Legend of the Spellslinger 1

Overall, I enjoyed this chapter. I love the Talesmith and how he can apparently manipulate other characters in the "story." It kind of feels like he's breaking some variant of the fourth wall and yet not at the same time.

I did have a few characterization problems, though:

First, when the Talesmith speaks in capitalized, bold face, italicized font...well, honestly, I'm not exactly sure what to make of that. There's no description of his voice changing as he talks to justify the font. So in my mind, every time the Talesmith spoke with the capitalized, bold face, italicized font, I pictured him briefly turning into some Hulk-like figure with a sudden demonic voice (as contrast to the rather nerdy image I initially had for him). I feel like that's probably not how you want the Talesmith to come across, so I would suggest touching up his description a bit and maybe, if you're only looking for emphasis on what he says, to take out the capitalization and bold face and just keep the italics.

Second, The Spellslinger is a badass. I mean, the guy is covered in scars, is missing an eye, and slayed a dragon. That sounds pretty badass to me. Additionally, he comes off quite cold. So far so good. But then he bursts into tears and cries like a baby, snot and all. And I don't know why. And it makes me not like him very much because I had that initial image of the cold-hearted badass, and then he...cries suddenly. So unless it's part of his character (perhaps he is simply very emotional?), the water works just kind of screams "Too soon!" I would suggest to bottle them up and save them for another day, maybe after the tension that causes him to feel the need to bawl his eyes out is built up to a climax where Spellslinger is simply puched beyond his limits. But again, if its part of his character to be that way, you may want to incorporate the feels in a little more throughout the who piece so the outburst doesn't seem so out of character.

Other than that, there were a few mechanical errors:

"...as soon as I woke; I committed..."
I don't think that should be a colon. A comma would work just fine.

"..."
The ellipsis isn't exactly necessary, unless that's just going to be your way of dividing up the scenes.

" ‘…and then our Hero bawled like a child while being dragged forcibly out of his hidey-hole only to realize that there was no monster waiting outside. "
Should be another apostrophe after "outside" to complete that quote within a quote.

Other than that, I have yet again enjoyed your writing and, even though the Tale of the Turtle wasn't mentioned (though the hobo oracle made up for it), I will eagerly await the next installment. <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/s/s…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title=" (Smile)"/>