Afterword - Book 2 - Chapter 14 (Patreon)

Chapter 14: Old Friends

(Original Chapter Title: Old Friends)

Ranthia is back in Remus and... well, six years is a long time. The city has changed in her absence.

And she's starting to see that she has as well.

This is something that Selkie never got to really play with (or opted not to, I've no idea which), but leveling so far beyond the general populace... might have downsides.

It was a joy to write Green and Ranthia's other friends from Ranger Team 6 again. They can be goofs (well, the girls can—Green's far too mature for that), but they're charming goofs.

Usually.

Ranthia often forgets that Green had been groomed to be a Sentinel, she was Sentinel Nature's hand-picked replacement so he could retire. She just had her own plan. But she is in on far more secrets than Ranthia would have ever dreamed, and as such, she's the first to realize that Ranthia has changed in a very important way.

As for who the eavesdropper was? You'll have to keep reading, it'll come up again!

Ranthia finally discovering that Pyra and Juvenae were sham-married was hilarious. I'd set it up for the Ranger Team 6, but it... never came up. Ranthia actually owns the reason—she was profoundly relationship-adverse throughout the journey. I suspect she noted Juvenae had a 'fake' ring for her fun, but our girl never put two-and-two together at the time.

Which gave me a wondrous opportunity to bring it up in the most hilarious way possible.

And then things go to shit. This was in the OG draft, but it wasn't planned from the start. It's often hard to remember my mindset from this far back, but here it was easy, I still remember the 'wait what?' moment. When I tried to game out how they would react to the news of Ranthia's new (maybe) relationship. Pyra was the easiest: she would be excited—she may not 'get' romance, but she loves being happy for other people's happiness. Green, naturally, would be happy for Ranthia too, even if it would be starkly tinged with her concerns about Ranthia's plans to rejoin the war. Art would favor being happy for Ranthia, though they would have private concerns that they're too polite to voice. Juvenae wouldn't care much, but she'd smile—it was the polite thing to do.

I never expected Lysia to be the problem, but godsdamnit, she was.

I'd planned for it to come up at some point, yes. Possibly through either Sentinel Seeking or Scorch. But instead it came up here.

Racism is an ugly thing, but it's also a foreign concept to Ranthia. Sure, conceptually, she knows that Laconia is treated badly, but she's never really seen it in action (that she truly noticed—eagle-eyed readers might have seen moments of it themselves from her younger years). But here she has someone she cares about disparaging someone else she cares about.

And Ranthia takes it quite poorly.

She took it poorly enough that a scene I planned to have after lunch got punted to a different chapter! Ranthia just refused to stay put after that.

A little piety calmed her down though, enough so that she inflicted a (poorly thought out) prank on her best friend. Seriously, poor servant guy.

Tertia and Ranthia's friendship dynamic is joyful to write. They're relaxed and unguarded around each other usually. There's no weird attraction or romantic undertones either—Ranthia might be a lesbian, but that doesn't preclude her from having genuine friendships. But Tertia's also 110% willing to be blunt and direct when Ranthia's doing something wrong.

Her words hurt Ranthia, but Ranthia needed to hear them. Learning that her anger wasn't as subtle as she thought it was... it's important. People are still animals, and we still have instincts for danger. Sure, we can sort of logic them away, but people even in our world often get 'bad' vibes from people that turn out to be dangerous. Reman people would be even more sensitive, because they've never gotten to escape predators like we have.

Fortunately, Tertia's thrilled for Ranthia (once she confirms that Ranthia's okay with the wait) and she married a hopeless romantic. Here Ranthia finds unquestioning acceptance for her potential paramour.

BtDEM readers probably have a good giggle at Ranthia's steadfast conclusion about whether elves can be arrogant or not. Extreme bias plus very limited sampling outside of strictly professional roles...

But duty calls, and Ranthia is ready to step in it!