I think this works pretty well as a second-act turning point, for all that it’s late in an allegedly 24-page chapter to have one. You thought big bad threat was Harky with Branch, but was actually Syr’Nj with Branch! Bamboozled again.

Or maybe Branch with Syr’Nj? As Syr’Nj herself will lampshade a bit later, her angry rant here is “co-written” with Graiya, who is probably aggrieved and lashing out just as Syr’Nj is, just on a different scale.

As co-writers ourselves, that was an interesting exercise to compose. Phil and I were still editing a fair amount of each other’s work up to this point, and we, um, disagreed about how long this speech should be and the resolution it should have, so we pulled it back and forth a bit between two goalposts. Still, we tried to make that a constructive process, adding more zest than we subtracted with each revision.