Heretic Spellblade 6 - Detailed Commentary

Intro

This post will include broad commentary on Heretic Spellblade 6, including many of the editing decisions I made (and didn’t make). As such, it is loaded with massive spoilers. If you haven’t read the entire book, come back later. This post will be waiting for you. Also, it’s really long.

Before I jump into the commentary, I’ll briefly mention a couple of things. I try to push more “authorly” topics toward the end of the commentary, so if you’re just interested in my thoughts on the book and its editing decisions, I’ll try to give some warning for you to jump off. But there will be some exceptions, so you might get a couple of glimpses behind the curtain. The first topic is a good example of this.

The Hardest Book I’ve Written

Long-term patrons have heard me say this about almost every book I’ve said, to the point where it could almost be a drinking game. So I figure I’ll set the record straight with the help of hindsight.

Spellblade 6 truly is the hardest book I’ve ever written. It had two false starts where I stopped working on the book (immediately after Spellblade 5, when I took an extended break and went to Japan, and in January when I ditched the first act). I rewrote the outline completely as a result of those false starts. The sheer size and complexity of the series made it difficult to get back into. It also bloated massively in size even though it was meant to be a short book (as Book 6 was intended to be one half of the original Book 6, something everyone has forgotten or never read in any of my online updates, making me question the point of writing any of them). Act 3 had to be completely rewritten and condensed, with an entire major battle dropped and elements rolled into the battle beneath Soreaux, as well as several plot elements pushed into Book 7.

I’m nowhere near as exhausted as I was after Spellblade 5. The past week has been enough to recuperate, I think. Some more Mob 2 chapters should be enough as well.

But doesn’t that make Spellblade 5 worse? Well, no. Spellblade 5 physically and mentally drained me due to how massive it was and some of the rewrites I did during it. I also wasn’t quite as… inured to how things were going. Then again, maybe it was worse. Spellblade 6 still seems worse because of the false starts and the sheer amount of content I pushed out, though. It’s also a book I judge quite harshly myself, although it’s very hard to accurately judge public opinion these days. As an author, I only see what I changed, left out, or the perceived flaws (particularly in certain chapters where I wanted to achieve certain things, but struggled to for various reasons). My personal take is that the book drastically increases in quality once Nathan finally arrives in Soreaux, but I also noticed that Patreon interaction nosedived at that point.

The only other book I think approaches the difficulty I had writing this book is Neural Wraith 3. I’ve said before that I find the Neural Wraith books easier to write, and regretted saying that. The books are easier to write, except for the mystery elements. While writing Mob, I’ve also rubbed up against some of my own personal flaws with writing and planning, particularly around structure and worrying too much about certain things, which can paralyze me for days at a time.

But Neural Wraith 3 ended up being the chaotic struggle it was because of IRL issues. Moving house, starting it after cancelling Spellblade 6, losing long-term plans etc. Lots of things went wrong at once, and then the book tanked so hard I came fairly close to outright bailing on harem. Hence the really long break. The book itself wasn’t hard. Life was. It’s still a good book, though, and I want to revisit the series despite all the whining about the from people who are mad about something in Neural Wraith 2.

Ch1-13 Commentary

Ever since Emperor flopped, I’ve been actively avoiding any opening that starts in the action. It’s something that works in visual media, but less so in written, because I think it overburdens the reader. You’re not just trying to follow the action, but learning who the characters are, the surroundings (and potentially new setting details), and motivations. I’m still very wary of them, even though I’ve seen other indie authors use them and succeed (or, perhaps, succeed in spite of using one).

In this case, the opening near the Spires is primarily for this reason. Although it was intended to serve a purpose that was dropped due to time constraints. Act 3 was supposed to include Fyre’s visit to the Spires. With that said, having Dmitri show up in person and reminding everyone that the Spires are around is important, as they’re reasonably important. It’s also a neat way to show you how cascades play out in ordinary nations, with the fireworks (which, in retrospect, I’m not sure I updated the first chapter to explain fully and many might only understand their full purpose when they’re explained by Adam to Charlotte or when the breach occurs), the alarm, and the generally grim response to the cascade. It’s a quick reminder of major elements of the setting, as well as how Book 5 ended.

Nathan also gets to visit Waier, although I don’t really show it off. This is very much a “conservation of description moment” where I’m limiting description of the city because it won’t be that important later, and it’s not that important now compared to the events taking place. Janice is reasonably likely to show up in Book 7 during the conflict against Falmir, however. And Otto has a prominent role in the politics of the series, which is the main reason I was leery of jettisoning him in Book 5 despite some of the feedback I received about him and the sheer amount of Diet involvement in that book. He’s the voice of the Empire’s nobles now that Tharban and the archdukes are sidelined (and Milgar is supportive of his granddaughter).

I’ll talk more about the Messenger battles later. For now, I’ll simply mention that the Tomoe battle has intentional similarities to the fight with Artemis. Unexpectedly strong after an easy beginning, involvement from an elite Messenger, the Twins can’t hurt her, Sen needs to use her special magic etc. The idea was to hit all the highlights of the ending battle of Book 5 for those who didn’t remember them as there were a lot of plot elements in that one battle (story of the series).

Tomoe herself is an intentionally nebulous existence. She gives off a Japanese warrior princess vibe, but Maura calls her out for stealing the name of Tomoe Gozen, a famous Onna-musha (and more recognizable these days thanks to the Fate series). And, yes, her tactical nuke ability is a reference to exactly what you think it is. I did consider removing it and changing her name, especially as Thanatos already exists as the Japanese Messenger that Maura clowns on, but the fact the Messenger boss is awful enough to give a Japanese Messenger a single-use nuclear attack was kind of the point. The joke is insensitive, but the boss is genuinely awful.

Bringing back agents was a neat reminder that Messengers can manipulate the world through methods more complicated than blowing shit up. Alongside giving Tomoe a berserker powerup, it also establishes Bauer as a different type of danger. While I don’t use agents (to your knowledge) in this book again, I’ve established Bauer as well as a plot thread that he’s somehow able to interfere with the portal of another Messenger. When his power is revealed to be behind Dominic at the end and that he was actually behind the Bastion’s betrayal months ago, it’s supposed to be less of a surprise. Bauer is intended to be the mystery villain, after all. An elite Messenger who has been active for some time but who has been laying low, but who may have had some fingerprints across the plot.

Just to be clear (and I’ll explain this in Book 7), the earliest Bauer can have appeared is during the events at the end of Book 3. Elite Messengers aren’t let off the leash until a new cycle begins, which starts with a new prophet—namely, Fyre, who only became the prophet with the eruption of the civil war.

Otherwise, we’re talking a whole lot of necessary buildup. There’s often a long list of things Nathan should be doing at any time, and I need to push some of them back constantly for pacing reasons. If there’s no direct plot progression for a decent length of time, the book will drag. The flipside is that not doing this takes away part of the point of the book. Why have a harem if Nathan ignores it completely? Why have a big, convoluted plot if it’s ignored? Why go back in time to fix stuff if Nathan isn’t going to make a bunch of plans and plots? I increasingly suspect dumbass protagonists exist so authors can just… not do this.

Tarako gets her own section, so I’ll revisit her later.

The Sen topic is one I added to the final book. Her path was hinted at ages ago, in that short story I wrote after Book 2, which is reference here. Curiously, I’ve seen a few people comment on the revelations about Ifrit both here and later in the book, even hinting that these might be a retcon. Which, I suppose makes sense as he’s always seemed like a throwaway character for the purpose of empowering Sen and the terms used to describe him likely didn’t seem important.

I used “existed since time immemorial” earlier on, to imply that the spirits are timeless, which combined with their literal immortality and eerie knowledge of Omria was intended to imply they had some history with her. In Book 5, I switched to primordial, which has a very specific meaning. It’s explicitly stated that Omria has something to do with magic in the current state of Doumahr, which raises the question of why a bunch of elemental spirits exist alongside her.

Finally, Reine’s gem was something I had planned for a while. Although I don’t have anything in mind for her trigem power, and will need to sort that out eventually. I wanted her powers to tie into her divine eyes, given they’re formed from gems as well, but also be a way to minimize the constant reliance on Nathan to teleport everywhere. She’s very much a support character, but I don’t want to stuff her into his mental fortress to be a spy satellite forever.

Ch14-26 Commentary

Ah, dumbass Deverese. He brought out some fierce comments when the chapters were being posted due to his behavior.

Deverese’s arc has been in the making since he first appeared. He started polite and the model Bastion, if annoyed by Nathan’s disrespect toward Baudelaire. His frustration and annoyance grew with every meeting, particularly as he’s very prideful and nationalistic. In his world, he’s butting heads with Nathan and defending his nation’s pride from a historical aggressor they seceded from. In reality, he’s a naïve fool tilting at windmills while ignoring the real problems because he’s swinging at scapegoats.

There’s a background arc in his appearances about the way his Inquisitorial colleagues are distancing themselves from him, even if they’ll continue to follow orders. Ester breaks ranks at one point. The elites from the Inquisitorial Corps at Fort Arrinsy react coldly to his nationalist rhetoric, given its clearly aimed at pushing away Nathan immediately after he saved their bacon. He’s a powerful Bastion with experience battling demons and the Empire, and the (former) backing of Baudelaire, but his time in the sun has ended. Especially after Baudelaire chastises him later in the book.

As a random sidenote, the names of forts and locations aren’t entirely random. The region around the canyon is noted to be closer in culture to the Empire than Trafaumh, so I opted to use “Fort” instead of Chateau. I believe it would have actually been something akin to “Tour de Arrinsy” if I went with the French term, as Nathan noted it used to just be a tower (unless I deleted that part in editing). I’m not super familiar with the French terms for fortifications, although I know they used them more broadly than the English equivalents. I also kept up the use of the term “march” for the border counties, although didn’t reexplain the importance of It beyond a brief explanation that marquises are more important than counts.

I had intended to rework this section somewhat before publishing. I’m still mixed on how it turned out. Nathan gems Reine, goes through the portal, then orders everyone around. It makes for better pacing, as stuff happens and it can be boring to have him sit around bossing people around. But it also can be a bit of let down to go through the portal and just have a chapter of mustering while everyone assesses the other side and notices that Fort Arrinsy is basically empty. The argument with Rosewald has a similar problem, although I’m absolutely certain it needed to happen before meeting Deverese now (due to how it plays into the bigger picture, particularly with Haverman and his belief in Fyre as the true prophet).

The dominion battle is one I have mixed feelings on. Many of the battles in the book fall into a familiar rhythm: Nathan and co. are easily strong enough to overpower their foes, but they’re far more resilient than expected, turning this into a battle of attrition where they need to minimize casualties. This works with the theme of the book, which is a constant slog against repeated invasions where the Messengers throw everything at the wall in order to bring about a collapse. A single fuckup could be a massive disaster.

This also ties back to Nathan’s comments when giving out gems in the previous book. He used to think that Champions could specialize and focus purely on power, but now he knows that survivability matters for everyone. Battles used to be short, bloody affairs that were decided quickly. Champions might die, but the Messenger went down reasonably quickly. Now, the Messenger can withstand multiple trigems pounding on them and hit back with enough strength to down them if they can’t survive the counterattack. Nathan’s old gemming strategy would have collapsed – I probably should have talked about this in the book, so I’ll try to remember to have him bring it up early in Book 7 as it’s a good reflection.

But now we’re onto the mop-up section. I originally figured there might be more action here, but it seemed tiresome to have even more action. Especially as it would be difficult to make it tense. Breaches aren’t dangerous in the moment, given Fei can vaporize small armies of demons. Rather, it’s the overall threat they pose.

Book 5 demonstrated it best with Reine’s spy satellite vision showing the demons and behemoths raging across the countryside at night, while innocents fled en masse. Fighting a breach is a problem of logistics. The conflict takes place over days and weeks, rather than a single dramatic battle. This is less impactful, but that’s how the cookie crumbles. I chose to have Nathan act more as a commander than a warrior, and to then catch up on other things in the meantime.

Notably, finally making Seraph a Bastion. Internally, Seraph’s character growth is done and I view this as a “capstone” of sorts. I still need her to actually use her Bastion abilities in Book 7. Otherwise, most of Seraph’s progress as a character will be about her relationships to others, such as Narime. She’s at her peak. If I revisit her, it’ll require me to invent a new problem or push her from her “happy place.”

I do get to slip in some other magic explanations, such as why Bastion magic isn’t used offensively (which may have been explained way back in Book 2). Plus the big hubbub about Nathan refilling a binding stone and freaking out the Twins.

Finally, there are the big Soreaux sections. Or, really, the pre-Soreaux sections that establish the problem. Patreon comments fell off precipitously here, but I can’t tell if that’s because of the content or because I was now posting chapters 1-2 times a day (and then the big splurge of them for Messengers at the end). A variety of different factions war in Soreaux, while the Inquisition is forced to sit back because Baudelaire knows that if she sends her soldiers out, it’ll be a bloodbath. Which will give either Nathan or Charlotte the excuse they need to incite open rebellion.

In the end, it happens anyway, because the whole affair was a tinderbox. Nathan’s later confronted that he was waiting for this. It’s one of his colder moments, as he could have saved a lot of lives and nipped the whole thing in the bud. Fyre might have killed Baudelaire anyway but whether Nathan and her could have gained any real control over the Inquisition is an open question. Politics is complicated, even if Fyre is a literal goddess now. By sweeping in as the savior during the darkest hour, Fyre was at her most powerful politically while her opponents were at their weakest.

Ch27-33 Commentary

Which leads into the march on Soreaux. Or into. Looking back, I probably should have explained the benefits of the foxes that joined the army now. It would have looked less weird in the final battle. Or had them use their magic in a battle somewhere. Sure, their presence was established, but not their abilities. Especially as Narime relies on big, flashy spells to blow shit up and Tarako is mostly a swordswoman who occasionally casts a spell.

I took a moment in the book to bring up a theory that amused me that Fyre might have been Kadria’s agent. I forget if they explicitly said if she might have been an alternate Ciana. Part of me suspects the issue here is that the link between the horsegirl Champion in Book 2 and Fyre is too weak (because I came up with Fyre during the big post-Book 2 replanning of the entire series, when I decided to go big or go home and finally commit).

Oh, and summons actually return. I don’t know if automaton horses have been used since Book 1, when Nathan summoned them to travel swiftly before he got easy access to horseless carriages. But they’re a fancy addition here and a reminder that Nathan can use his Bastion magic wherever.

I explained in the chapter commentary that I deliberately chose to make the ambush play out the way it did. Not everyone will enjoy the fact Nathan uses time dilation to effectively defuse the situation, but I wanted a way for him to stretch his powers and do more than just have a big, panicky situation where everyone is blowing shit up amid a crowd of innocent. Given the themes of the series, it would be really crazy for his Champions and soldiers to be wading through the blood of innocents in this situation. Nathan arguably should have planned better for the situation (like having his soldiers take over the rooftops instead of the Inquisition), but the only real way to avoid the drama was for Fyre not to talk.

So instead he flexes his power along with Fyre and Beatrice gets slapped (indirectly for now).

The same happens with the confrontation with the Inquisition before he meets with Baudelaire, but this one is more obvious. Despite Nathan’s rhetoric, he’s not trying to slaughter the Inquisition. They’re his allies. The question was how he’ll get them to stand down. Because if he slaughtered the Inquisition here, he’d have plunged himself into all out war across Trafaumh, regardless of Fyre’s influence. Again, in retrospect, I probably should have had him push back against some of Tarako’s more inflammatory comments, even they set the scene.

As for Baudelaire, she gets a long set of scenes after remaining out of the limelight for much of the book. She’s worked as a “will she, won’t she” pseudo-antagonist for the past two books, making appearances that leave you guessing as to where she sits and what she’ll do. Ultimately, Baudelaire’s power isn’t in her magic but her politics. Nathan finally overcame her and she crumbled, but still managed to die on her own terms. If she lived, she’d have been free to keep doing her thing under him, but death worked as well. The final letter handing over power to Reine even in death ensured she got her way. Sure, Nathan could have ignored it, but it would have made things even harder.

Baudelaire’s a complicated person. Her actions and motivations are intentionally opposed, because she acted out a mixture of selfishness, lust for power, and a strong distaste for the state of Trafaumh. But she moved with far greater caution than Gorthal, who ultimately lost control of the Empire while she would have tightened her grip over Trafaumh if Nathan hadn’t upset everything.

Politically, Baudelaire makes the right moves. She’s also an extremist willing to take almost any action and work with anyone. The book shows some of the tragedies she committed, and Reine’s right there. A bunch of past events are directly linked to her and the death of Nathan’s old world is on her (alternate version’s) hands. Where he used to blame Torneus for so much, the true manipulators have always been Trafaumh and Falmir.

Despite that, I was uncertain about whether to kill Baudelaire even when I wrote the chapter. I knew that Reine would raise the dagger and refuse to strike the killing blow. I also didn’t want Nathan to kill her, because it’s a reminder of how deep his pragmatism runs and that he’s moving on from his old world. He was just reminded that she brought about the destruction of the Empire back then, yet still thinks she might be too useful to get rid of. He’s working with Torneus, after all. The difference being Torneus never committed the same level of horrific acts and was more of a pawn, whereas Baudelaire’s the puppet master.

In the end, I decided that Fyre absolutely wouldn’t allow Baudelaire to live. Especially as she knew this was the only chance she’d have to kill the old woman. At the same time, I imagine Fyre would have been witness to Nathan’s torn emotions and known he wouldn’t judge her (especially as he said as much to Reine). So she acts as his bloody sword of retribution, even if much of it is for herself.

It's a very Nathan way for Baudelaire to die, I feel.

There’s a little aftermath following this. I didn’t want to do too much with Trafaumh in this book, at least due to the cut content which I’ll talk about further below). Major stuff will need to wait. There’s at least some treatment of the slavery situation, which was a big driver and Torneus gets to show back up. Otto gets some zingers when politics returns and there’s a reminder that the Empire is absolutely dominant, but also licking their wounds. Book 4 was less than a year ago in-story.

The fun part is that Reine finally joins the harem. She’s a good pupper. Narime’s been alongside her ever since she joined Nathan, so I had her join in as her “trainer” so to speak. I generally avoid one-on-one scenes these days, because I do so few sex scenes in my books and it’s an easy way to both add an extra woman into the scene while also expanding on the relationships the girls have. I do regret not pointing out that it’s a big deal for her to share, as Narime is like Alice in that she likes alone time with Nathan even if she likes to show off (although I worry I’ve made some slip-ups).

Ch34-40 Commentary

The battle that goes on, and on, and on. Almost every chapter ends on a cliffhanger, with some big thing happening. Oh, they’re in the portal, maybe demons are invading! Oh, they’re not, but Charlotte is here! Oh, she’s actually Beatrice slutting it up, but an evil Kadria is coming through the portal! But she’s the real Kadria and just turned Beatrice into kibble, but (Jack) Bauer is here! And then Evil Fei!

I have very mixed feelings over the finale for the book. I actually think my best writing in the book is in the second half, starting from shortly before Nathan arrives at Soreaux, as it took me a while to really hit my groove after so long away from the series. But I drastically underestimated how long the book would be. It didn’t grow in size or scope, I just miscalculated how long it would be. There are traces of that problem across the book, and I’d approach it quite differently if I knew it was going to turn out this long to begin with (certain characters and events I originally chose to skip over would have been included in the outline, as the book feels bigger). But the final battle is hit the most.

But I’ll talk about that specifically in the next topic. For now, let’s talk about what’s there.

The fight is similar to what I described earlier: Nathan has an overwhelming advantage, especially with a billion trigems, but his foe is tougher than expected and the concern is attrition. He can’t afford a pyrrhic victory. By contrast, while they don’t know it, Dominic and Gareth are completely expendable. That’s how Messengers work, and they effectively played the role of Bauer’s agents.

There’s very little on display of the Champion duel because of this issue, however. I came up with the ruby trigem’s powers, only to realize that there’s not much point in focusing on her and that battle over Nathan’s conflict with the Bastions.

And he basically curbstomps two Bastions. Nathan himself is quite strong, but the real star of the show is Ciana. She’s pretty broken as far as Champions go, at least in his hands. She basically borrows his stats, while lending him her own durability—and Nathan keeps getting stronger as he keeps nabbing more binding stones (albeit, not in this book). As a trigem with a dedicated durability enhancement, she shrugs off anything short of a sixth rank spell and could probably survive a meteor impact. Her barrier can withstand the spells of empowered Messengers (as shown against Siv), especially now that Nathan can top up her gems using mental magic. And now she has an almost literally impenetrable barrier, even if it doesn’t have the range of her duogem skill.

Gareth does get to show off a little here and has two fairly powerful trigems. But Nathan came here with only Ciana and isn’t exactly trying to kill his old mentor. There’s no argument that he could crush Gareth if he put enough effort into it. But Beth and Erica are capable enough to give him trouble, and Gareth’s new trick would have worked if he’d known about Ciana’s new ability. Then again, there’s a good chance Nathan or Ciana could have countered if as well.

I joked in the chapter commentary that in a web serial, the appearance of Kadria would have led to a whole chapter of fighting before she gives up the ruse. While my battles are getting longer as more happens, the magic increases in size and scale, and there’s a lot more plot happening in them, I try to avoid fighting purely for the sake of fighting. This book has a lot more combat, but it also plays a thematic role (and is important to pacing). I have mixed feelings as to whether I should have played up the possible Kadria betrayal more, as her loyalties have always been uncertain.

Then there’s Bauer and the big plot. Lots of stuff is implied or unsaid here, and will be revisited early in Book 7. To recap, elite Messengers can begin to invade once the prophet appears for two reasons: the boss has less reason to hold back (because a big reason he did was to prevent a prophet); and because the usage of prophet power allows more powerful Messengers to slip in while breaking the “rules” of invasions. This entire book is basically the fallout from the latter problem.

But it’s important to note that Bauer has been active in Doumahr for some time, if Dominic is to be believed. The earliest he can arrive is during Book 4, which is around 9 months before Book 5, and he had arrived before Alice and Nathan’s visit to Trafaumh in Book 5. That’s roughly a four month window he could have arrived during (Book 4 starts around the start of November, and they visit Trafaumh in March). Importantly, Bauer likely hasn’t used Soreaux’s portal (as Kadria seems to control it). Given Bauer’s mental abilities, it’s easily possible for him to remain hidden. The question is why, particularly given he took over a portal that was deep in Falmir (as Gareth created the gateway to somewhere he thought was preplanned). Oh, and he needs to be hiding somewhere that Reine can’t spot him.

Note, I know the answers here. It’s more that I’m spelling things out. Bauer’s plot isn’t a true mystery, as I don’t think there are anywhere near enough clues to let you reasonably guess it over other options. This is primarily because Nathan has very limited insight into Falmir and I intentionally chose not to do another PoV chapter after the first one, which plants some very firm red herrings (ironically, I recently read somebody stating that villain PoV chapters should never be written ever because they spoil everything, but I’d say that opinion is why almost all of litrpg and progfantasy falls well short of actual epic fantasy).

Artemis is a much simpler mystery. There was a portal being fucked around with in northern Trafaumh, and it was suspected that Charlotte may have covered up the events surrounding it. Artemis then arrives mid-battle, presumably using the gateway that Gareth created.

As a final note on the fighting, Bauer was never really intended to be a direct threat. It would be ridiculous if every elite Messenger was as devastating as Artemis. After all, she’s a specialized murdermachine and Bauer has insane mental magic. If he can fight as well as her, why waste time with the undead catgirl? Why would the boss need the partner?

I do regret the way Bauer’s mental magic was used in the battle, though. I chose to have the succubi shut him down, because I worried about potential power creep in order to handle him later. But it resulted in a somewhat weak fight outside of his dialogue, as he’s simply very sturdy and has a few gadgets. If I’d stuck with my original plan where he’d disable a bunch of Nathan’s Champions upon arriving, the battle would have been far more impactful.

Artemis, by contrast, clearly held back. The fight was very short but she had a different aim this time: grab Nathan. Sure, Ciana’s new ability kept her at bay, but she wasn’t flipping out and carving random Champions open.

There are plot/character reasons, but there’s a very strong meta reason. Artemis can’t have the same impact twice. She showed up in Book 5, nearly killed Narime and Ciana, and took a ton of power to hold back before Nathan shut the portal. I can’t just keep doing that, especially as it would have felt like “which Champion is K.D. going to maim this book?” And, sure, I took out Ester’s eyes and did the Fei fakeout, but the book ends on a far more positive note.

Ending-wise, this is the second book in a row that ends right after the action. This time, I actually will follow up with the sequel soon. But I do worry I’ve committed the same error.

See, one of the basic techniques of writing is “action-reaction.” You have something happen, show the consequences, then let people react to it. That’s why I always have a few slower chapters where the characters can reflect on what just happened and how they’ll move forward. Sometimes there isn’t time during battle to explain everything that’s happened.

Because I didn’t do that reaction in Book 5, it needed to happen in Book 6. But I’d also established expectations of immediate action.

Book 7 doesn’t have the world on fire at the opening, although there are still big issues that I can use to break up the pacing. It does still need to cover the reaction to the events at the end of Book 6, however. And a lot happened.

The Alternative Act 3

Right, let’s talk about the cut content.

My original outline had an extended Act 3. Much of this is fallout from the way I modified the early chapters to focus on the Empire without condensing the action in Trafaumh.

The gist was this: after Nathan takes Soreaux, Charlotte begins a two-pronged assault. She’d focus on the overland assault while Gareth does the gateway plot.

So far, still the same. The big difference was that Gareth doesn’t activate the gateway. He and Nathan have their big confrontation, and he would have talked him down from bringing Falmir’s army in. Kadria is summoned afterward and murders Beatrice. In the original outline, this was actually the end of Act 2 (taking Soreaux was the midpoint, but again, everything got pushed back thanks to focusing more on the Empire, and the new midpoint was the breach after the dominion battle).

There would have then been a bit of a lull, with some time spent on catching up on major stuff. Like Fyre visiting the Spires and claiming the place of power there. And the Astra scene.

Then Charlotte would have flipped her shit while her armies failed to get past the fortifications along the river (Tervuis’s Ford, to be specific). She’d have teleported past it, forcing Nathan and Trafaumh to engage in open battle. Big, pitched battle, including some stuff I’m loathe to mention because even if I don’t use these plot beats, there are some plot points I still need to introduce.

But the big thing was that the Bauer and Artemis stuff happened in this battle. Bauer would have interrupted the battle with a huge show of mental magic, turning everything into utter chaos. Cue a showdown between Nathan and Bauer amid the shitshow, with the same speech he gave. Then Artemis shows up and kicks Bauer to the curb while hunting for Nathan.

In short, while some stuff was stripped, I condensed other major plot elements into the battle beneath Soreaux. I didn’t have the time or will to add another 30k-40k words to write the original plan in a book that was already 40k words longer than planned. The Messenger shenanigans were more important to the book than the battle, even if that left the Charlotte PoV feeling a little stranded. Many of the chapters focused on the looming battle feel a little premature as a result and will need to be repeated to some extent in Book 7 to remind readers of what’s going on.

I’m still fairly happy with the final result, especially given the situation. Shit happens and my original plan was far too ambitious for a book I planned to be shorter. Kind of crazy given Book 6 covers such a short span of time. But, yeah, this is the reason the final battle is so long and has so many “wham moments.” It’s two battles condensed into one, with a double serving of plot.

Deleted/Unfinished Scenes

Most of these fell into Act 3, as mentioned above. Including the entire extended sequence detailed above.

Fyre needs to visit the Spires, as literally mentioned in Chapter 1. Pushed back to Book 7.

Astra’s been acting weirdly and less social. Nathan has noticed this but done nothing so far. Again, pushed back to Book 7, but I’ll weave this into the plot, as he’s neglecting her a little.

There’s also general political stuff around the Diet and Nationalists, but they’re not super important.

There was a big sex scene idea I had, but didn’t have the will to write (and still haven’t found it). Sen hints at it in her scene, because I might still revisit it and make it a Patreon bonus. Basically, the big anal sixsome with Sen, Fei, Sunstorm, Ciana, and Fyre. Book 7 already has a few sex scenes queued (Astra and the wedding are two big ones), so it probably won’t make it into it.

The breach following the dominion battle was supposed to be a proper fight, but I canned the idea as it just seemed unnecessary.

Ascent to Godhood

There have been hints about Nathan’s growing power and inhumanity, but this book is where they begin to come together. Calling to “godhood” isn’t confirming any theories. I’m just calling it that because this is basically the trope.

This is one of those really long plot threads that needs Book 8 to truly be disentangled. I suspect many people have finally clicked to where the series has been going and put together some old clues. By contrast, I know there’ll be people who didn’t see the old clues, have no interest in putting them together, and see this plot element as a way of extending the series instead of something planned from the start.

Kadria told Nathan ages ago that using ascended magic would change him, but expressed disbelief in Book 5 about the extent to which he’s changed. Ifrit’s said something similar but expressed no surprise/disbelief. The Twins have been barreling forward with their plan to make Nathan into their pet/master dark lord, but it’s hard to tell if they got caught off guard by his power this book due to a lack of knowledge about what has been going on with him or because they somewhat expected him to be special.

The very fact Nathan couldn’t say Omria’s name was a strong indication that he had become more than human. This doesn’t contradict Kadria’s surprise, because even Messengers can’t say the names, but it was a sign of his vastly growing power and changing nature.

By contrast, the boss is clearly up to something. Atlas was kept in the dark about Nathan, but immediately came to a conclusion about him once he knew what was going on. Bauer has bided his time and arranged that big confrontation, with his little speech that tried to trick Nathan into thinking that everything was predetermined by the boss. He even admitted as such, even if he chose to attempt to recruit Nathan (which, for all you know, was the boss’s plan all along).

Ciana’s Arm

One of the more difficult elements of bringing the book together, to the point it required edits to earlier chapters to make it cohesive.

I wanted the loss of Ciana’s arm to have impact. Serious wounds are often shrugged off in litrpg and progfantasy, even where some level of crippling can actually add to the character. Berserk is, as it almost always is, an amazing example of this. Although Guts was only missing his arm very briefly in the story, the impact it carries is huge. I didn’t want to immediately give Ciana a prosthetic, because the event that caused her to lose it wasn’t impactful enough to make readers remember it. But spending most of a book missing her arm, along with multiple events focusing on its absence, might make the prosthetic a little more important. Especially when she’ll remove it outside of battle.

I did consider leaving her without the arm for longer. This was a difficult decision, because I’d spent a lot of time and effort trying (and mostly failing) to build up to the replacement arm. In the end, my fear was that if I put it off, it wouldn’t matter as much as if I replaced it in Book 6 while it was a primary focus.

As a sidenote, I did have a bunch of times where Ciana regrew her arm during the book because I automatically wrote her with a pair of arms or doing something that required both. It’s not something you usually think about. Pola’s single ear causes similar issues. There might still be instances in the book, unfortunately. In at least one case, I built the mistake into the book, like the time Ciana tries to clap.

Messengers, Messengers Everywhere

I believe I said last book that I didn’t want to introduce more Messengers. And now there are tons more. I lied.

The problem was stated in the chapter commentary: most of the old Messengers like Thanatos have been defeated. It was a big deal in Book 5 that Nathan was now strong enough to flatten a foe (Thanatos) that had effectively dealt a mortal blow to his old timeline. Siv can’t return so soon, as my plans for her need her to stay away for a little longer and it would be a weird fight anyway.

At the same time, I’m wary of power creep. When I create a setting, I envisage the power scale in advance so as to avoid the horrible endless shounen power scaling that prevents me from touching a lot of that genre or anything too heavily inspired by it. I don’t want to make a character an order of magnitude more powerful by having him hold his sword with two hands (sorry, Bleach fans). Siv, Thanatos, and the Twins were the most powerful Messengers, but easily outclassed by the elites. Partner Messengers are supposed to be damn strong. These rules can’t be broken.

That means any threat to Nathan needs to involve a sideways step, as I can’t just throw in a bunch of new Messengers that are flat out better than the Twins and Thanatos. So Tomoe is a joke, except that Bauer gets involved. I named the elite Messengers as a way to let you know what sort of foes would be involved in the future (namely, the “fox-wolf” Shiva is left). Bauer gets used as the main threat for the book, and he’s discussed above.

The dominions ended up being my attempted way out. Basically, a set of special Messengers created en masse by the boss to clean up worlds for him once he’s designated them to be erased. They’re more standardized and have been customized to counter the succubi helping Nathan. Although I imagine the dominions often have anti-succubi powers due to Omria.

I don’t expect to have to pull this stunt in Book 7, as the focus will shift back to Falmir now that the cascade is handled. But there was method to the madness.

Fyre

Everyone’s favorite (or least favorite) prophet got a lot of screentime this book. This is partly for plot reasons, but also because I’m making up for her somewhat antagonistic introduction. She also has a rather intricate character arc and needs to develop through it for Nathan’s sake.

The short version is that Fyre’s growing into more a leader instead of a revolutionary. Somebody who still wants to help her people (specifically, beastkin) but is drawn into Nathan’s orbit and is changing. Other characters spell things out. Tarako specifically says that Fyre would be just as bad as past prophets without Nathan, slashing and burning humanity in revenge for real and perceived wrongs.

She’s constantly conflicted, though. Sometimes it’s because she sees what’s happening and wants to take decisive (and potentially brutal) action. Other times she is only beginning to understand what it means to be the prophet and the baggage and freaks out.

This does means she is growing in importance, and is almost a secondary female lead due to her importance. I suspect many elements of her characterization are offputting, as well as her fervent political beliefs. She’d normally work well as the yandere girlfriend type, but she’s not really that yan. Instead, she just adores Nathan, has very strong beliefs of her own, and is in well over her head. Nathan is preventing her from being swept away in the tide. Or, depending on your point of view, doing what she believes she should.

Kara

The ultimate promoted side-character. Kara has taken over much of Seraph’s role as the background commander left behind to run things, particularly as Seraph now commands the front while Nathan is on the march.

I still haven’t made a move on Kara joining the harem, in large part because I don’t think it adds too much. She’s dedicated to Nathan as she is. Making her a trigem (even if I don’t bother to cover her gem abilities, because she never fights in the books) is a way to recognize how important she has become to him.

The part where she turns out to already know his background is both a Nathan thing (where he doesn’t really keep his secret as well as he thinks) and a me thing.

I have very mixed feelings about the way any sort of time travel/dimensional travel is revealed. Many people get annoyed when the secret is kept, due to the implied trust issues etc, and get mad about this. At the same time, if Nathan reveals his secret and it ever backfires on him, people get mad and complain bitterly about him being stupid etc. To be very blunt, this is a reader issue. The expectation is that Nathan will perfectly manage the information and that it can never backfire on him, despite the very real problem that he’s working with Messengers (and not just taming them).

This makes it difficult to really manage the issue. I personally don’t really like scenes where the MC explains what’s happened and everyone reacts, but ultimately has to support and back the MC. They are, as the kids probably don’t say, cringe. It’s why I got it out of the way in Book 4 and then just handwaved all future occurrences. Because they have to be handled with kid gloves in an almost naïve way, they tend to be universally shit in my opinion. I can’t polish a turd. This has led me to avoid the issue in many cases, chalked up to Nathan’s paranoia even in a situation where it’s become increasingly ridiculous.

Hence Kara and, as evidenced in his confrontation with the Inquisitorial Corps in Soreaux’s citadel, many Royal Knights. There’s a vastly greater awareness of Nathan’s power and strange knowledge than he engages with. While he has a huge army of knights beneath him, there’s only one Nathan and they’re hyperfocused on him.

Tarako, the Dominant

Every so often, I write a character who bursts from the page and starts consuming everything around her (or him, but usually her). The Twins have done it. Fia’s doing it in Mob. Mina gets so much showtime in Demon’s Throne for this reason. Kushiel went from antagonist to major ally in Neural Wraith.

Tarako became this. I intended her to show up as a loredump and a nod to earlier mentions, plus an appearance in Soreaux. But that was it.

Then I realized that people would ask “why isn’t Nathan reactivating her gems?” and didn’t have a great answer. Sure, I could have her come up with some bullshit reason to refuse him, but that didn’t gel with her willingness to send all the other foxes into action. I umm’d and uhh’d for a little bit and decided to bring her into the fold.

I’m sure you can imagine it was a truly hard decision to make, given all that floof.

But she did end up taking up more time than expected. She’s a character type I enjoy writing, is vaguely related to a fox I wrote in another story a decade ago, and has fun dynamics with other characters. Her character arc and hidden depths are easy to write, as she’s a loyal but jaded Champion. While she has strong opinions and extensive knowledge, she sticks to her word and won’t turn on Nathan even if she thinks she’s made a pact with the devil.

Her powers definitely force me to adjust the battles, though. Her Nine-Tail Slash alone required me to put a cooldown on it due to how broken it was. But she also has powerful sorcery (if far weaker than Champions), teleportation, a ton of magical weapons and tricks, and extensive elemental magic. While Astra’s strength is not dying, Tarako is a powerhouse. Oh, and she has defenses against mental magic. In a video game, I imagine you’d select her as a New Game Plus option so you could flatten everything effortlessly.

She’ll still get a fair bit of screentime, as she’s fun to write. My original plans not to add her to the harem are in shambles, though. I enjoy her too much. So she’s absolutely encasing Nathan in those tails. But it might be a Book 8 thing.

Vala

Vala is slowly developing beyond her reflexive dislike and distrust of Nathan. But it’s a slow process, especially as she’s developed a strong inferiority complex and she’s had to chance sides.

I originally had a different plan for Vala when I started the series, but didn’t get around to trying to execute it properly. Mostly because it would have involved doing something else with Oliver. So instead she’s more a casualty of how different the timeline is. Where the rest of Nathan’s Champions have benefited from being guided and boosted by him, she’s stuck playing catchup in a foreign environment.

At the same time, Nathan struggles more with Vala than he has with his other Champions because she’s not head-over-heels for him from the start. He skipped this process with Sen and Sunstorm (although it’s arguable how things would have played out if he didn’t have Kadria available), but has ruled it out since and has Champions more willing to work with him. Vala’s pushed back, but she was also the most loyal of his Champions in his original world.

So the call out about Nathan not really seeing the real Vala was entirely needed. His interest in her is entirely because of the woman he knew from his old world, not this one. Sure, he “knows” her potential, but the real reason he chose her over others is because of his attachment to a woman that is dead. This Vala is drastically different to the one he knew.

It must also be hard for Vala to see that he doesn’t treat the others like this. And it comes off the back of the Nurevia scene, where he tells Vala not to worry about her alternate self.

Anyway, Vala is far from finished. The ice is cracking, however.

Reine

A good pupper. Reine’s made herself invaluable to both Nathan and me, in that she allows a lot of the current story elements to happen.

Her Trafaumh arc still isn’t done, as she still needs to handle her position in the Inquisition and a country she fled after the horrors it conducted on her. She’s opening herself up to Nathan and pushing herself to be more public, even if she falls back on the mask quite often.

One of the problems with writing Reine is that she often is in scenes for the purpose of plot and her abilities. So she has a lot to say and do, and this is inflected with her characterization, but isn’t necessarily developing.

Every so often, I get comments from people complaining about screentime of certain characters. Or more accurately, that their favorite character doesn’t have enough big character scenes. Sometimes this is accurate, because I’ve skipped over a character. Other times, a character has gotten multiple developmental scenes, often long chapter-length ones, to the point where the only way it could be longer was if I was writing a dedicated romance book. This is partly a side-effect of harem, because there’s only so much time for characters. I also do think many people don’t want deep scenes, but instead just a bunch of shallow scenes.

Reine’s more a case where she shows up a lot, but only has so many truly important scenes. She’s not a sexy lamp or anything, due to how useful she is, but her role as scrying/portal macguffin is often separate to her personal character development. Although I do try to tie them together (she wanted portal powers in order to help Nathan, after all, and her scrying powers are tied into her spymaster role and history).

Results, Trajectory, and Length

Gonna put this here in hopes it doesn’t completely derail the rest of the “authorial” commentary.

I’ve rewritten this topic like a billion times.

In short, I’m doing Book 8. I don’t think the series will end well if I don’t.

The results and series trajectory are… complicated.

Reception-wise, people seemed to enjoy it, but it also got a fairly muted response. Dunno. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. I’ve attracted a couple of permatrolls, likely due to NW2, but everything is fine.

Personally, this is a book that I can’t easily assess myself due to what went into writing it.

The trajectory of the series is difficult to judge. There’s some level of series fatigue, even though I don’t think it’s that long. The problem is that I’m writing in a genre with very rapid releases and short series. Outside of a handful of authors (and the farms), almost nothing hits the 1 million words mark. For all the audio omnibuses out there, how many will crack 100 hours? I’m pretty sure Spellblade will be over that once Book 6 is out. The series gets recommended less and I don’t see that reversing.

I mentioned in a news post that the book did fine, and not quite as worse as I feared it might. This is the complicated part.

Spellblade 6 results are tied up in a bunch of factors. It sold almost as many as Spellblade 5. But it also fell off as hard as Neural Wraith 3, meaning I’ll sell far less in future months. Mob released a month earlier and has picked up a little (although it’s still my worst Book 1 ever). But when Spellblade 6 began to fall, it took Mob with it. Amazon is actually recommending the rest of the Spellblade series. This is actually just a good thing, although I did do the 99c sale, so that might have kickstarted it?

Ultimately, this is my best release of the year. It’s still worse than any in 2022, because of how fast it will fall off. I basically need to write an extra couple of books a year to maintain the same income from Amazon, assuming that there’s not another cliff to fall off.

However, the big complicating factor in all of this is you. Namely, supporters on Patreon. It has been a little surreal to feel a 30% drop in my Amazon income this year (projected, even including the Spellblade 7 release) when my Patreon support has doubled.

Amazon book release income is, by definition, spiky. It’s focused on book releases. That’s why there’s such a big thing about authors pumping out books every month, regardless of quality, and why there’s a surge in co-writing and ghostwriting (including outside of harem). If you’re not releasing, you’re not making money. And your next release might do worse, and the next worse again etc. My concerns have been focused here, as it’s been around 80% of my income in the past and despite some of the shade thrown my way, it has fallen a lot.

If I am getting more consistent monthly/quarterly income from audiobooks and (especially) from Patreon, then that gives me food for thought. Patreon is often dismissed in harem, but it’s held up my income for much of the year, even if I know I’m one of the luckier authors.

So, yes, this is why I’m focused outside of Amazon itself. I get the impression that Amazon will increasing become a wasteland for content mills. There’s a big one that’s fairly transparently targeting litrpg, after all, even if it has its fans (then again, so do the farms). At the same time, I’ll need diversify further, simply because relying entirely on Patreon income if sales are falling is a dangerous idea (and unfair to everyone here).

Untangling Plot Threads

The big challenge of this book, and what took me a while to really find my groove, was the sheer amount of plot threads still dangling across the entire series. Book 5 built up a ton of stuff, because that was its job. But there are still long-term threads from across the entire series.

Hence the sheer amount of references to past events, sometimes in the form of very minor turns of phrase or little events. If you’ve reread the series recently, you might have caught them. Like, a simple example is when Vala enters Nathan’s office, there’s a joke about his “open door policy” – this was made back in Book 1 to Fei, with different results. Nathan constantly reflects on his past travails, such as his encounters with Torneus and Sureev. While there’s only one true “time travel” event and the reality is that of dimension hopping, the heart of this series is about changing history and what that means. So Nathan does a lot of reflecting on what that means, and the actions that led to events occurring.

The plan is to try to tie up all plot threads by the end of the series, and I deal with a bunch with each book. The big lore dumps in this book do a lot of heavy lifting for the mysteries, as we’re firmly in the stage where answers can be handed out. But there are still some that nobody truly knows the answer to, as they’re enmeshed in the plot itself.

I can’t literally answer everything, as the reality is that not everything can be easily known. This is a controversial idea in fantasy fiction these days. Almost every progfantasy series has some magic system where everybody easily understands the very nature of existence and how magic works, because that’s easier and readers get mad if they don’t. This is a nonsensical idea in reality, of course. We believed the sun revolved around the earth until 500 years ago. And quantum mechanics, which operates at a level closer to how magic might work in many systems, is around a century old and something we continue to spend countless billions on in our quest to understand the building blocks of physics.

But I like sciencey magic systems that reflect our own fundamental blackspots, and we’re in an era of hard magic systems and litrpgs that have long since abandoned any relationship with video games.

At least when it comes to the big plot questions, I think I have them all sorted and I believe I’ve caught all the errant threads. But time will tell.

Laying the Groundwork

With my recent decision to actually do Book 8, regardless of the softer performance of Book 6, many of my questionable decisions in Book 6 are now really good ideas.

Because I wrote this book as if I was going to do Book 8, which largely forced my hand. The issue is that I need to ensure that what happens in Book 8 is established early enough that it’s not a complete surprise.

There are some things I’ve realized I skipped over. The biggest one is that the focus is still very much on “defeat Charlotte.” During some of the discussions here, it would have been wise to remind readers that even once Fyre is established as the prophet, demons don’t go away. This is somewhat implied, particularly with Tarako’s lore dump. I never outright said it, in part because this would, again, commit me to a Book 8. So a casualty of my concerns about the genre.

Ultimately, how well I’ve established the groundwork will be seen at the end of Book 7 and how upset people get. I’m expecting it to be controversial, as I’ve seen a lot of people state that the series will end there. This is partly my fault, because I’ve stated 7 books before. But I’ve also said that I split Book 6 into two due to its scale. In the end, it’s just an expectation thing, and I’m pretty sure it’s wrapped up in a general desire for the series to end as it’s 3 years old now. So I’m expecting some backlash purely for that reason, and there was some by people who saw the writing on the wall for an extra book (or two).

I’d cram it all into one book and move on if I could, but I think that would end even worse. A series that ends poorly will be easily forgotten. And sometimes questionable series get recommended purely because of the ending – the anime Code Geass is a great example, as the second season is hot garbage outside the ending (I remember how badly everyone trashed it while it was airing, and it’s now a serious case of revisionism as everyone considers it a “classic”).

On the plus side, Book 8 gives me more room for the relationships. And maybe kids. Still undecided on that front.

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Anyway, that’s the commentary this time around. Some downer topics, but I hope I provided some insight into some of my intentions and plans. This book was especially difficult to talk about prior to the book, given it was morphing as I wrote it and some of the ideas were rather spoilery. A lot happens despite the relatively low amount of action.

As always, let me know your thoughts and if you have any questions.