Very good. It has a smooth style that makes reading a lot easier. Keep it up, you've got me curious what's going to happen next.

::)) great.

Love the phrase below, sort of sticks out through most of the events of the chapter.

"Ember. The name seemed wrong for her somehow. The last remnants of a fire- a dying thing. Something weak; words I would not use to describe her, even in defeat."

And don't have much else to say at this point, need to see more before I can get more of an opinion.

Egad! Now THAT's an epic start! Already showing your protagionist having slight doubts, leaving several gaps to leave the reader grasping for more... Very well done!

This is pretty good. I want to know more about Ember. The only problem I had reading this was that the dialogue didn't flow very well.

This was great! I enjoyed it, and wonder what will happen next!

I hear you want to make it into a book, and I think it will be a great one!

Oh, one thing though, as others have said, 'An hour' of fighting isn't realistic, and there should be more detail. Perhaps you should skip the 'an hour or so' part and write the whole battle scene? -shrugs-

Anyway, this was great!

Harr.

Eldarath:

*Garrottes*

-You have a hundred billion jillion missing commas. They make my eyes bleed, so numerous are they. Please fix.

-Very simply put, your battle scenes are extremely bland and inspid. There's no mention of light, footing, sound, objects, and so forth. Any of the above four I'll be willing to go into much greater detail should you wish.

And bloody heck, not the standard generic fantasy "sword". Make up your mind what KIND of sword your Holy Knight is going to use, because it can bloody well affect fighting style and very possibly the outcome of any confrontation. A shortsword will work differently from a rapier, which will work differently from a greatsword which will damn well work differently from a sabre. Do some damn research and find the advantages different blades have in different situations (Eg. A Claymore's cross-guard was designed for grabbing the blade of an opponent's sword so that with an applied twist, it'd go flying away.)

RESEARCH specific fighting styles. Your level of description or the fight is what I'd expect of beginners, generic thrusts, generic parries, generic dodges. An expert should be something better...I had a character fighting with a rapier once, and this is what I used:

Throw in other weapons like maces, polearms and raged weapons such as bows, and it gets much messier. Let's see how your Holy Knight deals with a competent bowman shooting at him from a hundred paces without a shield. (No, miraculously dodging every single arrow or slicing the arrows in half is cheating.)

-Weariness. How long has your hero been fighting by the time an enemy catches up with him? An hour? Two? Ten minutes? The least amount of time will damage him against an opponent who’s fresh. Superhumans like Corwin of Amber can fight for hours without stopping, but that’s because they’re superhumans, and Zelazny at least detailed the way Corwin got back in shape.

A tired protagonist will be more likely to drop her sword, to miss if she’s throwing knives or shooting arrows, to not be able to stab with her spear. Then there’s what happens if she kills her enemy, but another one is coming up on her, and she needs to yank the weapon out—more strain for the shoulders and back and arms. Her sweat will be rilling down her face, getting in her eyes, getting all over her hands and making her grip slippery. Any armor she wears will weigh down on her. Previous wounds will tear open, and add the distractions of pain and blood loss. Her movements will grow less coordinated. An enemy’s blow is more likely to get through, and be more likely of the kind that will do lasting damage, such as numbing her sword arm. If she’s exhausted, her sight will start blurring, she may get headaches, and she may lose control of her emotions, which could result in extravagant gestures or screaming matches. All good consequences, all good ways to add detail without resorting to the simple and bland “she was tiring,” and all good ways to make a fatal mistake.

Fighting with EACH OTHER NONSTOP for an hour is insane, and stupid. Both combatants should have collapsed from exhaustion long ago,assuming ordinary humans

-Honorable fighters are overrated. I can’t tell you how many books I’ve read where a fighter hero won’t do any of the following:

-stab an enemy in the back, or sneak up on a sentry and cut his throat.

-kick up dirt or throw water into someone’s eyes.

-feign an injury to make his enemy think he’s weaker than he really is.

-set traps in a chosen battlefield to increase his advantage.

-kill an unarmed opponent (never mind that the “unarmed opponent” may actually fight with a different weapon or know bare-handed combat).

-kill a woman or a child, even if that woman or child is on the opposite side and immediately threatening.

Not all may apply in this case, but you get the idea.

And, of course, the book’s “dishonorable” fighters, i. e. the ones on the enemy side, either don’t use these tricks or are castigated by the author in a “Tsk, tsk, tsk” tone if they do. And they never work against the hero, either, even when the hero should have been off-guard enough not to suspect them coming.

The problem here is that the author (you!), in playing by the honorable rules, doesn’t play by the rules that those ones imply: that the hero, if he’s forced to do the honorable thing and spare an enemy’s life or attack from the front or whatever, should have problems because of it. No, instead his enemies just aren’t good enough to challenge him, or they become converted to the side of goodness and righteousness by the hero, or somehow, even though he’s dragging an unwilling hostage across hundreds of miles, that hostage never manages to cause serious trouble. Ha. Imagine babysitting someone who really didn’t want to be with you, who would be dangerous the moment he got his hands on a blade, who has enough of a brain to resist the “side of goodness and light” babble, who will need to be released from ropes to eat and relieve himself, and who will be looking for a chance to escape when you sleep… By the end of the journey, the hero should be tired and irritable as all hell, not riding beside the hostage with cheerfulness in his eyes.

If you’re not going to have a practical fighter, you should have one in a hell of a lot of trouble, not just miraculously winning time after time. You can be a Knight of Goodness and Light, but it still won't make problems magically vanish, like they are now. Even if Ember has lost a good measure of her power, if she fears her old Order so much...I'd be surprised if she hasn't tried to escape. Even if Metis is a paragon of goodness and virtue and whatsoever, it won't stop a COMPETENT two-bit rogue from sneaking up to him and slitting his throat, save authorial intervention or a deus ex machina.

Oh yes, she hasn't because that would completely ruin the plot.

So is Ember ever going to tell Metis, and will they have to deal with that lord guy again?

(Heh just thought i'd give this thing a read, and well im hooked now).

Tons and tons of fabulous dialouge, but do you think the next chapter we could have some heads fly or something as a break from the dialgouging and reminiscing? Just might want to ease up on the talking a bit. And I was hoping we might accumulate a nice angsty, scraggly, raggamuffin character to combat with the placid and unwavering nobility of the two main characters, but instead we get a royal messanger. . .Just being honest, is all