antishurtugal_reborn | Sinner Sporking: Part Seven (Reply)

In the next chapter we’re still with Drago and Zenith. She’s in a bad way, as you would expect, but at least they’re within sight of the forest at last. Drago is encouraged, but Zenith isn’t, because the village where Niah was murdered is now part of the forest (remember how Azhure blew the whole place into a smoking crater with a bunch of children trapped inside and then Faraday planted trees over the top? Yeah). As such, this is actually where Niah is at her strongest and now the bitch is crowing about how soon Zenith will die for good. Drago, oblivious, takes her into the forest anyway. We get a page of blah blah about how special and amazing and wonderful the forest is and then the two of them start walking. Eventually they come to the grove Faraday planted over Niah’s grave (well isn’t that convenient?), whereupon Zenith flips the fuck out and starts reliving Niah’s death. Drago tries to help her, but can’t, and gets super pissed (I would).

Then all of a sudden they’re intruded upon by someone who says it’s no use. I was bracing myself to see WolfStar again, but what do you know – it’s none other than “Goodwife Renkin”, the farmer’s wife who I called Hazel in the last spork because the author never bothered to give her a proper name. Apparently she’s been wandering in the forest all this time, and now she’s come to help out. Thank goodness. I never thought I’d be glad to see the woman, and yet here we are.

She starts tending to Zenith, but then starts going off at Drago in a completely unnecessary fashion, probing him about whether he still envies Caelum and wants to take his place. Whereupon guess who else shows up? It’s Faradeer! aka Faraday, now reincarnated as a red doe. I’m still going to call her Faradeer though.

Hazel tells Faradeer that Zenith needs help. She comes over and has a good hard stare at the sack Drago is carrying before turning her attention to Zenith. Drago thinks about what an amazing person she was in life, and wonders if she regrets the whole being in love with Axis thing. Faradeer gives him a look, and for a moment he can see something of the woman she used to be before she starts talking telepathically. She can see what’s wrong with Zenith but ultimately decides she can’t do anything about it. Hazel meanwhile keeps being a jerk to Drago, calling him a sinner and accusing him of not saving Zenith from being raped. The poor guy manages to contain himself – unlike his father – and tells them Zenith was trying to get to the island where StarDrifter is. Faradeer says she might be able to summon the douche, and Drago decides he’d better get going and leave them to take care of his sister. Faradeer warns him about the contents of his sack, but he shrugs her off and runs away.

The next chapter cuts to – oh no. StarDrifter. As if WolfStar and Cosmo weren’t bad enough.

We learn that he’s been living on the Island of Mist and Memory ever since the end of the war and has been enjoying a peaceful existence, but he misses his grandkids. Oh, and this is rich. Remember how in the last trilogy the creep promised himself he’d have his granddaughter if he couldn’t have Azhure? Well, RiverStar apparently decided she was going to seduce him when she was just thirteen, namely by sneaking into his bed and getting handsy, and he was “so repelled by the experience that he had lost any desire for her”. Who the hell is this guy and what has he done with StarDrifter? Also, I hope you enjoyed getting a taste of your own medicine, you rapist piece of shit.

Anyway, so now he’s all lonely. Boohoo. Then he suddenly hears someone calling for him. He has a vision of the Mother and Faraday, calling for him to come and help. Conveniently a wormhole thingy has opened up so he steps through it and is teleported to the forest. Zenith is still thrashing around, and Hazel explains the situation. StarDrifter can see she’s been assaulted, and on finding out she was raped by WolfStar he loses his shit. You’re a fine one to talk, mister. On being told Zenith thought he could help her, he picks her up and notices her suddenly relax, as if the struggle is now over. But who has won? He says he’s taking her back to the island, and they’d better hope he’s doing the right thing.

Okay, so now StarDrifter is actually acting like a decent person and is even being a bit heroic. Which is nice except that it’s so wildly out of character that it feels like he’s been replaced between books. Or that a different author has taken over the writing duties. I don’t get it, and it’s really jarring.

The next chapter cuts back to Caelum, who’s busy losing his shit because none of the people he sent out have found any trace of Drago. There’s no sign of Zenith either, and he briefly wonders if WolfStar found her “Or was she hiding from her grandfather in some enchanted bolthole?” I really hate how casually this is phrased, like it’s no big deal that she has to HIDE to avoid being raped by her own grandfather. But hell if “compassionate” Caelum gives a shit. Yeah, remember how the author called him that in the last book? Harhar, it is to laugh.

Instead he just keeps raging about Drago, and finally orders for word to be sent to Isfrael in case Drago’s hiding in the forest. He also asks Askam to stick around because “I have need of a sharp mind”. LOLWUT? Are we even talking about the same guy here?

Askam leaves after some unfunny banter, and Caelum sits by himself and broods for a while. He wonders if he can use Azhure’s murder puppies to hunt the fugitive down, but “No, Azhure had told him a long time ago that the hounds could never be set to hunt mortals”. Um, WHAT? They did that all the time in the last trilogy, you liar! What the hell is this even?

Instead he starts messing with his magic ring, which we’re told is a duplicate of the one Axis wears, and tells it to show him a “Song for scrying”. Oh yeah, I know that one! I think the lyrics go “Drama Kopa” or something like that.

The ring obliges, and Caelum… doesn’t sing it? Instead he just listens to it in his head and a very convenient holographic map of the country appears. With a built-in voice activated GPS, no less. He tells it to find Drago, but nothing. He decides to try again using Drago’s original name, but when he asks for DragonStar the map takes him into a scary void where there’s an invisible super powerful Something. It calls him pathetic and then starts threatening to kill him and rape his corpse. Wow, that last bit was so unnecessary.

Caelum freaks out and ends the spell, and then has a meeting with SpikeFeather. Remember him? No, probably not. Caelum asks him if Drago’s down in the waterways underground, but the answer is no. SpikeFeather reports that nothing noteworthy has happened at the Star Gate either.

We’re almost at the halfway point by now, by the way. Not that much has actually happened.

Caelum goes to bed and has a dream about hunting with his family. But then it all turns nasty and he’s the one being hunted. The hunter appears and it’s an utterly generic guy in black armour on a black horse (seriously). Caelum yells “DragonStar!” and the chapter ends.

The next one cuts to Drago, who has no idea where he’s going but feels an urge to head southward. For some reason Faradeer is following him, which bothers him. Along the way he has to eat berries and such, and at one point catches a fish which he has to eat raw. We get a needlessly disgusting description of that, before Drago moves on to a little self-reflection. He thinks about how his whole life he’s been trapped and never given the opportunity to contribute anything. This makes him bitter, as you’d expect, as he thinks about how he could’ve been a great Enchanter (why would you want to? Those guys are completely fucking useless), but instead he’s some pathetic fugitive.

He holds onto the sack and wonders how he can use the thing that’s inside it, then falls asleep and has a dream. Like Caelum he dreams about hunting, except he’s hunting down Axis and Azhure and Caelum and WolfStar and basically everyone else who’s ever screwed him over. He keeps having this dream over the next few days and thoroughly enjoys it because it makes him feel powerful for the first time.

During the day he thinks about how he was one of the most powerful Enchanters ever born, and that he still has all that power inside him – he just can’t access it. But maybe there’s a way, and he starts to obsess over the idea. Meanwhile he keeps having the hunting dreams and eventually realises his hunting hawks are the children WolfStar threw through the gate. He decides they’re just like him, and that they all deserve revenge on WolfStar, but they’ll need a leader to bring them back through the Star Gate.

Drago decides to go ahead with it, and becomes convinced that the gate will fix the curse Azhure put on him. It’s foolproof!

Except it’s not, because we cut away for some completely unprofessional omniscient narration in which the author blandly explains that actually the item in the sack is messing with his mind because it really really wants to go through the gate, and it’s been keeping him hidden all this time.

It’s the Rainbow Sceptre, of course.

Faradeer knows about it, which is why she’s following him, and she has no idea what to do.

This cannot end well, and it won’t.

The next chapter is called Niah Triumphant. Dude, spoilers!

We learn that StarDickhead took Zenith back to the island and put her to bed under the care of a couple of priestesses. She stays out of it for a couple of days, then wakes up… and she’s Niah now. Well shit.

She’s pretty happy to be back, and blithely tells StarDrifter that Zenith was only ever an extension of her and didn’t count as a person. She also crows about being pregnant by WolfStar again, whereupon StarDrifter has the gall to take her to task over the rape (what, so rape is only okay when you do it, you douche?).

Instead of doing anything about the situation, he throws a sulk and storms out. He goes off by himself and thinks about how Niah is full of shit and is just possessing poor Zenith, and that Zenith must be rescued. In a rather nicely written bit, it’s stated that he feels a “far more destructive” emotion, which is the need for someone to blame for all this. He blames Wolfy, but then moves on to thinking about how this is just as much Azhure’s fault. And then realises he’s crying.