I’m wondering if the other person Elspeth sees when she tries to ‘talk’ to herself is the manifestation of her witchcraft, which simply wants to tell the truth. If so, she should be able to use that to start doubting the way Chelsea has tweaked her to evaluate other people much quicker than if she were to begin re-evaluating her memories; memories that she may not trust with her new values. She has no reason not to trust her witchcraft however, so if she asks it about herself and what she thought of others before being Chelsea’d, she may recover very quickly. Once she’s done this, she may also be able to help the Quileutes recover their original values. If not, then at least she can order Jacob around.
Giriath
and the way you introduced Allirea didn’t feel forced or unrealistic
I love Allirea! I think she’s my new favorite character in the story. I think she’s kind of the pessimistic, unwilling comedic relief. It always brightens the mood when she suddenly pops up and everyone goes “Oh right, Allirea exists!”, and it’s fun because she’s right there and may even be touching them. Another fun scenario is if her witchcraft doesn’t work on Bella and whenever Bella would talk about Allirea no one would know what she was talking about unless Allirea chooses to show herself, or Bella learns to shield people.
I wonder why Bella’s shield doesn’t negate the effects of Pera’s witchcraft. It has been explained what it can do, but the characters seem not to know how it works. Does it transport those hidden to another dimension where beings of their race and its subspecies (vampire, werewolf etcetera—all beings originating from humans) aren’t present, but other races (plant life, other kinds of animals e.t.c.) and non-living objects are? Or does Pera release some energy onto the things she uses her witchcraft on that makes it impossible to detect with your senses, or like Allirea unnoticeable even though your senses can register it? I think the latter hypothesis is more likely, and so I believe Bella should be able to learn to be unaffected by it. If I’m right, then I’m puzzled as to why she was affected by it in the first place.
I have some thoughts on chapter 2 of Radiance. It’s very interesting that Jacob’s pack has a former ‘kept’ wolf. He should have a lot of information on the Volturi and the ‘kept’ packs. It’s unfortunately also quite probable that he should know whether Edward was actually killed or not, and since Cody said Elspeth’s parents were both killed it’s safe to assume Brady either somehow doesn’t have any information on that or that Edward really was killed.
I guess we’ll also see if Elspeth is Jacob’s imprint next chapter. Personally I’d like it if her mate was female.
Chapter 56.
Things certainly aren’t looking good for the Cullen’s. I imagine Aro must be absolutely giddy, considering how well his attack went. The fact remains though that neither Bella or Jasper actually saw Edward and Alice die. I’m quite sure Edward still lives, since Bella didn’t find any of his jewellery. I’m not too sure about Alice though. It would make sense for Jasper to be able to distinguish Alice’s emotions from that of others, and a burning death is probably quite hard to fake. Alice’s gift would also be hindered by all the wolves and halflings the Volturi are now surrounding themselves with, and therefore not be as useful.
I wonder how Bella can survive Jasper—maybe he’ll be careless and she can put out the flames again. But at the rate things are getting more depressing, maybe she really will die and the sequel will be narrated by Elspeth, like I thought for a moment last chapter. My biggest question this chapter is: why would the Volturi leave Jasper alive after they had supposedly killed Alice? Why didn’t he just chase them until they killed him?
Uh, well I had made a few suggestions a ways back but I can’t remember all of them and as it’s my birthday I don’t currently have the time to search for them amongst all my comments and private messages.
Here’s a few though: tell us about when Bella met Allirea and Eleazar and managed to steal Allirea away and their subsequent journey up until they met with Elspeth and party again.
Tell us about how Bella reacts to Elspeth having been Chelsea’d, and if that is insufficient as an omake, what she is doing and thinking when and after Elspeth is abducted twice, and anything else you’d like to add pertaining to that time frame (e.g. Bella almost attacking Pera).
Tell us about the first major contact between the Golden Empire and human governments, and any subsequent contact you find interesting.
Tell us about the first direct public contact (televised or otherwise) between human society and the Golden Empire, preferably from the perspective of Bella’s past human acquaintances, like Angela, Mike, Ben, Jessica, Lauren e.t.c.
Tell us about the first official function Elspeth attends. Will she wear a crown? Will Jacob really get a title?
Tell us about Allirea’s experiences as personal bodyguard of the imperial family.
That’s all I have for now. :)
Your portrayal of Allirea’s power is one of my favourite parts.
I agree! She’s a very quirky woman with a very interesting power that I very much enjoy, even if she does eat people and see herself as part of a ‘master’ race.
Then I realized under mind control she would no longer think of any of those people as notable enough to wonder about her reaction to. Which is the really, really creepy part.
Yes it is, which is likely why Chelsea is at the mandatory assembly every single day. That way none of them will have time to feel any inclination to investigate their past life. Instead they’ll be all too busy living their little village life and thinking they’re the good cops when they go out on missions. I imagine they’re filled a lot of bullshit about the people they hunt and the Volturi’s reasons before and during missions, so it makes any potential windows of re-evaluation created by killing and kidnapping people on demand, be as minor as possible so Chelsea has time to do maintenance before they rebel.
Hopefully Elspeth’s witchcraft make her the exception to this routine, which we had small evidence of in this chapter. Thinking of herself as free sounded false to Elspeth, because of it. When she has run out of trivial things to blame for the reaction, she’ll probably use it to figure out why it makes such a statement feel false. I think this means that my previous hypothesis that she can use it not just to remember her love for Bella (who she thought of really hard in attempt to not forget when being Chelsea’d), but to re-evaluate everything she thought and did in her life, because her witchcraft will tell her what is true, and she won’t doubt that.
This means that when she finds a window of opportunity to do this without alerting Chelsea, she could command Jacob to round up his pack and everyone else they can get their hands onto, and get the hell out of Dodge. I’m also quite sure she could tell the villagers what is true about them, the Volturi and the world and her experiences of it, to make it much easier and faster for them to fight against the values created in their minds by Chelsea. That may take more time than it would for Chelsea to sound the alarm though, and if that happened she wouldn’t get another chance.
I thought you said things would calm down for a while after chapter 10 Alicorn?! Jasper and Edward sure went brain-fried by their mate connection. I had my eyebrows pretty high when Jasper described his impromptu battle plan, and it seems I was right to be sceptic, cause damn them vampires turn stupid when their mate is in trouble.
We’re in need of some heroics here or there’ll be multiple dead characters next chapter. I think Santiago will decide that only Edward and Elspeth are worth sparing out of this bunch. I doubt Bella will suddenly start owning with her witchcraft in this story though, so perhaps there’s some other kind of intervention? Maybe Bella brought company. Anyway I don’t see how Elspeth and co. would escape if they’re brought back to Volterra again.
Edward is probably completely indifferent to Elspeth right now, but as you said she simply needs to show him that Bella is alive and that she really wants Elspeth to be alive and well. She shouldn’t have to show him this through visualization with her witchcraft; he can read her mind and she can talk with absolute sincerity. If he snaps out of it quick enough, he’ll probably recognize the threat of Adelaide and either kill, incapacitate or keep her busy while Elspeth and Allirea flee.
The revelation that the Volturi can keep prisoners and make use of their witchcraft like this begs the question of who they have actually killed; is Alice alive perhaps? I’m not sure Elspeth would have time to recognize her in the pandemonium of the prisoners escape, and with all the potential witchcraft present (one could seemingly turn invisible), there’s no telling how someone could help her escape unnoticed. Her witchcraft is very powerful so the Volturi would be interested in keeping her, but then again Jasper claims to have felt her die. She may have been considered too powerful and uncooperative to let live.
I think it’s one of the Volturi’s most stupid mistakes to have such a large collection of unwilling and vengeful witches in one place—and right in their base of operations, no less. Any enemy with knowledge of this and the capability of penetrating the castle and freeing the prisoners will have successfully detonated a bomb of witchcraft on them, and it’s possible they’re made more pliable by having almost all of their relationships wiped out, so it shouldn’t be hard to persuade them to join a rebel army.
On a last note I must say that this story has the most interesting take on ‘gifts’ -or witchcraft as it’s called in this story- of all supernatural Twilight stories I’ve read. None so far have been ridiculously powerful and they all have limits and counters. Best of all they can be explained and make sense within the Twilight universe. I’d often wondered how it was that Aro could process all the insignificant memories of a being thousand of years old in a mere few moments, and without affecting his own personality. Alicorn’s take on that is more reasonable than that he would for example gain an extreme temporary boost in brain-capacity to make sense of all the intake while his gift is active, and this would very likely still affect his personality since he has in essence just experienced everything another individual has.
Most likely she’s Nahuel’s eldest sister: Allirea, Noemi or Iseul. Alicorn hasn’t yet written which one of them is the eldest.
Chapter 7.
I’m going to assume almost the whole chapter isn’t meant to be in cursive font and that you made a typo somewhere there. I’m only going to write a few thoughts I had on the chapter. First off, Bella is hella quick to come up with very possible hypotheses on what the Volturi will do, how and why. I really hope she got away this time too, or at least survived. Now, if I understood this correctly (it was really confusing to be honest), then it seems to me that Elspeth is most likely in a cell with a witch who can make those around her ignore hers and maybe others’ presence. Elspeth notices this person but seemingly decides she’s of no importance at all, even though she certainly should be. Her mind probably went all over the place trying to ignore the stranger killing Carlo while also trying to figure out what was happening to him. He didn’t know what was happening either even though he could most probably plainly see her feasting on his neck.
If the stranger has this witchcraft, then I wonder how the Volturi are keeping her captive, and captured her in the first place. It seems unlikely that they would have someone like Bella who can shield against such mental illusions or attacks. Perhaps the guard can counteract it if he knows she’s there and focuses on her all the time from when he opens the door until he closes it. If that’s the case, then Elspeth may be able to help her by taking his attention off of her.
I also noticed that it took quite some time for this stranger to attack Carlo; maybe she was ‘vegetarian’ or a newborn who tries her best to resist. If she’s newborn it’s quite possible she was captured by the Volturi to be changed, or was in the process of being transformed when captured and then forgotten or assumed to have somehow escaped when her witchcraft got a power boost with her change. This may explain why they put Elspeth in a cell with a vampire, but they may also just not have cared about the safety of their prisoners. If she’s newborn maybe she is too confused to escape, and isn’t aware of what she can do.
Elspeth also seems unhid, or else the guard, the stranger and Carlo are all hidden (and I don’t believe that for a second), so if her hypothesis that Del can’t unhide her because she’d copy Elspeth’s gift before she can use Pera’s, then we must assume the Volturi made Pera unhide her and most likely everyone else who didn’t manage to avoid capture. Unless Pera died and her witchcraft was nullified of course.
It will be very interesting to see how Elspeth manages to escape together with this stranger who may be even better at hiding than even Pera. After all, what better way to hide than being able to stare those hunting you in the face only to find them walking past you, continuing the search. I wonder how that would work with Demetri. He’d probably breach whatever the range of her witchcraft is, proceed to ignore her presence and look under every stone in the area, knowing she’s there somewhere, then inevitably stumble outside her range and try to figure out what in the hell just happened. Maybe he’d tip-toe in and out and eventually find the answer to if vampire’s really can go crazy (not counting Jasper).
The most similar witch I can think of at the moment (it’s 04:33 here so I’m rambling) is Renata, only the stranger is more powerful if she can project over an area or other people. From what I’ve gathered about Renata her witchcraft simply rejects anyone with an intention to harm those under her protection; they still know the target is there, they just can’t attack it. The stranger seems to make you think you don’t want anything to do with her when under her spell. You don’t want to sense her or think about her, and you certainly don’t have any intention to interact in any way with her. It’s an extremely powerful self-preservation ability that also has the potential to make her very lonely. If Edward really isn’t alive, then I demand that this girl become Bella’s second mate!
Hmm. That ended up being more than a few thoughts...
EDIT: After reading this, I’ve decided that ‘the stranger’ has a nice ring to it. Please please please make her be a newborn with little to no memory of her human life. :)
Even if it isn’t strictly canon, I hardly think it’s a horrible thing. Your Chelsea makes for a more interesting character, even if she is extremely creepy and most likely at least partly responsible for over a million murders.
Aro probably has more reasons to fear what Addy could do with her knowledge of his past actions and future plans than just his killing Didyme. I hope they find Bella soon. It seems like she would be essential in physically harming Renata, unless someone can injure her from outside her shield’s effect range.
The only causes for her reaction at the end of chapter I can come up with are as follows.
1: She’s been hit by Alec, and probably Addy has too.
2: Addy is sending all her memories to Elspeth, making her completely disoriented and “alone” with Addy’s thoughts, that she interprets as her own.
3: Addy is sending her a memory of being hit by Alec, not all her memories.
1 probably means there’s a rebellion for some reason. Or, more likely; Aro has found out about Addy’s sessions with Elspeth and deemed them too dangerous to continue. Alec is there to separate them and perhaps kill Elspeth to eliminate the risk of her spreading a heuristic allowing people to neutralize the effects of Chelsea’s witchcraft very effectively.
2 means we get to see whether Addy really is voluntarily working for the Volturi, or if she was tempted by their powers and later enslaved by Chelsea like everyone else. If she is, then she should have been able to use Magic to neutralize the effects like Elspeth does, but maybe she isn’t able to make that decision herself but would turn sides if Elspeth sends her the same heuristic she would her friends.
3 probably means Addy is testing if a memory of Alec’s power is sufficient enough to keep a person subdued. If it is, then she may decide Elspeth’s witchcraft can’t develop any further and finally deem her uninteresting and not useful.
I hope it’s something close to my second guess, so Elspeth can finally get on with freeing people from this horrible situation. And later the Volturi can hopefully get what’s been a long time coming. Especially Aro, Chelsea and Addy, if she’s a voluntary participant.
Well, sure. They suspected that should the Volturi force them to join, she would start brain-frying them into liking their superiors and want to please them. It was later revealed she would do this to any talented vampires the Volturi wanted that they came across, while breaking their ties to outsiders. But this was mentioned maybe once or twice out all four books. Eleazar and Carmen leave the Volturi unhindered, which isn’t really the case in this story. I suspect the choice they were given here was to have severe restrictions on their freedom or be completely altered by Chelsea. I think she may be more powerful in this story, but like I said it wasn’t really discussed in canon.
Chelsea can certainly make people very predictable. If one has a mate, then all they’re going to care about after being Chelsea’d is their safety, and they’re most probably not going to trust anyone else with protecting them until they’ve rebuilt their relationships. If one doesn’t have a mate, then he or she is going to care about his or her safety and no one else’s, and it will probably take them a while to find allies they’re able to trust with their life. If you don’t trust anyone, it will be very hard to make a sensible plan and stick to it.
This makes me wonder if Edward won’t just run away from the battle, if he hasn’t somehow been incapacitated of course. If there seems to be no way to win or get Elspeth out of there, he would want to find Bella and stop her before she can get there.
How do you quote or make HTML in general in these comments? I’ve looked around in the FAQ but wasn’t able to find out how.
Chelsea was/is working on the imprints too, presumably so that they won’t want to leave and ask their respective wolf to take them away or attack the Volturi. Now this was a very sad chapter in my opinion, even though we learned Alice was alive (which I had previously had privately confirmed by Alicorn, so no surprise there for me) and she reunited with Jasper. The effects of Chelsea’s witchcraft really hurts. It’s much more interesting in this story than canon, where it’s barely spoken about but hinted that it isn’t all that powerful—at least that’s the way I saw it. Maybe that’s just because the main characters never had to be subjected to the effects of her power in canon though, and consequently we didn’t get an opportunity to witness it and the reactions of the characters.
It’s very sad that these characters who used to love Elspeth now see her as little more than a hindrance to getting to their mates as fast and safe as possible. It’s possible that will change when they are reunited with their mates and given time, and the situation with Bella won’t be as bad as Elspeth makes it out to be just because she suddenly loves her second-most. She does need to grow up and work on her relationship with Jacob whenever that time comes, but first she needs to grow out of her sheltered self who relies entirely on her ‘mama’.
I really really want Bella to learn to expand her shield to others. It’s possible that just doing that once will erase any lasting witchcraft effects such as Chelsea’s, especially since witchcraft are relative to how their owners believe they work in this story, and Bella is a master of getting her mind to do what she wants it to.
If the Cullen’s (with considerable help from others) manage to defeat the Volturi and create a new vampire ‘government’, then I can totally see Elspeth as the radiant public figure who everyone is willing to listen to and easily understand, while Bella is an advisor who rationalises plans and presents them to others on the new government. I figure it unlikely that such a government would be willing to enforce Bella’s views on killing humans, though they might be amenable to encourage it or find other non-fatal ways to drink human blood or put effort in finding an equally satisfying substitute. A new government advocating non-violence and freedom after exposing the dirtier deeds of the Volturi could be very successful, especially with leading figures acquiring their positions because of their abilities to fill it, not because they seem themselves as the masters of the universe and demand a ruling position. Of course, there will be many looking to exploit the downfall of the Volturi to gain power, but with the many witches of the original rebellion and any others who might decide to join the new government, they will be very hard to defeat in combat or penetrate with less than sincere intentions.
I truly hope that is where the story is going: the defeat of the Volturi and the formation of a new vampire government. I also hope Alicorn writes about this and doesn’t call it quits when the major confrontation is over, because it would be very interesting to read about the creation of the government and the world’s reaction to it, and later conclude the story when things have settled somewhat.
Yes. And should Alice be alive and out and about to the Volturi’s knowledge, then they would probably try to send at least one of these people with every hunting group, to prevent any forewarning visions. I wonder if Alice’s visions can’t be affected the same as Bella’s shield though. If she started believing she should be able to see the half-kinds in her visions would she? - any comments on that Alicorn?
Chapter 6.
Oh boy! So let me try crystal-balling: Bella either kills or turns Pera or is stopped before she can do fatal harm or bite. It’s also possible Elspeth could suck out her venom should Pera be bit, I guess. Brady is sure to attempt steam-rolling Bella in any scenario, but Jacob should be able to halt that attempt quickly. Even if he can’t or won’t, Bella is very unlikely to die considering they’d have to be chill with dismembering her and then continuously lighting her on fire, all the while ignoring Elspeth fighting for her mother; something Jacob cannot do.
If Bella is somehow stopped before she can get at Pera, and is thwarted from trying to so again, then everyone except Elspeth will most likely be quite peevish with her. It’s also very likely that Pera just so happens to be Bella’s yummy singer. Either that or she was extremely hungry, which is also a possibility if she was stupid enough not to feed after reassembling herself. Elspeth also noted that Pera’s blood smelled very good. Maybe mother and daughter have similar tastes. I imagine Bella will have some difficulties travelling with the pack should Pera be her singer, though it will do wonders for her self-control should she learn to resist her.
If Bella kills Pera, it is likely that either Bella or Brady will have to die, since Brady won’t stop trying to kill her. The pack or what is left of them after this confrontation obviously lose the ability to ‘hide’ with Pera in this scenario; cue Volturi slaughter and slavery.
If Pera starts turning, and Elspeth either can’t or is too late to suck out the venom, then they most likely lose the ability to ‘hide’ during Pera’s transformation due to her not really being in a state to concentrate, and may also find themselves with quite a large contingent of Volturi on their heels during that time. When she wakes up she’ll maybe be all kinds of more awesome than she already is, have a sudden desire to chew on all humans present, relationship issues with Brady and be a little peeved with Bella and life in general.
In both above scenarios, they’re all very likely to suddenly pop up in a relatively seclusive location in the middle of NYC with a woman screaming her lungs out—or a dead woman, and a ravenous vampire doing her best to devour said woman. I’m going to bet on the latter scenario of Pera being turned vampire because Alicorn has already gone out her way to explain what would happen to a wolf-imprint relationship should the imprint be turned vampire. That and the PeraVamp and BellaVamp combo could be verrrra awesome should Bella actually learn how to use her witchcraft in any other situation than playing dead, and Pera could probably help her with that.
Wow. I really got a better feel of how massive the attack on La Push was when I read the character listings of the wolves, imprints and puppies. I also didn’t know or remember that Victor and Maureen’s daughter Natalie Hanley died in the NYC capture.
I really like that there are stories like these where the Volturi’s actions are actually representative of their character. Meyer set them up as extremely powerful and bent on world domination, but only made them act when it was convenient to her love story. Unfortunately much of the canon-fanfiction follows in this vein. You can’t have such a powerful, experienced and greedy entity like the Volturi in a story and not have an all-out war; it’s just not consistent with their character.