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Chapter 15
He had killed so many people over the centuries. Lords and magistrates, magi and occultists, rich and poor, noble and common, men and women and children from every walk of life. But he had never killed an Emperor before. Time to rectify that.
Chapter 15 summary: Kylon stands in the courtyard and watches as people gather for the signing of the peace treaty. He expresses to his wife how uneasy he is over everything. We switch over to Ark, who is on edge, too.
Caina and Corvalis look throughout the crowd to try and find Sicarion. After a while, Caina suggests that they should go up onto the roof, because nobody ever looks up there. They go, and find... another Caina. Obviously it's Sicarion. He brags for a while about the damage he's done before revealing his ace of the power to transform into anything that frightens the viewer the most. Caina sees Halfdan, who blames Caina for his death, while it's obvious Halfdan sees his sister. Despite Sicarion having told them as much not even a minute earlier, it still takes Caina too long to figure this out. Caina tries to fight against the spell, but it's too powerful. In the end, she grabs Corvalis, and the two of them jump off the roof.
Sicarion is surprised when they jump, and a little disappointed that he doesn't see their bodies on the ground below. But then he sees the canal, and decides that they must have fallen into the water and been swept away. He doesn't think much about them anymore, and focuses his energy on killing the emperor.
Chapter 16
Jadriga raised the staff and began to speak the final words of the spell, power flaring to life around her.
Chapter 16 summary: Everybody stands around and watches as the emperor comes out. He starts to give a speech before fake!Caina comes out and loudly announces exactly who she is. But then she transforms into Tanya, but only Tanya as she had been when Ark and Caina had rescued her from Jadriga. Ark is stupid confused because the real Tanya is by his side, looking healthy as ever. Claudia sees her father, and Kylon sees his sister. Sicarion watches the chaos around him and laughs.
Jadriga watches everything from afar, happy with the distraction he was creating. She then starts her spell.
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Chapter 9
Kylon frowned.
Oh boy. I can't wait for more unnecessary infodumping.
“Meet me at the Magisterium chapterhouse,” said Andromache. “But first find the spy and kill her.”
Chapter 9 summary: The bad guys sit around and watch as the people drag Caina out from the burning warehouse. They're like “We found the Moroaica like you asked us to, boss!” But Kylon is like “You fools! You think that I don't know what Jadriga looks like!”
Caina knows that she's in a pickle. So she pretends to be Jadriga from what little exposure she had to the woman. Everybody buys it... except for Kylon, who apparently suffers no fools.
However, Caina's ruse is blown when Kylon's sister, Andromache, tries to ask about some tomb, which had been promised to her by Jadriga. However, when Caina doesn't know, Kylon calls Caina out on her bullshit. She tells them that she's just some merchant's daughter, who was caught up in this, and then mistaken. And since you'd be dense not to understand that they were going to kill her, she played along.
Andromache then starts trying to choke Caina out, but Kylon stops her because he thinks that Caina could have more answers than she's letting on. In the resulting confusion, Caina manages to run off. Kylon watches her go, but he's more concerned with his sister. He's angry that she would have hurt Caina, and randomly thinks that Caina could be a spy. But he also thinks that she's a dumbass merchant's daughter. The narration can literally not make up its mind about how he feels about Caina.
Chapter 10
The night would belong to the Ghosts.
Chapter 10 summary: Caina knows that she's all out of options; she must return to the safehouse to pick up her shadowcloak, just to get away from these psychopaths. However, Kylon gives chase, which means that Caina is on the defense again. She manages to buy herself a little bit of time by luring him into a warehouse and then pushes some boxes onto him. It would have killed a normal person, but he's magic, so he's at best bruised.
Caina then goes to the safehouse, where she puts on the cloak, and then lights up a vase full of stuff Radist had made that would explode if exposed to air, and would turn into a powerful bomb if also set on fire at the same time.
Kylon is confused when Caina goes into the building (the safehouse) and he can no longer feel her. He goes in after her, only to find a curious “lamp” being burned, but no Caina. He just realizes what it is seconds before it explodes.
He returns to Andromache, who is upset to realize that he failed to kill one woman. Kylon tells them what happened, but now they know that there are people like that out there, and they won't be caught unaware again.
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Chapter 5
"Find the Moroaica," said Andromache, "and tell her that I have arrived."
Chapter 5 summary: We jump over to a new character, Kylon. I was on board with the chapter when it was just him fighting. But after he fought, he returned to his compadres who are working to take over the city. And what happened after that was just an absolute infodump of all of this stuff about the bad guys. And I get that you should work to build up the villains in any story. But this is not the way to do it. Too much information all at once, I'm not sure what is and isn't going to be relevant later. It was a situation of “in one ear and out the other” almost as soon as I finished reading a sentence.
They're bad guys, who are using magic to take over the city. Move on.
Chapter 6
The blast had flung Caina against the far wall, beneath some beams that had fallen at an angle. It was only the sheerest luck that she had not been killed or crippled.
We call that being an author darling.
You can't kill off your main character.
Yet as spies, they had failed miserably. Rezir had somehow smuggled thousands of his soldiers into the city, using them in his treacherous attack.
To be fair, some psycho witch was trying to open up a literal portal to hell. Of course you'd be distracted over that vs a couple of slave ships.
The men advanced on her. Caina just had time to wonder what the devil was going on, and then she turned and ran.
Chapter 6 summary: Caina wakes up. Despite the fact that she was clearly hit hard enough for her to black out, and couldn't physically move, she finds that she wasn't actually pinned down by falling debris. She is physically fine now. Randomly.
Anyway, she gets up and knows that she can't wander the streets in search of Nick in her now raggedy, dirty dress, so she puts on the armor of one of the dead soldiers nearby. However, she's quickly picked up by some random passing soldiers, who think her a deserter. They take her to their squad leader, who commands that the soldiers all fall in line and start to march.
Caina does this for a while, and then she pretends to trip and knock into a bunch of others. In the distraction, she slips behind some stuff. The squad leader and one other are angry that she would have deserted, and go into the warehouse after her. But Caina sneaks up behind first one then the other and murders them. Caina has a moment of panic over needing to kill them, but then reminds herself that they would have killed her.
She continues on for a little bit in search of Nick before she comes across three men. One of them is clearly some sort of a magi, and he seems to recognize Caina. Or at least, he thinks he does. Caina is positive that she's never seen these guys before. The man orders Caina be taken, although it kind of sounds like they still think her to be the other person, and I'm positive they're not going to hurt her.
Rattle Can Resurgence. . Ballpoint pen, watercolor & color pencil on Mylar. Inspired by an old burner piece I saw below the “L” in Chicago, 30 years ago.... . #artbytai #penart #pendrawing #kylon #rattlecan #drawing https://www.instagram.com/p/CPkLy23hgRu/?utm_medium=tumblr
