#coldfire trilogy

I'm finally posting more coldfire art!

Tarrant is an ancient evil who founded the very religion Damien now follows, as part of an experiment. He deals in fear and darkness, and can be considered a dark Adept or archmage, although the truth is he's a little more than either would imply. He is not a particular safe person to be around--amoral and ruthless, he has no problem feeding on someone for their blood or their fear, and he sees little value in an individual life.

overall i liked the ending of the book. very bittersweet, plucks a good heartstring, i don't give a shit about andrys and narilka and i resent them for being the only ones who have a happy ending, but whatever, i'm so happy for you and your ugly fucking husband, it's fine.

HOWEVER, i simply Do Not Believe that damien, after everything he's been through, everything he's seen and felt, being faced with some kid who wants to kill a newly mortal gerald with a crossbow, would just. leave. and let it happen. i don't care what gerald says or does. damien walked through a nightmare hellscape to save gerald's horrible undead life. damien let gerald drink his blood and then took gerald's blood in return to feed him his fear and keep gerald alive. damien has already cried once today over gerald dying, and that was when gerald had a Big Damn Hero moment and went out with a bang. in no fucking world is damien giving up on gerald now.

at first i thought it was a ruse, or a plan he and gerald cooked up, when andrys came out with the fake head, but then damien stumbled off to mourn a 2nd time, and i just......it strains credulity! damien is not letting his friend die for this! not without a fight!

I realized I had way too many thoughts and Thoughts to fit into a coherent Discord blurb so I'm vomiting up an entire wall of text post instead. XD Stay with me here this is a bit of a journey but I promise I'm going places.

So.

I've never delved very far into the character of Almea Tarrant because there was one little detail I could never quite reconcile in a way that satisfied me, even with the precious little canon info we have on her; namely, that I always got the strong impression that she's afraid of the fae. Even in the extreme brevity of her role in the prologue of Black Sun Rising, I feel there's a clear implication that this is a woman who is fundamentally uncomfortable with the unseen powers around her, and I could never wrangle that into a satisfying place coupled with the fact that she married Gerald. It's far from impossible, not even unreasonable, to think that she might just be turning a mental blind eye of sorts to the reality of him being an adept, but that never added up to a relationship dynamic that particularly compelled me; how deep can their love story be, if she has no connection with something so fundamental to him as a person?

But now. Oh, folks, how the tables have turned.

See there's something I noticed while reading Nightborn (yes, I only just finally got to it, lol). And that something is that Ian Casca was a redhead. His red hair is commented on repeatedly - it's sort of his 'signature' visual descriptor, the same way that Gerald's grey eyes get remarked on frequently. And because I'm me and my brain draws connections at the speed of light, from pretty much the first mention of that, a part of my brain noticed 'huh. Almea was mentioned as having red hair too. Would be funny if... but nah, Casca clearly doesn't have kids and we know he's not going to live that long, can't be a real connection'.

And then. Guys, gals, and nonbinary pals. Then we hit this.

*record scratch*

EXCUSE ME? Is that a canonical confirmation that they saved this man's sperm, and very well may have used it, due to a lack of preserved genetic samples from Earth? Canonical implication that there may well be biological descendants of Ian Casca running around Erna?

Red hair's not exactly a common trait. Only 1-2% of our world's population, though who's to say if that number holds consistent in the alternate timeline that these books seem to inhabit, lol. Granted we don't know how many genetic samples they were able to save from the colony supply, or the range of variety in those samples, but... there's nothing here that says it's not a real connection. And if you apply that lens to Almea's relationship with Gerald, the potential - at least for me - is staggering.

If Almea is descended from Ian Casca, and knows it, that would certainly explain an ambivalent relationship with the fae; growing up with the albatross of your ancestor's deeds around your neck would inevitably shape your relationship with sorcery in an irrevocable way. It could also add an incredible depth to her connection with Gerald, though, because while she might not understand what it's like to be an adept, she might well understand the social stigma of it. She might know exactly what it's like to be judged by every single person you meet for something you absolutely cannot control, your whole life shaped and driven by a simple quirk of inheritance. And the sheer tragedy of it, to think that she might have wrestled with that legacy all her life and even believed that she had finally triumphed over it, to then lose her husband to the same kind of madness and die in a twisted echo of that same first Sacrifice that has been looming over her since birth -

Guys I'm chewing on the edge of my desk here. The. POTENTIAL.

So all of this to say that I have already conjured an entire new characterization out of this wild extrapolation from a few lines of text in Nightborn, and I'm now working on a fic about Gerald and Almea's first meeting. And going feral about it. Because my god, the sheer delicious ANGST that I am going to wring from this...