Afterword - Book 2 - Chapter 49 (Patreon)

Chapter 49: Time Won

(Original Chapter Title: Time Won)

She's alive!

Ranthia struggles to keep her emotions and mindset in check around Night at the best of times, but she isn't at her best in this chapter. After the battle she's exhausted to the point that she's lucky she never fell over. Adrenaline is great, up until the moment it wears off.

Which is why she cried in front of everyone and (mostly) didn't care.

On that note, I actually originally planned Ranthia as one of those "too cool to cry" sorts, so I sometimes find myself amused at how emotional she can be. The actual Ranthia I write has... very little in common with my original plans—outside of a few broad aspects—but this is one of the stranger contrasts. That's just how writing goes when you're one of the weirdo authors that basically channels a thinking, feeling being.

Our Ranran's a bit of a crybaby at times, but we still love her. Right?

Also pictured in this chapter: Avyna being emotional! She manages it a bit better than Ranthia does, and soon enough she... invites Night over to express her gratitude.

Ranthia disliked that.

In the OG draft there was one omission that is in this version of the text—the loss of other immortal species was never raised originally. This was something I had planned, but failed to find a place to bring up during the OG draft. Fortunately, editing me was slightly less stupid and saw a wonderful opportunity, especially since it let me have Ranthia (once again) underestimate Night's age and let the reader see a contrary viewpoint to the 'dragons can hear their names' thing.

This is definitely a chapter that readers that are familiar with BtDEM (aka the source material) and those that have only read Blind Chaos (so far, I hope; the entire point of the fan works license I operate under is to solicit more eyeballs for Selkie's original) will have wildly different takeaways. Avyna says something that BtDEM readers will recognize as incorrect. ...But how and why?

RAFO!

Ranthia's antics during the day closely follow the OG draft. Well, okay, in it Avyna ran off upset; which was too out of character (I was still figuring her out a bit at this stage, originally, and didn't notice that I'd missed the mark), but otherwise beat-for-beat everything happened the same. Ranthia bought apology sweets and either made Night laugh with a dumb joke or imagined that she did.

And then, after he woke up (the best guest ever, I must say; stayed out of the way and cleaned up after himself completely, without making the host feel awkward?) she managed to accidentally offer herself and her lover up as a meal.

A+ Ran, A+.