Hey I've been trying to write a story, but I'm not sure about a lot of things. If I explain my ideas, will you critique it and tell me whats good and what isn't? I have a few parts I haven't figured out yet, but you can help me with that. 

Ok, so it's fantasy, and in the story people can use magic, but there are lots of limits because the magic comes from yourself. Let me explain. See, your writing hand is your output hand and and the other is your input hand. So you can absorb energy from the outside, and focuse it to manifest in some form when you put it out. An example is if you wanted to heal someone, you would either take some of your own life/health and give it to them, or if something like a plant was around you could take the life from it and stream it through you to who ever you want to heal. So plot wise, there is a small town of about 500, and about 5 people have gone missing, so the leader of the town knows that he needs to do something about it. He hires a man who is a sort of adventurer, roaming around, getting hired to basically kill creatures that have been causing disturbances. So around the same time he comes to the town, a woman comes as well, I'm not sure why yet. I wrote the part already where she comes to the tavern. One day, as the man is "patrolling"  a deranged man comes out of the sewers (this town has those sewers that are large enough to walk around in) and he keeps saying a word over and over again. When questioned about what it is, his responce is, "It's a word... It comes from the sewers... and it makes people.... hurt themselves." This makes the adventurer think that perhaps what ever made those people disapear could be in the sewers. So he and a group of others (brave others whose loved ones went missing?) They enter the sewers and walk around for a while, and walk in on a cult. The cultist are in the middle of some disturbing and perhaps gory ritual. The cultists worship a demigod. When the cultists are aware of their "visiters" they say the same word that the deranged man said. Some how the adventurer man survives, but all the others, when they hear this word, it makes them think that something evil/bad is in/on them or their worst fear. For example, if someone had arachniphobia, they might imagine that spiders are crawling all over him, and tear at their own flesh to try to rid himself of them, unaware that he is killing himeself. I really want one guy to self imolate ( to set himself on fire). Well, anyway, somehow, the woman and the adventurour met up in the sewers and try to stop the demigod. They wander through the sewers and find a hallway lined with cages and in them are people of every demographic, just shoved in like animals. There is a neverending light so it';s hard for them to sleep, not like they would want to anyway, because the ones whe fell asleep were often brought somewhere else, and they were sure it wasn't a better place. The whole hallway reeked an odor most foul, because they could never leave their cages, so obviously, it was a pretty gross place. They let the people go. Here, my vision for the story gets murky. I know that somehow, the demigod is defeated, and before that we find out that he took these people to find out how he can have more power over people, so he prety much tests/tortures them. The cultists, I wanted to have their freewill stolen from them with some sort of artifact, but now I'm wondering if I should do that or not becasue I found it fascinating that some people follow authority, even if it goes to extreme measures. Like that test where people administered electric schocks to someone just because they were told to for the test and half of them went to a lethal amount. Also, the word is something that they found out from those torture sessions, and it helps because before, magic was wordless, but when you could use words, you needed a lot less magic to do even more damage. I also wanted the adventuror and the woman to fall in love. I want the woman to have a larger part than I have said, but I don't know what she would do. I also wanted the power of love to be important, but someone said that was too clique.

Any help? Is it any good? I could post the part I wrote about the woman, but it's only a little more than a page, and it's at school, so it would have to be after school monday. I also need names. I'm pretty sure what I;m going to name the woman, but I don't know about the man.