Waybound Blooper by Andrew Rowe!

Andrew Rowe wrote an extra blooper for Waybound!

He actually wrote this forever ago, because he's a beta reader for almost all my books, and we meant to post this closer to Waybound's release date but we both forgot. So why today? Well, by a crazy cosmic coincidence, he has a new book available today! What luck!

While this is a blooper and therefore it should be obvious, SPOILER WARNING for Waybound.

Click "Read More" (below) to read the blooper, and once again, a big sacred artist salute to Andrew Rowe and his new book!

-Will

P.S. Click just below this.

​The moon was dying.
With every strike, the Darksilver Queen left jagged wounds on the lunar surface, blackened craters that retained a fraction of her willpower-eroding power--
And those were just the collateral damage.
The princess bled from a hundred wounds, her ancient uniform so ragged and bloodstained that her blue and white had been replaced by purple and scarlet. She wobbled as she attempted to stand her ground, one of the lovingly-braided buns in her hair severed, her cracked tiara askew.
She was losing. She knew that. The ruins around her, the bodies of her fallen friends — they were testaments to her eternal inadequacy. But she wouldn’t cry. She wasn’t that pitiful girl anymore, not the child that had been given a power and naval uniform from a time and place far different from her own.
She raised her scepter, feeling the regal madra flowing around her.
I can’t stop her attacks. Not in this condition. Maybe…maybe I don’t have to stop them, though.
The next burst of obliterating power flashed toward her, and this time, she didn’t defend--
She smashed her scepter, her madra, her soulfire, and her will into the strike, and commanded: “Return!”
And if I can’t stop them…maybe she can’t, either!
The attack rebounded, royal madra and Sage authority,  carrying the assault back toward the queen that had taken so much from her--
And splashed harmlessly against the Queen’s outstretched hand.
“Pitiful.” The Darksilver raised a hand to her chin and let out a laugh long-engrained in the princess’ mind as iconic for villainous nobility. “Is that the best that you can offer? Allow me to show you, foolish child, what a Monarch is capable of.”
The world around them darkened as blackened vines rose from the ground, grasping at the princesses legs. She struggled, her Enforcer technique burning with the last guttering flames of her soulfire, but her resistance was nothing to the might of a Monarch.
The Darksilver Queen raised a single hand above her head, conjuring a lance of blackened silver. The princess knew that attack all too well. Flashes of memory showed her the bodies of so many of her friends impaled on similar spikes, their defenses useless. Even her mother, once Monarch of these lands…
The princess didn’t have the power to stop it. Not on her own. Her core was nearly drained, even with the augmentations of her suit and circlet, and her scepter was nearly shattered.
I have to use it. The crystal. It’s the only way. I--
From the skies, a single red rose descended, landing between the two fighters…and she knew help had arrived.
But too late.
The princess heart would have sang at the sight of him once, his pristine three-piece suit (which was not, she had learned, actually a “tuxedo”), cane, and hat seemingly torn from the stories of a world far distant from their own. In those times, she had come to believe that he could rescue her from any harm, that his love would preserve her — but those were the days before she had learned the differences in scale between a Monarch and a Herald or Sage.
Now, she knew the truth. Even with their strengths combined, there was no chance of victory, only…
“I see the doubt in your eyes, but you must believe in yourself. You are the princess of this kingdom, and you will protect it from any threat, even—”
The world went white as a column of power tore through space, wider than her palace had been before its destruction--
And soundlessly obliterated the Darksilver Queen in a single instant.
The beam continued to tear through the landscape, perhaps pursuing the Monarch as her fleeting essence began to escape to her own crystal, until at last, the beam left, leaving a miles-wide gouge in the moon’s surface--
And nothing but moon dust remaining of the Darksilver Queen.
The black-and-white clad man looked at the princess, his shock fading rapidly into his more traditional stoic demeanor.
“My job here is done.”
He pulled his cloak around him, then vanished into the night.
“But you didn’t do anything!”
The princess stared after the departing man, gaping in incredulity — not just at his immediate departure, but at the series of events that had just occurred.
What in the world had happened?
And who, in the name of love and justice, had just saved the moon?