pork. I thought it fit nicely with Hallow's knowledge of surgical tools and the previous mention of the poor horse that got all cut up (more graphically than the rest of the dead contributors). I would have given you the extra point in strategy for that comparison to his skills, but because I'm pretty sure it was accidental, look for that point in wild card instead.
Character ~ 7/10 – It all started for me when Malefor popped up in the floor. How terribly rude! I'd say for about ninety percent of the thread, you managed to walk a thin line between zany and serious. You obviously feel comfortable writing characters, so instead, I'm going to focus more on where you could stand to improve. Remember, for starters, how little time actually passes between posts in this thread. What, maybe an hour from start to finish? And yet, Hallow runs a SERIOUS gamut of emotions, from quiet musing, to mirth, to near homicidal violence. That's not so bad, but it didn't seem like it took much provocation to cause these mood swings. Try and keep emotion consistent. Although it probably took you a good long while to write it, it only took me a matter of minutes to read it, and because it was all one scene, the inconsistent feelings were a bit of a set back. Maybe it's because they're roommates, but Malefor and Hallow seem to rub off on each other's personalities. I suggest a simple writing exercise called a character sketch. You've probably done it in school before, but its a useful writer's tool. On a single page, write down all of Hallow's character traits, then on another page, write down all of Malefor's. Now take your character sketches, and cross off the adjectives that overlap. With what's left, take those traits and play up on them when the two characters are in the same room. It will help separate the two, because sometimes race isn't enough.
Total ~ 21/30
Writing Style
Creativity ~ 6/10 - I like the poem (or rather, lyrics, i think?) at the start, as well as the little picture, but I have to consider that a full post of this eleven-post thread was someone else's words and art. What I would LOVE to see in future posts is perhaps you subbing out other people's words that inspire you, with a short poem that you write yourself, or dare I say, even your own artwork. As I know that Jack Ingram wasn't thinking of you when he wrote that, I have a hard time drawing any meaning or comparison from it. It seems to be an ongoing theme in your work, so why not make it your own? That being said, you still scored higher in this because I detected moderate usage of metaphors and similes throughout. It doesn't outshine any of your past work, though.
Mechanics ~ 3.5/10 - Why so low? Lack of proofreading. Pure and simple. In the future, when you're staring that "submit for judging" button in the face, resist the temptation. Instead, have someone on the site, in school, or at home have a read first. It might seem trivial, but the words you used instead of the correct versions have DRASTICALLY different meanings (I actually imagined Hallow cleaning dirty bowels off of his kitchen table. HILARIOUS!). Hopefully this low scoring will drive home the need to proofread every single time. Make sure your words mean what you want them to and don't just sound pretty. There were a few instances where I knew what you were trying to say, but you used the wrong adjective. No one does a perfect first draft. Ever. Period. And don’t rely on spell check on your word processor. Its not as smart as you might think.
Clarity ~ 7/10 - Transitions between Malefor's granted visions were very clean. It flowed back and forth from the visions and current events without being confusing in the slightest. Setting changes in the story were fairly seamless, largely in part to the fact that there just weren't very many of them. Because the characters were pretty well defined, I didn't have much trouble figuring out who was speaking, even if it wasn't obviously stated. Only misuse of words tripped me up. Clear, concise, and an over all smooth read. High score.
Total ~ 16.5/30
Wildcard: ~ 7/10
I really would like to ask why you decided on the title, if not just to continue a theme. I assume Leslie Lavign will play a bigger role in this saga at a later date (or has already in a thread I haven't read), but as far as I can tell, Hallow had completely forgotten about her by breakfast time. Did you just end up straying from the original goal? Or did I miss something?
Like I alluded to earlier, I love quirky characters and banter, and you write it like it's second nature to you. You also are very talented when it comes to describing setting. If you just spent a bit more time on it in each post, they would be a lot of fun and a good short read. Polish your words and make them shine!
Grand Total ~ 61/100
Gold: 200
Exp: 610
Spoils: Seeing as you didn't really request anything above and beyond, I gave you a little boost to your gold.
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