[jamingjen13]

This is my first time posting a story so go easy on me ok. Though critisisim is welcomed.

Chapter 1: The fire raisers

Capricorn stood at the edge of the forest and watched the small farm like a predator watching its prey.
The farmer had again refused his daughter to him, even though he had made it obvious that his men would burn his farm to the ground if he did. The fool was as stubborn as an old mule and now he would face the consequences.

"Everything’s ready, sir," Basta said, approaching Capricorn.
He turned to the skinny fifteen year-old and nodded. "Be sure to start the fire on the side of the house farthest from the girl's room," He said, turning his attention back to the house. "I still plan on making her one of my maids."

"Yes sir," Basta ran back to the house, hardly making a sound. The black jackets were already beginning to light the first few torches. Firefox, Capricorn's deputy, distributed the torches to the men. Capricorn gave the signal and the men began throwing the torches on top of the roof, and one man even managed to get his torch to break through one of the windows. The men laughed maliciously as screams of shock and fear came from inside the house. Flatnose, who was responsible for getting the girl out, took the screams as his cue to run in. It didn't take long for the miniature giant to run in and get the girl. He soon came out with the sobbing and screaming girl slung over his broad shoulder. Flatnose carried her over to where Capricorn stood and set her down on the ground in front of his feet.

"You monster! You fire raiser!" The girl screamed at Capricorn. "How! How could you do this!?" Capricorn studied the girl. She hadn’t been harmed by the fire at all. She was of course very beautiful, she had a hourglass figure with long blonde hair framing her green eyes.
"I could have done worse, my dear," Capricorn finally answered her. "I could have had the Shadow kill your family."

The girl shivered at the mention of Capricorn's monster and was about to reply when an agonized scream came from the house. Capricorn turned his head in the direction of the scream. He saw that one of his men had gotten both of his arms caught on fire and was now rolling around on the ground, desperately trying to put it out. Two other black jackets ran over to the man and tried to help put out the fire. He soon recognized the man as Basta because of his snow white shirt. Basta managed to put out the flames burning his arms with the help of the other two men.

"We need to clear out of here now," Capricorn said, turning his attention back to Flatnose. "This fire is getting out of hand." Flatnose bellowed the message that it was time to go, which the men gladly did because the fire had begun to spread to everything surrounding the house. When the fire raisers were a safe distance from the fire, they stopped to rest for a while. It was during this time that Capricorn tried to see how exactly the fire had gotten out of hand and if there was any way to prevent it from happening again.
"It was just too much for us to control, sir." That was the answer Firefox had given him when asked.

"Well, is there any way you can keep it under control in the future?"

Firefox thought for a moment before answering. "Well, we can't, but there is someone who can."

Capricorn frowned skeptically. "Oh really? Who?"

"A fire eater. Some people call him the fire-dancer. They say he can talk to it and make it do whatever he wants. He's almost never gotten burned."

Capricorn considered it for a moment. It sounded pretty far-fetched to him but he couldn't risk anything like this happening again. He decided to send a few of his men after the fire eater. "What is this fire eater's name?"

"Dustfinger."

This post has been edited by jamingjen13: 14 April 2008 - 03:54 PM

[China Oolong]

Hey, keep going with this, I saw quite a few spelling and grammar errors, but they were minor.

[Kari]

I quite like it. Spotted some grammar/spelling errors. Other than that, do continue!

[jamingjen13]

Thank you so very much for the comments, I'm glad you liked it. Would anyone happen know how to save something before you've posted it? I had to rewrite that first paragraph where Capricorn watches the house three times because I didn't have time to finish the chapter before having to get off of the computer. As for the grammer errors, I finished and posted two minutes before I had to go to bed so I didn'nt have time to check for errors. The next chapter will most likely be posted sometime this weekend.

[China Oolong]

Oh, goody! I'll be around for that

[jamingjen13]

I'm sorry I didn't update when I said I would I'v just been busy. I won't be able to update till tomorrow.

[China Oolong]

It's alright.
I don't know how to save it
PS: Do you write it from this site, or do you use Microsoft Word?

[jamingjen13]

Okay it's a few days late but here it is.

Chapter 2 The Fire-Dancer

The crowd stood back at awe and fear of the fire-eaters's tricks. He blew fire from his causing the crowd to cheer and back up even further. Then he began juggling torches, slowly at first , but then he sped up until you couldn't even tell the torches apart. For his final trick he caused fiery flowers to bloom and made them grow bigger, they grew so big that they finally exploded and sparks rained down from the sky. The fire-dancer, as everyone called him, bowed while people cheered and threw coins. He was only fifteen and already a master of his craft. The young man, Dustfinger, collected his earnings and made his way out of Ombra back to the strolling player's camp.

The sun had already sunken low in the sky when Dustfinger came upon the brightly colored tents. His best friend the Black Prince, king of the strolling plaers, was already ther sitting beside a small fire. They had been friends ever since they were orphaned at the age of eleven. The Black Prince was possibly one of the best Knife throwers on either side of the forest, he used these skills to protect the people he cared about the most. His three sisters and of course Dustfinger. "Hello Dustfinger,"the Black Prince said as he joined him by the fire. " how did your performances go?"he aked. " Pretty good and yours? Did the bear behave alright." His bear, whom he had freed from a very abusive master tended to growl and lash out at people in the past. The Black Pince simply chuckled though and said " Well he didn't scare everyone off, if that's what you mean."....To Be Continued.


Sorry I couldn't save it and I didn't want to have to keep rewriting the beginning, so i'm going to just post to post this part and update the rest sometime this week. By the way, yes I do write it on the website but from now on i'm going to write it on microsoft word so I can save. Peace out

This post has been edited by jamingjen13: 20 March 2008 - 02:15 PM

[China Oolong]

" And how did your performances go?" " Pretty goodand yours? Did the bear behave alright. His, whom he had freed from a very abusive master tended to growl and lash out at people in the past. The Black Pince simply chuckled though and said " Well he didn't scare everyone off, if that's what you mean."....To Be Continued.

Um... I really couldn't quite make out what it said over there.
Other than that, I liked it!

[jamingjen13]

Ummm.....yea. Sorry about that. I'll go ahead and fix it.The next part of chapter two should be up soon.

[China Oolong]

Yeah, now it's better. I get it.

[brisingr shurtugal]

Woah. No offense, but lots of people (including myself) don't really feel like reading a big block of text like this. Firstly, you'll want to put a blank line between each paragraph. If you want a "breaking point", like in Chapter 2, you could try some asterisks ***.

Secondly, whenever a new person starts talking, you're usually supposed to start a new paragraph. For example, instead of:

"I think my cookies are burning," said Joe. "Oh no! What will we do?" cried Bob. "I don't know," said Joe despairingly. "I've never made cookies before." "You could take them out of the oven," piped up Susie.

Try instead:

"I think my cookies are burning," said Joe.

"Oh no! What will we do?" cried Bob.

"I don't know," said Joe despairingly. "I've never made cookies before."

"You could take them out of the oven," piped up Susie.

It makes it much easier to read, and much less confusing. Try to fix that, and more people will want to read it! Which is good, right? Right.

Other than some grammar, it seemed pretty good. I just want to mention that maybe Flatnose wouldn't be named Flatnose yet, because he got his nose flattened when he got read out of Inkheart.

This post has been edited by brisingr shurtugal: 23 March 2008 - 03:31 PM

[jamingjen13]

Woah. No offense, but lots of people (including myself) don't really feel like reading a big block of text like this. Firstly, you'll want to put a blank line between each paragraph. If you want a "breaking point", like in Chapter 2, you could try some asterisks ***.

Secondly, whenever a new person starts talking, you're usually supposed to start a new paragraph. For example, instead of:

"I think my cookies are burning," said Joe. "Oh no! What will we do?" cried Bob. "I don't know," said Joe despairingly. "I've never made cookies before." "You could take them out of the oven," piped up Susie.

Try instead:

"I think my cookies are burning," said Joe.

"Oh no! What will we do?" cried Bob.

"I don't know," said Joe despairingly. "I've never made cookies before."

"You could take them out of the oven," piped up Susie.

It makes it much easier to read, and much less confusing. Try to fix that, and more people will want to read it! Which is good, right? Right.

Other than some grammar, it seemed pretty good. I just want to mention that maybe Flatnose wouldn't be named Flatnose yet, because he got his nose flattened when he got read out of Inkheart.

[/indent]Sorry about that I didn't think of that. To tell you the truth I just recently learned what paragraphs are for. I always assumed that Flatnose was his real name since they gave no mention of him having another name,but you do have a point,so i'll try it.

[indent]

Thak you for the advice,I'll go ahead and write in paragraphs from now on.

This post has been edited by jamingjen13: 23 March 2008 - 04:35 PM

[jamingjen13]

Chapter Two
The Fire-Dancer continued…
Dustfinger laughed along with his friend.

“That’s exactly what I mean, I’ll never forget the time he almost charged
Cloud-Dancer when he accidently hit him with that pole.”

At that particular moment, Cloud-Dancer and the Strong Man walked up
to the fire and sat down. “Well speak of the devil! The Prince and I were just talking
about the time his bear almost charged you, I’m sure you remember?”

“That’s not something I’ll be forgetting in a hurry,” he said, glancing
over at the bear.

“Alright, alright, enough with picking on my bear,” the Prince said, a note
of irritation in his voice. “Tell me how your time in Argenta was, the Adderhead’s
men didn’t give you any trouble did he?”

Cloud-Dancer and the Strong Man, along with a number of other strolling
players, had just recently returned from Argenta on the other side of the forest.The
ruler of Argent the Adderhead, or as some call the silver prince, despised the Motely
Folk because his wife had cheated on him with a minstrel. He would often hang them
and stick the heads of minstrels on the pikes of his castle.

“No,” the Strong Man answered, “we only went to towns close to the forest, so it wasn’t very eventful other than the usual, but we did happen to hear some interesting things about the fire-raisers.” Dustfinger and the Prince exchanged a curious look at this, the fire-raiser were feared by people on both sides of the forest, but it was the Motely Folk who feared them the most because they were their own masters and not protected by the law. If any of them were attacked the person responsible would go unpunished, this made them very easy targets. The fire-raisers were fully aware of this.

“We heard that they were burning a farm house near the wayless wood and that it got completely out of control, one of their own men burnt both arms right up to the shoulder,” the Strong Man paused for effect before continuing, “they also say this isn’t the first time one of their fires has gotten out of control, three of Capricorn’s men have died already.”

“Maybe if we’re lucky they’ll all just die off,” said Dustfinger.

Cloud-Dancer snorted. “As if we could be that lucky.”

“Mmm. Well you never know,” the Black Prince.

The Black Prince reached for his cup of mead while gazing into the fire, this proved to be a mistake. Instead of picking up the cup he knocked it over into the fire making it go out with a hiss of smoke. “ Oops, sorry, um… Dustfinger?” the Prince looked expectantly at Dustfinger. He immediately spoke a few words in fire and snapped his fingers, the flames didn’t come up instantly like they usually did, instead waiting a few seconds before coming to life. I’ll have to go into the wayelss woods tomorrow to get more fire-elf honey,thought Dustfinger. Though nobody else seemed to notice the extra few seconds it took the flames to pop up.

*******************

Dustfinger departed early the next morning, he had already said farwell to the Black Prince. “Be careful,” he said to him, “I know you can get around the woods well, but the fire-raisers like to lurk around in there too and they would just love to get their hands on a Strolling Player to torture.” Dustfinger just nodded and said he would be.

His ears could hear the movements of predators and other dangerous creatures. Why shouldn’t he be able to hear one of Capricorn’s blood hounds creeping up behind him?

Now he was making his way toward the clearing with the nymph’s pool. He had learned that the slime would protect against the fire-elves stings, so he waited near the edge of the pool for what seemed like hours when the nymphs finally surfaced. He had spoken to them in a soft voice, “I won’t hurt you, but I need you to rub my face and arms to protect me.” He also gave them some fish he caught to help persuade them.

After traveling the entire day he came upon the clearing a few hours before night. Everything was calm and tranquil, which is why he liked being in the woods, it was just so peaceful. It was Spring so all the leaves and flowers were green and colorful. The pool was in the center with a stream breaking off from it and heading north, the fire-elf nest was hanging from a tree a few feet away from it. Dustfinger silently approached the pool and knelt down over it like he had done so many times before. One by one the nymphs appeared, their rainbow scales glistening in the fading daylight. They already knew what to do, having done it so many times before. Dustfinger was soon covered in the same cool slime that coated their scales.

He slowly made his way to the fire-elves nest, humming quietly to make them drowsy. The fire-elves buzzed around him angrily until ome by one they fell asleep, dropping to the forest floor. Dustfinger only took a small piece of their fire honey, no bigger than his thumbnail, and walked away carefully to the edge of the clearing where he finally stopped humming.

Dustfinger gathered all the dry firewood he could find and put the small piece of fire honey in his mouth only burning his mouth slightly. Just as he was about to speak the few needed words in fire when he heard a twig snap close behind him and spun around. Dustfinger stared at the trees behind him in fear, the only weapons he had were ire and a knife he kept in his pack, if whatever made that noise was a wild cat neither of those would hold it off for long.

He relaxed when he saw it was only a snake making its way up a tree. Satisfied, he turned back to the wood and spoke the needed words in fire and snapped his fingers just like in the Strollong Players camp, this time however, the flames came up and greeted him instantly.

“Well, well, well, and just who do we have here?” Dustfinger stood up in surprise and jerked his head in the direction of the voice. What he saw made his body freeze in absolute terror-there were three black jackets only a few feet away from him.

The one in the front was about average height with dark red hair, the black jacket to his right had dark hair and a goatee. The one to his left was looked like he could be the size of a miniature giant, he also had a very flat nose that hardly stuck out at all and of course, they all carried swords at their belts.

Dustfinger cursed himself for being so careless as they moved closer. The red haired one drew his sword and pressed it to Dustfimger’s neck. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Dustfinger swallowed hard before answering, “D-Dustfinger.” He was confused by the looks of satisfaction on their faces. “Well Dustfinger, your coming with us,” the goateed one said with a thick accent in his voice. “Why?”

“Oh Capricorn has been just dying to meet you,” the flat nosed one answered.

Me!,he thought incredously. Up until now he had never had the misfortune to meet any of the black jackets.

The one with the accent pulled out a piece of rope and tied it around Dustfinger’s hands.

I should have been more careful, he thought, as the three men led him away to Capricorn.


Alright! Now were in business! A special thanks to Kari & Gotamon and Arthryn, for helping me. I have spring break this week, so the third chapter(no parts, just a full, beatufil chapter) should be up soon.

This post has been edited by jamingjen13: 07 April 2008 - 08:41 AM

[China Oolong]

Very well done! I really liked your chapter.
Hey, can I be your editor? I saw a few mistakes in spelling and stuff.