Well, dear readers, this has been admittedly a little overdue. I originally made an afterword for Royalroad and couldn't get around to it on here and Spacebattles. I made RR's one a little longer since it was a long stream of consciousness from myself and an author's point of view. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to make a unique one for the other platforms simply out of laziness and I didn't feel it would be right to copy-paste my stream of consciousness two more times.

Simply put, this is the end of Volume 2 of Saga of the Cosmic Heroes. One year and a half later, some 328k word and 92 chapters later—and we're at the end. And what a ride it has been so far.

Not the end, mind you, more of like a pitstop of sorts. I say pitstop—because frankly I've been burnt out and I need to rest my mind for a while. I'd say the burnout started around way back in ch68/69, back then I toyed with the idea of announcing a hiatus back there because I had gotten the meat of the conflict done—all that was going to be done was wrapping things up. As Toscana Requiem went on I started to feel more and more burnt out, and I'd say without a doubt it culminated right at the My Fair Lady chapter which looking back on it know I made a bad call not splitting that chapter into two. I was right at the finish line and fell over dead from tiredness. I wanted to be done, but I pushed on for my and your guy's sake.

I didn't stop at 68/69 because I felt that it wasn't a particularly good point to stop at. I felt I needed a better stopping point if I wanted to call a hiatus, so I kept writing until I eventually decided on the best point would be to wrap up Li's character's arc before I decided on hiatus.

I went a little more in-depth about my decisions and thoughts in retrospect on the development of Victoria and Li's character's arcs and the overall pacing of Toscana Requiem from ch69 onwards. But here, I'll keep it short: I didn't expect Li's post-Rouen story to be so long. I knew how it was going to end(Vow in the Snow) but between that and ch68 most of it was somewhat planned, somewhat pants-written.

Toscana Requiem has been a lot shorter but I committed to the idea of tying all subplots so the story ballooned quite a bit and I'm satisfied that I've more or less concluded Li's character arc and her cast of characters to some degree. This is because this is more or less the end of Li's character arc so she and the Mafia needed some closure. This is because the focus shifts away from Toscana towards Brenaco/Terra and later Ruthenia. But this is not the last we'll ever see of Li and the Mafia because they will play a major role in a later volume.

And with that said, I think it brings me to Victoria. I think I made her narrative a little too choppy because I was amateur in storytelling and Li's narrative I felt like I matured a lot. Still, I think I did a disservice to the early part of the story because of the head-hopping. I think after this there won't be as much head-hopping and it will focus mainly on Victoria whenever possible.

As for the story after Toscana Requiem, I think in the chapter where Brutus discusses Brenaco, a thought occurred to me that I didn't initially plan for that to be a focus for vol3. Originally ch92 was conceived as an idea that it would be the only chapter to have a dual PoV—first from Li's and then Victoria's. This was dropped because I decided to make the first half of vol3, Embers of Ishtar, actually focus on Victoria's mission there. The first idea I had for the return to Victoria's narrative would've glossed over the actions at Brenaco and the Federation's side of the aftermath of the Toscana military disasters. Vol3 would've been mostly what is now the second half of the story, Evergreen Golden Summer, but I decided that focusing on EoI would give more weight to the slice of life that's mainly in EGS.

I think that about settles it for this afterword. I'm taking a hiatus for August and some of September and then will return to writing vol3 Embers of Ishtar. I've had ideas for some short stories set in the SotCh universe, and one lighthearted fantasy short story that I've been interested in doing, but I'm not sure I will go with either of them. I don't think I can or do want to write anything other than SotCH, it's a story that means a lot to me.

So with all that said, thank you for reading Saga of the Cosmic Heroes, and until next time. This illustration I commissioned mossacannibalis for.