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Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths - Sundered Bond Summary

I have immense brainworms and I feel like nobody has read this book and everyone keeps saying untrue things about Lukka and I am going to go feral. So instead of doing that I'm going to just post a summary of the book bc I have nothing better to be doing and I read it like 2 days ago so it's very fresh in my mind

Overview

Lukka is a Captain of a squad of Coppercoat Specials, the most elite of Drannith’s military forces, and has been for the last 2 years of his life. After 20 years in service for Drannith, the soldier of one of only a few sanctuaries to have remained permanently standing in Ikoria becomes involuntarily bonded with one of the monsters that calls Ikoria home, and he’s forced to abandon everything he’s ever known, lest General Kudro—chief-of-command in Drannith and father of his fiancée—execute him out of fear of his “bonding sickness” destroying Drannith from the inside out.

[More under the cut...]

Characters & Names

Lukka—a human man somewhere between 40-50 years old who has been in the Coppercoats for over half of his life, and in the Specials for at least 2 years of it. He lead a team consisting of 4 others (Epha (sergeant and trapper), Nik (sniper), Gedra and Gox (twins that serve as trappers/hunters)). He was engaged to Jirina, daughter of General Kudro, and thought very highly of her.

Jirina—Lukka’s fiancée. A brown-skinned, dark-haired human woman that has a unique position in Drannith’s military due to her modest status in the Coppercoats, yet also is the daughter of General Kudro. She respects her father deeply but fears his authority too.

General Kudro—Lukka’s would-be father-in-law and Jirina’s father, the seasoned chief-of-command in Drannith. His position in power is very much based on authority and how well people believe in his authority, and he knows it. He listens closely to the reputations his people and the Coppercoats hold amongst commoners, for he knows a quiet drone can become an insurmountable roar fast enough. He is not afraid of resorting to underhanded tactics to “maintaining the peace,” either, and believes bonding magic to be a sickness, having kept it hidden from much of Drannith, despite researchers being aware of it for some time prior to Lukka’s bond.

Vivien Reid—A planeswalker that was staying on the plane, visiting to explore its strange magic and unusual crystalline formations. She admits to Lukka that she helps him out of curiosity, and in hopes he can teach her more about Ikoria, as she passes through in search of a place yet still to call home. She finds the way of life Lukka is used to in Drannith very odd and uncomfortable (the kill-or-be-killed mentality).

Winged Cat—Lukka’s involuntarily bonded cat-clade monster, a great, winged tiger, which goes unnamed throughout the story.

Brin & Rol—A bonder and her bonded monster that Vivien and Lukka befriend through the course of the story. Brin is a pale-skinned teenage girl with pink, wild and spiky hair, leather and homespun clothing, and a tuft of pink fur strewn over her shoulders. Rol (short for Roland) is a raccoon-like monster with pink fur and a round body, about the size of a horse.

Mzed, Dogsbreath, Nightshade, Toothcracker, & Sedra —Hunters that General Kudro hired to track down Lukka so he could be returned to Drannith as a prisoner. They are generally unruly, banter often, and rude to one another and to Jirina (whomst is forced to join them in their mission). Dogsbreath wears a mask resembling a dog, Nightshade specializes in poisons, Toothcracker is very physical and confrontational, and Sedra is known for being a bit… well, crazy.

Captain Falk—A man from the sanctuary of Skysail that the Hunters hire to take them to the Ozolith to catch up better with Lukka via a skyship called the Vermillion.

Abda (AKA “Spiky”) & Rigi—A bonder and her bonded monster that Vivien and Lukka befriend through the course of the story. Abda is dressed in leather and homespun, a brown jacket with a white shirt beneath, and carries a long spear with a double-point. She has dark brown hair done up into spikes. Her monster, Rigi, is a squat, badger-like monster with brown fur that fades to white on its belly, tusks that protrude from its lower jaw, and black thorns that cover its back and shoulders, which extend down to its brow and cheeks.

Barrow & Zeph—A bonder and his bonded monster that Vivien and Lukka befriend through the course of the story. Barrow is dressed in gray armor with white furs layered over the top, his hair white and swept back aside from two prominent spikes of hair at the forefront of his head (Lukka describes them as “horns”). Zeph is a cat-clade monster twice the size of Lukka’s winged cat, with a wild mane of white hair, and a body resembling a white tiger. It has two ram-like horns and glowing yellow eyes, and holds some control over electricity.Colonel Bryd—A colonel whom Jirina has quarrels with throughout the story, usually to humorous effect. He briefly takes over as Chief-in-Command after Kudro’s death, but Jirina overrides his authority by simply ignoring him.

Events

Lukka is on a hunt for a monster that has been killing livestock with his Specials team, Epha, Nik, Gedra, and Gox. He finds a sheep whose brain has been carefully extracted in an almost surgical manner.

They come up with a plan for Lukka to stand as bait (implied that he always does this) after traps are set up in the area, and some hours later, the nightmare returns and attacks. The traps work at first, but the monster breaks free and rushes Lukka. The rest of his squad save him, and they end off the day happy to have succeeded, believing that they all will now have 4 days off-duty to do whatever they wish. Lukka intends to spend it on quality time with his fiancée, Jirina.

A scene from Jirina’s POV shows that she has much more stress going on in her life as General Kudro’s daughter than she lets on. Lukka doesn’t pick up on it, and tries to get her in the mood for some fun. She tells him “not in the office,” and they leave after Lukka convinces her to let him go with her to her room to relax.

Interesting to note that despite Lukka’s high status in the Coppercoats, he admits to only having a cramped, shitty cot to sleep in, whereas Jirina, as daughter of General Kudro, has a bed big enough to accommodate the two of them with room to spare and a room on a higher floor of the Citadel.

After only a day off, Lukka’s team is called in despite their promised 4 days off, because a winged cat-clade monster has taken residence in a farm within Drannith’s third circle - the second-most wall Drannith has (it has 4, the first two being fairly weak and the first one hardly a wall at all, whereas the last two are thicker, and the final wall is enormous and big enough for entire troops to walk together, with ballistae and the like mounted there).

Even so, farms and such are often kept in the third circle, because Drannith is forced to make use of all its space within its territory.

The winged cat has been said to have slaughtered 10-20 Drannith soldiers already and nobody can oust it, which is why Lukka’s team has been called in.

At the farm, Lukka is afraid of going into any buildings or crops, for fear of the cat ambushing them. Instead, he tries to draw it out, and sends his team to start setting traps and to get into position. He sets out some bait that is supposed to be brand-new from Drannith’s researchers (implied to be a division of the Coppercoat military).

They wait for hours, and while they begin to think the cat may have slipped past them (and Lukka starts privately panicking and worrying about what would happen if the cat has snuck further into Drannith without their notice), the winged cat suddenly bursts from the barnhouse. All while Lukka is still trying to reach for a weapon to figure out how to push his own attack, the following happens:

It shatters the wooden wall nearest Gox and slashes his stomach open with its claws, disemboweling him. He bleeds out.

The winged cat then fought briefly with Gedra, outmaneuvering her and slamming her to the ground, then ripped her throat open. She bled out as well.

Lukka started barking orders to retreat, and while Nik tried to listen, the cat caught up to her and picked her up, taking flight with her in its mouth, and shook her so hard that her neck was broken.

Epha fled. The winged cat turned its attention to Lukka. He stayed behind, intending to sacrifice himself so Epha could survive, in hopes that Epha could live to tell others in Drannith about the severity of the creature they were dealing with as well as simply wanting her to live.

The winged cat advanced on Lukka, and he found himself thinking of Jirina and hoping Epha made it back before the cat was finished with him, but before anything could happen between them, a bolt of green energy fired between them and he was knocked unconscious.

Lukka awakens in Drannith in a private hospital bed, where Jirina comes to see him. She is discomforted by the presence of military personnel that are already interrogating him.

Lukka, none the wiser about what has happened, tells his questioners what has happened, and the personnel seem unusually satisfied and cagey about his answers. They leave to inform Kudro directly, telling Jirina that the general requested they give the report immediately, and that Jirina not be allowed to speak to him beforehand.

Jirina briefly speaks with Lukka and he recounts what happened. He asks why the cat didn’t kill him. Jirina, out of anxiety, posits that Nik’s bolt that she shot off before she was killed perhaps hurt it more than he thought. Lukka, not picking up on her anxiety, isn’t convinced.

Jirina leaves to speak with her father. Colonel Bryd keeps her out his office until the military personnel from earlier is done giving their report.

General Kudro, upon speaking with Jirina, tells her that he is saddened by the news of what has happened to Lukka and informs her of bonding magic, calling it a sickness, telling her that he fears Lukka has fallen victim to it, and that he can’t allow it to spread into Drannith. Though he doesn’t say it directly, Jirina picks up on the cues that he means to execute Lukka—and may very well already be on the way to do so.

Though she finishes the conversation with her father on amicable terms, Jirina decides that she can’t let her father do this, and that she must find a way to convince him otherwise. She leaves to help Lukka escape Drannith ASAP.

Upon returning to Lukka’s room, she dismisses the doctors so she can speak to Lukka freely, calling upon her authority as the general’s daughter to do so. Lukka, starting to get worried, begs her to tell him what’s going on. She tells him and he’s dismayed, but agrees to leave and follow along with her plan.

She and Lukka devise a plan for him to leave despite the location being the heavily armed Citadel in the center of Drannith. She asks Lukka to pretend to have taken her hostage, to walk out while holding a knife against her throat, threatening them to kill her if they attempt to apprehend him; doing so will assure nobody will even attempt to touch him, as nobody will want to be responsible for the death of the General’s daughter.

Lukka is horrified by the plan, and hates every moment of it, as he finds Jirina’s acting very convincing (as he does his own), but the idea of waiting around to die scares him more.

Once on the fringes of Drannith, Lukka lets her go (where she assures him she will smooth everything over with her father, she’s sure of it, and they share a pleasant goodbye), and flees on his own from there. He uses his knowledge of paths designed for Coppercoat usage and backways to avoid confrontations until he is met with checkpoints and gates leading out of the city.

Expecting the news of a rogue Coppercoats Specials captain to not have reached so far already, Lukka tries to bluff his way through the security of a gate that is rarely used, but they catch on anyway. He refuses to fight back, even when they threaten him, because he can’t stomach the thought of killing “teenagers and soon-to-be retired old men for following their orders.”

Vivien surprises him by saving him, shooting her bow and throwing an animal spirit to distract the guards, giving herself and Lukka the opportunity to flee.

While all of this is going down, Jirina has returned to her father in Drannith, revealing that she is alive and unharmed (but not telling her father that it was a facade, of course). He tells her that Lukka cannot be allowed to simply run free, for letting such intimate knowledge of Drannith run away with someone who bonds with monsters is unacceptable. He tells Jirina he has hired Hunters—mercenaries of sorts, but for monsters—to hunt Lukka down and bring him back to Drannith, because if he sends Coppercoats after Lukka, the news will be all over Drannith, and he wants to keep the situation on the down-low. He instructs Jirina to go with these Hunters, as she knows Jirina best. Jirina goes to object, but Kudro tells her that she will do it if she is still loyal to Drannith, forcing her to do so or imply that she is no longer loyal to Drannith. She believes that once she and the Hunters retrieve Lukka, she can still convince her father to change his mind, but she does secretly begin to wonder if something may be seriously wrong with Lukka due to her father’s paranoia.

It’s some hours after Vivien aids Lukka that Lukka and Vivien have finally made it fully out of Drannith, and Vivien has set up a modest camp for them. Lukka finally gets a chance to reflect on what all has happened that day. He asks Vivien why she aided him, and she claims that she felt the burst of magic that came from him and the winged cat. She came to search for it, and was surprised to find it coming to her, and decided to intervene so she could learn more about him, admitting that her goal is mainly sating her own curiosity.

Lukka is a bit less than enthused that his only friend is now a woman that wants him as something of a specimen, but he’s willing to take all the help he can get, so he thanks her.

Lukka says that he needs to slay the winged cat so he can return home, to Drannith, wanting nothing to do with it, given how its ruined his life. Vivien reluctantly agrees to lead him to the cat, telling him she can magically sense its location, to an extent.

He tells her that before they get too far beyond Drannith’s walls, he will need to stop by an outpost to restock on his own gear. He hopes that, given how far out the farthest outposts are, the news of his rogue nature won’t have reached them and he’ll be able to merely flash his stature at them.

Vivien agrees and, to Lukka’s relief, it works.

When they find the cat again, Vivien and Lukka are being attacked by a nightmare-clade monster. The cat saves Lukka, and Lukka, confused and upset, demands to know why—’There it was. The thing that had ruined his life. He wanted to laugh and cry all at once. [...] “Why not kill me too?”’

Vivien informs him that he is bonded, which is when Lukka finally learns about bonding magic. He laments how he never wanted this and reasserts his hatred for what has happened, and how he just wants to go home, but he also tells Vivien that he sensed something through the cat. He sensed that the Ozolith, a crystalline formation far north of Drannith, was somehow speaking to the cat and was what had driven it to attack so violently; someone was driving monsters to destroy Drannith via the Ozolith. He also felt how the cat was scared and how despite its violence, it had hardly eaten during its stint near Drannith, and how it actually didn’t want to be that close to it or the ‘twolegs,’ as it called them.

Vivien and Lukka come to the agreement that they should go to the Ozolith to learn more of what’s happening there.

As this is going down, Jirina and the Hunters find them. Jirina tries to talk Lukka down, but the Hunters attack him ruthlessly, and the winged cat becomes enraged. Lukka becomes overwhelmed as the situation escalates; Jirina tells him that if he comes home, everything will work out, but he is afraid and not so sure, and Vivien fires off her bow, and then—the winged cat picks him up by his clothing and lifts him into the sky.

The cat picking him up shocks Lukka to his core. He is no longer thinking of killing the cat. He even willingly explores the bonding magic, briefly, to see if he can convince the cat to let him onto her back so he can be more comfortable (which it does). He uncomfortably finds himself considering whether he should name it or whether he should call it “‘it’ or ‘she,’” but shoves away the feelings by reminding himself that she slaughtered 3 of his squad. Despite this, he starts calling her she, and later, he strokes her fur and rests on her back, even falling asleep at one point.

Before reaching the Ozolith, during their travels, the winged cat suddenly dives, and they meet Brin & Rol. Shortly after, they meet Abda & Rigi and Barrow & Zeph as well, who all agree to travel to the Ozolith as well after Lukka explains the sensations he felt through the winged cat about the voice that spoke through the Ozolith (though, hardly for the same reasons; Abda and Barrow are barely motivated at first until Brin points out that the Coppercoats will harm monsters en masse if they’re being driven to attack Drannith, much to Lukka’s annoyance).

They fly on Lukka’s winged cat to the Ozolith together. During this, while stopping to rest at one point, Vivien tells Lukka the story of how she lost her homeplane and how she is a Planeswalker, and about Nicol Bolas. Lukka is disturbed and refuses to let that happen to him.

At the Ozolith, they find nightmare-clade monsters guarding it. The bonders and Vivien agree to hold them off while Lukka swoops in and tries to interface with the Ozolith, to figure out what’s going on.

However, while this is going down, all hell breaks loose. The same Hunters from before, as well as Jirina, arrive via a skyship they rented from Skysail. It becomes a three-way brawl at the Ozolith, with Lukka and his allies, the Hunters, and the nightmare creatures all opposing each other.

Lukka touches the Ozolith and is overwhelmed with power by it. He speaks to an unnamed, unknown planeswalker through it. While in some sort of mental space where he can hear this planeswalker but not see them, he watches the raging battle as if from above. The planeswalker presses Lukka to accept the Ozolith’s power as his own, while Lukka rejects their proposals at first out of distrust (but admits that he just wants to go home and wants this to be over). The planeswalker has him watch Abda get shot with a ballista bolt from the skyship overhead, and after that, Lukka relents, allowing the planeswalker to grant him the powers of the Ozolith.

Lukka is returned to the battle and he lashes out with power via the Ozolith, gaining control of all of the nightmare-clade monsters as well as Rigi. His controlled monsters brutally kill most of the Hunters, and he even succeeds in downing their skyship. He only notices at the last minute that Jirina is still among them, in the vessel, as it plummets.

In the aftermath of the battle, Lukka is confronted by the bonders and Vivien, who are unhappy with how he forced the nightmare monsters to attack in such ways that they often killed themselves or gave themselves lifelong injuries (Rigi also died in the course of the battle). Lukka is shocked at their response, given how he believed he had just saved their lives, and is already thinking of how he can use his newfound abilities to protect Drannith and prove his loyalties to General Kudro in a whole new way. He and the others argue briefly, before Lukka loses his patience with them, and attempts to seize control of their bonded monsters anyway.

He’s unable to, and a fight breaks out again. Vivien berates him, telling him that she thought he was a good man, but she sees now that she was wrong; Lukka lashes out at her anyway, and she fires off a shot that produces a ghostly elk. It charges him and while he scuffles with it, Vivien and the other bonders escape.

Lukka lets them leave, no longer interested. He gathers control of the remaining nightmare monsters once more, calling them his “army,” and starts to plan his next moves to return home to Drannith. He also decides to scour the surrounding area first, however, in search of Jirina, because he isn’t sure what happened to her after the battle.

Unknown to Lukka, his winged cat—in the chaos—caught Jirina as the skyship fell from the sky. It then carried her back to Drannith, where it dropped her off at its innermost wall. Jirina managed to beg people to capture it and not kill it, but her arrival on the back of a monster, and then subsequent request, caused rumors throughout the city that Jirina has become a traitor to humanity. Kudro, out of fear of otherwise needing to oust or execute his own daughter, plans a public display where Jirina is slated to execute the winged cat, so the townspeople of Drannith may see where her loyalties truly lie.

Jirina realizes the tenuous position she’s in, but hopes that her father will be reasonable when he sees how truly unwilling she is to do it. She refuses. Kudro is not reasonable; angry and sad, he has Colonel Bryd take her away, and he slays the winged cat, much to Jirina’s dismay.

Jirina essentially becomes a prisoner in her own home after that point, unable to leave or do anything freely as she pleases.

Back with Lukka, he watches, through his bond with the winged cat, the public execution of the winged cat by Kudro. He realizes that the winged cat saved Jirina, all because it realized she was important to him, without him having had to ask, and he’s overcome with emotion. For a long moment, he sits silently, crying, before he gets up and furiously starts to reach further and further with the power of the Ozolith, gathering yet even more monsters for his “army.”

Lukka is desperate to go home and to return to Jirina, and has realized that if Kudro won’t let him by taking things out, then Kudro will kill him, and he refuses to let death be his only option forward. He starts to march his army towards Drannith.

Kudro amasses Coppercoat forces, and takes Jirina under the close eyes of guards, to meet Lukka and his army in the field after they spot him some distance away from Drannith, approaching. Kudro believes that they will not survive if they allow Lukka to meet their walls, but Jirina recognizes that fighting him in the field will cost an untold number of Coppercoat lives. Kudro later surprises her by revealing that Lukka has asked for a parley, and that he intends for Jirina to play an important role in it: she will assassinate Lukka. He gives her a dagger to keep in her pocket. Do this, and her name will be cleared, and she will no longer be a prisoner.

Even so, Jirina doesn’t want to kill Lukka and doesn’t intend to during the parley.

Lukka attempts to talk to General Kudro and Jirina during their parley. It’s hardly under peaceful terms; the parley occurs on an island in the middle of a raging river, and Kudro has ballistae mounted facing it. Lukka has a single monster facing the island from the opposing side of the river, or so it seems at first.

Lukka explains his idea of using monsters to guard Drannith instead of Coppercoats, explaining how humans need not die anymore in place of monsters. Let them die instead. Kudro, of course, is unbudging in his position on the matter and still thinks of Lukka as “sickened.” Jirina tries to pull Lukka aside and speak to him alone, telling him that this idea will never be accepted in Drannith; she begs him to give it up and simply come back.

Lukka is frustrated, because the way he sees it, if he “gives up,” he will be killed. He doesn’t believe Jirina can convince Kudro of anything.

Lukka comes to the conclusion that Kudro will have to leave the picture, seeing him as all that is keeping him away from his fiancee and home.

The parley starts to go awry. Lukka viciously denies Jirina and Kudro’s terms. Kudro tells Lukka off.

Lukka reveals that he was prepared for this eventuality on his own when monsters start bursting from the earth and the trees, disabling the ballistae and killing Coppercoats. In his fit of rage, he kills Kudro, and then turns to Jirina, babbling about how they can now have a life together—

…And Jirina swipes that dagger for him. She misses, only cutting his face in the process.

Furious and heartbroken, Lukka throws her into the raging river, snarling at her that she can die with the rest of the “traitors,” then—completing his arc of turning into the very monster Kudro was trying to prevent him from becoming.

Jirina escapes the river later, barely alive, and is confronted by monsters. Vivien and the other bonders that previously argued with Lukka save her and take her back to Drannith, where she asserts herself as chief of command despite the authority supposing to have gone to Colonel Bryd.

Lukka marches his monsters on Drannith, intending to force them to let him stay, or to drive everyone who fights him out so he can stay in their place. Jirina, however, has prepared Drannith by the time he arrives, and though there are hundreds and hundreds of casualties and plenty of damage, the city’s great walls hold. Jirina manages to get close to Lukka again and demands to know why he’s doing this, asking him if he really thinks he can just “come back” after this. He tells her that he intends to force them, that he’s not asking anymore. Jirina comments that he really has gone insane, and when Lukka goes to have monsters attack her again, the other bonders once again jump to her defense.

Lukka, once again, tries to seize control of the bonded monsters, as his army is spread thin at this point in the battle and no others are close enough to save him from the coming onslaught from Vivien and the bonders. The unknown planeswalker residing in the Ozolith warns him that if he does this, he won’t like what happens—but Lukka does it anyway, pulling more and more power from the Ozolith, until the great crystal shatters and explodes.

Pain floods his body and his army of monsters scream in agony as a reflection of his own. Fiery sensations course through him, as his spark ignites, and he internally laments how he just wanted to go home, just wanted to be with Jirina again. Then, he finally planeswalks away.

He awakes elsewhere, in a swamp, where three canid creatures take interest in him. He notes that he feels mentally fragile, like if he “shook his head too hard, it might break,” (or something along those lines), but despite that, he instinctively attempts to reach out to control the animals ahead of him. He controls one, which fights the others off.

Grateful he has some power left, Lukka vows to go home, even though he knows that’s completely impossible, both literally and figuratively, showing that he has lost it completely at this point. And that’s where the story ends.

#mtg #lukka #vivien reid #ikoria #magic the gathering #magic: the gathering #sundered bond #ikoria: lair of behemoths #ikoria: lair of behemoths - sundered bond

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