# The Price of Steel:Ch 1-"Only the Strong" (PROFANITY, GORE, SEX)



## Dawson (Sep 12, 2014)

_*(Content warning: violence, profanity, gore, implied rape) *

Sleep, girl, sleep._ Araceli thinks. She looks at her humble chambers, and blows out the already-dying candle on her night-table. She said a short prayer to the patron Goddess of her nation, S’Bekkïra. 

_Grant me wisdom; grant me peace; grant me the ability to distinguish truth from illusion. I ask these mere blessings from you on such a night. _

Ara smirked. 

_Goddess, grant me sleep, most of all! _

Only a hint of moonlight peeks through her small window, showing her curled in a quilt., tossing and turning in the autumn chill. Straight, dark hair, and medium, olive skin, not unlike that of oak heartwood, with average features that were too busy trying to actively, and annoyedly, fight off the insomnia that came with manual labor to look all that pretty. The sixteen-year-old artisan’s daughter was trying to fall asleep, when she hears a heartwrenching scream coming from the garden behind her small house. She shot up, running to the source of the noise, clearly recognizing it as the voice of her mother. 

She smells something organic, yet metallic. _Blood,_ she thought. It didn’t take a girl gifted with “wisdom beyond the years” to figure it out, for fuck’s sake. She had smelled blood before. But never like this. 

She saw a figure on the floor, convulsing wildly. 

“NO!” 

She looked down. 

But she didn’t even have to look at the face to know. 

It was, as she had dreaded, her mother, Miranda. 

She was hoping that the scream was just a rogue peacock in the garden. But no. Of course not. Goddess no, not with her luck. It was a body, barely alive. 

Her mother’s throat was partially lacerated, and were her wrists; her hands nearly detached from her arms. 

Her dress was disheveled and torn. 

She was gasping for air, and flopping around, choking on her own blood, trying not to drown in her own fluids. 

“NO! MOTHER, NO!” 

Ara ran up to the writhing, battered body of her mother, and touched her face, wearing a look of horror on her own. 

Her mother opened her dark eyes, and looked at Araceli. 

She turned onto her side, and coughed up a sizable amount of blood, liquidy, and shining slightly dark with bile. 

“MOTHER! ARE. YOU. OKAY? PLEASE. SAY SOMETHING. SAY ANYTHING.” 

Miranda smiled. She looked oddly at peace. 

“Child, remember- Only the strong survive,” she muttered, barely audible, with blood sputtering out of her mouth with every syllable. 

She closed her eyes peacefully, and slightly-thickened blood slowly dripped out of her still-gently-smiling mouth, as Ara sat there in shock, with her knees to her chest. 

_Only the strong survive. _

_ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE. _

*ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE!!! *

She suddenly knew what she had to do, as if a new wind had entered her- she had to not only had to be strong. She had to be the strongest. So she would survive- even if it was the only thing she claimed she did in life. Fuck yes, she would survive. She would make her mother proud. No. She would avenge this crime. She would make sure that the man who did this know he was _weak. _

But was it wise? Was it rational? Was it fair? 

No. 

What _was_ fair? 

What _was_ rational? 

Sparing the man and going after the system that allowed this bloody atrocity. _Knowledge is knowing how to solve a crime,_ Ara thought. _Wisdom, _she realized, _is knowing how to prevent them in the future. _

King Shaan was notorious for letting the accusations of murder amongst commoners go ignored and unavenged by the executioners. Which was increasingly problematic- as those with powers, such as Ara and Miranda, had to hide their powers. You see, people gain powers when they are killed, absorbing them from the soul of the person they have slain. The Powered have to hide their abilities or at least downplay them as to not become targets of murder. 

How the word that Miranda was a gifted oracle got out was beyond Ara- she usually just used her gift to predict financial outcomes and crop cycles and even the mundane, such as the 
weather or if her outfit that she would wear into the village would garner her compliments from _that one salesman_ without appearing to be a woman of scandal. Miranda did not whore out her abilities on corners like some street-psychics did, Mind you, most of them were simply good at deduction, lacking any real gifts from the Goddesses). She did not sell her powers. She never even spoke of them outside of the home. 

King Shaan was notorious for letting the accusations of murder amongst commoners go ignored and unavenged by the executioners, especially the murder of those with powers, such as Ara and Miranda. You see, people gain powers when they are killed, absorbing them from the soul of the person they have slain. The Powered have to hide their abilities or at least downplay them as to not become targets of murder. 

As the sun rose, Ara stood from beside her mother’s bloody, mutilated body. 

_How did they know? _

_And most importantly- how did she NOT? _

_I understand that prophecy is prophecy. _

_But… couldn’t she have prayed to S’Bakkïra? _

_Or asked me for a solution? _

Then- It dawned on Ara. 

This was the solution. 

This was a sign from the Goddesses- all five of them. 

She was going to be the one to kill the man who did… all of this… to her mother. But she would also make sure it never happened again. Power-killing was the epitome of what King Shaan’s kingdom stood for. The man himself was bordering on non-human with all of the powers he had acquired- well no- stolen, rumor had it. They said he could turn into a dragon at will, annihilating armies with just one breath of fire. They said that he could kill with a simple look in the eye. And that he gained all of these powers from every single kill that he had accumulated over his respectable lifetime. And Araceli knew- these powers were not what he really cared about. After witnessing this scene, she understood how his kind thought. The powers were mere trophies to him. 

After all, the killer could have made it quick. Just a cleanly sliced neck, or stabbed heart. She doubted that her mom would have been much of a fighter. But no- he cut her hands. The tools of her work as a potter. So even if she _did_ survive, she’d be unemployed, an outcast, a complete undesirable. And Goddess knows what else he did to her. The power was merely a trophy. 

Ara wanted a trophy too. Three, actually. Two more than this monster of a killer could ever claim. 

Her trophies: Life. Strength. Survival. 

Because after all, as her mother said, “Only the strong survive.” 

(AN: I may not actually make this the first chapter. Rather, I may include a previous chapter that shows another character having a moral quandary at a temple of the Goddess of Love, asking for insight that will change her destiny, yet admitting that she will have to give up the peaceful life of a noblewoman for the life of a murderous savage, setting the tone of the story for something much more mystical, and putting in place many themes, and introducing, albeit very vaguely, a major character in the second half of the first book. I'm torn now! Do you think this is a strong opener, or would you rather see a mysterious redhead entering a flaming inferno of a temple, talking about deep ethical and philosophical concepts and contemplating a life of crime, just so she will be able to feel love for the first time in her life?)


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## Fivetide (Sep 13, 2014)

Hi Dawson, thanks for sharing, it’s not my cup of tea but I thought that the story was vivid and had great atmosphere.
  The only thing I would say is that some of your sentences are to padded, it breaks the flow of the story, I’ve tried to give an example :


_Her mother’s throat was partially lacerated, and were her wrists; her hands nearly detached from her arms. _

_Her dress was disheveled and torn_


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Personally I would have lead with the obvious and then gone to the gore :


She came across her mother, dress torn and dishevelled, throat slashed and hands nearly severed from deep lacerations.


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## Dawson (Sep 13, 2014)

Thanks for the feedback; will keep in mind! 

Glad you liked my atmosphere. 

I was also told by another reader that Ara lacked enough emotion. 

Would you agree, out of curiosity, and what would you suggest to give her more feeling and depth?


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## Fivetide (Sep 13, 2014)

Be Ara , what emotions would you be feeling if you found your mother dying on the floor ?
Ara ran up to the writhing, battered body of her mother, and touched her face, wearing a look of horror on her own.
You see you don’t have to tell us it’s her mother we already know that. There’s only two characters in the scene. But you could use it later to add a sense of drama.
So you could say, and this is probably crap and many others on here could do a much better job.
Ara ran to her, tears welling, her heart pounding with anguish. Kneeling she cradled the writhing, battered body. Then gently, with a touch only a daughter could have, caressed her mother’s pale face.
Anyway what do I know about emotions, I write crass Zombie slapstick books!


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## Dawson (Sep 13, 2014)

The thing is, Ara's not a very emotional character. 
She's very stoic and wise and pokerfaced. 
She channels everything through anger and her battles with the king's armies. 
But I do like the part about "her heart pounding with anguish." 
I may very well use that! 

I just still don't want her to seem too... cold. 
It's part of the "wisdom beyond her years" thing. 
She feels that emotions are best if they're hidden. 

Until the end of book two, when she just lets them all out.


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## popsprocket (Sep 14, 2014)

Corrections in red
 Changes in orange
 Comments in blue



Dawson said:


> Sleep, girl, sleep. Araceli thinks. She looks at her humble chambers, and blows out the already-dying candle on her night-table. She says [except she's not saying it, she's thinking it, so a word like 'offers' would be a better fit] a short prayer to the patron Goddess of her nation [I'm not keen on this "the patron goddess of her nation" bit as it is, but it'd at least sound a little better if you gave the name of the country so that it was just "the patron Goddess of [country]"], S’Bekkïra.
> 
> Grant me wisdom; grant me peace; grant me the ability to distinguish truth from illusion. I ask these mere blessings from you on such a night.  Ara smirks, Goddess, grant me sleep, most of all! [just in terms of formatting, this should all be one line]
> 
> ...




 Let's rip the Band-Aid off: there are a lot of problems with this excerpt. I won't guarantee that I caught all the problems, but I think got most of them.

The very first thing I noticed about this is that you have tense issues. You begin in present tense, then almost immediately forget and slip into past tense, only to dredge up the present tense stuff every now and then. Pick one or the other and stick with it for the whole thing, none of this switching back and forth within the one POV business. Now, the corrections I made brought the piece into present tense since that's how you started out, but given the amount of this that was written in past tense, it might be more worth it for you to look at writing the whole thing in past tense. Most people have one or the other that they're better at and sound more natural when using. It can't hurt to give it a go at the very least.

Narrative voice consistency. I picked out a few spots where the narrative voice you are using changes in a rather obvious fashion. Keep in mind that when writing third person, you aren't necessarily writing from the perspective of a third-party. The narrator can be as intimate with the character (as in the example where the narrator is inside the characters head, able to see and hear and feel everything that the character does) or as separate from the character (as in the example of a narrator that is obviously third-party and sentient in their own right) as you like. Personally, I'd reserve the sentient narrator for comedy stuff and stick with an intimate narrator here. Learning to maintain a consistent voice when writing is one of those skills that comes with time, so you'll just have to keep at it until you get there. In the mean time it doesn't hurt to have the issue pointed out so that you can be aware of the issue.

Character descriptions/general descriptions. This one is fairly individual thing, with some people preferring to read/write long descriptions, and others preferring to be more sparing. I fall at the extreme end of 'sparing', just so you know where I'm coming from. For the most part I didn't have too much of a problem with the _way_ you were describing things - small inserts of information like "her small chambers" and "the sixteen year old artisans daughter" are the right way to go about it as far as I'm concerned - but the _when_ is an issue. Adding in description of surroundings and characters has a massive effect on the pacing of a piece. When you are trying to move something along quickly, stopping to even toss in the odd bit of information can completely ruin the flow (and it certainly does that here). Character descriptions are a similar thing, but the way you just inserted a description of Ara didn't sit well with me. It was very strange to suddenly leave her head and have a description of her - and a suuuper wordy one at that (I don't even know what oak heartwood looks like to understand the analogy you used). I struck out most of what you had and kept it simple. That's important. No matter how specifically you describe a character, 100 different readers will have 100 different mental images, so expending words on verbose description is a waste of effort.

Swearing in fantasy. I have no problem with swearing in writing or in real life, but fantasy is a bit of a special case. The swear words we use in everyday language are very specifically our own and don't translate so well into fictional worlds. Did Frodo say "Oh, shit!" when he nearly fell into the volcano? No. Because it would be totally inappropriate for the world and characters. Your usage here falls under that. If you're going to have characters swearing, then invent a swear word consistent with their world. Also keep in mind that swearing is often viewed as vey juvenile way of driving a point home, and it certainly felt like that when Ara smelled blood on the air. Completely unnecessary, didn't add anything, would probably have stopped reading there immediately if I had picked this up off a book store shelf.

Pacing of the piece as a whole. This one might hurt your pride a little: this reads very amateurish. That's mostly owing to the pacing that you have going on here. I mentioned it up above - that all of this happens in one breath. What I mean is that there's almost no human emotion here, you skip from event to event and emotion to emotion with nothing in between and it's very jarring to read. The cure for this is, as always, to keep writing and hone your skill some more. In the mean time what you need to do here is expand on what is happening. Inject some atmosphere and tension into the moments before Ara hears her mother scream, and then slow down what is happening so that Ara has a chance to go through some actual moments. Then, I'd strongly suggest separating her epiphany and putting it in a later chapter. No one goes from seeing their dying mother writhing on the ground to deciding to take down a kingdom faster than she can blink. Doing this will contribute heavily to making your characters seem more real.


Some more minor things:

Capslock = no

Triple exclamation marks = definitely never

Using dashes... using a dash like this:

_Which had become increasingly problematic-

_Is actually used to indicate that a sentence has been broken off. The correct use requires that there is a space on either side of the dash. 

There's also some strange formatting here. Breaking up the narrative into short lines has a very specific effect on pacing, but it's fairly misused here. For now, I'd advise you to focus on learning to write in proper paragraphs and passages before branching out into the more difficult formatting types.


Phew, that took a while. I hope I didn't forget anything because I have to run. I'll come back and read this later and make sure I touched on everything I needed to.


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## Dawson (Sep 14, 2014)

I want to write in past tense, but I will try to keep the tense consistent. Tense has always been an issue for me, I admit... 

And I think profanity is realistic. GRRM uses it in ASOIAF. So why not? I think *lack of* profanity is unrealistic. I always think that while watching daytime TV and such. Some curse words, like the religion or homosexuality or race based ones wouldn't make sense in this world. But words like "shit" or "fuck" or "asshole" I think make perfect sense in-universe. Especially with one character in particular, who is kind of a runaway soldier who makes crude jokes to run from his past and such. He curses a lot, but has to learn to curb his mouth, after practically adopting an adorable little orphan. I've read a few fantasy webcomics that have cursing in them, as well as some fantasy-themed YA books that have some realistic cursing. 

Point taken on caps and exclamation points. Will use boldface and italics instead. 

When do you think I should describe the character, then? In the morning, when she washes her face, and compares her features to those of her mother? Somebody suggested that, and I kind of like that. She can also talk about how she has her dad's nose though, or something. 

And I'll definitely space out the chapter more, and focus more on Ara's thoughts and feelings. Develop her more as a character. Treat this more as a proper chapter, not as just an intro to the story. 

Thanks! I appreciate how honest you were. Genuinely.

EDIT: I'll add in the part about the power gaining and power-killing in the next chapter, which occurs the next day, when Ara asks for her father's blessing to avenge her mother's death and protest the king. She'll talk about why she thinks it wasn't just a random attack, and how it's consistent with the power-killings that occur in the kingdom.


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## popsprocket (Sep 14, 2014)

Dawson said:


> And I think profanity is realistic. GRRM uses it in ASOIAF. So why not? I think *lack of* profanity is unrealistic. I always think that while watching daytime TV and such. Some curse words, like the religion or homosexuality or race based ones wouldn't make sense in this world. But words like "shit" or "fuck" or "asshole" I think make perfect sense in-universe. Especially with one character in particular, who is kind of a runaway soldier who makes crude jokes to run from his past and such. He curses a lot, but has to learn to curb his mouth, after practically adopting an adorable little orphan. I've read a few fantasy webcomics that have cursing in them, as well as some fantasy-themed YA books that have some realistic cursing.



Yes, swearing is a thing, no I don't agree that English swear words are a good example. To each their own, but I really feel like you aren't adding anything by having them in Ara's POV. Yeah, sure, a soldier swearing profusely fits with the character, but the swearing here is poorly placed and too strong in the first place. That's the advantage of inventing swear words. Characters can swear like sailors and you won't put anyone off.



> When do you think I should describe the character, then? In the morning, when she washes her face, and compares her features to those of her mother? Somebody suggested that, and I kind of like that. She can also talk about how she has her dad's nose though, or something.



This is sort of a personal writing style question. The answer is, if I were writing this, I wouldn't put in an explicit description of her character, and especially not from Ara's point of view. The way I see it is that a person rarely thinks about their own appearance to the extent of offering a physical description, so having characters described in their own POV chapters has always felt really odd to me. Now, lots of good writers do it anyway, so go right ahead if that's what you prefer. Personally my characters are only ever described by _other_ characters, and usually a bit at a time,

e.g. One main character will see another and make a mental note of one or two things about them - hair colour, height, distinguishing marks, and whether or not they are good looking or not. That sort of thing. Really simple descriptions that allow (force) the reader to infer details of their own.

There has been the odd exception - I do recall I once had a character's "short hair" blowing in the wind, but it was still only a small bit of information.

And settings, well they're lucky to get even that much description in my writing. Unless I'm trying to create a specific atmosphere or something in the room is important, it's usually not worth describing as far as I'm concerned. But like I said, those little bits and pieces that you have here and there seem to be the right way to go about it, their positioning just needs some work so that they're unobtrusive to what is happening around them.



> EDIT: I'll add in the part about the power gaining and power-killing in the next chapter, which occurs the next day, when Ara asks for her father's blessing to avenge her mother's death and protest the king. She'll talk about why she thinks it wasn't just a random attack, and how it's consistent with the power-killings that occur in the kingdom.



That's definitely a much better place to put information on her powers.


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## Dawson (Sep 14, 2014)

I personally think made-up curses sound silly. That's just me though. 

I like to be able to picture a character. Not in annoying "My Immortal" detail, but at least know their race and body type, you know? I think in pictures, though, so not knowing what a character looks like bugs the hell out of me. Even if it's just "brown skin, average features, dark eyes, straight hair, average build, bad posture" described in a functional way that suits the story, I personally need that while reading to be content. Do I need to know their exact outfit and makeup? No. Haha. No. This isn't Gossip Girl. 

Like, I was thinking about having Ara look in the mirror and wash her face in the morning, as that person suggested, and do something like: 
Ara looked in the mirror. She saw, first and foremost, her mother's face. Her thin lips, her medium-olive skin, and of course, her almond eyes. _Dang, I do have my mother's eyes... Would I really look like that if I was dying? Well, I'd look kind of different at least because I have my dad's wider nose, but still..._ Ara looked down and continued to rinse off her face with water, trying to wake up from her night of alternating laying there in bed, with her heart racing, and getting up, pacing around her room frantically. She looked back in the mirror. Her straight black hair was frizzed out and a hot mess. She combed it back into a half-ponytail, to keep it out of her eyes, so she looked at least somewhat awake. She half-smiled at her reflection. _That was the most pathetic half-smile I have ever seen,_ she thought. She sighed. She went to go finish getting dressed so she could confront her father about her feelings regarding, well, everything. Her mom, the killer, the king, the kingdom... everything. The thought rushed back into her head: _What would I look like dead? Oh gosh. _


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## Fivetide (Sep 14, 2014)

Dawson said:


> Thanks for the feedback; will keep in mind!
> 
> Glad you liked my atmosphere.
> 
> ...





Dawson said:


> *The thing is, Ara's not a very emotional character*.
> She's very stoic and wise and pokerfaced.
> She channels everything through anger and her battles with the king's armies.
> But I do like the part about "her heart pounding with anguish."
> ...



First you ask how to give her more feeling and depth, then say she’s not a very emotional character.
In that case set out to reader her personality
Example from my book

_In fact he was in love with Mel, and she knew it. Well I say in love, with Stax that’s difficult to quantify. Actually he was bereft of most emotions when sober, I knew they were in there somewhere, but very rarely surfaced._

Or :
She hid her emotions, she knew it was a weapon that could be used against her.
Or
She knew they thought her cold and callas,
Or
“One day”, she thought, “They will see my emotions, when I hold the kings served head high, and spit in his dead face”.


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## Dawson (Sep 14, 2014)

I *like* that last line! 

I like that a lot!


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## Fivetide (Sep 14, 2014)

Glad you liked it. Apparently I do nasty quite well, in fact I have been called sick and warped by several critics, high praise - I think lol:


_Blondie was in agony, the heat was beginning to blister her young legs, soil covered red high heels began to steam and smoulder. Her psyche squirmed and yelled, trapped within its useless carcass. The smell of barbequing flesh reached her nostrils. An immobile body incapable of escape was pumping adrenaline into her bloodstream, counteracting the natural reflex to pass out, and prolonging the cruel pain. Her mind writhed in agony, tears gushing down soft cheeks, blinded by the intensity of the tortured nerves, a heart drumming like a jack rabbit, threatening to burst her heaving chest wide open. Hell was the makeshift oven of a German car; this would become the last grotesque memory for a young girl. Fate still had a last nasty twist to serve, soon her dress would catch fire and then the pain would intensify by magnitudes._

- full short story http://www.thezombiefitnessprogram.com/uncategorized/chapter-144709-time-hiding-places/


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## Jeko (Sep 14, 2014)

Hi Dawson. Just a few things:

1) The tense shifts from present to past. I'm not sure which the narrative would prefer, but it definitely doesn't make sense with both.
2) You can't hook the reader with an image of a girl praying for a good night's sleep. However, the moment things start going wrong is when I start getting interested. So I'd skip the 'intro' for the character and throw us straight into her problem.
3) The character would sound less annoying and more interesting if she wasn't partial to the f-word at inappropriate times. If she was actually scared of the blood she saw, she wouldn't have the attitude that 'for fuck's sake' shows in free indirect style (when the narrator embodies the voice of the thoughts of a character). There's no sense of 'dread' or fear or actual emotion towards the possibility of her mother's death.
4) We don't even know Miranda - hell, we don't even know the character has a mother - and then she's dead. And we don't learn anything more about her. And the MC doesn't react convincingly to her situation. So the death only reads as a device the writer is using to make the MC do her derring-do.
5) A sentence can be a paragraph by itself, but not dozens of times over. It limits the pacing of the prose, and feels amateurish.
6) Her mum dies and she 'suddenly' realises that the reader has no knowledge of why this is important, so she has to ruin any effect of the death with an info-dump. If there's one thing that distracts us from horror and immersion, it's back-story when it shouldn't be there.
7) Don't say 'you see'. Just don't.

Overall, I'd cut out 80% of this scene as it stands. The only interesting thing is the mother's death - the build-up to the discovery, the discovery and the reaction. All the info-dumping weighs it down, and all the intro-ey stuff before will only make readers turn off before the fun begins. Begin the fun when they begin reading. Let all the background info bleed through the narrative of the unfolding story. Neither the narrator nor Ara seem to care about what's happening because of everything that gets in the way of the scene. They read only as devices with which the writer can get all she wants to get on the page written.


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## Dawson (Sep 14, 2014)

Thanks. 

Tense problem is currently being edited into solid past tense. 

Like I said, I'll move the infodump to the "next day" scene where she asks for her father's blessing to avenge her mother's death, some money, and some farm tools to use as rudimentary weapons. 

I'll cut out that type of cursing. Some cursing, fine. But this cursing, I see, breaks the atmosphere. 

I'll try to flesh out Ara and her relationship with her mother a bit more when she's watching her mother writhe on the floor, and after she's died, all in that moment between "oh... gosh... she's..._*gone,*_" and "*I must avenge this and make sure that this absolutely never happens again under my watch!" *


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## Pandora (Sep 15, 2014)

Beautiful writing Bennie, the opening images description tender and lovely, then all hell breaks loose. I am super impressionable, the emotion of gore, horror and suspense sometimes too much for me which is a compliment to the author. I'd like to take it all in but it will stay with me a day, probably more. I'll just say the gentler side of you is as powerful as the raw. Good work. The red head in the burning temple sounds intriguing too, a talent you are.


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