Suddenly A Succubus Ch. 48 - Reflection

There's going to be a fair amount of overlap between scenes in the next few chapters, but that's just because how dense the proceedings are. Despite Amara being the main character of the series, I try to give equal weight to the other girls as much as possible, even if it's difficult at times. In this Book, since Amara's been dealing with some pretty tough emotions, it's been a little bit harder to get time with Tessa and Nick, but thankfully Vee has given me a lens to check in on them.

This scene starts with a quote from Amara to confirm exactly when in the timeline we are, and then we get to explore everyone's thoughts about Amara storming off. Tessa is scared and pulling away, which makes sense, and Vee is determined to never give up on Amara. Chloé, however, was a bit trickier for me to write.

She's been absent from the narrative for a while, and spent the entire first two books completely ignorant that her friends were all hiding magical secrets. After that, she had a few hours to reconcile with being attacked by monsters, learning her friends were angels and demons and witches, and then it was time for the final fight. She then spent the next several days scattered in an ethereal void between dimensions, so... what exactly does she think when she comes back and Amara immediately blows up?

In the end, it felt the most natural for her to be a bit more optimistic and confident. She just finished reaffirming herself to the universe, after all, and she still views Amara as a sweet, supportive friend with some cool extra limbs.

I always intended her to be a little more confident after reforming, so I wasn't too surprised at that bit, but her effect on the group was something I hadn't quite realized I was missing. Without her, Tessa and Amara overwhelm the dynamic with all their angst, leaving Vee and Nick to pick up the slack. However, Nick's not really an optimist, he's more the type to ask "How are you feeling?" while trying to find a practical middle ground between everyone. Vee certainly has the optimistic idea that she can save Amara, but she's still fairly serious about the whole affair. Lot's of "Oh, whatever will I do to save my totally-platonic friend? Are we fated to drift apart?"

Then Chloé stepped up and just said, "Hey, I'm back and I'm helping. Go grab your shit and start looking for Amara." It was so refreshingly straightforward. In early books, I tried to make Chloé feel as relevant as I could even though she wasn't wrapped up in the magic drama. She's the one that talks Amara out of her post-Halloween funk, and her charity efforts give Amara something positive to cling to as she tries to make amends with Vee.

One idea I always came back to was how simple and nice Chloé was. She has a huge heart, she wants to do the best thing, and most of her drama was about her lack of self-confidence. In some ways she's the heart of the group, and this book has been exploring about how losing her affects everyone, in more ways than one.

So, yeah, Chloé's amazing and I'm so happy she's back. I knew I missed her, but now that I get to write her again, it's SO nice.

However, we're not out of the angst yet.

It's time to head down to the facility under the campus. I won't pick over this scene in too much detail, as it all serves one critical point to the story. See, last chapter we saw Amara start to blow up, then make some very questionable decisions. In this chapter, she's coming to her friends to say "Look! See what I'm capable of! If you let me go berserk mode, I can solve all our problems single-handedly!"

She's high on her own power after feeding so deep on Palesa, and she's slowly losing herself to her anger that's been building constantly for the last 3.5 books. She thinks she's making a good argument, but she's clearly shooting herself in the foot with her behavior.

There's a certain type of illicit thrill that comes from watching Amara embrace her demonic personality. She's done it a few times throughout the series, and every time she does, most of my readers seem to really enjoy it. When Brandon had her trapped in his binding circle, when she confronted Luxnor, when she fought the cult at the end of Book Two, those were all relatively heroic things. However, one thing I've often struggled with was how to convince my readers that demons are legitimately really scary.

Evelyn, a millennia-old archdemon, showed up earlier and was just the sweetest thing ever. Amara herself has mostly used her powers for smaller, cuter things like cooking and fun sexy times, with the occasional fight scene thrown in.

But, for the world of the story to feel vibrant, I need people to believe just how bad demons can be. I tried to touch on this a bit earlier in the series when Tessa first found out about Amara, but that's very much something I was telling, not showing. I firmly believe that, if the audience doesn't see something for themselves, it won't be internalized in quite the same way.

With that in mind, the whole point of the series up until now has been "What is Amara becoming? Will she be a good person when this is over?" I literally ended Book One with the line "What am I becoming?" after all.

I realize I'm rehashing many of my thoughts from my previous reflection. I'm not trying to, they're just very relevant again.

This chapter is step two of that process. It's all about watching Amara spiral further and further out of control, to the point that she's now actively hurting the people she claims she's trying to protect. Her power is overwhelming her, it's making her words shake the literal earth, and it's convincing her that she's the only one who truly understand what's happening here.

Fun fact: This scene was almost a little bit nastier. When I first wrote it, all of Amara's words were bolded, and she was a bit meaner, more cocky. My Beta Readers, bless them, helped me pin down that it didn't feel like Amara was genuinely trying to convince her friends of her arguments, and I'm glad they caught that. I think this scene works much better in its current version.

The last scene, however, is exactly how I first wrote it.

This scene is dread. It's fear. It's following Amara as she becomes the horror movie monster in someone else's story.

It starts simple enough, with Amara exploring the house for secret passages (and conveniently letting me set the stage for the upcoming fight!). She then meets "Vee" who's acting a little strange, isn't she? It's a shame Amara's not thinking straight right now, otherwise she might have remembered that they literally established a code word to check for imposters.

I'm genuinely curious if I managed to trick anyone with the backstabbing here. I'm picturing that brief window of "Wait did Vee just fucking stab her?" before I finally drop the act and show it's all Bishop.

Gosh, she's so rude! What kind of monster would impersonate their enemy's closest friend just for their own selfish benefits?

Anyways, this whole scene was radically reworked at the last minute. Initially, I'd planned for Amara to be at home, Bishop shows up, figures out where Palesa is, stabs Amara, then leaves. However, I couldn't think of a good reason for Amara to be wasting time at home, and it made much more sense for her to be on the hunt.

Then I thought, hey, isn't Bishop a Coven Head? Wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity to show what a high level witch can do?

What if I turned the entire manor into a twisted game of cat-and-mouse inside an illusion nightmare funhouse?

I LOVE this idea so much. I loved having an excuse to describe what the manor looked like. I loved the idea of Amara stomping around, fully prepared to kill Bishop, but unable to find her. I love illusion magic, and it was so much fun to have Amara explore her heightened abilities with more illusion mind games. Making voices appear all over the house to mask your location? Having a full conversation while you're both hiding from each other? It's SO dramatic and cinematic and I'm all for it.

She also taunts Amara about "killing her sweetheart," which is SO misguided of her. I mean, they're so obviously just friends. Ugh, I swear, everyone's a VeeMara shipper these days.

Once I'm filthy rich and can afford to finance my own SaS animated series, this scene is gonna slap.

Of course, the biggest piece of dread is that Bishop keeps disguising herself as Vee, thus making Amara attack Vee. My goal was to make everyone in the audience terrified at the thought of the real Vee showing up and, wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what happens.

Repeating one of her most traumatic memories, however, doesn't seem to have great effects on Amara's mental health. Rather than realizing how far she's spiraled, she instead doubles down and runs off, swearing that she'll have Davenport dead by the end of the night. Probably not a good sign.

What's gonna happen in Chapter 49? How far will Amara go, and will she cross that line of no return? Gosh, I guess you'll just have to wait two weeks until you find out :P

Nyx ♥