Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 750 words.  The detested scene finished.  Fiery Younger Sister's work is done...decisively.  This can't possibly be anything other than a victory for my protagonists, eh?  I do now suspect that, seeing how this has played out, the problem in the next chapter to which Kate is the answer isn't going to be quite as simple as I'd envisioned.  FYS can spark all the fire any rag-tag army could possibly need.  All the wildfire.  But that still isn't the same as heart.

Lob Lazy at the House of Silence: 240 words.  I got my viewpoint character out of the pub, with only moderate struggle, and sent him on his way to collect his next plot token.  I even remembered what it was.  One of the others, with a certain thematic appropriateness, I have both forgotten, and neglected to write down.

Dreamer's Log: Lankhmar.  Just don't go there.  Don't.  I don't care how good a deal they're doing on EasyJet!

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 690 words.  Bringing Fiery Younger Sister's gruelling scene to boiling point.  FYS is reminding me of one of those cartoon characters who produce massive offensive weapons out of thin air at the drop of a hat.  She can't do that physically, but she can pull out of thin air a way to use anything offensively, because she really Just Does Not Care.

There's a limit to how much of that scene I can stand at once, so I skipped ahead for the rest of my wordage to put in the description of Secondary Villain's stronghold: Castle Carrowglaze, the Green Rock of the Blue Boar.  It's kind of a dump, but the setting ought to be worth something to a discerning buyer.

The Popinjay: 340 words.  Bright Young Thing is a very bad person.  A very good bad person.  This is probably why the family's sparkling cynic is also the only one of them who takes her religion seriously instead of piously and conventionally.  Not that the priests could appreciate that - or that Beauty does now.  Because Bright Young Thing is being a very bad person.

Lob Lazy at the House of Silence - 180 words, skipping ahead to the passage of chorus-like fairy-tale linkage between Second and Third Sons' Quests.  More fun with King Dead and Queen Rotten.  And I think this has given me the glory-and-trumpets linkage to follow Third Son's eventual... achievement.  Kateverse history does crop up in strange guises!

Part of the present productivity boom seems to depend on always having something to write opportunistically when the main line is too difficult or too harrowing to speed.  This hasn't worked before, and I'm thinking it has to do with the obvious failure mode: writing everything up to the difficult bit, until all yarns are tangled at once and choke off together.  But slow slogging progress on what's bogged down, with relief writing to keep the flow free elsewhere, may prosper better.  Slog the key, and play the oil for the lock?