thechummygremlin

we also have to... what? get going? start going? this one sent me stumbling. been a while since a seemingly random, but still contextually viable, word was poorly inserted.

bodied?um how about.. buried, owned, bullied, toyed with... ?

not sure the citizens would want to relive the experiences.. though they might be relieved to find the guilds have a strategy to deal with the murders. :) ...a single letter can change the whole meaning of a sentence...

perhaps spasming instead of spiking?

depends on the level of detail... if you spend a whole chapter's worth of words setting an environment that will only be used for a handful of chapters in the book, and leave us with a mere paragraph of story momentum, i would say cut back on the level of immersion you're going for. that being said, I enjoy the nitty gritty details of world building

but the masked ladies overlooked the sea in a previous chapter..?

not sure if it's too late, and you've already made a decision... personally, the way you've built the characters, age and all, is fine by me. since you don't seem to be planning any huge shifts in age anyways, perhaps a way to fix this for other readers would be to introduce a shirt 'training period' in a Master-student style relationship. gives you a way to age your characters up, and a bit of leeway in building a foundation on where he can be polished, powered up, and maintain his aloofness to the outside world. as of this chapter, you have several 'master' style characters to choose from, including bonecrusher and kazak. either could provide a source of new knowledge/skills for the MC growth while letting him mature to a level the other readers find more comfortable. again, i have no issues with the current version, but I think this could also be a writing/ creative exercise to help you grow as a writer without sacrificing / modifying the world/characters you already put effort into .

could not*

spoke*

savored? sounds tasty. though "soared" would work better.. or sailed?