Well, I s'pose I'll chime in. Even though I'm more than a bit lost after missing 17 chapters.
My biggest beef with the whole chapter is that you spend too much time describing things. Here's a particular paragraph that bugged me:
They were straight punches, one right over the other, elbow in, lined up with my shoulders, meaning that when they connect, you aren’t just pushing on my arm, but against my whole body. When I shift towards an opponent, my feet never leave the ground, but glide across it. Which is very effective for maintaining balance and power, it’s tricky to learn, but I’d been practicing a long time.
So, this is the middle of combat, and you're giving me a martial arts lesson. While I don't have any problem with your first description (They were straight punches, one right over the other), when you continue with "meaning that when they connect...", blah. Just describe what you do, not *why* you do it. If it works, your resulting action (the other guy gets the crap kicked out of him) will show such. If it doesn't work, it'll also show (likely by your MC getting the crap kicked out of him). If you want to throw in something like "I was glad I'd been practicing so long." that's good, because it's a quick note that he a) actually knows what he's doing and b) he's still thinking a little bit during the combat.
Cutting out a lot of the over-explanation of what's happening would probably solve the other problem I have: this chapter is pretty long. You could probably cut out 5 pages. Easily. And I don't think it would really affect the choreography
I actually like the second half, with the Sigil Knight better, but I would have to agree with LTU (ugh, that almost feels dirty... sorry LTU
). If they're supposed to go around pwning everything, having them beaten already (I assume this is around the end of the first third of the book, maybe moving toward the halfway mark) seems a little premature. I would have expected it to turn out much differently... like, he and Kajsa get their game on, bash some heads in, but then get totally curb stomped by the Knight, and barely manage to get out with their lives. Even better, it could be that the Knight is the one that put the iron into Kajsa (maybe one of their purposes is to deal with trolls, so they're well aware that iron screws them over). Dunno, it's your story, but managing to kill a Knight only to get mortally wounded by a normal person's arrow is a bit anti-climactic.
Personally, I don't mind "kinda sappy". If they're in love, they're in love. There's nothing wrong with that, until you go all Harlequin romance on us. You haven't done that, yet. If it's part of the story, then interweave it with your plot and it'll be cool. If nothing is going to come of it, you probably shouldn't draw too much attention to it, because it'll distract from your real story.
The only other thing I really had problems with was that you used colloquialisms in odd places. At one point you refer to the Knight throwing a punch at "mach two". I understand that your characters are from Earth originally (or something), but even so, most people have no real concept of mach two anyway. "His fist was a blur" conveys just as much, without the technicality of it moving 681m/s (at which point there's no dodging it, I don't care how good you are). It just kinda jars me out of the world, which is fantasy. Unless you're going for a DBZ approach, where people can move faster than light and such. I'd like to think that your story was a little more grounded in semi-reality. Then by all means, SUPERSONIC PUNCH away.
I might send you some small line-edits, but not right now. It's late, and 6700 words is a bit to go through with a fine-toothed comb.
