Afterword

I’m afraid I’m giving away all my secrets up front, but my model for the
catastrophe was a certain alien queen.

The afterword to this volume is something of a confession of sins.

I offer my sincerest apologies for not managing to finish this episode
in a single volume. I had planned to tell the whole story of the elven
tavern waitress by the end of the book, but as usual, I found myself
several hundred pages beyond the planned length, and therefore I decided
to split the story into a first and second volume (plus, I thought readers
might get worn out if they had to go straight through all the tight spots
and bloody battles that continue after Chapter 6 without a break). I’m
terribly sorry about that…
There was an omen this might happen. The main heroine this time
around was supposed to be the tavern elf, but instead, the prophetess of
tragedy shoved her out of the way and claimed center stage for herself.
Seems she wanted to escape the shadows she had been confined to so far.
I’d thought up the “prophecies” as a sort of gimmick for the plotline
early on, but once I got started, the deliverer of the prophecies just
wouldn’t stay still. Her despair, inner struggles, and determination went
far beyond what I had initially planned, and in the end, she escaped my
control for fifty pages or so. It may have been the first time words flowed
so smoothly onto the page. In the end, she was promoted to quite the
heroine (at least in my opinion). It was such a shock to me that I kept on
mumbling to myself that it must be a mistake.
While I was bending backward to accommodate this unexpected turn
of events, however, I was also a bit pleased. I suspect that it’s a good
thing for both the author and the book when the characters who live
within the story betray the author’s original plans or shoot to the forefront
of their own accord. My apologies to those readers who were expecting to
see more of the elven heroine, however. She’ll have a larger role to play
in the next volume (I think), so please hold on a little longer.