The Brutus arc definitely turned out to be longer than I had planned, but I learned a lot while making it. Not only did I get better at using Ren'Py, but I got a much clearer idea of what I wanted to do with the game as a whole.
The next update will wrap up the Brutus arc (for real this time,) and then I'll be going back to the main story.
Like I've mentioned on the discord, the next big task is to rework act 1 entirely. The story is going to be mostly the same, but certain characters are getting changed to be a better fit. (Za'Hra, Cyrus and Erika most notably.)
And like I've mentioned before, buried somewhere in the pages on this thread, I won't be diverging from the main story like this again, until after I finish it. But trust me when I say that the Brutus arc was immensely important for this project, arguably for the characters, but mostly for what I learned during the process of making it.