Afterword - Book 2 - Chapter 36 (Patreon)

Chapter 36: A Contract Signed

(Original Chapter Title: A Contract Signed)

Past me sure took on a challenging task. "Oh, I'm going to have a contract getting written, but I'm gonna make it romantic."

This is, in a lot of ways, a solid look at a key facet of Avyna's personality. It's easy to imagine that she's perfected this little ritual through her past relationships (she has a grown daughter, don't be shocked that Ran isn't her first formal relationship). It's also a fun look at Ranthia being panic-y, following her train of thought into places that she seldom is so open about.

As some of you might remember, early into the story I screwed up the date and lost a year without noticing, so everything was getting pushed back a bit with Ranthia a year older. This... largely hasn't mattered much, but this was one of the places I was frantically trying to decide if I needed to change something up until the moment we got here. The eighty year contract.

Ranthia politely informed me that I would suffer knife wounds if I stole a year off the contract from her, so the contract stayed eighty years. (Slightly more seriously, she would have come to absolutely hate her year in Remus if it had so visibly damaged her time with Avyna.)

I don't want to say too much about any section of the contract or their actions here—much of what I could say will come up in some form or another at some point.

Poor Bulwark though, Ranthia was more than a little rude when she encounters him; not that she meant to be. She's just... well, kind of reasonably excited. Not that he knows it. I do still giggle at him assuming she's a speedster—it's not entirely unreasonable.

One thing I've tried to be consistent with is that a lot of the 'negative' reactions to Ranthia's eyes are in her own head. Yes, she had the misfortune of getting a truly horrendous initial reaction before she knew about [Vision of the Void]'s changes to her eyes, but since then, largely she has mentally added greater weight to glances thrown her way. Sure, when she's trying to intimidate people, her eyes are a great force multiplier, but Void-touched eyes are rare by Reman standards. Her world is no longer quite so tiny.

And Avyna wasn't even slightly bothered by them.

Not that Ranthia is going to be suddenly freed from her own discomfort with her eyes, not so readily. Few reactions have been overtly negative—except when she was weaponizing them—but a self-taught stigma is hard to escape once it's ingrained.

It's fantastical, but it's still a body image thing. Same as countless other women (and, yes, men) have gone through.