Exile Chapter 52 Draft 4

I've finished Chapter 52 of the second draft of Exile, and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

This is the part of the story where the bad guy reveals all the heretofore unknown details of his nefarious plots. There's something one of my favorite writers, Brandon Sanderson, does rather often in his writing. He often gives a small detail, seemingly insignificant at the time, early on in the story that becomes a major influence in why the antagonist is doing the things he's doing. I tried to emulate that in this story with Fayt Nightfang's motivations by giving little snippits about Parth and Torren early on in the story, and about how Silmera had helped push the Samirreh out of the Four Kingdoms the first time. He's out for revenge because of that, and he's using the Samirreh to do what they did to his people and home to the people of the Four Kingdoms in retribution before he kills them all as a massive human sacrifice to bring his wife back from the dead.

one major change in this chapter from the previous draft is that I've put a lot more focus on mal's choice here. He's come face to face with the leap of faith that Cora has been warning him about in his dreams since the day the Curse passed to him. It's a huge, character defining moment in his life, and not to make a big deal out of it is kind of a missed opportunity. He's terrified of what might happen to him, and of becoming another Demon Queen Marael, but he decides to do what has to be done. Going back to the last chapter's notes, of course he's going to hesitate and run through his options when faced with his greatest fear. He's going to run through a whole slew of emotions and ways to justify not doing it, before he finally decides that he has to.