Okay, I've finally gotten to this. I'm not sure what I can say that hasn't been said already, but I feel I shouldn't comment on 2b and 3 until I've commented on this.
Also, thanks for suggesting Tofu as a reader. It's fantastic!
Anyway, I've mentioned I don't mind Nmae as a name. Don't put an apostrophe in it, it's just fine as it is.
Wow, first chapter was a lot shorter than I expected. It was interesting, if confusing due to being thrown in this world rather quickly. Bending seems very interesting, and I'm curious as to the limits of what it can do. However, before I can begin to think on this, we're suddenly introduced to people having frequencies and tones and all that jazz. All of it very intriguing, but I didn't feel as if I was given enough.
I like Nmae. The thing with the emotions was rather odd, especially this line:
"She knew shouldn’t be this afraid, not yet, but it was getting difficult to ignore."
Which leads me to believe a cost of Bending, or of seeing things in audible terms (which, now that I think of it, could easily be more Bending at work), is that it makes you feel fear. This is further solidified in the final line of the chapter:
She was so happy that she felt she might just make it out of the city before being overrun by terror.
A very interesting ramification of using the magic, and one I haven't seen before. If this isn't the case, then I am so stealing that for another story because that is an awesome concept.
Not much else I think I can say on chapter 1. I would have liked to see more to it, but at the same time I'm not sure what else you could add. The only thing that comes to mind is more on Nmae and what she's doing; as Justice1337 said, there's so little on her and what she's doing, that I have a hard time caring about any of it. I'm intrigued, but not really intrigued enough.
Onto chapter 2.
Love the first line, although it seems like a lot of stories I read lately seem to start with people in jail or imprisoned in some other way. Nothing wrong with that, just coincidence in what I've read recently.
I like Dalrymple, especially how he argues with his brain. His escape seems to involve magic, obviously, and I'm wondering if the magic he uses is related to the Bending Nmae used in the first chapter. He doesn't seem to know what he's doing or how he's doing it, only that it works, which says quite a bit about his character. One page in, and I feel I have very good impression of the man, so very nicely done.
The corridor into which they emerged was posh, with polished marble floors and wood-paneled walls.
Use of the word 'Posh' threw me out a bit, as it's a British slang term (as you're using it here, at least) and unless this is set in our world, or Dalrymple has knowledge of the United Kingdom, it doesn't fit the rest of the story.
"{Countrian}" makes me laugh.
Interesting chapter. Not sure exactly what I think of it. There's nothing quite yet to really hook me to this story, aside from a few mysterious motivations, and while that can work, I haven't been given enough to really care. Well, that's not completely accurate; I do want to know if I'm right about the magic causing fear in those who use it. Again, though, not quite enough to make me care beyond more than a few chapters, so the following ones will need to have a good hook to really get me into them.
Nice job overall, though. I'll be reading 2b and 3 and commenting on the shortly.
