Afterword - Book 2 - Chapter 35 (Patreon)

Chapter 35: Release

(Original Chapter Title: Release)

For a chapter just short of 7,000 words, this chapter feels incredibly dense. In a good way, I hope. Ranthia's farewell to Remus covered a lot of beats, but that was kind of necessary.

We finally see Hexara's letter (it really was real!), which I decided to write out in the edits. In the OG draft it was just summarized, but it felt important to share the details of the message. (Also, before this, the "Miraculously—thanks, Xaoc!—the charcoal words written on the not-a-scroll were still legible." still makes me giggle.)

The scene with the trainees and their passions was in the OG draft, though I added Ranthia's bit about being a curiosity to better clarify what Ranthia was getting at with the lunk. It's a fun scene, but it also closes a plotline that hadn't been explored much.

Fun tidbit, in the OG draft the Adventurer's guild (inexplicably) paid her with a small bag of gemstones instead of coin. I really have no idea why I made that choice back then, so I yeeted it in the revisions. They never even came up again, it was just... weird.

I expanded a lot on the section for Ranthia's 32nd birthday—I just... wanted to linger on the character moments it invited, even if Ranthia wasn't quite as comfortable as she would have been if Tertia had actually heeded her wishes. (Tertia, effectively, sold attendance to Ranthia's party in exchange for commitments to the Fund she established; an extra peek at the businesswoman she had become.) The emperor's wife had NOT attended in the OG, but she wasn't going to miss it the opportunity. As I said before, Sextia and Ranthia might have worked well together, had Ranthia been able to trust the woman.

She may or may not have had regrets, had she done so.

The other two celebrations didn't get shown, but I didn't think her socially drinking would add much interest for the reader beyond a note that she did so. ...And the more personal party at the brothel was never going to be shown, even if Ran was probably more than a bit drunk and overstuffed (not like that) by then.

The outreach program was super important to Ranthia, but from a storyteller's prospective it was a glacial process that wasn't terribly interesting to look at until its earliest stages were all complete. This was a rare point where my OG draft terrible habit of writing retrospectives from Ranthia actually worked—since it let readers see the shape of the thing without various scenes of "And Ranthia helped haul building materials for an hour before her next obligation" or "And so Ranthia paid another fee for permits, quite heroically."

The segment with Themis was completely new to my edits—and, believe it or not, I very nearly talked myself out of it. I'm vaguely uncomfortable with Ranthia being connected to every single event in Remus that we learned of at the end of BtDEM book 7 or after. In part because I'm trying to leave space for other Tales Beneath the Dragoneye Moons that want to take place in this era, but also it just feels... silly? Like Ran's managed to become somewhat important (somehow) to this period of history, but having her fingers in everything should be unlikely.

But (of course there was going to be a 'but'), I finally caved because I wanted to give Ranthia a final scene with Julia. Julia recognized Ranthia during the party with the elf trio, of course, yet there was no place for Julia to speak on the behalf of Ranthia's fathers during that scene—which disappointed me. Instead, I cemented the timeline with Themis' plans to become a senator—Ranthia wanted to endorse him, he'd mildly impressed her—and finally gave Ranthia her 'closure' with Julia. And I'm glad I did, I think the scene overall has a lot of meaning.

From there we have Ranthia's equipment for the trip, Ranthia's letter to Hexara, and a bit of economic reality (letters in and out of the war are a privilege for the wealthy, ordinary soldiers might be able to send a message home once in a while, but getting responses was... unlikely).

And in that prose, we also see her farewells. Some are more intimate than others, some Ranthia knows to be more final—even if she gets over her disinclination to return to Remus ever again. I don't want to say anything about any of them, I believe this prose can—and should—stand on its own without the words of some cat getting in the way of it.

But hey, at least Sentinel Aurora seemed to have rediscovered something she had lost in the year since Ranthia punched her!

But of course, the chapter doesn't end there. Release would be bittersweet, at best, if it had. But Ranthia (and readers, I suppose) have long waited to know if there was happiness waiting for her beyond Remus' borders. I think it's fair to say things are looking rather promising, on that front.

Avyna hadn't just waited for her, she took action to ensure she would be there to receive Ranthia—to move forward with Ranthia, if Ranthia was willing.

And I think she just might be.