Bleeding Moon

(Well, after 'True Hatred' failed, here I go again at a new start)
Current Chapters:

Bleeding Moon



Prologue:

The rain fell from the grayed sky, exploding as it hit the ground. There were three figures outside on the stormy morning, each one cloaked. They were on a gravel mountain, in the middle of it. There was a small road that spiraled up the mountain, and they stood on it.

"I have not any understanding as to why Jai hasn't been awakened." said the first figure with a strong accent that nobody could identify. The voice was female and smooth.

"Perhaps, Ilander, maybe Jai has been awakened, but it takes time for things like this. In two days, things should start to take effect." came another voice from the second figure. The voice was scratchy and that of a male, with no accent other than the one of the land itself.

The third figure stayed silent. The cloaked person started going down the mountain, without a word, puzzling Ilander and Qi. Qi was the second figure, Ilander the first, and both watched as their partner, Kitj left. Or at least, they thought it was Kitj.

"Where are you going?" asked Ilander, her accent still strong but her voice strict and saying 'Tell me now.' Kitj started to walk faster, and then broke into a full run.

"GET HIM!!" yelled Qi, but Ilander was already chasing after the person who posed as Kitj. The stranger ran faster, but soon found something quite eerie. The ground was moving. EvenIlander stopped and hesitated, as did Qi. The gray of the clouds turned into an inky black and a bolt of red lightning shot out and hit the ground, though there was no sound. No thunder. The stranger ran faster than ever now, but stumbled every now and then as the ground seemed to be getting....goopy? He found it harder to run, and soon screamed in horror as his feet began to sink into the murky goop that was once gravel. Soon, the poor person found he couldn't move. He was knee deep and the goop was to thick to get through. Ilander was in the same predicament. Ilander looked up the spiral, trying to glimpse Qi, though there was no sight of him. There were screams, from houses and other places that even could be heard on the mountain. Children. Adults. Everyone. The houses were sinking in what used to be sturdy ground, two lovers that snuck out early to meet were now sinking in what used to be grass. The inky black let out another red bolt of lightning, and then a second one. Ilander screamed once more, but it was no use. Finally, she knew she had to use magic. She only knew three spells:

"Kajin Loop"
This spell would let her communicate with someone in the past. She could only loop back two days and the message could only be ten seconds long, but that'd be enough time to stop this from happening. Back at the Saz Ruins, X must've switched the 'Teardrop Stone' with the psuedo stone. Hence, Jai wasn't awakened, and the world met it's end as it was right now.
"Asunave Derfak"
This spell would allow her to read minds. That wouldn't do good here, but in the past, it'd be a fabulous ability.
"Jisteran"
This final spell that she knew allowed her to see into the future, one day in the future at the exact time it was used. Why didn't she use it the day before? That way, she'd have known about the psuedo switch and that this was going to happen. The journey to get the three stones...."Stone of Blood," "Teardrop Stone," and "Cursed Stone" took four days...two days earlier, they had the 'Stone of Blood.' They were about to invade X's hideout to get the 'Cursed Stone.' X was a evil warlock who had gotten the stone first. The journey to get the 'Cursed Stone' was awful.

Ilander was up to her neck now. Would it do any good to cast the 'Kajin Loop?' If it worked, then why was she here today? Taking a deep breath, she mumbled a few words as the goop got to her chin. Ten seconds for the message...ten seconds to stop the end of the world...

Chapter One: The Warning
Two days before the end of the world...
Qi fingered the ruby stone, like a child. Across it's left side as a long streak of white from when X sliced at Qi, and he used the stone to block the magical blade. Though the blade could cut through any material like butter, it couldn't cut through the legendary stones. Instead, X's blade broke though the gash in the stone was deep.

"QI!!" came a female voice. Qi turned around and saw Ilander, looking pretty as ever. They weren't wearing the drab cloaks at the time, hence Ilander's full beauty was exposed. She had long, blonde hair and sparkling sapphire eyes. Her hot pink top looked good with the navy-violet jeans she was wearing. Around her neck was a crystal necklace, and at the front of it, where the two ends would meet, was a pendant of a pegasus. Her usual smile though was replaced with a serious look, though her eyes twinkled with excitement.
"I think I found out where X's lair is!!"

"You mean we. WE found out." came another voice. A smooth voice, though without Ilander's accent. Kintj stood there, with his chestnut hair and lovely hazel eyes. His lips were curved upwards in what seemed to be a hint of a smile, and he wore his white long-sleeve with the red blotch on the left sleeve, and a pair of gray sweat-pants. The red blotch had come from X's attack while trying to get the Stone of Blood. Kintj had died for a few seconds, but his heart slowly began to beat again after huge energies were unleased after X's sword collided with the stone. All that was left of that blinding flash of light that saved Kintj was a great white gash across the side of the stone. Qi grinned at the news of X's hideout having been located and asked where it was eagerly. Before Ilander and Kintj could answer, there was another flash of light, similiar to the one from the sword's impact. The flash cooled down and the three were surprised at the visitor. It was Ilander. Except this Ilander was missing an eye, missing her right arm, and missing her former beauty. The two Ilander's stared at each other for half a second, but then the one that appeared started to blab about a horrific future....and that they had failed. The 'Teardrop Stone' would never be obtained and the world would meet it's end.

Apparently, the 'Teardrop Stone' was switched with the psuedo at the Saz Ruins.
"What are the Saz Ruins?" Kintj had asked, but Ilander 2 kept babbling about the horrific fate they were to meet. When the message finished, Ilander 2 vanished in that same flash of light. The Ilander of that time was in shock. As was Qi, and so was Kintj. None of them spoke a word, all uneasy.

TO BE CONTINUED
No, Chapter One hasn't ended yet.

TO BE CONTINUED
No, Chapter One hasn't ended yet.

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To begin with, although it does feel like an alright place to end the chapter, I'll just direct your attention to this fanfic rule:

Do not post unfinished work.
If your chapter is not finished, then there is no need to post it. Use a word processing program to type your fic in so you can have all the time to work on it. An unfinished chapter/story will result in a closed thread.

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So just keep that in mind - take your time with posting it all!

On that note, I do feel that the story was a bit rushed here and there - there are some things a spell/grammar check should have picked and a proof-reading would improve your writing too before posting.

Plot-wise the story is rather intriguing so far - interesting concept with the travel-back-in-time thing to warn herself (and others) they are doomed - although it seems she wasn't actually that helpful about doing that. XD I do wonder if they will do anything different this time around, and I'm also wondering about the stones themselves, and why moving them and all has such effects - maybe consider establishing that a bit more later on (if not here) is something to consider.

Onto more specifics:

The rain fell from the grayed sky, exploding as it hit the ground.
There were three figures outside on the stormy morning, each one cloaked.
They were on a gravel mountain, in the middle of it.
There was a small road that spiraled up the mountain, and they stood on it.

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I separated these lines to show that sometimes you go with sentences that are too similar in length to each other - what that does is make the paragraph's pacing sound repetitive and the writing more like a detailed list of events rather than a story, so try to mix it up with short and long sentences. For instance, here you could merge two of the sentences together which'd fix that issue.

"I have not any understanding as to why Jai hasn't been awakened." said the first figure with a strong accent that nobody could identify.

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I made the full stop there red + in bold because it should rather be a comma than a full stop. The reason for that is that the part following the dialogue (...said the first....could identify) isn't a sentence by itself but is one sentence with the dialogue (after all it is talking about who said that and how, etc), so if you ignore the quotation marks you shouldn't have a full stop in the middle of a sentence - hence a comma is what should be used there. (Note that only applies to full stops in dialogue, stuff like ! or ? can be used). E.g.:

"Hello," said the man.
"Hello!" shouted the man.
"Hello?" questioned the confused woman.

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are legitimate sentences there, but a full stop would not work there, unless for instance:

"Goodbye." The man then ran off screaming.

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the part following the dialogue is a separate sentence, like so. There are other instances of incorrect punctuation usage with dialogue - simple enough istake but do go through to catch it all.

"Where are you going?" asked Ilander, her accent still strong but her voice strict and saying 'Tell me now.'

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There shouldn't be a space between the ' and 'tell', and nor should 'Tell' be capitalised there, I feel, as it's still part of the sentence rather than its own sentence.

Or at least, they thought it was Kitj.

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I did feel that maybe this fact could have been left out - written like this, it gives away any mystery or possible plot twists you could have used later on instead, and as-is it is also written in a sort of 4th-wall-breakage manner in that it's you the narrator telling us directly that it's not him, which can be a bit jarring and bring us out of the story.

EvenIlander stopped and hesitated, as did Qi.

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As mentioned with the proofreading - make sure to go over your work before posting with a read-over (or get a Beta Reader) and run a spell/grammar check too as that'd catch stuff like forgetting to have a space between words like so.

He was knee deep and the goop was to thick to get through

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too over to.

There were screams, from houses and other places that even could be heard on the mountain. Children. Adults. Everyone. The houses were sinking in what used to be sturdy ground, two lovers that snuck out early to meet were now sinking in what used to be grass.

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Here I felt the story was a bit too rushed in places because suddenly we know that the mountain had houses on it, but when I first read about the mountain I had thought it was an uninhibited one, so it came as a surprise to me to read that there were houses here. Take the time to establish the setting and facts some more earlier on, I suggest.

With more specific stuff in that last quote, the comma after 'screams' isn't required so that can be taken out (commas should only be in separating objects in a list or consecutive adjectives or before a name/nickname [e.g. 'Hello, James'] or before one of the 'fanboys' [for and nor but or yet so]), and the 'Children. Adults. Everyone.' struck me as odd... Furthermore, the last sentence there is a run-on sentence - it talks about houses sinking and then suddenly uses two 'lovers' as an example of something else that is sinking - I feel the two parts of that sentence could be separated into different sentences around the 'ground, two' bit ('...be sturdy ground. Two lovers that had snuck out....'), although I again feel the addition of the latter strikes me as odd, as the 'two lovers' aren't mentioned anywhere else nor add much to the story.

Across it's left side as a long streak of white from when X sliced at Qi, and he used the stone to block the magical blade.

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its over it's (the latter meaning it is so 'across it is left side' doesn't fit. The sentence here also sounds odd and as a result I'm not really sure what you are trying to tell us here - it's rather confusing, and proof-reading to make sure the sentences sound all right would fix that.

All in all it's an all right beginning - it could just use some expansion here to establish some factors of the story better and some editing so all the sentences make sense, as well as removing the small simple mistakes. You seem to have a neat plot set up and the description is certainly decent too as-is - certainly there's potential with this tale, so good luck with the rest of it!

All right, bobandbill already mention the grammar mistakes and some rushed writing problems here, but I'll try my best to give my thoughts on this story.

First off, I'll have to agree with bobandbill that the structure/length of most sentences seems to be the same and repetitive. Try your best to mix short and long sentences if you can. It takes practice to able to have your sentence be of different lengths. Heck, I still have that problem time to time even after writing for five years because bobandbill beta my fics and he would tell me my sentences are of same length. XD

One thing I feel you could have done better is chose some stronger words in the story. Here's an example:

The stranger ran faster than ever now, but stumbled every now and then as the ground seemed to be getting....goopy? He found it harder to run, and soon screamed in horror as his feet began to sink into the murky goop that was once gravel.

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Hm, goopy sounds less professional and silly in my opinion. Perhaps use something like "mud" or "soft" instead? That way, you still get the idea across (ground changing to something soft) without the sentence sounding silly. I actually noticed you used "goopy" a lot in the story,

In short, which words you use can make a difference. You want your writing to sound as professional as possible . One way to do this is read a loud and determine if some of the words sounded silly in a sentence you're trying to put some emotion in it. If that's the case, you'll have to change a couple words or change the whole sentence altogether. Don't worry too much trying to get this right the first time. That too I still need to practice, haha.

One other thing I find off is the mention of Ilander only knowing three spells and the descriptions of each one. I feel you could have reveal those three spells gradually in the story and surprise the readers that way instead of "info dumping."

Okay, now review for Chapter One (that's been posted so far):

Two days before the end of the world...

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I feel that's too much telling saying "two days before the end of the world" straight out. You could have established the setting here, like for instance describe how the world was peaceful and such two days before.

"QI!!" came a female voice. Qi turned around and saw Ilander, looking pretty as ever. They weren't wearing the drab cloaks at the time, hence Ilander's full beauty was exposed. She had long, blonde hair and sparkling sapphire eyes. Her hot pink top looked good with the navy-violet jeans she was wearing. Around her neck was a crystal necklace, and at the front of it, where the two ends would meet, was a pendant of a pegasus. Her usual smile though was replaced with a serious look, though her eyes twinkled with excitement.

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This is one of my pet peeves, so sorry if I went overboard here. XD; I feel you're give too much bias description of Iander. For instance, "Ilander's full beauty was exposed" and "Her hot pink top looked good with the navy-violet jeans she was wearing." It's like you want us to believe Ilander is the most prettiest being ever, which I don't recommend doing because some readers might think the character is a Mary Sue (Mary Sues are not exactly due to them being very pretty and instead having them get things their way and other stuff, but I won't explain over that unless you want me to in private). It's fine if this scene is in the POV of Qi, but so far it's hard (for me, at least) to tell if you're doing that.

Apparently, the 'Teardrop Stone' was switched with the psuedo at the Saz Ruins.

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I feel that part there seems misplaced in the narration. Maybe have the characters have a short discussion that the Teardrop Stone is somewhere else?

"What are the Saz Ruins?" Kintj had asked, but Ilander 2 kept babbling about the horrific fate they were to meet. When the message finished, Ilander 2 vanished in that same flash of light. The Ilander of that time was in shock. As was Qi, and so was Kintj. None of them spoke a word, all uneasy.

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Ilander 2 also sounds unprofessional to me. I recommend coming up with different ways to describe the second Illander, like "clone", "twin", etc.

Overall so far, I admit I was totally confused what's going on until bobandbill mentioned about this having some time-traveling stuff going on. I can tell there are some fantasy stuff going on and I haven't read stories of that genre in a while, so this shall be interesting. Also, I love time traveling stories, so I can't wait to see where the rest of the story goes.