Hello, dear friend. It's Laura, author of The Fralsningdor Chronicles.

Join me for a cup of tea at my writing nook in Wyoming!

📝 Writing updates: the fate of Fralsningdor

I fear I've left my beloved readers of The Fralsningdor Chronicles with a mild case of "battered reader's syndrome" after my last email, for which I am so very sorry.

Amidst your delightful enthusiasm for Of Signs & Flutters, there were several very concerned (and very valid) questions about The Fralsningdor Chronicles, Book III.

Namely:

• Is it ever coming?
• Girl, you do know "trilogy" means three books, right?
• Does my suffering fuel you?

Time to put those fears to rest:

The Fralsningdor Chronicles, Book III is ABSOLUTELY still coming!

I don't have a good excuse for not keeping you better updated. I guess I just didn't realize so many people were that invested in the goblins of Korreth. Which is, frankly, pretty unfair to you. I should know by now that my readers are nothing if not loyal — strangely, inexplicably, stunningly loyal. 🥹

So why the delay?

The reasons I took a break between Book II and Book III to work on other stories are twofold:

1. I knew switching to dictation (speaking the first draft of a book instead of typing it) would involve a steep learning curve, and the final 400 page installment of a high fantasy trilogy was not the place to rewire my brain.
2. The conclusion to this series is so epic that I needed to improve my craft before I could do it justice. The writer I was when I wrote Chosen of the Tapestry never could have written Lost King of the Pattern. And the writer I was at the end of Lost King of the Pattern still needed to grow before I was fit to weave the finale.

But, as a token of good faith, today I'm doing something that I hadn't planned on doing until next Spring!
​
​drumroll please

The title of the final book in the trilogy is...

Kingdom of the Weaver​
​The Fralsningdor Chronicles
​— Book III —

The final battle for their
kingdom is here, but none
of this will mean anything if
they can't also save the small.

My top priorities are my marriage, my kids' homeschooling, and being involved in my local church — but I hope you know that finishing this series is 100% also on the list. I just needed to grow a little as a storyteller first. 😊💙

Previously on A Hoard of Tales...

Samuel steals a motorcycle from the VPD and races into Sovra’an to help Charles. They're met with an ambush of mobsters, and Charles suffers a shot of cursed elemental magic. Samuel pulls of a daring escape, not knowing whether Charles would live or die.

​Missed an episode? Catch up here.​

Episode Sixteen

The door handle rattled and clicked as someone braved the hostile environment of Charles’ hospital room.

It’d been four full weeks since he’d gone through the Tarraven, the first three of which he’d spent unconscious.

He’d wanted to leave the moment he woke up, but recovering from a shot of cursed elemental magic was no small task. Not to mention fourteen straight hours of Rot exposure. He’d only just been taken off oxygen this morning — though based on fragments of gossip wafting through the Recuperatory like a bad smell, that could have just as much to do with limited resources as as it did recovery.

To make matters worse, FREB Rot-prevention protocols were in full force. Without proper discharge paperwork, he could easily be suspended from work for “reckless endangerment,” and there would be no chance of using VPD resources again if that happened. Greyson had a heart, but her first love would always be the department itself. And if the past week of sleeping and studying in frantic bursts had shown him anything, it was that next time he crossed into Sovra’an, he needed to be far more prepared.

Without looking up from his tablet, where he was researching snippets of Amelia’s riddle, Charles grabbed an apple from his untouched lunch tray and aimed it at the door.

“Out,” he commanded, his voice still rough from Rot poisoning and disuse.

The figure leaned against the wall and folded its arms. “Your devilry won’t work on me,” said Samuel. “I’m no doctor. I barely made it through academy.”

Great. The only person he wanted to see less than the kings’ cursed doctors.

Charles closed his eyes for a heartbeat, breathing deeply and schooling his emotions — gratitude, anger, affection, annoyance, betrayal.

Was he glad his partner had saved his life? Yeah, no kidding.

Thrilled about Samuel charging into the middle of a fire fight and dragging Charles out of Sovra’an before he could rescue his wife? Not even a bit.

Charles knew it was irrational. Thanks to his friend, he’d lived to try again another day.

He didn’t care.

“I’m busy, Smirk. Go away.” He chucked the apple at Samuel’s head and Samuel caught it out of the air before taking a bite.

“You’re being an idiot,” he said after swallowing.

“Noted. So leave me to be stupid on my own.”

“Never.” Samuel’s voice with icy with anger now, and Charles finally looked up.

“What’s your problem?”

“You nearly got yourself killed, Chuck. And you didn’t even tell me where you were going so I could help.”

“Didn’t seem to stop you.”

“Yeah, and I had to find out from Greyson! I’ve been given a letter of reprimand for stealing the bike…”

“Sorry,” Charles interrupted.

“Gah!” Samuel threw the apple in a trashcan and stalked forward to grip the railing at the foot of Charles’ bed with trembling hands. “That’s not the point! You should have let me come. Should have trusted me with this.”

The silence stretched out far beyond what was comfortable as Charles wrestled with his own anger. Finally he sighed and sagged against his pillows, directing his gaze to the ceiling.

“I do trust you, Smirk. More than anyone.”

“So why?”

He shrugged jerkily. “Because I can’t lose you too.”

“Yeah? Because that’s really freaking selfish, Chuck. We can’t lose you either. Me or Millie. And you nearly took yourself away from us because you couldn’t stop and think for one shift-snared second.”

Charles froze, then slowly turned his ice-cold gaze to Samuel.

That had been a low blow.

“How dare you bring Millie into this,” he hissed.

“How dare me? How dare you,” Samuel shot back. “Blood Bearer knows whats happening to her, Chuck, and she’s going to need you when she gets home. Because I swear on the Tarraven, man, I am not letting her die there. With or without you.”

He threw a bundle of dark cloth onto the bed and folded his arms.

“Get dressed,” he ordered. “I pulled some strings and got you discharged early. Let’s go home and make a Rotting plan.”

In spite of himself, Charles’ cheek twitched. “Pulled some strings, hua?”

Samuel’s eyes glinted darkly. “I annoyed people for three solid hours until someone gave in.”

Charles snorted and snatched the bundle that he now recognized as his own clothing. He rushed to the bathroom and changed as quickly as possible, returning to the room on bare feet, only to find Samuel holding his boots.

“You’re a legend, man,” admitted Charles. “A pain in the butt. But a legend.”

“Yeah.” Samuel cleared his throat gruffly. “Love you too.”

••••••••••

Samuel watched his friend out of the corner of his eye as he examined his kitchen table. It was covered with a large tourist map of Valehaven and Sovra’an. Framing the map was a littered mass of notes, photos, transcripts, and medical records. Each scrap of paper was taped to the wood below to keep it in place. The chairs were stacked with boxes of equipment — which left the counter top where Samuel was sitting as the only available horizontal surface in the kitchen.

He snapped his cheap restaurant chopsticks apart and opened a box of lukewarm takeout. Across the room, Charles stood with one fist propping up his other elbow, fidgeting with a pen and tapping it against his lips.

“All those unsolved missing persons cases have got to be ‘the lost’, right?” Samuel asked around a bite of fried rice, using his chopsticks to point at the paper that listed eighty-seven names in sterile black and white.

Eighty-seven lives. And every one of them waiting for someone to find them. Just like Amelia.

“Definitely. It’s all connected. But I can’t figure out…”

He leaned over the table abruptly, gripping the edge and looking closely at one of the security footage still-frame printouts.

“What’ve ya got, Chuckles?” Samuel dropped to the ground and walked over to the table.

“What if the note guy was one of the missing? You know — ‘One of the lost can still faintly recall.’”

Samuel’s stomach dropped.

They hadn’t checked the security footage from the library against the identities of any of the missing persons. Obviously they’d looked to see if he matched any known criminals, but…

“We didn’t consider he might be a victim too,” Samuel said softly.

Charles growled deep in his throat and slammed the table with one fist, causing papers to flutter slightly under their tape.

“Chuck?”

Charles sighed and straightened up, running one hand down his scruffy jaw.

“Millie did. She told me on the way to the station that night that he seemed like he needed help. Said he smelled like he’d been bathing in alcohol.” Charles shook his head. “I thought she was just feeling sensitive because — but I didn’t bother to check him against the missing persons cases. It never even occurred to me that one of them might show up at the library looking for Millie. Or… for me.”

Samuel nodded. “Right. So what if we…" He looked up and around, as if searching for something.

“What do you need?”

“Does Millie have any, like… yarn around here or something?”

Charles raised one wry eyebrow above his sad hazel eyes. “She’s not exactly crafty, Smirk. You know that.”

“Fine, a marker then.” He set down his food next to a transcript of Captain Greyson’s call to Northwatch from last month.

Charles went to the junk drawer and produced a red permanent marker. He handed it to Samuel. Samuel bent down over the map and consulted the list of missing persons and their last known locations, marking each one with a red circle.

He straightened up, brow furrowing.

“What exactly were you hoping that was going to do?” Charles skeptically examined the less-than impressive mess of data.

Samuel sighed. “I thought it was gonna do… something. But here on the map it’s just scattered. Millie was so targeted, but as far as I can tell, everyone else seems random.”

“No. No, it’s not,” said Charles softly. “Smirk, this layout matches the breakouts of chest colds in Valehaven almost exactly.”

Samuel’s brow furrowed. “The what?”

“That cold that’s got the hospital overrun. I’ve been seeing the map of outbreaks all week through my window. It’s posted at the nurses’ station across from the room I was in.”

“Well thank goodness for that cursed bullet, I guess, because they let me out the day I woke up from Rot poisoning.” Samuel smirked.

“Yeah rub it in, why don’t ya.”

Samuel grinned, utterly unrepentant.

“Smirk, what if…” Charles stopped, and raised his pen to his lips again, chewing on the clicky end.

“What?”

Charles grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “This is gonna shut down the whole kings’ cursed city if I’m right,” he mumbled.

“Chuck.”

“If the people who abducted the missing persons had just arrived from Sovra’an, they’d still be contagious, right?”

“Uh… no. They wouldn’t. Are you okay?”

The Tarraven didn’t let the Rot through; everyone knew that. You could bring back symptoms and damage, but none of the actual disease. Otherwise cross-realm travel would have been shut down a long time ago. Considering the risk, that was crazy enough. But those who’d come through from Sovra’an had always struggled to give up their old home, even though it was killing them.

Charles shook his head sharply and placed one finger in the middle of Lower Valehaven on the map — right in the epicenter of the red circles.

“Not the Tarraven,” he said shortly.

“Rotshard. You’re not saying…”

Charles nodded gravely. “It’s not a cold, man. Someone’s spilled a lot of blood and made an illegal backdoor portal. The Rot has come to Valehaven.”

Until next time! Yours from the trenches of OSAF edits,

💚 Laura

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