SilasSilverstrike

the way that when holt and ash meld senses, holt gain some of ash's discerning nature.

idk this detail is running rent free in my brain. as it should.

"Banishment is almost like leaving your childhood home for college, so missing home is synonyms with refusing to grow up."

"Home is where the heart is, NEVERRR stones or woods. Human are basic and bland like that"

And i don't want to sound like an asshole but how many writers do read history?

Because banishment was adjacent to execution.

An entire community rejects you in the extreme. At best, when you do find a new place to life in, and then these people never thought "Hey why would his community throw him out? better never find out" and kicked you, everything you built in your previous community jobs and marriage and love and children or even a friend a connection with any amount of honest rapport, and oh don't even forget every trust every smile every hello and good morning? you have to HARD earn that.

Oh that IF you didn't fall under prejudice from how you look what you beleive in is there a historical blood and alllll that.

And if you do fall under any of these? good luck! you can't go back home. They treat you like a walking corpse.

Even if you don't read history- maybe banishment system didn't cross you (it happens)- bare minimum of putting yourself in the banished shoes would have you go "this fucking sucks. it is dehumanising, almost"

and then he turn around and shoot down everything ferrucio suggests on sight.

If you want that- you could pick Quintus, the one who led the riders at their darkest time in history, and the only surviving paragon of the worst incursion ever.

Or that emerald paragon (forgot her name) who grabbed the entirety of the emerald force in the order to cure as much of the earth as possible until her very spirit was crippled.

You could squeeze in TALIA and even Adaskar before Holt.

But Holt has one thing over all these legendary leaders (At least of his time): his mark is undeniable.

Adaskar fell an Elder but that is a feat far too big and too removed for the average rider to envision. Talia restarted the ventures into the depths as quarter of world fight her over it- but with the scourge having control over emerald magic, her legend might be overshadowed by Vald's breaking the final boundary and whomever figure out the cave-ins issue; the ones who will make the ventures count.

talia is a victim of holt's rapid egotism who can't do anything about the justice system that dehumanises an entire class of her people. and less so about the nobles who would support this system with their very lives.

she also -she and no one else. remember that it is HER- can establish a full-on election system that respects everyone voices. from the red range to the sunset sea. nobles who?

oh and these two statements happed within 6 months.

i get the story trying to argue how petty for human to fight among themself and all that.

but eh. if miller gave talia other than burning innocents in their own home AND that thrall is an elder-killer tier threat with the only forces who can even look at him busy with an even pettier wars, and lord jocquel has no option but to share in them. i would agree

but he did all that. so how wrong it is to leave the paragons to deal with the threat while you handle what (very reasonably) appear as a tyrant turning magic against mortal defenseless men?

everyday we get closer to neveh the inheritor of ice's domain.

+ i hope and i pray that she goes back to eso. not to lead with him but to lounge about and annoy dowid together.

vs

rake waking up from a dream of his childhood feeling his 100 year long draconic form alien and awkward. -> talia's voice tearing earth as if a dragon roared -> holt fighting like a dragon tearing and biting until his opponents is nothing but mangled flesh.

~

vald 100 years ago: already a paragon, a process infamously decades long.