I'm doing a quicker read-through than I probably normally would, mostly because it's fairly similar.
Line stuff: I continue to smile at the "spiders shouldn't have wings" remark. It's still great!
However, I'm noticing the "then"'s to start sentences far more than I did before. I figure I'll keep mentioning it until you cave about it
It's a word choice thing, and you can use it perfectly well, it's just make sure you know the reasons for using it, not that you're throwing it around for kicks and giggles.
Still calling Melia a Sith now? *poke*
Though, if you changed Melia's appearance to include the leaves, nice change. Though, I have a feeling I must have skipped over it the first time. Oh well.
Not a lot more I can say about it, I'm afraid. I really didn't notice anything different. Still good, still fun.
Having not read anything of "The Sword of Worlds" until this rewrite, I came in with certain expectation, none of which was to see a Connecticut Yankee. Real world people in fantasy lands is usually some attempt at satire or humor using a gimick (like Dr. Watson) to give cause to explain the world and such and compare it to things in the real world. While this is not a bad idea (it's actually fairly clever I think) all real people in fantasy world stories fall into the same rut of trying to to be Evil Dead or some such but failing miserably. You can understand my feelings then when I read this piece and thought it was really really funny.
Personally I don't like fantasy with real people in it (fictional but still). Maybe it's because I'm jealous of them, wanting to be going on the adventure instead of reading about someone I could know doing it, or maybe it's because I think Mark Twain is a twit. But whatever my reasons for disliking it, I found myself really enjoying your piece despite my inherent, negative feelings. And to top it off the real person was not only NOT the conventional hero of these types of stories, he was really really likable.
The inner dialogues made me chuckle "I know I'm a stud . . ." as an example. The narrator's voice is very easy to follow and brilliant in bringing the character to life. He was witty, charming, and his girlfriend made me giggle. That said, I really think you could put more into it.
There are a good number of places in the text that feel like they're missing a gag or two that could have added to the hilarity of it all. The piece stands well enough on its own, but I think there could be more to it.
Overall, thumbs up.
I think you hit on precisely the reason why I like Kail. I agree with the analysis 100%, including the moving to other worlds thing. I'm not a fan of it, either.