Prologue/

The dead Queen stepped through to the last level of Hell. It was open blackness in every direction, the only light emanated from her own person. As she walked she noticed her foot steps left ripples like water in the tar blackness underfoot. The dead Queen crouched slightly, putting one foot in front of the other tentatively into the darkness. As she walked on the blackness expanded, growing fuller, pulling her, sucking her further forward. Her gliding steps stopped suddenly as she noticed a red light glowing through the depth less black underneath.

The Queen stopped as the glowing red light formed underneath just ahead of her, slowly it rose, dripping, forming into a massive crimson figure up in front of her. Its body was shaped as a woman with large bosoms. Six hands twisted out from its small waist and curving hips. It's adornments were all golden inlaid jewelry, large chunky necklaces, delicate swirling bracelets, and one huge gold filigreed crown wrapping about its head and fanning out behind it like a fake halo. On the right upper hand it held a shinning green mirror encrusted around the rim with rubes, the lower hand a curved long sword, the pommel shaped in the form of a goats head. The bottom most right hand a wooden goblet. On the left side her upper hand held a scythe all black even the blade. In the middle hand a curved mountain goat horn flask, and the last left hand held nothing. Its head rose up, it looked like it could have belonged to a beautiful woman, or a very feminine man. The slanted huge eyes opened showing yellow glowing orbs. When the Queen heard it speak the full red mouth did not move, the words echoed around her sounding like ten voices at once from all directions,

“You have reached the last level of Hell...”

The queen nodded, “It has taken much time...Demoness.”

“You have gained from your struggle, many boons you carry from the many of my demon beasts you have slain....but you also have lost...I see you are very much scarred, I see you have no eyes, no heart, and not in the sense of coldness.” The Queen looked down at her chest to the gaping hole where her heart should have been pumping, and touched where her left eye once had been. She now wore in her right socket a cursed golden eye carved with symbols so that she could still see. Better now than her two eyes had before. “It was torn out by Vescaries, before I severed his horns.” as the dead Queen finished the sentence the Demoness's orb eyes swerved down looking strait into hers.

“... only one before you has ever in all the ages gotten to my realm, what boon do you ask of me now that you have reached me? Eternal life? One of my trinkets of power? My place at the head of the underworld?”

“I have come seeking what is mine.” The dead Queen stated coldly, grasping the hilt of one of her swords swinging around her hips.

“I had thought you might. I will need one more thing from you to reach this goal.” The dead Queen paused contemplating.

“...I have nothing that you would not already have, or in your power to get, unless you want my swords. Which you will not get. What else do I have to offer?”

“Truth.” The voices rang out as if asking for nothing more than a simple gold piece.

“Truth?" the queen's voice echoed questionably, "As in a Riddle?”

“I wish to know your past.” the Queen paused again, feeling uncertain.

“...Why would that be worth anything?”

“Entertain me.” with that the Demoness waved her free hand, a leather bound book floated up from the liquid floor along with an eloquent feather pen. A delicate velvet red pillow also came up, but beside the Queen, “You know, I could rip you apart.” she uttered taking a seat on the pillow crossing her legs. The Demoness said nothing, the Queen relented. “I have no childhood that I feel I could call mine own...”

“There are many legends of how you came to be I wish the the simple truth, although many times the truth is harder to believe than lies.”

Reviews

[Anthony Hart-Jones]

I have to admit that this is a bit of a mixed bag.

It's well-written overall, with some good imagery and use of language, but feels cluttered at times. The first two paragraphs are a little hard to wade through, being both too long and not really flowing quite as well as the dialogue, which is much easier on the reader.

I do notice some poor word choices, but only one or two. For example, we have the word 'filigreed' at one point, which matches the style of the piece, following the less-elegant 'chunky' in the same sentence. A good thesaurus (I use thesaurus.com) would help there, so it's not insurmountable.

Building on TLK's quote about adjectives, I'd say that the red figure could be considered a little over-described. There is actually surprisingly little action for the amount of description, which almost tempts to the reader to 'skip to the good bits' and miss out on some well-written description.

My advice would be to take your time describing the scene, especially the events, but to let the reader infer more about the figure rather than being drowned in adjectives. Where are we? What does Hell smell like and feel like? Don't rush to introduce the six-armed woman, set the scene first and then drive the scene forward with the dialogue once we know where we stand...

As I said, it's well-written. It just needs some work to bring out its strengths, perhaps a little proof-reading too. You have the spark, so you just need to refine the craft of writing a little and this story could really be something special.

[TLK]

The first paragraph needs to be broken up, it is simply too long to read comfortably. To do this, you will need to prioritise what is most important. Currently, it seems to be the Queen walking through blackness. Now, what you say later is much more interesting -- tentative, ripples, the blackness expanding. If you see that this imagery is much more powerful too, then make it the subject of the action in the first sentence. Start with the interesting part, something like "the expanding blackness of Hell sucked her further forward". That is what you are trying to say, but you leave it too late.

When you establish the importance of this image, you will find you have a very short first paragraph that explains visually what is happening.

The crimson figure description will be its own paragraph. Here you are going overboard on adjectives and adverbs, which is a common stylistic tick. You'll find lots of advice online about why and how to excise such words:
http://wendypalmer.com.au/2008/04/24/writing-rules-misapplied-avoid-adjectives-and-adverbs/
http://www.screenwrightist.com/avoid-writing-adverbs-adjectives
http://www.flavorwire.com/125609/10-authors-against-adjectives

Most concise on this is Stephen King: "The road to hell is paved with adjectives". Just imagine if he'd said "The long tarmac road to hot fiery hell is lovingly paved with sinuous gasping adjectives".