Afterword - Book 4 - Chapter 38 (Patreon)

Chapter 38: Stalling Out

(Original Chapter Title: Stalling Out)

More than once while I've been editing and preparing chapters for readers, I've found myself wondering what the heck past me was thinking. And this chapter was probably one of the most severe cases I've had.

The OG draft version of this chapter was 2.2k words. The version you read is 7.1k words. So yes, a lot changed, but the single biggest thing I had to fix was that, in the OG, Ranthia fought the twin solo. Oh, and past me cut the scene in the middle of the fight and just moved to the next scene. Modern me is in utter awe at how terrible and unsatisfying of a decision that was. Even the fragment of the fight that was there wasn't well written! In it, the twin fought like an idiot (he was running back personally for new weapons every time one broke instead of having them passed to him) and the scene focused mostly on Ranthia's thoughts about the fight.

At least the new version of this chapter has one of my favorite lines that I've written: It wasn’t a plan; it was blind optimism wrapped in wishful thinking until it became a temptation.

But yeah, this one took an absurd amount of effort to polish. I'm proud of how it came together though! And I needed to do the end of the war that was justice before its conclusion could be (re)written.