That elevator sure stopped fast, didn’t it?

This arc is the opposite of Arc 5 in a lot of ways; I think this is the shortest one I’ve written yet, probably by quite a bit. It’s roughly two-thirds as long as Deep Blue Sea. I had more planned, but the more I looked at those plans the less happy I was with them. It didn’t help that this was in some ways the second half of Deep Blue Sea; I think I mentioned in that Author’s Note that I extracted an arc that didn’t fit … well, this is that arc.

The core of this arc was always supposed to be Apollyon. I could play around more with the Solomon vases and what people were doing with summoning magic, not to mention the new Adventurer’s Guild or even Apollyon’s history … but that didn’t really feel like it was getting us anywhere. I did want to do some more with the huge spell Apollyon made out of ley lines … but every time I tried, it just felt boring. There was no conflict until I added in time pressure; the ritual had been there for a very long time. I’d actually originally intended that to be the primary path to Apollyon - it leads to a more extensive fight - but it wasn’t a better story.

The better story here was, I think, where I ended up: the contrast between Apollyon, the Final Reaper, and Serenity. Serenity has changed a lot over the past 11 arcs and I felt like this really brought that home. He’s finally coming to realize that while his past isn’t going to change and he will always have the skills the Final Reaper developed, his future doesn’t have to be defined by them. He still doesn’t want to be the man he was, but that doesn’t mean he has to reject everything, either.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

It does mean that he needs to try to find a new way forward. That’s not going to be easy; he can’t let everything slide (not that he was ever going to) but he also can’t immediately assume that the obvious enemy has to be an enemy. Yes, Apollyon was - but Serenity absolutely could work with someone like the Final Reaper.

For me, Apollyon’s death felt very much like the thud when you close a book after you finish it. It really brought things home for me, enough that the closing chapter was surprisingly difficult to write. I hope it felt the same sort of completion for you that it did for me.

With that waid, we do have one more little problem to solve: what actually destroyed the planet in the original timeline (no, it hasn’t changed - the Voice just doesn’t know because it never knew). If you were paying a lot of attention earlier in this arc, you might even be able to tell what the threat is … by name, at least. No one knows what it really is. Well, no one who’s going to share the information.

The tentative title for the next arc is World Shaman. Feel free to take that as a hint of what to look for if you’re not sure what the threat is.

See you there tomorrow!

~Lillene