Sword of the Outsider takes place around 2400 A.D. I've added internal markers at a few key points to tie things together. Now, this is at its core a ridiculous self-insert story. If that's a turn-off, I understand. If you're okay with it, wonderful! I had a lot of fun here, so I hope you will, too. At first this wasn't meant to be a cohesive novel, just flash-fiction and short stories I threw together, but it ended up telling a (mostly) complete story. I've also revised and expanded a lot of its material, even rewriting the entire second half of the Arc 2 Climax.

I skipped depicting many things here, including Machrae Diir's creation, because I was writing in a dreamlike state of mind. Dreams simply happen the way they happen, and we ride along. Read Arc 1 through that lens and it’ll make a lot more sense. Treat this book as a folkloric recording of real past events, written in a future that doesn’t exist yet.

Wherever I avoid describing something, or describe it only loosely, it’s because there is no one right way to envision it. The empty spaces in this early vision of Machrae Diir, and surrounding everything that happens in it, exist for you to project yourself into.

Did you imagine something that has power and reinforced the scene's tone? Good enough! Did you find my prose too dense and bizarre to visualize–in fact, incomprehensible? Also good, and very affirming for me! In writing this pseudo-foreword months after Arc 2, I found that I often struggled to remember what I, myself, envisioned with many of that arc’s more elaborate descriptions. Very eldritch, yes?

In the same vein, I like to imagine whole sequences of events implied behind the scenes and between the entries that actually make it into this book. Up until somewhere near the end of Arc 3, most of these pieces were written as direct transcripts of my mental state at the time of writing. I often understood that the ideas in one scene had a relation to earlier scenes, but could rarely put this understanding into words.

This book, in short, is a demon’s free-form exploration of her own monstrousness, seeking to experience itself without needing to justify every discovery by ironclad logic. The stories within the story often read as isolated climaxes and endings, payoffs without setup, because that’s exactly what they are. In future stories I'll be happy to flesh out the making of Machrae Diir, to stitch together the threads uncovered by this foray into my abyss, with proper inciting moments, character development, and all the rest.

Until then? Enjoy this collection for what it is, readers dear!

XOXO

~Kairliina~