Sunder 5.7 (Patreon)

The original idea had this thing so much bigger than this. Like a lot of things this week, however, things didn't quite go according to plan, so I decided that rather than cram everything into one chapter, I'd split it into two. 

So, this is the first half of what was originally going to be 5.7. 5.8 will pick up where it leaves off, 5.b will finish out the arc, and then we'll move on to arc 6: Tyranny.

As a result, what you get today is about 3.8k words, rather than 7k or 8k. Unless it balloons into something much larger, next week's chapter should be about the same size.

Anyway. Next chapter gets to start off with the awkward dinner. That's gonna be a pain to write, but probably also a lot of fun.