Hi MattMatthias 
 This is a review from "Invalid Item" 
of your short story: The Great Light (Pt. 1) 
And remember, these are only my opinions. I'm just here to give you a different perspective, encourage your work, and hopefully give you a nice, well-deserved pat on the back!
 First Impressions:
For a fantasy fan like me, there's so much to love here! You have introduced some compelling characters in Malt and Otara, all set against a backdrop of space-time portals and a mysterious Great Light that separates reality from darkness. I think it is often hard for stories to establish originality in the fantasy genre, but you have certainly done just that.
My Favorite Elements:
 Plunging into the Action One of my biggest pet peeves with fantasy stories is that they take forever to get to their point. Often the farm boy who is destined to topple the evil lord of darkness must be shown as a simple farm boy for seven or eight chapters. Not so with your story! You begin directly after the slaughter of Malt's horse, walk us through the harrowing ordeal that brought your protagonist to his deserted spot, and introduce a goddess. I love the feeling of immediacy that your first chapter creates. I was so in the moment I had little time to wonder what coming next. If the rest of your story unfolds in such a manner, I think you have something quite special on your hands.
Originality I just wanted to briefly give you credit for the stunning vision and imagination that you display in this chapter. You do not rely on the standard cliches of the fantasy genres, but instead endeavour to carve out new terrain. I admit that I am quite curious about the Great Light, and as far as I know, there's nothing quite like it out there in the literary world. And what's ether? You tantalizingly mention that ether was what tainted the axe that nicked him, but ether is also some force that Malt was once strong it and separates his current spot of desolation from anything else. Haha I guess I will have to keep reading to find out!
Favorite Lines He, like so many other heroes of legend, was merely a Puppet, strings tugged by a bored divinity in some endless and incomprehensible struggle for power. Splendid metaphor! This sentence is expertly crafted, and I re-read it just so I could enjoy it one more time before moving on.
His strength halved, his weaving of the ether reduced to that of any other man, his prophetic powers gone. I chose this sentence because I think it really illustrates how you almost effortlessly weaved exposition into Malt's thoughts. The concept of the ether is, of course, still a bit of a mystery to me, but here you reveal something of its use among the "normal" populace without stating it in a straight-forward and boring method.
Each wore a mask; one for each of the major gods, including... including you, my mother. This is a fantastic bit of characterization of Malt and his relationship with his goddess mother. The hesitation he reveals at even retelling this part of his tale reflects upon the unease that he feels around her. I love characterization like this that shows something about the background and emotions of your protagonist through pure dialogue.
Suggestions:
 Third Person Limited versus Omniscient As the author of this tale, the decision of which narrative mode to use it totally up to you. My only slight concern is that most of this entire chapter seems to be told in third person limited, focusing solely on the inner thoughts of Malt. In the last paragraph, however, you dramatically shift to relating the thoughts and concerns of Otara. There is no problem bouncing around from one character's thoughts to another in third person omniscient, but I would suggest sticking to limited if you plan on following the story through Malt's perspective.
Ether and Other Mysteries As I mentioned earlier, there are so many fun fantasy mysteries to unravel in your tale, and it makes me want to keep reading! I just have a little suggestion in this department about how to make these mysteries a bit more engaging. Without giving away details that you want to save for later, it might help to inject your tale with a bit more descriptive imagery. For example, when Otara floats down from the tree, what does that look like? Does a light breeze carry her downwards, sending her clothes billowing around her, or does she and the air around her appear completely unchanged? Or when she heals Malt's shoulder wound, what does the white light do when it reacts to the injured spot?
Word Choice and Punctuation They had done that to him too, an axe that had barely nicked him but an axe tainted with a weave of purple ether that prevented blood from clotting. This sentence read a bit awkwardly for me. I think the problem might be that the subject, "they", conflicts with the action done by the axe. Also, repeating axe twice in the sentence might not be necessary. I might suggest something like  "They had done that to him too, nicking his shoulder with an axe tainted with a weave of purple ether."
...kings deferred to his every whim, Emperors bowed their heads. Just a small note, but is there a reason "Emperors" is capitalized and "kings" is not?
I was caught without armour, and bearing only a small ritual sword for the church services. I noticed a couple of times throughout your story you added a comma to separate two verb phrases that have a shared subject. You don't need to do that. However, in this specific case, I might suggest adding "was" before "bearing" since by itself, "bearing" does not make sense with the subject (I bearing only a small ritual sword).
Suddenly, the largest of them, wearing the mask of Te Basa and with a red ribbon tied around his arm, cried “Enough!” . . . It was then I realized they had corralled me I don't think the ellipsis is necessary in this sentence. You use a lot of them in Malt's dialogue to indicate his pauses, but this pause, if that's what it is, seemes a bit superfluous.
Malt’s face lit up, a confusion of hope and amazement. This might be just me, but I didn't really understand your description of Malt's face. A combination of hope and amazement doesn't add up to confusion in my book. Haha but then again, this is your book, not mine 
Overall:
I think this was a splendid opening chapter to your story, Matt! I hope my suggestions can be of use to you, but either way, you should be proud of this very original and entertaining fantasy effort 
It was such a pleasure to read your work!
Happy writing!
 Kilpik
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With an imagination like that, I really can't wait to read more of your stories! You have a gift for twisting details that we know about our world into mysterious and fascinating facets of another. 
This is a review from "
Kilpik
The 
Favorite "Bad" Elements (and by bad I mean 
Comments of a 
In a 
I absolutely loved the journey you take your writers on in such a short amount of space. In the first scene, I wondered if you were doing some sort of retelling of the "Good Samaritan" tale, with Thomas as one of the heartless passerbys. Obviously, I was wrong, but the little twists and turns your story were wonderful to read. By the time Thomas called Sacred Heart, I realized I needed to just hang up my predictions; they weren't working. I loved the feeling of anticipation as i waited to see how all your dissimilar elements would come together.
