Afterword - Book 4 - Chapter 24 (Patreon)

Chapter 24: Must Come Down II

(Original Chapter Title: Must Come Down)

Of course "Must Come Down" was talking about Dimlit, what else was such a chapter title going to cover? His first appearance was in "What Comes Up" and he was always intended to be a two-parter. The fact that this ended up being in two separate books was a happy coincidence, since it let me play with expectations more. Especially after the last chapter.

Sometimes when I'm prepping chapters for Royal Road, I find alarming typos that made it past every single beta reader (and Patreon reader, not that I've gotten many error reports from here) and two editing passes from me. In this case, it was a common error I make: I had "unphased" instead of "unfazed" (they are not, contrary to a belief I once had, regional spellings of the same word; they have very different meanings). Is letting a mistake through the end of the world? Heck no, I routinely find mistakes even in tradpublished works that have been proofed by editors with decades of experience. But my personal standards are ridiculous (and borderline obsessive, if I'm honest), so I do my best to avoid any and all mistakes.

...I kind of dread ever reading my older books. Even delving older chapters to double-check my memory can be fraught.

Anyhow, this chapter opens with scenes from the passage of time, bringing us to ~5 years since Ranthia and Avyna got together. The base itself is having morale and troop motivation issues, but Ranthia's largely preoccupied with doing her job and enjoying her time with her beloved and their friends. She notes the issues, but she's not willing to stick her neck out. Not again.

And then come some gnolls! BtDEM readers might recognize Thukrur, but you'd be forgiven for missing it—especially since his name never came up thanks to Ranthia. If anyone remains confused by this sequence: basically what happened was Dimlit shipped himself to Remera as cargo. Then he (somehow) snuck away with his barrel without the gnolls noticing until they tried to deliver their cargo. They took this as a personal failing and tried to make amends. And at some point after Ranthia hid the tax book in her home and left to see Avyna, Dimlit found their home (presumably legionaries were all too happy to point out which tent was theirs).

Can books be cursed? I 'unno. But sometimes reading something truly awful can be inexplicably engrossing in its own way.

Anyhow, writing Dimlit is a joy. It wasn't really planned or intentional, but he manages to really get under Ranthia's skin each and every time; he's something of a kryptonite for her. This makes it even more fun, because I feel like we get to see a bit more honesty out of Ranthia's narration any time he's involved. But Dimlit is very much the type of character that works in small doses—I feel like a lot of writers (and directors and game designers) seem to miss when things work best without overuse.

The Generation five is basically an ornithopter; an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings like a bird. Contrary to expectations, it's a bad way to fly, but it actually can work! ...Briefly. Crewed flight times infamously total out in the span of seconds. Realistically, for how small Dimlit's science was, the System had to have lent a hand in terms of material strength and how much power winding could provide; but I tried to write the outcome as realistically as I could! (Writing is often a bizarrely deep research dive; thank Xaoc for the internet... even if it's getting harder to find things that weren't fabricated by the bullshit engines).

Ranthia is somewhat less impressed with it than people (at least those in the know about ornithopters) from our world would be.