My apologies again for this taking so long! I was visiting my girlfriend on the other side of the country and didn't have proper internet there (really only dA on my phone) so it was difficult to try and leave critiques for people I promised while there. Now that I'm home, though, I was able to take the time to read over this piece like you wanted and give proper critique! My apologies again.

Right from the beginning, I feel like this story is moving too quickly. That may just be my personal opinion and taste, but I feel like as a reader, we are thrown into the situation much too quickly. While it's good to start in the middle of the action, this part seems to be TOO into the action. There are only three quick lines at the start to set the scene before Altair makes his first statement and things start building up. Slow down a bit. Really set this scene for the readers so that they can ground themselves in this world, not suddenly become thrown into it wondering why and how everything is happening. Pacing is definitely something here that you'll want to work with, and something that I noticed as I continued reading into Chapter 1.

Another thing that I noticed when reading the beginning (and throughout all of this) which made it difficult was the punctuation. There were a lot of punctuation errors that could be cleaned up through here. A word of advice for catching some would be to read your work aloud. This way, you can feel and hear the rhythm of the words and help you apply proper punctuation for them. Right now, there are semi-colons and em-dashes that are used incorrectly or too often that would make this flow much better without them. Reading aloud can also help you catch unnecessary words (which there were quite a few of throughout) as well as repeated words. There were many times I noticed words or phrases being recycled and by reading aloud, the ear will catch them better than the mind can. Another thing that stood out to me was how many adverbs were littered throughout. While some here and there are alright, having a bunch of them all throughout your story can become tedious and throw the reader off and come off as amateur. I suggest in your edits for later drafts that you try this technique-- it very well may help you!

Here's one part alone that I thought I'd highlight just for an example of how to edit your work and get rid of adverbs and other needless words (and punctuation errors):

(Original) "Slowly but firmly, the Marduk Armor approached the princess. Every step, every movement it made thundered her to her core. Soon, the beast towered above her, its fiery gaze staring through her visor and into her very soul."

(Edit) "The Marduk Armor approached the princess. Every step and movement it made thundered to her core. Soon, the beast towered above her, its fiery gaze staring into her soul."

The edited version moves much quicker and smoothly and works better with the pacing of this story. By taking out words that are unnecessary and do nothing for your writing but bog it down, it really helps make the language stronger. Even in the suggested edit, "fiery" could possibly be removed, as well, but I left it in there for the time being. By cutting out words like that example and making it more concrete and to the point instead of over flowering it, it really makes for a smoother read that the reader doesn't get lost in and bored with quickly.

Back to my main comment, I think what threw me off the most with the prologue is the fact that there's just too much dialogue going on. You want to find a nice balance between detail/description and dialogue in writing, and right now, there's just so much dialogue and character names getting thrown about that it's very hard for the reader to get grounded in the setting or really get to know the characters and what is going on. Ultimately, this form currently makes it confusing and hard to follow. We really never get any sense of the characters or where this is taking place, which is something that you want your reader to know and understand before anything else. Making them lost and confused right from the start with things that shouldn't be confusing takes away from the mystery that you're trying to create. More description of the setting and the characters and who they are by developing them more can really help pull the story together and help solve this issue that right now makes the opening very hard to follow. After the first few lines, it especially became tedious with all the information coming through the dialogue without much else to really sustain it. Like *RoyalBlackheart mentioned in her critique, if this wasn't a requested critique, I probably wouldn't have read beyond the Prologue (if I made it that far). Slowing down your writing can help with this issue, as well as more detail and grounding the reader in your world.

Since I briefly mentioned dialogue, I think that this is another thing I noticed in your work that could use some working on. Currently, the dialogue is very forced from what I feel, and very unnatural. Again, like with the unnecessary words and punctuation, reading your work aloud will help you find this. Listen to what your characters are saying. Do they sound like what people would really be saying in real life? What is the rhythm/tempo that your characters are speaking in? Does it sound convincing? Right now, a lot of it is very unnatural and forced language that sounds very over-the-top and created for literature and "corny" in a sense. In this situation, you wouldn't find the characters saying some of the things that they are. Really get to know your characters, show us your characters, and give us real people-- not puppets with speech that comes off as strange to us.

Even into Chapter 1, there was also a lot of telling instead of showing (as I had mentioned with the dialogue issue before). There's a lot of just coming out and telling the reader what is going on and how things work, etc. without actually showing them. This can become tedious and boring for the reader and ultimately negatively affect your work. That's something that I think you need to work on the most in order to really get this story off the ground currently (once the minor editing things such as punctuation and grammar and whatnot are cleaned up). The Prologue was full of telling, but it continues into Chapter 1 (as I feared), so it's something that you'll want to make sure is polished so that it becomes more of an effective story.

As I briefly mentioned before, as well, you have a lot of work to do for character development. I get the feeling that you really have a strong sense of these characters in your head, but they're just not coming out on the paper yet. As readers, we can't yet really grasp who these characters are or what their desires are. From the start, we should feel an attachment to them of some sort which gets us invested in their story. In this current draft, I personally feel no attachment to any of the characters, nor do I feel motivated to continue along with them and see what happens to them. Just like establishing a strong setting and getting the reader grounded in your world, you need strong and developed characters, as well. This is probably my number one word of advice for you with this piece. Develop your characters and make them interesting enough to really get your readers to bond with them (positively or negatively is fine) and want to continue reading about them.

I will say that overall, Chapter 1 was better than the Prologue, though there were still a lot of those weak points that I mentioned which made it hard to follow and remain interested. Working on some of the things that I mentioned above may certainly help and bring out the full potential of this work. I see that you have it and that you have a brilliant idea in your head, but it's just not coming out on the paper yet. You've got a ways to go, but you are off to a good start.

Keep writing and never give up! The more you work, the better you will get. I wish you the best of luck!