Afterword - Book 2 - Chapter 30 (Patreon)

Chapter 30: Various Little Duties I

(Original Chapter Title: Various Little Duties)

This chapter opens with a fun character moment. In the OG draft I felt too uncomfortable digging deeper into Ocean and Hunting's personalities, which led me to just summarize that they had an argument before things got underway. Having spoken to Selkie and gotten more comfortable with what Blind Chaos means as a Tale Beneath the Dragoneye Moons, I was finally ready to do this justice by the time I got here.

My favorite reaction to this scene was one of my beta readers. This person had just finished a reread of BtDEM shortly before this chapter was edited and passed to them. I'ma gonna quote them: "Always thought of Ocean as more of a mature, serious one, given his role's political overlap. That said, your notion of him as something of a prankster among his peers fits with the enthusiasm he had for testing Dawn's persistent casting, ditching her in Deva and betting on the state of armour when she returned. I like it!"

Speaking on BtDEM for a moment: Elaine bonded with the Sentinels, but she also largely put them on a pedestal at the same time. Their titles and roles colored a lot of her perceptions and I'd argue that it read like she never really engaged with them as people. Ranthia, on the other hand, is—even after everything—an Adventurer at heart. She's eager to see the people and cast off the mythos after a brief wow period. It makes her more aware of their more human quirks.

Despite what I just said about being hesitant to flesh out the OG Sentinels, the talent show was actually in the OG draft. A few bits were vaguer, but it was a great moment that I needed to preserve and do justice to when I edited. Hunting 'winning' the thing was new, but it felt apt!

The scene with the reverse-grip trainee was newly added during editing. A lot of people seem to be surprised that Ranthia doesn't reverse-grip her knives (had she stayed on the assassin path instead of dance fighting, she might have—but that's not our reality) probably because videogames with reverse grips on knives/daggers for combat have become so prevalent. This was a shower thoughts idea that I wrote down in my notes so I wouldn't forget when I got here—a way to explain things in the story without having to deal with it in Q&As.

But seriously, reverse grips suck for actual fighting. There's more downsides that Ran didn't even cover.

And yes, Hunting impaled Ran in the OG draft too. I wrote more lead-in for the scene to explain why it happened, but Ranthia always (hilariously) underestimated her mentor.

I kind of wish I'd been able to just do a few chapters of Ranthia and Hunting taking more time off together, but things had to keep moving and Ran, for better or worse, wasn't quite willing to drop all her obligations just because her mentor was around for a while. I think it was still good for both of them though!