Lady Maeve

  As mentioned in the previous Appendix, this story was a nightmare to finish. I mentioned that switching to Lady Maeve as a POV character was a solution to a problem I was having at the time. The story has been finished for a few months and I would like to elaborate on this decision and the deeper problem that it indicated.

  Before we get into that, I should mention the high-level process or filter that was used to determine if content was included in this story or not. Depending on the character, the filter changed.

  Felix: "Is this paragraph/sentence about flying machines, the dream of flight, or the experience of flying through the sky?"

  Shane: "Does this paragraph/sentence meet the filter for Felix, OR does this paragraph/sentence explore the magic system in this world?"

  As you can see, there is already a conflict here in the way the story is constructed. Shane was given the freedom to explore the magic system in the world, and this ended up causing me to write myself into a corner. In the climax of the story, Shane is still busy exploring the magic system, but Felix is doing cool stuff in an airplane. I did not have a character in the south of the continent exploring Flight as such.

  The reader may be scratching their head as to why Lady Maeve, who up until that point was a minor POV character only available in some interludes, suddenly takes center stage in the climax of the story. At the time, it was the only way I could have finished the story. In retrospect, this decision indicates the deep structural flaw in the story. I do not think this flaw can be fixed. The only option to fix the story that I see is to make Maeve a full POV character much earlier and give her clear motivations and possibly a character arc. However, even this approach would just be a band-aid.

  The State of the Island

  At the start of the story, it is clear that something has gone horribly wrong in this world. Both of the main characters are horrible people, for reasons that are not described until much later in the text, and which require some context from two other stories, both Fire Elementals and Fighter Jets, and Knights, Witches, and Fighter Jets.

  In this world, the Elemental Queen of Light and the Elemental Queen of Darkness are secretly the same entity. One of the things that is not explicit in the text is that the Queen of Darkness (Ashe) has been very active in the history of humanity. It is only implied by Chapter 37: Propeller Tips, when Prince Kai says: "Ashynvellemviarius. Such a fascinating name! In the language where the name first appears, the people had developed at least thirty-six different words for the ashes that are created when burning bodies."

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  This is somewhat subtle, but it was my intention when writing this to indicate what Ashe has been doing to humanity since the dawn of time. It is clear that there were lots of bodies to burn. The goal of the Divine Power of the Fifth Goddess was to create freedom in the universe. However, animals do not exactly have what we would consider "free will." In other words, Ashe needed to evolve a new animal that did have "free will," which required many, many generations of what can only be described as deity-managed eugenics.

  At the start of the story, Ashe has sent her two followers, Zakx and Mia, to manage the island with the intent to breed two races of people who hate each other. In addition, three of the principal characters, Felix, Shane, and Astrid, have had their souls horribly twisted by torture and mutilation in previous reincarnations.

  Sir Zachary the Knight of Summer => Felix: Heart cut out, brain cut out, blood drained, kept alive in a box.

  Quinn => Shane: Heart cut out, brain cut out, blood drained, kept alive in a box. Watched his brother Seth die in an aviation accident. Killed by Kiera Blaine.

  Annatiki Marunavi => Astrid: Tortured, mutilated, then trapped for centuries as a thrall subjugating the etherborne.

  In retrospect, I empathize with the reader if they are put-off by the state of the island at the start of the story. It is populated by hateful people and explored by hateful characters.

  The Great "Life Partner" Recon

  In the original text, Astrid referred to Elvira as her "life partner," a term that I was never quite happy with because it did not capture the true relationship between the characters. There is no romance between them. They are sisters, bound by powerful magic, and later in the story, through a demonstration of the Dance of the Festival of Fates, it is revealed that they can swap places between the two Elemental Planes.

  This leads to the very strange situation at the end of the novel where Shane establishes a similar bond with the Spirit of the Nation of Riln. If you read the original version of the text and stopped reading at that point, then I am deeply sorry.

  While doing the rewrite for Knights, Witches, and Fighter Jets, I found a better term to describe this bond. I renamed it the "kindred" bond, which makes sense because one of the parties in the bond is a Spirit. Elvira is now Astrid's kindred spirit. This required changing the term "life partner" to "kindred" everywhere in the text, a recon that was made possible by the Author Premium "search" feature.

  Now, at the end of the novel, Shane establishes the kindred bond with the Spirit of the Nation of Riln.

  Further recons may be required. It is mentioned that Ingrid is a Spirit and Vaska is a Dream Being. If I do a rewrite of Fire Elementals and Fighter Jets, this may need to be swapped. I could easily see a use for the kindred bond between the two women, so that Ingrid flies while Vaska gives her power, similar to the way Schierke bonds with Guts in Berserk.