Time to take another look at the Dragon Prince
It’s been a while, but it’s time to see where Callum and Rayla are heading as Ezran heads back to his Kingdom.
Chapter 1 – Sol Regem
So a bit of Xadia’s backstory, a mighty dragon once tried to
convince humans to give up dark magic, threatening to wipe out a village of
people if they refused. They refused but the negotiator had come prepared with
a staff, as dragons came in to support this attack he used that staff to drain
their life-force, gaining fire abilities which he used to blind the mighty
dragon, he was caught in Dragon’s flame but the staff survived.
The Dragon’s name is Sol Regem, and it’s now blocking Callum
and Rayla’s path, they have to sneak by him, of course being blind his sense of
sight isn’t an issue, so avoid be smelt or heard… if he’s can touch or taste
you, well…
General Amaya is advised to retreat from the base in case of
an inevitable sun-elf attack. She’s informed she has a visitor. Sneaking Is
proving difficult is little zym is jealous of all the creatures flying above
them, his desire almost gets them all scorched. Turns out the visitor is Gren,
who tells Amaya of what’s been happening and about Viren’s arrest. She decides
that her general is correct and they no longer can defend the bridge, their
best hope is to destroy it before the sun elves us it.
With the two pinned down, sneaking no longer an option and
fighting in evitable losing battle, Rayla decides there’s only one solution, to
reason with him. And upon revealing Zym it seems to work, but Sol Regem has a
deep seeding hatred of humans and whilst he’ll allow Rayla and Zym to pass, Callum’s
gotta die.
Rayla tries to make her case for Callum and it might’ve
worked if not for one thing, Sol can tell that Callum has practiced dark magic.
Amaya and her crew have rigged the mountain with explosives and are rolling out
a detonation cord, unfortunately the sun elves cut the cord before it can be
used to detonate the explosives.
With that option out, Amaya decides to ride out and detonate
them herself, she’s knocked off her horse and loses her flaming torch,
thankfully she’s skilled enough against a sun elf to get her sword and uses
that to detonate the explosives. In an interesting turn, the explosion knocks
the sun elf off the cliff and she’s holding onto the edge for dear life, Amaya
helps her up before being surrounded and forced to surrender.
Callum and Rayla have an idea. Rayla, the faster and more
agile of the two will wear Callum’s scarf and lure Sol Regem away, allowing Callum
to pass unimpeded. It works for a while, but Rayla gets trapped in some rocks
and it a sitting duck for the next fire-blast. Callum has an idea, he gets
Rayla to throw the scarf then uses his one and only spell to blow the scarf
beneath an arch, being blind, Sol hits his head on the arch and is temporarily
trapped.
Viren is still imprisoned but Aaravos is still whispering in
his ear, telling him that things have already been set into motion and that he
shouldn’t fret. Still, the ruling council outside are talking about ending his
life as Ezran walks in.
It’s a nice worldbuilding episode as the pieces continue to
move. I’m glad they’re being clever with the use of Callum’s magic, fighting a
much stronger opponent using illusion and trickery, Lujanne taught them well.
Rating 7.5/10
The Crown
We open with Ezran getting up the next morning, woken by
Bait. Ezran takes the crown, but doesn’t feel ready to put it on, partly
wishing he was in Xadia with the others. Speaking of which, Callum and Rayla
are heading through Xadia, Callum’s cube is picking up primal energy in just
about every direction. Rayla’s plan is to head to her home to get help from the
other moonshadow elves.
Ezran is seeing his newfound authority, royal guards who
shout his requests at people even though he’s right there, jelly tarts whenever
he wants without having to steal them, and now he has to deal with a huge
backlog of messages. Yeah, you can which is the heavy plot and which is the
light plot this episode. One minute you’re hearing how several kings and queens
have been murdered and the next fart flowers. I get wanting to balance out the
dark stuff but did you have to go there?
Anyway, a Royal Guard has brought Soren and Claudia to the
castle, they’ve been arrested as traitors and are now brought for Ezran’s
judgement. He’s not really sure what they did but Claudia keeps putting her
foot in her mouth and revealing, at least to the adults, what her intentions
were. Ezran doesn’t know what to do with them, I don’t think he knows what
Viren did. So he tells them to give them food and rest but keep the chains on
Another visitor of equal seriousness is the son of one of
the deceased kings. His army is outside the city gates, and he’s there to talk
about waging war against Xadia. Of course Ezran does not know about anything
that’s happened in his absence and is rather against the idea of waging war in
principle, especially given the plan with Zym.
The council advisor woman who’s name I can’t remember,
sorry, it’s been a while since I last watched this show and it has a lot of
characters recommends he give control of the kingdom to a regent who he trusts.
Still, that’s not the path that Ezran ultimately chooses.
Soren and Claudia are allowed to go free, not paying for the mistakes of their
father and he unequivocally refuses to send his people to war, preaching a
story of peace that would setting a lot easier if the hadn’t staged
simultaneous deadly strikes on multiple kingdoms. I’m sorry, but a co-ordinated
response to that is necessary, if actions don’t have consequences, then the
actions will continue. And with this display of courage, he finally places the
crown upon his end.
Ah, the naivety of youth. Still, it’s an interesting little
political drama with some nice worldbuilding in the B-plot, even if said
worldbuilding involves shit like fart flowers
Rating 7/10
Chapter 3 – Ghost
Rayla is feeling a lot of emotion regarding her return home,
especially concern over what they may think of Callum.
Prince Kasev is summoned back to the Katolis palace, Ezran
decides to tell him of the plan to have Callum and Rayla bring the baby dragon
back to its mother and ta-da, world peace, or something, I may have missed a
few steps. It works about as well as you might expect and one of the royal
guards empathises with Kasev’s cause.
The sun elf warrior is about to interrogate Amaya with the
help of an interpreter. Through the magic of… I guess interpretive dance they
make through the forest illusion into Rayla’s home. Of course, Callum is
literally wearing two twigs to disguise himself. But that might not be the only
problem, as none of the elves have faces, Rayla says that it’s her that’s the
problem, she’s a ‘ghost’
Soren and Claudia head to the dungeon to see their father
who uses a butterfly to make himself presentable. He’s not too happy that not
only have they not recovered the egg they’ve let it hatch. Though he tells them
that everything he’s asked of them is for the good of humanity, Claudia then
asks about his order for Soren to kill the princes.
Rayla hopes all this is a misunderstanding and goes to the
one person she’s confident might see her to set things right, Ethari,
unfortunately that isn’t happening and he’s ghosted her as well. The Sun Elf
warrior gets pretty much nothing from her interrogation and decides to take
Amaya to see the Queen, who quickly orders her killed.
Ethari is able to see Rayla in a reflection and says that
whilst he told them she wasn’t ready to be a moon-shadow assassin, her
abandonment of them resulted in their deaths. Aaravos tells Viren to lie, as
they’ll need Claudia for some unspecified purpose soon so he does so, saying
that Soren had misinterpreted his words, possibly even dangerously so. The
saddest thing about this is that Claudia actually falls for this bullshit.
As they leave, one of the council bribes the guards so that
Kasev can pay Viren a visit. Back with Rayla, Ethari uses a bit of moon-magic
to temporarily break the ghosting spell, Rayla uses this chance to tell him
everything. But Ethari has some bad news, with the death of her mate, the
Dragon Queen has fallen ill, time is now of the essence and he provides a
couple of mounts to help them on their way.
As they ride away we see beneath the water that one of the
flowers is still open and floating. These flowers represent the lives of the
moon-shadow assassins so one of the may still be alive, though barely.
Ethari sends a message via magical arrow to the dragon queen
in the hope that she may see it and hold on. Rather than being killed on the
spot, Amaya is given an opportunity to face judgement by the light, she looks
into it and to the elves’ surprise comes out unharmed, she has a pure heart.
It’s a solid episode with some neat emotional touches
Rating 7/10
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