Into the Storm Book 3, chapter 7 into prereads · 1:22am Aug 30th, 2021
Titled When Friendships Falter, AJA and I have completed collaboration on it. It’s now in the hands of our other two prereaders, Silentwoodfire and Silverblade5.
What this means is it will launch as scheduled on September 1st, and it currently musters a healthy 10.3k words. It’s time to hear from the Highborne again, and learn what happens when an equally infuriated Fell Flight and Firefly come to blows over Gavian and Thunderbolt. Here, have a teaser:
Sickbay
EAS Loyalty
Cloudsdale Central District Airship Anchorage, outside City Hall
Over South Flank of Foal Mountains, inside northern Thestralslovakia
September 5th, 1139 AE
1750 hours
I returned to the Loyalty from leave in the late morning following a few fitful hours of sleep, after seeing to the ongoing care and safety of my sisters.
After some discussion over tea with Morning Glory, who agreed that they should not stay in our old house full of nothing but pain and empty rooms, I visited our neighbor, Divine Wind, and politely asked him to take in my sisters. To my relief, he and his Neighponese herd immediately agreed, and once our younger sisters had awoken, we set about moving their possessions over into their guest room. They would have to share it, but ‘twas a minor price to pay for escaping the misery to be found in our herd’s old house.
Morning Glory promised me she would see to selling the old homestead and giving proper honor to our lost herd. But she turned pensive and strangely reluctant when I told her to stay with our sisters and help rebuild the weather factory, as ‘twas certain experienced workers would be needed to do so. When I asked her what was wrong, she shocked me one final time by standing up straight before me and announcing her intention to enlist in the Aerial Corps.
She was not the only one, as Divine Wind’s oldest son, Banzai, spoke up in support of her, saying he wished to join the Corps and fight the gryphons as the ‘duty and honor of our homeland requires’. But I cared less about that than trying to convince my sibling not to. Our two teenage sisters joined the effort, saying it was hard enough having to say goodbye to me again, but they could not bear the thought of losing both of us after suffering the loss of the rest of our herd.
But Glory remained adamant, saying Equestria needed her more as a soldier than a civilian weather worker. “But you’re not a warrior!” I protested, pointing out what methinks was obvious. “You hate fighting!”
“You’re right. I’m not like you, Fell Flight. I don’t want to fight or kill. I’d much rather stay here working to rebuild the Weather Factory with our family. But our family is gone, and I can’t bear the thought of you fighting this war alone. Equestria needs soldiers, and I now know I can be one. So I will.” She stood to passable attention and saluted me; I couldn’t help but reflexively return the honor. “Private Morning Glory reporting for duty, Master Sergeant!”
“Oh, Glory…” I hugged her, hard. We both broke down and sniffled; our embrace was shortly joined by my other two sisters, who methinks understood then that Glory was not going to be persuaded away from her chosen course of action. “Where did you learn to be so stubborn and stupid?”
“From you,” she told me with a smile. “From a big sister I admire immensely and wish to help defend Equestria...”
Even if it’s ready before, the chapter will release on Wednesday, September 1st, to mark the four-year anniversary of Into the Storm. The story currently comprises two completed books, half of a third book, and 348k words total. Here’s to another four years, and that many more words and books to come. Thanks for following it this far, and hope you enjoy!
I'm glad I could help out with this, especially after dropping the ball on Rock Biter. Felt interesting going through my old writing and bringing it up to the 2021 standards. You know how old the original work was we just finished editing? April 2020. Was I truly so poor in 2020? Yikes...
In other news, I Feel Pretty passed Social DIstancing (which also came out in April 2020) by number of likes. I am having a very very good year.
I'm looking forward to reading it.
Stoooked