Lord of the Glass Desert Ch. 2 (Patreon)

Well... I said I would have it out by today, so I'm putting it out today.

Because of time constraints, I went over things again with a fine-toothed comb before putting it up here. 2muchdiggity and oldfart have not seen it yet so any mistakes are all mine. With luck, there won't be many.

Unfortunately, I was feeling ill for part of this last week which put me behind, but to be honest these first chapters have been a struggle. There has been a ton of research as well as going back into books one and two to make sure I'm recalling things that I wrote a year and a half ago accurately as I get new readers up to speed. I feel that I am going to finally get beyond this introductory section in the next chapter and hopefully, things will start flowing a little better. I really want to get back to three chapters a month again and I'm sure most of you wouldn't complain either. 😁

In art news Bun is getting close to finishing up Aradelle and while I was wanting to do Gerda or Bea next I think it might have to be Kal. I have a rendition of Ikuno but to do the comic I'm going to have to have Kal as well.

Finally, there is one part I feel I need to mention in this chapter and it's something that I never even considered a year ago, or even a few months ago. But in today's socio-political turmoil I think I need to mention this beforehand. In this chapter, Kal sees people with very dark skin for the first time and his reactions are intended to be genuine for someone who has never seen a brown or black person in their life. 

Now... why did I use the term "Very dark skin" and the answer is because when building the world of TRC I decided upon the concept of geographic cultures among the humans, not racial cultures. In essence, humans are humans, the geography where their ancestors lived may have brought about variances in how they look and their social rituals but every human in TRC is simply seen as human, not black/white/yellow/brown/red/purple/green/blue human.

In this context, I sincerely hope that no one finds Kal's fleeting train of thought as he sees these desert/savannah dwelling humans for the first time as offensive or derogatory, it was most certainly not written with any malice intended.

On with the story!

Descent. Tension. Overcharged.

Enjoy!

-Blu

Edit: Just got 2muchdiggity's revisions back and put up the updated versions.