Exile Chapter 53 draft 4

I've finished chapter 53 of the fourth draft of Exile and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

There is a lot of stuff that happens in this chapter that serves the plot of a larger story outside of this one. Revealing of the Dark God's motives for instance explains his reasons for doing what he's done in Genesis, Beyond the Lost Horizon, and Heretic Twilight. Silmera's death serves to force Mal to a decision that will affect the outcome of the Spires of Infinity storyline. Shayla, first daughter of Raven and Temari, whom you saw born at the end of Ark of Zarathustra if you've read it (and I don't really recomend it because it's horribly written in its current incarnation) is finally allowed to keep a promise she made to her father that she'd return to him one day.

A lot of storylines outside of the story of Exile are either beginning or coming to an end here in this chapter, and I'm the only one that knows the full impact of it all becuse I'm the only one that knows what any of the other stories are about because I haven't written most of them out yet. Still, it makes for a good and fulfilling end to Exile as well, you just wont get hte full impact of the importance of the events in this chapter until I get around to writing out the rest of it all. Most of the stories I write are connected in some way, if not directly. They all take place in different worlds and at diferent times, but they're all still parts of a much larger story that I've been putting together since I was about ten.

Anyway there are two final climactic battles fought in this chapter, the Dark God vs. Fayt Nightfang, and Mal vs the Dark God. Mal takes another leap of faith, trusting again in Queen Cora's words. The Dark God's explanation for why he hates humans is more to serve the larger story outside of this one, but in this story it serves to draw parrallels between him and Mal, which makes it more of an internal thing for Mal, fighting against what he used to believe, and realizing how stupid it was. They were both crazed for revenge, willing to do anything for vengeance, but Mal shows he's the better man by having overcome that desire, and forgives the Dark God for all he's done before banishing him to the dark oblivion that he so rightly deserves.

It was my intention to leave Markus dead at this point in the story, but I decided on a better fate for him, so he managed to survive and was healed by Mal. I also intended to leave Weasel as she was here, but I figured that she should be given her happiness back after all she's been through and had Mal heal not only the people that were hurt in this battle, but all afflictions of any kind in the entire Four Kingdoms, including Weasel's sterility. He had an excess of power that came from the life drained out of the Samirreh, and rather than return them to full health as well, he killed them all and used their lives to undo all of the horrible thigs that they've done to people.

anyway, almost done with the fourth draft FINALLY, it's up to 333k words, which is slightly less than the equivilant to the first five harry potter books combined, or one of the longer wheel of time books. It's only 18k words short of being 3 times the length of the first draft, which is pretty crazy, considering I first started on this story out of frustration with angents turning me down because Beyond the Lost Horizon was too long. I don't know how much I'm going to be able to cut out of this story, but we'll see what happens in draft 5.