The guild: cavern of Ice

The guild:
A Cavern of ice
Why did I take this damn job? The chilling cold rippled inside the frozen cave we now sat in, my companion didn’t seem to be make matters any better. I couldn’t take it any longer I had to say something.

“Marcus you bloody pyre, heat this freaking cave”. I demanded. He turned his head revealing his usual lopsided grin strung across his lips. He was one of those people who was always smiling, laughing, joking around. It was fine, until you realized that he never shut up. Then it just got really annoying.

Marcus smile slip into a fake grimace, he signed “Alright, but only if you say how great a wizard I am, and how honoured you feel to be trained by someone as amazing as me”.
I made a gagging noise,” I’d rather give myself to the snow storm than utter such spiteful words, which quite frankly would have me burning in hell for eternity”.

“Oh alright Angela, if it’s for you I must comply” he smiled. Then drew in a very deep breath, slowly a deep sense of warmth started to grow near him, and everything around us grew colder. I shivered, my silver parka, and gland white armour didn’t seem to help at all. Slowly, he breathed a breath of steady fire directly onto a patch of ice. It didn’t melt the ice like regular fire, and stayed contained there, flooding the cave with heat.
Marcus was lucky, an arrogant prick, but lucky. He was walking through this snowstorm with nothing but a pair of small black shorts, a thick red belt that carried a several small yellow orbs around his waist, and a bright orange scarf. Pyre mages never got cold; their internal fire let them stay warm, and cozy in any condition, but with one odd
side-effect.

Marcus stomach growled “Looks like I didn’t eat enough before we started the trip, one second”. He then pulled one of his yellow orbs from his belt. As soon as it touched his fingers it burst into flames and consumed his hand in fire. He lifted the fire and examined it for awhile; then he brought it to his lips and consumed it, slowly like he was savouring every last piece. Did I mention that Pyre mages have to consume fire for food? It’s one of the various odd side effects of using magic, there are others, but eating fire is the most common.

A loud burp escape Marcus’s lips making a loud echo travel its way down the cave into the darkness. Marcus wiped his lips, and replied “excuse me”.

I glared at him, ready to shout quite a few profanities, when a roar erupted from the darkness of the cave. We turned startled, to see giant snow bright yeti burst from the shadows. Piercing long fangs gleamed in the light.

We acted very quickly; encountering monsters was daily business for us. Marcus dived for the fire. Stuck his hands into it, and drew in all of its energy covering his hands; gloves of fire surged out from his finger tips to slits of his wrist. I quickly threw off my, exposing my flesh to the cold, and then pulled from my belt my favourite sword Aegis (A sleek white broadsword with feathers running through it as intricate patterns). As the blade pulled freely from the hilt I felt my body lax to the exposure of magic, my body fine tuned itself to the power I now held, gaze and reaction time sharpened.

The yeti struck, his movements were very brute but deadly accurate. He charged at Marcus first seeing as he was the greatest threat. Marcus countered; bring his flame covered fist into the beast jaw, sending it sliding back only a few feet. That was pretty odd considering a blow from Marcus’s fist of flame, was like getting thrown into a wall at 50km/h (I knew from experience). I guess Marcus was affected by the cold, more then I original thought. He seemed just as startled as I was; because he failed dodge the yeti when it threw a giant swing into his gut. This sent him flying out of the caves entrance.
The yeti then chose to set its sights on me, I stood there for a second thinking about how my teacher had been so easily defeated. How could I even hope to defeat such a monster by myself?

The beast jumped for me paws extended. Before he could rap his huge arms around me, without thinking, I shot down into a crouch and slid along his side of body to base of his back. He quickly spun around expecting to strike me by surprise, but clearly wasn’t watching closely enough because I was able slip in-between his legs before he turned. This left him confused; he stayed actually stayed turned searching for me. I knew just trying to stab him would never work; his skin was too tough, probably as strong as piece of steel. So I chose the next best course of action... Magic

I took a step back, and called out. “Hey! Ugly looking for me”. The beast whirled facing me, but by then it was too late. The world narrowed, becoming slow, and motionless; the beast could still moved forward of course (I couldn’t stop time), but his movements had become a slow, and sluggish. I looked to my blade, Aegis know glowed with a faint white light, it’s edge’s now seemed 10 times sharper, but I knew that wasn’t so. It was me; I had become 10 times sharper by invoking Aegis’s power of the wind, its speed was now mine. With one swift movement I was behind the beast, and the world sped back into focus. The Yeti’s head fell to ground. Its body withered, and crumpled to ash.

As I walked out of the cave Marcus stood up a little shocked. There was no way in hell anyone could wipe away the new smile that now danced on my lips. Marcus would be hearing about this for the rest of his days.

I'mma be honest--I stopped reading after about a paragraph. Wanna know why? Probably not. I'll tell you anyways.

It's called a hook. Something that, from the very start, draws the reader into the story. It doesn't have to be a perfect hook, or a hook with lots of exclamation marks in it, or a hook that can dance like Fred Astaire. It just--needs--to--be--a--hook. And you don't have one.

Why did I take this damn job? The chilling cold rippled inside the frozen cave we now sat in, my companion didn’t seem to be make matters any better. I couldn’t take it any longer I had to say something.

Why did I take this damn job. Huh. Is it just me or does that sound ridiculously uninteresting? Maybe it's just the notion of a 'job' at all, or the fact that you want to yell, "HOW SHOULD I KNOW, you're the one who took it!" Whatever it is, it doesn't catch me, it doesn't make me want to stop and go back and find out what's going on. Perhaps just phrased differently, it would be better, but I leave it to you to rephrase.

Secondly, you need to read this over. It's so full of tense slips and grammar mistakes my psycho-grammar-perfectionism eyes nearly hung themselves, and only didn't manage it because, as you know, it's very hard to hang yourself when you're a small, slippery ball with no neck to speak of. Ahem! Anyhow, if you want to clean it up a bit, here are a few tips off the top of my head.

Dialogue punctuation

Here are the incorrect ways you punctuated:

he signed “Alright, but only if you say how great a wizard I am, and how honoured you feel to be trained by someone as amazing as me”.

(signed should be sighed) I suppose you can, technically sigh something, but it would sound really weird and by the end your voice would be this weird, breathy whisper that sounded like a hoarse mouse. At least, with a sentence as long as this one is. Here are your two options, though I favor the first:

He sighed. "All right, but only if you say how great a wizard I am, and how honored you feel to be trained by someone as amazing as me."

(Note: Punctuation at the end of dialogue is ALWAYS IN THE QUOTES. Not this: ". but this: .")

He sighed, "All right, but only if you say how great a wizard I am, and how honored you feel to be trained by someone as amazing as me."

No matter what, there HAS to be a comma or a period before 'all right'--doesn't matter which, really, though the period makes more sense to me. Remember: the period or comma at the end of dialogue is always IN the quotes ("" <- those are quotes, if you were wondering).

Secondly...

“Marcus you bloody pyre, heat this freaking cave”. I demanded.

If there is a tag at the end of dialogue (a dialogue tag is the part up there that I put in bold. It's sort of a description of HOW the persons said it, in most cases) then this is how it should look:

"Marcus, you bloody pyre, heat this freakin' cave," I demanded.

Comma, before the closing quotes. You can substitute the comma with a question mark or an exclamation mark, but never a period/fullstop. Never. Incorrect grammar. If there's a period, there shouldn't be any dialogue tag afterwards. At all. If I may remind you one more time: The punctuation at the end of a dialogue (be it exclamation mark, a question mark, a comma or a period) should always be before the ending quotes. Always. No exceptions, except very rare occasions which won't bother you if you don't bother them.

Characters/plot/overall

I'm rushing this last bit because I have to go and I took too long whaling on you about the punctuation. The characters so far, if patched up with some good grammar/punctuation and thought out a little more, could be quite entertaining. I honestly like Marcus already, freakish as he is. Be careful with first person, though (that, if you didn't know, is narrating from the main character's perspective as if you were him/her, using I/my/me), because sometimes it gets tricky to really develop a first person character without cloning yourself. I do it sometimes, and it sucks.

The plot, well, seemed okay so far. Magical is always fun, in my opinion, and as long as you don't get really vague and start throwing out tons of names, locations and allusions to gods/kings/historical figures that are never explained, then you should be good.

Overall? I liked it. The punctuation ticked me off majorly, but then, it always does, so yeah. Hopefully other people will come on and explain to you about fragmented sentences, because unfortunately, I don't have time to. Good luck, and maybe drop me a PM when you revise?

All zee best, darrrrlink.

-SELA

First off, I agree with Sela. You need a better opening, something that draws the reader in more. I always find the word job making me think beck to reality before I get back in, and get me back into how I need to do work. The whole reason i read books is to escape from that. That's just me though.

Now I'm just going to comment on the overall areas of this.

First, description. I think you could have described Marcus himself a bit more, and not just what he was wearing, I was just picturing him as a pair of shorts and a belt with a creepy smile hovering above himn. Use the action scene near the end for this, use the action to describe his various parts as he attacks.

You also seem to use then a couple of times when unnecessary. Then is a bad word. Without the word then action goes a bit faster, and makes it more animated, less mechanical. So try and not use it unless it is needed, and even then try and find a better word for it.

Plot: Seem interesting enough, I'd like to see what they are doing together expanded on more in the next part of the story, get a feel of why they are needed to know their monsters, why they are together, etc.

Marcus himself, I like the use of a foil sidekick, its always a favorite of mine. The butting head at every turn just brings a flare to the story that makes me like the characters a bit more. Use this to reflect how the people have changed in it. If one of them has a drastic, or even minor, change the main could acknowledged as he can stand Marcus a bit more, how he gets why he does certain thing, or how is happy that he his changing.

Over all, liked it, hope to read the next part.