Afteword - Book 5 - Chapter 19 (Patreon)

Chapter 19: Interlude – Avyna – Ambition’s End

Buckle in, this is a hefty one.

At last, the time has come. Off the bat, I'll be up front: this wasn't the chapter I had once planned to write.

I always had Avyna's entire arc in mind, even from her very first appearance. She would approach and entice Ranthia out of self-interest, then at the end, Ranthia would be there to deliver her final fate, personally. It was meant to sting. Ranthia wouldn't want to do it, but she would—because there was no other choice. Through that moment, Ranthia would learn just how small of a fish she is. Just how powerless she was to save everyone. It was meant to galvanize her.

At the time, I misunderstood something fundamental. I somehow never even quite realized the obvious truth until I was doing my editing pass, actually. I never grasped just how swiftly and intensely Ranthia could fall in love.

And I certainly never expected Avyna to genuinely fall in love with her.

In my original plans, there was supposed to be an emotional distance between them. They would have their fun during their contracted time together, then both would willingly move on. And that plan went out the window before I even knew what was happening. I was still in the midst of writing the OG draft when I (finally) realized that their feelings had become mutually too sincere for my plans.

I might have panicked. A little.

I've referenced it in a previous afterword, but because of this, I developed a... let's (very) generously call it a writing technique that lets me game out what-if scenarios with Ranthia. Because I needed to find out what would happen if I threw my planned conclusion at the couple.

In some ways, I'm not sure how to explain the technique. It's more like roleplaying than writing, in a lot of ways. Yes, I wrote it out, but it was in simplified terms only—the barest structure possible to keep things moving while keeping myself in "writer" mode.

And when I gamed the scene out, with the love that they shared, the story came to an abrupt and brutal end. Ranthia refused to carry out the deed, but even together, they weren't enough. Sure, I was underestimating Avyna back then, but I can say this here and now—the difference wouldn't have mattered.

Anthelleon was my answer. Or, at least, she was the only piece of the answer I was going to hand Ranthia. From there, she needed to find a way to gain enough allies to survive. Also, a related fun fact: originally, Anthelleon and Aegiomus were the same character! Anthelleon was going to be a veteran Hunter that held some measure of respect that took Ranthia under her metaphorical wing. Why did I change it? Well, about 30% of the reason was just that I managed to forget this when I first wrote her introduction, but the other 70% (and the reason I kept the new Anthelleon) was because, by the time I finished worldbuilding enough to establish the Lodge, the original plan made no damned sense. Ranthia was far too experienced to need a mentor for mere monster hunting.

She needed a peer—a proper friend.

Another aide came in the form of something that was actually already in the OG draft. A disposable bit of fun that I dropped in simply to establish Avyna's mercantile Skills—the acquisition of the magic metals, because Ranthia wanted a bit of adamantium. Thanks to her, it came with mithril, lusterite, and purium. Past me didn't even really consider or expect anything to come from that, at the time I'd just picked a few of the more well-established magic metals.

While editing, I noted Avyna's purium pendant, and the current iteration of the scene began to craft itself as I progressed.

For as often as I mentioned Ranthia getting hit by the nerf stick as I edited the OG draft, where she ended up just isn't too different. By the time she arrived in Ar-Suelle, Ranthia was roughly just as capable as she'd ever been at any point in development. I just needed her to survive a melee with elves, keep Avyna alive (though Avyna was hardly the wilting hapless flower I wrote her as in the OG draft), and for Avyna to escape after faking her death.

Easy. Yeah. Let's go with that.

See, I also had another problem: during some of my downtime when I got sick, I built the first template character sheet for an elf. And I finally had a firm grasp of just what Ranthia was up against. For now, I'll just say that Ranthia's high class qualities barely narrow the playing field, at least in terms of physical prowess.

This chapter went through a lot of iteration and shifting plans as I progressed through the version of the story that you all know and (I hope) love. The earliest revisions came while I was still writing the OG draft. Then throughout the editing processes I continued to mull over it. But no plans or ideas survived contact with the keyboard, at least not entirely intact.

In fact, this was always going to be a Ranthia PoV chapter. I'd never even seriously considered using Avyna's PoV until I got here. But I felt like I needed to explain in-prose why Avyna was willing to poison herself and gamble on the pendant, and I wanted to use her eyes for the aftermath. And with Ranthia's PoV, we would have been bogged down in her battle with Rogue Wind, which ultimately wasn't incredibly relevant (nor, as you'll soon see, climatic).

I'm glad I used Avyna's PoV, truly I am, but holy chaos, I struggled writing this chapter. My beta readers can attest to me complaining about it. In fact, have an excerpt from #beta-feedback:

CrimCat — 2/8/26, 4:54 PM

"How's the writing going today Crim?"

"Well mysterious voice, I just spent 15 minutes rewriting a single sentence six times before I stopped completely hating it."

This chapter and Avyna's PoV chapter from the end of book 4 were two of the most difficult chapters I've ever written, at least so far. Both times, I went through a "I'm a total hack, not cut out for being an author" phase while I fought the prose. There's just so much emotional intensity behind Avyna, and I'm not sure that came through properly in either chapter, even today. Especially since she masks it through far more formal language choices than Ranthia would ever use.

It's a damned tough balance.

Interludes are actually generally the things I struggle with most while writing. Ranthia's mindset is practically second nature to me (ignore the fact that I get out of sync with her almost every month). But slipping into Bantus from book 3 or Solace from book 4 or Rani from this book? Maddening, especially since I struggle to keep Ranthia out of it while I'm writing from someone else's PoV. Avyna and (very guessable spoiler omitted) are in some ways easier, because they're also pretty... vivid, for lack of a better word.

But Avyna isn't Ranthia. If anything, she's even more damaged than Ranthia has ever been.

It was worth doing. For all my complaining, I think this chapter came out exactly as I hoped it would. Maybe readers that hated her will hold more sympathy for Avyna after this? We'll see.

Relatedly: I've had it pointed out to me that this is also a thing in China, but I still hold a minor (silly) grudge against Selkie for establishing that elves use their pinkies instead of their middle fingers for the same purpose. I don't think Selkie properly appreciated just how damned hard it would be to write a convincingly dramatic scene involving people pointing their pinkies at each other!

As a final note, I want to indulge in a minor rant. I can name multiple authors that would have ended the chapter after Ranthia killed Blood Chain and left Avyna's survival a "surprise" to be revealed to the audience later in the book/series, with the explanation of her survival described only in a conversation or a quick flashback at most. And seriously, what the heck is up with that as a writing style?

If you can't surprise your audience without hiding things from them artificially, breaking your story's usual flow and immersion level to do so, you shouldn't bother trying.