I don’t know exactly why I started chapter twenty-eight the way I did. I mean, yeah, there were things that needed to be wrapped up, I guess. I felt like some kind of celebration would be appropriate and that Humphrey might go talk to Runt.

Having him go back to Viggo’s old tent is something else that I’m not sure why I did, but it still felt necessary. After Viggo’s redemption, it didn’t feel right for Humphrey to just be fine about it. He would need some time to reflect on it all. As far as the sword goes, I just thought it would be kinda cool if they used it and Viggo’s memory as something to look back on and learn from.

My reason for having Humphrey leave the Western Pack came from how much I loved the trio that he, Viper and Leyla were in “The Lost Tale”. When I wrote that, I intentionally tried to give him the happiest life I could before he had to go back and deal with Viggo and I wanted him to have that perfectly happy life again after everything that happened.

Plus, I could support that decision with the idea that after everything they went through, the valley doesn’t feel the same to Humphrey. Everything reminds him of all the bad that happened.

My decision to have Kate go with simply stemmed from the fact that they’re almost like a power couple. Kate and Humphrey. You can’t have one without the other. And after everything I put them through, I wanted them both to have a happy ending together.

I didn’t have a whole lot planned out for chapter twenty-nine, so unfortunately, I had to kinda rush through it. However, I still did my best to make it clear they all had as fun a day as possible.

Luckily, I had established these characters’ relationships with each other, so while you don’t get to hear about the stories and the friendly banter, you have a good sense of what it was like because you know from the rest of the story how they are with each other.

I originally had an epilogue that was supposed to wrap everything up. I intended for the epilogue to subtly be the wolves of the Western Pack telling Humphrey’s story around the logboard, which is why I had put quotation marks at the beginning and end of the epilogue. But then I got an even better idea for the ending of the story, but it meant getting rid of the epilogue entirely. But I liked my new idea so much that I went with it.

I put what parts of the epilogue I could into the final chapter to wrap up the stuff I wanted to, and I added a short intro paragraph to the beginning of A Hero’s Past so I could still keep that idea of having the wolves of the Western Pack telling part of the story, just instead of ending it, they’re starting it, which felt much more appropriate.

The idea that I had which replaced the epilogue was to make one last callback to the original movie and it was the perfect relevance and appropriateness of the callback that made me use it. It’s the short exchange of dialogue between Kate and Humphrey right at the very end, but I’ll put that with the references.