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Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: in the wild
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wassupimviet
Blargh! No decent ideas here, but I'll tread old ground.
Spoiler for Carry the Dying King:
Carry the Dying King
The noble king gasped, eyes narrow, but face dignified—the just king is slain.
He fell to the world.
He expected his spirit to be carried on.
The old warrior-king had felt the spear of his foe pierce through his armor, but paid it no mind. It had brought him to the ground, but the honored man was prepared to die. After all, he was dying for his country and his people, dying as the great and benevolent ruler! His retinue of men-at-arms swooped down on the enemy, fighting for the body of the king they thought dead. They overwhelmed the man who struck down their ruler. The king smiled behind his helm. This devotion—absolute proof of the good king!
A shriek sounded high above the plain. A raven looked down on the king with a bold stare. The king’s eyes grew wide; he felt something else piercing him now, but it was far beyond the physical. Some ethereal sense lanced itself deep into his chest and overwhelmed the king with disquiet. The king caught sight of his killer then, gutted and dying as he was. The man’s helm had been knocked off in the melee and the lordly king saw the man’s mutilated face. Vapid eyes stared into nothing and his gaping mouth was filling with blood. He drowned in it. Terror seized the king’s throat.
Hands took hold of him now, his knights, and they would carry him. But they would not take him away from here—from this newfound horror—as he had hoped. The raven shrieked again, its accusations following him. It rose above the clamor of men fighting and killing, weeping and dying. He tried to refuse what he saw as he was dragged along. Some soldier, merely a boy, gave an unearthly scream as he bled out from his wounds. Another tried to, but instead it only bubbled the blood pooling in his throat from the cut there. A third was only silently weeping, impaled as he was. They wore both his crest and his enemy’s. The lamentations were endless, but, in spite of all that was here, they were private lamentations. The suffering of any one did not matter when they all suffered. Their only observers were the king and the raven.
But no! the king told himself. The people still loved him, the knights were still loyal. He clutched his personal truth and held himself over it. He felt himself pushed against a tree by his knights. He wished for anything, any more to prove his truth. He wished for words of mourning. But they talked only of the prestige and courtly honors they would gain for retrieving the body of the king, the lands they would receive from their newly conquered foe for this. They left, satisfied with the death of the king.
Then the world around him grew louder. But it was not the sound of battle. The raven called, and the bodies surrounding the tree—there are so many bodies, why are there so many bodies? the king asked—seemed to respond in kind. The king heard a din, both somber and angry, rise around him. It grew. It drowned out everything. The one voice of the dead mass arose and attacked him, rejecting him, sentencing him to die as they had. The king tried to cover his ears, but his body had long given up to death. The raven perched above the tree, cawing and cawing, and the king knew that it was the composer of this elegy. The din rose still, still! and swallowed the king’s personal truth. And they told him. He had never been a people’s man, only a confidence man, peddling some petty nobles’ war as theirs. He had merely conned himself.
The bodies condemned him.
Warmonger! they called him.
Tyranny! they charged him..
Murderer! they convicted him.
A horseman—carrying the king’s own crest!—rode by and knocked the king’s body askew. His face landed in mud. The king, but now only a broken, craven man, began to heave. He choked on the mud and his own spittle. He lied mangled, as the world around him lied mangled. The dignified king existed no more. The raven gave its malevolent cry once more, but this time it was halting, sputtering, staccato. And still again it came above that damned din! The craven man heard laughter.
The sepulchral king begged, groveled, whined—wasn’t I a just king?
The world rebuked him.
The carrion bird did not.
Word count o' 752 (sans that title) according to Microsoft Word.
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Man, I really like this one. You're style and writing skills are really good.
We can't know for sure what kind of king he really was, since it's all his point of view. Everything's so dark and brutal yet he tries to see the silver linen on the horizon in a way. His people hate him for all the blood shed, he claims he did his best, but it doesn't matter since everyone is equal in death.
Good stuff.
Quote:
Originally Posted by papermario13689
Oh, a good commitment has led you to a quickly submitted and very solid entry! It was even given a thorough proofreading; looks like you had a reliable one to assist you How did you find the somewhat extreme limitations? It's good for a writer to venture off into new limitations and challenges; most writers can and will use italics/bold to accentuate their text, but it's good to see you managed to get a similar point across whilst refraining from using those tags. Nothing to ruminate about, just a limitation that forces you to write in a different style, is all.
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Thanks for the comment.
I don't think the limitations make any sense, personally. The 1,5k limit yes, but bold and italics? Sure, I can do without, but it's such basic formatting that I find it very weird that it's forbidden in a contest that pretty much asks for very different styles. I actually made sure there aren't any rules regarding paragraphs, breaks and tabs and the like since it was so out of place for me xD
Quote:
Originally Posted by wassupimviet
Man, I really, really love the feeling going on here. It's great, especially right now; there's this slight rumbling of thunder going on outside and the sky is a sort of ruddy yellow, and it all seems to just fit. It's far too perfect.
I've also always liked these sort of stories, too. I like the idea of one person passing on some sort of higher wisdom to another simply in how they act, rather than through a lecture or something. It really hits home for me.
There are one or two slight spelling mistakes ("laugher" and "immediatly" specifically), but no big deal. Be damned if I didn't say that the way the story flowed pulled me right in, though.
Great stuff, all in all.
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Thanks for the comment! A very flattering one at that The skies must have known you're reading my story so they rearranged themselves to give you the perfect atmosphere! XD
Also thanks for pointing out the errors, will fix 'em now~
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