Blurb
Trapped, tortured, and at the mercy of a sadistic councilman, a young warrior must reclaim her stolen powers to survive. With every agonizing strike, she plots her escape — and vengeance. As her strength returns, she faces impossible odds: deadly guards, her own exhaustion, and a merciless enemy who will stop at nothing. In a world of fire and shadow, only cunning, courage, and unrelenting determination can turn the tide.Original (First 500)
Pain ripped through me as I heard the crack of the whip. Again and again and again. I could feel my blood oozing from my slashes, hot and wet. I fought against my restraints, my wrists burning as the metal cuffs chafed them. Then Mordecai, the traitor, came around to face me, and ask me questions. Once I didn’t know the answer to. So he tortured me.
After I burned the ice away from Aquaia, and passed out from exhaustion, I woke up to find myself here. And at the mercy of Mordecai Gregori, one of the most trusted council members.
I couldn’t escape using my powers either since, I guess, I burnt out. I can’t feel it anymore. It’s like I had no power to begin with. At least that’s how it was when I first got here but now I can feel creeping back in everyday.
And today I think I could use it. That I could escape. So I let Mordecai think I was still weak, that I didn’t have my power yet. But I was waiting for the perfect moment to get out of these chain, and kill him. Because he would help the enemy. And he had probably injured many more before me. The sadistic bastard.
So today, I was trying to escape. And when Mordecai came to caress me, as he usually does which was extremely weird and creepy, I grabbed his arm and let the fire free. He was ash on the wind in no time. Then I burned through the cuffs, the hot metal burning into me. I peels off the hot metal, and rubbed my raw, bleeding wrists, trying to soothe them. It didn’t help.
I took two daggers from the assortment of knives, and daggers. They were about the same size, and light enough for my weak body to wield. I hadn’t had a proper meal in weeks, maybe months. And I was so hungry. I was starving. I had been fed a small meal everyday. And it wasn’t enough to feed me, as well as keep my strength, my power. Finally I had enough strength to escape.
I went out the door, having to route around in Mordecai’s pocket for a key to unlock, the door. Gross. Once the door was unlocked I walked out to see that there were guards lining the hallways, and when they saw me all of them unsheathed their weapons, most of the weapons two handed swords. Not as efficient as my dagger, but that’s why I was able to keep my stamina and agility up. After that long time chained up all of the muscle had disappeared and it was a wonder that I could even walk or hold the daggers in my hand.
They attacked, and I slashed. I had killed maybe five guards, most of them different kinds of dark creatures. Then ones of them slashed my leg. I hissed in pain, and hurried to get this fight over with.
My Edit
The whip cracks. Pain rips through me — bright, blinding. Again. And again. I lose count of the slashes as my back and my mind go numb. Blood runs down my ribs, hot and slick. After weeks of this, I can’t believe I have any left. I barely have the strength to kneel. I barely have the will to draw another breath.
Silence.
Mordecai's boots echo across the concrete floor — slow, measured, familiar. The whip slithers behind him, leaving a dark smear across the stone. He steps in front of me.
“Tell me where to find the crystal,” Mordecai says, gently.
I lift my head. Tears blur him into a wavering shadow, but I refuse to wipe them away. The pain is nothing. He trained me to breathe past it, compartmentalize. But he never taught me what to do with betrayal. The monsters he trained me to fight were strangers.
“You promised,” I whisper. My lips split when I speak. I taste iron.
His jaw tightens, but his voice stays calm. “Tell me.”
Mordecai. When my power first sparked and burned the curtains from my bedroom walls, he was the one who knelt beside me and said it was a gift. When I scorched the training yard, he laughed and called it progress. He taught me how to breathe through flame. How to hold it. How to shape it. How to love it.
When I burned out my magic saving Aquaia — the harbor, the ships, every soul trapped behind the sea wall — I thought it had killed me. I remember the roar of the wave turning to steam. I remember the sky going white.
Weeks in this cell have reduced me to a quivering mass of torn tissue and broken promises. But within the ruin, something glows. Slow. Quiet. Patient. My magic has returned. It coils low in my chest like an ember waiting for breath.
Mordecai steps closer. He crouches in front of me, his coat brushing the blood-slick floor. For a moment, he just looks at me.
Then his hand rises. I flinch, chains biting into my wrists.
His fingers brush my cheek, pushing a grease-matted strand of hair behind my ear. The gesture is achingly familiar.
"You don't have to do this," I say, my voice hoarse and heartbroken.
His hand falls as he steps back, the tenderness disappearing from his gaze. He towers over me, looking at me through the eyes of a stranger. Of an enemy. "Yes, I do," he says. The regret in his voice makes me close my eyes.
I draw a breath. I open my eyes. I free the fire.
It explodes outward in a roar. Mordecai screams as his coat ignites, then his skin. The smell hits me — sweet and sickening. Flames crawl over him, devouring cloth, flesh, hair. His cries collapse into something smaller, thinner. The last bit of him are the eyes that once gleamed with pride at my first step, my first word, my first fireball.
Then they, too, are gone. Mordecai. Gone. I killed him. How — I can't deal with this right now. I can't — Somewhere beyond the cell, something shifts. The air itself seems to shudder. A distant howl answers another. The wards Mordecai wove into this prison flicker and fail.
They know. His creatures will not last long without him. But they will last long enough to tear me apart.
Heat spreads down my arms. The iron around my wrists glows red beneath my focus. I tighten my will. Metal softens. Locks melt. Chains crash to the floor. Without them holding me upright, I collapse onto my hands and knees. The wounds across my back awaken and shriek. I swallow the screams clawing up my throat.
A lifetime of training forces me to my feet. I stagger toward the door. My fingers leave streaks of blood along the wall. I press my palm to the lock and let the heat build until it runs like wax. The door swings open.
A shape hurtles through the smoke-choked corridor toward me — an oversized black cat with torn, leathery wings and green eyes split by vertical pupils. Its mouth opens too wide, rows of needle teeth glinting wetly.
It shrieks. I burn it to ash. The corridor fills with the smell of cinders.
And I step into it.(Original word count: ~499 → Edited: ~727)
Silence.
Mordecai's boots echo across the concrete floor — slow, measured, familiar. The whip slithers behind him, leaving a dark smear across the stone. He steps in front of me.
“Tell me where to find the crystal,” Mordecai says, gently.
I lift my head. Tears blur him into a wavering shadow, but I refuse to wipe them away. The pain is nothing. He trained me to breathe past it, compartmentalize. But he never taught me what to do with betrayal. The monsters he trained me to fight were strangers.
“You promised,” I whisper. My lips split when I speak. I taste iron.
His jaw tightens, but his voice stays calm. “Tell me.”
Mordecai. When my power first sparked and burned the curtains from my bedroom walls, he was the one who knelt beside me and said it was a gift. When I scorched the training yard, he laughed and called it progress. He taught me how to breathe through flame. How to hold it. How to shape it. How to love it.
When I burned out my magic saving Aquaia — the harbor, the ships, every soul trapped behind the sea wall — I thought it had killed me. I remember the roar of the wave turning to steam. I remember the sky going white.
Weeks in this cell have reduced me to a quivering mass of torn tissue and broken promises. But within the ruin, something glows. Slow. Quiet. Patient. My magic has returned. It coils low in my chest like an ember waiting for breath.
Mordecai steps closer. He crouches in front of me, his coat brushing the blood-slick floor. For a moment, he just looks at me.
Then his hand rises. I flinch, chains biting into my wrists.
His fingers brush my cheek, pushing a grease-matted strand of hair behind my ear. The gesture is achingly familiar.
"You don't have to do this," I say, my voice hoarse and heartbroken.
His hand falls as he steps back, the tenderness disappearing from his gaze. He towers over me, looking at me through the eyes of a stranger. Of an enemy. "Yes, I do," he says. The regret in his voice makes me close my eyes.
I draw a breath. I open my eyes. I free the fire.
It explodes outward in a roar. Mordecai screams as his coat ignites, then his skin. The smell hits me — sweet and sickening. Flames crawl over him, devouring cloth, flesh, hair. His cries collapse into something smaller, thinner. The last bit of him are the eyes that once gleamed with pride at my first step, my first word, my first fireball.
Then they, too, are gone. Mordecai. Gone. I killed him. How — I can't deal with this right now. I can't — Somewhere beyond the cell, something shifts. The air itself seems to shudder. A distant howl answers another. The wards Mordecai wove into this prison flicker and fail.
They know. His creatures will not last long without him. But they will last long enough to tear me apart.
Heat spreads down my arms. The iron around my wrists glows red beneath my focus. I tighten my will. Metal softens. Locks melt. Chains crash to the floor. Without them holding me upright, I collapse onto my hands and knees. The wounds across my back awaken and shriek. I swallow the screams clawing up my throat.
A lifetime of training forces me to my feet. I stagger toward the door. My fingers leave streaks of blood along the wall. I press my palm to the lock and let the heat build until it runs like wax. The door swings open.
A shape hurtles through the smoke-choked corridor toward me — an oversized black cat with torn, leathery wings and green eyes split by vertical pupils. Its mouth opens too wide, rows of needle teeth glinting wetly.
It shrieks. I burn it to ash. The corridor fills with the smell of cinders.
And I step into it.
(Original word count: ~499 → Edited: ~727)
Critique
The hook is strong: a captured and tortured hero trying to escape someone she once trusted. Opening with action and betrayal is always effective—you can’t get more dynamic than the MC being whipped in the first line.Setting
The setting for this scene is a prison cell. Pretty basic; metal bars, a locked door, and a cement floor. If you're going to open on an action scene, it's really smart choose a simple setting. It cuts down on scene description and allows the reader to focus on the two characters at the center of the scene.Characterization
Another nice get-out-of-jail-free card that you get from opening with an action scene is that the bare bones of characterization is all you need to focus on. We have Mordecai; a once-trusted council member turned traitor and torturer. And we have the MC whose body is weak from the torture, but her magic has returned enough for her to escape.
That said, the tell rather than show style of the original excerpt uses a lot of vague language like "the traitor", "the enemy", "the sadistic bastard". Mordecai showing up every day to caress her face is a great detail, but describing the event as "weird and creepy" is a little impersonal for a mortal enemy. As this scene is our intro and outro for this character, some sort of emotional stakes would be nice. In my edit, I made Mordecai more of a father/mentor figure, which helps anchor the action of the scene with emotion.
Also, while it's nice to have a badass MC who can withstand torture and scorch her enemies into ash, this is our intro to her as a person, as well, so a little bit of internalization goes a long way.
Conflict/Tension
The premise is full of conflict and tension, but the execution diffuses it. Aside from the strong opening lines, the excerpt shifts quickly into exposition, reading more like a summary than a scene. The nice thing about underwriting a scene is that you have a skeleton that you just need to flesh out into a living thing.
In my edit, I added dialogue, more immediate visuals and scents, and slowed down and focused on the connection between the MC and her torturer.
Final Thoughts
As written, the excerpt reads like a summary of a series of dramatic actions mixed with some backstory and world building. Aside from the whipping in the first sentence, there isn't any action to ground all of this information. There are benefits to telling instead of showing. For instance, in the original excerpt, the MC is able to lose all of her power, gain it all back, be tortured, kill her torturer, arm herself, and kill five guards. In my edit, it took over 700 words just for her to deal with Mordecai and kill one minion.
I would argue that when we're meeting a new character, especially a main character in a physical or emotional situation, it's okay to slow down and focus on that moment.
I also think that the premise of this scene — to establish a completely new world, an MC, the loss and gaining of the MC's power, torture and escape — that's a lot of pressure on the very first scene of the story. I did my best with my edit, but I would actually probably start a scene or two before this one. Have the MC wake up in a cell, introduce the betrayal and the torture slowly. That way, by the time the MC burns up Mordecai, there's a nice release of the tension that has been built up over several scenes. In this case, we're starting mid-tension and that ratchets up the level of difficulty in establishing emotional stakes in the story and personal investment in the action.
