It's cold, it's miserable, and I'm suffering from that particular kind of weary depressive feeling you get when it's too bloody cold to do anything and you can't get to sleep. So I guess I might as well post more sporking to kill some time before dinner.
And now it’s back to Axis for more infodumping! Orr tells him about the Star Gods. There are nine of them, but only seven of them have names. For your edification they are:
Adamon and Xanon (isn’t that a brand of anti-depressant?), the Senior Gods of the Firmament, Silton, god of Fire, Pors, God of Air, Zest, Goddess of Earth, Flulia, Goddess of Water, and Narcis, God of the Sun. The other two gods are gods of Moon and Song, but have yet to reveal themselves.
And yes, this book has a goddess called Zest in it. And a god whose name sounds like a type of cheese. I know I’ve said it before, but damn this author sucks at names.
Axis says when he used to pray to Artor he could feel the god’s presence, but when he prays to the Star Gods he feels nothing. Orr says this is because the Star Gods are “trapped” somehow and have some battle or other going on with Artor, but there’s nothing Axis or anyone else can do about that.
Then Orr tells a story about how the magic lakes were supposedly created, which isn’t worth recapping except to say it seems to imply that there was some kind of apocalypse and that the survivors hid underground. So maybe it was them who built the freeway thingy. Who knows? If memory serves the author goes into it more later on, but it only gets more insane and ridiculous.
Now Axis uses a magic song to guide the boat to the Star GateAtlantis, and along the way he sees ruined cities and petrified forests and such.
Hmm. Could this have some connection to the random underground highway? Possibly, but that might be interesting so we won’t be learning anything more about it now, or possibly ever.
They enter the Star Gate chamber thingy, which Axis thinks is – what else? – “beautiful”. Axis looks into the Star Gate itself, and it’s awe-inspiring and such. Then he starts touching the Icarii statues despite being repeatedly asked to stop because it's extremely rude, because that’s Axis for you. I repeat – this is the guy who wants to be King of the Icarii. The guy who treats one of their most sacred places like a playground and doesn’t care about any of their customs. He’s as bad as those tourists who climb on old monuments to snap selfies and then act surprised and indignant when someone points out the “DO NOT TOUCH” signs.
But the real reason why the author wrote Axis as an insensitive jerk in this scene was so we could have a plot point, because when he touches one of the statues it disappears. (What, she couldn’t have had him just bump into it by accident? She had to write him as a rude prick just so we could have a plot point? What the hell?).
Orr freaks and says that this means the guy depicted in the statue has come back through the Star Gate – none other than WolfStar. (How does he know that? Why is this even a thing? Do people regularly resurrect themselves in this world?).
Axis asks when that happened, and Orr says there’s no way to know, but if he had the power to come back from death, then he’s “powerful beyond imagination”. Uh-oh. Now it would seem WolfStar – who, yes, almost certainly trained Axis and Gorgrael – is manipulating the pair of them for some nefarious purpose and may also be manipulating the stupid prophecy.
Will this actually change anything in the long run? Ahahahah, no. This whole WolfStar subplot is completely pointless.
Naturally Axis says he has to tell StarDrifter about this, but first he’s going to bring FreeFall back from the dead. Because that’s possible, apparently. (And no, nobody else who dies will be brought back to life in the same way, and nor will it even be suggested. Again, why the fuck is FreeFall so screamingly important?).
The next chapter is called – I shit you not – “Gorgrael Makes a New Friend”. Did nobody realise that sounds like the title of a children’s picture book? I can practically see the cover. (And it’s adorable!).
Either way Gorgrael is looking at the remains of the SkraeBold Belial killed in the last book and is planning to do something with the heap of “frozen grey sludge”. Apparently Gorgrael has the power to make new creatures out of… uh, sludge, and he wants to make something winged which can take down the Icarii. He considers dragons, which apparently used to exist, but decides they’re too big and gaudy. Oh snap! Take that, Saphira.
Then the Dark Man shows up and asks him what he has in mind. The two of them play a cute little guessing game (seriously, this guy is treating the big villain like a child), in which the Dark Man describes aspects of a certain creature. “Demon-winged”, “ogre-bellied”, “grave-jawed”, “dragon-clawed” and “blight-eyed”.
Somehow or other Gorgrael guesses that he means gryphons. Since when did gryphons look anything like that? Well, okay, to be fair there’s about 50 different variations flying around. Pun intended. But it’s still stupid.
Gorgrael and the Dark Man work together using the – sigh – “Dark Music” to sing an evil version of the Song of Recreation. The sludge starts expanding, grows a pair of eeevil red eyes and eventually bursts open into a gryphon. For the record, author went with the “body of a lion, head and wings of an eagle” model. The Dark Man announces that thanks to a little twist from him the Pointlessly Capitalised Gryphon is a pregnant female who will soon give birth to nine “pups” who will also be pregnant females. An asexually reproducing all-female species of gryphon. Well, points for originality I guess.
Also, the griffin “grunts”. If it has a bird’s head and throat, shouldn’t it be making bird noises? Last time I looked birds didn’t “grunt”. They chirp. Well, at least it doesn’t pointlessly “hum” and “bugle” all the time. Thank goodness for small mercies.
Then Gorgrael and the Dark Man sit down together, and the Dark Man tells Gorgrael that Faraday is Queen now. Gorgrael obsesses over her some more, end chapter. Is it just me, or is the main villain becoming more and more irrelevant as the trilogy goes on?
In the next chapter the Icarii finally leave Talon Spike and fly to Sigholt, though of course it takes two pages of tedious description for the author to get that across. Cut to three weeks later, and the Strike Force has now integrated with the AW with no problems or racial tensions whatsoever. Of course. Also one of the generals is named SpreadWing RavenCry. Did the author put these Icarii names together with fridge poetry magnets or what?
Blah blah, descriptions of training. EvenSong is determined to be a good fighter now and is sparring with some guy named Edowes. Again, why are we wasting time giving names to one-scene extras? She eventually wins by hitting him in the nuts, and isn’t that just hilarious? Everyone pats EvenSong on the back for being awesome, and then she and Azhure go for a walk and we learn that Azhure now has more than two hundred men under her command.
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She and EvenSong chat, and Azhure frets that while her pregnancy is quite advanced, the baby doesn’t move and she’s afraid it might be dead. EvenSong says lolno, Icarii babies “sleep” until their fathers sing to wake them up. Why? Because somebody thought dat wud be so cool.
Oh, and we also learn that none of the locals had any problems with the Icarii showing up and in fact were instantly convinced that they’d done the right thing because the Icarii are amazing and special and wonderful. Of course. And now they’re forgetting all about their religion as well, because the author doesn’t have the faintest idea how people’s minds actually work.
Then StarDrifter and MorningStar show up, and the Azhure and EvenSong hurry off to meet them. Great, more StarDrifter bullshit ahoy.
Cut to Margarita, who’s with Rivkah and thinking about how great she is. Yup, love is definitely in the air. Nobody is allowed to be single! Nobody, I tell you!
StarDrifter and co. arrive, and there’s some tension because of the whole divorce thing. The Icarii are impressed by Margarita’s “courtly greeting”, which we didn’t get to see, and then Azhure and EvenSong arrive. StarDrifter immediately stares at Azhure’s baby bump, and Rivkah makes a brittle comment about how they’re going to be grandparents.
MorningStar remarks that it’s a Beltide baby, and Azhure freaks, thinking she’s implying that she should get an abortion. At which point one of her giant doggies comes rushing over and bites MorningStar on the wrist. Azhure spits that nobody’s going to hurt her precious Sue spawn, and MorningStar hastily backpedals.
Yeah, apparently Azhure sics her giant murder dogs on people if they annoy her now. Our heroine, ladies and gentlemen.
And just like a good little woman she’s completely obsessed with the sweet sweet baby despite never having expressed any interest in motherhood before, because of course, All Women Want Bebbes. That’s how you know they’re women and not some sort of weird space alien with breasts.
Cut to Azhure tending to MorningStar’s injury while StarDrifter creepily watches. He asks about the giant doggies, and both he and MorningStar are uncomfortable to find out the answer. MorningStar thinks about the “attraction” between Azhure, Axis and StarDrifter and goes “hmmm”. Apparently it hasn’t occurred to anyone that StarDrifter and Axis are a pair of vile sexual predators who are both prepared to fuck anything without a Y chromosome.
And oh my gods, woman, it’s not that freaking hard! Azhure has special Icarii possessions/abilities and big scars on her back, and SunSoar men are uncontrollably attracted to her! What do you think it means? But no, author apparently still thinks this is a big mystery.
The next chapter cuts to Axis and Wendy Orr arguing. Orr says it’s impossible to bring someone back from the dead, but Axis isn’t having it. Why does he care so fucking much about FreeFall? I don’t know. He just does. He repeats the story of how FreeFall died and it was all his fault and blah blah blah, I still don’t care. Orr says he’ll take Axis to the “Gate” but he’s never ever allowed to tell anyone else about it.
So they travel along the “River of Death”, home of the band Styx, where the shades of dead people float. It’s like that scene in one of the Pirates of the Carribean sequels nobody liked. They finally arrive at an island thingy and Axis has to go on alone. He finds a “rectangle of light” where a dark figure sits staring at two glowing bowls. It’s like something out of Greek/Norse mythology all of a sudden. The figure turns out to be a creepy looking woman, and she keeps dropping metal balls from one bowl into the other by way of some sort of meaningless tally.
After some exposition about certain entities who don’t go through the gate which I’m just going to ignore because it’s boring and irrelevant, Axis says he wants to bring FreeFall back from the dead and is told lolno. For some reason Axis is really, really set on this promise he made to the guy while he was dying, and yells about how he can’t break said promise, etcetera (but breaking multiple promises to Faraday is just fine. It had better not be because promises made to a woman aren’t really that important, but I’ll bet my butt it is).
He mentions Borneheld, and the GateKeeper is all “I don’t like the Dukes of Ichtar!” (no really. She actually says this) and says okay, Axis can bring FreeFall back as long as he does something horrible to Borneheld which isn’t specified. Axis is horrified and doesn’t want to do it, but too bad – he gotta do it now. So he agrees to do it. Apparently he has “a year and a day”. Or else. When did this turn into a fairytale?
Axis leaves, and the GateKeeper thinks about how she hates the Dukes of Ichtar, like, a lot. Why? Because Zara is her daughter.
This is played like some sort of big revelation, but I don’t know why. It’s completely irrelevant to the story, and we don’t even know Zara, or anything about her. So, like, who cares? This is like me writing a story in which the main character goes to the supermarket in the very first scene, where we learn that – GASP! – the cashier is her long-lost twin sister’s cousin’s brother's former roommate! OMG! Also, why do we keep getting big “shocking” revelations about who the Sentinels are related to? Why is this even important? (Oh wait, I just answered my own question – it’s not).
Anyway, so now it looks like FreeFall, the irrelevant character we also don’t care about, is going to come back to life because Borneheld is eeevil. This is so incredibly stupid I don’t even have words for it.
End chapter.
The next one returns to Azhure, who’s now six months pregnant. She goes up onto the roof, and bam – Axis teleports in.
Azhure has a moment where she thinks about how she had expected to meet him while wearing her new army uniform and they’d have a mature discussion about the baby like, y’know, adults. Instead of which she immediately goes to pieces thanks to her blood doing the date rape thing again. And now all she wants to do is fall into his arms, sob sob, melodrama.
See, this is why Azhure isn’t a “strong female character” in spite of all the idiotic power-ups and constant praise. Maybe she’s supposed to be a badass military commander, etc, now, but she’s still a stupid, weak little woman who can’t say no to a man if he’s her Designated Love Interest, becomes totally obsessed with motherhood the instant an unplanned pregnancy comes along, and is so ruled by her hormones (and magic singing date rape blood) that rather than discuss their relationship like an adult she just melts into a lovelorn puddle.
Axis is pretty surprised to see the baby bump, and – moron that he is – can’t understand why Azhure is so uncomfortable with the whole situation. But of course he’s instantly smitten with the idea of becoming a daddy. Despite never having so much as considered it at any point previously. Because good heroes and heroines always love the idea of parenthood and swoon over the sweet sweet baby even if it’s a horrible time to start a family, or they’ve previously been characterised as a serial womaniser, or they’re, y’know, supposed to be promised to somebody else. Axis should be horrified and guilty right now. But nope. Axis doesn’t do “guilt”. Very occasionally he'll feel vaguely bad about doing something, then keep on doing it anyway while making excuses.
Azhure shows him to his quarters, which are of course super comfy and luxurious, and Axis asks her to stay with him as his lover. Azhure demurrs, “humbly” pointing out that she’s “a simple peasant girl”.
Ahahahahah, fuck you, no. You don’t get to pull that shit when you have two hundred soldiers at your command and the respect of hardened generals, plus a magic bow and giant magic dogs, all of which you accept as your due despite having earned precisely none of it. You just don’t. Nice display of completely false modesty there, Azhure Sue.
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Axis gets pushy, telling her to “Stay with me. Dance with me”. In fact he says it twice. Azhure at least has the decency to point out that he’s supposed to be marrying Faraday and that Faraday loves him, and Axis is like “so what, she’s a long way away” and also, she’ll totally be okay with him cheating on her... somehow.
He then uses emotional blackmail, and turns the baby into a weapon against her by saying he needs his daddy around. Oh, and he does this while fondling her breasts and undressing her. Whereupon Azhure caves faster than an old shack built over a sinkhole, because of course she does.
As you will have noticed, shittily written female characters like her are only “strong” and self-willed when it suits the author. The rest of the time they’re shrinking violets who don’t know what they want and need a Man to set them straight. While feeling them up, naturally. Would you believe this author called her female characters “femme fatales” and was known and praised for having such awesome, feminist heroines? Because of course she was. Even though all of them eventually end up tied to some jerk and pumping out babies, frequently after being raped by him as a prelude to True Love. This series can take its fake “progressive” message and shove it.
Cut to them post-sex (thankyou author, for not forcing me to read your idea of a sex scene). Axis asks what she wants to call the kid, which he can sense is a boy, and she says she wants to call him Caelum, though not after some more wangst about how miserable and lonely her childhood was. We’ve heard it all before, author. Drop it. Also, Having a Tragic Past and constantly wangsting about it is yet another classic Sue trait, calculated to make us feel sorry for Mary Sue despite all the author favour and special gifts and fawning praise and whatnot.
Then Axis sings to the kid, who wakes up and starts moving, and Azhure thinks about how great it is to be in a relationship with Axis. You know, the guy who cheats and assaults people and has a ridiculously short temper and a skin about as thin as tissue paper. What a catch. I think I’d rather be in a relationship with Donald Trump. Wait, scratch that - I think I'd much rather go with option three: Suicide.
And now it’s back to Axis for more infodumping! Orr tells him about the Star Gods. There are nine of them, but only seven of them have names. For your edification they are:
Adamon and Xanon (isn’t that a brand of anti-depressant?), the Senior Gods of the Firmament, Silton, god of Fire, Pors, God of Air, Zest, Goddess of Earth, Flulia, Goddess of Water, and Narcis, God of the Sun. The other two gods are gods of Moon and Song, but have yet to reveal themselves.
And yes, this book has a goddess called Zest in it. And a god whose name sounds like a type of cheese. I know I’ve said it before, but damn this author sucks at names.
Axis says when he used to pray to Artor he could feel the god’s presence, but when he prays to the Star Gods he feels nothing. Orr says this is because the Star Gods are “trapped” somehow and have some battle or other going on with Artor, but there’s nothing Axis or anyone else can do about that.
Then Orr tells a story about how the magic lakes were supposedly created, which isn’t worth recapping except to say it seems to imply that there was some kind of apocalypse and that the survivors hid underground. So maybe it was them who built the freeway thingy. Who knows? If memory serves the author goes into it more later on, but it only gets more insane and ridiculous.
Now Axis uses a magic song to guide the boat to the Star Gate
Hmm. Could this have some connection to the random underground highway? Possibly, but that might be interesting so we won’t be learning anything more about it now, or possibly ever.
They enter the Star Gate chamber thingy, which Axis thinks is – what else? – “beautiful”. Axis looks into the Star Gate itself, and it’s awe-inspiring and such. Then he starts touching the Icarii statues despite being repeatedly asked to stop because it's extremely rude, because that’s Axis for you. I repeat – this is the guy who wants to be King of the Icarii. The guy who treats one of their most sacred places like a playground and doesn’t care about any of their customs. He’s as bad as those tourists who climb on old monuments to snap selfies and then act surprised and indignant when someone points out the “DO NOT TOUCH” signs.
But the real reason why the author wrote Axis as an insensitive jerk in this scene was so we could have a plot point, because when he touches one of the statues it disappears. (What, she couldn’t have had him just bump into it by accident? She had to write him as a rude prick just so we could have a plot point? What the hell?).
Orr freaks and says that this means the guy depicted in the statue has come back through the Star Gate – none other than WolfStar. (How does he know that? Why is this even a thing? Do people regularly resurrect themselves in this world?).
Axis asks when that happened, and Orr says there’s no way to know, but if he had the power to come back from death, then he’s “powerful beyond imagination”. Uh-oh. Now it would seem WolfStar – who, yes, almost certainly trained Axis and Gorgrael – is manipulating the pair of them for some nefarious purpose and may also be manipulating the stupid prophecy.
Will this actually change anything in the long run? Ahahahah, no. This whole WolfStar subplot is completely pointless.
Naturally Axis says he has to tell StarDrifter about this, but first he’s going to bring FreeFall back from the dead. Because that’s possible, apparently. (And no, nobody else who dies will be brought back to life in the same way, and nor will it even be suggested. Again, why the fuck is FreeFall so screamingly important?).
The next chapter is called – I shit you not – “Gorgrael Makes a New Friend”. Did nobody realise that sounds like the title of a children’s picture book? I can practically see the cover. (And it’s adorable!).
Either way Gorgrael is looking at the remains of the SkraeBold Belial killed in the last book and is planning to do something with the heap of “frozen grey sludge”. Apparently Gorgrael has the power to make new creatures out of… uh, sludge, and he wants to make something winged which can take down the Icarii. He considers dragons, which apparently used to exist, but decides they’re too big and gaudy. Oh snap! Take that, Saphira.
Then the Dark Man shows up and asks him what he has in mind. The two of them play a cute little guessing game (seriously, this guy is treating the big villain like a child), in which the Dark Man describes aspects of a certain creature. “Demon-winged”, “ogre-bellied”, “grave-jawed”, “dragon-clawed” and “blight-eyed”.
Somehow or other Gorgrael guesses that he means gryphons. Since when did gryphons look anything like that? Well, okay, to be fair there’s about 50 different variations flying around. Pun intended. But it’s still stupid.
Gorgrael and the Dark Man work together using the – sigh – “Dark Music” to sing an evil version of the Song of Recreation. The sludge starts expanding, grows a pair of eeevil red eyes and eventually bursts open into a gryphon. For the record, author went with the “body of a lion, head and wings of an eagle” model. The Dark Man announces that thanks to a little twist from him the Pointlessly Capitalised Gryphon is a pregnant female who will soon give birth to nine “pups” who will also be pregnant females. An asexually reproducing all-female species of gryphon. Well, points for originality I guess.
Also, the griffin “grunts”. If it has a bird’s head and throat, shouldn’t it be making bird noises? Last time I looked birds didn’t “grunt”. They chirp. Well, at least it doesn’t pointlessly “hum” and “bugle” all the time. Thank goodness for small mercies.
Then Gorgrael and the Dark Man sit down together, and the Dark Man tells Gorgrael that Faraday is Queen now. Gorgrael obsesses over her some more, end chapter. Is it just me, or is the main villain becoming more and more irrelevant as the trilogy goes on?
In the next chapter the Icarii finally leave Talon Spike and fly to Sigholt, though of course it takes two pages of tedious description for the author to get that across. Cut to three weeks later, and the Strike Force has now integrated with the AW with no problems or racial tensions whatsoever. Of course. Also one of the generals is named SpreadWing RavenCry. Did the author put these Icarii names together with fridge poetry magnets or what?
Blah blah, descriptions of training. EvenSong is determined to be a good fighter now and is sparring with some guy named Edowes. Again, why are we wasting time giving names to one-scene extras? She eventually wins by hitting him in the nuts, and isn’t that just hilarious? Everyone pats EvenSong on the back for being awesome, and then she and Azhure go for a walk and we learn that Azhure now has more than two hundred men under her command.
Oh, and we also learn that none of the locals had any problems with the Icarii showing up and in fact were instantly convinced that they’d done the right thing because the Icarii are amazing and special and wonderful. Of course. And now they’re forgetting all about their religion as well, because the author doesn’t have the faintest idea how people’s minds actually work.
Then StarDrifter and MorningStar show up, and the Azhure and EvenSong hurry off to meet them. Great, more StarDrifter bullshit ahoy.
Cut to Margarita, who’s with Rivkah and thinking about how great she is. Yup, love is definitely in the air. Nobody is allowed to be single! Nobody, I tell you!
StarDrifter and co. arrive, and there’s some tension because of the whole divorce thing. The Icarii are impressed by Margarita’s “courtly greeting”, which we didn’t get to see, and then Azhure and EvenSong arrive. StarDrifter immediately stares at Azhure’s baby bump, and Rivkah makes a brittle comment about how they’re going to be grandparents.
MorningStar remarks that it’s a Beltide baby, and Azhure freaks, thinking she’s implying that she should get an abortion. At which point one of her giant doggies comes rushing over and bites MorningStar on the wrist. Azhure spits that nobody’s going to hurt her precious Sue spawn, and MorningStar hastily backpedals.
Yeah, apparently Azhure sics her giant murder dogs on people if they annoy her now. Our heroine, ladies and gentlemen.
And just like a good little woman she’s completely obsessed with the sweet sweet baby despite never having expressed any interest in motherhood before, because of course, All Women Want Bebbes. That’s how you know they’re women and not some sort of weird space alien with breasts.
Cut to Azhure tending to MorningStar’s injury while StarDrifter creepily watches. He asks about the giant doggies, and both he and MorningStar are uncomfortable to find out the answer. MorningStar thinks about the “attraction” between Azhure, Axis and StarDrifter and goes “hmmm”. Apparently it hasn’t occurred to anyone that StarDrifter and Axis are a pair of vile sexual predators who are both prepared to fuck anything without a Y chromosome.
And oh my gods, woman, it’s not that freaking hard! Azhure has special Icarii possessions/abilities and big scars on her back, and SunSoar men are uncontrollably attracted to her! What do you think it means? But no, author apparently still thinks this is a big mystery.
The next chapter cuts to Axis and Wendy Orr arguing. Orr says it’s impossible to bring someone back from the dead, but Axis isn’t having it. Why does he care so fucking much about FreeFall? I don’t know. He just does. He repeats the story of how FreeFall died and it was all his fault and blah blah blah, I still don’t care. Orr says he’ll take Axis to the “Gate” but he’s never ever allowed to tell anyone else about it.
So they travel along the “River of Death”, home of the band Styx, where the shades of dead people float. It’s like that scene in one of the Pirates of the Carribean sequels nobody liked. They finally arrive at an island thingy and Axis has to go on alone. He finds a “rectangle of light” where a dark figure sits staring at two glowing bowls. It’s like something out of Greek/Norse mythology all of a sudden. The figure turns out to be a creepy looking woman, and she keeps dropping metal balls from one bowl into the other by way of some sort of meaningless tally.
After some exposition about certain entities who don’t go through the gate which I’m just going to ignore because it’s boring and irrelevant, Axis says he wants to bring FreeFall back from the dead and is told lolno. For some reason Axis is really, really set on this promise he made to the guy while he was dying, and yells about how he can’t break said promise, etcetera (but breaking multiple promises to Faraday is just fine. It had better not be because promises made to a woman aren’t really that important, but I’ll bet my butt it is).
He mentions Borneheld, and the GateKeeper is all “I don’t like the Dukes of Ichtar!” (no really. She actually says this) and says okay, Axis can bring FreeFall back as long as he does something horrible to Borneheld which isn’t specified. Axis is horrified and doesn’t want to do it, but too bad – he gotta do it now. So he agrees to do it. Apparently he has “a year and a day”. Or else. When did this turn into a fairytale?
Axis leaves, and the GateKeeper thinks about how she hates the Dukes of Ichtar, like, a lot. Why? Because Zara is her daughter.
This is played like some sort of big revelation, but I don’t know why. It’s completely irrelevant to the story, and we don’t even know Zara, or anything about her. So, like, who cares? This is like me writing a story in which the main character goes to the supermarket in the very first scene, where we learn that – GASP! – the cashier is her long-lost twin sister’s cousin’s brother's former roommate! OMG! Also, why do we keep getting big “shocking” revelations about who the Sentinels are related to? Why is this even important? (Oh wait, I just answered my own question – it’s not).
Anyway, so now it looks like FreeFall, the irrelevant character we also don’t care about, is going to come back to life because Borneheld is eeevil. This is so incredibly stupid I don’t even have words for it.
End chapter.
The next one returns to Azhure, who’s now six months pregnant. She goes up onto the roof, and bam – Axis teleports in.
Azhure has a moment where she thinks about how she had expected to meet him while wearing her new army uniform and they’d have a mature discussion about the baby like, y’know, adults. Instead of which she immediately goes to pieces thanks to her blood doing the date rape thing again. And now all she wants to do is fall into his arms, sob sob, melodrama.
See, this is why Azhure isn’t a “strong female character” in spite of all the idiotic power-ups and constant praise. Maybe she’s supposed to be a badass military commander, etc, now, but she’s still a stupid, weak little woman who can’t say no to a man if he’s her Designated Love Interest, becomes totally obsessed with motherhood the instant an unplanned pregnancy comes along, and is so ruled by her hormones (and magic singing date rape blood) that rather than discuss their relationship like an adult she just melts into a lovelorn puddle.
Axis is pretty surprised to see the baby bump, and – moron that he is – can’t understand why Azhure is so uncomfortable with the whole situation. But of course he’s instantly smitten with the idea of becoming a daddy. Despite never having so much as considered it at any point previously. Because good heroes and heroines always love the idea of parenthood and swoon over the sweet sweet baby even if it’s a horrible time to start a family, or they’ve previously been characterised as a serial womaniser, or they’re, y’know, supposed to be promised to somebody else. Axis should be horrified and guilty right now. But nope. Axis doesn’t do “guilt”. Very occasionally he'll feel vaguely bad about doing something, then keep on doing it anyway while making excuses.
Azhure shows him to his quarters, which are of course super comfy and luxurious, and Axis asks her to stay with him as his lover. Azhure demurrs, “humbly” pointing out that she’s “a simple peasant girl”.
Ahahahahah, fuck you, no. You don’t get to pull that shit when you have two hundred soldiers at your command and the respect of hardened generals, plus a magic bow and giant magic dogs, all of which you accept as your due despite having earned precisely none of it. You just don’t. Nice display of completely false modesty there, Azhure Sue.
Axis gets pushy, telling her to “Stay with me. Dance with me”. In fact he says it twice. Azhure at least has the decency to point out that he’s supposed to be marrying Faraday and that Faraday loves him, and Axis is like “so what, she’s a long way away” and also, she’ll totally be okay with him cheating on her... somehow.
He then uses emotional blackmail, and turns the baby into a weapon against her by saying he needs his daddy around. Oh, and he does this while fondling her breasts and undressing her. Whereupon Azhure caves faster than an old shack built over a sinkhole, because of course she does.
As you will have noticed, shittily written female characters like her are only “strong” and self-willed when it suits the author. The rest of the time they’re shrinking violets who don’t know what they want and need a Man to set them straight. While feeling them up, naturally. Would you believe this author called her female characters “femme fatales” and was known and praised for having such awesome, feminist heroines? Because of course she was. Even though all of them eventually end up tied to some jerk and pumping out babies, frequently after being raped by him as a prelude to True Love. This series can take its fake “progressive” message and shove it.
Cut to them post-sex (thankyou author, for not forcing me to read your idea of a sex scene). Axis asks what she wants to call the kid, which he can sense is a boy, and she says she wants to call him Caelum, though not after some more wangst about how miserable and lonely her childhood was. We’ve heard it all before, author. Drop it. Also, Having a Tragic Past and constantly wangsting about it is yet another classic Sue trait, calculated to make us feel sorry for Mary Sue despite all the author favour and special gifts and fawning praise and whatnot.
Then Axis sings to the kid, who wakes up and starts moving, and Azhure thinks about how great it is to be in a relationship with Axis. You know, the guy who cheats and assaults people and has a ridiculously short temper and a skin about as thin as tissue paper. What a catch. I think I’d rather be in a relationship with Donald Trump. Wait, scratch that - I think I'd much rather go with option three: Suicide.