This is Kaos here for a review!
Solex decided to go out and get some fresh air. Curious, she walked towards the inhabitant's area. As she walked down the path, she realized just how rough they lived their life. She had never seen just how bad it was, believing it was simply what she edited in the book. Coughing and sneezing noises filled her ears, along with the soft drone of flies. Some were living in houses, some weren't. The houses weren't even well built either. Something smelled rancid. She turned her head to the scent and found that someone was cooking a dead animal well past it's due date. She covered her mouth and ran back home, screaming as her footing cautioned around dead bodies. The living inhabitants stared at her as she ran, their bodies covered in wounds, scabs and frostbite.
This first paragraph seems rather scattered, so I suggest you chop it up into more than one paragraph. The only function I can see of it is to set up the atmosphere. It feels choppy as it goes from thing to thing, addressing everything in one big starting paragraph. Instead of this I would have rather liked to see the description sprinkled throughout the chapter. I do like the atmosphere that you set up here, it's just messy in how you tell everything instead of it feeling more connected.
“Xelos!” she opened the door with urgency.
"Hm?" He lifted from his bed. "What is it? You look troubled."
"The only thing troubled is all those people out on the streets!" She pointed to the door to emphasize, her eyes wide with horror. "Xelos, we need to do something!"
"What can we do that we haven't already done? The god's are not doing anything to fix their needs so it shouldn't be too harsh of measures." He rested himself back in the mattress, hugging his pillow and sighing. "You had your fresh air, didn't you? Stay inside, you're sensitive to these things."
I didn't find the dialogue all that believable, as the characters talk sort of monotone, despite you using exclamation marks and all the like, which actually made me feel like the main character was being melodramatic. Instead of having an excess of exclamation marks, which I suggest you cut out, use the concern through the dialogue. I feel the reaction of the main character should be toned down from what you have here, a sort of more depressed and overwhelmed feeling. I like that you make Xelos dismissive of what the main character is saying, but make it more believable, or tune it to where it sounds like a parent would when dismissing a child's problems.
For grammar, it should be "The Gods'" as you are addressing something that the characters believe are real (or at least I think) and that there are plural gods.
Further on in the chapter, it seems that Xelos is a sort of healer. This makes more sense as to why the people of the town are mad at him, but I feel like you should capture their anger in a different way.
Back to the topic of exclamation marks. Quit using so many. You can express that a character is loud or mad or anything of that sort without having to use so many exclamation marks in a short amount of time. It weakens the dialogue heavily, and I suggest using more body language to express these sort of emotions. It seems that you sort of avoid using this.
He pushed her aside, looking through. He felt his heart stop as he watched all the work they pulled together fall apart.
They were fighting, punching one another, stealing each others belongings... Two people stood on higher pedestals, announcing a war that would soon arise.
"I can't believe it..." He whispered, pulling away from the window. "I... I can't believe you!" He looked towards his scared sister, having a mirrored expression.
"Xelos... I just wanted to make things better-"
"Well you didn't, and the war is happening much sooner than planned!" He dug his hands into his hair, loudly growling under his teeth. "We... we aren't going to have enough time, because of you!" He lifted her up by her shirt collar, trembling. "You... You want to help? Start by doing anything you can to calm them down so this war can be slowed!" He threw her back down.
She nodded quickly, grabbing her things and running outside.
Xelos just laid back in his bed, holding his pillow in a more protective manner.
Use something other than ellipses, because there's an excess of that too in this chapter, but especially near the end of the chapter. It does the same as using too many exclamation marks by making the dialogue melodramatic.
I felt that neither of these main characters were sort of in the right, it felt like you were trying to make Xelos that, but that didn't really end up happening for me. Both of their characters feel very wavering on their actions, which don't really make sense. Solex locking Xelos up for them to heal didn't really make sense to me either or how it helped town.
Your pacing in this chapter goes by too fast. You're trying to establish that the town is broken and that a war is going to break out soon but you don't give it time to be created and it seems like you're just trying to get into the war that's supposedly going to happen soon. Rather, there's a lot of running back and forth in this chapter. We go back and forth from Xelos laying down in bed and the town rampaging. Keep the characters in one setting instead of having the reader have to go back to dialogue of Xelos in bed and Solex yelling, "We need to help the town!" The ending in this chapter confused me. Xelos was angry about the war, yet just goes back to laying down. It makes the character seem nonchalant more than anything else. Xelos is screaming our ears out about the war about to happen, yet doesn't really do anything.
I've picked up on Solex is Xelos backwards, and I haven't read the other chapters so I don't know the reasoning for this.
I hope this helped and have a great day.
Points: 220
Reviews: 1081
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