And that is a wrap on Volume 1! This is just going to be a bit of a ramble session to close things out.
First of all, thank you to everyone for reading this story. The more experience I get with writing, the more I find myself trying to improve every single chapter. While this story is currently shorter than my other two ongoing projects, I can honestly say I've put more time and effort into these chapters than anything I've written before.
Not gonna lie, I went over every chapter five or more times just to make sure it was the best it could be before posting. It's still imperfect, and I know I have plenty of room to grow, but I can at least say I did my best.
Also, I left a recap of all the changes I did to ch 26 at the end in case you are curious lol.
Finally I want to give a special shoutout to @Basilisk , the goat himself. Bro spent a lot of time helping out managing my way through this story. And we also spent a lot of time theorizing and planning for this volume and things to come after. Go check out his Story "I am a Daemon, so what?" It is incredibly well written.
Also, another shoutout to @Tertius711 and @Harman for also assisting me with beta reading and just general planning / talking over the events that would happen.
— –Themes!– —
Now, onto the themes.
I've mentioned it before, but the core theme of this volume was "Prisoners of Destiny/Fate." I wanted every main character to face an arc where they were taken against their will or imprisoned by circumstance. Alex and Illyana had Limbo. Tandy had the kidnappers and the D-Lite experiments. Ciri had the Wild Hunt. Even Tony Stark had the Ten Rings.
In the end, every main(and major side) character was kinda doomed to have a bad time. But hey, they all made it out and back home in the end.
But well, rather than go into that, since I've already talked about it before, lemme get onto some of the more minor themes/motifs!
Obviously, Alex's theme was Glass. His powers manifest as shattering glass, but it fits his character too. When he first arrived in the Marvel world, he was pretty fragile, even a bit pathetic, which he acknowledged himself. But as we've seen... break some glass, and you get one hell of a sharp weapon. Plus, along with the broken glass you get a bunch of reflections, which works with the countless versions of himself Alex has in his head. Versions he will slowly learn to reach out and work together with.
But hey, going onto more subtle themes/motifs.
I tried to implement the moon and the night in some way every time Alex had a major character moment. If you ever go back for a reread, take a look, almost every significant shift for Alex happens under the moonlight or at night. To name a few off the top of my head: his first talk with Ciri by the campfire, the meeting with O'Dimm, the Wild Hunt ambush, the conversation with Ciri before they finally got together, his heart-to-heart with Illyana, and their final return home.
Honestly I have a good explanation for it, but I never got around to implementing said explanation into the story naturally. Lemme know if you have a guess lol.
Now onto Illyana, the mark that Ororo left on her was rain and clouds. It's really only shown near the end, but after Ororo dies there's a lot of mentions of rain and overcast skies whenever she is around lol.
As for Ciri, her whole thing was accepting that stuff happens, and that you have to learn to live and roll with the punches. She mentions it a lot but, "That's life." She also had snow as a theme after the Wild Hunt because of the White Frost. I think every single time Ciri appears after they kill the Hunt, there's snow on the ground or falling around them.
Then there's Tandy, which, to keep it short, her whole thing was abandonment lol. She was just doomed to be left behind one more time.
And well, since we are here, Belasco's whole thing was chains and control. I could have used a ton of stuff for his magic, but pretty much every single spell he uses ends up being chains or some sort of restrainment. Even the fire spell to suck up the oxygen when fighting Illyana, that was just to drop her to her knees so he could put the collar on her.
— —Future Stuff– —
There's a good amount of stuff I wanted to set up, but I'll keep it short.
For one, O'Dimm. He left Alex an hourglass, an hourglass that is still not empty. Even if Alex doesn't happen to return to the world of the Witcher, who knows if they'll cross paths again in the future?
Then there is the X-Men. I wanted to set up a lot of things with the X-Men, and just mutants in general. Which is why I had Xavier's pov pop up from time to time. For one, Nightcrawler bringing in his "friend" over, since his adoptive sister and mother have a lot of connections to magic and even Limbo in the comics.
And well, there was also a cliff hanger that one chap about Xavier calling over someone for help. We never got back to it, but that person would have been Emma Frost. To be honest, there is a lot I want to do with her and the Hellfire Club in the future.
She's definitely going to be a great influence on Alex if they ever cross paths lol. Or perhaps it'll be the other way round?
There's also Alex's exploration into building more technology and actually starting to create bigger things of his own. I'm really hyped to see him begin dabbling into technomagic, kinda referenced in ch 24, but the Aether Core itself is already a form of technomagic. Similar to how Sorcerers take energy from different realms. Alex did say it himself when talking to Tony. "It's taking energy from somewhere."
Also, I think the next theme for Volume 2 is going to be "Trying to control/change fate." So instead of being held hostage by his fate, Alex will try to get his grubby hands into things that don't belong to him. So we can see the consequences and domino effect his actions will have on the world around him lol.
For one it would be Cloak and Mister Negative. At this moment, Alex inadvertently ended up causing Tyrone and Martin Li to partner up. And well, not to spoil anything, but Alex is gonna end up messing with stuff over at Oscorp. So who knows what sorta mess he'll kickstart by trying to change people's destinies.
— –Final chap Author's Note– —
I will say, man, that last chapter was hard to write. I have a lot of different versions for how things ended up happening. Originally I was going to have a reunion scene between Illyana and Alex, but then it would have felt repeated once Tandy came back up. So I swapped that up.
Then I was gonna have Alex's pov start with them in Ororo's garden trying to heal it. But no, that ended up not being quite as good. I also had a version where Illyana and Alex are kinda catching up along the castle, but that also ended up being a bit weird.
To be honest, it was a hard line to tiptoe, since Illyana really looks up to/admires/loves Alex. And she even has the Knight in Shining armor thing going for him. But Alex sees her more as a younger sister/still a little girl at the moment. He wants to be more of an older brother/mentor to her, but well… that's bound to change in the future.
I hope I did capture that dynamic in the conversation they ended up having. They are close, but not romantic at the moment. And Illyana is mature, but she still has a bit of that inner child inside of her when she's around Alex.
Sure, I eventually want them to get together, but that's in the future. Illyana already married the guy, so he's kinda stuck lol.
Then there was Kate and Limbo lol. Tbh originally she was going to go back home with Illyana, but it felt wrong to leave Limbo alone. Especially given the time dilation. So in the end, she stayed back, keeping an eye over everything.
And finally, Tandy. Man, Tandy.
That final interaction went through a lot of changes. She was sleeping in the couch at first, then she was awake, then she was going to walk into his house as he was exploring what was happening. Hell, I had even written a Tandy Pov of her finally getting to Alex's home. But that felt like a bit much.
Also the kiss, for one, sometimes she never went for it, another time Alex got kissed before he could react, but for the most part, Alex rejecting the kiss felt right. He simply doesn't feel that way for Tandy at the moment. Ciri stole his heart, at least for the time being.
I kinda also did a lot of messing around with him at the end grabbing his medallion. But I decided to just keep it simple. Something to show that he still cares and loves Ciri, even if they are apart, and might not see each other for a long long time.
Hopefully it was a satisfying ending.
Alright, that's pretty much it from me. Thanks for reading.