kippurbird | Just when you thought you saw the light, it turns into a train.

Triscuit is dead again. Don't get your hopes up though, we still have about a hundred pages left. So, he's dead and he sees daddy. No, wait, he's dreaming. Daddy absolves him of any guilt for killing him.

"There is nothing to forgive," The dead king said gently. "You had no choice. Both the wizard and I could see that."

Yes. Triscuit did have a choice. He could have attacked Sludge! He had the damn sword in his hands and he could have attacked instead of standing around like a gobstruck idiot. However any responsibility or guilt that he could have in regards to his actions just got absolved because Daddy told him he didn't have any other choice and he did the right thing, of course.

However, not surprisingly, it gets worse.

"I have come to tell you that you must do everything in your power to save your sister - and, by doing so, also save the world as we know it." He paused, still looking at the medallion as though remembering all that it had once represented. "You and she are the very future of Eutracia," he said. "You must rule, and she must be free of the power that hold her here, free to go home and raise her child in peace. But also understand this: If you are able to return with her, be informed that there are many problems in our homeland, and your destiny, however difficult, still waits to be fulfilled. You two are the Chosen Ones. But the Prophecies decree that it is you, the male, upon whom the main burden falls."

Sister doesn't seem to have any real impact on being a Chosen one here. She's supposed to go home and raise her baby. And that's it. Which is perfectly acceptable for her as a woman to do. Meanwhile Triscuit seems to have to do all the hard stuff. We still don't know what Sister's job is as one of the Chosen Ones is. Personally I think it would have been MUCH more interesting if Sister was allowed to stay evil and the two of them had to fight each other. A sort of Dark Side vs Light Side sort of thing. It would be cliche but at least give Sister a much more active role in the story. She's more passive in this story than Triscuit is.

Anyway, Triscuit wakes up and is in a cage hanging off the ground. The idiot sorceresses left his weapons with him. So, you, of course, know that he'll be able to get free at some point and be able to wreck carnage on everyone. I believe we've now hit a negative IQ here.

The Evil (if incredibly stupid) Sorceresses are introduced to Triscuit and then Sister shows up! Triscuit tries to convince him that he's her twin brother and she says that they told her that he'd try something like that.

"Besides," she said nastily, "how could you be my brother when I find you so attractive?" Impossibly , she began to reach out to touch his groin.

If we remember earlier in the book she was attracted to him, calling him the most handsome man that she knew. So obviously this doesn't mean much for her position.

Sushi, however, calls her off saying that Sister should come over and show him who she truly loves.

Smiling, Shailiha walked to Succiu and took her in her arms. She then kissed the second mistress. Not a kiss upon the cheek or a sisterly kiss of endearment, but a raw, passionate, sexual kiss on the mouth that seemed to the prince to last an eternity. After the embrace, Shailiha lovingly brushed back some of Succiu's hair, and the two of them stood before him, arm in arm. Triscuit began to feel the need to vomit, as tears welled up in his eyes. His head slumped down to hjis chest. The insanity never ends, his heart sobbed

Ah this must be one of the acts of depravity that Dwarf has been talking about. Nothing like kissing some one you love to show that you care about them being called an act of depravity. Oh wait, of course, they're two women. That's a terrible and disgusting thing to do. Only men and women are allowed to kiss. Anything else is just horrible and disgusting.

I say we all write slash and send it to Newcomb as punishment for this. Horrible, graphic slash. With endowed blood rushing lustily through veins.

Triscuit demands to see Earwig who turns out to be hanging out in another one of those cages - a gibbet- and he looks like he's been tortured. The question is then, how long has Triscuit been out for them to torture Earwig. Dwarf is also hanging in his own gibbet.

Failee then monologues about how she knew they were coming. It's boring.

We learn that Dying is what Minions are bred for. Or so Sludge tells us.

That's got to suck.

Traditionally, warriors are bred for fighting, not dying. Because I mean if they were bred for dying then they should be weak like nerds that spend too much time in front of their computers and not working out. Then they'd be able to die easily. Or maybe make them Sterile! Then they wouldn't breed at all and die out quickly.

But really, no one is bred for dying. That's stupid.

However! Triscuit starts to bleed internally. "Tristan's endowed blood tore through his veins like never before as he trembled with sheer, pure hatred of wanting to see another man die by his own hand."

Since Sludge is bred for dying, I'm sure he'll just stand there and let Triscuit stab him in the gut. For some reason, we're supposed to think that Sludge has changed over the past couple of months because we get a long paragraph of description describing how he hasn't changed. You don't need to describe things that haven't changed. It's dull, it's redundant and wastes space.

The Frog people are now no longer Death Incarnate. Sludge is.

Once again, Triscuit shows that his priorities are in place. He swears to himself that, "Even if I do nothing else in this awful place, I will kill you."

Bad Triscuit. No cheese. You shouldn't be focusing on the Minion but on saving people everyone from oblivion. He should be the last thing on your mind. Saving your sister should be the first. Actually saving the world should be first. Everything else is secondary. Killing Sludge should be an after thought at most.

Newcomb's new favorite adverb is Nastily. He repeats it three times.

Sludge tells him that he found Angel and that he brought her back with him doing whatever he wanted with her over and over again, slowly. He says that he even might take her as his mate. I don't see why he would want her as a mate though as she might not be able to bare him Minion babies and that would emasculate him. But it could be that he's just saying that for Triscuit's benefit. However, I highly doubt that. He then reminds Triscuit that he raped Mom too.

Tristan tried to subdue the vicious images in his mind. The twin visions of Kludge first atop his hysterical, screaming mother, and then the gentle, virgin Gallipolai.

Because if she wasn't a virgin it'd be all right.

Anyone up for a posse?

Still Triscuit pretends that he doesn't care for Angel (even though they were spying on him, told him they were spying on him, and saw that he did care for her) an then insults him with the "Depriving a village with an idiot" insult.

Blah, blah, somehow Earwig lost his powers and his eyes no longer sparkle with it. And we Finally learn why the Sorceresses want Triscuit.

They want to have his baby. His first born son.

"It is really quite simple," she said. "From your seed mingled with that from one of us, I mean to acquire your first and only son. Raised by us, he will be much more easily controlled than his father. He will worship us, inf act, and be a male of the Chosen One's blood, who unlike yourself, will do our bidding gladly, without the use of the Agonies. And in turn I shall mate your son with Vona, Zabarra, Succi, and myself for as long as we choose, allowing only the females to live. The result will be blood and seed that will be of an even higher quality than your own, because it came forth from your son willingly. Then we will be free to kill both you and your boy child at our leisure. Imagine it. An entire race of female Chosen Ones, trained in the Vagaries and under our complete control."

Even the EVIL sorceresses only want to have babies. Because they're women and that's what women want. Babies. Also, note this. She says that they're going to raise the son to utterly adore them and then kill him. Why though? He's a willing slave to their whims. They could even teach him the Vagaries. They could do that with all their kids. There's no reason why they have to just have women. Nowhere does it say that only women can use the Vagaries. I mean look at Gimpy. Besides if they're going to be doing incest they might as well go all the way. By using only women they're cutting off a vital resource and weapon. The women will need to breed if they want more sorceresses and anyone else they breed with won't be of as pure endowed blood as Triscut's children so if anything they should keep the boys alive for that purpose.

Why am I thinking this through logically?

Well that's enough for now.