Gate Lords Prologue

    Time slowed. And Legba felt at peace. He had just opened the First Gate. He was acutely aware of his surroundings, of the slightest breeze on his skin. He could taste the dryness in the air. The tiniest of noises sounded like ruckus to his ears. And his eyes bore sharply through the enveloping darkness, making sense of the mural details of the hallway.

    The guards were already catching up with him. Six men armed with spears and wearing breastplates were running down the hallway, coming right at him and yelling. In the darkness, Legba smiled. Six were perhaps a bit too much for him in his current weakened condition. But he had to get rid of them. They would get in the way of his search.

    “Surrender now,” said a gruff voice “and you might live to see another day”.

    Legba chuckled. “You are the ones who should leave me alone if you value your life. My purpose here is no concern of yours,” he said.

    “Such insolence!” replied the same person in that gruff voice. He was probably their officer. “Seize him at once!”

    And so the guards advanced on him. Since the alley didn’t offer enough space, they came down by two, spears first.

    Legba felt like just standing there and doing nothing. He felt like just waiting, waiting, and waiting forever. It was such a bother to defend himself, such a bother to dodge the incoming attack. But he took a grip on himself. That was the trouble with opening the First Gate. While greatly enhancing the senses, it also created a sense a detachment from reality in the one who opened it, making him feel weary of everything, even of life. Some people had even died of starvation that way, finding it too troublesome to even feed themselves. It was a useful but dangerous power.

    For Legba’s enhanced vision, the guards were progressing in slow motion. He suddenly leaped forward, unsheathing his sword as he went and slashing at the neck of the closest guard. He fell on the floor, gasping for breath, not quite realizing what had happened. Red stained his golden breastplate.

    Legba continued his deadly advance, not even giving his opponents the time to be startled. He was slashing at necks, at arms, at legs, at any open skin he could find, and dodging spear points. The guards couldn’t move their spears at ease in such a restricted space, which put Legba at an advantage. One he was fully using.

    In the end, he was the only one left standing, and his sword was dripping wet from blood. They didn’t give him as much of a challenge as he had expected. Pathetic.

    Legba could clearly feel its presence now. What he was looking for. Before, it was just a faint existence, now he almost felt it pulsing, calling for him. Maybe it was awakened by the freshly spilled blood.

    He couldn’t understand why Amokh had chosen this god forsaken temple, in this wretched corner of Vallanya to hide it. Didn’t he realize how much more powerful it would make him, how strongly it would establish his authorities over the other gods? True that Amokh ruled over the gods, but he couldn’t stop them from squabbling and waging wars against each others. He himself had to suppress rebellions aimed at dethroning him along the years. Yet, with this, certainly no god would dare dispute his sovereignty.

    Legba burst into the priests’ quarters. They were awake. They started yelling at him, but when they saw his crimson sword, they hastily retreated. He paid them no mind.

    He could still feel the object of his search pulling at him, but lower this time, as if coming from below ground. He could see no trap door on the floor. He did not have the time nor the patience to find a path. So, he opened the Second Gate.

    A considerable amount of strength rushed through his arms and legs, filling them. He hasn’t felt so powerful in a very long time. The Second Gate bestowed enormous strength and stamina when opened. Few people have ever reached that stage. Few could even open the first Gate. Yet, he knew he couldn’t sustain opening the Second Gate for more than a few minutes. It was too risky. He quickly stomped on the ground and as expected, it gave way. He fell into a large empty room. By cracking, the ground had produced a massive cloud of dust and he started sneezing. He always hated dust. He immediately let the Second Gate close itself.

    The room he fell into was rather large and circular with walls seemingly cut from stone. There was no door that he could see. Probably one was hidden in the wall and would only open at the activation of the right mechanism. Torches hung from the walls and shed their light over a crudely made stone altar placed at the center. On top of that altar, laid a sword with a bare and slightly curved dark blade. The hilt was silver without any decoration. Exactly what Legba came looking for tonight.

    The pulse he was feeling all this time came directly from that odd-looking sword. That was probably the most powerful weapon in the entire world. LightCaster it was called. Rumors had it that it was forged by the first god to walk the surface of the world, Ammonra the GateKeeper himself, many millennia ago. Now that he was up close, Legba could feel a formidable amount of evil and hatred emanating from the sword. It was akin to a bottomless pit of evil. So much evil that it was suffocating. And Legba was trying hard not to succumb to it.

    He moved his hand to seize LightCaster and he felt the power. Enough power to lay waste to cities, to topple kingdoms and even threaten the gods on their thrones. Certainly with this much power, he would have the right to rule.

    “You don’t want to touch that thing, young man,” came a voice behind him.

    There, stood an old man dressed in a long free flowing grey robe. His scalp was bald and his chin was closely shaved. The grand-priest most likely. Legba didn’t see him coming, nor did he hear him. And he could have sworn he wasn’t in the room earlier. Maybe he was another Gate user and came down the same way as Legba. Or perhaps there really was a hidden door somewhere around.

    “Who are you, old man?” asked Legba.

    “My name is Fra. And I am grand-priest in this temple dedicated to Ammonra. But who I am is of no matter. What matters is that you desecrated this place tonight and came to steal what Emperor Amokh himself gave us for safekeeping many generations ago.”

    “Oh. Ammonra is it? He died eons ago. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind my little adventure here tonight.”

    “You blaspheme, child! It is true that Our Lord died saving us from the shadows. Nevertheless he still watches over his children. He still lives inside us, among us and continues protecting us every day. This is how strong his love for us is.”

    Legba couldn’t decide if he felt puzzled or if he just felt like chuckling. He hated theology. A bunch of nonsense, according to him. He never really paid much attention to religious doctrines.

    “But I digress,” continued the priest. “The matter at hand stays that this sword is way too dangerous and that you don’t have the slightest idea what you are meddling with.”

    “LightCaster”

    “What?”

    “LightCaster. It’s name is LightCaster.” Legba was motioning to the sword on the altar.

    “How? How did you learn this name? The gods themselves took care to erase all records of its existence! They went to great length to make it as if it was never forged! Who are you?”

    As he was talking, the priest’s expression started to change. His confidence was fading. And fear replaced it. Legba grinned but did not answer him.

    “As a servant of Lords Ammonra and Amokh,” continued the grand-priest when he saw he would get no response, “it is my duty to prevent this weapon from falling into the wrong hands, even at the cost of my own life. Its propensity for destruction is way too formidable. So, young stranger, prepare yourself. Tonight, you draw your last breath!” And he opened the Second Gate.

    Not at all impressed, Legba reached and seized LightCaster.

Reviews

[TLK]

The guards enter the story almost like voices in a radio play. I have little sense of their embodiment and therefore I do not believe they pose a threat to Legba. Also, Legba starts by coming across as tired, yet still able to be louchely sarcastic. I find it hard to put this two things together. They are like oil and water.

You want to get better, so I'm going to be harsh and not sugar coat it. That said, this is my subjective opinion, so according to your intentions and your intended readership I might simple be wrong. I am not reaching inside your soul and critically analysing who you are, I am merely responding to your own efforts in my own limited and idiosyncratic way. (If the worst comes to the worst, read my stuff and be honest with me, too!).

Do you know how important the first line is? You open with an image that more suits a film or game - "time slowed". Then the unconnected "Legba felt at peace". And the third line makes no sense at all without explanation. You need to get the reader to find something in your writing, first, before they will make allowances for you and follow you into the unknown.

What I'm saying boils down to SHOW, DON'T TELL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show,_don%27t_tell
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Infodump

Of course, the best authors get to break the rules anyway: http://io9.com/5481558/20-great-infodumps-from-science-fiction-novels





*Here's the start of Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream: "Limp, the body of Gorrister hung from the pink palette; unsupported hanging high
above us in the computer chamber; and it did not shiver in the chill, oily breeze that blew eternally through the main cavern. The body hung head down, attached to the underside of the palette by the sole of its right foot. It had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from ear to ear under the lantern jaw. There was no blood on the reflective surface of the metal floor. When Gorrister joined our group and looked up at himself, it was already too late for us to realize that, once again, AM had duped us, had had its fun; it had been a diversion on the part of the machine. Three of us had vomited, turning away from one another in a reflex as ancient as the nausea that had produced it. Gorrister went white."

Here's the first line of Alfred Bester's novel The Stars My Destination: "He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead."

These are the kind of openings that grab a reader.




Your use of the action scene is a bit of a cop-out. We go from Legba feeling weak to somehow destroying a number of guards, without any look into the action of how he does it. I have to say that I feel a bit cheat about that.


"A considerable amount of strength rushed through his arms and legs, filling them. He hasn’t felt so powerful in a very long time. The Second Gate bestowed enormous strength and stamina when opened. Few people have ever reached that stage. Few could even open the first Gate. Yet, he knew he couldn’t sustain opening the Second Gate for more than a few minutes. It was too risky. He quickly stomped on the ground and as expected, it gave way. He fell into a large empty room. By cracking, the ground had produced a massive cloud of dust and he started sneezing. He always hated dust. He immediately let the Second Gate close itself."

OK. I still don't know much about this gate stuff, but apparently he can't open the second one for long.
Then he (a) stomps through the floor.
Then he (b) sneezes.

Why does it seem that (a) and (b) are similarly important and noticeable? You are not making him stomping through the floor interesting. I think this is a missed opportunity.




“My name is Fra. And I am grand-priest in this temple dedicated to Ammonra. But who I am is of no matter. What matters is that you desecrated this place tonight and came to steal what Emperor Amokh himself gave us for safekeeping many generations ago.”
“Oh. Ammonra is it? He died eons ago. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind my little adventure here tonight.”

This dialogue seems to be straight from an adventure serial (the stuff that inspired Indiana Jones). I think that, if you WROTE the whole piece like an adventure serial, it might make more sense as a whole. Think about it. Try reading some classic adventure literature like King Solomon's Mines.