This is not the end of the arc, but it’s the end of Volume 5. Welcome to the afterword.
I, Fushigi, am back, Dear Readers! Thank you so much for continuing to read along!
For the first time, I managed to reduce the number of chapters (by one, down to 50), but thanks to high chapter word counts, this is still the longest volume yet. I broke a 100K words this time. I need to try to rein it in a litte, because I’m not actually seeking to write my volumes that long.
Just a reminder, I’m taking a short vacation. I’ve been posting three chapters a week for quite a while, after initially posting two chapters per week. Between the two, I’ve been posting since March 20, 2019. I could just set up chapters in advance, but unlocking chapters is not automated on this site. The only way to completely disconnect is to put tools down and walk away for a week.
How to characterize this volume? Frankly, it was the wrap-up of an arc followed by the first half of an arc, so it’s a little messy. But, this volume is where the rest of the overall story begins. Tiana has come to have some grasp of her personal strengths and of her alliances, and some idea about her enemies. Now she needs to begin confronting those enemies. Before she can get back to Orestania and sort them out, however, first she must rescue her foster sister.
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I didn’t call for questions this time (I forgot. My day job has been very busy lately.) The truth is, I’ve not received many questions in the past. Most of the Q&A has been populated by questions that I mined out of the comments. So, I’m just going to go ahead and speak to some of those subjects that have come up in the comments here.
First, while mining the comments, I discovered one that I missed, so I think I’ll answer it first. A reader noticed that when Bruna mentioned her temp job at a brothel, Ceria only objected to the fact that their mother was around and might find out. This raised the question about whether Ceria might, like her little sister, also fall back on prostitution to earn cash sometimes like the two did as teenagers.
Frankly, I hadn’t considered it, but it is true that Ceria previously invaded a brothel that Tiana visited and took over their client. It suggests she was acquainted with the operator. However, it was in her hometown, so that acquaintance could have dated from her rather recent teenage years.
I’m going to leave it like this: Ceria doesn’t see anything wrong with it beyond the fact that it bothers her mother, so if she needs the money, she probably will. It’s pretty clear that it is either allowed or ignored in their world, and she’s a pragmatic girl with few inhibitions.
Another reader wanted to clarify about the factors making people mistake Tiana for a succubus, and exactly how the miasma of monsters played into identification.
I’ll give a slightly expanded answer here concerning the first half of this. Tiana downplayed some of it when she explained it, because the original Tiana did not think she was particularly beautiful. This was a case of Ugly Duckling Syndrome. She had grown up with a self-inflicted false beauty standard. She saw her features as vampiric, and thus a symbol of her evil father, thus compared her vampiric black hair and eyes to the bright colors of her mother and the royal family she was growing up with (all sandy- or blond- or platinum-haired, with bright eye colors like Mother’s amethyst) and came to the false conclusion she was not good looking. She also had a modest chest (however, only in comparison to Mother’s and Amelia’s outrageous bosoms. She’s actually on the reasonable end of well-endowed.)
The reality is, Tiana is an Elder, and succubi look exactly the same as Elders, except with added horns and tail (and they can suppress those) which makes them, in this setting, the most beautiful species. (Sometimes the ‘oh a succubus’ reaction she is assuming is actually men just getting gobsmacked when encountering a beautiful woman.) They are supremely beautiful, nicely curved woman with black avian wings, black hair and eyes, and fair skin that neither tans nor sunburns. (Most vampires also have the black hair and eyes most of the time, but pale skin that is extremely prone to sunburn, giving rise to the trope that sunlight can damage them.)
About the miasma signature of monsters: only fairy sight can naturally spot the miasma (which they can only easily see when it is part of a monster’s biology or combined with mana to make demonic mana; it’s mostly invisible on its own). There is a special exception to the ‘only fairy’ part of that statement. It has been hinted already, but I’ll say it here: fairy sight and fairy sense are actually spiritual strength. I won’t go into specifics on that for now, but the implication is that other people who cultivate spiritual strength should be able to acquire the same senses.
There is an optimal amount of miasma that a particular monster’s biology needs to have. Too much and too little are both bad for them. (For mortal creatures, the optimal amount is zero.) So excessive amounts for a monster or any large amount for a mortal cause the same ‘miasma sickness’ that can be debilitating or fatal if left untreated. Monsters utilize the miasma (when it isn’t at overdose levels) to increase their physical and magical power, which is why they are physically much stronger than comparable mortal creatures. But, they need mortal mana in order to control it, and they are unable to stabilize mortal mana on their own; they must harvest it from outside.
The ‘signature’ of a particular monster lies in their optimal amount of miasma, which varies by species and to a lesser degree by individual, and the makeup of their mana portion. I’ve gone into greater lengths with the fairies, whose usual ratios of mana depend upon their tribe (pureblood greater fairies being somewhat equal in all elements) with exact ratios dependent on the individual. These ratios of elements identify monsters as well. A water monster’s mana portion will be largely Water, a fire monster largely fire, etc.
Incidentally, this mana constituent of their biology is a separate issue from their need for a supply of stabilized ‘mortal’ mana that they use to control their miasma. Mana absorbed from mortals is like a vitamin they must ingest, rather than being a part of their constitution. It is kept in their bloodstream, and does not become part of their cells.
What makes Tiana an Elder instead of a fairy, is the monstrous biology that fairies don’t have. Fairies are half physical matter, half manifested mana. Monsters also have some amount (usually less than half) of manifested mana, plus the miasma that fairies do not have. Both the mana and the miasma give these creatures their advantages over mortals. But Tiana has the fairy biology and the monster biology combined, getting the advantages of both, leading to her body’s ability to host an Elder soul without suppressing the majority of its consciousness.All she lacks now is the cultivation to fully access that consciousness.
The fairy side of her biology also gives her the ability to protect her miasma (at least, a minimum required portion of it) from things like purification. Incidentally monsters descended from Elders (like vampires, succubi and amazons) are harder to kill by purification because they partially retain this protection, but they lack enough of the fairy nature for it to be more than a degree of resistance.
An aside about vampires and their senses. Vampire sense and vampire sight are Dark magic skills that enhanced the Elder ‘fairy’ senses. They can’t normally sense miasma and they sense mana differently (it depends upon the element how well they can sense it) so they are usually far less useful to Tiana. They have big advantages for certain things, though (or the Elders wouldn’t have had those senses), but unfortunately, Tiana has not developed them to the same degree as her fairy senses, probably due to her dislike of her vampire side.
The same reader asked: “is there a reason for the different types of Fairy wings? Like this latest one has wasp wings, others have had dragonfly, or bird wings IIRC. Is it just something you decided on a whim, or is there a deep lore reason?”
As I answered in the comments, there isn’t a really deep meaning. The inspiration was the varied representations of winged fairies over the centuries. They have appeared with bird wings, wasp or bee wings, dragonfly wings, butterfly wings and moth wings. I specifically made the sylph tribe of fairies have bird wings because I have occasionally seen sylphs imagined as winged women, in basic angel style.
My own addition was to giving nereids and naiads the option to develop flying fish wings. These tribes can develop wings or fish tails (which nereids are sometimes represented with), or even develop both.
I think it might have been the same reader again (Dragon Master, if you’re curious, one of the more active commenters) who wanted clarification on the life span of monsters.
To make it clear, only mortals have a defined life span. It depends upon the species (elves = very long, humans are the shortest) but they all age eventually. This is what defines them as ‘mortal’. It holds true both for mortal races and mortal beasts.
The other three biologies are “non-mortal”, Magical (fairies and elementals), Demonic (demons) and Monstrous (just about everything else) biologies have a defined adult shape that they reach, and then live until something kills them. This is true whether we are talking about a Greater Fairy or a Rock Beaver. It’s a feature of all non-mortal biologies.
Immortals (like the HR Manager) also are theoretically like this, but they aren’t as tied to living bodies as we inhabitants of the Mortal Realm, so this is harder to define for them.
The comments have had other interesting discussions, on exoplanetary astronomy, altitude sickness, late medieval pike square tactics, bird-kin architecture. There was an additional discussion, but it was in the chapters still locked at the time of posting, so I will just urge readers to read it if they want to know exactly what was going on with Sidis.
I’ve made adjustments twice because of the scientific comments. I decreased the mass of the Blue Moon (thereby changing the orbit of Huade around it) and lowered the altitude of Lisrau Mining Town by more than a thousand meters. It’s fun getting these scientific cross-references. And very valuable for a fantasy writer who IRL is an electrical engineer, not an astrophysicist or a doctor. By all means keep checking my work!
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Again, feel free to go on Discord and DM me (you can find me at the Creative Novels server, https://discord.gg/Savbewm and ping @Fushigi!), or you can ping me in the #chapter-discussion channel there, or you can just go right ahead and write a comment here in the chapters. I do read and often answer comments, and I would love it if people posted a lot more of them.
I also encourage you to post a review of the novel. If you have not yet reviewed, you can find the link to post a review on the novel’s main page. There should also be a link below.
Also, every week, Vote For Substitute Hero! to push our Tiana higher on the list at Top Web Fiction!
In the next few days I will publish a couple appendixes, then it’s onward to Volume 6 a week from today.
Thank you for continuing to follow Tiana!
– Fushigi
