To start off, I'd like to say sorry that this took so long. I said a month and it's been nearly two.

I've pretty much finished up the third arc in my actual drafts so that's great progress on the writing front but I actually haven't done nearly as much editing as I'd like. This is down to two main things. First and foremost, it's because of the fact that I just don't have time to do it on top of writing. I'd love it if I did but that's just not the way things are going for me right now.

The second reason is the fact that I'm pretty sure I want to rewrite the entirety of the first arc. The second and third arcs, I'm pretty happy with but the first arc just doesn't feel right to me anymore. Now, I'd like to preface this by saying that I'm not going to be rewriting it now - that would take entirely too much time that I just don't have - and that when I do rewrite it, the actual end result of the arc is going to be the same and many of the broad strokes are going to be the same.

My current plan for the rewrite is that Erin gets into the criminal organisation as a low-level bruiser (but in a smaller city) and both Sammath and Ashe have been kidnapped. Most of the broad strokes of the story arc follow the same plan. They do escape, they do make their way to the village (though intentionally, this time), and they do meet Lu. They then travel to Trillden city (that part, I'm pretty happy with still) and then they'll return to the smaller city for the final confrontation. That means that it's going to mainly be set in the city, with a little more... nuance and planning from people within the criminal organisation. It also means that it won't be a slaving operation (or at least not one that uses slaves themselves). More something akin to human trafficking.

Beyond that, my general strokes for the edits to the story include: revamping some of the magic, changes to character dialect for both character continuity and just so that I can stop cringing at it, and adding more to each of the settings.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I've come to the realisation that I don't want the Stages of magic to be akin to steps, where you get a massive boost of power every time you complete one. They're still going to have the the same requirements to complete each Stage but be more of a gradual transition, like a hill that slowly gets steeper and steeper as you climb further. The main thing that this means is that, between the top of one Stage and the bottom, there isn't really a gap in power, but there's a massive qualitative power gap between the tops of each successive Stage. The other thing it means is that people will be slowly increasing their magical energy storage, in whatever form that might be. Revamping a little of the magic also means going back and changing some of the advancement criteria for Ashe and Erin but that won't really matter beyond the actual specifics of advancement yet.

As for adding more to the settings, it basically just boils down to me feeling as though things like seasons and their effects haven't actually really had much impact in the story nearly as much as it should have and I'm going to be fixing that. That and I just feel like there hasn't really been much of a variation with many of the different settings or anything really unique and inspiring about them. Perhaps it's just Mage Errant getting to me but it feels like my story's just been set in generic forest number 3 and generic city 6 this entire time.

Anyway, changes that actually happened: the first 3 chapters got entirely removed from the story and the prologue got completely rewritten (I'd recommend going back to that after you've read this, if anyone actually is reading this), renumbering the chapters to account for this, and filling in any blanks to anything that were left in the story. I'm going to schedule the chapters for arc 2 to be posting everyday for the next few weeks and, if that finishes, arc 3. After that's up, I'll figure out what I'm going to be doing for the release schedule for the rest of the story but I have nothing concrete sorted out with that yet.