Honestly, everyone is comparing it to Shakespeare when Chaucer's probably a more accurate comparison, just for the fact Chaucer rhymed in iambic pentameter and Shakespeare didn't unless it was to add emphasis. That said I didn't even realize the rhymes at first.
It's an interesting read, and I'd like to see where it's headed, though this did feel like three chapters crammed into one, and I wish it would explain the brands more instead of throwing us straight into the fire.
@sherlock0790 5th century English would be mostly Latin considering it was just abandoned by the Roman Empire. Old English started with the Anglo-Saxons which were hired as mercenaries by the Romano-British, and sounded basically like German. It was really only after the 5th century that it got around. It gradually changed into the English seen with Chaucer which seems closer to modern English at the end of the Middle Ages in the 14th-15th centuries, and Shakespeare is the first writer of what we can call the "Early Modern English" period, with most of the words and pronunciation being the same or similar to modern day.
I know that's pedantic but hey, history is fun for me.
@talas Basically from what I understood:
-There's this dude named Christopher and he has the same curse as the guy from Berserk of Gluttony, but it also eats someone's fate, slowly killing them.
-Minerva is the princess of another kingdom as was just revealed who has the power to avoid death, though still feeling the pain of it each time she dies. She also has foresight and can foresee fate
-Minerva and Chris can't kill one another because they keep altering one another's fate and reseting to zero with their brands, so neither can best the other and it keeps going back and forth until they have no effect on each other, so she takes him prisoner as a "slave"
-Chris killed his mother from his brand and was exiled from the village, who already was implied to hate him
-Minerva's and Chris are being hunted by the current rulers of the kingdom because they're rebels now, working for the Order of the Silver Egg, who saves them in the end
-Everything else in the chapter either is characterization, develops the Minerva is royalty, sets up the antagonist's power, (blood-bending, essentially) and the chapter ends with Chris saving Minerva from a fate he saw of her getting impaled to death, and the Order of the Silver Egg rescuing them
It's not too hard, but I can see why it's confusing. The sing-song-y rhyme scheme doesn't help.