Afterword - Book 4 - Chapter 50 (Patreon)

Chapter 50: Obstreperous

(Original Chapter Title: Obstreperous)

Rejoice those of you who saw this title in the last chapter afterword and fretted that I'd abandoned it! Obstreperous is a niche word, but it is an absolutely amazing one! Seriously, go look it up if you haven't; it's such a cool word when you can find a use for it. Lucky me, I happened to stumble across it shortly before this part of the OG draft. I made sure to earmark the word for this specific chapter.

In which Ranthia becomes ungovernable.

I know some readers are disappointed that Ranthia isn't starting up some rebellion or doing something equally foolhardy, but honestly? If she had, the next book would have been short and quite brutal—there's no realistic way for her to have done such a thing. As for what would have happened had she confronted Night? Well, there'll be some hints. I'll leave it at that.

Fortunately for us, Ranthia decides to do something a bit smarter. I didn't have Green's words in the OG draft, but when I was editing... damn if they didn't feel fitting. It was a great tipping point for the decision Ranthia had already made, after her internal struggle.

She's not here to be a sacrificial hero. She's here to do something with her life, as best she knows how. And so she comes up with her plan to fake her death.

Unfortunately for her, the hydra did its best to make an honest woman out of her.

Oh, there was a minor character moment in this chapter that I wonder if anyone caught: Ranthia had absolutely zero reaction to the hydra having classes like a person. She's so numb to it thanks to the war, it didn't even stick out to her—the classes were exactly what she expected. It was very much intentional, but it's hard to spot non-reactions as something meaningful. But hey, that's why these Afterwords exist! So I can tell you and you can be like "uh-huh, neat."

The battle in this chapter was a total rewrite from the OG draft. At the time, I'd struggled with writing anything compelling, so I had the hydra accidentally kill itself early into the conflict (literally, it walked into its own Acid puddle and failed to escape). Just a 'haha, it was very dumb' moment. And yes, it bugged me back then, but I was planning to end this book (...book 2, at the time) at a later point than I chose to use after editing. And I didn't want the hydra to upstage something to come (oooh, spoilers?!).

Between the new ending point and my general dislike for what I did, I had Ranthia figure out why the hydra acted as it did and use that against it. I think the new version works better. It's an "easy" fight, by her standards, but her victory wasn't just an accident.

But how successful will her gambit prove to be? Book 4 isn't quite done yet!