I'll just apologize for taking so long to look this over, and then jump right in
"Toma," said Toma. "My name is Toma."
The three Tomas look a little odd. It might be better to just use a "said he."
Also, that makes two males with names ending in "a". Is this a trend?
Hafona seems pretty confident in his abilities to protect himself. That sounds like an interesting bit of backstory.
*This place brings out the worst in people*, she thought. *And when your worst is murder...* She thought of Toma's hateful stare on that first day, and Hafona's wordless threat.
She reminded herself that she had also killed. What would this desert bring *her* to do?
Now this story is starting to sound very interesting to me personally. Character-centric conflicts...lots of internal conflicts...sounds good.
The bit where Hafona is explaining about the connection between the Usurper and the land, and Tefuna and the sea, was all very interesting. But I wonder is it too soon to give away all your secrets? To me its more interesting when its foreshadowed a bit more and we get to guess at this sort of stuff. Its a bit like a horror movie; the scariest parts are when you can't actually see the monster.
Just my random thoughts: take them or leave them.
Once again this was a short chapter, but you are definitely carrying us along at quite a nice pace. It was an enjoyable read, and while you haven't hooked me yet as a Must Read, I'm interested to see where it goes.
