So Tiponi meets some new friends, huh? Well, I doubt they mean them any harm at this point. After all, they did stay with Tiponi while she recovered. That blindness problem seems serious, though; I wonder what's going on with that? I imagine a lack of sight would make Questing very hard indeed...

Good job with this chapter. I enjoyed that first paragraph especially, and only fully understood the great aesthetic appeal of it after reading your note. Very nice idea. Nice work with the little things, too, like the stick whittling and the comb. Though I felt it was pretty clear by now that Tiponi has that as a goal. It's good to emphasize such points, but make sure you don't go overboard with it.

There were some things worth commenting on, though...



Dust and dirt from the cold ground loosely found its way up to mouths, feeling gritty on teeth. When you opened your eyes it was …dark.

First of all, "its" is incorrect, since you're describing the actions of dust and dirt. It should be "their", since you're dealing with multiple things. Also, it's not usually good to say things like "When you opened your eyes...", because that refers to the reader. The reader isn't in the fic, so that doesn't really make sense. It'd be better to have one of the characters perform the action, just to use someone who is actually in the fic itself. Tiponi would be a good choice here, since you immediately showed her reaction to the darkness following that line.


“So I guess I just want some one new to battle, and I’m not passing up the opportunity to battle a different Quester.”

The words "some one" should be consolidated into a single word, "someone".


Tiponi nodded in agreement, then turned to her pack to fish out her blankets. He must have placed it next to her while she lay unconscious.

You can't really say this, since you referred to Tiponi right before talking about someone else who placed her pack next to her. If you want to refer to someone by a pronoun, he or she should be the last person that you called by name, in order to maintain clarity.


"My name?" he said, half surprised "That’s right, I didn't get a chance to tell you, huh?

You need some sort of punctuation before that second quotation (not to be confused with quotation mark), to properly separate it from the narration. Also, you seem to have suddenly switched your style of quotation marks from “” to "". Odd, that.


“You mean you traveled here all the way from Quartz?!”

Your writing's good enough that you don't need to rely on cheap tricks like the double end punctuation ("?!") to get by. Besides, it's grammatically incorrect. And you wouldn't want that, now would you?


Ekad pulled out his sleeping gear and put out the fire before drifting off into a wonderful sleep about the towns outside of Swarm.

It's not a grammatical criticism, but you already used forms of the word "sleep" a lot in the past few paragraphs. It might be advisable to change that last "sleep" into something else, like "dream", perhaps.


Ekad wasn't in the clearing, though his gear still lay next to the cold, ash ruminants of a camp fire.

This one almost slipped through, but I took a second look at it and checked up on my suspicions. What do you mean by "ruminant", exactly? The closest definition I could find to what I think you mean was this: "Any of various hoofed, even-toed, usually horned mammals of the suborder Ruminantia, such as cattle, sheep, goats, deer, and giraffes, characteristically having a stomach divided into four compartments and chewing a cud consisting of regurgitated, partially digested food." And that's definitely not right. Could you perhaps be referring to remnants, instead of ruminants?


Tiponi pondered where her new found friend had gone as she finished up combing her light-brown, wavy hair.

The phrase "new found" should just be one word, "newfound".


Tiponi and Medwin had both grown up on a farm, where they were used to catching there meals.

The word "there" should be "their".



This was a good chapter, though, and very pleasing to read. You're learning some useful techniques (and teaching me a thing or two, quite frankly), and those can really strengthen your writing style. Good description here too, especially of the surroundings and that rat thing. That added some good flavor to the fell of the chapter, so to speak. Anyway, I'll be looking forward to the next one! Until then!


P.S. Happy birthday! Yes, I have enjoyed this fic very much. And don't worry about it being two years since you started this fic. I've been going for about two years on my biggest fic, and... oh, wait... *ponders*

Never mind, ignore that last remark... *slowly walks away while whistling*