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An Almost-Perfect Verse in a Long Forgotten Tomb
“Disturb my slumber if you dare,
For there are fates much worse than mine
Awaiting those who cross this line.
So carry onward with great care,
Lest you invoke my curse.”
The torchlight flickers, orange glow on pale sandstone walls. It feels like a last defence against the encroaching dark, shadows that have housed three thousand dead for three thousand years. And the words, read out with careful, dreadful precision, don’t quite echo as you might expect―the flat, dead voice chills us to the bone.
“Really?”
“No, don’t be dumb,” Peter says, and there is a collective sigh of relief. “Seriously, did you all really think some ancient inscription was going to have near-perfect rhyme and rhythm in English?”
Trish at least has the decency to look away, but everyone (aside from Peter) feels the same―shame at falling for the trick, and indignation that the trick had even happened in the first place. Arthur, though, is the first to put it into words:
“You’re a dick, Peter.”
Not that Peter seems to really mind. He just chuckles, and turns back to the glyphs that line the walls, running a finger over them delicately, his attention totally captured. It’s odd, but they’ve all seen Peter do this before.
“Any actual ideas?” Arthur asks, the impatience in his voice clear to everyone. Peter’s finger falters for a moment, and a wave of something that was once frustration and was now merely motions passed over his eyes and out of his nose in a sigh.
“So far as I can tell,” Peter says, his voice slow and deliberate, “there’s a dedication to the gods, and something unintelligible about sheep. It doesn’t seem to mention what this line on the floor means at all.” As he finishes, Peter swings his backpack over his shoulder with practised care and rests it softly in from of him, wedged between his knee and the sandstone wall. With a flick of a clasp the backpack is open, and Peter is diving his whole arm into it, right up to the rolled sleeves by his elbow. A moment later he has a small, battered book in his hand, and he is flicking through it.
“Are we really just going to wait here until you’ve translated that?” Trish asks. “I mean, it’s probably just saying something about some sheep they sacrificed to help build this place.”
“No.” Peter’s voice is soft, nothing more than a murmur. “It’s not quite right for that. There’s a standard way they would record sacrifices, and this just doesn’t start to match. And I’m not even sure ‘sheep’ is declined properly…”
Even with his voice so soft, Peter doesn’t hear their footsteps—he’s too absorbed in the words on the wall, and the little book of notes in his hand. It’s only a few minutes later, when the words made a little more sense and the book was a few pages more battered, that he noticed the few shadows that had vanished from the wall, and the silence around him.
He shrugged, jotted down the quickest of notes, and slung his backpack once more onto his shoulder. A brief whistle that barely echoed later, and Peter was wandering slowly down the tunnel to catch up with the group, the unread warning all but forgotten on the wall.
For there are fates much worse than mine
Awaiting those who cross this line.
So carry onward with great care,
Lest you invoke my curse.”
The torchlight flickers, orange glow on pale sandstone walls. It feels like a last defence against the encroaching dark, shadows that have housed three thousand dead for three thousand years. And the words, read out with careful, dreadful precision, don’t quite echo as you might expect―the flat, dead voice chills us to the bone.
“Really?”
“No, don’t be dumb,” Peter says, and there is a collective sigh of relief. “Seriously, did you all really think some ancient inscription was going to have near-perfect rhyme and rhythm in English?”
Trish at least has the decency to look away, but everyone (aside from Peter) feels the same―shame at falling for the trick, and indignation that the trick had even happened in the first place. Arthur, though, is the first to put it into words:
“You’re a dick, Peter.”
Not that Peter seems to really mind. He just chuckles, and turns back to the glyphs that line the walls, running a finger over them delicately, his attention totally captured. It’s odd, but they’ve all seen Peter do this before.
“Any actual ideas?” Arthur asks, the impatience in his voice clear to everyone. Peter’s finger falters for a moment, and a wave of something that was once frustration and was now merely motions passed over his eyes and out of his nose in a sigh.
“So far as I can tell,” Peter says, his voice slow and deliberate, “there’s a dedication to the gods, and something unintelligible about sheep. It doesn’t seem to mention what this line on the floor means at all.” As he finishes, Peter swings his backpack over his shoulder with practised care and rests it softly in from of him, wedged between his knee and the sandstone wall. With a flick of a clasp the backpack is open, and Peter is diving his whole arm into it, right up to the rolled sleeves by his elbow. A moment later he has a small, battered book in his hand, and he is flicking through it.
“Are we really just going to wait here until you’ve translated that?” Trish asks. “I mean, it’s probably just saying something about some sheep they sacrificed to help build this place.”
“No.” Peter’s voice is soft, nothing more than a murmur. “It’s not quite right for that. There’s a standard way they would record sacrifices, and this just doesn’t start to match. And I’m not even sure ‘sheep’ is declined properly…”
Even with his voice so soft, Peter doesn’t hear their footsteps—he’s too absorbed in the words on the wall, and the little book of notes in his hand. It’s only a few minutes later, when the words made a little more sense and the book was a few pages more battered, that he noticed the few shadows that had vanished from the wall, and the silence around him.
He shrugged, jotted down the quickest of notes, and slung his backpack once more onto his shoulder. A brief whistle that barely echoed later, and Peter was wandering slowly down the tunnel to catch up with the group, the unread warning all but forgotten on the wall.
I really hate to start off my reading with an "I don't get it", but ... I don't get it. :( This seems to be very heavily (structurally and textually) implying that there's some sort of hidden clue or text that turns this from anticlimax into twist ending, but I can't tease anything coherent out of the text. There's something going on with the perspective shift, I think -- "you" are a character as early as paragraph two, but the second-person seems to be phased out over the narrative gradually rather than abruptly, and also doesn't seem ultimately relevant. And if there really is some outside force coming in, as the footsteps ambiguously imply, then I don't understand why they'd leave him alone and why the inscription is described ultimately as "unread". Unless there's something going on with him secretly being the pharoah or something, but then 1) missing context, 2) the odd unexplained "you", and 3) if he's expecting an attack, why would he be so genuinely absorbed with the text that he doesn't notice the footsteps? So this one currently feels like a miss, but I may have to re-evaluate it if I'm just missing things because it's 5 a.m.
Tier: Needs Work
Tier: Needs Work
I feel like the opening here stumbles pretty hard. Firstly, opening with a verse seems kinda... super risky. Unless you're certain your audience is up for poetry, I think you'll find as many people are turned away by the first line being verse as are drawn in by it.
There's this weird psychological effect tied up with 'disfluency', where people tend to agree more easily with stuff that's easier to read, independent of how 'correct' it is, while they'll think more critically about things that are more difficult to read, independent, again, of how correct it is. (What makes something 'convincing' is unfortunately different from what makes it 'correct'.) To that end, I think there's an argument to be made for making the opening of stories smooth and immersive besides simply hooking iinterest. This is just a guess, but I think that putting your verse in the second or third paragraph would significantly increase the amount of people willing to engage with it deeply. Draw them in, then make them think? I mean, it's just a guess, but anyways, I'm digressing.
Secondly, the 'you' in that second paragraph comes in before we've gotten any other ideas on the viewpoint of this story, and reading horizon's review, I see I'm not the only person who wondered if this was supposed to be second-person somehow. I eventually decided it was metaphorical or a figure of speech, but it threw me for a moment.
The middle of the story did a good job of pulling me in and building suspense. This reads like it's intended to have hints of horror in it. Exploring an ancient tomb? With an actual torch, no less? A battered book of mysteries? A strange and possibly malevolent translator, who the others might not be the best of friends with? These are all great elements in one way or another.
However, the ending just seems to kinda... drop it all and fade away. Is there a point I'm missing? It seems like it ends with everyone just wandering away, and Peter following, and the whole build-up and what is basically abandoned.
I even tossed around the idea that 'being forgotten' is a worse fate than any curse the ancient could have thought up. However, since the verse was proposed by Peter, I'm not sure that even works.
I dunno. I want to like this, but it's just not holding up under scrutiny.
There's this weird psychological effect tied up with 'disfluency', where people tend to agree more easily with stuff that's easier to read, independent of how 'correct' it is, while they'll think more critically about things that are more difficult to read, independent, again, of how correct it is. (What makes something 'convincing' is unfortunately different from what makes it 'correct'.) To that end, I think there's an argument to be made for making the opening of stories smooth and immersive besides simply hooking iinterest. This is just a guess, but I think that putting your verse in the second or third paragraph would significantly increase the amount of people willing to engage with it deeply. Draw them in, then make them think? I mean, it's just a guess, but anyways, I'm digressing.
Secondly, the 'you' in that second paragraph comes in before we've gotten any other ideas on the viewpoint of this story, and reading horizon's review, I see I'm not the only person who wondered if this was supposed to be second-person somehow. I eventually decided it was metaphorical or a figure of speech, but it threw me for a moment.
The middle of the story did a good job of pulling me in and building suspense. This reads like it's intended to have hints of horror in it. Exploring an ancient tomb? With an actual torch, no less? A battered book of mysteries? A strange and possibly malevolent translator, who the others might not be the best of friends with? These are all great elements in one way or another.
However, the ending just seems to kinda... drop it all and fade away. Is there a point I'm missing? It seems like it ends with everyone just wandering away, and Peter following, and the whole build-up and what is basically abandoned.
I even tossed around the idea that 'being forgotten' is a worse fate than any curse the ancient could have thought up. However, since the verse was proposed by Peter, I'm not sure that even works.
I dunno. I want to like this, but it's just not holding up under scrutiny.
>>Not_A_Hat
(re: "you")
If it were just "as you might expect" I'm sure I would have read it as a badly placed interjection rather than a perspective hint, but it was immediately followed up with "the flat, dead voice chills us to the bone", so whatever is going on with the narrative voice, it doesn't appear to be in third person.
(Also, rereading, I just noticed: the last paragraph shifts from present tense to past tense. So I'm beginning to think that this may have been edited once, or more than once, to change the voice and/or tense, and the changes were imperfectly applied?)
(re: "you")
If it were just "as you might expect" I'm sure I would have read it as a badly placed interjection rather than a perspective hint, but it was immediately followed up with "the flat, dead voice chills us to the bone", so whatever is going on with the narrative voice, it doesn't appear to be in third person.
(Also, rereading, I just noticed: the last paragraph shifts from present tense to past tense. So I'm beginning to think that this may have been edited once, or more than once, to change the voice and/or tense, and the changes were imperfectly applied?)
>>horizon
Yeah, I usually figure that sort of thing to be editing. This story has several inconsistencies under scrutiny. That tense change seems to happen in the beginning of the last sentence of the second-to-last paragraph to me, going from 'it's' to 'made' somewhere in the middle of the line. Same thing with the one strange inscription seemingly mentioned as 'on the floor' by Peter and 'on the wall' at the end. There's that 'us'; and I can sorta see the whole thing as being told like we're standing in crowd around Peter, with both me and the narrator (and maybe you!) all just hovering in the darkness. But there are problems with that, too; the 'everyone feels the same' bit, for instance, suggests to me the narrator might be omniscient, because you can't really say something like that from a properly limited viewpoint? And at the end, although it doesn't directly say Peter's alone, it seems to suggest it to me.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This sort of thing kinda boils down to how much the author has convinced me to trust them. The narrative voice here is strong enough I've got more buy-in than average, but the inconsistencies don't have enough of a pattern for me to try drawing conclusions from them as-is. So I'll stick with 'you' being metaphorical, since 'as you might expect' is a common enough phrase, and just put the rest of the quirkiness under 'editing'.
Yeah, I usually figure that sort of thing to be editing. This story has several inconsistencies under scrutiny. That tense change seems to happen in the beginning of the last sentence of the second-to-last paragraph to me, going from 'it's' to 'made' somewhere in the middle of the line. Same thing with the one strange inscription seemingly mentioned as 'on the floor' by Peter and 'on the wall' at the end. There's that 'us'; and I can sorta see the whole thing as being told like we're standing in crowd around Peter, with both me and the narrator (and maybe you!) all just hovering in the darkness. But there are problems with that, too; the 'everyone feels the same' bit, for instance, suggests to me the narrator might be omniscient, because you can't really say something like that from a properly limited viewpoint? And at the end, although it doesn't directly say Peter's alone, it seems to suggest it to me.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This sort of thing kinda boils down to how much the author has convinced me to trust them. The narrative voice here is strong enough I've got more buy-in than average, but the inconsistencies don't have enough of a pattern for me to try drawing conclusions from them as-is. So I'll stick with 'you' being metaphorical, since 'as you might expect' is a common enough phrase, and just put the rest of the quirkiness under 'editing'.
I agree about the inconsistencies in tense and POV.
And then, well, what gives? I'm lost by the end. If the others have been captured, then why not the scholar? If they simply padded away while he was engrossed in his translation, then the end is underwhelming, and the arc non-existent.
So, I don't know which way to pick at the fork, but both ways are unsatisfactory.
And then, well, what gives? I'm lost by the end. If the others have been captured, then why not the scholar? If they simply padded away while he was engrossed in his translation, then the end is underwhelming, and the arc non-existent.
So, I don't know which way to pick at the fork, but both ways are unsatisfactory.
