It’s been a bit of a wild ride, but Serenity’s finally on his way back to Earth.

This arc had some growing pains; it was originally supposed to spend about half the storyline in the Necropolis (instead of the Shining Caverns). Greyvine was going to show back up as an antagonist, angry about having the dungeon “stolen” even though he abandoned it and the people in it (that never fit into the plot, so he’s out there somewhere, still angry about it).

I started plotting a mini-arc where Serenity and Raz dealt with the mercenaries that co-opted Raz; that would have led directly to the encounter with Greyvine. It sounded like a great idea until I tried to figure out how to make it work and realized it didn’t have anything more to it than a bland revenge plot about bad hiring practices. It didn’t help Serenity get home, so it was a distraction, and it didn’t have enough of a reason to do it to make it worth the delay for him when he could just remove Raz from the situation and be done with it - and work towards going home. I couldn’t figure out a way to make it compelling and it got scrapped.

Serenity was going to fall across the curse plot from the other side, the original victims, and track them back to the inventor and deal with her while dodging attacks from minions of Greyvine … yeah, that got scrapped, too. The one part of scrapping the mercenary/Greyvine subplot that I regret is that I was going to spend some time with Serenity and Raz working together, developing their relationship; that was delayed to Arc 4 instead.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Instead, we met Hale, Katya, and Zan and got involved in their mess - and Katya led Serenity straight to the curse plot where it was unfolding in the Shining Caverns. We met some other dhampir and Serenity got to find out more about his link to the A Rest from Death dungeon.

Stojan Aith was going to be the final enemy either way; that was, after all, a major part of why Serenity was sent to Tzintkra. He was going to trigger the City Lord problem if he tried to take anyone to Earth with him - and Raz was always planning to follow him.

The change in location makes the title seem a bit off, but somehow, Braving the Shining Caverns just doesn’t have the same ring to it. I may or may not change the Arc title - it depends on whether or not I come up with something better, and right now I want to refocus on the next arc.

I’m happy with where we’ve ended up, and even happier to finally have Serenity headed home. There are problems waiting for him, of course, it wouldn’t be a story otherwise.

The working title for the next arc is Down to Earth.

See you in the next arc tomorrow - even though Serenity may not quite be on Earth yet.

~Lillene