It's always something (Patreon)

Gonna be a small schedule interruption.

For those who haven't been following the unfolding saga on discord, I had to take my cat back to the emergency vet, so that's how I spent all of Tuesday from 3AM to dinner time, which is how long it took to get the final verdict. To summarize, she is okay, just going to need a little special care from now on, and I am out almost $2K with all said and done.  Just a few months ago that would've been a disaster, but thanks to very kind reader support and the fact that I've been saving up for something, I should be fine for the rest of the month; it'll be tight but I won't go hungry or miss any important bills.

This is relevant because my existing mental illness does not play nicely with that kind of short-term intense stress; I have been trying to write since I got up this morning and I have bupkis.  Static between my ears.  It WAS a short-term event exacerbating a pre-existing condition, so I'm confident I'll recover fully and quickly, just...I guess not that quickly.

God, I hate being so fragile.  When I was a teenager (before the bipolar flared up) I often got praised by teachers for my resilience under pressure.  I miss that.  These days it seems like every little thing incapacitates my ass...  Well, that's not really productive, though, complaining about what is doesn't help in dealing with it.  Gotta get up and move on.  Trial and error has taught me to accept the knockdowns when they come and rest when I need to, otherwise these things spiral into much bigger problems than they need to be.

So, skipping an update while I put my head back together.  In the interests of not misaligning the entire posting schedule, it'll be one skip for every tier so they stay in planned lockstep.  The update following chapter 4.43 will be the missed one for everybody, so that's Avenists today, Scions next Tuesday, and Royal Road readers next Friday.

Thanks for understanding, everybody.  I appreciate you.