Caelum: Enjoy a double release.
Authors note: <<Brackets>> are implied to be universal/world announcements. “Quotes” Are character speech. “Italicized Text” are thoughts, |””| Are translations for languages the character can not understand.
Author’s notes: Thank you to Dragodonv2 and Mitch on discord for editing this chapter.
Time ticked by a feeling of warmth surrounding the being, the muffled sounds of the outside world could barely be heard, too distorted to understand. It was too dark for the being; it is unable to see nor move, constrained and restricted by the fluid around itself. The feeling of restraint rapidly becomes more clear causing the being to panic and attempt to struggle from time to time, though the energy and focus to resist doesn’t last before the being sleeps once more.
Light begins to shine once more, the feeling of restraint loosened and allowed the being to focus once more.
“Light…? It's so bright…I was comfortable…”
Suddenly a sense of pain, fear and urgency rushes through the being. There are movements around the being, a pressure of being squeezed around it causing it to be unable to focus its blurry eyes for just a moment. It wants to cry out slowly moving towards the light against the beings will.
“What is going on?! What is happening to me?! Why must I be in so much pain?! Why can’t I control my body?!”
Moments later the comfort of being once held disappeared completely, the sound of rushing water taking over the quiet. The bright light encompassed its vision completely, incapable of being able to see that well, the sound of crying escaped its throat. The normal sound of a child screaming, instead of harsh ear-piercing noises a beautiful cry of a baby girl is heard.
“Xxxxxxx xx xx x xxxxx! XXXXXXXXX!! XXX XXXXXX XXXXX!” |” Here comes it comes! Your baby! Congratulations!! A baby girl!” |
The child’s eyes were unable to focus on anything, though it heard voices it could not understand the language. The blurry movements continued, the child continued to cry from the pain and shock of what was happening. The blurry people moved around and the feeling of cold slowly washed away from its form, warmth was found and covered the child before the sensation of security covered it.
A soft substance was pushed against the child’s mouth, the body's instincts kicked in and it latched on with a soft sucking a warm and sweet flavor entering its mouth. The new found instincts completely repress the child’s desire to do anything else. It sought food and the comfort of the mother.
“The pain, it's gone…so much noise…What is this flavor?... At least my stomach is full, I finally feel it once again.”
Time progressed once more, the child awakened once again, attempting to move its body, though it was in vain. The body did not respond to any of the brain’s wishes and moved purely on instinct. The child’s body sucked down the sweet texture of the mother’s milk. The child from that point grew sleepy and it fell asleep unable to keep going any longer, once more.
The Priestess's run around the mother of the child doing their best to clean and ensure the mothers health. Every single priestess in the room was an elf with various grayscale colors of hair. Every single one of them was a pure blooded elf following the same goddess, Dyara, The Goddess of Life and Birth.
The mother rested inside of the bed which was ordered specifically for the birth of the child, in the temple it was the first time in its long history that a First Priestess was to give birth. The priestess’s do not interact with the other sex since their first blessing. The sound sounds of happy women moving around through the temple's halls.
Within the halls of the church stands a single tall male elf, he watched the birth and happy actions of the temple’s priestesses. An evil grin appearing on his face, he wasn’t allowed to go much further in the room, the ball often used to talk with the temple’s members by members of the opposite sex. There was a single other person in the room, a woman dressed as a priestess, a high ranking one at that. The woman simply keeps her head bowed towards the man and the crystal ball.
The man turns his head towards the woman with a happy grin. “The child is born...the Miracle Child… So, who's the father?”
The woman did not lift her head, merely remaining still, her full body garb hiding her features, though the man knew who it was, he did not speak their name.
Woman: “There is no information at this point sir, none of the members of the temple have acted out of place once, no one’s minds think of men even the mother. There is no hole in security as far as it can be seen. All the temple's security teams report that there has been no trespass in the High Priestess’s sanctum and continue to do their jobs with the goddess in their minds. It is like the child truly came out of thin air.”
The man frowns and places his hand on the crystal ball causing it to darken, then brighten as the newborn’s face swam into view, focusing on the child to see if there was anything to be learned from its appearance alone. Pink hair was dusted atop the Elf child’s head, bright pink eyes closing even as the crystal ball zoomed in to look, it soon slept peacefully off its mother’s breast.
Man: “Pink hair? That is unnatural in itself...Only Elves tainted by breeding with lower creatures have such freakish hues; and the eyes match the mother… The mother is a liar. A whore of the temple and of our royal blood, she has clearly slept with a man of a different species and is concealing it under the name of her god. Investigate harder. I want to know who the father is to ‘thank’ him for his work.
The woman sat up before turning and walking out of the room, leaving the man to brood with his own thoughts. She had work to do now, and she believed his word, she put the kingdom before her faith. If he said there was a father, then she was dead set to find him, even if she had to make one appear.
I like what I see of the story so far. That said, this chapter is still near the beginning and it may not be fair to judge a story by only this much. Sadly, I see that the story seems to be on hiatus with it being months since the last chapter. I do hope everything is okay with the author and that this gets more chapters some day.
Anyway, I see several grammatical errors in this chapter. This is not surprising as I find a lot of the same errors with other novels freely available on the Internet, but particularly those on Scribblehub. With the pure intention of helping the author and this chapter improve, I want to point some of them out:
The Priestess's run around the mother of the child doing their best to clean and ensure the mothers health.
Normally, the possessive of names and nouns is indicated by adding an apostrophe followed by an "s" (+'s). However, the possessive of names and nouns that end with the letter "s" is indicated by merely adding an apostrophe (') at the end without adding another "s". So it should read as " Priestess' ". I realize that this may not look right to those unfamiliar with this grammar rule, but I assure you that this the proper way. I encourage you to look it up if you doubt me.
Looking closer at the context of the sentence, though, I see that the use of the possessive on Priestess is incorrect. Instead, the author must have been trying to indicate the plural. In this case, it should be "The priestesses" with a lower case "p". Also, the possessive of "mother" should be used to indicate that the health is that of the mother. So it should read something like the following:
"The priestesses run around the mother of the child, doing their best to clean and ensure the mother's health."
Actually, it may be better to word it like so:
"Several priestesses tend to the child's mother, doing their best to clean and ensure the mother's health and comfort."
Within the halls of the church stands a single tall male elf, he watched the birth and happy actions of the temple's priestesses.
This is a run-on sentence. This is a clear-cut case where, instead of splitting it up with a comma, it should have been turned into two separate sentences. I say "clear-cut" because the second part has absolutely nothing to do with the first part. So it should read as:
"Within the halls of the church stands a single tall male elf. He watched the birth and happy actions of the temple's priestesses."
An evil grin appearing on his face, he wasn't allowed to go much further in the room, the ball often used to talk with the temple's members by members of the opposite sex.
This is another run-on sentence. In this case, it should have been split up into three separate sentences. What's more, the last part does not make much sense due to the way it was worded. (Part of the sentence structure is missing, so it is not a complete sentence.) I'd recommend wording it something like the following:
"A wicked grin appeared on his face. As a man, he wasn't allowed to go much further in the room. Instead, members of the opposite s*x were required to use a magic sphere here to talk with the temple's members."
There was a single other person in the room, a woman dressed as a priestess, a high ranking one at that.
I do not believe the use of "single other person" is correct. And that was not the proper use of a comma. Instead, a different form of punctuation is needed to separate the latter part of the sentence. Either a dash (-) or a semicolon (;) would do here. I'd recommend something like one of the following sentences:
"There was one other person in the room - a woman dressed as a priestess and a high ranking one at that."
"There was just one other person in the room - a woman dressed in priestess robes who appeared to be high ranking."
"There was just one other person in the room; a high ranking priestess."