It’s one of those chapters...
The kind where a brand-new point-of-view shows up out of nowhere, grinding the pace of the story to a halt as this mysterious new person is given space to introduce themself in some new subplot that is seemingly irrelevant to the preceding events up to this point.
Market research shows that web fiction readers absolutely love this kind of stuff and never, ever complain about it in the comments section, so we are going to follow through by introducing this new cast member through their own eyes.
...
It was a dark and stormy night in the Kingdom of Al’Shazan. Wind swept over the lands and through the dark expanses of the Balthus Valley.
Not a creature stirred, not even a mouse.
The trees were silent despite the wind. The great slumber of night had taken even them.
Only one being was awake.
In the city of Gareth, there was one mysterious cloaked individual who was not only mysterious and cloaked, but also clearly the person who our narrator would follow but not quite get into the head of until the climactic reveal. They were covered in such darkness that it was impossible to tell who it was, even for omniscient beings.
This being stepped through the sleepy streets of Gareth and found their way to the only building with any light—the tavern.
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Of course it was the tavern. Nobody writing fantasy stories could be creative enough to think up locations that weren’t readily shown in Lord of the Rings, because breaking any new molds would just be stupid and risky. We can’t have this mysterious individual going to the train station, now can we? Because while magical systems involving soul palaces and crystals are all fine and dandy, but it just gets unrealistic when you introduce—gasp—industrial technology.
The individual entered the tavern, and immediately they were confronted by a large bald man with a disgusting face.
Matthias. Their target.
“What ya doin’ here, fine one?” Matthias bellowed out in a drunken mumble
“Assassinating you,” said the figure.
Still cloaked in darkness, even when inside this well-lit building, the figure unleashed two dark whips—
No—
Two shadowy vines.
The vines wrapped around Matthias’s arms—
And pulled them off!
Oh no!
Dark vine magic!
The now-armless Matthias stumbled around with blood pouring out, but not depicted in enough detail to bother adding a violence content warning tag, especially since the vines also cauterized the wound a second later and stopped any bleeding—now they were basically green lightsabers.
“Why would you do such a thing?” Matthias cried out.
“Because I’m a mysterious POV,” said the figure. “And that’s what mysterious POVs do.”
They left the tavern and carried on with their night, off in dreamland.