Before I knew it, Part Four is done — and with only eight parts total, it suddenly feels like time has flown by. Of course, the remaining parts all have quite a few chapters, so it's hard to tell exactly where I stand.
This part was a story about adventure, music, and the contrast between ancient and modern Arcane Magic, woven together with a main thread running through the whole narrative. I feel it turned out fairly well — whether it was the combat sequences or the "fake death" twist with the music, there were innovative and fun moments. That's probably why the twenty-four-hour subscription count for the "Ode to Joy" chapter hit a series-high of over fifty-eight hundred.
The romance subplot has been slowly unfolding too. An awkward, inexperienced mage who likes to plan everything, paired with a strong-willed, proactive knight — that dynamic already creates an interesting and entertaining tension.
Of course, I know I still have plenty of issues. Sometimes the battle scenes get too verbose, with too much explanation and too many reasons spelled out for why the hero wins. Sometimes the romantic moments aren't delicate enough. I want to keep learning and improving — a writer can't afford to stand still, right?
The dream sequence in the Dark Mountains toward the end of this part was genuinely tough to write. I essentially scrapped the original outline and reworked the entire arc. The setup — why the characters came, what they gained, what threads it connected — those were all predetermined, but the story itself ended up completely different from what I'd planned. The main reason was that I suddenly realized the original outline was a rather cliché psychological trial, and a psychological-projection dream story would be much more interesting.
Because of that shift to psychological projection, I hit a brutal wall this week. From Sunday night through Friday night, there wasn't an evening I wasn't agonizing over plot points, transitions, and how to layer in the symbolism — grinding away until eleven or midnight, brain swelling, then crashing early and waking at five-thirty to write. Four out of five days from Monday to Friday were like that. The one exception was when I simply couldn't go on anymore and took a sick day, pushing the update to noon. Fortunately, the story held up and turned out well — as long as you're satisfied, I'm happy.
But all that back-and-forth took its toll. A cold I'd been fighting flared up badly, and last night I nearly had to go in for an IV drip. Since Part Four wraps up here and it's time for a break to plan the outline anyway, I'm taking a day off to recover and polish the outline. See you Monday morning!
Oh right — I still owe two more updates, I haven't forgotten. The high-tier subscription count broke ten thousand back in early July, and the current average subscription is just over seventy-eight hundred. At the current growth rate, it should comfortably hit eight thousand by month's end. Anyway, thank you all for your support — without you, I couldn't have kept going.
Lastly, mid-month vote-ticket reminder~rs