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This is the introduction to my story for Berka's contest, take a look and let me know what you think.  I have decided to play around with the second person narration a bit, which will be apparent in the story itself after this introduction.

 

The howls of beasts swell within the cold, bitter, wind.  The moon mourning those swept up in this darkness, this night.  As the snow falls upon the ground, it blankets everything within view.  Standing from the mountain top, as far as ones vision goes, the desolation of winter is carried upon the land. 

More than that, beasts, ghouls, and otherwise unearthly abominations haunt these lands.  There is but one place free of them, one place of respite…for now.

Underneath an alcove, a single camp fire gives light, and warmth to the darkness.  Weary hands being held over the flames, his shawl protects him from the things the fire cannot.  He stares blankly into the fire, his dark blonde hair covered by the hood of his shawl, and his beard growing far out of control.  The dark spots around his bag stricken eyes show dozens of untold horrors.  In his eyes show life…and pain.

On each side of him, lays a hairy, deformed, wretched beast.  Each corpse riddled with arrows, and sprawled onto the ground, bestial tongues lolling from their gaping mouths.

This man's eyes dart upwards, face twisting slightly in disgust.  His expression extenuates the scar crossing the right side of his lip. 

Finally, he is here.  The one he had been waiting for all this time.  The snow crunches beneath his step, the lumbering figure materializing out of the shadows.  The thick pelt of the creature before him contrasting against the light of the fire, the cold breath of death spilling from its lungs.  The beast sits down, his eyes almost glowing from the light, and the strange antlers growing upwards into the night sky.

This beast makes no attempts or moves towards the man in front of it, seeming to be content with just sitting and waiting for now.  They each stare, deep thoughts dwelling within.

"It's been a long night," the human says, "hasn't it…Arnolt."

He says the name almost as if the mere sound would make him retch and vomit, his eyes now cold staring into the crazed eyes of the monster in front of him.

"Yes…Hauke," the beast says, "it has been a long night."

The voice comes out, deep and husky, but slow as if it struggles to remember a life time of words and language.  Those inhuman eyes blankly staring at the man before him, the last vestiges of what once was seeping from him.

"You're probably wondering why I asked you to come here," he gestures to the two dead beasts, "and not alone as I had asked."

"I did…but they want to Gather by the Fire," Arnolt says, "they needed, what you…had."

"I suppose, I do owe you one last kindness my old friend," Hauke says, "after all, we did struggle together.  I'm not sure you even remember any of it."

"I know…all of it," the beast says while glancing to the fire, before looking to the man in front of him.

"Well, good," Hauke says, "make yourself comfortable, because it will take a while.  I think you at least deserve to see how things unfolded, as I have seen it…"

First, the disclaimers: this is my review. It is likely not like anyone else’s. In fact, you probably couldn’t find anyone else who completely agrees with what I write here. But it’s my opinion. I’m also writing this as I read through this for the first time. These are my first impressions as I read it. I’m not saying they’re right, just what I’m thinking. This is written in the spirit of helping you see how others see your story and to perhaps give you ideas for improvement, and not to be mean or anything else. Please don’t take it personally. This review is likely worth exactly what you paid for it. Finally, you did ask.

Here we go:

The howls are “within” the wind? To me, that makes it sound like the howls are captured by the wind and can only be heard if you’re inside the wind. The howls can swell, and the wind can blow, but I think the way you’ve combined those makes something not work quite right. The next sentence is a fragment, there is no verb. And “moon mourning?” That’s kind of alliteration taken to the extreme, isn’t it? I dunno here. I can get the idea of the moon mourning, but I don’t think I’d ever place those two words directly adjacent to one another. The snow sentence is okay, but again, the order and choice of words just feels a bit off. And that last sentence? I don’t even know what’s going on there. How do you stand FROM a mountain top? How is winter desolation? How is desolation CARRIED on the land?

The next paragraph seems fine…but then we get to paragraph three. You mention that the camp fire is “underneath an alcove.” An alcove is “a recess, typically in the wall of a room or of a garden.” Therefore, your fire is apparently underground, crushed underneath stone, but happily burning away. Is the alcove made of coal? Next, though, I can clearly see the monster-feel of this writing – because the monster is grilling someone’s chopped off hands over the burning underground coal fire. At least that’s what I see when I read that hands are being held over the flames. I guess it could be lovers holding hands, too, but the “over the flames” makes me think there be some grillin’ going on. The rest of that sentence isn’t too bad. The first “his” is jarring because the very first time you identify this character, you do it by referring to his shawl, rather than the fact that there’s even a figure hunched over the flames.

In the beast paragraph, it feels like the beasts died as I was reading. It started out with two beasts lying next to him, but in the next sentence they’re corpses. Maybe they should be identified as dead when you first introduce them? Did he just fart? I don’t know what’s going on. You were talking about the beasts, giving lots of descriptions about the beasts, but then suddenly he looks up, disgusted. Who doesn’t like the smell of their own farts?

Okay, getting into the next paragraph we’ll just let the confusion rein. We have this guy, first described with “his shawl,” then he’s “this man,” but now “he is here.” Now I’d assume that the “he” in the last bit is someone else, but in the next sentence there’s another “he” that doesn’t appear to be. Then there’s someone walking in the snow, and that’s “his.” And since the farting guy just looked up, it looks like there’s now three guys, all only identified as “he:” the shawl guy, the guy in the sky that shawl guy was waiting for, and now some new guy that’s walking in the snow outside the underground coal-fired alcove. But that’s okay because now the corpse is alive what with its thick pelt and “the beast sits down.” And I don’t even know whose lungs we’re talking about now, it almost seems like it is the arrow-riddled corpse beast. But hey, someone (one of the three he characters, one of the maybe-alive beasts, or the new beast that just walked in) has “strange” antlers. Why are antlers strange? Are you an antler-phobe?

Oh wait, there’s a beast and a man. Is this the beast on the left or the right side? I mean, I guess it’s the beast that just walked into the hidden alcove, but honestly I didn’t see that without re-reading a bit. Hey look, there’s a human! This would have made a lot more sense if you managed to work that into his description before you even got to the shawl. By the way, what is “cold staring?” Is that different from “hot staring?” or even “warm staring?”

So now it appears the beast walked up, took a nice seat that was prepared for him in the barc-a-lounger by the fire, but he’s so much of a beast that he’s struggling to make words… but the very first word he utters is a contraction. Of course, the rest of the sentence sounds like a beast because it doesn’t make much sense. If you take out the description of the words, he said, “You’re probably wondering why I asked you to come here and not alone as I had asked.” What? Did he ask him to come here at all? Did he ask him to come not alone? Did he come alone, but not as he asked because there’s dead things on the ground? Yeah, I have no idea who asked what at this point.

Why is “Gather by the Fire” capitalized? Is that a place? And why would the dead monsters want to gather by the fire if instead they really wanted what the other beast had? Maybe they wanted to sing campfire songs before taking something from the beast?

It ends with the beast saying he “know[s] all of it,” and then the human says, “Tough crap, buddy, this is a damn exposition and I’m going to explain it all to you again whether you like it or not because I need the readers to know it too.” Well, perhaps I paraphrased a bit, but that’s pretty much what I read there.

As mentioned, these are just my random impressions as I read through it for the first time. Hope this helps!

I mean, all I really got is that the dialogue and character descriptions could use some tweaking, which I'll take into consideration.  But the rest...is just, giving me a damn head ache really.

Thanks for the review anyway though.

Antlers? For some reason, that made me picture some kinda weird jackalope-wherewolf hybrid. Other than that, this seems like a Brothers Grimm/Dark Fantasy thingy. Seems interesting. I'd click to see the next page.

Maybe it's a wendigo!

Oh yeah, that makes a lot more sense that what I thought. lol.

As Ogre pointed out, there is some tweaking to do (i.e. the first "his"), but since he's already been very thorough I'll stick with commenting the content.

The concept is interesting and the atmosphere is vivid, you also haven't chosen a common type of monster although of course from this introduction we know very little of the characters and story. I'm curious about what "Gather by the Fire" means, but I'm sure you'll explain it sooner or later. Conclusion: I want to read more of this story.

Overall it looks good, I can't wait to read the rest ^_^ I'd reccommend going through and deleting some unnecessay commas though.

Examples:

"Cold, bitter wind"

"gives light and warmth"

"his shawl and his beard"

"on each side of him lays"

"arrows and sprawled to the ground"

"they needed what you... had"

"I suppose I do owe you"

"to the fire before looking"

"comfortable because it will take awhile"


Some of these are optional commas that could be left in, but I think the scentence flow would be better without them. Some just don't belong there. There are a couple of other small errors throughout as well. A lot of scentences don't have a clear subject. Ad even if they do, the suject doesn't actually perform an action. You have verbs there, but at least one of them per sentence needs to be in its active form.

For example:

" The moon mourning those swept up in this darkness, this night. "- This isn't actuallly a complete scentence. "Mourning" is an action, but the present-tense language you are using requires it to be phrased differently. You should use "The moon is mourning" or "The moon mourns" (personaly I'd go with the second.) The scentence after that is structured just fine, so I'd use that as an example.

"Weary hands being held over the flames, his shawl protects him..."- This one is a bit trickier. You've got two subjects, only one of which performs an action. The shawl "protects", but the hands once again don't have a complete phrase. "Weary hands are held" would work better, but I'd honestly shift it around just to make the phrasing less awkward. For example: "As his weary hands hovered over the flames, his shawl protected him..."

The following examples all have a similar issue, but it's not hard to fix. Just changing one word can shift the phrasing.

"Each corpse riddled with arrows" should be "each corpse is riddled with arrows"

"thick pelt of the creature before him contrasting against the light of the fire" should be "thick pelt of the creature before him contrasted against the light of the fire"

"blankly staring" should be "blankly stared"

It seems like you're experimenting with passive voice, which is great! Just make sure you keep your verbs in the right tense ^_^

I only saw one punctuation error:

"as far as ones vision goes" should be "as far as one's vison goes"

A lot of this is super nitpicky, but I hope it helps! Ogre went over the conceptual stuff, so I'm just sticking to individual errors. The story itself looks really interesting so far. Can't wait to go up against you in the contest!

Maybe it's a wendigo!