Afterword - Book 2 - Chapter 55 (Patreon)

Chapter 55: A Bit of a Siege

(Original Chapter Title: A Bit of a Siege)

Fun fact: my fingers want to write 'seige' every. single. time.

I know better. I'm well aware that this isn't an exception to i before e. The misspelling even looks wrong to me. Yet my danged fingers...

Anyhow, this is a chapter that is dense with things that are either (or both) immediately important and/or worth bearing in mind as the narrative moves forward.

Remera weathered the initial strike, but the base finds itself surrounded by enemies with thin hopes for rescue. A siege is, by its nature, a somewhat dull state of affairs for those not trading arrows and spells with their enemies. Not that Ranthia has a chance to get bored.

As a fun behind the scenes tidbit, I want to point out this paragraph:

There was something innately strange and wrong about casually walking to a morning meeting while the sounds of battle and death echoed in the distance. Surely the gods couldn’t have intended their progeny to live such brutal lives.

This was actually a versioning mistake I made while editing. I'd meant to revise the second sentence to focus on the actual combat and killing, but at least one beta reader was highly amused at the fact that the paragraph seemed to suggest that meetings were brutal and unintended by the gods. I liked the effect, so I chose not to fix it.

There's a lot of interesting character moments in this chapter, but I feel like one of the bigger reveals is the display of just how popular Avyna is with many of the legionaries in Remera. We see some choosing to protect her to the extent that they're even willing to stand up to superior officers. Sure, they're from a different Legion, but those superiors could absolutely still ruin their careers—or outright order their death.

There's also a scene that I expect is somewhat divisive with readers: Ranthia slits an officer's throat, yet chooses not to finish the kill. There's valid concerns about creating an enemy and leaving him alive, but honestly, Ranthia never considered the guy to be an enemy. She gave him a clear warning and he kept flapping his ego (and his mouth), and Ranthia wasn't making an empty threat. In that moment, she was ambivalent about whether he lived or he died—the statement that she wouldn't tolerate attacks made against Avyna was the important thing. Ranthia largely believes herself to be immune to the politics of the Legions, after all.

Is that wise? Probably not.

But the chapter concludes with Ranthia, once again, finding Night at her door, just when she thought she could rest. What could that possibly portend?