Afterword - Book 4 - Chapter 28 (Patreon)

Chapter 28: Unfamiliar World, Familiar Strife

(Original Chapter Title: Blind Retribution IV)

And now we're done with shuffling things around!

The chapter title is a shameless attempt to bait people after how the last chapter ended, but I also know that most people don't bother to read chapter titles—not that I'll let that stop me.

Writing disassociation comes easily to me, because I've dealt with it before. It's... not as strange an experience as you might expect, especially not while you experience it. The easy analogy is that it's like playing a game with a third person camera, except the game is your body. You feel like you're just kinda watching what happens and responding, often with a bit of latency. Memory can also be weird and abstract, though Ranthia is a bit perkier about remembering things than I ever was when I went through it.

Is this an identical experience for everyone that's been through it? I honestly have no idea, but I assume there's at least some degree of overlap. As I hinted at with the end of the prior paragraph, Ranthia's experience doesn't quite mirror my own; though it's definitely cut from the same cloth.

She seizes her way back by force of will though, which I've never managed. Then again, I never found out about an attempt on my life while I was disassociating; maybe that'd be enough for most people.

The plot thickens.

Ranthia's clumsiness at the end of her 'battle' wasn't (just) from shock, trauma, and blood loss; she'd been poisoned! Fortunately for her, the winged ogre actually did her a favor when he ripped her in half—quite ironically, removing the source of the poison kept it from rendering her completely helpless.

Adjacently related, it's fun to come up with increasingly alarming names for anti-pain Skills. Though in retrospect, I feel like [Tearing Resistance] was probably the most alarming, rather than the least. Ah well, curse chronology.