Stellar

I am forever grateful to you and those others that show patience and grace when it comes to what I do. Believe me, I would have preferred Lucid Truth was already done to perfection on a much more reasonable timeframe, by something like 2024 or 2025. Nobody wants this thing completed more than I do, so it will stop haunting my dreams as it has done for the better part of a decade, ever since I first starting thinking seriously about it in 2017 after Veil was over. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that some nights as I try to fall asleep, this book with its litany of difficulties -- alongside the planned sequel to Spirit of Fire -- are the biggest things circulating in my brain and keeping me awake. So, your forbearance and your understanding are appreciated, and I thank you for it.

The comment sections of one of my own stories isn't really the place I want to have this kind of discussion, but I'm sorry, I simply can't let this lie. Do you actually understand how long it takes some authors to produce their fiction? Some may be able to spit something out every day or week like clockwork, but there are many who require a lot more time and care to craft things to a certain quality. This applies doubly so for me when it comes to the complexities of winding up my signature work -- this is the final half of the last book of a trilogy and it's important to me to get it correct. Sure, you didn't intend to start it when you knew it was incomplete. That's fine, mistakes happen. However ... even after I answered your DM and informed you, you decided to comment the above anyhow. To be clear, you are entitled to your opinion, but when the only interactions I have had with you are these -- no other comments about the content of the story or the characters or a review, or even a single like on any chapters as far as I am aware -- how do you think that appears to me? My work is free to read. I'm not being paid to write fiction, and you have absolutely no idea what's going on in my life that I cannot devote the time and energy towards creative pursuits. If your expectation is that I drop other things in my life in order to 'finish in one go' something that would likely require at least a couple of years of unbroken attention to resolve to my own satisfaction, lest of all the audience, then ... well ... that's certainly 'an opinion' I suppose. I don't want to fight anybody either, but I will not accept anyone saying this to me about my work. Period. Thank you for telling me you enjoyed my work, but please consider that authors are human beings with lives outside of providing you with their art. You cannot expect life to conform to any schedule.

You did ask me directly in a private message about whether the final book in the trilogy was completed given the current status of 'on hold', and I told you that it was not but that it would eventually be when I am in a position to do so. So, respectfully, I am not sure why this is at all surprising. Yes, this is where Lucid Truth got to, but when a book is incomplete, there will necessarily be an arbitrary cut-off at a middle point, and unfortunately, this is currently it.

@wildone New Zealand is my home country and I've lived here all my life. Short of potentially meeting somebody special that lives elsewhere else in the world, I have no intentions to move. So yes, I am indeed still here. Graeme is correct about our school year though. Both for secondary and tertiary, it's very close to what's used in Australia nationally and by state, with everyone starting and finishing generally within a week or two of one another.

The telutuk, and later the selet also, needed to be overtly xenobiological in the sense that they are notably different from most anthropic and Earth-evolved creatures, especially as the apex predators of this world. Evolution is nothing if not a slave to environmental pressures, but just recreating some kind of musclebound clawed-and-fanged alien version of a tiger or a bear didn't sound too inventive. So that's where the shiver-stalker and the venom-shank made their appearance in my imagination. You have it exactly correct with the arbiters; we are just as much a cancer to them as they are an existential horror to us. No middle ground and no negotiation is possible in such a relationship. As for Shay -- as you say, I've largely addressed this above in comment replies. It's a confluence of others -- such as Mira and Rashid -- interpreting what Shay and his godlike power are, through their own individual worldviews. To be clear, this isn't exactly the first time this theme has arisen -- though it certainly is the most obvious example -- so it's not like this hasn't been introduced as a concept before, but you'll just have to wait to see if this concern leads to anything else. Lastly, as for Rashid's use of language: he is Iranian and his mother language is Farsi, along with Arabic and English, and to a lesser extent a couple of African languages. The reason he is speaking Arabic here is that he learned the language when he was young because it is still very prevalent throughout the future regional Middle East, and in order to better understand the Quran and be able to talk to other non-Farsi-speaking Muslims about it. If he wasn't deliriously quoting chapter and verse, he would probably have just said something in English or Farsi anyhow, so there you go.

There were tactical reasons for not sending him in, despite his prodigious abilities.

And there is so much more yet to come! Shay and Mira have brought me a lot of joy as characters to write, I will say that.

If you're referring to Mira dying? Yes, it absolutely would shorten things a great deal.

I think newer accounts might have restrictions on giving out likes until a certain point? I don't recall. You should be able to like/love or any one of about five other reactions on any individual chapter or comment or story page or forum post, etc. Feel free to comment yourself though, I still read and respond to them even years later. Glad you are enjoying the book and Shay's characterisation, and yes, as of chapter 10 -- this point -- there is a long way to go.

I genuinely have no idea what I did to be included on this list of luminaries, since I'm one of the least social people on here, but thank you for the mention all the same.

The interwoven pasts of the Mishith and Jzu Krrm are important lore, certainly. Though, as foundational as it is, the significant connecting elements that link to the rest of what is going on all occur in the time of the hybrid. Jasu Kirmith history can be broken into three basic periodic aspects. Firstly, the era of renewed scientific discoveries and sustained large-scale interstellar expansion achieved through hybridisation, eventually culminating in quantum-based technology. Secondly, the cataclysmic reality-splitting event itself that was produced by that technology and caused the enemy's introduction. Lastly, the course of the conflict up until the war's abrupt -- and not fully explained -- halt at Lucere's siege, and the Sundering being committed. It's those pieces that will be the most enlightening when you can slot them together with greater detail. As we work our way toward the story ending, the information will be less and less obtuse, I promise.

I'm glad I'm proving educational in any sense! Thanks for reading and enjoying my work.

ESCALATION "The next threat arrives unforeseen, with guarded balance turning instead to rising crisis." -o-0-O-0-o- The very moment Admiral Yasir Lugor heard the tactical officer's voice and saw the incoming notification appear directly before him, he understood the deadly peril he faced, and the depths to which they had all been deceived. In that single microcosm of time, it was plain to him. Layer upon layer of duplicity. Ahead was the primary swarm of Disciples a

This is Chapter 9.

Well, the Herald isn't technically dead. Not yet, and 'yet' is the important word here. As Shay says, temporal dilation means that the process of the Herald being crushed into the singularity will take some indeterminate amount of time that's probably greater than the universe's current age squared. This is not any exaggeration either; being so close to that much mass makes space-time absurdly warped to the point that time is near to stopped. In a very real sense, to the outside cosmos, all black holes are forever in the process of collapsing into their singularities, with the inrushing mass frozen in the slowest of slow motions as everything is dragged to the core. A nanosecond inside is equal to a literal eternity outside. However ... the Herald's fate is now sealed, and it cannot influence anything outside of where it is. So, though it's not dead *yet*, it has effectively been removed from the equation. Given that the alien swarm was already following the Herald's specific steps to attack Earth even as it went absent to chase Shay and friends, there's a good chance nothing major will immediately change after the snake's head is removed. The body -- the attacking armada -- has instructions and knows where, when, and how to act. As for the 'spy mission', I'm assuming you're referring to Iskandar meeting Lucas. That just didn't feature this chapter, but it will soon. Not going to say anything else about the Master, because at this point there is nothing for me to say. If your questions are ones that I can provide any commentary or insight on, feel free to ask away!