One flesh, one end, bitch.

[thebonekingdom]

New Pacat's interview just dropped in a new french magazine dedicated to fantasy, called "Chimères"!

Here is the translated interview >>

Translated by Drizzling(discord) and I. There might be some mistakes as English is not our first language. <3

[thebonekingdom]

Some of my Dark Rise Headcanons

Trans FTM Visander in every world. 🏳️‍⚧️

James would wear long gel nails with heavy nail art in modern time, with pretty charms and soft colours. (This is my love for pretty nails talking) 💅

Will & James talks in the old world language together so people can't understand them (I mean, it'd be such a shame to not take advantage of this ability) (once they remember everything ofc)

Will is the less flexible person ever. He tries his best, but it's definitely not his forte (it just makes so much sense in my head)

Will drinks tea brewed the Chinese way while James drinks tea brewed the English way (thanks to the person who asked 'tea or coffee' for Wames on the discord server 🤣)

What are yours??? 👀

[thebonekingdom]

Choose your Dark Rise Rare-pairing ✨️

Duval/Gauhar (Violet's mother)

Nathaniel/Cyprian

Sarcean/Anharion/Visander

Emery/James

Grace/Sarah

Kettering/Sloane

Voting ended onJun 17, 2024

I don't even know what I would choose tbh 🧜‍♀️

[thebonekingdom]

"You could run from your enemies. You couldn't run from yourself." -Dark Rise 1

What do you think will happen in book 3? Make your predictions and theories ✨️

[thebonekingdom]

'No one would ever join you by choice. Not if they knew what you were.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Dead,’ said the Queen. ‘I am going to kill you. I won’t stop until I do it. There is nowhere you will be able to rest. I will hunt you down, kill you as many times as I have to. It’s going to be me. My sword in you, Sarcean. The Light will always stand against you.’

‘The Light?’ said Sarcean. ‘Today I have put out the sun.’

— Dark Heir

[thebonekingdom]

Part. 2: Some more infos based on Sarcean/Will's and other characters' memories and feelings about the old world. [not chronological]

[The first part — Compilation of Sarcean's memories from book 2, more or less chronologically]

1. Will/Sarcean

2. James/Anharion

3. Visander

4. The Collar

Will

• In the past, "Anharion's armour had been gold." but later, Sarcean had "dressed him in red [...] as the gashes that can never mar [his] skin."

• Contemplating a drawing of the Dark Palace, Will remembers watching "the corruscating domes of magic in the distance" that were "assailed by ravenous shadows" and would soon "flicker and go out".

• The white unicorn horn Will saw with Violet in the Hall, made him remember a battlefield where unicorns were "charging into an oncoming rush of black shadows", some with "armoured riders" and others using their horns like "deadly spears.". He knew they wouldn't survive but were "charging anyway, impossibly brave.".

• When he touched the Shadow Stone, he saw a vision showing the four thrones of the Hall, with "four resplendent figures sitting in them.". However the vision morphed into something different and three of the figures turned into "horrific shadow versions of themselves" with a figure "with a pale crown and eyes of black flame" rising above them all.

• At Bowhile, when the shadow kings raced towards them, Will felt the fact that "he was their master" and "maker" and he saw "that ancient battlefield under a red sky where an army of shadows stretched across the land.". His steed was "a giant scaled creature that winged across the sky" and the shadows were "his to command, on the cusp of victory.".

James

• James doesn't remember his dreams, but when he wakes up, he can't move "trapped in sleep, but awake". It's as if "there's a great power bending over [him]" that is whispering "—I will always—". He can't finish talking but Will's inner thought complete "Find you. Try to run.".

• When Sinclair (in Sloane's body), put the collar on James, he remembered what he said to Sarcean the day he arrested him, "Try to run [...] I will always find you.". He also saw a vision of Sarcean, "a man he'd fought, and hated, even as he'd given himself in aching surrender.". "He remembered the feeling of being taken" and the collar flooded him with a power that "wasn't his own" but "came from the collar" and "connected him to a power so immense it seemed endless.". "He hated how good it felt.".

However, to his surprise, he felt "no compulsion [...] nothing at all.", and to Sinclair's confusion James, now with his memories back, says the collar does control the betrayer, but that "the Dark King is its master". James realised "the stories were lies" and no matter "who put the collar around his neck [...] [it] had only one master".

• When James[with his memories] went to save Will and pushed his power into him, "James' magic connected to the vast reservoir of [Will's] own."

Visander

• When he returned, Visander remembered the "Queen's cold blue eyes on him" and "the sharp pain as she ran the sword through his chest" for him to return. Back then, he didn't have the time "to say goodbye" and "embrace Indeviel" for the last time, but he saw "her swords in his guts" when he looked down at himself. He closed his eyes and the next thing he knew, he was "opening them in —a coffin—".

• Indeviel was Visander's companion in the war. He was by his side when "the shadows [were] sweeping over the field at Garayan.". They fought together and he remembered, years after their first encounter, the "pale bodies of slain unicorns, torn apart by lion claws" which Indeviel had sworn vengeance against.

• When Visander finally came face to face with Will, he said to him that he is "the same age now as [he] was when [Sarcean/Will]⁴ killed his family" [⁴Visander says "you", he doesn't make a difference between Will and Sarcean.]

The Collar

• According to Gauthier's ancestors, the descendant of Anharion's executioner, the collar didn't open when he got killed and he had to "saw off the Betrayer's head to get it.".

• The collar doesn't work on people who aren't Anharion, even if "plenty [...] have tried to put it on others." but its power seemed to have "sucked [Gauthier] dry of anything but the desire to take and to hold." and "hollowed him out like a husk."

[I do think it works a little bit like the One Ring in lotr. People crave to use and have it, but those who aren't powerful enough to whithstand its power, are suffering from it. It only has one master after all.]

[I have not re-read the two books for this and only found those infos by researching words on the ebook version, so I probably missed some! Feel free to add them in the comments if you want <3]

[thebonekingdom]

Here’s a "little" compilation of what we know from Will/Sarcean’s memories of his past life in Dark Heir (Because I thought it could maybe help us untangle what is true or not about the old world and Sarcean):

In his first life, Sarcean was the Dark General, one of the army commanders, of the Sun King. He had been the one tasked with taking care of the Sun King's secret deeds and was feared by most. [Edit: he also was "lithe as a fish" and had long silky black hair. 🧜‍♀️]

He was also friend with Anharion, who wouldn't be called that way until much later, "in the far future".

At the time "he wasn't wearing the Collar. The affection in his eyes was real.", and while an intimate relationship between the two was forbidden, due to the vows Anharion had taken, it didn't stop him from sometimes watching him "like this". His words had "the sweetest hint of flirtation"¹ he "offered to no one else"¹ but Sarcean. [¹This last quote is from when Will is freshly awake, but the narration makes it clear that it still is Sarcean's memory and not an interpretation from Will. It says "Sarcean knew well that Anharion would never—"]

When Sarcean met Anharion under a spray of orange blossom, he was already entertaining the idea of him becoming king and Anharion being his queen. He asked him what he thought about it, becoming his queen, and "the words were [...] too soft to be entirely playful".

Later, during a procession, not long before the lady-to-be-Queen arrived, Sarcean had a plan and wanted to take the "true secret that lay deep in the heart of the palace" to use it to do something unmentioned. [But that we can guess following the following events in the pit.]

But for that, he was waiting for the lady to arrive, and then he could set it in motion.

[Did that procession happen before or after his first meeting with the lady, I can’t say for sure.]

The Sun King was riding first "with a gold mask covering his face". Then followed his golden general, Anharion, and next "white-cloaked soldiers".

Sarcean was the only one dressed in black on his equally black steed Valdithar.

This is during this procession that he felt Visander eyes on him, the new Sun guard who "shared Anharion's colouring" and decided that if he was feeling magnanimous, he might give him his attention later. Which he eventually did.

When he first met the lady, Sarcean had carefully chosen a time "when the Sun King would be absent." and feigned stumbling upon the lady by accident.

She wasn't what he had excepted, a "formidable sorceress", on the contrary she was a "young lady, stepping unawares into a darkly tangled web.".

She told him she wasn't believing the rumors about him, unknowing he was Sarcean from what he knows. He felt surprised and after she continued talking, he was watching in shock and "had never felt anything like this sweet exhilaration".

They spent a night together and, later, he left the palace for months and only came back when she called to him, knowing it was a trap.

His feelings for her were still sharp and intense, and proximity to her was painful.

When he told her he knew of the trap, she "sounded like it hurt her" when she asked him why did he come if he knew.

It's Anharion who put the manacles on his wrists, which was like being "braced for the blow, and instead to receive a knife to the heart". His beauty was painful to look at, "Yet Sarcean had never been able to look away.".

The Sun King had told them Sarcean had tried to "ensorcell [him] against his will" and Sarcean asked "Is that what he told you?" and he almost felt pride that the king considered him "enough of a threat" that he would "move openly against him." But he also felt anger, and when facing the Sun King, his "anger burned like acid in his veins".

When Sarcean asked Anharion what he would do if he fought instead of surrendering, Anharion replied “You know my power is the greater.”, and when he asked about what if he ran, Anharion told him. “I will find you. [...] I will always find you, try to run.”

[It is interesting to note that this last quote is the one James remembers/hears when the collar closes around his throat.]

Being arrested was the first step of his plan and as he knew it, the Sun King locked him beneath the throne room, where blood and "the memory of blood" remains and he knows that "in blood there is a great deal of power.". He had studied the place.

When the King and his court left for Garayan, it's Visander who came to him to help him out, even as Sarcean secretly hoped it would be Anharion, and this is when he killed his last alive ally for him to be reborn.

The Sun King was furious about Sarcean's escape and his now dead followers were "brought out [of the pit] and interred".

Now, his followers would rise again when Sarcean would need them the most and it would be directly inside the Palace's magical defence to help him take it.

According to Kettering, he "warred with the Sun Kingdom for years before he conquered it"². [²Not out of Sarcean's memories, but to have little guess about the time that has passed]

Once he took the Palace, "a great deal of time" had passed since Sarcean was cast out of it. At this point, the Sun King had fled with Anharion, his stewards and inner guards.

When he stepped into the throne room, it was "piled with the dead" and "the slaughter pleased him". He liked the irony of a Dark Guard to replace the Sun Guard and a Dark King to replace the Sun King.

In here, he faced the Queen and her champion, Visander, and in that moment, she told him "You will never be the true king. Those who serve you will only ever be unwilling slaves. No one would ever join you by choice. Not if they knew what you were." ("And what is that?" "Dead" said the Queen)

"Decades later"³ Sarcean "commanded his army to die when he did"³ and when he was scrying, Anharion was the one who stood guard since "his loyalty was absolute, because he was bound by the Collar."

[³Again for time purpose, said in the narration but not 100% sure if it’s a memory or an interpretation of what Will was told.]

Somewhere during his story, the Queen said "I cannot return when I am called to fight. So I will have a child." This quote was written on her medallion. [I believe she would have said that near the end of Sarcean first life or after his first death, but I could be wrong.]