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thebibliomancer · 3 years

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Tides of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 23

Tides of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because I want to know Amri’s plan!

Last times on book: Amri and co are on a quest to unite all the Gelfling against the Skeksis. They’ve succeeded with the Sifa of Cera-Na and the Dousan of the Wellspring but learn that All-Maudra Mayrin was killed by the Skeksis while they were avoiding ever going to Ha’rar. Mayrin’s eldest daughter and Skeksis loyalist Seladon has been named new All-Maudra. Fearing that the Vapra won’t rise up in resistance, the group is lost for solutions until Amri dreams he falls into the ocean and has a cryptic conversation with the urRu Swimmer.

Chapter 23

Team Naia climb a mountain but find a mysterious tower

They planned to leave that evening, when they could move under the cover of the night. Until then, Amri found a corner of the cabin and crawled under a pile of pillows, blocking out the daylight. He dreamed of the stone tree in the belly of Grot. He stood before it as it died, limbs like roots, or roots like limbs. Knowing that if he could be breathed in by the ancient thing, flow into its veins and up its trunk, when he emerged on the other side, he would be a pink blossom on the slender boughs of the Sanctuary Tree.

He heard whispers. A thousand voices, all as one. The shadows moved with infinite limbs. When he woke, it took everything he had not to slap away the spider tapping the back of his hand.

The protags are probably used to it at this point but oh no I would freak out. I do not like crawlies crawling on me.

Anyway, aside from waking up Amri for The Plan, Tavra also has a favor to ask Amri.

“In case anything should happen to me tonight. Someday, when the fires are lit. When it’s safe. Would you find my sister Brea and tell her what happened? I want her to know that I didn’t abandon her.”

“No,” he said. “I’ll make sure you get to tell her yourself.”

Has anyone in fiction ever answered otherwise?

It feels like that kind of thing only comes up so the other person can go ‘no you’re totally going to survive so you can tell her yourself’ or ‘we’ll tell her together’ or something.

Protagonists try to be optimistic about their chances, I guess.

I think I’ve seen maybe one example where a more world-weary character just instantly agreed to a request like that, recognizing the asker wanted reassurance that things would be taken care of if the worst happened.

Anyway.

Naia brings a cloak for Amri to wear when they go out and climb up a snowy mountain. Its in Silverling white and silver which Amri feels weird about since the Gelfling tribes like to color code just like people from Avatar. But he recognizes its better for the mountains so puts it on.

“Do I look like a Silverling?” he asked, pulling his hair out from inside the cloak collar.

Naia’s ears turned pink. She looked away and mumbled, “Not a bit.”

Shiiiiiiiiiiip teeeeeeeeeease.

If they hold hands at this rate, they’re going to explode.

Tae comes in and tells them its time to go, the Vapra are gathering at the citadel but neither the Skeksis nor Seladon have shown yet. And even with the Waystar trees, its going to be getting very dark on the mountain.

While the team is climbing the mountain to do the Plan with the Waystar trees, Onica is basically going to be the getaway driver. She’s staying on the boat ready to go. If anything goes wrong, they can fly off the mountain to the boat and sail away to fight another day.

This vague the Plan has multiple angles figured out. Its a good the Plan.

Onica also tells them that she believes in them. Aww. Onica encouragement is truly precious.

I’m so glad that we’ve gotten so much Onica material in this book. She’s great.

Team Naia leave the boat and the wharf (Amri looking back to see if the Swimmer shows but she does not) and hurry through the city.

As Tae had said, the Vapra of Ha’rar were already gathering near the steps that led up to the citadel. Huddled in their silver cloaks, whispering quietly among themselves. Amri heard the consistent sound of fear, and apprehension. He heard Seladon’s name, and Tavra’s. The sibilant sounds of the Skeksis Lords’ names. skekUng, skekZok. skekSil, the Chamberlain. skekSo, the Emperor.

I wonder if all of them are showing up. That’s a big gathering of Skeksises.

But the team keeps going to where Ha’rar meets the mountain and then up a narrow winding stairway.

There’s more buildings of Ha’rar even built into the mountain but the stairway becomes a steep footpath and then nothing. Just trudging through deep snow in a mountain side forest. In the dark. It’s evening. For everyone that’s not Amri or Tavra, the footing becomes really uncertain.

“I can’t see a thing. Is this what it’s been like for you, traveling in the day?” Naia asked as they reached a rocky ledge too high to step over. He made short work of it and crouched on the top, grabbing Naia’s hand and pulling her up and over. She didn’t wait for him to say yes before she added, “I didn’t realize.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “Not everywhere in Thra is caves and rocks.” Though night and ice is close enough, he thought. Or at least he hoped it would be.

They stop to look at Ha’rar, which is described as looking like a painting at this distance. Maybe a matte painting. I miss matte paintings. They were so cool.

The team has reached a point where Tavra can’t guide them anymore because the wind changes the landscape too often so she tells them to follow the Waystars’ light but be careful of hidden crags.

Tae says

“Our path is up to you now, Amri.”

Something he’d longed to hear, but now that he had, it felt heavy on his shoulders. It was up to him to guide them -- and protect them from danger. He knelt and touched the freezing stones. Under the deep snow, the mountain path still existed. He could feel its sturdiness.

That rock sense thing sure is helpful.

Super helpful.

Amri even senses a building up ahead.

Not any building Tavra is familiar with but as she says not many people travel up here so if someone were to build something, not many people would know or care.

“It would be a nice way to live if you wanted to be alone,” Naia remarked.

“And if you didn’t mind freezing,” Kylan added, teeth chattering.

Hah! Good ol’ best boy Kylan.

He’s so quiet that he doesn’t feel as present as some of the other characters but he remains relevant to the plot and delightful.

Amri leads the group towards the mysterious building, which is a simple stone and ice tower. It looks abandoned from the outside and the place doesn’t seem too occupied or furnished on the inside but Kylan can tell that the hearth has been lit within the past couple days.

So its not abandoned, just austere.

They can’t stay long without losing their opportunity to reach the Gelfling of Ha’rar before the Skeksis do but they can stay long enough to warm up with a fire and hey, there’s a hearth right there.

While Kylan started the fire, Amri touched the parchments that were strewn across the stone worktable. The soft, cold paper was thick and fibrous, covered in ink-drawn maps and charts. He recognized the coastline of the Silver Sea, from Kylan’s book, meticulous and fine-detailed, every landform and eddy and bay lovingly titled and detailed. Cera-Na and her fingerlike headlands, even the sand river they’d taken into the desert. The Caves of Grot, the Claw Mountains. The long tail of the Black River, the lifeline of the Skarith Basin.

There were other charts, too, but they were not of the land. Amri recognized stars and the Sisters, the patterns of the wind drawn across the sky where it intersected with the path of the Brothers. The pictures of the seasons and the ninets, how the phases of the moons changed course as Thra moved through time and space.

Hmmm. And the maps are drawn in ink, too, and not dream-etched.

So I have my theory about whose house this might be. I’m a bit surprised that it is where it is but I have my theory.

I mean, its got to be an urRu, right? Not a Gelfling because its ink and not BURNING WITH YOUR MIND POWERS. Probably not a Skeksis because there’s one Skeksis who could live in such simple digs without succumbing to the unfathomable urge to bedazzle everything in sight.

And would we be so lucky to get a second urRu when there’s only a few chapters left? No, no. This is clearly the oddly mountain located house of urSan the Swimmer. All the way up on a mountain, the further place from the sea.

I like that the map including the desert implies that she just swam the sand rivers too. That’s commitment to your monomania.

Amri arranges the maps on the table to they form a jumbo map of the Skarith Land and is in awe at seeing his whole world (or at least the only important continent of it apparently) all at once like this and at how much of it he has personally seen since starting his journey with the group.

But there’s work to be done so he asks Tavra if she knows what she’s going to say for the Plan.

“Yes,” the Silverling spider replied. “I don’t know if it will be enough, but it is all I have. I can only hope that my words can move the Vapra to believe that there is hope... even without my mother and Seladon to guide them.”

“They still have you,” Naia assured her. “Even if your voice is small. If Amri’s right, and if Kylan can do what he did with the Sanctuary Tree, then...”

I like that their plans are always building up off their previous plans.

But before Naia can finish explaining the Plan there’s a crunching on the snow outside and the door is slammed open by an old familiar unexpected individual.

SHE! Her. skekSa the Mariner, who is just as confused to see the Gelflings here as they are to see here.

Its a small world after all, I guess.

Her menacing eyes fell upon Amri and his friends, then the star charts and sea maps. Amri found his hand on the hilt of Tavra’s sword. skekSa reached back and slammed the door, throwing the latch so there was no escape. She leveled the room with her gaze, hot breath steaming from her nostrils.

“Tell me, and I will let you live,” she growled. “Where is urSan the Swimmer?”

Dun dun dun?

#dark crystal #the dark crystal #Tides of the Dark Crystal #liveblog #Amri #Naia #Kylan #Tae #Onica #Tavra #another character

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thebibliomancer · 3 years

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Song of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 23

Song of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because Tavra’s a spider now. It be like that sometimes.

Last times in book: On the way to Ha’rar after failing to retrieve the firca of Gyr the Song Teller from the Tomb of Relics, Kylan discovered Tavra was an imposter. He, Naia, and Amri manage to outsmart and trap her and discover that an angry spider called Krychk had taken control of Tavra’s body at the behest of the Skeksis. Kylan does a dream-stitching which puts Tavra’s mind in Krychk’s body and leaves Krychk to die in the mess it made of Tavra! He’s not sure how he did this actually!

Chapter 23

Tavra-Spider explains it all, the group turns around to go back to caves

Tavra-Spider gets right into it, no pausing to adjust to her new existential nightmare, and tells the group they’ve got to head back to the caves.

She jumps on Kylan, who understandably jumps at a spider crawling on his arm and has to fight the urge to swat her off.

“... but you’re a spider.”

Fully extended, her legs were almost the length of his fingers, but needle-thin and shining black. She easily climbed his sleeve to sit on his shoudler, wehre he could see eight faceted eyes in her tiny head, like miniature crystals set in the stone of a pendant. Her small voice was much more audible from there.

“And alive, thanks to you,” she replied. “It’s not ideal but it doesn’t matter.”

Its not ideal but it doesn’t matter

Tavra, you are killing me again!

She is taking this exceptionally well!

She’s got her duty to follow and dangit she’s gonna do it. If they don’t act, the Grottan could well be wiped out and she will not stand for that.

Tavra also mentions that Krychk had been using a Crystal shard to communicate with the Skeksis at the Castle.

The Skeksis have invented crystal cell phones and the best the Gelfling have is courier! Dangit!

Kylan, still having more trouble coming to terms with this than Tavra herself, asks Tavra what they should do with her body.

Tavra says that they’ll have to leave it (no time to pause and bury or cremate it) but to grab the Crystal shard (not that one) and a pearl amulet from within her cloak. The pearl is so that spider-she can prove her identity when they eventually reach Ha’rar. She has a lot more faith in this group’s ability to ever reach Ha’rar.

No one was eager to search the Silverling’s cloak, so Kylan did it. He found the shard and the amulet, a pearl drop on a silver chain. The pearl itself was shining, white and blue, wrapped in a silver cage shaped like tiny Vapra wings. The shard was small enough to hold in his hand, black as obsidian, though he sensed a flicker of energy from deep inside it, like the sound of voices just muffled enough to be incoherent. At first he was drawn to it, wanting to peer further into it to see what waited on the other side, but Tavra pricked him with her spider feet.

asdfsdf

She pricks him with her spider feet!

Oh my god. She’s a spider and she’s poking Kylan to stop him from looking into the crystal shard like a palantir.

Tavra tells them to destroy it AND NOT LOOK INTO IT so the three Gelfling smash the shard into dust with a large rock.

Naia thanks the finger-vines because she’s polite, they pay respects to Tavra’s body really quickly, and then they hurry back toward camp to retrieve the supplies they left there.

“I’m sorry,” [Kylan] said as they hurried back along the trail along camp. “I didn’t mean to... do whatever I did. I just didn’t want you to die. I hope you aren’t angry with me.”

“I’m not angry. My body will return to Thra. When my work is done, I will join it. Until then, I have no time to worry or complain. We need to go to the tunnels north of Domrak.”

Tavra is handling being a spider now REALLY WELL. She’s very philosophical about it.

Kylan also realizes that Krychk’s plan HAD BEEN to go to Ha’rar so it could spy on the Gelfling’s plans for the Skeksis. Which got completely upended by Kylan and Naia chasing sidequests ha ha. He also realizes that since he barely interacted with Tavra in Shadows and since Krychk was Tavra for most of Song, he doesn’t really know Tavra at all.

“Are you all right?” he asked, not knowing what else to say. He tried to imagine being in her predicament, but it was impossible. There was no way to know how Tavra felt, after the terror at the castle and being a prisoner in her own mind while Krychk controlled her withered body.

Despite all that, Tavra’s response was stoic and loyal.

“I will be all right when the Skeksis are stopped and our people are no longer living in their shadow.”

TAVRA PLS you’re too powerful! Are you the Gelfling Captain America??

They reach camp and retrieve their stuff and Tavra sets to Planning. She asks Amri what would be the fastest way to get to the tunnels that connect Domrak to the Grottan Sanctuary.

Amri isn’t much help since he’s not really familiar with the aboveground but Naia suggests Kylan check the Raunip book’s maps.

While Kylan gets out the book, Tavra decides to exposit and fill in some plot gaps.

Tavra couldn’t wrest control away for long but left the DO NOT TRUST HER message. It was vague because Krychk stopped her from finishing it. I’d guess that Tavra sensed she’d lose control so chose HER vs TAVRA because fewer letters. She also confirms that Krychk couldn’t read.

I SUSPECTED.

Tavra feels like crap for being too weak to not be body-jacked by spider but Naia tells her “Let’s agree to all be sorry and all forgiven. And then... move past this so we can stop them.”

Presumably except for Amri who might as well think ‘excuse you I’ve never done anything wrong in my life. I just got here.’

“The crystal spiders are an ancient race. I don’t know how long they have been working with the Skeksis, or how long they have been using weak and dying hosts to spy on the Gelfling. They are not under power, like the creatures that look upon the darkened Crystal or its veins. They are loyal to the Skeksis by will.”

So, yeah, like I mentioned last time. Seems like the spiders are just unapologetically evil in this take.

Also, any Gelfling could be under control of spider. The correct response is to be paranoid forever.

Kylan remembers that horner that attacked them back in Stone-in-the-Wood and wonders if that too was controlled by a spider. It did just pas out after Neech found a crunch snack in its fur.

Wow, there’s no unwoven plot beats in this book! The blue mouth tree that tried to eat Kylan and Naia inspired his trap against Tavra and the darkened Horner might have been controlled by a spider!

At the least, it demonstrates the amount of paranoia learning about the crystal-spiders would engender. Who knows whats secretly controlled by spider!

“Krychk called on the Skeksis while we were in the Tomb of Relics. When it confirmed that it had destroyed the firca, its spider brethren took Domrak by surprise. We were already headed away and in the opposite direction. The Grottan didn’t stand a chance in Domrak... Many fled north, toward the Sanctuary. That is the last I heard, this night when Krychk spoke to Lord skekLi through the Crystal shard.”

“skekLi!” Naia exclaimed. “A Skeksis... Could he be urLii’s other half?”

“I do not know. Krychk was in contact with many of the lords, but skekLi was its master so far as its mission to find you, Gurjin, and Rian. It was promised the Grottan caves as payment for its loyalty.”

SPIDER BROKE THE FIRCA I KNEW IT OR AT LEAST SUSPECTED

Also, I gotta say I love the incredibly blunt attempt to draw a connection between urLii and skekLi because I guess we’re too far into the book to set up another conspicuous injury for them to share.

And I love Tavra just brushing past the question.

Tavra-Spider says that if they can reach the Sanctuary before the spiders, they might be able to fight back. To Naia’s doubt. They almost got their asses kicked by a small swarm just now and the odds will be worse against more spiders and in tunnels.

Tavra asks if Amri knows anything about the Grottan Sanctuary but all he knows is that its one of the most ancient places in Thra, that it was entrusted to the Grottan, and that urLii travels there often to “commune with the singing mountains.”

Kylan gets excited because the singing mountains were supposedly formed by the bell-birds.

“The same,” Tavra said. “The Sanctuary was a nesting place of the bell-birds. When the spider destroyed the firca, I wanted to tell you that your plan was still a good one. There’s still hope. It is possible that there may be bones left of the bell-birds, though they died out many trine ago. If the Sanctuary has been untouched, and protected by the Grottan, then we may yet have a chance.”

May yet! Firca Quest is back on!

... I really want a point-and-click Dark Crystal adventure game. It feels made for the genre.

Amri points out that even if there is a bell-bird bone, that’s not the same as having a firca and making it into a firca doesn’t mean it’ll have the same power as Gyr’s.

But Naia just decides that Kylan can make a firca like that. Such faith in him!

And her confidence makes Kylan confident enough to want to try.

Best friends!

Kylan finally finds something on the map, an underground tributary to the Black River called the Tide Pass that’ll bring them close to the Sanctuary.

Amri warns them that its a mostly submerged underground channel. But its the only path that will get them to the Sanctuary in time. Going back through Domrak would put them in the highest concentration of spiders. Its the Tide Path or nothing, and at least Naia can breath underwater and Amri can see in the dark.

“What do you think, Amri?” Naia asked. “Is it possible, or will we die for sure?”

“You and I wouldn’t die for sure,” he replied, but his assurance ended there.

I mean that’s not funny but its not not funny and I laughed.

Amri does say that if the other two are willing to try, he’ll do whatever it takes to see all four of them through. But Tavra’s spider body doesn’t require a lot to live so she’s not in a lot of danger really either.

The person most at risk is going to be Kylan AND the one they most need to succeed.

So it has to be Kylan’s decision.

But Kylan would be blind in the Pass, half or more submerged in deep, dark cave water. He was tired of tunnels and being underground. In fact, there was nothing he wanted to avoid more than another crawl through the dark, needing help from the others just to move or breathe.

Despite her new arachnid form, he couldn’t help but imagine Tavra as she once had been, touching his cheek in the same way and saying the same words. He had not been able to do anything to help his own clan, but maybe there was something that could be done for Amri’s. For once, there was something only he could do, and that was what he had wanted all along.

He committed the map to memory and packed the book.

“Then what are we waiting for? To the Tide Pass we go.”

Heck yeah, Kylan

#dark crystal #the dark crystal #Song of the Dark Crystal #liveblog #Kylan #Naia #Amri #Tavra #but she's a spider

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