Talon Trash Heap

Thinking about Martin looking at this kid when he found him and gave him that name because he found something that was lost. That he like the historical saint was found in a terrible situation but could be saved.

If Tristan picked it seeing himself in that figure because he wants to help other people who were lost like him?

Also from a narrative lens, Tristan is Garret's guide so many times. He steps in when there's no way out and is the one to save the day so many times.

Another wonderful layer of this is Tristan role in the new order of Saint George is a fantastic mirror to St Anthony. The real life Saint himself took part in the newly formed order of the Franciscans despite the violence happening in the 12th century within the catholic church at the time. Great mirror to Tristan taking Garret side despite the risk.

Mist only refers to him as Riley’s Hacker Friend, which could mean 1 of 2 things: either Wes is the shady person behind Riley’s back who acts as an underground puppetmaster and was never connected to the disappearance of eighteen-year-old Wesley Higgins, or Mist was warned beforehand that there is no way better to make the terrifying Ex-Basilisk angry than to breathe towards threatening his friend. Or, somehow, a combination of the two.

Which is to say, the Archivist knew Wes. Talon did not.

Kind of hard not to take note of the newest part of Roth’s hoard, because the Archivist hoards knowledge and Roth hoards talent. Wesley Higgins was skilled enough at age fourteen to be stolen from the birthplace of St. George, the one place that Talon cannot go. Wesley Higgins only stayed in the dark about Talon’s true operations until he was sixteen, and then began working under a Talon Senior VP because keeping him in the dark any longer would be a waste. Wesley Higgins also made it no secret that he did not want to be here. Wesley Higgins managed to collect blackmail on Talon, the organization that specializes in blackmail.

The Archivist, specifically, specializes in blackmail.

There’s no way he wasn’t aware of Wes. As someone running a parallel secret organization within Talon, having a talented hacker who has no loyalty to Talon would be incredibly appealing to the Archivist. He was probably trying to poach this kid ever since he turned sixteen, but it’s hard to steal from another dragon’s hoard. It’s even harder when the thing he’s trying to steal is making it pretty damn clear that he doesn’t take kindly to dragons. Who, like most humans, wouldn’t see the difference between working for Talon and working for the Archivist when neither are human. So acquiring Wes would take time, and the Archivist has a lot of patience, but all the patience in the world doesn’t matter when Wesley Higgins was only under Roth’s employ for another two years before he dropped off the grid and was never seen again.

And sure, Roth knew where he went, because Roth knew who stole that file from St. George that so mysteriously went missing, which was then used to start Cobalt’s underground. And Roth definitely knows who blackmailed him. Wes wasn’t exactly slick in where he went. But for Roth, losing part of his hoard escaped was bad enough. He wasn’t about to admit to the rest of Talon that said part of his hoard blackmailed him and then started stealing hatchlings, because that’s how you lose your job. So Wesley Higgins stays missing. Maybe a body that looks like him mysteriously washes up in a river somewhere. And Cobalt gains a shadowy puppetmaster, shrouded in even more mystery than the ex-Basilisk itself.

The Archivist assumes that Wesley Higgins is a lost opportunity. A shame, a waste of potential, but potential doesn’t mean much, and it’s not like he would have been any more agreeable to the Archivist than he was for Roth, when the Archivist is just another dragon.

Twelve years later, Talon sends one of his lowercase-a archivists on a suicide mission to kill Cobalt. She is, to the shock of everyone including herself, left alive. About two months later, Cobalt breaks into his Vault with the Elder Wyrm’s daughter and Dr. Olsen’s son. Oh, and his little human hacker friend, whose mention made an ex-Basilisk so pale and stiff when it came from the Archivist’s mouth, which means that Cobalt actually cares about his puppetmaster. His very skilled puppermaster, considering he was able to cut a hole through his electronic security as efficiently as any of Talon’s elites. It takes hours before his own technicians can recover enough from the security cameras to get a picture of him.

And apparently the Archivist misread Wesley Higgins, because he’s been working alongside a dragon for twelve years with no issues. He’s older now, as he watches the grown man on the camera carefully leaf through the Archivist’s electronic information and steal even more company secrets than he already has, but it’s unmistakably him. The human that outran Roth, outran the Archivist, and ran straight to Cobalt.

The best thing to do for Talon, of course, would be to inform the Elder Wyrm who Cobalt’s puppermaster is. It would certainly give the Archivist more credibility with the Elder Wyrm, what with making the underground easier to pin down, and would serve a nice bonus of destabilizing Roth’s power— maybe even enough to keep him from trying to bring Dante Hill into his hoard, because the Archivist would love the chance to collect the second son of the Elder Wyrm.