It has been a while since I posted an update. Since the last one, my wife and I welcomed our first child into the world. August Robbins was born on April 20, 2021, and my focus has been on him these past three months, not to mention the months my wife was pregnant. But I'm feeling inspired and I wanted to add the many ideas I've come up with for the story. In Chapter III, the explanation behind space travel didn't make much sense to me because I want this story to eventually be a space opera with spaceships and the like, so I came up with a better explanation and also a better point of conflict between why Sangréal wants to invade Aélia so bad. I'll post some of the changes I made below. Let me know what you think:
'It was common knowledge that when it was reported that the aélium mine in Isa finally dried up, Aélia made several attempts to discover more in other parts of the world. When no more was found, it led scientists to theorize that a large meteor made of aélium had impacted the planet thousands, if not, millions of years before. This also led them to believe that there could be more somewhere out in the galaxy. Because of this theory, Aélia's science division proudly created the Deep Space Scanner, or DSS. This device was used to scan the surrounding space for similar energy readings to aélium. However, the last time Glaed had heard anything about it was the year his father passed away. The Aélian news station circulated a rumor that more aélium had been found and that vehicles capable of interstellar travel were being created so that colonies on Aélia's sister planets, Eocury and Resiavis, both of which were rocky and uninhibitable, could be terraformed and established.'