Ghost Wounds, end notes

The idea for “Ghost Wounds” came from a passage from the book of Luke:

“Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.”

You can see how that would be apropos.

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There were a bunch of different endings, but they basically had two main variations:

-Caina puts on the soulsieve, and lets Lucan kill her, or kills herself. This kills Croanna.

-Caina kills Siona. After Siona is dead, Croanna no longer has the protection of the soulsieve, and so Caina kills her.

Whether Lucan survived to the end depends on whether or not Caina killed Siona. If Caina killed Siona and then Croanna, Rycurgus would keep his cool, stab Lucan in the back (recognizing him as the greater threat in a straight fight), and then turn his attention to Caina. But if Caina managed to outwit Croanna so thoroughly, then Rycurgus, in a rage, would attack Caina first.

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Croanna was a fun villain to write. She wasn’t as powerful as Korthion, or as dangerous in a fight as Sophia Nikaedes, but she was very, very smart, as the First Magus found out the hard way.

Of course, it might seem that she picked up the Villain Ball by trying to make Caina kill Siona in front of Lucan rather than simply killing her. But remember, Croanna had already tried to simply kill Caina twice – first by sending the Kindred assassins to the Black Cuirass Inn, and then by sending Rycurgus to Rhazion’s house.

It might appear that her love of cruelty was her undoing, but not so – Croanna was very good at cruelty (as Ark and his family almost found out the hard way), and very good at tormenting her victims without exposing herself to personal risk. After all, Croanna recognized that Caina was the biggest threat to her plans, and tried to kill her before she even got to the Imperial Citadel.

It just never, ever occurred to her that Caina might actually put on the soulsieve. Croanna anticipated everything, except that.

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I thought about doing an ending where the soulsieve, in addition to transferring Caina’s mortal wound to Croanna, also transfers her old injuries. So Caina’s scarring would heal, and she would find herself unexpectedly pregnant by Lucan at the end of the story.

But that seemed too cheap, too easy. After all, the evil of Sauron cannot be wholly cured, nor made as if it had not been.

Everyone has scars, but we can sometimes learn to live happily despite them.

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Choose Your Own Adventure will return in a few weeks – I want to get some ducks in a row first, and then run a little contest (more on that next week).

I’m not sure what we’ll do next. I suppose we could do another Caina one, but it would seem artificial – her arc has come to a pretty clear resolution. On the other hand, there’s no need to leave the setting – the Empire of Nighmar is a pretty big place, and there’s lots of other things happening with it. I think Lucan himself could sustain a story. Or maybe Siona, in another ten years – she’s going to have a very good teacher, after all.

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Finally, and most importantly, thank you all for reading.

Because of my job situation since January, I haven’t had time to do any new fiction writing this year. But I did keep doing Choose Your Own Adventure, because I’d already started “Ghost Ascension” at that point, and by God I was going to see it through to the end.

So when I started writing “Soul of Serpents” on May 1st, I was astonished by how much easier the process seemed than I remember. Then I realized that “Choose Your Own Adventure” really helped with that – the necessity of turning out episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday really teaches you to optimize your writing time.

So thank you for that!

-JM