TBATE - Not Bound By Fate

A/N and an update

So, as you may have noticed, I haven't posted a chapter last week. In fact, I won't be posting this week as well and for the foreseeable future. Why, you may ask? The reason is simple, but not really. The simple part is that I don't really enjoy writing this fic at the moment, it feels more like a chore than anything else.

But that's not the only reason. University has been a lot more demanding than I expected this year, making it harder to focus on what to write with all the stuff it's throwing my way. And to add on top of that, there is the entire 52 other chapters I wrote before, making continuing this fic a bit of a challenge. To put it bluntly, I made Arthur too strong for this point in the war, but not enough so that he can singlehandedly deal with everything Agrona has at his disposal.

This led to my current predicament, how do I make this part of the story be entertaining? Having Arthur curb stomp the retainers and Scythes would just be boring, and introducing the wraiths will be too much for the rest of the cast. They are simply not strong enough to be in that situation, and so most would die, which defeats the purpose of a back in time fic like this one.

And that is the major issue with this type of story in the first place - at least the way I wrote it - how do you add tension and avoid making a lackluster power fantasy with no substance to it? I sure as hell don't know.

Now, as I said before, I already have the entire sequence of events that will lead to an ending planned out. And I genuinely think that what I envisioned was something interesting and worth writing - wouldn't be here otherwise - and reading. So with that in mind, I will be ending this fic prematurely, but I will at least give you what was supposed to happen in the event I was a better writer and found a solution to my current problem. I'm actually taking this idea from omegalul1234 (go read his stuff or else), who did this for the fics he dropped, so shoutouts to him.

Anyway, here are the events that were going to take place (spoilers for some stuff from volumes 10 through 12):

After Arthur ends hos training with the Asuras, the day before he is supposed to return to Dicathen, Kezess confronts him about having an aether core (under the assumption that Sylvia was behind its existence) and they strike a deal where Arthur will get a position with the great eight to represent the lessers in exchange for Agrona's head and whatever knowledge Arthur has on aether;

The place where Arthur fought Jagrette now has a squad of Vritra blooded mages instead and are easily dealt with, but the reality is they were just a scouting force sent to test Arthur;

Alea and Aya fight against Uto and struggle to win, leaving them out of commission for a few months to recover;

The Archivist calls for Arthur again, this time giving him a clue on where to find Mordain;

Seele convinces Kezess to not go through with an assassination attempt;

Aldir notices that some of the Lances are becoming stronger than the artifacts allow them to be;

Olfred seeing an opportunity with Alea and Aya out of the war for the moment, helps Nico set up base in Darv;

Seris begins to make more significant moves with her rebellion to draw Agrona's attention;

The ships finally arrive on the coast of Sapin, bringing with them Melzri and Viessa;

A large scale attack on the wall is made, this time with more troops and mutated mana beasts, and at the same time a civil war breaks out in Darv led by Nico in the hopes of getting the attention of either Arthur or the person who is supposedly the Legacy (clueless);

After all of that is dealt with Arthur, Sylvie, Tessia and Varay are sent to Alacrya and Seris rebellions starts in earnest;

Arthur and Varay tries to raid Taegrin Caelum, but fail and retreat;

Nico finally confronts Arthur and learns Cecilia can no longer be brought to this world, at least the way Agrona intended to do it;

Nico in his rage gets negged by Sylvie;

Back in Dicathen, Regis helps Mica end the civil war and kills Olfred;

Arthur finally gets to Agrona and kills him, or so he thinks;

Once back in Dicathen, Arthur is greeted by Kezess as he came to personally collect Agrona's body, as nothing could go wrong at that point;

The body explodes inside the portal connecting to Epheotus leaving Kezess, Myre and Windsom stranded between dimensions, possibly dead;

In Alacrya, Agrona reveals himself to be alive and well and starts to suppress the rebellion;

Without Kezess, Epheotus is thrown into political chaos as different clans try to seize power;

Arthur finally goes looking for Mordain, and when he finds the Phoenix, manages to convince him to stop leaving in hiding to help stabilize the Asuras;

With Mordain's help, Seele takes over as leader of the Indrath clan and settles whatever disputes were going on between the clans;

Now having much more open support from the Asura's, Arthur plans another raid on Agrona's fortress;

It actually succeeds and Agrona is finally dealt with, the only problem remaining being figuring out what happened to Kezess and Myre;

Turns out they weren't the only ones trapped between dimensions, as Myre explained after finding a way back. She recounts how Kezess and her found Arkanus Indrath body being possessed by something and Kezess was fighting to keep the thing reaching their world;

Kezess dies, but manages to wound the being enough to stop the thing from just slaughtering everything in its path;

Insert epic final fight here where Arthur learns to server the Fate between two beings separating Arkanus from the big bad. The end;

Virion got to live the dream of helping raise his five great-grandchildren and died happily.

And that's about it. Those were the main plot points I wanted to hit, but didn't find a way to make the parts in between interesting enough. There was also going to be a few side stories, mainly about Arthur using his mastery of spatium to get a vacation/honeymoon for him and Tessia by visiting otherworlds.

Maybe one day I will come back to this fic and try to do it right, but I just don't have it in me to do it now. I hope you enjoyed the journey so far, and my apologies for not keeping my promise of seeing this to the end.

Peace