Here we are again. Another adventure has come to an end.

Thank you everyone who has reached this part. It wasn’t an easy journey, and I appreciate the effort. There were many who went out of their way to suggest improvements, share their thoughts or just say that they’re here, reading. A loud shout out to you all, as well as the silent readers, keeping to themselves. Without all of you, this story might still be needing another two years to finish. As much as I’m always the first reader and the one who I think up the stories for, it’s you readers who motivate me to continue on with writing them down NOW, instead of a year later when I’ll feel more like it.

Yet, I know this story isn’t perfect. I tried something new here, and in a way, it failed miserably. The naming of mistakes would take me another hour and its late, so lets leave it at that. I know that things didn’t go as they should have. The story that should have been no more than 15-20 chapters somehow reached 40 (not calculated, but it’s a nice number at the least). More than that, the end is… confused to say the least. I seem to have lost the original plan somewhere along the way, but the ending was set in stone before even starting, so yeah… This story had a lot of potential, but I missed most of it.

But I’m not going to end this afterword on a bad note. As far as this went away from my original goal, I’m still happy about it in a sense that I saw a lot of new strengths and weaknesses of my own writing. The way I should be writing to enjoy it more myself, and make it more enjoyable for others to read. So maybe it would be better to say that I’m thankful to this story for being a brilliant teaching material, and my dear readers for helping me on this long journey.

As a small reward, I can give you some material I used to prepare for this story. Original plans, characters sheets and a short story about Elecar’s life. I wrote it before even starting on Dream Chaser, knowing I wanted to have a clear picture of who this Elecar was. He was the man of terrible fate in my mind, but many people have something like that. I wanted to know what was his exactly, and how it came to be that he was ready to destroy the whole world to avenge himself against his family. It was also where Kallum was born.

At first, Elecar was a loner. Someone who had not known the warmth of human contact. But when writing it, I felt that there was something missing. His life’s events, changes just didn’t feel right. They were superficial at times, made only because the story required them to happen. That’s why when travelling home (a 30 hour long journey in a van without internet, electricity or books, so in general just sleeping in an uncomfortable position and staring through the window), I thought about it, considered teacher figures but none felt fitting. It would be too easy for him then. That’s when a medic friend came to be.

He was young and naive at first, filled with the joy of life, which he shared with Elecar. Later he grew weary of life and its unfairness, the oppression of shapers, but he wasn’t a fighter. His mind was too occupied with helping others and doing what he can now to focus on such lofty ideas of destroying all the shapers altogether. Not that he didn’t wish for it, all while being one of them.

Yet, even as I say that, I’m not certain. In my mind, Kallum is still a mystery. Since I never wrote anything from his perspective, I see him through the eyes of Elecar. A good friend, a trustworthy ally, a compassionate man ready to help all those in need with rarely seen shadows of rage at the pointlessness of his work. All this while knowing he was a simple army medic yet had connections with many nobles, was a taught shaper and could procure many lost artefacts. A true enigma, which I often like to ponder about.

And I’m rambling. Sorry. I just truly love this story and am somewhat sad I couldn’t show it for half of what it could be.

And this is my favourite quote from the story (yes, I’m allowed to enjoy my own story, and think that some sentences were written better than others!):

If only Elecar had succeeded. That fool. Iago played with the earring, wondering what Kallum would have done had he lived to see the outcome. Probably continued with his eternal task of helping those that couldn’t help themselves. He wasn’t one to point fingers and start fires. It was Elecar’s favourite past time.

And to finish this event, I’d like to say that I’m not going anywhere. For better or worse, I’ll continue on writing. It’ll be the story that continues in the world set up by Flight of Icarus. The new story will have new characters, a new game by how much it’s changed, and some old events that creep back up to the now. Not everything that happened back then could just go away without leaving a mark. But the story will be free to read as a solo novel too.

That’s it, then. Thank you everyone for reading my stories, and I hope to see you again, when I get ready to start another adventure, another learning experience.