Forged By Fire Sporking: Part Six

[epistler]

Part Six: How Not to Steal a Dragon

TRIGGER WARNING: Rape of a minor, also nudity of a minor. How I long for the day when I didn't have to open my sporkings with a disclaimer this appalling. :(

The next chapter opens with yet another meaningless and honestly quite silly metaphor, as Zarq sneaks around “silent as starlight”. Because starlight is known for not making a lot of noise, I guess? She wanders around lost for a while, and eventually finds her way to the “messenger byre” where the winged dragons are kept. I guess these ones don’t have their venom sacs, since it’s never been suggested she do the hanky-panky with them.

Cue some more really dumb “poetic” description:

A vast black shoal of cloud was swallowing the moon at one end and disgorging stars at the other, and the sky growled like a great, uneasy dog.

So there’s a cloud which is also a dog busy growling while eating the moon and shitting out stars. Gotcha. Fun fact – I believe this is the first time the author has ever used the word “dog”. Before now all dogs have been referred to as “curs”.

 Zarq is all scared and imagining she sees Inquisitors about to swoop down on her, Dementor-style. But there’s nobody around so she steals a set of reins and a knife, sneaks into the “cottage” (they have cottages now?) where the stable hands live, where she assaults a thirteen year old kid, ties him up, and holds him at knifepoint. The other stable hand, who is of course a big gross man, is still asleep and – oh, for fuck’s sake. The kid is nude and Zarq sees welts on his backside and bite marks on his back, along with blood coming out of his crack and a smell of “semen and excrement”. Yep, she’s just attacked and tied up a rape victim.

*massages forehead*

As if that wasn’t enough, Zarq continues to pile it on by expositing to the reader that the kid is so ready to give up and submit to her because he’s used to submitting because he’s, like, a rape victim and stuff.

…The cigarette lighter I keep on my desk has suddenly begun to look very attractive.

Moving on, Zarq finds out the kid’s name is Ryn and tells him they’re both going to fly out of there together. But she still has to deal with the rapist guy in case he wakes up. Rather than just tie him up and gag him while he’s snoring, she grabs a “brass candlestick” and prepares to bash him over the head with it.

Wait, they have candlesticks now? In a stable? Does the author not know that open flames in a stable are pretty much the worst idea ever, right up there with smoking at a petrol station? Come on – we’ve all read Black Beauty, and we all remember the tragic scene where the stable burns to the ground because some jackass decided to light up his pipe.

Of course you remember that scene! Two innocent horses died and Black Beauty barely made it out of there alive thanks to the bravery of James Howard the stable hand! Does nobody read the classics any more?

Humph.

Anyway, so Zarq hesitates because she doesn’t like the idea of attacking Colonel Mustard- uh, the rapist guy – while he’s asleep. She reflects that she has “reason enough to do it” because of “the marks on Ryn’s body”, adding that she doesn’t like the idea of striking a sleeping man regardless and she hopes this says “something good about me.”

No it doesn’t. This is contrived, manipulative, and easily one of the most distasteful things the author’s pulled on us so far. Sure the dragonsex was nasty, but at least that’s not something that happens in real life to real people!

The, um, moral quandary ends when the guy starts to wake up and Zarq hits him anyway and knocks him out. She then ties him to his hammock so he won’t be able to get out of it “when” he wakes up. Yeah, because bashing people over the head hard enough to knock them unconscious never leaves them too dead or brain-damaged to get out of bed afterwards. (Oh, and the guy’s apparently drunk as well. Evil Guys – Now With 60% More Stereotype! Seriously, at least half the Evil Guys in this trilogy are also drunks for some reason). While she’s doing this she considers cutting the guy’s dick off, but decides against it because that would be “too messy”. Because hitting him while he was asleep wasn’t okay, but mutilating him after you’ve bashed his head in with a candlestick is just fine and dandy except for the inconvenient blood. I just love how quickly she goes from Morally Superior Hero to coldly calculating psycho. Literally the flip of a switch.

With that out of the way, Zarq takes Ryn the Rape Victim out into the “byre” (a name that immediately makes me picture cows, can’t imagine why) and untethers one of the dragons. Turns out they keep them restrained with “nose barbells”. In other words, exactly what they do with cows.

So now the dragons are cows? Well they’re living in a byre and sporting nose rings, so what else are you gonna call it? Do they give milk as well?

Zarq puts a bridle and saddle on the dragon (no, it’s not explained how she knows how to do this), then nabs a second dragon and saddles that one up too. She grabs all the rest of them, and gets the lot of them tethered together like a camel train. Apparently she thinks this will work because dragons like walking in lines randomly… it’s never been mentioned before, and only pops up now when it’s convenient to the plot. They really are just coming off as winged horses now. Or possibly cows. The dragons are excited by the prospect of getting to fly, as their “ear slits dilate[d]” eagerly. Wait, is that even how ear slits work? Whatever an ear slit even is?

Finally Zarq negotiates with Ryn the Rape Victim, who says he’ll have to ride the lead dragon and Zarq can take the one behind him. She agrees to this, but decides to threaten him anyway, saying that if he tries anything on she’ll throw her knife at him and get him right in the ribs. Privately she acknowledges that there’s no way she could actually do that because the knife is curved, but the kid buys it anyway.

But she could totally bag him with a proper throwing knife. Because she knows all about knife-throwing, I’m sure.

The two of them mount up, and apparently dragons respond to verbal commands as Zarq tells hers to fold her wings and lift up a leg so Zarq can use it as a step. Once she’s on the dragon she asks Ryn the Rape Victim how she’s supposed to get the thing to take off, and he responds by staring at her “as if I were yolkbrained”.

I haven’t mentioned it before, but calling someone “yolkbrained” is pretty much everybody’s go-to insult in this trilogy. I’ve pretty much tuned it out by now.

After some blah-blah about how they’re going to take off, they manage to get airborne. Ryn is still naked, by the way, and Zarq helpfully describes him as looking like “a freshly wittled arrow lying slender and bare”.

Pardon me while I shudder violently for several minutes.

They fly for Savga’s village, where they come in for a landing. Unfortunately they take it too fast and the whole lot of them crash. Zarq’s dragon breaks a leg and gets her nose ring torn right out, and we get a nasty graphic description of torn cartilage and bone fragments and such. All the other dragons have had their noses ripped up too.

Nice work, Zarq. Your latest brilliant scheme just severely injured a bunch of poor innocent dragons.

Ryn helps her get them all restrained by “bolting” their wings to their saddles, and Zarq runs off for the village. And – oh no – Savga comes rushing out to meet her. Fuck off, kid! No, I don’t want to see a sickly sweet reuni- ugh, too late.

Zarq tells the villagers she’s stolen all the Clutch’s messenger dragons and needs help getting them to the “myazedo in the hills”. I have no idea what a myazedo is, but basically this means she wants to give them to the rebels. Savga immediately asks if this means Zarq is taking her to her mother, and when Zarq reluctantly says yes the kid starts hugging her leg “adorably”. Gag.

As Zarq enters the village proper she’s confronted by none other than the dragonmaster. (No, he still doesn’t have a name. Maybe I should call him Lance). Typically, he’s in a foul mood. He explains that he went looking for her after Gen told him where he’d left her and “the puling kitten” (any relation to a mewling quim?). But by the time he got there they were both gone.  Zarq tells him he’s gotta help her get the dragons to the rebels, and he’s rightly pissed when he finds out she’s managed to injure them all. Someone else adds that the “Wet” is coming, hence the brewing storm, but Zarq continues to argue with the dragonmaster. She throws it in his face that she’s the one who “procure[d]” the dragons, and he snaps back that she stole them. Zarq says nu-uh, they’re her dragons and you “can’t steal what you own”, and is he coming or not.

Naturally the answer is yes.

And naturally Zarq’s plan will end in disaster. I mean, come on. Flying six injured dragons right into a huge thunderstorm? That couldn’t possibly be a really bad idea.