#BUT. I am reading it for Lukka
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my favorite part of Strixhaven's story is when the cult leader goads a mentally broken unstable man who had nearly starved to death/died of thirst a few days ago into attacking a college campus lmao
also how Rowan just leaves for Strixhaven and Will is forced to follow. I feel like it is not used for comedy nearly enough that they can drag each other through planes bc they're not strong enough to resist it if one chooses to leave ksjdksjkdsj
also, uh. Lukka might have just been preparing to lay down to die at one point??? he comments on having not eaten recently and not having had water in 3 days, rescues Mila from being pinned under rocks, tells her to go, and then just passes out. When he wakes up, he's super grateful for the food she's left him, and only then does he bond with her and seem to have some fire to do anything more than look for food in Arcavios ksjskjdksjds
Seriously when this man arrived in Arcavious, he went to an inn for food, and they assumed he was Oriq bc of his starnge clothes and unwillingness to tell them where he came from (KIND OF A SORE SUBJECT, also they wouldn't know!). This culminated in them throwing spells at him! unprovoked.
I'm kinda glad he had dogs and horses maul them tbf, he was NOT looking for a fight and they decided "oh strange clothes. ORIQ. No food for you"
#i really don't like strixhaven that much tbh#oh look. the magic school plane. yay#BUT. I am reading it for Lukka#bc I have Lukka brainworms#Lukka#mtg#magic the gathering#magic: the gathering#strixhaven#arcavios#mila#'you cant see through your pain lukka'#yeah no kasmina is right#Kasmina is SUS#but Kasmina is right#he also comments on visits in other planes#going similarly to his visit in strixhaven#and while it's a self-fulfilling prophecy#(he feels alienated all the time bc of what's happened#to him and will always be hypersensitive to perceived slights)#and it's very likely he misinterpreted some other planes as#inhospitable when they're really not#he seemed to think arcavios was as good a choice as any#and seemed to actually enjoy his bond with Mila some#found comfort in their bond even if it made him#miserable bc it reminded him of all the misery he'd been through#so he basically went 'if everyone treats me like an oriq i guess I'm a goddamn oriq'#and extus 100% took advantage of that#this man. this man is going to make me go FERAL yall dont understand#poor little meow meow bastard
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Summary: In Tatooine legend, the sandstorm is Lukka, the Fury, both cleansing and damning. Lukka, the slaves believed, was Justice, was he who remade the world, and remade the soul.
The storm screams at him, and Obi-Wan Kenobi screams back.
~*~
Four years after Order 66 and the fall of the Jedi Order, a grieving, struggling Ben Kenobi finds himself inexplicably taken back in time.
Author: @blue-sunshine-mauve-morning
Note from submitter: Great fic series with really nice worldbuilding
#official fic poll#haveyoureadthisfic#pollblr#fanfiction#tumblr polls#fanfic#fandom poll#fandom culture#internet culture#The Desert Storm#star wars
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I have just finished the Ikoria ebook and I have Thoughts
I am rotating Lukka in my mind like some kind of microwaveable food item.
I'm a sucker for Ikoria and everything about it but I just hadn't gotten around to reading the book yet. Very good. Many notes.
Lukka is a very special kind of asshole. He starts as a well-meaning but ultimately ignorant man and, through a combination of arrogance, access to power, and self-feeding isolation and radicalism, becomes a very hateful piece of shit. He's a very interesting take on a red-centered planeswalker to me because he comes from the same slice of red's philosophical color pie as Act of Treason effects. His main flaw isn't that he's stupid (though he's not like. book-smart or anything), it's that he lacks empathy.
Above all else, I take Lukka as a warning.
Lukka starts the novel as like, this prodigal foot soldier at the head of the first squad of Specials. If you're anything like me calling a bunch of people "Specials :)" because they're good at killing things is like, a giant red fuckoff fascism banner, and you aren't too far off because Drannith is a military aristocracy from hell. But Lukka likes it here because everything makes sense and doesn't challenge his values until a giant cat kills most of his friends and then challenges his values.
Particularly, the giant cat challenges his values by bonding with him and forcing him to empathize with it. This scares the shit out of Lukka, who is used to treating these things as existential threats to his life and the life of everyone he loves (i.e. his fiancee). He telepathically panics and tells the flying cat to fuck off so it does, and then he passes out and wakes up in the hospital with some military aide writing down every word he says. His fiancee, Jirina Kudro, helps him out of the city and he fucks off into the woods with Vivien to go find the cat.
Once he does, he runs into some other people with mental connections to Ikoria's monsters. And this is the kicker: he has no care or sympathy for the others in his position or curiosity at how they live away from the cities. He just wants, by his own words, to go home. This will proceed to be his defining trait. And this makes the other bonders accept him! Because, much like many real minority communities, they understand being displaced, they understand being hunted for what they are, they understand the desire to make oneself a found family.
Instead of empathizing with people who might welcome him, and looking past differences, he instead goes off on his selfish quest to redeem himself with the status quo he comes from. This gets him manipulated and pushed into alienating himself from both groups, isolated in a mentality where rejecting his plan means rejecting him, reinforcing his ideas and driving them to even more extreme ends. Even if at the heart of his issue he is on some level correct (General Kudro and the military aristocracy of Drannith is corrupt and fascist and unchanging), his methods and rhetoric harm both (what if we used our allies, a subset of our minority group, as thoughtless weapons, objectifying them and stripping their own rights to empower our own? doesn't that sound great?).
This repeats itself on Arcavios in the Strixhaven story. He gets to the plane, find civilization, and is immediately persecuted for being weird and suspicious and out of place. He gets in a fight with a dragon cop and then runs off with the Oriq, the gang of criminal mages who rebel against the dragons who founded Strixhaven and, from all we've heard, effectively rule the plane.
And again, the Oriq aren't wrong about the dragon founders being vaguely tyrannical (with some of the lore mentioning a banning of ally-colored magic on the... continent? plane?). But Lukka is still driven by selfishness and power, and instead of informing people of possibilities, he helps the Oriq unleash a murderous war avatar inside of a school. (This will not be the first nor last time a red 'walker helps or actively commits a war crime and it gets pretty passed over.)
Lukka is fundamentally a warning against the thought process of (and rhetoric used by) people like TERFs, splinters of a minority who fall into hate trying to appease the majority and ultimately fail.
#im too tired right now to figure out how phyrexia clicks into this#but ill probably go feral about it tomorrow#fox yips#magic the gathering#lukka#ikoria: lair of behemoths
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i am absolutely vexed and haunted
when ikoria came out i hated lukka because he was a complete douche and also he felt like his story arc was created specifically to make me angry by setting him up to be my type of character and then throwing the villain ball at his face
and i was so upset infodumped about him to my friends who know nothing about magic, paid the four stupid dollars to read his book, and now i am fucking obsessed with this dumbass man. i accidentally made myself care about lukka and i cannot stop
and there is no lukka content because anyone with half a brain who cares about magic content looked at him and went “ah yes, this dumbass generic white man” and moved on with their lives yet i cannot
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I really like the different experience all the planeswalkers in this set have with "monsters". Vivien obviously loves them and dedicates her life to them. Narset grew up under them and has rebelled against them but has plenty of respect. Lukka was trained to fight and hate them but is obviously going through some major changes in that view. It's an excellent cast to choose for this set and I am excited to see how they interact when I get a chance to read the story.
To set some expectations here, the characters on the cover and in the summary are the planeswalkers to expect in the story.
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Something that came to mind while reading your SW posts and mostly very silly - a jedi version of "All the Colors of the Wind," badly sung by Luke Skywalker at four am, feat. Leia Organa, who's ready to murder this dumbass.
hmmm.
let’s make it angsty
All The Colors of the Wind: Tatooine Slave Version.
Singing is very important in slave culture (think stories of Ekkreth, Amarattu, Leia the Mighty One, Lukka the Storm and I tell you this story to save your life and The Prince of Egypt style of music. Deliver Us ringing any bells?) but it’s also stories and poetry and things that mean things to them.
In the desert, it’s the suns, the sand, the heat and how precious water is.
In the oceans, it’s the monsters, the deep, the storms and how precious calm is.
So here’s Luke, singing a traditional Song of Mourning in Tatooine Slave Culture, and Leia’s not getting it.
Princess Leia whose only gone hungry deliberately, whose never had to worry about food, or clothes or water. Princess Leia who has just lost her entire planet, culture, family, heritage, her crown, her gods and the palace from which she should have ruled and the people who would have been her subjects.
Luke singing mournful, yet biting songs in a language she doesn’t know early in the morning is something that she doesn’t appreciate.
Maybe it’s not badly sung, maybe that line he sings, depur, depur, depur is supposed to sound like disgust and hatred? Maybe the repetition of her name doesn’t mean her name, even when he says it with fire and a shout?
Regardless, Leia has enough and snaps back and slaps Luke down.
Maybe Luke will sit down and tell Princess Leia, General Leia of Leia the Mighty One of Vengeance and how he has the greatest respect for her.
Perhaps Leia will learn of Lukka of the Storm and think that such a title fits Luke perfectly.
But not now. Not in the moment when Luke is singing such a song that grates against her ears and tugs against the pain in her heart.
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Animorphs, book 1 (The Invasion)
So I read the entire first book last night/this morning. Already a good sign! I am not generally one who powers through books in an evening. Here is some rambling with my thoughts.
(For anyone here from the tag: Hi, I am a 28-year-old woman. I have never read Animorphs before, but from everything I have vaguely heard about the books since, I have gathered they would have been my favorite thing in the world if I had read them as a kid. Every “disturbing/horrific things that happen in Animorphs” post is my jam. I also think a lot about fiction and sometimes ramble about things I watch/read/etc. I don’t know if I’m going to ramble about every book, or if I’m going to be reading them with any kind of regularity, but here goes.)
The writing’s very simplistic and barebones, but then again that’s probably a large part of why it was such a quick read - no quiet descriptive passages setting a mood where my mind could wander, just rapid dialogue and stuff happening throughout. I couldn’t help but vaguely wish as I read that it were written more interestingly, but it did the job and I got used to it.
I was surprised to see Tobias getting stuck as a hawk was something that happens in the very first book. Or rather, it was telegraphed really, really strongly throughout the book, so I wasn’t surprised when it happened, but when on like page three Jake was like “I looked into Tobias’s eyes, which I sometimes think back to now that I’ll never see them again...” I went huh. I’ve known this as That One Series With The Kids Turning Into Animals And One Of Them Is Called Tobias And Gets Stuck As A Hawk for longer than I’ve known it involved aliens, but somehow I’d always imagined that was like a plot twist several books in or something.
(I went surprisingly long without finding out it involved aliens, actually. When I first heard there were brain slugs I was like wait what the series with the kids turning into animals is about what.)
Tom being a Yeerk was also super-telegraphed in a kind of annoying way. It was actually a nicely done twist the way it initially happened - we’d seen Jake talking about his brother Tom at the very beginning, and he heard a familiar voice at the construction site so I figured one of the kids’ parents was a Yeerk or something, but since Tom hadn’t really been brought up in a bit, that didn’t jump out until suddenly all at once in the Jake-dog scene Tom came back and Jake smelled the Yeerk and I was genuinely like oh shit. But then Jake went on to still be completely oblivious for a bit while talking about how Tom had been distant ever since he joined this cultclub called “The Sharing”, and Tom didn’t know about the basketball team he himself had been on, and all in all I was like “Jake. Jake. Come on.” I would say he was just in denial, but the writing is generally pretty blunt about that sort of thing (which kind of makes sense since it’s presented as something Jake writes after the fact to warn others - kind of hokey but), and all in all it doesn’t really come across that way. Luckily Marco figures it out almost immediately, though (after which Jake’s visibly in denial), so thankfully we don’t have to go half the book facepalming at Jake.
The transformation sequences kind of bugged me because boy do they make no anatomical sense. Jake, what do you mean your knees inverted, those are supposed to be your ankles. What are your bones doing. And apparently morphing from bird to human involves arms growing out of your chest?? This is not how vertebrate anatomy, Andalites, please fix your box to not do whatever it’s currently doing
On the other hand, the actual scenes where they were morphed were fun, see the dogness of Dog Jake. Everything about it was an accurate description of dog and made me miss Lukka.
It’s awfully convenient that one of the kids who stumble across this injured Andalite and are given the power to turn into any animal they touch just so happens to have parents who are wildlife rehabilitators and have special access at the zoo. Boy, would they have had trouble otherwise. It’s nice the morphing thing has some pretty specific rules in place, though; the touching requirement is a nice way of keeping their power limited but extensible, and I imagine fun things are going to be done with it later - the little zoo adventure here wasn’t super-interesting, but I can imagine lots of neat ways this could fuel the plot in the future.
The kids have issues! In particular, Tobias and Marco have issues. Marco’s a jerk and reluctant to fight aliens because of his dead mom and broken dad, and Tobias gets stuck as a hawk after spending most of the book obviously, desperately wanting to just be a hawk forever to escape his horrible home life. It’s also rather convenient how the kid who permanently transforms into a hawk just so happens to be in a situation where nobody’s going to properly care that he’s suddenly gone missing, but yes, I love the implication that although he says he couldn’t find a chance to morph back within the two-hour limit, he probably wasn’t actually trying too hard. (There’s even a bit of neat foreshadowing where Jake notes that although Tobias says he was just too scared to run and that’s why he stayed around the Andalite long enough to hear more information about the Yeerks, he probably actually just wanted to stay a bit longer. Tobias is so eager to do this alien thing that finally gives him a purpose and something cool and important to do in this miserable life. Tobias needs hugs. I dig the characters. The book gets across some pretty strong, interesting characterization even with the minimalistic prose and having basically zero scenes that aren’t actively and directly propelling the plot forward. Props on that. I feel like the blunt, simplified style of the narration is masking a lot more nuance that comes through in the actual dialogue.)
I also like how terrified and powerless the kids are a lot. Even transformed into tigers and elephants, Visser Three can turn into huge bizarre fire-breathing monstrosities from other planets that they just stand no chance against, and in this book at least, their whole brave rescue attempt is summarily thwarted the moment Visser Three appears. Genuinely have no idea how they’re going to pull this off. Hopefully something obscenely clever that’s also horrific and traumatizing.
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Fanfic - Neil's Chains - Chapter 9
Chapther 9 - Revenge
June 30, 2002
I haven't seen my children for two months, I am stuck here, gagged, chained and being tortured, Jefford does it personally, he is full of hatred, fury and ambition. He doesn't feed me anymore, he just drugged me and told me that my children thought I had abandoned them, that I hated them and that I would never want to see two monsters like them again, he said that Lukka didn't believe she said that he he lied to them, that I would return to protect them from him, that we would see the sea together and that irritated him.
He told me how beautiful and strong his daughter was, that Cassandra came to hate the twins, that they were just stuck in the room and that they would be his next experiments, since one day they would become immortal like their father.
My desire was to break his neck, but I didn't even have the strength to move anymore, I just knew that he was trying to kill me, that he was pushing me to the limit to do that.
The only thing that was giving me strength, or that helped me to preserve my strength was my children and every time Cassandra came to do the research with her husband I tried to convince her, but he dissuaded her from what she was talking about and just against the boys and I could only watch the scene. Everything was bad but I know it can get worse and that was all I wanted to avoid.
.
July 10, 2002
Their daughter speaks for three months and it is the same time that I don’t see mine, I miss them so much, the only thing I miss about them is this diary with their memories of the last eight years together with some photos I took of them and I hid, I love to spend my night reading and watching them, sometimes I was in tears for them, just thinking if they were well, fed properly, sleeping well or being happy, my God, how I miss them.
Earlier today I heard screams near my door, screams that came from Jefford saying something about ending everything and Cassandra just telling him to calm down that it would be over, she would end them without pain, after sleeping. I despaired, I knew what it was about, I was struggling, screaming and crying but all in vain, I was in the basement too deep to hear me, so I concentrated on listening to try to hear them, hear everything that happened up there and the that I heard will torment me for the rest of my life.
~ • ~
Jefford was screaming and banging on the door, Lukka was huddled in a corner of the room with Gil.
"Calm down, everything will be fine, okay, everything will be fine, our father will soon appear" she said and I tried to pull the chains out of my arms.
"Open the damn door, I just want to talk to you" Jefford roared outside.
"I had an idea" Lukka spoke very softly "Come with me" they went to the window where she opened and left then took her brother's hand and pulled it out.
“Lukka what are you doing? Because it got in my head ”Gil asked quietly crying.
"Something that our father asked to do, it will protect us" she replied. I realized that she didn't do it because she wanted to, but because I compelled her to do it. They went down and went down in the garden, then Lukka took his hand and said in tears “Run and hide, I will delay you, I will take care of you and you must disappear, do not let anyone ever arrest you or say that you not able or weak, that you are very strong and courageous, that you are happy and that you never forget me, I love you bro ”with those words Gil let go of his hand and started running, I realized that she had compelled the brother unconsciously and he disappeared into the forest, farther and farther away, and she stood there in the garden just crying and Jefford closer to her “Where are you” he was screaming for the house.
"We are here" Lukka shouted at him
"Pestinha don't make things worse!" he stops in front of her “Where's your brother, your monster”
“Away from that damn place” she said to him “You think I don't know that my father is trapped down here, that you tortured him, that my mother only had us to arrest him here. I know that we were the chains that kept him here all these years and that if it weren't for that he would have already left or died. We will no longer be these chains, no matter what! My only wish is that he lives and gets rid of you ”
“Silly child, everything will be over” he laughs “I came to break these chains and slaughter the creature in the cellar” he approaches “I know you are just an ordinary girl now and that makes my job easier, believe me”
Lukka runs into the forest and Jefford shoots her leg that falls and crawls across the floor, after that I only hear a blow after a blow after a blow and then a little sigh followed by a difficulty in breathing “Now only the other who is well is missing near here, with those little legs he won't go very far ”Jefford speaks in a voice of joy“ And as for you, it will become animal food ”he holds her and drag her through the forest until I can’t hear anymore, until I lose all my hopes.
~ • ~
When he went to the basement to see me, I smelled it, he knew the smell of my children's blood very well, he was soaked by it. These motherfucker, bastard was laughing, bragging about what he had done and he said that I would be next, that two more short weeks and I would be with them.
All I could do was cry, my wrists were bleeding, my clothes were soaked with my blood, my hair was tousled and I was lying on the floor crying, desperate and dead. They had given me hope, given me a family and now I had taken it. I asked Cassandra about it and she just said that she was not the mother of any monster, that they were already dead even before she was born and that her real life would start now, with her real daughter. It was then that I realized that she had betrayed us again, not only to me, but also to her children, her own blood. I just shouted to them that I would take revenge, I would take revenge on all of them and for everything they did to me, they did to them and abandoned me in that basement.
.
July 23, 2002
I am a terrible father, I let my children be killed by a psychopath I lived with them, I gave them everything I wanted, I kept our agreements, but even so they took them away from me they betrayed me again. I swore that I would take revenge and that I would end them all.
Today I heard that someone had arrived at the house who had just recovered but had lost his memories and would hardly ever recover them and Jefford was planning to get rid of her again. The guy is a tremendous psychopath, he just wants to kill and kill and kill, then we were the monsters.
.
July 27, 2002
I felt that someone is close to the house, someone like me, he is young, but he is stronger than me and maybe he can help me out of here to get my revenge in one way or another ...
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Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths - Sundered Bond Summary
I have immense brainworms and I feel like nobody has read this book and everyone keeps saying untrue things about Lukka and I am going to go feral. So instead of doing that I'm going to just post a summary of the book bc I have nothing better to be doing and I read it like 2 days ago so it's very fresh in my mind
Overview
Lukka is a Captain of a squad of Coppercoat Specials, the most elite of Drannith’s military forces, and has been for the last 2 years of his life. After 20 years in service for Drannith, the soldier of one of only a few sanctuaries to have remained permanently standing in Ikoria becomes involuntarily bonded with one of the monsters that calls Ikoria home, and he’s forced to abandon everything he’s ever known, lest General Kudro—chief-of-command in Drannith and father of his fiancée—execute him out of fear of his “bonding sickness” destroying Drannith from the inside out.
[More under the cut...]
Characters & Names
Lukka—a human man somewhere between 40-50 years old who has been in the Coppercoats for over half of his life, and in the Specials for at least 2 years of it. He lead a team consisting of 4 others (Epha (sergeant and trapper), Nik (sniper), Gedra and Gox (twins that serve as trappers/hunters)). He was engaged to Jirina, daughter of General Kudro, and thought very highly of her.
Jirina—Lukka’s fiancée. A brown-skinned, dark-haired human woman that has a unique position in Drannith’s military due to her modest status in the Coppercoats, yet also is the daughter of General Kudro. She respects her father deeply but fears his authority too.
General Kudro—Lukka’s would-be father-in-law and Jirina’s father, the seasoned chief-of-command in Drannith. His position in power is very much based on authority and how well people believe in his authority, and he knows it. He listens closely to the reputations his people and the Coppercoats hold amongst commoners, for he knows a quiet drone can become an insurmountable roar fast enough. He is not afraid of resorting to underhanded tactics to “maintaining the peace,” either, and believes bonding magic to be a sickness, having kept it hidden from much of Drannith, despite researchers being aware of it for some time prior to Lukka’s bond.
Vivien Reid—A planeswalker that was staying on the plane, visiting to explore its strange magic and unusual crystalline formations. She admits to Lukka that she helps him out of curiosity, and in hopes he can teach her more about Ikoria, as she passes through in search of a place yet still to call home. She finds the way of life Lukka is used to in Drannith very odd and uncomfortable (the kill-or-be-killed mentality).
Winged Cat—Lukka’s involuntarily bonded cat-clade monster, a great, winged tiger, which goes unnamed throughout the story.
Brin & Rol—A bonder and her bonded monster that Vivien and Lukka befriend through the course of the story. Brin is a pale-skinned teenage girl with pink, wild and spiky hair, leather and homespun clothing, and a tuft of pink fur strewn over her shoulders. Rol (short for Roland) is a raccoon-like monster with pink fur and a round body, about the size of a horse.
Mzed, Dogsbreath, Nightshade, Toothcracker, & Sedra —Hunters that General Kudro hired to track down Lukka so he could be returned to Drannith as a prisoner. They are generally unruly, banter often, and rude to one another and to Jirina (whomst is forced to join them in their mission). Dogsbreath wears a mask resembling a dog, Nightshade specializes in poisons, Toothcracker is very physical and confrontational, and Sedra is known for being a bit… well, crazy.
Captain Falk—A man from the sanctuary of Skysail that the Hunters hire to take them to the Ozolith to catch up better with Lukka via a skyship called the Vermillion.
Abda (AKA “Spiky”) & Rigi—A bonder and her bonded monster that Vivien and Lukka befriend through the course of the story. Abda is dressed in leather and homespun, a brown jacket with a white shirt beneath, and carries a long spear with a double-point. She has dark brown hair done up into spikes. Her monster, Rigi, is a squat, badger-like monster with brown fur that fades to white on its belly, tusks that protrude from its lower jaw, and black thorns that cover its back and shoulders, which extend down to its brow and cheeks.
Barrow & Zeph—A bonder and his bonded monster that Vivien and Lukka befriend through the course of the story. Barrow is dressed in gray armor with white furs layered over the top, his hair white and swept back aside from two prominent spikes of hair at the forefront of his head (Lukka describes them as “horns”). Zeph is a cat-clade monster twice the size of Lukka’s winged cat, with a wild mane of white hair, and a body resembling a white tiger. It has two ram-like horns and glowing yellow eyes, and holds some control over electricity.Colonel Bryd—A colonel whom Jirina has quarrels with throughout the story, usually to humorous effect. He briefly takes over as Chief-in-Command after Kudro’s death, but Jirina overrides his authority by simply ignoring him.
Events
Lukka is on a hunt for a monster that has been killing livestock with his Specials team, Epha, Nik, Gedra, and Gox. He finds a sheep whose brain has been carefully extracted in an almost surgical manner.
They come up with a plan for Lukka to stand as bait (implied that he always does this) after traps are set up in the area, and some hours later, the nightmare returns and attacks. The traps work at first, but the monster breaks free and rushes Lukka. The rest of his squad save him, and they end off the day happy to have succeeded, believing that they all will now have 4 days off-duty to do whatever they wish. Lukka intends to spend it on quality time with his fiancée, Jirina.
A scene from Jirina’s POV shows that she has much more stress going on in her life as General Kudro’s daughter than she lets on. Lukka doesn’t pick up on it, and tries to get her in the mood for some fun. She tells him “not in the office,” and they leave after Lukka convinces her to let him go with her to her room to relax.
Interesting to note that despite Lukka’s high status in the Coppercoats, he admits to only having a cramped, shitty cot to sleep in, whereas Jirina, as daughter of General Kudro, has a bed big enough to accommodate the two of them with room to spare and a room on a higher floor of the Citadel.
After only a day off, Lukka’s team is called in despite their promised 4 days off, because a winged cat-clade monster has taken residence in a farm within Drannith’s third circle - the second-most wall Drannith has (it has 4, the first two being fairly weak and the first one hardly a wall at all, whereas the last two are thicker, and the final wall is enormous and big enough for entire troops to walk together, with ballistae and the like mounted there).
Even so, farms and such are often kept in the third circle, because Drannith is forced to make use of all its space within its territory.
The winged cat has been said to have slaughtered 10-20 Drannith soldiers already and nobody can oust it, which is why Lukka’s team has been called in.
At the farm, Lukka is afraid of going into any buildings or crops, for fear of the cat ambushing them. Instead, he tries to draw it out, and sends his team to start setting traps and to get into position. He sets out some bait that is supposed to be brand-new from Drannith’s researchers (implied to be a division of the Coppercoat military).
They wait for hours, and while they begin to think the cat may have slipped past them (and Lukka starts privately panicking and worrying about what would happen if the cat has snuck further into Drannith without their notice), the winged cat suddenly bursts from the barnhouse. All while Lukka is still trying to reach for a weapon to figure out how to push his own attack, the following happens:
It shatters the wooden wall nearest Gox and slashes his stomach open with its claws, disemboweling him. He bleeds out.
The winged cat then fought briefly with Gedra, outmaneuvering her and slamming her to the ground, then ripped her throat open. She bled out as well.
Lukka started barking orders to retreat, and while Nik tried to listen, the cat caught up to her and picked her up, taking flight with her in its mouth, and shook her so hard that her neck was broken.
Epha fled. The winged cat turned its attention to Lukka. He stayed behind, intending to sacrifice himself so Epha could survive, in hopes that Epha could live to tell others in Drannith about the severity of the creature they were dealing with as well as simply wanting her to live.
The winged cat advanced on Lukka, and he found himself thinking of Jirina and hoping Epha made it back before the cat was finished with him, but before anything could happen between them, a bolt of green energy fired between them and he was knocked unconscious.
Lukka awakens in Drannith in a private hospital bed, where Jirina comes to see him. She is discomforted by the presence of military personnel that are already interrogating him.
Lukka, none the wiser about what has happened, tells his questioners what has happened, and the personnel seem unusually satisfied and cagey about his answers. They leave to inform Kudro directly, telling Jirina that the general requested they give the report immediately, and that Jirina not be allowed to speak to him beforehand.
Jirina briefly speaks with Lukka and he recounts what happened. He asks why the cat didn’t kill him. Jirina, out of anxiety, posits that Nik’s bolt that she shot off before she was killed perhaps hurt it more than he thought. Lukka, not picking up on her anxiety, isn’t convinced.
Jirina leaves to speak with her father. Colonel Bryd keeps her out his office until the military personnel from earlier is done giving their report.
General Kudro, upon speaking with Jirina, tells her that he is saddened by the news of what has happened to Lukka and informs her of bonding magic, calling it a sickness, telling her that he fears Lukka has fallen victim to it, and that he can’t allow it to spread into Drannith. Though he doesn’t say it directly, Jirina picks up on the cues that he means to execute Lukka—and may very well already be on the way to do so.
Though she finishes the conversation with her father on amicable terms, Jirina decides that she can’t let her father do this, and that she must find a way to convince him otherwise. She leaves to help Lukka escape Drannith ASAP.
Upon returning to Lukka’s room, she dismisses the doctors so she can speak to Lukka freely, calling upon her authority as the general’s daughter to do so. Lukka, starting to get worried, begs her to tell him what’s going on. She tells him and he’s dismayed, but agrees to leave and follow along with her plan.
She and Lukka devise a plan for him to leave despite the location being the heavily armed Citadel in the center of Drannith. She asks Lukka to pretend to have taken her hostage, to walk out while holding a knife against her throat, threatening them to kill her if they attempt to apprehend him; doing so will assure nobody will even attempt to touch him, as nobody will want to be responsible for the death of the General’s daughter.
Lukka is horrified by the plan, and hates every moment of it, as he finds Jirina’s acting very convincing (as he does his own), but the idea of waiting around to die scares him more.
Once on the fringes of Drannith, Lukka lets her go (where she assures him she will smooth everything over with her father, she’s sure of it, and they share a pleasant goodbye), and flees on his own from there. He uses his knowledge of paths designed for Coppercoat usage and backways to avoid confrontations until he is met with checkpoints and gates leading out of the city.
Expecting the news of a rogue Coppercoats Specials captain to not have reached so far already, Lukka tries to bluff his way through the security of a gate that is rarely used, but they catch on anyway. He refuses to fight back, even when they threaten him, because he can’t stomach the thought of killing “teenagers and soon-to-be retired old men for following their orders.”
Vivien surprises him by saving him, shooting her bow and throwing an animal spirit to distract the guards, giving herself and Lukka the opportunity to flee.
While all of this is going down, Jirina has returned to her father in Drannith, revealing that she is alive and unharmed (but not telling her father that it was a facade, of course). He tells her that Lukka cannot be allowed to simply run free, for letting such intimate knowledge of Drannith run away with someone who bonds with monsters is unacceptable. He tells Jirina he has hired Hunters—mercenaries of sorts, but for monsters—to hunt Lukka down and bring him back to Drannith, because if he sends Coppercoats after Lukka, the news will be all over Drannith, and he wants to keep the situation on the down-low. He instructs Jirina to go with these Hunters, as she knows Jirina best. Jirina goes to object, but Kudro tells her that she will do it if she is still loyal to Drannith, forcing her to do so or imply that she is no longer loyal to Drannith. She believes that once she and the Hunters retrieve Lukka, she can still convince her father to change his mind, but she does secretly begin to wonder if something may be seriously wrong with Lukka due to her father’s paranoia.
It’s some hours after Vivien aids Lukka that Lukka and Vivien have finally made it fully out of Drannith, and Vivien has set up a modest camp for them. Lukka finally gets a chance to reflect on what all has happened that day. He asks Vivien why she aided him, and she claims that she felt the burst of magic that came from him and the winged cat. She came to search for it, and was surprised to find it coming to her, and decided to intervene so she could learn more about him, admitting that her goal is mainly sating her own curiosity.
Lukka is a bit less than enthused that his only friend is now a woman that wants him as something of a specimen, but he’s willing to take all the help he can get, so he thanks her.
Lukka says that he needs to slay the winged cat so he can return home, to Drannith, wanting nothing to do with it, given how its ruined his life. Vivien reluctantly agrees to lead him to the cat, telling him she can magically sense its location, to an extent.
He tells her that before they get too far beyond Drannith’s walls, he will need to stop by an outpost to restock on his own gear. He hopes that, given how far out the farthest outposts are, the news of his rogue nature won’t have reached them and he’ll be able to merely flash his stature at them.
Vivien agrees and, to Lukka’s relief, it works.
When they find the cat again, Vivien and Lukka are being attacked by a nightmare-clade monster. The cat saves Lukka, and Lukka, confused and upset, demands to know why—’There it was. The thing that had ruined his life. He wanted to laugh and cry all at once. [...] “Why not kill me too?”’
Vivien informs him that he is bonded, which is when Lukka finally learns about bonding magic. He laments how he never wanted this and reasserts his hatred for what has happened, and how he just wants to go home, but he also tells Vivien that he sensed something through the cat. He sensed that the Ozolith, a crystalline formation far north of Drannith, was somehow speaking to the cat and was what had driven it to attack so violently; someone was driving monsters to destroy Drannith via the Ozolith. He also felt how the cat was scared and how despite its violence, it had hardly eaten during its stint near Drannith, and how it actually didn’t want to be that close to it or the ‘twolegs,’ as it called them.
Vivien and Lukka come to the agreement that they should go to the Ozolith to learn more of what’s happening there.
As this is going down, Jirina and the Hunters find them. Jirina tries to talk Lukka down, but the Hunters attack him ruthlessly, and the winged cat becomes enraged. Lukka becomes overwhelmed as the situation escalates; Jirina tells him that if he comes home, everything will work out, but he is afraid and not so sure, and Vivien fires off her bow, and then—the winged cat picks him up by his clothing and lifts him into the sky.
The cat picking him up shocks Lukka to his core. He is no longer thinking of killing the cat. He even willingly explores the bonding magic, briefly, to see if he can convince the cat to let him onto her back so he can be more comfortable (which it does). He uncomfortably finds himself considering whether he should name it or whether he should call it “‘it’ or ‘she,’” but shoves away the feelings by reminding himself that she slaughtered 3 of his squad. Despite this, he starts calling her she, and later, he strokes her fur and rests on her back, even falling asleep at one point.
Before reaching the Ozolith, during their travels, the winged cat suddenly dives, and they meet Brin & Rol. Shortly after, they meet Abda & Rigi and Barrow & Zeph as well, who all agree to travel to the Ozolith as well after Lukka explains the sensations he felt through the winged cat about the voice that spoke through the Ozolith (though, hardly for the same reasons; Abda and Barrow are barely motivated at first until Brin points out that the Coppercoats will harm monsters en masse if they’re being driven to attack Drannith, much to Lukka’s annoyance).
They fly on Lukka’s winged cat to the Ozolith together. During this, while stopping to rest at one point, Vivien tells Lukka the story of how she lost her homeplane and how she is a Planeswalker, and about Nicol Bolas. Lukka is disturbed and refuses to let that happen to him.
At the Ozolith, they find nightmare-clade monsters guarding it. The bonders and Vivien agree to hold them off while Lukka swoops in and tries to interface with the Ozolith, to figure out what’s going on.
However, while this is going down, all hell breaks loose. The same Hunters from before, as well as Jirina, arrive via a skyship they rented from Skysail. It becomes a three-way brawl at the Ozolith, with Lukka and his allies, the Hunters, and the nightmare creatures all opposing each other.
Lukka touches the Ozolith and is overwhelmed with power by it. He speaks to an unnamed, unknown planeswalker through it. While in some sort of mental space where he can hear this planeswalker but not see them, he watches the raging battle as if from above. The planeswalker presses Lukka to accept the Ozolith’s power as his own, while Lukka rejects their proposals at first out of distrust (but admits that he just wants to go home and wants this to be over). The planeswalker has him watch Abda get shot with a ballista bolt from the skyship overhead, and after that, Lukka relents, allowing the planeswalker to grant him the powers of the Ozolith.
Lukka is returned to the battle and he lashes out with power via the Ozolith, gaining control of all of the nightmare-clade monsters as well as Rigi. His controlled monsters brutally kill most of the Hunters, and he even succeeds in downing their skyship. He only notices at the last minute that Jirina is still among them, in the vessel, as it plummets.
In the aftermath of the battle, Lukka is confronted by the bonders and Vivien, who are unhappy with how he forced the nightmare monsters to attack in such ways that they often killed themselves or gave themselves lifelong injuries (Rigi also died in the course of the battle). Lukka is shocked at their response, given how he believed he had just saved their lives, and is already thinking of how he can use his newfound abilities to protect Drannith and prove his loyalties to General Kudro in a whole new way. He and the others argue briefly, before Lukka loses his patience with them, and attempts to seize control of their bonded monsters anyway.
He’s unable to, and a fight breaks out again. Vivien berates him, telling him that she thought he was a good man, but she sees now that she was wrong; Lukka lashes out at her anyway, and she fires off a shot that produces a ghostly elk. It charges him and while he scuffles with it, Vivien and the other bonders escape.
Lukka lets them leave, no longer interested. He gathers control of the remaining nightmare monsters once more, calling them his “army,” and starts to plan his next moves to return home to Drannith. He also decides to scour the surrounding area first, however, in search of Jirina, because he isn’t sure what happened to her after the battle.
Unknown to Lukka, his winged cat—in the chaos—caught Jirina as the skyship fell from the sky. It then carried her back to Drannith, where it dropped her off at its innermost wall. Jirina managed to beg people to capture it and not kill it, but her arrival on the back of a monster, and then subsequent request, caused rumors throughout the city that Jirina has become a traitor to humanity. Kudro, out of fear of otherwise needing to oust or execute his own daughter, plans a public display where Jirina is slated to execute the winged cat, so the townspeople of Drannith may see where her loyalties truly lie.
Jirina realizes the tenuous position she’s in, but hopes that her father will be reasonable when he sees how truly unwilling she is to do it. She refuses. Kudro is not reasonable; angry and sad, he has Colonel Bryd take her away, and he slays the winged cat, much to Jirina’s dismay.
Jirina essentially becomes a prisoner in her own home after that point, unable to leave or do anything freely as she pleases.
Back with Lukka, he watches, through his bond with the winged cat, the public execution of the winged cat by Kudro. He realizes that the winged cat saved Jirina, all because it realized she was important to him, without him having had to ask, and he’s overcome with emotion. For a long moment, he sits silently, crying, before he gets up and furiously starts to reach further and further with the power of the Ozolith, gathering yet even more monsters for his “army.”
Lukka is desperate to go home and to return to Jirina, and has realized that if Kudro won’t let him by taking things out, then Kudro will kill him, and he refuses to let death be his only option forward. He starts to march his army towards Drannith.
Kudro amasses Coppercoat forces, and takes Jirina under the close eyes of guards, to meet Lukka and his army in the field after they spot him some distance away from Drannith, approaching. Kudro believes that they will not survive if they allow Lukka to meet their walls, but Jirina recognizes that fighting him in the field will cost an untold number of Coppercoat lives. Kudro later surprises her by revealing that Lukka has asked for a parley, and that he intends for Jirina to play an important role in it: she will assassinate Lukka. He gives her a dagger to keep in her pocket. Do this, and her name will be cleared, and she will no longer be a prisoner.
Even so, Jirina doesn’t want to kill Lukka and doesn’t intend to during the parley.
Lukka attempts to talk to General Kudro and Jirina during their parley. It’s hardly under peaceful terms; the parley occurs on an island in the middle of a raging river, and Kudro has ballistae mounted facing it. Lukka has a single monster facing the island from the opposing side of the river, or so it seems at first.
Lukka explains his idea of using monsters to guard Drannith instead of Coppercoats, explaining how humans need not die anymore in place of monsters. Let them die instead. Kudro, of course, is unbudging in his position on the matter and still thinks of Lukka as “sickened.” Jirina tries to pull Lukka aside and speak to him alone, telling him that this idea will never be accepted in Drannith; she begs him to give it up and simply come back.
Lukka is frustrated, because the way he sees it, if he “gives up,” he will be killed. He doesn’t believe Jirina can convince Kudro of anything.
Lukka comes to the conclusion that Kudro will have to leave the picture, seeing him as all that is keeping him away from his fiancee and home.
The parley starts to go awry. Lukka viciously denies Jirina and Kudro’s terms. Kudro tells Lukka off.
Lukka reveals that he was prepared for this eventuality on his own when monsters start bursting from the earth and the trees, disabling the ballistae and killing Coppercoats. In his fit of rage, he kills Kudro, and then turns to Jirina, babbling about how they can now have a life together—
…And Jirina swipes that dagger for him. She misses, only cutting his face in the process.
Furious and heartbroken, Lukka throws her into the raging river, snarling at her that she can die with the rest of the “traitors,” then—completing his arc of turning into the very monster Kudro was trying to prevent him from becoming.
Jirina escapes the river later, barely alive, and is confronted by monsters. Vivien and the other bonders that previously argued with Lukka save her and take her back to Drannith, where she asserts herself as chief of command despite the authority supposing to have gone to Colonel Bryd.
Lukka marches his monsters on Drannith, intending to force them to let him stay, or to drive everyone who fights him out so he can stay in their place. Jirina, however, has prepared Drannith by the time he arrives, and though there are hundreds and hundreds of casualties and plenty of damage, the city’s great walls hold. Jirina manages to get close to Lukka again and demands to know why he’s doing this, asking him if he really thinks he can just “come back” after this. He tells her that he intends to force them, that he’s not asking anymore. Jirina comments that he really has gone insane, and when Lukka goes to have monsters attack her again, the other bonders once again jump to her defense.
Lukka, once again, tries to seize control of the bonded monsters, as his army is spread thin at this point in the battle and no others are close enough to save him from the coming onslaught from Vivien and the bonders. The unknown planeswalker residing in the Ozolith warns him that if he does this, he won’t like what happens—but Lukka does it anyway, pulling more and more power from the Ozolith, until the great crystal shatters and explodes.
Pain floods his body and his army of monsters scream in agony as a reflection of his own. Fiery sensations course through him, as his spark ignites, and he internally laments how he just wanted to go home, just wanted to be with Jirina again. Then, he finally planeswalks away.
He awakes elsewhere, in a swamp, where three canid creatures take interest in him. He notes that he feels mentally fragile, like if he “shook his head too hard, it might break,” (or something along those lines), but despite that, he instinctively attempts to reach out to control the animals ahead of him. He controls one, which fights the others off.
Grateful he has some power left, Lukka vows to go home, even though he knows that’s completely impossible, both literally and figuratively, showing that he has lost it completely at this point. And that’s where the story ends.
#mtg#lukka#vivien reid#ikoria#magic the gathering#magic: the gathering#sundered bond#ikoria: lair of behemoths#ikoria: lair of behemoths - sundered bond
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You! Star Wars Time travel fix it lover! Have you read Desert Storm by Blue_Sunshine on AO3 yet? It's so good!! It's focused on how having the time traveler would change things, not on a reveal, and it's got overarchinf themes of growth and found family and how change comes as a result of the efforts of many people with many different ideas and motivations, and that it often comes best when it comes from the people involved in issues, not outsiders, and it takes more than one person! It's good!
I am immensely enjoying the fact that my brand is finally including time travel fixit because I am getting recc’d so many good fics! I haven’t read this one but it has gone straight to the top of the list ☺️
Desert Storm by blue_sunshine (30k).
In Tatooine legend, the sandstorm is Lukka, the Fury, both cleansing and damning. Lukka, the slaves believed, was Justice, was he who remade the world, and remade the soul.
The storm screams at him, and Obi-Wan Kenobi screams back.
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