For better or worse, I'm the kind of guy who likes a good presentation. In our case that means formatting. Just scrolled over the story thread. The only "formatting" worth mentioning is the "End." at the very bottom and the fact that each chapter is divided by post. Nothing wrong with that (it was encouraged, I believe), but from a publication-point-of-view, I would have liked seeing some "Chapter - 01" written at the beginning of each post. Guess, I'll have to do it myself before sending this for print.
Scrolling back to the top, I'm going to start reading the story. About 10 - 15 paragraphs in, the redundancy in the text begins to strike me as odd. My fingers are twitching to point out specific suggestions, but I'll leave that for later. Right now, its important to note that some confusion exists on who is speaking. It's obvious AFTER one finishes the dialog, but creates needless confusion.
Plot point: the mage apparently made arrangements to AVOID being disturbed. Indirectly, this indicates that the locals in the area are aware of him. And yet, he gets surprised when the intruder knows his name. Unless we're going for some "Rumplestilskin" kind of idea, the comment from Magellan
'But nobody knows that' is distracting.
And speaking of distractions, the viewpoint of the narration is confusing to me. It seems to shift between a third-person witnessing the scene and Magellan's personal thoughts about Eleazar (the intruder).
Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but at the point where its mentioned
"words made his blood boil", I'm beginning to wonder what happened to the cauldron? Was it turned over in the fight or did Magellan just abandon it?
... and I'm answered at the end of the chapter. Nice bit of story-telling, author! Well done.
Moving on to chapter-2;
"
but he had been decided to finish reading it one of these days" There is something grammatically wrong with this in the first paragraph. Can't quite say what it is, but I can think up of a few alternate suggestions. Will leave that for editing later.
Until the point where it says "
Eleazar asked, pressing his head on his shoulder." I wasn't sure where Magellan was sitting. For some reason I imagined him in some corner. The quoted line, suggests that he was actually sitting in the middle of the room (with space behind him for Eleazar to stand on).
"
the suits of armors around him began to move" it would have been good, if you included a description of the suits of armor as part of the library at the beginning of the chapter. I think this point is where we first encounter them in the story/chapter.
"
Things didn’t change until the end of the month." Personal note - if you are in the mood for really cheap humor, this is an ideal time to make a pun about "that time of the month".
...
Yeah, that was bad. Sorry.
"
He took the scalpel in hand, ready to get back to work on it. " I am reminded of the story 'Frankenstien' for some reason...
Chapter-3 now;
(off-topic: took a 1 hour break to watch an episode of Deep Space 9, returning to story)
Near the beginning of this chapter, Magellan cuts something with a scalpel. It's mentioned that his own blood was dripping too. I am confused as to how that could have happened. A little later, its mentioned that "
Magellan grasped the scalpel tightly". This explains how he cut himself. If he was doing this earlier, it could have been mentioned more clearly.
The following statement - "
“‘Why not’? Why not?! There are many reasons why you would bother interacting with someone like me, if you have an interest in my plans! Stop me! Join me! Convince me to be your minion! What kind of reason is ‘why not’?!â€" It's obviously a climatic point, but just doesn't give off the vibe of someone in frustration. [GenocideHeart] would probably be able to tell you better than me, but one suggestion is to try and describe some facial expressions of Magellan in that dialog. Expand it to another paragraph, perhaps?
Not sure if it means I'm dumb or not, but the explanation of how Magellan countered Eleazar's sword swing is confusing. Reminds me of the nonsense spewed in the Nasuverse.
I do however, find it impressive that Magellan thought up of creating a rock/earth Golem to block the bullet shots. Impressive!
Chapter-4 (finally!);
More or less the same writing style as before. Specifically around here -
“…oh for the love of–â€
the fight perspective shifts a lot and it is really confusing. Sure, I get it on a re-read, but should that really be the case?
And in the end, it looks like Eleazar was destroyed. Or at least, temporarily halted out of existence.
Questions I'm left wondering;
* Where EXACTLY did Eleazar come from?
* If Eleazar came from some organization, what are its goals?
* What is the state of Magellan's world? There's talk of war and armies, but ... that answer is a bit too simple. And such things are usually never 'simple'.
* And finally, the obvious; What will Magellan do now?