Tribulations, p.23
Tribulations, page 23
“Just what are you planning to do to my brother once you have birthed his heir!?”
Bīng gave Lingxin a look like she wanted to just ignore her, but at seeing Xeal with her she sighed as she spoke.
“Xeal, I would thank you for keeping better control of your wives.”
“I am not Watcher,” replied Xeal. “My wives are their own people, not things to be controlled by my whims.”
“Still, she is creating tension with an ally. I would think that she would know better.”
“You are no ally,” retorted Lingxin. “You are simply a convenient partner that gets something you want by giving Xeal something he wants. Now, what is your intent for my brother?”
“He will become my puppet until my child is ready to take the throne, at which time he will spend the rest of his days here serving me. It will be as it should have been from the start, with the true ruler of his empire being me.”
Xeal had to hold in a laugh as he interrupted the pair of women.
“That’s cute. Bīng, how will you rule from this prison? How will you quell a rebellion? How will you even be able to trust the reports that you receive? I can go on, but ask Arnhylde about how much control Matrikas has over the Zapladal Theocracy and they worship her. I’ll give you the long and short of it, she has long since given up even trying to direct the events of it.”
“I am not so weak willed as to not be ready to do what is needed to maintain control.”
“Will has nothing to do with it. I am fine with your daughter sitting on the throne and I am even fine with Jin being stuck here with you. What I am not fine with are the problems that you exerting any control over the citizens of this country, when you know nothing about them and can never walk among them, will cause. Stick to being seen as a divine being that is revered and is sought for guidance.”
“Xeal, I thought you would agree that my rule would be preferable to what is currently in place. Now that there are five years to work with, it is the perfect time to purge that which is doing harm to the empire.”
“You are no different than my brother, father before him, or any of the ministers. Your solution is to kill those you find too inconvenient, just like them!”
At Lingxin’s words, Bīng seemed at a loss for a second as Xeal spoke to close the topic.
“Bīng, immortals should never seek to rule mortals. It is why I will seek to destroy any nation that my kind attempts to found that would rule over the natives of this world. It is why my wives mostly rule in my stead and I will never seek to be king of anything.”
“Hmm, I will think on your words, though my sisters and I are likely planning on our children doing just that, or would you say that they are too close to being immortal with how long they would live?”
“Do as my children must and have them retire to Cielo city when they turn 100,” advised Xeal. “Beyond that, they will bleed as easy as any other, so long as you don’t intend to see what happens when your son marries Matrikas, or one of your other sisters.”
“Doing so could prove rather interesting. If we were to have one that took lineage from all of us, the child that would be born would be 99.9% phoenix. Such an existence has never existed before and I for one would like to see just what they could do. Though it would take 200 years at least for us to achieve that and by then it will likely not matter any longer.”
“Wouldn’t that be like sleeping with your own nephew?” asked Lingxin, sounding disgusted.
“No. We call each other sisters, but we have no true blood relation. We simply came into being one day like all of the original beings. The ten of us were gathered by our mate and became sisters in the same sense that you are sisters with all of Xeal’s wives.”
“And you know, like it, or not, that is what we are now as you are not a concubine and I don’t care what you may say, that makes you his wife, the empire’s hidden empress and my sister. If you wish to effect true change for the good in these lands, accepting that and making it the new norm is a decent first step. Now, I will leave you to think on that and I look forward to meeting my niece, or nephew, when they arrive.”
Lingxin didn’t even wait for Bīng to respond, as she took Xeal’s hand and made her way to the teleportation gate and left with him. For Xeal’s own part, he knew that this wouldn’t be the last he heard of this and was just sighing as he worried just what the future held with all the phoenixes, save for Levina, having been paired with a mate from what Taya had shared with him. Though he had purposefully not asked for the details on just who each of the men were, or what had been the terms as he really didn’t want to know. So, instead, he simply enjoyed falling asleep next to Lingxin, Enye, Dyllis and Mari once more, before he left for an extended period of time.
Announcement!
Just a quick word before you close this book and start waiting for the next one to come out, which you should really read this book’s afterword for some information on that one.
However, that is not what this one is about and I am doing a very limited run of signed books that you can order. All you need to do is head over to the link at the bottom of any page on my website (https://www.Bernsbooks.com) and place your order. This sale will only run 7/1/23 to 7/31/23 and it may be a long time before I ever do something like this again as I have no idea what to expect as far as demand.
With that said I am also starting to dabble in merchandise as a whole. To start this, I am in the process of getting chibi art for Xeal and his ladies made to go on mugs, shirts and anything else that makes sense. I have much more planned as the options are almost endless but I have to start somewhere. So, I hope that some of you will enjoy what is planned and grab a mug or something and yes, I will be expanding the collection as I see positive sales.
Alright thanks for reading this announcement now back to the regularly scheduled stuff at the back of the book. Though, once more there is no preview due to things just not working out due to time constraints, sorry.
(*****)
Thanks!
Thank you to all of my patrons on Patreon, especially my knight-tier patrons Carl Benge, Alexander Casey Donnell, Timelesschief, Christof Köberlein, Benjamin Grey, Daniel Sifrit, Michael Jackson, Jeffrey Iverson, David Peers, Kyle J Smith, Roman Smith, William J Dinwiddie II, Rick White, Ryan Harrington, Michael Mitchell, Rtewan, Stefan Zimmermann, Grantland Case, Peter Barton, Peter Hepp, Kore Rahl, Joel Stapleton, Lazai, Richard Schlak, Shard73, Blackpan2, Thomas Watret, Adamantine, William Adams, Matthew, Douglas Sokolowski, Edwin Courser, Sam Ellis, Andrew Eliason, Nick Stockfleth, DAvid Marksz, Fred Rankin, Georg Kranz, William Puryear, AR Schleicher, Angus Christopher, Collateral_ink, Roy Cales, JOHNNY SMILEY, Thomas Corbin, Spencer Ryan Crawford, Outwardwander, David Guilliams, Bern DG, Christopher Gross, Tony Fino, Ciellandros, ABritishGuy, PeeM, F0ZYWOLF, Dan Dragonwolf, Marvin Wells, Dominic Q Roddan, Tanner Lovelace, Daniel Diaz, yo dude, Aimee Hebert, James A. Murphy, Mark reilly, Erebus Drakul Zaydow, tawshif tamjid, Kor Vang, nathrielos, James (Burnthemage), Fallen, Klaas Weibring, Shadowteck michael berge, Whiskey, Arcaedian, SamuraiGaming Mike3000jr and Mercury044.
(*****)
Afterword.
Just a quick word before you close this book and start waiting for the next one to come out, which you should really read this book’s afterword for some information on that one. However, that is not what this one is about and I am doing a very limited run of signed books that you can order. All you need to do is head over to the link at the bottom of any page on my website (https://www.Bernsbooks.com) and place your order. This sale will only run 7/1/23 to 7/31/23 and it may be a long time before I ever do something like this again as I have no idea what to expect as far as demand.
With that said I am also starting to dabble in merchandise as a whole. To start this, I am in the process of getting chibi art for Xeal and his ladies made to go on mugs, shirts and anything else that makes sense. I have much more planned as the options are almost endless but I have to start somewhere. So, I hope that some of you will enjoy what is planned and grab a mug or something and yes, I will be expanding the collection as I see positive sales.
Alright thanks for reading this announcement now back to the regularly scheduled stuff at the back of the book. Though, once more there is no preview due to things just not working out due to time constraints, sorry.
To think that I actually reached 20 books published at a book a month straight. I have to say that it surprises me and I know that I will do it again, but it won’t be back-to-back like it was this time. Right now I am expecting that book 21 or 22 will end that streak, as I shift to publishing on a month and a half timeline for the remainder of Eternal Dominion. Which is slated to be 32 books at this point and will finish up in time for Christmas 2024. Just for reference, here is what I am expecting that to look like.
[book 22. (9/15/23), book 23. (11/1/23), book 24. (12/15/23), book 25. (2/1/24), book 26. (3/15/24), book 27. (5/1/24), book 28. (6/15/24), book 29. (8/1/24), book 30. (9/15/24), book 31. (11/1/24), book 32. (12/15/24)]
Adds four and a half months to the release schedule and it will allow me to make sure that I am tying up as many loose ends as possible as I write the final third of Eternal Dominion. Also, I will finally get the time that I need to get my next series ready for release at the same time as just speaking from the economics of everything, writing long series usually suffers from massive reader drop-off. It is just the truth of it and no matter what I do, I have to expect that to be the case and it is why I never just want to have one series going at a time. It is for that reason that you can all expect to see two series from me, hopefully in the next year. I already have the first draft of book 1 in one of them written and I will be writing book 1 in the other after I finish writing the first draft of book 24, while I have my proofreader looking for anything that needs to be addressed in books 25 to the end of Eternal Dominion.
On that note, if you have anything that you feel like I have forgotten or dropped, please don’t hesitate to reach out on Facebook, or the email that you can find by joining my mailing list. I really do want to make sure that I am not missing anything big or small that is important to give a resolution to. So, please, just like how a book can be gone over by 100 people, but an error will still slip through for you the reader to find, I know that some of you have ones that everyone on my team will miss. So, to those of you who have something that has been bugging you and you want to make sure I address it, let me know!
Now, going back to the other series that I am writing, one will be a coauthored project with my wife. Now, don’t worry, it will still be about 90% me. I am just working with her to do a bit of detail work and expand the world slightly. In truth, I don’t want to deal with pen names and by adding her to the process it will allow me to distinguish my harem and non-harem stories. As while books that she helps me with may still end up with a one man and two women situations, that is as far as she will allow it to go since she can’t stand harem. So, when you see anything by Bern and Cynthia Dean out there, you now know the general story, at least for now. However, adding her in also takes what is currently a three-month process and turns it into a six-month process if my current estimates turn out to be correct. As such, I only expect to be able to publish 3-4 books in that series each year, which isn’t acceptable to me. Thus, the other series that I will be writing and yes, it will be another harem that leaves out all the explicit parts. Though, it may have some darker moments and themes due to the setup that I am using for it, but that is all I will say on that for now. After all, if everything goes well, we are looking at book one of both of those being out by summer next year. That said, I would love to get one of them out early next year if possible, but with me upping the length of each book for both of those series, I can’t make any promises.
Oh, and yes, as I write this, I survived being without my wife for the whole 75 days she was gone, but the last 30 were absolutely terrible for my writing. It is why I am getting ready to spend all but two weeks of my summer writing like my life depends on it, and I will only be taking one week and a few random days off between now and the end of the year. Especially as we are expecting to move cross country and try to buy our first house when we do… Just hoping interest rates go down, or at least don’t get any worse than they are already. So, if you see me suddenly trying to get you all to buy a shirt or some other product in the next year, know that it is simply me shamelessly trying to increase how big of a down payment we have. Let’s just hope I don’t lose my soul in the process!
Now onto the repetitive stuff. Did you know I have a newsletter and that by signing up you can get a free prelude novella for Eternal Dominion? Heck, it is really easy too. Just go to my website below and scroll to the bottom, where you will just need to put in your email address. Or you can go to https://BookHip.com/BAMDFBA, put in your email the single time and confirm it in your inbox to get the prelude and sign up for my newsletter in one go.
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As always, if you feel I have forgotten something, feel free to reach out to me on Facebook through my page, or join my group. I am only one person and sending a message to my Facebook author page is the fastest way to get me to see it, as I don’t get alerts on my personal page when non-friends message me for the first time. That said, I will not answer personal questions, like where I live, even in a general fashion. Please keep it to my story, or my writing process.
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Bern Dean, Tribulations
