Chapter 193 - Afterword: The Eventide Of Faith (2/2)

Mind you, she herself was also dealing with the same troubles as Reed, but she had a wealth of hard-earned wisdom and life experience to cope with it all much better than Reed. Though their suffering was equal, their ability to endure it was not. ;

Not even close. ;After all, she had five thousand years of life experience and Reed only had nineteen to spare. They can't even begin to be compared in that regard. ;

So what was she supposed to do? Simply stand beside him and let him continue to sink in his misery? Of course not; not a single person in the world would let their significant other fall into hell. What kind of person would ever neglect the person they love like that? ;

Hence the overbearing coddling, the overprotective nature of hers, and the strong desire to guide him away from his pain. Her intentions were absolutely pure and well-meaning, but they eventually led Reed down a bad path.

Though she was admirably shielding him from his personal demons, she also inhibiting any form of growth on his part as an adult who could become capable of handling difficult situations and life-defining mistakes. ;

He nearly became completely dependent on her to an unhealthy degree, always looking to her for a way out when things got too hard or when things became too painful to bear. ;

There's a word to describe someone who does all of that; a mother. And while it might've eased Reed's pain to have her play that role, it only served to further worsen the internal problems he had in the long run. ;

Had Lu'um possessed a clearer mind, not shrouded by her pity and love for Reed, she would have not let him run away into self-exile. She would have slapped him silly and put him through his paces, but that unfortunately never happened. ;

Thankfully, Reed finally got his shit together in the end, even if took an incoming apocalypse to get him to move his feet forward. Consider that a testament of how bad it got for Reed — the world needed to be in danger and the blame needed to land on his shoulders for him to get his act together.... ;

It's a difficult job that Lu'um has been given, one with many hard decisions to make and even fewer clear answers to discern. I find it easy to point blame on her if one looks at her from Reed's perspective, but once you see the delicate problem she had to manage from her perspective, it becomes much harder to blame her. ;

For Reed, growing up meant admitting his mistakes, trying to atone, and becoming independent of Lu'um, or rather, letting her finally rest — giving her the chance to stop playing mummy, and start being the woman he loves instead. ;

This independence naturally meant that he also brushed off everyone else he had used as a crutch — ;Velvund, primarily, but all others who would have led him by the hand. ;

On a side note, I wanted a stylistic and thematic transformation to occur once Reed shed himself of everything he formerly depended on and I feel as if I hit that mark. This extremely important metamorphosis wasn't just internal, but also an external one, too.

He became something completely unlike his former self, now towering at nearly eight feet tall, far beyond normal human dimensions. His complexion changed dramatically and he turned a sickly tone of dull white — resembling a fresh corpse, in a morbid way. Even his shadow disappeared in the wake of his transformation, giving him a phantom-like etherealness... ;

I was greatly inspired by the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, albeit only in an aesthetic sense. I wanted to do away with Reed's human self and make him into something appropriately haunting to fit the terrible reality of his sins, more importantly, what he perceives himself to be inside — a monster who killed and hurt many people. ;

I really want to commission art for his new form. Design-wise, I always imagined him somewhere between a very young Dracula from the Castlevania series to something as inhuman as the blue-skinned version of Edmond Dantes from Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo.

In any case, there were many more conflicts in this volume. Funnily enough (and also by intended design), the biggest thing in the room, the fissures, were more of a background threat than a center stage conflict. To me, they were just a means to enable me to write about different scenes I need to make across the continent. ;

Man vs. Society was also a type of conflict that I had been setting up for a while, too. Of how utopian Mulia seemed to Reed in Volumes 1 and 2 — being someone starved for a world not filled with injustice or gross inequality. And that was what he got, at least on the surface, in the beginning. ;

Younger Reed only saw what he was allowed to see, from the perspective of his only friends, who I need not remind you were all either extremely high in the aristocracy or straight-up royalty. He was shown a view of Mulia that no normal person would have ever seen, his head clouded by his life as a prince and a celebrity figure, much to his dismay. ;

Once Reed was finally made privy to how such an unnaturally harmonious and long period of peace was created and upheld, through the gross actions of the Dreaming Council, the illusion was shattered for him. As someone greatly accustomed to the taste of injustice, it comes as no surprise what Reed was going to do from then on. ;

It is one thing to bring the Dreaming Council to trial for their crimes but in the end, Reed dared to go even further and brought down the entire damn system to its knees. And if that isn't an accomplishment worth putting on your headstone, then I don't know else I'd put on my grave. ;

In essence, this volume has been all about change and the things that come around it. Not just for Reed or Mulia, but for everyone. There is still a lot that I have not talked about, much of it pertaining to the changes felt by many of the supporting cast, but I assure you that they will get their own time in the spotlight, soon. ;

I have found that children see their parents as akin to gods, who are capable of anything and support their world. And in return, adults see their leaders and the gods they worship as pillars of their world. ;

Parents, kings, and gods, the entire lot have a special relationship with each other in the field of responsibility and governance... and a lot to do with Vol. 3.

I think something that we can all agree on is that all parties involved (parents, kings, and gods) failed to do properly do their jobs across the board in Mulia. But hopefully, now that Reed has taken charge to set everyone back on the right path, things will turn out for the better. ;

In any case, I think I've spoken enough about what I thought about this volume. It was a big task for me to do and now that it's done, I'd like to do something smaller in scale, more personal, and not as ridiculously grand. ;

I'm thinking of doing a side story volume that will roughly be 80,000 - 90,000 words that will not feature Reed or Lu'um as the main characters, but everyone else that has been kept in the background during Volume 3. I'll see how that pans out, but if it doesn't I'll go back to the drawing board. ;

Let me know what you think. I'm always interested to know your thoughts on the matter. Stay safe, wear a mask, and keep hope alive during these trying times. I'm going to go make some coffee now. ;

Yours truly, ;

FattyBai