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flawseer · 4 hours

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In your last ask, you mentioned misgivings with Book 10's ending, and especially how it pertains to Winter. I absolutely agree, and I know why, but I wanna hear your thoughts on it, too: What's up with Book 10?

The following is a (very long) examination of my personal feelings with regards to the WoF second story arc finale. While it is based on what is in the text, this analysis will be interpretive and fill in blanks with my own thoughts. Keep that in mind.

Hahhhh... okay. Since mentioning it in my last post I’ve gotten several requests to talk about my feelings regarding the second arc finale. There’s probably no way around it then.

If you haven’t read that last post (it was admittedly very long, and so will this one be), I talked briefly about why I didn’t like that part of the story. I have to warn you now, this will likely be the most negative and dour post in the history of this blog. In a few parts it will sound like I hate Wings of Fire, and I want to say now, while I still have the chance, that I don’t. I love this series, thinking about its setting and characters brings me joy.

I also—very emphatically—want to make it clear that I have no ill will against Tui T. Sutherland. I’ve looked around other people’s stuff a bit and there are a huge number of posts wishing violence upon her or threatening her for doing things to her series that people don’t agree with. That is NOT what I am doing here, shit like that is NOT okay! While I will be critical of her choices, I still respect her effort of bringing this vibrant, wonderful world of dragons to all of us.

Also, obligatory last disclaimer: If you liked the finale, that is okay. You are valid for feeling that way. I’m here to share my point of view, not to demand people agree with everything I say. Just be warned that you most likely won’t enjoy what I have to say. If you don’t think you can handle that kind of criticism, this is your guilt-free opportunity to stop reading.

Otherwise, let's get into it.

CW: Discussion of parental abuse, depression, disease, and extreme acts of violence.

In defense of the finale

Before I start to systematically disassemble this narrative and get lost in a quagmire of negativity, let’s talk a bit about the circumstances that brought forth this part of the story. The plot of this arc was a mess from the moment animus magic was unshackled from the restrictions it had in the first arc, and from then on there was no longer any conceivable way to end this story in a clean way. Sutherland had created an invincible, unbeatable, omnipotent villain; he could read minds, see the future with perfect clarity, and anything he could imagine he could conjure into existence at any time with no cost to himself and no drawbacks. She was likely wracking her brain about how to resolve this impossible conundrum. What we got wasn’t good, but I believe nothing could have been. The foundation was rotting and by the fifth book it couldn’t bear the weight of the plot anymore.

The thing about animus magic in arc 2 is that it is so potent, so all-powerful, and so free of restraint that everyone who uses it also HAS to be a simpleton, or they would be able to break the plot immediately and become god. From the moment Darkstalker broke out of that mountain, he could have said “Any and all spells that are cast with the intention to harm me, interfere with my plans, or do something I don’t consent to will not work, from now on until forever”, and he would have instantly won. The strawberry would have fizzled out. The Darkstalker-blocking earrings would not have been created, and no one could have saved the Icewings. On the flipside, Turtle or Anemone could have said “I enchant the concept of animus magic itself to no longer obey Darkstalker”, and his threat would have been neutered. Point is, powers as potent and easy to use as this really need limitations, or they will quickly eat your plot alive.

I don’t envy the situation Sutherland was in at the time at all. If you’re an author, that kind of thing is a nightmare. It really is no wonder she decided to blow up animus magic for good in her next arc, even if I would have preferred it to get more healthy restrictions instead of killing it outright.

The Darkstalker age regression thing

Everyone has talked this part to death already, but if I am to write a thorough analysis of my feelings regarding this finale, I’m going to have to talk about it as well. I’m sorry if I end up repeating a lot of things you’ve already heard.

This final fate of Darkstalker, to have his memories wiped and be reset to an infant, is really uncomfortable. As far as I am aware, though correct me if I’m wrong, Sutherland said in an interview that she didn’t want Darkstalker to die because, in her view, he did not deserve to. We can debate here about the philosophical question of whether anyone is truly deserving of death, and the merits of “justice” and “punishment”, but in general, Wings of Fire did not seem to have any issues killing off its villains prior if they committed suitably terrible acts. That makes this moment stand out as noteworthy.

Who is Darkstalker then--and if we assume villains can be “deserving” and “not deserving” of death--what about him speaks in his favor, or against? The guy had a pretty crappy childhood, coming from a broken home (there is that inadequate parent theme again). He genuinely loved his sister and felt protective of her, and whenever he liked someone he wanted them to be happy and feel affirmed. The thing that Queen Diamond does to his mother is awful and he is justified in hating her for it. He is also portrayed as rather sympathetic in Moon Rising. When he asks Moon to find his scroll for him and not to leave him, he is not manipulating her, he is sincerely begging for her help. He is stuck somewhere underground, trapped in darkness, in a space so tiny that he can’t move. He remains that way for months, lonely and sad. If you just focus on these aspects, it’s easy to understand why he has so many fans who want him to see healthy and happy.

On the flipside, while he is dedicated to the happiness of his friends, he doesn’t always go for the most ethical way to achieve it. He tries to brainwash said friends without their consent whenever they exhibit behaviors he doesn’t like, or when he thinks he knows better and wants to “fix” them. He has very little regard for other people’s autonomy, lies to his loved ones with alarming frequency, and is unhealthily attached to the idea of power. Those things are certainly not good, but they are his character flaws. These are his demons; everyone has them and they make him a person. If this was all there was to it, he might still be a villain, but I’d argue he’d not be wholly irredeemable.

But there are things about him that take him beyond the pale. Things that go beyond the realm of just being misunderstood, or easily excusable.

He is possessive. He wants Clearsight and Fathom for himself, and for them to listen to him primarily. When Indigo makes it clear she doesn’t like him and cautions Fathom against trusting him, he deceives his friends and traps Indigo in a wood carving, just so he can isolate Fathom from his support network and manipulate him easier. He alters Clearsight’s mind to make her more agreeable and stop her from holding him accountable for his actions; while he thinks he loves her, he only loves an idealized version of her that is wholly devoted to and unquestioning of him. This is why, when he later forcibly overwrites Fierceteeth’s existence to recreate her (which is another horrific thing), he tries to excise the parts he finds undesirable to create a perfect version of his lover. But this caricature he has created in his head is not and can never be Clearsight, which frustrates his attempts.

He is vengeful. Not against people who have actually wronged him, like Queen Diamond. That would be questionable, but understandable. What makes this unacceptable is his frequent targeting of innocent people who just happen to be related to the person who wronged him in some esoteric way. He enchants a secret murder knife that kills random Icewings regardless of who they are or what they think about the Queen, just because the one who took his mother from him happened to share their tribe. He hates Turtle and wishes death upon him in Moon Rising just because he is a green Seawing, like Fathom was. And then there is the big one: He tries to kill all the Icewings who are alive in the present day, where Queen Diamond is long dead and none of them have ever even met her. Even his mother, who suffered from Diamond’s actions the most and has the most reason to hate her, is horrified and calls him out on that one.

And lastly, he is sadistic. He revels in torturing those he hates. He forces his father to disembowel himself, while the latter is fully aware and powerless to resist AND the man’s traumatized daughter is watching. Later he sends a magical plague to kill every single living Icewing sans one.

It should be noted that Darkstalker possesses virtually infinite magical power; whatever he declares, with very few exceptions, will happen. Even if he wanted them dead, he had the power to prevent unnecessary suffering. He could have said “Arctic, fall dead instantaneously”, or “Every Icewing will fall asleep and pass away peacefully,” but he didn’t. He wanted them to feel pain and pass away in the most wretched, agonizing ways he could imagine.

So what he chose to do instead is—and I want you to picture this for a moment—Darkstalker sat down, calmly, and said “Henceforth every living Icewing, excepting Prince Winter and those of hybrid blood, will fall ill with an incurable disease. This disease will cause heavy internal bleeding and make its victims cough up blood and waste away for a few days, followed by certain death.”

This spell does not discriminate with regards to who its victims are. The book glosses over the implications, but imagine the ramifications. Young children are notoriously frail, how many newborns got infected and died because of this? How many families were torn apart because they couldn’t get the magic earrings fast enough? Or accidentally got one earring less than there were family members and had to decide who has to die?

Most of the Icewings were physically cured by the earrings, but an experience like that sticks with you for the rest of your life. Somewhere surely, a dragonet watched as his mother put the earring on him and then slowly wasted away because she didn’t have one for herself.

It’s really easy to overlook how horrific this spell is because it isn’t shown or dwelt on. But the trauma, grief, and suffering it caused must have been immeasurable.

And none of those victims have ever even met the person Darkstalker wanted to get revenge on. None of those deaths meant anything to anyone.

The attempted death toll and scale of the calamity here puts even Scarlet to shame. The ones who come closest to it were Queen Battlewinner and Morrowseer with their attempted Rainwing extermination. All three of those died for what they did. Gives you some food for thought for sure.

Peacemaker’s burden

Despite just airing all of his dirty laundry and declaring him an irredeemable villain, I actually do have a lot of sympathy for Darkstalker still. His story is really sad. He was a child born with an amount of power that nobody should possess, and it corrupted him to the point where it destroyed his life before it began. His parents were always fighting and no matter how good his intentions were, he was unable to understand why he couldn’t hold on to his friends and relationship. He kept making mistakes, then made bigger mistakes to fix those, until his hands were covered in blood and he couldn’t stop anymore. My belief is that, after he wakes up in the present and realizes Clearsight is dead, he loses his reason for living and becomes completely lost in his grief.

Therefore, my opinion is that it would have been appropriate for him to die. If not to punish him, then to finally grant him reprieve from all that rage and pain, and let him rest. I think that would have been a dignified end.

But instead he got turned into a baby. ... And then they decided to magically erase his father’s blood from him? I don’t know what it is, but something about that Icewing erasure makes my skin crawl?

The thing that turns this baby twist from weird into highly unsettling is the context. Darkstalker’s mind is erased, then modified into a new person via animus magic. This is the technique a lot of this arc’s villains used to victimize Hailstorm, Queen Ruby, Peril, Kinkajou, Fierceteeth, and Winter. The same technique is now used again, by the heroes, which is a dangerous thing to have your protagonists do if you want them to remain morally upright.

It is also very reckless, because in almost all of these instances, animus mind alteration has been shown to be very unreliable. The spells seem to wear down over time and are susceptible to partial breaking upon encountering certain strong stimuli. Hailstorm—while trapped as Pyrite—seems to retain trace amounts of his former memories, which is why Pyrite is subconsciously drawn to Winter and clings to him all the time. Ruby is able to ignore half of her conditioning because her familial love for her son partially overpowers the magic. Qibli is just straight up able to reason his way out of it.

The thing to note here is that spells of this nature require a very meticulous approach; you can’t half-ass your reprogramming or the victim will just think their way past it. If you alter someone’s mind, the wording of the spell must be ironclad, lest you risk it wearing down over time and even break.

Luckily we have nothing to fear in that regard, because the spell that created Peacemaker was written by a Rainwing with a total of four days of literacy training. No one better mention the name Clearsight to the new baby Nightwing, or next month is going to be rather interesting.

But that’s just speculation on my part. Let’s assume that, somehow, this spell isn’t as unstable as all the others. Somehow Kinkajou threaded all the needles, and masterfully dodged every conceivable pitfall to pen the perfect incantation, despite having been illiterate just a few weeks prior. This one is built to last and Darkstalker is sealed away really thoroughly, for good.

That is still absolutely terrible and morally dubious, because now you have Peacemaker, who for all intents and purposes is a COMPLETELY innocent little kid, saddled with this huge burden of being the certifiable reincarnation of a genocidal ancient wizard. He’s gonna grow up thinking things like “Mommy gets real quiet whenever the topic of the Icewing tragedy is brought up,” and “Why does Auntie Moon look at me like that? One time she accidentally called me a weird name, who is Darkstalker?” “What is this ‘Clearsight’ name my mind-reading friends from the village found in Mommy’s mind?”

In a village that will be full of mind-readers soon, eventually the secret will come out, and Peacemaker is going to learn what was done to him. A huge, messy load of undeserved baggage was forced onto this completely separate, innocent entity. He will be devastated. Whether he then chooses to forgive them for this remains to be seen. To be honest, he would be well within his right not to, and turn resentful.

Poor kid.

Qibli’s callousness

I love Qibli, he is one of my favorite characters. This happens to be his book, and the fact that I fundamentally dislike half of it makes me rather sad. If anything, I hope this tells you that I’m not just hating on it for my personal amusement. I really wanted to like this. I tried to, and I couldn’t.

Qibli is really weird in this one, to be honest. He is suddenly made to be co-dependent on Moonwatcher, fawning over her every third paragraph, saying how much he loves her, how he is an incomplete and dysfunctional wreck without her, how it physically pains him to be apart from her, oh if only the stars would grant his wish and split the mountains apart so that he may fly to his princess, his muse, his goddess of ebony wit. It gets so old.

And it’s not Qibli. He never acted this clingy towards Moonwatcher. It’s more intense than even Winter gets about Moon, and Winter was actually depicted with a crush on her in book 6. Qibli was always just a supportive element, eager to befriend Moon but never desperate, like he is going to keel over if he is separated from his true love five minutes longer. These very frequent love declarations feel so forced coming out of him. It strikes me like it was just written in service of the love triangle. Maybe if we make him confess his love every four seconds readers will overlook the fact that they had no proper romantic build-up.

You might rightly accuse me of bias. I have previously admitted I am fond of Qibli/Winter as a romantic pairing, on the surface this seems like I am just not happy with my pet ship being blocked by Moonwatcher. But I assure you, I am actually pretty flexible and accommodating even towards pairings that contradict my preferences. I have no issues with Winter/Moonwatcher, for example, because the possibility was properly established and they have good romantic chemistry in Winter Turning. In theory, I would have no problem with Qibli/Moonwatcher either if it was ever set up as an interesting romantic dynamic. But to me, it seems like Qibli is written as a good, supportive friend to Moon for four books, only to pivot hard into “Moon moon moon moon moon moon swoon” at the last second, and it just reads to me as obnoxious.

I got distracted. This section is called “Qibli’s callousness”, and I haven’t even talked about the main part.

Qibli and Winter have excellent chemstry together, whether you read it as romantic or platonic—both of these interpretations have merit and are set up. They’re always the highlight of any scene they’re in. Throughout the story arc you get the impression that these two really get on each other’s nerves, but they bond and grow into really strong friends who bicker a lot but have each other’s backs when it counts.

Then there is a scene where Qibli casually tells Winter that he wouldn’t object if someone wanted to mind-control away some of Winter’s more objectionable traits.

This is genuinely a terrible thing to say to your friend. Like, it crosses a line and ceases to be harmless banter; you’re just telling them that there is something you hate about them so much that you wish they were someone else. Winter actually WAS mind-controlled earlier and felt (and proably still feels) guilty about having attacked Qibli in that state. And now Qibli says “Hey, I wouldn’t mind if someone did that to you again! Hue hue!”

It is awful, BUT I don’t necessarily object to Qibli saying this here. Qibli is in the middle of his character arc at this moment, so he is expected to be flawed. He is making a mistake by thoughtlessly telling Winter this horrid thing, and it seems like a believable continuation of his current character track. This is a reasonable development as long as the plot acknowledges that it’s a mistake.

Spoilers: The plot doesn’t acknowledge that it’s a mistake. Qibli never has a scene after where he reflects upon what he said and apologizes to Winter. When Darkstalker has Qibli trapped in his mountain jail and mind-wipes Qibli’s grandfather into a toddler (hey, wait a minute), Qibli gets visibly disturbed. Like, this is so off-putting to him that he gets queasy and Darkstalker hastily changes the spell. That could have been a great way to bring this back. Like in the epilogue, have Qibli track down Winter and tell him about disturbing baby grandpa theater and how he realized that wiping people’s minds is actually messed up and should have never said that to him.

But he doesn’t. He just lets Winter go, allowing him to believe he is broken and needs magical intervention to be tolerable. It leaves me to think that maybe he’s still okay with it, and fantasizing about rewriting his friend’s mind. Great.

Moonwatcher’s character death

You will find as this goes on that, I get the impression that the second half of this book takes all of the wonderful, endearing characters I have learned to love throughout the story and replaces them with really mean, or stupid, or otherwise inaccurate caricatures.

Moonwatcher’s relationship with Darkstalker gets plenty of setup and development in Moon Rising. You get the sense that these two could be great friends if their circumstances were a little different. It does a great job at making you think maybe Darkstalker is just misunderstood; maybe Moon should free him from his predicament.

Then at the end of Escaping Peril comes the emotional gut punch. Darkstalker actually IS a villain. He callously admits to Moonwatcher that he used his magic to make his own father gruesomely disembowel himself. Moonwatcher is horrified and disgusted that he would do that. There is no circumstance in which something like that would ever be okay. She ends the scene awash in tears because the person she thought was her friend is a murderer and a sadist. This is good, that is a natural reaction to what she was just told.

A few hours from there, in Talons of Power, Turtle finds Moon again and she is completely cool with Darkstalker walking free, despite crying her eyes out after feeling so betrayed earlier. That may seem strange, but this is still good because later, Darkstalker’s mind control plot is discovered. This scene was obviously written to set that up, Moon is mind-controlled into forgetting that Darkstalker could do something that morally reprehensible, and thus forgives him. This is also completely in line with his characterization in Legends: Darkstalker. It’s a kind of stunt he would pull to get Clearsight to shut up about him slipping into villainy.

In my earlier post I alluded to a moment where Moon is set to narrative auto-pilot and says something so rampantly off-kilter that it does irreversible, permanent damage to her character. It happens here, in the second half of book 10. Qibli gives Moon the Darkstalker protection earring, and Moon, somehow, says “I’m not being mind-controlled, Darkstalker really is my friend.”

I get what the plot tries to do here. It’s taking this concept of mind-control and adding a nuance, in an attempt to flesh out Darkstalker and give his character depth. He is ready to control everyone in the world, but for Moon, who is his best friend in this era, he wants her to remain herself. Perhaps this is his attempt at attonement for playing with Clearsight’s mind and driving her away from him. It is very touching in a way, viewed in isolation.

Unfortunately, it does not work with the full context of all the books. Because Moon is in auto-pilot mode right now, her main character trait is “Darkstalker=Friend,” so naturally she would speak in support of him. But this revelation has devastating retroactive consequences. The earlier scene that was written with Moon under mind-control is now altered into her having been in her right mind! She is completely okay with Darkstalker’s admittance to cold-blooded torture and evisceration, within hours of being so shocked by it that it made her cry and ready to denounce him. That is such a quick turnaround it’s giving me whiplash. And what’s more it turns Moon from a principled, upstanding girl into a sociopath who casually accepts gruesome torture and murder if it is committed by someone she likes.

Did Sutherland forget about the scene two books ago, where Darkstalker’s actions were so inconceivably horrid for Moon to learn of that she started crying? It baffles me that this made it into the final version. Her saying she was never mind-controlled makes Moon come off as so awful. This torture-excusing lunatic is not the same kind-hearted and insightful character I followed in all the other books.

Kinkajou’s character derailment

The world is a sad place when I have to question the way Kinjajou is written. Fortunately she is mostly fine, despite her having the biggest excuse to act out-of-character since she’s the victim of a mind-altering spell. Her only real moment of “what!?” comes at the end.

I already talked about her role in casting the spell that regresses Darkstalker into an infant. But I didn’t mention how her being the source of it is questionable in itself.

The clue is in the first paragraph of this section: She herself has experienced the effects of invasive mind-alteration. She was cursed by Anemone in the previous book to be in love with Turtle, and kind of half-struggles kind of not with it, it’s really strange. Turtle is appropriately horrified and acts like really awful things are happening, but then it’s mostly played lightly for some reason. My assumption is that Sutherland introduced this plot point, but then realized how uncomfortable this premise really is and tried to downplay it until the story got to a point where it could get done away with.

But I think the takeaway is still supposed to be that this was a horrid thing to do (which it absolutely is), and that Kinkajou will have to spend a lot of time trying to untangle her real emotions from the fake ones the spell created.

The point is: Kinkajou knows first-hand how awful it is to do something like that to another person. Ideally she should never even conceive of the idea to cast a spell like that, but if we’re really set on this Darkstalker baby thing and it has to happen, she should at least be a bit hesitant about it. And afterwards she should struggle with the guilt of having resorted to it. Not celebrate it and be proud, like it’s funny.

The assassination of Winter’s future

Now we come to the part I’ve alluded to previously; the part where all of these threads converge to utterly destroy one character and drive him to the brink of ruin. Let’s talk about Winter.

Prince Winter is the son of Tundra and Prince Narwhal, hatching in the same clutch as his sister Icicle. He spent his formative years being unfavorably compared to said sister—who easily took to traits that Icewing royalty considers desirable—whereas Winter struggled greatly to embody those same ideals. He was just a little too kind, too merciful, too gentle. As a result he often had to endure abuse from his parents, who made him feel like he was defective.

Because he was young and didn’t have any other frame of reference, he embraced this abusive narrative and began to drive himself with a vigor unreasonable for someone of his age. He scraped and cloyed for every bit of credit he could get, obsessing over advancing up the circle rankings in an attempt to “purge” the wrongness out of himself. To make his parents as proud of him as they were of Icicle.

This never worked. He was always seen as the runt, poised to embarrass the family name. Whatever he did, no matter how hard he strived, there was always something he could have done better.

The only real source of love and affirmation in his life was his older brother, Hailstorm. Where everyone else only saw what Winter wasn’t, Hailstorm embraced his brother despite of his “failings” and was openly affectionate with him. When Winter was with him, it was okay to not think about rankings all the time, and just be himself for a bit. I assume Hailstorm fulfilled a similar role for Icicle as well, which is why both of them love him dearly, and Icicle destroys her own life to bring him back.

Winter also has a fascination with scavengers, possibly because they are small and perceived as useless, like he himself is. He likely feels a kinship with them and observes them being craftier and more adept than everyone else sees them. This is therapeutic for him, to see that a thing can have merit even if no one wants to see it.

One day, he and Hailstorm sneak into Skywing territory so Winter can catch a scavenger as a pet. This excursion turns hostile when they are discovered by a roaming Skywing troop and faced with the prospect of capture, possibly execution. In a gambit to save Winter from this fate, Hailstorm mirrors the words of his parents, calling Winter pathetic and useless, so the Skywings will not think of him as a threat and show mercy. His act succeeds in convincing the Skywings, but it also convinces Winter, who does not understand Hailstorm only said these things to save his life. He returns home—believing his brother hated him all along—to face the wrath of his furious family for losing them “the desirable son”.

For all of his life, these themes have repeated themselves and haunted him. “I was born wrong and defective,” “I am unlovable,” “No one wants me.”

A few months after the war ends, Winter is one of the five Icewings enrolled in the newly founded Jade Mountain Academy. Shortly after departing, he unexpectedly returns home, having successfully rescued his older brother and bringing him back. He is made to believe that this erases his mistakes, his mother even pays him a backhanded compliment, an uncharacteristically “nice” gesture. He is promoted to the top of the rankings, finally his parents are proud of him.

But of course it is all a trick. The “adoration” afforded to him was all a ploy. Secretly, his parents abused power and tradition to arrange for Winter’s death. They force him into a lethal trial they intentionally rigged against him, all to finally erase that stain on their family’s honor.

Winter finally realizes the true nature of his parents’ opinion of him. Even when he succeeds, and does everything right, he is still defective, unlovable, and unwanted. He will never be anything else to his family. And so he leaves his homeland, pretending he is dead, resigned to live in hiding forever.

During this time, while at the brink of despair, Winter is able to draw strength from one source: His new friends from the academy. He vocalizes that, for all the abuse he suffered at the hands of his birth family, he fervently believes that THEY would never do anything like that to him. They chose to stuck with him, even when he was awful, and told him he was not hopeless. He was not a mistake; he could be deserving of love.

So naturally, he returns to them; they accept him readily, are willing to be his new surrogate family. When he almost burns to death at a later point, they fear and weep for him. When Qibli sets out to confront his own abusive family, Winter, despite being mind-controlled into a placid potato at the time, feels concerned enough for his friend’s safety to insist to come along (returning the favor of them accompanying him in his time of need in book 7). When Darkstalker’s mind control forces Winter to attack Qibli, he is shown ashamed and guilty of it once the control wears off again.

They bicker and struggle, and make mistakes, they break up but always come back together again. Time and time again the one thing that is always reinforced: When the cards are down, Winter loves his friends, and they love him. They would never intentionally hurt each other, or give up on each other.

I want you to keep in mind how wholesome, and loving, and mutually supportive this ramshackle band of misfits has been portrayed to this point... Because we’re moving on to the arc 2 finale, and it will do everything it can to corrupt all of it and consign Winter to a life of misery.

We arrive at aforementioned scene, where Moonwatcher receives her earring. Just a little bit prior, Winter had learned that Darkstalker unleashed a magical plague onto his people in an attempt to wipe them out. Now here is Moonwatcher, revealing that she is not under any spell, and has aligned herself with this guy willingly, speaking fondly of him as if he was a dear friend who never did any wrong. Winter takes this badly and accidentally breaks a vase; the narrative lingers on this moment and really tries to sell us on how unreasonable Winter’s reaction is, how he is overreacting, but let’s examine that interpretation for a moment.

Moonwatcher doesn’t yet know about the attempted Icewing genocide, but she DOES know about Darkstalker being okay with casting spells to inflict immeasurable torture upon those he hates. WE know that she knows this, so her stance here is already suspect. Yet she goes on to praise Darkstalker and refer to him as a friend. Look at this from Winter’s perspective. This “friend” of Moonwatcher just tried to kill his entire tribe, and he actually succeeded in killing his aunt, Queen Glacier, a person Winter greatly respects. Winter is currently unable to return to his homeland for fear of being branded a traitor. Even if he could return, he knows his obstinate and spiteful family would prevent him from attending the funeral, meaning he is not even afforded the basic dignity of saying farewell to his aunt. The aunt whom Darkstalker murdered by making her vomit her own blood until she withered away in her bed. And here is Moon, absolving the person who did this to Glacier from his appalling actions, despite knowing full well what Darkstalker is capable of and choosing to look away.

I don’t know about you, but I think I can forgive the grieving, emotionally overwhelmed boy for shattering a little pottery after hearing his trusted friend—who held his hand when he was dying—say that the guy who makes people disembowel themselves and wipes out entire countries may be misunderstood and not so bad. I think I would have a similar reaction. In fact, I would never want to talk to her ever again.

There is no way I can read this scene in which Moon doesn’t come off as either an absolute lunatic, or critically stupid and callous. In fact, based on her earlier behavior I half-expect her to get over the news of the attempted Icewing massacre in a couple hours, saying “Eh, it’s kinda bad, but you just have to do these kinds of things sometimes, you know? I’m sure he had his reasons.”

Then there is the part where Qibli makes his off-color comment about how Winter’s brain could really use a good wash. I already went into how it could have worked but didn’t. But with the timing here, we’ve already had Moon spit on their friendship, so as Winter’s other closest friend, it naturally follows that Qibli also craps on his feelings.

Consider the context: Winter comes from an abusive household where his parents forcibly tried to change him away from who he was to purge the “wrongness” from him. When they betray him and he narrowly escapes their attempt on his life, he re-affirms his belief in his friends, and the knowledge that they wouldn’t treat him like that gives him the strength he needs to keep going. But now, Qibli asserts that Winter DOES need to be altered, thereby AGREEING with Winter’s abusive parents, rendering Winter’s affirmation from book 7 erroneous. Qibli WOULD treat him like that if it made Winter less “intolerable”.

Neither Moonwatcher nor Qibli ever make an attempt to repair this rift. Winter is left betrayed and alone.

Stuff happens, and the forces of the Nightwings and Icewings come to blows over Jade Mountain. With his two closest friends having written him off and his support network eroded, Winter relapses into thinking he is worthless, seeks validation in unquestioning patriotism, and realigns himself with his abusive family by throwing himself into the battle. Nobody wants him to, in fact his parents still hate him for it, but whatever. His father dies and his mother blames him for it.

Meanwhile Turtle, Anemone, and Qibli are cooking up a solution to the battle problem. They have the idea to make everyone’s minds connect in a huge empathy wave for a few moments, which I think is a pretty interesting idea for what it’s worth. But then they teleport both armies back to their homes, and the spell sweeps Winter up with them, taking him out of the rest of the finale and bringing him to the Ice Kingdom. The characters say “whoops” but aren’t further concerned with the situation. It’s all a big laugh.

Let me remind you that Winter is currently considered not welcome on Icewing territory. His family, whom he was sent back with, is extremely abusive and vindictive. His friends know this. Said parents have previously arranged for him to be killed, and are still on record as wanting him dead. His friends KNOW this. And now he is alone with them and a gaggle of other royal Icewings who all are extremely pissed off at him for ruining their sacred trial site.

It is very possible that he is being torn apart and mauled by an enraged mob right now. He could be forced into captivity and flayed. Maybe the interim regent is sentencing him to death and getting the rope ready. There is a million different horrible things that could be happening to Winter right now, while he is trapped alone with people who hate him, things his friends would be reasonably able to anticipate. And nobody is doing anything to get him out of there, to suggest bringing him back, even though it would only take a single spoken sentence to do so! They aren’t even concerned!

Then the climax happens, strawberry thing and all, and we get the coup de grâce. After all is said and done, the group decides that Winter is untrustworthy, and that they must protect the secret of Darkstalker’s fate from him, because they fear if he knew he would kill Peacemaker.

Moon, who read Winter’s mind in book 6 and reached out to him about how the “ruthless Icewing warrior” persona in his head is a facade and how she sees he has a gentle and good heart... Moon, who in book 7 finds out about Winter’s secret deal to kill Glory and STILL trusts him, who calls out his bullshit to his face because she KNOWS how kind-hearted Winter is and that he would never resort to murder... Moon who, again, held his hand while he was dying... thinks that the dragon she has reminded of his compassionate nature time and time again would kill an innocent child.

This is disgusting. Moon believing that is so far off the mark with regards to anything this group has embodied or done for any of the last 4 books, that my only conclusion can be that these are different characters. Maybe the Nightwing library collapsed on top of original Moon, and when Darkstalker magiced her back to health she came back wrong or something. I don’t know.

So after all of this, Winter is left alone. He somehow escaped from the Ice Kingdom; luckily there is a timeskip so we can just gloss over the horrible situation he was put in by his friends. He thinks about Jade Mountain. He reflects on everything that happened, how his parents never really loved him... How they hated him so much they tried to kill him... How he despaired, but found solace in his friends who loved him for who he was.... How those friends then betrayed him too and magiced him away... How they didn’t care about what happened to him... And he decides he is done. He won’t bother going back. A few people, probably Sunny, reach out to tell him he is welcome back, but he says “it wouldn’t be fair to other Icewings if an exile took up a bed”. The decision isn’t hard to make, after all there is nothing left for him there. Everyone has written him off, moved on and left him behind.

Kinkajou visits sometimes, tries to stay in touch, but that’s just how she is. Maybe the others sent her to check on whether he’s going to become troublesome. They don’t trust him. Better to keep an eye on him, he might kill the baby.

With nowhere else to go, Winter moves to Sanctuary, a place for rejects like him. I picture him standing there, at the edge of a cliff staring blankly into the distance. He is completely alone; no one wants to go near him or talk to him beyond the bare necessities. He could probably make new friends with the Talons of Peace if he tried, but there is no point. Why should someone like him have friends? It wouldn’t work. They’d just decide he is too inconvenient to be around. Sooner or later they would just tell him to leave anyway. It's better not to try, so he doesn't get hurt again.

And slowly it dawns on him. His parents had been right all along. It was never them, or the others, it was him. He is the problem. The Icewings said it, Qibli said it, Moonwatcher said it. There is just something fundamentally wrong with him.

He is defective. He is unlovable. Nobody wants him. He will never be anything, or have anyone. And so he stands at the cliff, looking over the broken vase fragments of his life... This is who he is. Prince Winter. A mistake.

And quietly, where no one knows or cares, he does the only thing he has left to do... he begins to weep.

As it is written, the tale of Winter is the story of a boy who is told he is wrong for being alive. He closes his ears and tries to keep walking forward, desperate to prove that he is not an error, that he has merit. But this book comes out and it unmistakably says that he doesn’t. He is nothing, and he deserves to have nothing.

And I just cannot accept that.

Why did this have to happen?

I think that the author was really struggling with the ending of this book. I’ve said before how much of a corner she wrote herself into with such an invincible villain. I think she came up with the strawberry idea as a solution to this problem. But as she was writing it, the characters kept fighting her. It was not a natural solution, not a decision the characters—as they were established—would ever make.

So concessions had to be made to force the issue. Established traits had to be bent slightly to make this plot work. The farther she went, the worse it got. The concessions piled up and turned into contrivances. Eventually the characters were no longer acting like themselves. Their bonds got stretched too far and some snapped. It’s a very tragic pitfall that occurs with long-running series.

I think Sutherland must have also been tired. Writing an entire book is a monumental task, and writing 6 connected ones even moreso. She also comes out with these things really quickly. Maybe she was burnt out? Maybe she wanted to be done and her attention lapsed. Maybe that’s why she forgot that Moon knew about the disemboweling. It seems reasonable to believe when you consider that the next story arc would make a relatively clean break from the problems of this arc, especially with regards to the magic system.

But I don’t know what ultimately happened, so I can only speculate. I reiterate, I bear no ill will against Sutherland for writing this. Even if I kind of hate everything about this finale, and very vocally wish it would be different, I don’t want this examination to generate (or reawaken) any hatred towards her, or to attack her personally. I understand the pain of an artist who gets trapped with something for too long and has to find the means, any means, to see it through to the end. I criticize the story, but I could never hate anyone for that.

But for me, I do not consider this half of the book as part of the story. The characters act too unnaturally for it to have happened. So to me, it didn’t. We don’t know what happened, maybe Darkstalker is still out there. Maybe they dealt with him. Maybe what actually happened is my crappy and self-indulgent rewrite of the ending which I will never show to anyone because it would be really embarrassing.

But whatever actually ended up happening, I am sure Winter never ended up at that cliff, pondering how worthless and meaningless his life was. He is currently at Jade Mountain, surrounded by friends who love him, and bickering with Qibli about the correct solution to their advanced calculus assignment that is due tomorrow.

Is there anything left to say?

Probably.

I didn’t talk about Anemone yet. You know, in the epilogue she enchants herself a bracelet that makes her “not be so mean all the time”. I find that creepy. To me it reads as Anemone voluntarily brainwashing herself with magic to erase her negative traits instead of growing past them naturally because she finds them undesirable and wants to work to change for the better. I would ordinarily assume that this is an overreaction on my part, and I’m just reading the scene wrong. But no, we just got through a part where the heroes brainwashing someone is treated as an unequivocal good and worthy of celebration, so I think my reading may actually be spot on. Why are we letting the little kid alter her own brain without supervision? Hello? Tsunami? Someone intervene maybe? This cannot be healthy.

Turtle stands out to me as the one bright spot in all of this. He (and Peril, but she’s mostly out of focus) remain as the only main characters of this arc who don’t have any mind-boggling out-of-character moments or sudden streaks of uncharacteristic callousness. I really like the part where Qibli goes to free Turtle from his captivity and plans to give him an earful about the comically unhelpful messages he’s been sending him. But when Turtle asks if what he did was helpful, Qibli sees how beaten down and exhausted Turtle is, and wordlessly drops his frustration to tell him “Yeah, they were helpful.” That is the true Qibli shining through for a moment, showing that he cares about the well-being of his friends.

Do I hate the pairing of Qibli/Moonwatcher? No. Well, I DO hate how it happened in the book, and how the story tried to assassinate Winter’s character to resolve the love triangle and make it happen. I don’t hate it on principle though. If you are a fan of Qibli/Moonwatcher and want to write fanfics about it, please do! I absolutely encourage you to do that! Maybe you can fix this mess and turn it into something that’s actually properly handled!

Mightyclaws keeps the power that Darkstalker granted him past the finale. That means all the spells that Darkstalker cast are technically still active. Does that mean the Icewings have to wear earrings for the rest of their lives? Do they get sick again if they take them off? Is Peril forever cursed to think of Darkstalker as a cool old uncle and has to somehow reconcile how everyone else thinks of him? How did the Nightwings relinquishing their powers work, do they have to wear the earrings forever too now?

And there is one more thing to mention.

My confession

You may have already intuited this, if you’ve been following the content of my blog. It is very heavily skewed towards the first and second arcs of the series. I would now like to confess something.

When I read the second half of book 10, I found it so disillusioning, Winter’s fate so upsetting... that I put down the series then and there. And I haven’t picked it back up since.

That’s right, I have not read arc 3. I don’t know if that makes me a fake fan. I know pretty much everything that happens in it, the controversial twist at the end, Pyrrhia coming back into the story later, Snowfall getting brainwashed by a piece of jewelry until she cares about a plot that had nothing to do with her or the fate of the Icewings, etc..

It’s not out of malice, or because it’s a new continent. The opposite in fact; I would have greatly prefered a clean break with a new setting—Bug-themed dragons in a slightly more contemporary, developed environment sounds fascinating and full of potential. I don’t hate Pantala or the new characters.

I just... I can’t really do this again. I can’t handle the thought of Pyrrhia coming back post-Darkstalker, with Winter showing up and talking to these guys again like nothing happened, seeming like a different person, joking around with them like his entire character wasn’t dragged through a mountain of manure to make the plot bend a certain way. I think as long as this is the ending that the story is continuing from, seeing that would just make me miserable.

Maybe I will just stay in the parts of the story that I fell in love with. And imagine a version of reality in which Pantala is allowed to exist on its own, where Swordtail was the fourth POV character of arc 3, where Queen Wasp stayed the villain throughout, and Snowfall got her own legends book about how she reformed Icewing society and fixed all the shit that poisoned Winter’s life, so future generations don’t have to suffer through the same stuff he did.

~~~~~

If you’re still with me, thank you for reading this far. I think this is everything I ever thought about the finale of the second story arc, so now I never have to talk about it again. Writing this was difficult. I found it crushing at times. This will probably stand as the only overtly negative post I have ever made on this blog. I love Wings of Fire, and I want to celebrate it. To add to it, not tear it down.

I hope this wasn’t too boring, or painful, or frustrating, or soul-crushing to read through. I’ll see you later, hopefully with a more constructive post.

#wings of fire #dragon #wof #digital art #wof art #flawseer art #flawseer talk #flawseer reply #wof winter #long post #long winded

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waywardsalt · 2 months

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rough rough draft of chapter 1 of the bellum x linebeck fic

Though the storm had passed and the sun finally shown upon the sea again, Linebeck felt gloomy. He leaned against his ship’s rope railings and stared at the horizon. The night before, the pounding of the rain had put him at ease. Now, the bright afternoon had brought back that familiar anxiety. After some thinking, Linebeck pushed himself away from the railing and resolved to begin his morning chores.

As the only person on his ship, it was up to Linebeck to take care of it- and he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. He knew his beloved steamship like the back of his hand, and he collected a bucket as he blinked the last of the sleep from his eyes. Firstly, he gathered seawater to dump into the engine’s storage tank. The ship was drifting at the moment, but once Linebeck would turn it on, the heat would build up in the engine and the water would boil and evaporate and build up steam to get the wheels moving.

Linebeck knelt at the lowest edge of the deck and dunked the bucket into the water for the ninth- tenth? - time. He’d have to do some extra engine maintenance before he got moving. He’d been traveling during the entire storm, likely pushing the engine to its limits. But after the water gathering, Linebeck checked the hull for barnacles and scratches, checked the railings for damaged rope, checked his food and water supplies, barely giving himself a moment of rest while he went through the familiar motions.

Since he began sailing, Linebeck’s life had been altogether monotonous and unpredictable. His ship was one he had designed himself, and knew better than anyone else how to take care of and operate it. He had no desire to take on a crew, and knew from experience that they’d only hold him back- trying to teach new people how to work his ship was incredibly tedious and often led to them making mistakes and doing more harm than good. The last bastard he’d temporarily hired and bothered to teach about his ship- Linebeck scowled and shook his head. Not even worth thinking about, now.

The storm had replenished his fresh water supply. It had been bad enough to obscure visibility across the sea, so Linebeck had done some fishing. If he cared for gods, he would have thanked one that he made it through without getting sick.

He didn’t need a crew. Linebeck hadn’t had a long-term crew member for what- seven years now? They just made him feel uneasy and he could never muster up the patience to put up with them.

Or maybe he kept finding the wrong people. That had certainly happened before. He was never particularly good with other people. Linebeck was almost certain that he’d made a good few new enemies just in the last month. His eyes scanned the horizon as he walked back out onto the deck. Linebeck tightened his grip on his mop’s handle. He was totally alone. And yet his skin prickled with unease.

“…No point worrying,” he mumbled to himself. He started mopping the deck, forcing himself to keep his eyes trained on the wood. His last chore of the morning was always the most soothing. He moved slowly and rhythmically, beginning at the prow and slowly making his way back to the cabin. His ship was small, though large enough to be comfortable for him. The deck sloped upwards a few feet from the cabin and plateaued, about a foot higher and better to accommodate the rooms and machinery beneath.

The air was warm and humid; Linebeck brushed his hair out of his face and behind his shoulders. He considered removing his coat, but he was nearly done mopping- no point in wasting the time. The heat was never a big issue for him. He was perfectly suited to the sea, and Linebeck felt more than confidant handling every aspect of this life on his own. No problems whatsoever. No good reason for the anxiety that refused to leave his mind.

Maybe there was a good reason, the same reason why he kept scanning the horizon.

Finished mopping the deck, Linebeck turned to admire it. The storm had cleaned it well enough, but now that the sky was clear he wasn’t just going to cut out part of his morning routine.

With everything done for the morning, Linebeck gathered up his mop and the bucket and moved to put them away. The bucket would be dumped out and left with other containers in the storage room, the mop left in the engine room… and then the engine would need to be started up. The nearest inhabited island was two days away (with good conditions), so while Linebeck had no need to get going right that moment, he felt safer with the engine running.

To get the engine started, Linebeck pulled a lever by the wheel up and waited a moment as he heard the hissing of steam start, and then stop. He knelt down in front of the storage tank. Enough water for the day, that was for sure. He withdrew his matchbox from a pocket in his coat and struck a match, humming idly to himself as he tossed it in the space below the water. It would only be a few minutes before the ship could get going; over the years, Linebeck had gone back and forth on the design of the engine, and managed to make it especially efficient with different materials and methods, and was quite proud of it. While the water heated up, he shut the tank door and sat back, resting a moment.

He’d gotten… some sleep last night. He’d dreamed briefly, and didn’t feel as terrible as he usually did. Some sleep. Better than no sleep at all. Linebeck laid down on the floor and stared up at the ceiling. He stared at the winding pipes at the tops of the walls and then shut his eyes. If he was lucky, he could perhaps find a few minutes to nap. Just a few minutes…

The ticking of the machinery around him slowly faded in as the engine properly started up. The sound melted into with the noise of the ocean outside, and Linebeck felt his anxieties ease. The familiarity of his daily routine eased his mind like nothing else.

The next island was north of his position… Linebeck let out a long breath. He’d have to at least position his ship facing north, and get started within the hour. He sat up and stretched. If he got started now, he could reach the island by late tomorrow. The engine was ready to go, and Linebeck smiled to himself as he fiddled with some of the smaller levers and switches, listening to the subtle changes in the ticking and clicking around him.

He paused when he heard up an unfamiliar noise. Linebeck stilled his hands, suddenly feeling cold.

Without thinking, Linebeck kicked the engine into proper operation and after a moment, the wheels on either side of the ship started turning and he quickly steered the ship in the opposite direction of that odd sound. He heard it again, from outside his ship- the unmistakable sound of cannon fire, and Linebeck was not brave enough to stop and check to see if it was aimed at him.

It was usually aimed at him, anyways.

Linebeck steered his ship away and locked the wheel in place; he felt his heart pounding in his chest as more muffled canon fire reached his ears. One sounded closer than the rest, and he managed to tear himself away from the wheel and run up to deck. Running away was nice, but he needed to know where to run away to.

It seemed like he was getting chased more and more. Linebeck figured he ought to start a list of the crews that had it out for him; that was something to do once he was safe. He stumbled out onto the deck and leaned over the rope railing, staring at the southern horizon. Sure enough, he could see a pirate ship in the distance heading his way, and the wind was in their favor.

Linebeck gripped the railings until the rope started to dig into his skin. The hell did he do to them? He recognized the decorated sails as the sails of the ship that’d been pursuing him before the storm. Their captain was one he’d cheated out of several hundred rupees in poker- or was that a different crew? No time to think it over while they got closer and closer. More cannon fire rang out, and Linebeck jumped back as the cannonball splashed into the water dangerously close to his ship.

Sailing in a straight line was a terrible idea. Better to leverage his steamship’s advantages and focus on disrupting their aim. Linebeck wildly looked around. No rocks or islands in sight. His best hope was to run for it and hope that either they’d run out of cannonballs or the wind would die down. He raced back inside.

He was just one man; why did all of these pirates decide that being slighted by him once marked him as the biggest threat to them on the entire Great Sea? Pirates were so petty. He flinched when he heard a muffled splash and felt the ship rock. Linebeck gripped the wheel tightly and started turning the ship west, his sweaty hands almost slipping off. He gritted his teeth as the cannon fire sounded closer and the ship rocked again.

The last time he’d been pursued like this, a cannonball had burnt his hull and cost him several days of sleep. Linebeck turned the ship far enough around to spy the pursuing pirates again; the moment he heard the cannon fire again, he spun the wheel to sail in the opposite direction. Turning was slow, but his ship never stopped moving. He’d had nightmares about one of the wheels being damage, and Linebeck felt weak in the knees just thinking about it.

As the pirate ship slipped out of view, the waters around his ship were more violently disrupted, and Linebeck yelped as his ship was more violently rocked by the waves. There was no cannon fire, no sound of a cannonball hitting the waves- and the water was clearly churning too violently for it to have been a cannonball. He clung to the steering wheel for dear life, his knees nearly buckling underneath him, and the cacophonous sound of an especially large wave made him wince. The ship rocked again, but still no cannon fire. Instead, Linebeck picked up a new muffled noise.

…Splintering wood?

The wood of his own ship was fine, there was no motion asides from the violent waves rocking his ship, but the distant splintering continued, and with it, faraway screams. For the second time in barely five minutes, Linebeck’s curiosity prevailed over his fear. On shaky legs he stumbled up onto his deck- slick with water that had poured onboard, and nearly fell over the railings when he reached them.

The pursuing pirate ship was being torn apart by something. Something had pulled the main mast down and split it in half, tearing through the sails and ripping the vessel in half. Linebeck squinted, hardly seeing anything that could be causing it, then caught a glimpse of what looked like a thick black rope curled around the prow, tearing it clean off and dragging it into the sea. The way those ‘ropes’ moved; Linebeck slowly slid down into a crouch as he realized that a sea monster was what was attacking that ship.

One pirate jumped from where the prow had been, likely trying to escape and swim away, but a black tentacle shot out of the water and grabbed them midair and yanked them below the water. Linebeck felt frozen to the spot, more than grateful that he wasn’t the creature’s target, but he feared that if he took advantage of the chaos and sailed away, he would be attacked next.

The pursuing ship began to sink, and the sharp cracking of wood was piercing as it reached Linebeck’s ears. The hull was torn in two, more tentacles appearing to crush them into unsalvageable wreckages. The fear that shot through Linebeck urged him to straighten back up. He started to hurry back into the engine room, but stopped in his tracks as the tentacles withdrew back into the water.

The pirate ship’s remains slowly sank, survivors clinging to any floating pieces. Linebeck stared at the water around his ship. That… thing had stopped. That sea monster that he and those pirates had the misfortune to disturb.

That sea monster- Linebeck had researched every possible hostile creature that had been seen on the Great Sea, and that certainly had to have been one of them. He grabbed onto his railing again, feeling too sick to move his gaze from the sinking ship down to the waters just below him. He stood at the end of the railing, steady on the sloping deck despite the way his limbs shook and his heart hammered in his chest.

There was a sea monster in these waters. It had just wiped out an entire pirate crew in hardly a minute. From what Linebeck could recall, that pirate crew was rather prepared and experienced, and their ship certainly wasn’t some glorified piece of driftwood. This wasn’t just an overgrown gyorg or some other typical sea monster- he was at the mercy of the kind of sea monster that had stories passed around. The kinds that endured for decades or even centuries and were either worshipped or feared. He’d never seen a regular sea monster that had those kinds of tentacles and was that quick and deadly.

One of the stranded pirates was suddenly and violently pulled under water. Linebeck lowered himself back down to a crouch, staring at the now-empty patch of water. After a few moments, a faint red hue bloomed from deep under the surface.

I’m going to die.

The thought seemed to echo in Linebeck’s head. It wasn’t a thought he was unfamiliar with, but it was much, much more frantic now than ever. He was going to drown or be eaten. Even if he got out unscathed, his ship likely wouldn’t, and that sounded just as bad as if he got injured. Linebeck shakily stared down at the water mere feet from him. Every tiny wave and ripple in the water heightened his anxiety, and his mind raced. Another pirate was pulled under the water, eaten, and the waters were still for a moment. Then, there was a subtle ripple further away from the wreckage and closer to Linebeck’s ship.

How do I get out of this?

Linebeck’s terror forced him to his feet, and he raced into his ship’s cabin. That monster was more than capable of catching up with that pirate ship, and Linebeck stumbled on his way down the stairs as his ship rocked slightly.

This monster was capable of killing and catching him with ease, and it tore apart that pirate ship with ease, and it was eating the survivors, and Linebeck was up next if he didn’t think fast. His feet brought him into his ship’s cramped kitchen, and he stood still in the doorway for a moment. His fear and quick-thinking seemed to crash into each other, and his mind went blank as he stared around. Linebeck switched his attention from his utensils to the fish he’d recently caught and had yet to clean to the cupboards. Why the hell had he run here?

The sea monster killed all of the pirates. It was probably chasing after him now. It tore apart the ship, and… ate the pirates. Ate the pirates. Linebeck stared at his recently-caught fish. There were a pair of smaller amberjacks he’d picked up during the storm, a seabass he had a few different plans for, and then a large loovar he’d been planning to sell. He suddenly felt itchy looking at that loovar. He was going to sell it. It was a large, pristine loovar, with sleek, undamaged scales and was over five feet long and took up the entire counter that fit in the narrow kitchen. It was valuable and would net him a good sum of rupees at the next island he docked at.

Linebeck’s ship rocked again, violently enough to knock him off balance. The terror finally mixed with his quick thinking and he grabbed and yanked the loovar off the counter, stumbling a moment under its weight. He slung it over his shoulder and hauled it up the stairs, his shoulder aching before he was even in the engine room. Goddesses, his coat was going to reek if he made it out of this alive.

He paused to grab his mop and tuck it into the crook of his elbow and stumbled a bit, stubbornly keeping the fish from touching the floor. The ship rocked under his feet again, and Linebeck shuddered and hurried out onto the deck. The water around his ship’s hull ripped every few moments, and Linebeck didn’t hesitate in letting the loovar drop onto the wood. He kicked it off the deck, and it fell unceremoniously into the water and floated barely a few inches from the hull- too close.

With the mop he prodded at it and sent it floating slowly away from his ship. And so, Linebeck huddled at the edge of his deck, leaning against his mop for support. For just a moment, the waters were still. The loovar bobbed on the water’s surface and the sunlight glinted off its scales. Linebeck exhaled slowly. For all he knew, the monster could have already left. He could probably grab the loovar if he was careful.

Linebeck started to reach back out with the mop, but drew it back as the water around the loovar suddenly started to ripple. The rippling grew more furious, and the water began to bubble and small waves started rushing out from around the fish- a dark shape was just barely visible deep in the water. The shape rushed to the surface, and Linebeck only got the quickest glimpse before falling backwards onto the deck as the largest waves yet set his ship violently rocking.

It was huge, easily half the size of his ship, and a stunning yellow. For the split second he saw it, Linebeck couldn’t discern any detail, but he didn’t miss the mouth full of sharp teeth that engulfed the loovar. Linebeck had fallen onto his back and didn’t dare move as the sea calmed down, the blurry image of the beast burnt into his mind. He stared up at the sky and realized that the fear in his chest had eased. Had he appeased the creature? The rocking of his ship slowly stopped, and he felt he was in no hurry to get up.

There was a slight splashing, and Linebeck jolted upright. He stared off the edge of the deck, at where the loovar had been floating. It stared back at him. The sunlight glinted off its yellow body, greenish in some spots, and golden in others. Under the water, the rest of it was just a murky shadow. In its mouth, encircled by those teeth, was an eye that stared back at him, the tiny pupil within a burning yellow and orange, surrounded by deep black. A monstrous eye, and one that Linebeck could’ve sworn he’d seen somewhere. Something about the thing’s unblinking gaze made a sense of visceral horror return to Linebeck, and before he could think it through, he scrambled to his feet.

The creature didn’t move in the water, but its eye followed his movements. Despite the hammering of his heart, Linebeck couldn’t tear his gaze away from that eye. His limbs felt locked in place, and his breathing came in in ragged gasps and he realized just how bad his situation had gotten. There was no way that loovar was enough to save him. He’d seen the way the creature had torn apart that pirate ship. He’d seen the way it had grabbed and killed those pirates. There was nothing keeping it from killing him next.

Then, without any sound but the sounds of the water, the creature sank down into the ocean and out of sight.

Linebeck immediately hurried back into his cabin, just barely remembering to snatch up his mop.

He wasted no time in getting his ship up and running again, and set a course for the island before even thinking of relaxing. Linebeck anxiously surveyed the sea as he steered the ship away, but spotted nothing out of the ordinary.

…Maybe the loovar had satisfied that… thing. Linebeck tried not to think much about it. But his nerves were still shot by the encounter, and he stiffly steered until the sun began to set.

He didn’t anchor the ship until stars glittered in the sky. Linebeck moved gingerly around his ship, half expecting that monster to return. But the evening was quiet, and Linebeck eventually felt relaxed enough after doing his rounds. He collected every book he had that mentioned sea monsters and went out on deck to read and rest.

Linebeck rested against the prow. He set the books in his lap and started flipping through each one, quickly skipping through what turned out to be a catalogue of common seafaring enemies, and finding a short collection of short stories based on powerful creatures around the world. As the sun dipped further below the horizon, Linebeck finally reached a much more informative book- one that had been gathering dust at the edge of the shelf- and flipped through more slowly, inspecting each illustration. Dragons, sentient plants, fish creatures, and Linebeck slowed down upon reaching the chapter reserved for deities. It didn’t take long for him to turn a page and find a familiar illustration.

It was little more than a collection of sketches, but that eye was unmistakable. Linebeck leaned over the book with a small spark of triumph in his heart. He was right- it was one he’d heard of before, a creature named ‘Bellum’. Apparently a powerful, demonic sea monster.

Linebeck felt a faint shiver down his spine and he sat up and stared off across the sea. He shut the book and gathered up the rest. Back in the cabin, he locked the door out, and hesitated with his hand on the knob. That nearby island was his destination, a small island with a small town that he’d been for. He needed supplies, needed to restock on food and parts and whatever else eluded him at the moment.

He double-checked the lock and silently headed down into the storage room. Linebeck left the volume with the information on Bellum on the table, and put the rest back on the bookshelf behind the thin bar that kept them from falling out.

Bellum.

Linebeck turned and stared at the book on the table. In the dim light of the few lit lanterns in the room, the book seemed almost ominous with its dark cover and elaborate spine. Where had he picked this one up? Was it one from home, or something he’d bought on a whim a while ago? Either way, it was worth reading through and taking notes on- even if the information he wanted seemed to only take up two pages.

Linebeck idly rubbed his hands together. The only indication of his lingering anxiety was the thin layer of sweat on his palms. Most sea monsters were known through shared stories and rumored sightings. Once he got all he could from the book, he could start asking around at islands. With any luck, though, he wouldn’t have to see that thing again.

#my writing #cant remember the other tag and i do NOT have time to check #uhhhhhh would greatly appreciate feedback/constructive criticism #just know that ill disregard anything related to the story bc thats set in stone- looking more for stuff with the actual prose #or a bit on how linebeck is written (he doesnt feel. anxious. enough so i will ahve to work on that)#if the formatting is fucked then idk. when i posted that warriors thing a while back it fucked up the formatting then too #tbh. not feeling as bad abt this as i wqs before giving a quick editing read through. i still think it needs some real work tho #‘with any luck though he wouldn’t have to see that thing again’ <- thoughts of a guy whos gonna fuck that thing by the end of the year #depends on your definition of fuck ig. i know whats going and i think fuck is a bit if an exaggeration but its also funny #anyways i haved mixted feelings on this but i do really want to improve it so. this aint ff.net or ao3 but id appreciate uh. replies?#whatever here its just shy of 4k words iirc #long post

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