The KOTLC ANALYSIS Project

EVERBLAZE - ANALYSIS PROJECT (KOTLC III)

Originally Written: April 2020

Introduction:
Hello friends! I'm back and it hasn't been 3 months, so I'm taking that as win! I'm actually writing this introduction before I write the analysis, so future me will be warning you of the word count here: 14,896 words. But don't worry! That's why the key exists. For now let me tell you about what will be different about this analysis, and the answer is not a lot. I will be talking about and taking a real look at the reason and ramifications of Kenric's death. I will also be doing an analysis of the Elvin Government. Thank you to anyone that takes the time to read this obnoxiously long thing, you're wonderful!

Also something to take note of, everblaze, as in the unstoppable flame, is a proper noun and is meant to capitalized. But for the sake of clarity, lowercase everblaze refers to the flames, and capitalized Everblaze refers to the book title.

Key:
Anytime you see a ☀that's something important. That should make it easier for someone who doesn't want to read the whole thing—because these just keep getting longer—and skim instead. And yes, I picked ☀because it's the sun, and that's where Everblaze comes from.

I'll do my best not to talk about things that happen in future books, but in order to make a few points I will have to reference future events. I know some people who read this won't be finished with Legacy, or even some of the other books so any big spoilers will be marked by this ✺.

Any notes or comments I make will look like this: ★Comment/note about etc. . .

And a final change is that anything that looks like these ◉ or ❏ are just bullet points.

Very Detailed Summary:
★Fair Warning: this may be a little boring, but good if you want to remember all the important stuff.
1. The book starts two weeks after the end of Exile, with Keefe and Sophie going to check and see how Silveny is adjusting to the Sanctuary.
2. Sophie gets trapped in the void (because she can't teleport through mountains), she accidentally takes Keefe and herself to her old human home, where she investigates Mr. Forkle's garden gnomes.
3. The statues are arranged in the constellation of Cygnus, the swan. Sophie finds a note that says, "Wait for instructions and stick to the plan."
4. They lightleap to Keefe's house, and then lightleap to the Sanctuary. Sophie learns that someone found some orge footprints, that had no scent. They meet Silveny and Greyfell's caretaker, who takes them to the alicorns.
5. Greyfell is being very aggressive towards Silveny, and Silveny is now afraid of him. Sophie tries to earn Greyfell's trust, and he eventually shows her what's been freaking him out, a tracker that was hidden in Silveny's tail.
6. The tracker was placed the same day as the orge footprints were found, meaning the bad guys are working with ogres. Sophie and Keefe go to Evergreen to tell Alden what happened, but Biana also surprises Keefe and Sophie by telling them she manifested as a Vanisher. Sophie tells Alden everything, but then he says he has to tell her something too.
7. Alden tells her that the Council has ordered her to do a healing on Fintan. Sophie then has to go home after a lengthy discussion with Alden.
8. When Sophie gets back she sends the Black Swan a message in the caves by Havenfield. She asks them for a meeting, and tells them she needs their help. Sophie finds Edaline in Jolie's room starting to clean things out. She stops Edaline and begs her to let her do it, (because she wants to investigate Jolie's connection to the Black Swan) she tells Edaline she wants to get to know Jolie. Edaline lets her.
9. Sophie describes the tracker she found on Silveny to Sandor, and he tells her it definitely wasn't tracker because of what was made of, he says it must have been made by something only the ogres mine . . .
10. Grady finds Sophie looking through Jolie's things the next day, and brings up Brant. He tells her he'd like to petition the Council to allow Sophie to heal Brant's mind. Sophie worries it may not be possible, so she asks Grady to take her to Brant so she can see if it's possible.
11. Brant is weirded out by Grady coming to see him on a random day, but he lets them in. Sophie starts searching Brant's mind for the nook, but all she can feel is heat and flames. Brant grabs her wrists and yells stop (he burns her, but Sophie doesn't know that yet). Sophie thinks she can heal him, but Brant pushes Grady and her out and refuses to let Sophie do it.
12. The Black Swan replied to Sophie message, and deny her request "for your own protection." Sophie and Keefe start questioning if the Black Swan might have a leak.
13. The next day at Morning Orientation at Foxfire, they announce that Biana manifested, but they also announce that Dex manifested, which he was trying to keep a secret. Sophie finds out Sandor told Dame Alina and makes him apologize to Dex.
14 On the way to Sophie' session in the Silver Tower, Wylie confronts Sophie about healing Fintan and not his dad. Sophie fails at mimicking with Lady Cadence, and gets detention for a week. Sophie asks about the ogres, and describes the "tracker" she found, Lady Cadence freaks and sprays Sophie with reveldust, it glows red. She tells Sophie she basically touched a orge homing device. Lady Cadence then tells her she needs to get her skin melted off, and anyone who also touched the homing device has to as well.
15. Sophie and Keefe go to support Silveny through having some of her skin melted off. Councillor Terik accompanies them, and he does a potential reading on Keefe. He says Keefe has great potential and that he 'fascinates him, but not as much as Sophie's since her's was so divided.' Councillor Terik also says he was a lot like Keefe when he was younger. He later says later that Sophie's potential for bad was off the charts, but not as much as Keefe's . . . .
16. Keefe gets reveldust-ed again and it glows red again, even though he already had his skin melted off. Everyone is kind of confused and Keefe has to get his skin melted off once again.
17.Biana confronts Sophie, and Sophie begrudgingly lets her join her and Keefe's evil fighting team. The next day Dex gives Sophie her panic switch. In detention Keefe and Sophie have to hide effluxers (orge repellent devices) around Foxfire. . .
18. Sophie discovers Keefe is really good at mimicking. In Sophie's telepathy session with Fitz, she predictably picks Fitz to be her guide during the healing with Fintan.
19. A few days later, Sophie's running late to the Silver Tower because of Stina's bulling, but Magnate Leto assures her it's all okay, and then he gives her a small token of glass. In Sophie's inflicting session—it seems Councillor Kenric decided he needed to chaperone after how out-of-hand it got last time when Bronte inflicted on Sophie. When Bronte asks her why she was late and she gives him the glass, he calls it an amnesty, and seems shocked Magnate Leto thought she deserved one.
20. Bronte asks her to inflict on him, and inflict positive emotions. Bronte basically collapses from a happiness overload on his perpetually grumpy soul. He basically was comatose in his own body, and Sophie has to go in with her telepathy, with the kind reassurances of Kenric to keep her relatively calm. To bring Bronte back she literally has to inflict some anger into him.
21.While trying to befriend Vertina—while also being dressed up by Edaline—both Edaline and Vertina say Sophie looks so much like Jolie. This sparks the idea that Jolie might have been Sophie's biological mom.
22. Sandor makes Sophie go to the healing center to check on the "bruise' Brant gave her on her wrists. Elwin heals her up, but then tells her that her cells are the most exhausted ones he's ever seen. Sophie gets a lecture about sleeping, and Magnate Leto (there for not related reasons) asks why Silveny being at the Sanctuary affects her sleep. Magnate Leto reminds her—after Sophie explains why—that she can transmit across the world, and she could probably still have Silveny help her go to sleep.
23. In Sophie's telepathy session we learn about Fitz's stuff animal, Mr. Snuggles. During the same trust exercise that led them to that information, leads Fitz to getting past Sophie's mental blocking. Sophie panics and blocks him.
24. Dex starts trying to build a gadget that would basically allow him to be a telepath. Sophie finds a small compact mirror in a box of Jolie's old Foxfire things, and it has pearls arranged in the constellation Cygnus. Which absolutely confirms Sophie's theory that Jolie was part of the Black Swan.
25. Tiergan picks Sophie up for Fintan's healing, which is at Oblivimyre (A place best forgotten, apparently? But also a trap meant to make people go insane?) Sophie, Fitz, Oralie, Alden, Kenric, Terik, Tiergan, and of course Fintan were all there for the healing. After Sophie did the actual healing Fintan talks directly to her and says he's been waiting for her to come back. Fitz pulls her out, and Fintan hasn't even moved, but Tiergan checks, and his memories are piecing themselves together. Sophie and Fitz go in to search his memories, where Sophie finds the memory of Fintan training a young pyrokinetic again, but at that point Fintan has summoned everblaze.
26. Fitz brings Sophie out of Fintan's mind, Sophie grabs Oralie and Fitz and pulls them back from the Everblaze. Sophie stops Fitz from running through the flames to Alden, Sophie grabs Fitz and Oralie and pulls them through a window and teleports them to safety, a good distance away from Oblivimyre. Fitz and Sophie find Alden, who lightleaped out with Tiergan, Alden asks Sophie to collect quintessence (from the unmapped stars) so they can make frissyn (the only thing that stops everblaze).
27. Sophie and Fitz go to quickly collect the quintessence. Sophie gets really tired at one point, and accidentally implanted all of her memories of the stars when she tries to give Fitz the information on how to find the unmapped stars. The get quintessence and lightleap to where everyone else is, Sophie gives Tiergan the quintessence. Alden tries to get Fitz and Sophie to leave after the frissyn is made but Sophie senses that Alden's hiding something from her. Sophie forces Alden to tell her what he's hiding. He tells her that both Fintan and Councillor Kenric never made it out of the tower.
28. Sophie spots all the Councillors huddled around Oralie as she sobs, and Alden tries to comfort her. Alden tells Sophie that Councillor Kenric charged Fintan when Fintan called the everblaze. He pushed Sophie, Oralie, and Fitz out of the way, but then Fintan's body exploded in flames.
29. Tiergan brings Sophie home, and tells Grady and Edaline what happened. Sophie willingly asks for a sedative, but Edaline gets Sophie to sleep without it.
30. The next day the Council announces Kenric's death, and when nominations for the next councillor will begin. Sophie projects everything she saw in Fintan's head, and discovers the name of the bad guys on a patch in one of the memories. They're named the Neverseen.
31.Sophie mentions the Neverseen to Vertina and she says "not them again" but when Sophie asks what she means, Vertina refuses to tell. Vertina says she can't tell her what she knows till Sophie tells her the password.
32. They go to Kenric's planting, as Sophie weaves through the crowd she hears people whispering about her, and blaming her. The Council goes through the planting, and Sophie wander to the front of the Wanderling Woods with Keefe, Fitz, and Biana.
33. Then out of nowhere, King Dimitar shows up. The Council and King Dimitar exchange a few tense words and Dimitar suspiciously asks about the alicorns, and then when King Dimitar is about to leave Sophie—against all better judgement—decides to read his mind.
34. Dimitar's mind was blank and soft, and Sophie didn't get anywhere before Fitz shook her till she stopped. King Dimitar immediately seemed to notice, Dimitar tells the Council that Sophie violated the treaty. Councillor Emery stands up for Sophie saying she was new to their world, and that she was quite the special case. King Dimitar decides to test this special thing, and does some weird high-pitched mind trick thing. It doesn't effect Sophie but everyone around her collapses. Sandor moves to protect Sophie, but Dimitar punches Sandor in the stomach, then tosses him into a tree. King Dimitar declares he will be bringing Sophie back to Ravagog to serve a life sentence.
35. Grady gets overprotective and tells Dimitar that's not part of the treaty, then he mesmers Dimitar into dropping the arm holding Sophie, and then made him punch himself in the face. King Dimitar declares this a act of war.
36. The Councillors get all technical with what the treaty says, and declare that this was not a time of peace so nothing Grady did violates the treaty. The treaty also says both sides have to agree on a punishment, and Dimitar says he won't agree with anything other than a life sentence in Ravagog. That's when Lady Cadence steps in and asks if he really wants to go to war over this, she pulls the whole 'a good king would not want his people to die' and King Dimitar only relents when Oralie adds that he just offered them assistance for anything they need, and that this is there need. Dimitar says they can punish Sophie however they wants, but they have two week to do it. Then he leaves.
37. Sophie gets the world's most uncomfortable 'we're disappointed in you' speech from Tiergan, Grady, Alden, Sandor, and Edaline. They think her punishment will probably lots of community service at the Sanctuary. Grady is convinced by Edaline to not ground Sophie for eternity, but to instead put her on Verdi teeth brushing duty and give her the task of cleaning out Edaline's hoarder-like office.
38. The nominations for a new councillor start, and it seems Magnate Leto is in the lead with the most votes. Fitz comes over to see Sophie and tells her that when she implanted all those memories of stars while they were collecting quintessence, she also seemed to have implanted a random memory of a window . . . in Italy. . . that had the sign of the swan painted around it.
39. Sophie and Fitz determine she sent it to him because she was afraid, and the Black Swan probably gave her a way to find them if she was ever in serious trouble. Dex shows up at Havenfield too, he accidentally let it slip that the Council had given him an assignment to create a some gadgets, one of which would be an ability restrictor. Fitz and Sophie are kind of concerned on what the Council would want that for, understandably. Sophie asks Dex if he can make her iPod connect to the internet.
40. Keefe comes to see Sophie and shows her the note he found from the Black Swan in his cape pocket. The message said that now that plans have changed, they need to have a meeting in three days, at sunset and to 'find us where the lost have no end.' Sophie goes to check the caves, and she has her own note, with two differences. Her note tells her that the days ahead will be pretty miserable (don't quote me on these guys, these are more straightforward than Sandor's sword, so definitely no the Black Swan's words) and that she must not fear who she is, or her power. Sophie's also got her old magsidian black swan charm.
41. Three days later, Sandor, Keefe, and Sophie head to the Wanderling Woods at sunset. Hanging from Sophie's Wanderling is starlight from Lucilliant, one of the unmapped stars. They ended up in a cave, where they found light from Candesia, which leaped them to a air-bubble under the ocean. Then they found light from Marquiseire, which took them to some random misty hill. Then they found light from Phosforien, that took them to the tundra. The last bottle, light from Elemetine which took them to an island, where the Black Swan are suspiciously not present.
42. Sophie does a whole lot of crazed theorizing on why the Black Swan brought them here and then didn't show. They were just about to leave when, Keefe spots three figures in black cloaks making their way towards the island. They were actually walking on water.
43. Sandor throws Keefe and Sophie over his shoulders and moves them back into the tree cover, and tells them not to move. That's when a dozen dwarves with the Black Swan pop out of the ground. The dwarves tell Sophie to call Sandor back to her, and explain that they were trying to capture the rebels, but that Sandor was ruining their plan. When Sandor comes back, he smells that dwarves have been there, and runs back onto the beach, just as the Neverseen were stepping onto the beach. They turned around when they saw Sandor, and left.
44. The dwarves explain that this was all a test to see if they had a leak, or if Sophie and Keefe did. Before they leave, Keefe makes them deliver a message to the Black Swan. Keefe tells them that in five days the Black Swan will find instructions in the cave at Havenfield, since they passed their test, it time for them to pass theirs. Sophie and Keefe faded from all those leaps with the unmapped stars.
45. Two days later the Council reach their decision on who the Councillor will be. The next day a scroll came, the new Councillor would be Dame Alina.
46. The next day at the ceremony for Councillor Alina, they announced who would be the new Foxfire principal, Magnate Leto Kerlof, and that the new Beacon for the silver Tower would be Lady Cadence Talle.
47. Keefe and Sophie decide on the instructions for the Black Swan. The message basically said, they'll meet the next day at sunset, at Sophie's old home, that they want answers, and to arrange gnomes? . . . (I don't understand the last line either guys). The Black Swan responded the next morning, all it said was "Okay."
48. They dressed Sandor up as a old lady, and left for San Diego as scheduled, where Mr. Forkle was waiting for them. Mr. Forkle then starts taking charge of their meeting, as he always does. Mr. Forkle tells Keefe he must be their leak, even if unintentionally. Forkle showers Keefe with Reveldust, and Keefe's hands glow red.
49. They start trying to think of what Keefe could be unintentionally wearing all the time. Sophie realizes it must be his family crest pin. Keefe starts having a internal breakdown, because that would mean his dad was with the Neverseen. Forkle tells him to go home and test it, but then he tells him that if it glows red, he can't let his father know. Because if Keefe's dad doesn't know, it's a lot easier to capture him.
50. Keefe then freaks out more, because his dad is a Empath, how can he lie to him? Mr. Forkle comes up with a cover story for him to tell his dad. Sophie gets even more concerned about Keefe, who's kind of silently trying not pass out. Keefe gets ready to leave, but Mr. Forkle tells him to call Sophie if it is in fact his dad, and to tell her 'swan song'.
51. Sophie stays and questions Mr. Forkle some more. Sophie asks him about Jolie. He says she's not her mother. Sophie holds up the mirror she found, Mr. Forkle tries to play dumb, saying he sees no swan. Sophie tells him she sees a pretty bird in the sky and a human mirror. Mr. Forkle finally admits Jolie was working deep undercover-which is why she couldn't own anything with the sign of the swan.
52. When Sophie gets back to Havenfield she tells Vertina 'swan song.' Vertina tells her that "The truth lies behind the glass that is not a window." Sophie starts searching Jolie's room, and Keefe calls swan song. Sophie finds a narrow compartment covered by a mirror by Jolie's bookshelves. The compact held one small notebook, labeled Reflections in Black Swan cipher.
53. Edaline walks in on Sophie with the notebook and the compartment, and Sophie has to explain. Edaline just sits in silence till Sophie's done with the story. Then she says she thinks Jolie tried to tell her, by asking 'What if someone wasn't who you thought they were?' Edaline answered by telling her 'There will always be people who disappoint us, and it's up to us to decide when to forgive, and when to walk away.' Edaline follows up by saying that the last she saw Jolie—the day of the fire—Jolie told her she thought it was time to walk away.