Heir of Fire Ch. 12-14

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day!

Chapter Twelve

Another Manon chapter that is sure to be boring.

The witches clans are all gathered in the White Fangs, which just makes me think of this:

I wonder if Ethan Hawk will show up.

There's some backstory on the witches clans (there were over 20,000 hundreds of years ago, there are only 3,000 now, and blah blah blah).

Manon has to discipline one of her coven with physical violence for some reason. Apparently the witch is proud of being disciplined, I guess. There's some mention of Baba Blacksheep, and Manon wants to know who killed her. 

Manon goes to some hole in the side of the mountain with a bunch of other witches. 

I can't tell from the text if the witches magic was taken away with everyone else's or not. It's a bit vague. The witches started aging after the magic went away so I guess they don't have it. A lot of the paragraphs are talking about the different witch clans and people in them. 

The witches cross a bridge. 

As heirs, their foremost duty was to protect their High Witches, even if it meant sacrificing themselves.

....what's the point of being an heir then?

The whole point of being an heir is that you're the one who is in charge after someone dies. The entire point. If it's your duty to sacrifice yourself, you're a bodyguard, not an heir. Jeez louise.

They find the dudes breeding the wyverns. 

He went on about the different types-the bulls were the best, but a female could be just as fierce and twice as smart.

So females are actually better then? Please use logic.

There's lots of talk about the wyverns without showing them yet. It's not worth relaying even if it is vaguely interesting. Finally, they see a wyvern. It's a typical wyvern (dragons have four legs, wyverns have two).  They have venomous barbs on their tails.

Titus, the wyvern, attacks a human and eats him. I'm wondering how they're going to control these things so that the witches can ride them if they just eat anything whenever they feel like it.

As her eyes met with the endless dark of Titus', she smiled at the wyvern. She could have sword he smiled back.

Chapter 13

Cel is tired when she goes to Rowboat for training. 

Though his features remained cold, she had the distinct impression that he was somewhat annoyed at her for not sulking in a corner, bemoaning the state of her nails.

Why would she, or he, even think this? She was a total mess when he found her, and didn't look much better that morning. Why would he think she suddenly turned into a priss?

They go outside and into the forest. They end up at a temple ruins. She tells him to "do your worst."

"Wipe that smarmy, lying smile off your face."

Heh. I like Rowboat's smackdowns. When Cel doesn't stop smiling, he lays another verbal smackdown. They have a "who's a worse person" argument.

Oh please. Commit genocide and still be considered the series' protagonist, and then we'll talk (I"m looking at you, Black Jewels Trilogy).

Rowboat tells her to shift. They like to say "horseshit" a lot. When Cel won't/can't shift, he attacks her.

So... training someone to shift involves physical violence instead of... telling them how to do something?

She gets a black eye. Rowan sits on her chest to pin her down. Cel tries to pay him off because that's what a several thousand year old Fae wants. 

"I don't know what the hell you've been doing for ten years, other than flouncing around and calling yourself an assassin."

Gonna need some cold water for that burn.

 Even Rowboat knows Cel is a terrible assassin. He levels some more burns at her, and I'm just relishing it. Cel kind of closes in on herself to be emo.

Rowboat makes her get up.

But when she reached in, toward the place in her chest where that monster dwelled, she found only cobwebs and ashes.

I have a feeling a lot of scene breaks and chapters will end with sentences like these. I feel like I'm reading an emo kid's diary.

Anyway, they don't go back to Mistward, and instead go to some grassy hills that are really barrow tombs. Rowboat tells her to walk through the mounds and face the barrow-wights and then they can go to Doranelle. They go into the hills.

The barrows are closed with iron doors to keep the creatures inside, I guess like the catacombs in the glass castle back in Adarlan. They go to a flattened mound and Rowboat leaves her there to wait for her on the other side of the field.


Chapter Fourteen

Cel walks towards the flattened mound and sees a wight. She walks past it and sees a man. She's hit by a wave of "blackness", whatever that means. She can't see anything, so she starts to run, but can't get out of the blackness.

Honey, maybe you spontaneously went blind?

She feels something breathing on her neck. She has some flashbacks to the night her parents were killed.

Celaena vomited. She fell to her knees, her bladder loosening just before she vomited a second time.

Is this really necessary?

She flashbacks to Nehemiah's crime scene. Something grabs her from behind so she elbows it and runs. She escapes the blackness. She runs towards Rowboat and then shifts. She goes back and forth from forms. 

She wakes up later. She's still all gross from losing all bodily functions. Rowboat snarls at her because he has no chill. He explains that the thing she faced wasn't a wight, and it's implied that whatever it was wasn't supposed to be there. He doesn't know what it was. He wants to know what happened ot her so he can figure it out, but Cel won't tell him beyond the fact that it showed her memories from her past.

He walks off, and they go back to Mistward. He shows her the bath, and this chapter is finished.