Having now stayed on schedule for 4 patreon chapters, except for one disruption caused by a surprise delay in my Adderall prescription, I am now confident of maintaining my planned schedule of weekly chapters once more. I am building up patreon's advance chapters first, and the full amount will be done and the first public chapter posted on July 7.

In other news, my niece is finishing up getting her degree in neuroscience, and she needs survey responses to complete a research study for that. If you care to spare a few minutes to help her out, please follow this link and fill out her survey. The focus of the survey is symptoms of ADHD and Dyslexia, but she says all responses are helpful whether or not you have either of those conditions.

And now, yes, I'm adding this to the announcement because of the minimum length requirement, but I figure a teaser is better than just spamming "WORDS".

B3 Chapter 2: Loyalty Crisis

Amber gave Carlos a light squeeze with the arm she had wrapped around him and snorted a laugh. Sometimes, he asked questions that seemed astoundingly incongruous with the sophisticated knowledge he so often displayed, and she never knew when it might happen. She didn't mind, though; it was endearing, and getting to explain something to him instead of the other way around always gave her a bit of a thrill. "Surely you understand that we have to assume that he can still follow us, right? If we don't and we're wrong, it will be a catastrophe when he catches us unprepared."

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Carlos spluttered for a moment. Amber wished she could see his face just then, but that would require moving her head off of his shoulder, and she didn't want to do that. It was a short-lived opportunity, anyway, as Carlos recovered quickly. "Well, yeah. I was just– Never mind. What matters is what to do next."

Amber nodded. She had been combing through the branching tree of foreseeable possibilities with several of her minds ever since they had escaped the throne room. "Caution demands that we assume failure, but that is not sustainable. We can't live the rest of our lives endlessly fleeing an enemy that we constantly speculate might be one step behind. We must at some point conclusively determine that we have escaped immediate pursuit. Unfortunately, trying to scry on any pursuit efforts would provide a connection they could use to find us. The only way to actually find out if that broke our trail, without giving them a new trail in the process, is to wait and see if he shows up. So, we should prepare as best we can for that. Let's start with getting a bit of distance so that we'll have more time to react." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

She looked around at their new surroundings. They should be roughly 100 miles from the wellspring, in a random direction outward, away from Kalor Kingdom, but that meant nothing to her. Maps of the Wilds were always spotty, focused on specific points of interest, or sparse on details, especially for the deep Wilds, far from civilization. They were somewhere in the foothills of a tall mountain range, with numerous snowy peaks in the distance. The thick tangle of vegetation she'd grown accustomed to in the Wilds was much thinner here, with trees only grouped in isolated clusters, rather than covering everything with a vast canopy. Even the grass had gaps, spots where bare dirt showed with no cover. She chose a hill a bit over a mile away and teleported the group there, then quickly spotted the place where they had just been. Even at over a mile distant, she could easily sense the lingering aura of her presence there.

<Continued on Patreon>