"...The metallic stench of blood, that had risen up..." I would remove the comma in this sentence.

Watch for fragments in the italicized part there, I assume is a flashback or introductory type thing. While I'm okay with an occasional sentence fragment here or there, there are a quite a lot in this. I mean, it sounds great. It flows and all, but writers break grammatical rules for a reason. Fragments stand out. It's like bolding a passage without actually bolding it, if you know what I mean. It's like...when you read it, the words resonates, and leaves an impact. That's why you should use it sparringly, and in the right places. It's not going to stand out if you overuse it, it'll only just get annoying for the editors.

"...no description for it- the only thing..." I would remove the dash and add a period, make that two sentences.

"...There was no way the shadows had formed..." Oi, that sounds awkward. I suck at grammar, so I can't tell you with certainty whether this is correct or not, but I think there's a verb tense error in this. "There was no way the shadows have formed." Sounds better to me.

The next sentence there sounds awkward too, though I could see what you were trying for. I would revise it, maybe "they came from all directions?" More fragments there.

"... Whatever this was- because it was impossible to even take the shadows into consideration- would not defeat her..." Excellent use of dashes, here =)

"...It would not be the death of her. Her death would come when she chose to allow it to do so..." The 'to do so' part sounds a bit flowery and unneccesary. The following sentence however, 'That point had not yet arrived.' was really nice. Liked that.

Fragments again, in the next paragraph. (Audy has decided to be hypocritical by having criticized your use of fragments with fragments of her own :-P )

"...Her nails were long(comma or semi-colon here, instead of the dash) she had managed to break into her skin..."

"...Plus she had bitten into her tongue..." Bitten into sounds kinda redundant. Saying, 'Plus, she had bitten her tongue' would suffice. Same thing with the previous sentence, 'broke into her neck' sounds awkward and redundant, "if she had broken her neck" would be better. I would also remove the ellipses as they are not needed.

"...It was blood. But not hers. She knew it wasn’t hers..." I like this line, it kinda intensifies the moment, because of the sudden change in sentence structure, so I loved this. I would just edit the punctuation a little, so as to give more of an emphasis. Like:

[...liquid on the floor. --> start on a new paragraph

It was blood...but not hers. She knew it wasn't hers. It couldn't have been. She hadn't spit there.

It's not much different, but it adds more strength to it, and all I did was change the punctuations a little

Anyway, good job with the suspense here. I would just add a /little/ bit more to get the best out of this scene.

Blah, uneeded fragments again.

The servants thing seems kind of out of place. It just seems silly. You've had all these wonderful suspense thing going on, only to reveal something silly--or rather, it's not a silly scene, but you wrote it in such a way that the tone sounds silly. I would just remove it all together, and just have the descriptions of the blood and the heads, because that was what you were leading up to the entire time. Goryness...I like it xD

Loved the dialogue exchange in the next part. It's really strong and captures your characters. Very nicely done, the dialogue, the tags, body language. Really brilliant. You definitely have a sort of ominous kind of atmosphere here. I like Akatia's character as the villainess, I assume?

"...Her shoulders had been bandaged by her maids, and her room had been cleaned by (remove: those of her) servants with the strongest stomachs. But she would not sleep in there again. Earlier in the day, when she had been in her right mind for a few minutes, she ordered her belongings that were not(had not been?) stained (to) be moved into a different room..."

"...Everything had been to stop things from going back to the way they were. The constant running, all because of that battle she‘d been a part of because of her job..." Sounds so awkward. I would reword this. Maybe, 'Everything was done in order to stop things from going back to the way they were. The constant running away, all of that was because of the bygone battle, because of the man she had gotten to love too much.' (Unless it's important to the storyline, I would just remove the bit that talks about her job cause the readers would assume that.) Anyway, it's just a suggestion as to how I would reword this. Cause this paragraph sounds awkward and wordy and messes up the flow and clarity.

Reading through this dialogue exchange bit here, I'm left /so/ confused. I had to go back and read it, slower. But I have somewhat of an understanding now. Part of the reason that hinders the dialogue here, are all the long sentences that are filled with important information that is essential to the reader's understanding of the story. Break your long sentences up into two or more. This is also very vague and kinda repeats some of the stuff that was mentioned in the beginning. Remember: Say it once, say it right. My advice with this is to think carefully on the information that you absolutely need to reveal to the readers and to think how you can reveal this information in minimal words possible, yet as clear as possible. Give the reader credit, and understand that they could probably assume a lot of things. In other words, there is a difference between subtle and just plain vague. I have the same problem. It's tough. I think you did a good job with that, though it still needs some improvement.

Anyway, the idea sounds interesting. This sounds like it's going somewhere. Compelling ending, I must say.

So the descriptions that you've used in this story are marvelous. The dialogue is /really/ good, you just have to tighten the bolts a bit, to make it a little stronger. Revealing information through dialogue is the /hardest/ thing to do efficiently, but you've handled it well. Characters are strong--or rather Akatia is. I'm still unsure about Desarea yet, obviously she has had to endure some really impacting conflict before in her past that has left her scarred for seventeen years--but the fact that she has endured it should make her somewhat strong, right? You know the characters best =D But I /beg/ you not to make yet another one of the hundreds of weak, emotional, tragic heroines PLEASE!

Anyway, good job with this. Story telling wise, it was quite good. You've handled each transition from scene to scene, quite well. I was never left confused as to where I was. I think your biggest problem (which also happens to be mine as well) is sentence structure and punctuations. A friend of mine gave me /great/ advice for that though, so I'm still working on improving my sentences and punctuation, but I feel like I've gotten a lot better. What he said was that punctuation really makes a difference when it comes to tone, suspense, and really the type of story that you want to write. Just think about your sentences before you write them (or in my case, when I go back to edit them) Would a dash work better than the comma, the semi, a period? Think to yourself --what will be more effective and more grammatically correct--before you go into the grammatically incorrectness of a fragment xD His advice has really helped me a lot--before I was a 'dash' freak, I overused it way too much, and it got cumbersome on the reader. I realized this and I'm still trying to improve, I think the same would apply to your fragments.

Anyways, great job. Would like to see more of this.

~ Audy

review game! :)

i think you know that most of the sentences in the beginning are fragments, and i like it that way - it gives the piece a nice panicked feel. "The metallic stench of blood" sentence, though, felt strangely worded... maybe rephrase?

the sentences after the blood sentence have a lot of adverbs. maybe that's what you were going for, but it weighs the sentences down a little (i use adverbs a lot, too...)

"The wind was her enemy as well... But there was blood on her own hands as well" - maybe use "too" for one of these.

"Plus she had bitten into her tongue" - this was also a weird sentence... i'm not quite sure why, though. maybe it's too blunt or something.

"wasting no time in lighting the object" - perhaps replace "the object" with "the candle" or "it."

CREEPY. O_O did SHE write that on the wall... or did someone else write it...?

this is quite a gory piece now that i think about it... XD

nice description of the painting... :) vivid. graphic, though. XD

"trying without success" - i don't know why this seems weird... but it does. perhaps "in vain?"

...what's going on?! i bet my questions will be answered soon. if not, i'll ask them. XD

"Desarea wanted to scream[] and attack..." - no comma there.

crepy... WHAT'S GOING ON?! (i know i said that already) obviously these characters have a lot of history, but i certainly hope you'll go into more depth... since i'm not quite getting the whole story. i'm sure you will, though, since this is only the first chapter. :)

anyway, you've kept it rather vague up to this point, so i'm looking forward to more depth and explanations later. good job so far. keep writing! :)

-Lefty