AD2098

[Jack 'O the Shadows]

PROLOGUE

You don't expect your life to be torn apart on a clear, sunny day. You expect it to happen at night, with thunder crackling and wind buffeting you from all sides. But it was a clear day today, and maybe that was why no one saw it coming.

Escilmaya was outside when it happened, so she saw it first; A large, circular blue ball of lightning just popped into existance at the skirts of the forest outside her village, like an angry will'o the wisp shrieking with fury. Something shot out of it's center at an amazing speed, trailing smoke as it went, and crashing into the Bakery. Then all hell broke loose.

A giant ball of flame erupted from the bakery, shattering the windowpanes and cracking the stone, as metal giants began to storm through the ball of lightning. They stood at least nine feet tall, with shining, metal plated arms and legs. Some of thier arms ended not in hands, but in mutilated stumps of steel, with a hole bored into it. Thier faces were mockeries of people behind a glass casing, with pink flesh and blackened hair and eyes... and thier thoughts burned with hate.

Escilmaya could sense it from where she had dropped to the ground, an all-encompassing hate that filled the air while they marched into the village, mowing down her friends, neighbours and family like so much wheat for the harvest. The stumps of thier mangled arms flashed as they walked, and people fell. odd looking darts sunk deep into the villagers, thier cries of pain cut short as they fell like so much dead weight into the dirt. Then the giants began to pick them up, and take them into the circle of lightning.

It seemed like an eternity before they noticed Escilmaya. She had tried to play dead, but it diddn't seem to matter to these monsters. The one who found her roughly grabbed her and lifted her into the air so fast she couldn't even scream. She tried to struggle within that vise-like grip, but it was useless.
The horrible thing did notice her attempt though, and called out "Captain, we've got a live one here!" with a malevolent glee and eagerness she did not understand. Another one of the creatures quickly ran over, and looked into her face.

The thoughts that eminated from that beast were the most horrible she had ever felt. It was not hate, nor even lust which made his eyes sparkle with an inner fire as he looked down upon her.

It was greed.

[SweetSophia]

Lemme get this out of the way: "their" in the third paragraph is spelled wrong and the word "odd" in the fourth should be capitalized since it's the beggining of a sentence.

Now, back to buisness. I can tell pretty clearly what's going on and that's good, but I'd personally like to see more descriptive language at certain points. Case in point: you describe the metal giants as metal plated. Shake it up a bit. You could go with mechanical, metalic, rigid, robotic. Is it chrome, bronze, silver? Maybe I just don't like seeing the word metal repeated. I do think you do a good job describing the lightning ball thing.

That's all I can think of to say, but I'm not an expert. You should be getting a second opinion soon.

[Kyunji]

Basically, I agree with the post above, except that I must add in that you do a pretty good job setting the "mood" of the story. The "spookiness" aspect adds a lot to the story itself. Of course, this is just my humble opinion - I'm not the most professional writer ever.