Characters / Wings of Fire: Main Antagonists

Burn

Queen Burn

"This world doesn't need a prophecy. It needs me as Queen of the SandWings."

First daughter of Queen Oasis. Oldest and strongest of the rival SandWing queens. Allied with SkyWing Queen Scarlet and MudWing Queen Moorhen. Known for her strength and brutality.

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• Alliterative Family: Burn and her sisters: Blister and Blaze.
• Appeal to Force: She got the MudWings to break their alliance with Blister and join her side by promising them a century of peace if she won the war.
• Bad Boss: So much so that she ends up driving most of her allies to Blaze's side.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The brawn to Blister's brains and Blaze's beauty.
• Berserk Button: Do not mention how Oasis was killed by a scavenger in front of her.
• Blood Knight: The Dragonets decide against supporting her since she'd probably continue the war For the Evulz. She's like this normally as well, giving up the very real possibility of finding Blaze's hideout in order to fight the MudWings, who recently entered the war, against the advice of her general, Six-claws.
• Cain and Abel: Is fighting a civil war with her sisters.
• The Caligula: Is one of the three sisters waging war over rulership of the SandWings, having dragged the other dragon nations in.
• Collector of the Strange: She keeps taxidermied dragons in her palace and loves obtaining abnormal specimens. She had standing orders for her soldiers to watch if Six-claws died in battle and, if he did, to cut off his talons to give to her.
• Dark Action Girl: She loves fighting, and though she's generally more practical about her bloodlust than Scarlet she does have scars from fighting other dragons in person.
• Enemy Mine: Pulls one with Blister at the beginning of Deserter when they conspire together to kill Blaze by luring her into the desert with a sandstorm coming..
• Establishing Character Moment: Her first appearance in the prologue of book 1, which the above quote is from.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Is described as having a good relationship with Queen Oasis.
• Eviler than Thou: Tries to pull this on Blister by turning her plot against her while lecturing her on how she underestimated her as too stupid to see through her and how disgusting her plans were. Blister responds by killing her with the other snake she brought with her and doing this to her instead.
• Evil Is Bigger: She's a huge dragon, especially compared to the main characters, who aren't even fully grown.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: She doesn't care about the prophecy, claiming she makes her own fate.
• For the Evulz: She likes killing for the thrill of it and is actually happy when Blaze joins the war because she thinks fighting two sides will be fun. She draws the line at not even killing her enemies quickly, though.
• Frontline General: She has scars from fighting in the war, unlike Blister, who always avoids being in any position to be injured.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Though her position as queen is contested, she certainly fits the "evil" part. Many SandWings in her territory join up with Blaze because they fear her so much.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: Unlike most dragons, who think hybrids are too rare to be concerned about, she thinks they shouldn't exist and keeps a stuffed alleged hybrid (SandWing/IceWing) in her castle.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Much like her sisters, she doesn't end up becoming queen, and the dragonets rule her out very fast due to her brutality and bloodthirstiness.
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: She breaks off Dune's frozen wing because she is mad at Six-claws for questioning her orders.
• Karmic Death: Tries to give Blister one by killing her with the snake she was going to kill Burn with, but there is an extra snake so she ends up getting a Karmic Death herself.
• Large and in Charge: She's the largest and strongest of her three sisters.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: In contrast to Scarlet, who enjoys throwing elaborate executions and gladiator fights, Burn prefers to kill dragons quickly.
• Offing the Annoyance: Why she kills Scald and Singe. Smolder was able to stay alive for twenty years by doing what she said and not getting on her bad side.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Smolder figures out that she's planning something horrible when he sees her actually working with Blister.
• Screw Destiny: She doesn't care about what the prophecy says, and wants to make a bid for the throne anyway.
• Taxidermy Terror: Her palace is full of these.
• Would Hurt a Child: Her very first scene has her murdering the unhatched SkyWing dragonet that would have been in the prophecy.
• Villainous Demotivator: Burn is not good at keeping a support base, and despite being the closest to the rightful heir and initially having the most support, it ends up being Blaze who most of the SandWings like most by the end of the war. Whenever she's talking to her competent general Six-claws, she notes how she's going to stuff him in her castle when he dies to show off his "freakish" extra claws. And then there's also what she did to Dune.

Blister

Queen Blister

"Give me the dragonets. And then we'll both get everything we want."

Second daughter of Queen Oasis. Allied with the SeaWings and NightWings. Known for her intelligence and ruthlessness.

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• Alliterative Family: Blister and her sisters: Burn and Blaze.
• Bad Boss: Played with. She's mentioned to be very intelligent and pay her soldiers very well, but her cruelty and general creepiness also drive SandWings away from supporting her.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The brains to Burn's brawn and Blaze's beauty.
• Cain and Abel: Is fighting a civil war with her sisters.
• Creepy Child: Was this as a dragonet.
• Emotionless Girl: She seems to show no emotions ever since she was a dragonet, which creeps out her mother, Oasis.
• Enemy Mine: Pulls one with Burn at the beginning of Deserter when they conspire together to kill Blaze.
• Establishing Character Moment: Her first appearance, like Burn's establishes her motivation, personality, and ruthlessness.
• Eviler than Thou: She is constantly fighting with Burn and Blaze, eventually planning to kill them outright. After she kills Burn, and when she is about to kill Blaze, she gloats about how she has plotted the whole war and successfully bested both of her sisters. She also does this to Kestrel, with her death showing how Blister is far more threatening than her.
• Evil Gloating: After she kills Burn and challenges Blaze, she gloats about how successful her plans have been while slowly killing her remaining sister.
• The Evil Princess: She was ambitious to be queen since she was a dragonet, and engineered Oasis' death and the resulting world war because she knew she couldn't defeat Burn in a fair challenge but wanted to be queen anyway.
• Gambit Roulette: Her plan for killing Burn in The Brightest Night relies on her getting the package and somehow not realizing they are vipers, or trying to keep them alive (unlikely for Burn). Then she plans to kill Blaze in a fair challenge, despite how she is heavily guarded and how the war would have been over decades ago if such a challenge was feasible. It only works due to Burn and Blaze being personally present at the peace meeting, which had not been announced when she first made her plan. Burn gets killed by one of the vipers when she is close to the package, but only because she was trying to kill Blister with the other one (so she was standing close to her) and Glacier allows Blaze's challenge to occur because they're in the middle of a peace meeting and it is easy to just let the war end at this point..
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Noticing a pattern? Again, she isn't the official queen yet, though.
• Half-Identical Twins: She looks very similar to Smolder and they are from the same hatching.
• Karmic Death: Burn tries to kill her this way by using the snake she wanted to use to kill Blister. Blister kills her instead with the second snake, and then still gets a Karmic Death by her ambition to rule backfiring when she tries to grab the Eye of Onyx.
• Inadequate Inheritor: She doesn't end up becoming queen of the Sand Wings and the dragonets of destiny quickly rule her out as their pick due to how creepy she is.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Tsunami and Starflight figure out that she killed Kestrel because she mentions that her throat was slashed as well as being poisoned with a SandWing tail, which she shouldn't have known.
• Last Episode, New Character: Is introduced in the epilogue of The Dragonet Prophecy.
• Manipulative Bastard: Blister was the one who started the war in the first place by stealing the treasure and blaming the Scavengers, and succeeds in killing Burn through trickery and deception.
• Murder by Inaction: She purposefully didn't get Burn's help when Oasis fought the scavengers that killed her, because she wanted her dead. Oasis knew this was her intention, but thought that a few scavengers couldn't possibly kill her anyway.
• No Body Left Behind: At the end of the last book of Part I. She's incinerated by the Eye of Onyx.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: She treats the dragonets as honored guests in the Sea Kingdom to convince them to join her side. Until Starflight betrays her, that is.
• Obviously Evil: She is described as having a creepy effect that makes the dragonets of destiny and others instantly not trust her and think she's planning something. That doesn't mean they necessarily know what she is planning, though.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Smolder figures out that she's planning something horrible fairly quickly when he sees her working with Burn.
• Smug Snake: Oasis sees her as one, saying she's a dragon who thinks she can use her brain to solve everything but isn't even as smart as she thinks she is. YMMV on whether she actually is one.
• Snakes Are Sinister: Is described with a snakelike face and uses snakes to try to kill Burn.
• The Sociopath: Is noted to show no emotions or empathy even as a child, and is manipulative but also sometimes rash due to her belief that she would make the best queen.
• The Unfavorite: She was Oasis' least favorite daughter, because she thought that Blister was always scheming to have her killed and didn't like her emotionlessness.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Why she kills Kestrel.

Blaze

Queen Blaze

"Are you going to kill my sisters for me? Because that would make everything so much easier."

Third daughter of Queen Oasis. Youngest of the rival SandWing queens. Allied with the IceWing Queen Glacier and supported by most of the SandWings. Known for her incompetence and vanity.

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• Alliterative Family: Blaze and her sisters: Blister and Burn.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: The Beauty to Blister's Brains and Burn's Brawn.
• Brainless Beauty: Known for being the most beautiful SandWing sister and also the least intelligent.
• Cain and Abel: Is fighting a civil war with her siblings.
• Dumb Blonde: Has pale gold scales like most SandWings and is very unintelligent and incompetent.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: While not openly malicious, she's unintelligent, naive, and easily manipulated. Not good traits for one of the three unofficial queens.
• Idiot Hero: More like "Idiot Villain". She is acknowledged as the least intelligent of the three sisters when the Dragonets discuss the benefits of supporting one or another.
• Inadequate Inheritor: She, along with both her sisters, doesn't end up becoming queen, and it's common knowledge that she's an idiot.
• Lethally Stupid: She does things like following two random dragons deep into enemy territory despite being her centerpiece of her own side in the war who would be killed on sight, and walking into a huge sandstorm when she was little because a dragonet said someone hid her crown there. She nearly gets killed as a result both times.
• Puppet Queen: She's mostly just a figurehead for her ally, Queen Glacier. However, Glacier was planning on molding her into a strong queen that could stand on her own once the war ended, and fully intended to be a loyal ally if Blaze won.
• Sole Survivor: She's the only one of the three sisters to survive the war, as Burn and Blister both die at the peace summit.
• Token Good Teammate: Of her three sisters, she's the nicest. She's the most popular with the SandWings for the simple fact that unlike her sisters, she's not cruel and bloodthirsty.

Darkstalker

Darkstalker

An ancient NightWing who was sealed away thousands of years ago, and contacts Moon via telepathy. He is known in the present only as a dreaded figure in NightWing folklore.

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• Abel And Cain: Defied. He considers using his powers to hatch his sister's egg a day early so she would be born under three moons, but decides against it partially to avoid futures where one of them kills the other.
• Aesop Amnesia: In one of his more lonely moments, he comes close to understanding that Clearsight sealed him because she was rightly batshit terrified of him, and seems to regret using her. But instead of acknowledging these feelings, he tries to fix them. His whole plan is 'conquer the world and then I will feel good again'.
• Affably Evil: He's friendly and congenial to every dragon he meets, but that doesn't stop him from doing some horrific things.
• Ambiguously Evil: Even Moon isn't sure whether he's the good dragon he says he is or the villain that the history scrolls describe him as. While Darkstalker reveals much of his story, Tui has noted that he's a complicated dragon and it won't be so clear even when reading it whether he's evil.
  • Definitely seems to be leaning toward Obviously Evil status as of Talons of Power spoiler where he immediately loses quite a bit of the charming, mentoring nuance from Moon Rising and comes off as dangerously unstable and potentially murderous.
• Ancient Evil: According to NightWing and IceWing legend.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: After being unfrozen in Escaping Peril, he ends up becoming massive by dragon standards, being nearly as big as a mountain.
• Babies Ever After: This was supposed to happen with him and Clearsight in the best futures.
  • It actually happens to him at the end of "Darkness Of Dragons", when an enchanted strawberry erases all of his memories and magic and turns him in a baby RainWing-NightWing. He's now named Peacemaker, and he loves making mud pies and strawberries. His mother Foeslayer decides to stay with her now-infant son and changes her name to Hope.
• Badass in Distress: His introduction in Moon Rising.
• Bait the Dog: He's a notorious dragon according to the history scrolls who is actually quite reasonable when Moon gets to talk to him. And then we find out he enchanted Arctic, his own father, to disembowel himself. Even Moon feels betrayed.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Clearsight sees him enchanting her earrings to make her not see any bad futures and then justifying it as trying to make her finally happy as this - his real motivation is so she won't stop her from what he's about to do, which will trigger the Bad Future, but he's convinced even himself that he has Clearsight's best interests at heart.
  • Qibli gets Darkstalker himself to admit as much regarding him starting the IceWing plague and then going to war with them - though Darkstalker says it's in self-defense because the IceWings have always had genocidal intentions regarding the NightWings, and now the NightWings' location is known and the IceWings' ancient enemy is on the throne, he could have chosen a peaceful solution as Qibli himself did given that he is virtually omnipotent, and his real motivation was ultimately a desire for revenge he refused to admit to himself.
• Benevolent Mage Ruler: Aspired to become one before being imprisoned. He used his precognitive abilities to justify this ambition.
  "At each crossroad, I would have known the right thing to do."
• Berserk Button: He does not like it when dragons try to kill him (granted, nobody likes it when people try to kill them he just gets extra angry when they do). Or say he's like his father. As of Talons of Power, anything to do with Fathom.
• Big Bad: Seems to be set up to be this from the prophecy and his backstory, though he says himself that he isn't evil. He does turn out to be the Big Bad of the second arc.
• Big Brother Instinct: He is always protective of his sister, Whiteout.
• Big Damn Heroes: He's introduced pulling Moon out of a terrifying vision of the future.
• Boomerang Bigot: He hates IceWings, especially after what happened to Foeslayer, despite being half IceWing himself.
• Brutal Honesty: Makes no bones about Moon's lack of skill.
  "Right now you're a little pathetic."
• Byronic Hero: He's a charismatic, powerful, sarcastic dragon with a propensity for great kindness and cruelty, a troubled past and a desire to change the world and make it a better place.
• Charm Person: He has a snake earring that is enchanted to make him appear charming and handsome to everyone. He uses a similar tactic in Talons of Power to make dragons quickly trust him.
• Child by Rape:
  • Winter doesn't go into too much detail about it considering it's a kids book, but his mother kidnapped his father and forced him to have him in order to have the NightWings get the IceWings' animus powers. Though this turned out to be subverted, as it turns out they were actually in love but the IceWings assumed no prince of their tribe would ever be in love with a NightWing.
  • Subverted: this actually was the plan all along, and Foeslayer's mother Prudence very deliberately brought her along on the "diplomatic mission" to the IceWing kingdom in the hopes that she and Arctic would have a fling and Foeslayer would become pregnant with his eggs, though Arctic actually falling in love with her and defecting with them wasn't part of the plan, nor was the war that was to follow.
• Child Supplants Parent: From birth he wanted to kill his father (but hesitated due to what good was still left inside him) and have his mother to himself. He eventually actually does kill his father.
• Compelling Voice: He uses his scroll to make Arctic do whatever he says, including killing himself.
• Complete Immortality: He claims to have found a way to do this. Considering he's over 2000 years old, he succeeded.
• Control Freak: He's tempted to use his animus powers to control those he loves to make them happier, or just to make them his version of perfect, and Clearsight constantly has to convince him out of doing so. This is part of why Clearsight and Fathom betray Darkstalker - she knows that if she lets him rule, he'll brainwash them into being more pliant to him while convincing himself he's just making them happy and being a good dragon.
  • This is proven to be completely justified, since he proceeds to do exactly this to literally *everyone* he meets in Talons of Power.
• Court Mage: To Queen Vigilance.
• Creepy Good: Both his powers and physical condition are certainly creepy, as is his reputation among NightWings. If he is what he says he is, though, he cares for Moon and wants a better future for dragons.
• Crippling the Competition: He does this to Turtle, taking away his animus powers after he reveals himself to save Kinkajou and Anemone.
• Day in the Limelight: His origin story is detailed in the special edition book Darkstalker.
• Deadpan Snarker: Despite having been sealed away for 2000 years, he's not without a sarcastic sense of humor.
• The Dreaded: He is remembered in the present day only through folklore as a malevolent monstrosity, and is revealed to be the reason that the NightWings fled their original homeland and relinquished their psychic powers.
• Enfante Terrible: Downplayed, but his powers of mindreading and future seeing mean he acts nowhere near as innocent as the average newborn dragonet, and he's considering killing his father before he even hatches after seeing his horrifying thoughts. Clearsight suggests near the end of the book that he might have been born evil and she never could have saved him, though that's mostly to provoke him into attacking her so she can put on the bracelet.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: For all his faults, Darkstalker genuinely loved his mother Foeslayer and was enraged when she was captured by Queen Diamond. When they see each other again 2,000 years later, Qibli can clearly see how much he loves her.
• Evil Is Bigger: The extend to which he is evil is obscured for most of the series, but he's definitely much larger than any other dragon in the series thanks to Stronger with Age.
• Exact Words: He tells Qibli that he's not only interested in conquest- he also wants true friends, and to improve the world. Which is true, but he doesn't want those things nearly as much as he wants conquest. Certainly not enough to let his friends retain free will if they ever start questioning him.
• False Innocence Trick: Moonwatcher worries that he might be performing one. By Escaping Peril, she is fully convinced that he has been manipulating her all along. Though in any case he never told Moon that destroying the scroll would ensure ALL his animus powers returned to him. As it turns out Darkstalker genuinely believes he's not evil and wants Moon to think the same. But that doesn't stop him from twisting the truth quite a bit in what he tells her.
• Fatal Flaw: His Legends book makes it clear that while he did truly love his friends, his mother, and his sister, anything and anyone who makes him feel scared or insecure- including his father- earns his complete, total, and dedicated enmity. To the point that there's nothing he won't do to make those feelings...and the dragons who triggered them go away.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: He's shown to be shocked and disoriented by suddenly waking up 2000 years after he was imprisoned, and grieving because he knows everyone he's ever known is dead. Especially when he gets to see the ruins of his old home.
• For the Evulz: Some of his worst futures have him killing dragons for fun.
• Genocide from the Inside: After Foeslayer is captured, he considers making a spell to kill all of the IceWings but Clearsight convinces him out of it.
  • As of the epilogue of Talons of Power, it looks like he picks this idea right back up again by inflicting the IceWings with a plague that immediately kills Queen Glacier and is spreading like wildfire.
• Glorious Leader: He wins the support of many of the NightWings despite his reputation by constantly emphasizing the NightWings' glorious past and generally acting like this trope.
• Heroic BSoD: He screams out in shock and pushes Moon out of his vision when he finds out just how many years have passed since the Scorching.
• A Hero Is Born: The second chapter of Darkstalker features his hatching.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Early on, he's furious at anyone who exposes his sister Whiteout to trauma, from his feuding parents to school bullies, and does his best to shield and protect her. By the climax of Darkstalker, he seems to forget she's even there when he orders Arctic (who he knows genuinely does love her, and who she sincerely loves back) to disembowel himself with her as a firsthand witness.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: In universe, he is known from the legends of NightWings and IceWings as a horrific villain, and even the legitimate history book he is focused on portrays him as villainous. He himself says that this is very exaggerated.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He was defeated with the same bracelet that he himself enchanted to protect from mind readers, allowing Clearsight to approach him without Darkstalker realizing what was happening.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: He helps with the war effort against the IceWings, though he is half IceWing himself.
• Hybrid Power: According to IceWIng legend, this was the whole reason he was born, to be a NightWing who inherited his IceWing father's animus powers that the NightWings didn't have before. He also has a strong version of NightWing Psychic Powers, and can breathe fire like a NightWing.
• Hypocrite: He reaches the last straw in tolerating Arctic's abuse of him and Whiteout when Arctic enchants her to follow him back to the Ice Kingdom (and also removing her speech quirks, as well), which culminates in Darkstalker enchanting Arctic to kill himself. He's far from unjustified in his anger, but this is still coming from the same dragon who enchanted his beloved into only being able to see positive futures in order to better serve his own long-term interests, and tried to enchant his best friend into forgetting about the love of his life and using his animus magic in disregard of his oaths otherwise.
• I Did What I Had to Do: He admits he may have done some unpleasant things, but that the world is better off as a result. Specifically, he killed his own father, and doesn't feel the slightest guilt over it.
• Ignored Epiphany: At the end of Darkness of Dragons, he remarks that he can see the future of his takeover of Pyrrhia, and knows that it will never happen because everyone will always be fighting and resisting him. That, and him being shown via the soul reader that he's nearly pure evil, are still not enough for him to realize that his dreams of a world under his rule will never come true and that he'll never be happy, especially without Clearsight with him, and accept Jade Winglet's offer of starting over.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Moon is the first social contact he's had in over 2000 years, and his only connection to the outside world. Because of this, he is desperate to keep her alive- even if it means others die.
• It's All About Me: He's insanely vain and self-absorbed, refusing to listen to anyone's opinions if they don't align with his. His entire friendship with Fathom is marked by him repeatedly attempting to persuade him to start using his animus magic again, completely disregarding the entire reason Fathom is terrified of his powers. This even extends to enchanting a goblet as a gift to Fathom that, when drunk from, will make him forget the Royal SeaWing Massacre and his feelings for Indigo, and believe that animus magic is a great thing that he'll start using whenever he wants.
• Kid Hero: He's still a dragonet throughout Darkstalker, and is buried underground at only six years old.
• Kill the Ones You Love: According to history books, he was killed by Fathom, his best friend. The truth is more complicated, and subverts the trope.
  • Some futures have him killing Clearsight after he realizes how she planned to betray him.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: His desire to protect Whiteout leads to him horribly punishing a dragon who tried to harm her, even though that dragon is her father, and she has to watch him die.
• Large Ham: Turtle notes how he seems to be delivering his lines in this way, suspecting he's trying to be theatrical to impress other dragons into trusting him.
• Long-Lived: He's 2000 years old, around ten times as long as any normal dragon can ever live.
• Love-Interest Traitor: He was betrayed by Clearsight, his love interest. He foresaw a number of futures where this would happen, but believed he had averted them all until it was too late.
  • He's also this to her, brainwashing her into not seeing anything wrong with the futures. He doesn't see this as a betrayal, but quite literally everyone else does.
• Lured into a Trap: How Clearsight manages to betray him. She tells him to meet her at Agate Mountain after she steals his scroll.
• Mark of the Supernatural: Like all NightWings with mind reading Psychic Powers, he has silver scales under his eyes.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Implied in the Darkstalker excerpt, where Darkstalker detects a rush of anger and suspicion from Arctic when he notes that the hatchling Darkstalker looks nothing like him. Darkstalker later notes when Clearsight mentions he doesn't look much like an IceWing, to which Darkstalker replies that Arctic has asked him that in a much less polite way many times.
• Manchild: He was only six years old when he was sealed in a can, and he sometimes acts like it. Which is part of what can make him so terrifying.
• The Mentor: He trains Moon to block out thoughts and encourages her to be proud of her powers. Moon suspects he may be manipulating her into freeing him, but he tries to waylay those fears.
• Merlin and Nimue: With Moonwatcher. He teaches her about Psychic Powers, and there's always the knowledge that one of them might betray the other - Darkstalker by really being evil or Moonwatcher by not freeing him. They both betray each other - Darkstalker by withholding just how he killed his father, and Moonwatcher by refusing to free him out of a belief that his action crossed the Moral Event Horizon.
• Military Mage: Vigilance enlists him to use his powers to help the NightWings' war effort against the IceWings. In addition to creating a magical barrier around the Night Kingdom that kills any IceWings that enter it, he also made weapons for NightWing soldiers to use.
• Morality Pet: Arguably the only real example is his mother Foeslayer, as while he makes many attempts to have another, every other attempt ends up being a subversion.
  • Darkstalker was encouraged to befriend Fathom in the hope that Fathom's humility would rub off on him. He does befriend him, but it ultimately doesn't work.
  • With Moon. He tries to protect and comfort her, but both know this is at least partly motivated by his desire to escape (as she's the only one who can help). Though after escaping he still treats Moon as his Morality Pet, he's still not willing to let her do a good enough job to actually influence his decisions.
  • He offers Qibli the option to be this, but Qibli knows enough about him to know where this is going by this point.
• Most Definitely Not a Villain: In Talons of Power, he tries to convince the Jade Winglet he's not evil and won't kill them even as he blatantly uses his mind control powers on Winter.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Lampshaded by Arctic, who is not happy with Foeslayer's name choice for him. Foeslayer retorts that it represents him being a hero fighting the darkness. Of course, darkness wouldn't be such a bad thing for a NightWing anyway, but Arctic is an IceWing.
• Necromantic: The one thing and animus can't do is revive the dead, which Darkstalker is very upset about given how Clearsight and everyone else he knew must be dead by now. He still tries to bring Clearsight back by enchanting other dragons, with little success.
• Never Be Hurt Again: He snaps into a rage when Anemone starts using his powers recklessly and trying to give him an enchanted earring due to his fear of being betrayed again like what happened with Fathom.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: In addition to his Complete Immortality enchantment, he also made him scales unable to be harmed.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: When Moon learns he is considered a borderline Eldritch Abomination by the other NightWings and even the IceWings, he proclaims that most of the stories were either grossly exaggerated or outright made up.
• "Not So Different" Remark: He identifies with Qibli, them both being geniuses born to abusive parents. His greatest argument that We Can Rule Together is that, if he becomes king, there will be "no more bad parents, because we can fix them". Unfortunately for Darkstalker, they are different in that Qibli prefers justice to peace.
• Omniscient Morality License: He can see every possible future, and as a result tells Moon to not warn the dragonets of Jade Mountain Academy about the exploding history cave. Also why he wanted to be king though Clearsight, who had better powers, thought it wasn't worth the bad futures it could potentially cause.
• One True Love: To Clearsight, with them both having visions about how they are meant to be together.
• Papa Wolf: Is shocked and disappointed that Moon never received training for her mindreading powers.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: He brutally kills Arctic in punishment for the latter plotting to kill the tribe that took him in and kidnapping his daughter from her tribe, while using his animus powers to brainwash her into liking it.
• Patricide: He killed his father, Arctic.
• Playing the Victim Card: He is hurt by people doubting him, so he does his utmost to ensure that no one can ever doubt him again.
• Pet the Dog: Some of his enchantments are to do various small, kind things for the dragons he loves, like paint for his sister that never runs out, or a blanket for her mother that always keeps her comfortable when she's sleeping in the desert during the war, or a bell that rings whenever Fathom is worried so he can comfort him. When Fathom sees these enchantments, he questions whether it is the right thing to do to betray a dragon like that. Then Fathom discovers the invisible spells hidden beneath the kind ones, cruel, petty, spiteful and in at least one case murderous and the dog is well and thoroughly kicked.
• Powerful and Helpless: When his mother, Foeslayer, is captured by IceWings, he is desperate to think of a spell that can save her, trying everything he can - but he's prevented from directly saving her by the animus powers of the dragon who is trying to capture her, Queen Diamond, and he can't just kill Diamond because then she'll be replaced as queen by her niece Snowfox, who is much more extreme than her and would probably kill the entire NightWing tribe. This feeling of helplessness is a big part of him sliding into increasingly more extreme uses of his powers to deal with anything that bothers him.
• Power Trio: Was part of one along with Fathom and Clearsight. He even made three dreamvisitors so they could contact each other at all times.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Kills Arctic, this way, forcing him to disembowel himself.
• Red String of Fate: He's destined to fall in love with Clearsight, and expects her to be more romantic for the occasion. That doesn't necessarily mean they're destined to be happy together, as Clearsight constantly notes.
• Really 700 Years Old: He's about 2000 years old.
• Rip Van Winkle: He was enchanted to fall asleep permanently and only escaped 2,000 years later thanks to an earthquake breaking the bracelet that enchanted him.
• Sealed Badass in a Can: While legend builds him up to be Sealed Evil in a Can, he disputes those claims. Regardless, he's both a powerful Animus dragon and a NightWing with powerful psychic abilities who's been trapped for 2000 years.
• Seers: His precognition is so powerful that he can see into any possible future. While he always had the talent, he formerly lacked the skill to do this. Unlike Clearsight, he could only discern the absolute most likely timelines, a few warning flashes, and perhaps a few strongly possible alternates. He almost exclusively focused on the ones pleasing to him. But awakening under the mountain and being trapped for months with nothing else to do gave him a LOT of practice.
• Self-Serving Memory: He constantly denies that he's evil and that he did anything evil in his original life 2,000 years ago. While he is accurate in a number of instances, such as why he killed Arctic, he very noticeably leaves out important details and, when confronted on them, refuses to see it as a problem.
• Single Tear: Sheds one after returning to his old school and trying to talk to Clearsight there.
• Sorcerous Overlord: While some futures were he becomes king, the ones he focuses on and strives for, involve him becoming a Benevolent Mage Ruler, others lead to him becoming this.
• Soul Jar: In order to keep his Animus powers from driving him insane, he sealed them into a scroll. Unfortunately, it convinces him that he's free to use his powers at every opportunity, including attempting to brainwash Fathom into stop loving Indigo and forget about his oath to Queen Pearl so he can freely use his own animus magic, trapping Indigo inside of a wooden carving when she stops Fathom from drinking out of it, preventing Clearsight from seeing any negative visions of the future, and eventually forcing his own father to disembowel himself. Needless to say, it's questionable at best whether or not sealing his powers into the scroll even helped at all.
• Spell My Name with a "The": Is referred to in Nightwing folklore as "The Darkstalker". He's personally quite annoyed by the trend of attaching a "the" to his name.
• Stepford Smiler: After Foeslayer's capture, he meets Vigilance with war plans against the IceWings, and Clearsight is unnerved by his smile, which seems clearly to be hiding his grief and anger.
• Stronger with Age: Despite being emaciated from 2000 years of starvation, he is massive in size.
• Talking to the Dead: He tried to talk to Clearsight in the ruins of the Lost City of Night despite knowing that she couldn't possibly be alive after so many years, a fact which his visions of the future confirm.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Quite literally, given he's a dark-scaled dragon who's extremely large thanks to his age and a powerful, intelligent dragon who isn't afraid to acknowledge this.
• The Usurper: In some futures, he kills Vigilance and takes the throne himself.
• Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: He's remembered as a boogeyman-esque folkloric figure by the other NightWings.
• Too Funny to Be Evil: Part of how he convinces the dragons of Jade Mountain academy that he's not evil.
• Totalitarian Utilitarian: He's motivated by a belief that his rule and magic will make dragons happy. But he doesn't take kindly to dragons whose vision of happiness is different than what he thinks it should be - he can't imagine initially why Clearsight would be angry about her Brainwashing for the Greater Good or why Stonemover would want to be trapped in stone.
• Touch of Death: He has a tail ring that he enchanted to kill anyone who he touches with it.
• The Unfavorite: Arctic favors Whiteout over him.
• The Un-Smile: When he's finally freed, he looks at Moonwatcher and Peril with a smile that is described as being charming and menacing at the same time.
  • Earlier on as well, a few days after Foeslayer is captured, Clearsight is terrified by his odd, creepy smile after being in a state of mourning for so long.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Strawberries as Peacemaker.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: He wants to kill Vigilance and become king because, as a seer of the future, he knows that it would likely lead to a great future for his tribe.
• Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Towards the end, he starts insisting that he's taking "the moral high road" by brainwashing Qibli because brainwashing isn't as bad as murder- his original plan.
• We Can Rule Together: Makes this offer to Qibli. In particular, Qibli can be The Consigliere and call him out on his tendency to go too far and be vindictive when there's actually a third option. Qibli refuses, saying he can't work for a dragon who needs to be told to realize that he doesn't have to commit genocide when he has the powers to easily find a less murderous solution.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: What he thinks he is. All of the horrible things he does he thinks are in the service of guiding the NightWings and his loved ones to futures where they'll be happy and prosperous, though anyone who knows him is fully able to see that he's doing all of this more for himself than anyone else.
• What Is Evil?: As he's about to brainwash Qibli into compliance, he describes morality as "arbitrary".
• What Year Is It?: He asks Moonwatcher how many years have passed since the Scorching, and is fairly shocked when he finds out.
• Windbag Politician: He tends to be annoyingly long-winded while trying to convince the NightWings to elect him as their king.
• Wise Beyond His Years: Thanks to his powers, he doesn't exactly act like a newborn dragonet when he's a newborn dragonet.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Most of his worst futures are as a result of this, when he overuses his animus power. When he creates the scroll, it seems like he will have a brighter future because almost all of those futures fade away. Unfortunately, being convinced his soul is now utterly safe, he feels free to indulge in -every- impulse to use his powers...including the angry, unhappy, vengeful ones.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: For one, the terrible hunger he's endured while trapped will not kill him- but it hurts horribly. For two, he has outlived his society and everyone he loved except Foeslayer. For three, nobody know he exists except for a little girl- and she spends half her time wondering whether or not he's evil.
• Villainous Breakdown: Goes through one when Qibli shows him the soul reader, which shows that despite Darkstalker attempting to be careful with his soul that he's nearly pure evil, not because of his magic, but because of the actions he's taken. He spends the remainder of his time as himself in furious denial that he's evil and that he's doing the right thing, despite all of the evidence telling him he's different.

Wasp

Queen Wasp

• Big Bad: She’s the main villain of the third arc. Until it's revealed in The Poison Jungle that she herself is nothing more than a pawn of the Othermind and its first victim in recent times.
• Big Brother Is Watching: She can mind-control HiveWings, letting her see everything that’s happening in Pantala.
• Control Freak: She attempted to conquer Pantala because she saw the SilkWings and LeafWings as more dragons that she could dominate. Her motive behind infecting all of the other HiveWings with the Breath of Evil is so that she can always be anywhere at any time in case anything happens, and she doesn't take anyone being immune to her mind control lightly. It even goes from the wider tribe to deeply personal, as she took away Malachite, Lady Scarab's secretary and Cricket's father just because she saw that Scarab liked him and wanted to hurt her. She also has flamesilk SilkWings tightly controlled and imprisoned their entire lives beneath Wasp Hive, only letting them out to breed, in order to produce more flamesilk, rather than letting them live freely.
• Decoy Antagonist: She is actually not the Big Bad, just a pawn in the Othermind's plans.
• Evil Nephew: Or rather, Evil Niece in her case, as she is related to Lady Scarab.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: She's the villainous queen of the HiveWings.
• Hive Queen: Literally. She can mind control the HiveWings to see what is happening everywhere and accomplish tasks by means of the whole tribe. However, she's unaware that the Othermind is actually the true Hive Queen controlling her and thus everything she's doing.
• Irony: She can mind-control all HiveWings...and she is being mind-controlled by the Othermind. The only reason she herself (seemingly) had free will was because it was letting her take control in order to hide its own existence throughout the HiveWings until the time was right.
• More than Mind Control: Cottonmouth makes it clear he's not controlling her as a puppet, rather she's always been a monster and he merely allowed her to use him in her own schemes, unaware he's pulling her strings in more subtle ways.
• Small Role, Big Impact: If she wasn't power-hungry enough to fake Clearsight's prophecies to seize control over Pantala in the first place, the Leafwings wouldn't have resorted to attempt to use the Othermind, which was by its own admission, dying out until it got served to Queen Wasp.
• Unwitting Pawn: She's one for the Othermind/Cottonmouth, who gloats he allowed her to act on her own evil ambitions, unaware she was serving his own goals.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: According to Hawthorne, she started her war against the LeafWings slowly, felling certain parts of Pantala's forest and deliberately starting forest fires to destroy parts of the forest, then cutting the rest down to build hives. When the other tribes attempted to get her to stop, she played the victim.

The Othermind

The Othermind/The Breath of Evil/Cottonmouth

• Ancient Evil: Ruled the continent thousands of years ago before the first dragons came. It came to be during the Scorching.
• Ambiguous Gender: Its gender is initially left unknown, being referred to with "it" pronouns. Flames of Hope reveals that it - or, more specifically, the dominant personality of its composite mind - is male.
• Bad Boss: When Wasp tells it that it was their fault for letting one of the prisoners escape, it takes control of her and strangles her. Cottonmouth wasn't much better before the Scorching as a normal human. When one of his men questions why they're risking taking more dragon eggs than necessary, Cottonmouth interrupts by stabbing him through his stomach and killing him.
• Big Bad: For the third arc.
• Botanical Abomination: Is a plant with the ability to control the minds of countless creatures across the entire continent and a consciousness that would naturally be near-incomprehensible to dragons, though controlling so many has made it more familiar.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: Cottonmouth is effectively dead but lives on through the Breath of Evil. Once Luna cuts him off from the plant's root, he dies.
• Dirty Coward: It's noted at his core, Cottonmouth is a coward and the reason intense enough pain drives him out of a host is that Cottonmouth can't tolerate actually being harmed himself.
• Fantastic Racism: Cottonmouth thinks of dragons as nothing but savage beasts for him to use to rule the world and dominate.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Wasp was already a nasty piece of work and she was a huge threat to begin with, but the Breath of Evil rapidly eclipses her when it's revealed just how powerful it is, especially since it's only allowing Wasp to think she's in control, before planning on turning her into the same sort of mindless puppet.
• Hive Queen: Thousands of years ago, it controlled massive swarms of animals which is used to attack the first dragons that arrived on the continent. Now it's in control of most of the dragons on the continent as well and plans on taking over everything on the planet.
• Humanity Is Infectious: Its communication is more like a dragon than the other plants are due to it having taken control of the minds of so many dragons. And due to being more than a mere plant in the first place.
• It's All About Me: Cottonmouth created the Breath of Evil out of a single-minded desire to rule the world and to get revenge for the dragons nearly wiping out humanity in the Scorching, something that was entirely his fault. It's flat out stated he's the kind of person who 'only likes pictures if he's in them', and tends to only sift through dragons memories to look for things about himself.
• Logical Weakness: Cottonmouth can control a vast number of dragons with the Breath of Evil, but much like with Wasp, whenever a dragon experiences bad enough pain, he's forced to release his control over them. He also can't effectively use the abilities of dragons he's not familiar with; when he attempts to camouflage Pineapple after he takes over his body, he can't use it right because Pineapple is the first RainWing he's come across. He also finds it harder to control more dragons, leaving Wasp to control the HiveWings while he controls the newly-taken SilkWings and LeafWings.
• The Man Behind the Man: It is the true Big Bad of the third arc, using Wasp as its pawn by getting her to use it to control the HiveWings.
• Manipulative Bastard: Manipulates Hawthorn, Wasp, Sundew, and even (using Hawthorn's leafspeak) the plants of the Poison Jungle to its bidding, even when it's not able to directly and completely take over their minds.
• Meaningful Name: A Cottonmouth is a poisonous snake. Fitting considering his actions resulted in the destruction of human civilization.
• Mental World: Both Cottonmouth and Lizard are trapped in a shared mind that they can't leave.
• Near-Villain Victory: He nearly succeeds in capturing Sundew and the rest of the Super Secret Stealth Team in an ambush, allowing him to use her leafspeak to overrun all of Pantala and steal the body of every dragon in the world, before Luna manages to break out of his mind-control and use her silk to kill him.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The first dragons to arrive in Pantala managed to control it and seclude it to an isolated part of the Poison Jungle, until Hawthorn rediscovered it millennia later.
• Smug Snake: While he was human Cottonmouth thought dragons were savage beasts that could be tamed and that he would eventually rule the world with them. That failed dismally, as did his backup plan of leading an exodus of humans to Pantala and trying to take over the last remaining dragon egg he had with the Breath of Evil plant, which also backfired because he also got caught by the plant and made part of its mind.
• Villainous Breakdown: He's in the middle of one when Luna meets him in The Flames of Hope due to his Guardian not only bringing him the wrong dragon (he wanted Sundew, not Luna) but also because the village of humans that have worshipped him since ancient times have stopped paying attention to the Abyss, leaving him essentially helpless.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Cottonmouth before the Scorching thinks that the dragons in the overall setting are dumb brutes who exist only to be slain for glory or forced into servitude with human masters when they are actually fully sapient beings capable of reason. His idea that is also adopted by rival empires in response, which is the taming aka enslavement of dragonets from birth to use them as future war beasts backfires in the most destructive way possible. The mothers of the stolen dragonets banded together and burnt the various human empires to the ground in anger, resulting in the formation of the seven dragon tribes of Pyrrhia.

Lizard/Freedom (All spoilers unmarked)

• And I Must Scream: Like Cottonmouth, she's trapped in their shared mental space, unable to do anything except act through the Breath of Evil itself.
• Character Development: At first she only wanted to take over dragon bodies so that she could live and burn and destroy things like the dragons she's seen in Cottonmouth's memories, and only sees Luna and Dusky as annoyances that she likes to torment. By the end of the book, she's become more friendly with them, and rather than being constantly angry is just sad at all of the love that she'll never experience.
• Enfante Terrible: She's only a dragonet, but is still part of a horrific body-snatching plant that wants to take over the world. She's also violent and hateful to most.
• Everyone Calls Her "Barkeep": Everyone that knows her calls her "Lizard" because Cottonmouth never bothered to give her a real name. Luna and Dusky name her "Freedom" before they kill her, so that she can be remembered.
• Hidden Depths: While at first she's a smug, vicious, evil little dragon, further conversations with Luna and Dusky show that she's just a heartbroken and very lonely dragonet who never got a chance to live a life of her own.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Subverted. Before her death, Luna promises that she'll weave tapestries in her honor so that she'll never be forgotten.
• Tyke Bomb: Was intended to be this as a last-ditch effort from Cottonmouth to gain a dragon slave. It backfired horrendously.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: She's only a dragonet, but she's vicious and violent and wants to take over other dragons so she can burn and destroy things, though her opinions on what dragons are like have been colored by Cottonmouth.
• Meaningful Name: Before her Mercy Kill at Luna's talons, she asks for them to name her Freedom, the one thing she always wanted but could never have.
• Mercy Kill: Luna is forced to do this to her because there's no way to free her from the Breath of Evil.
• Parental Abandonment: She feels a great deal of bitterness towards her mother for supposedly never trying to find her, even though Cottonmouth's own memories show that her mother burned down the world in heartbreak and rage at her egg being stolen.
• Volleying Insults: She and Cottonmouth constantly insult one another, him criticizing her immaturity while she mocks his failures.
• Walking Spoiler: While the Othermind was present since The Poison Jungle, Lizard isn't even remotely hinted at until The Flames of Hope where she plays a massive role in it. As such, her existence is almost impossible to talk about without spoiling the plot.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Briefly criticizes Luna for attempting to spare her, informing her that without Cottonmouth the Breath of Evil will run rampant unless she keeps it in check, something she doesn't want to do.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: She's spent 5000 years in a half-dead state controlled by an evil plant, and has hated every minute of it.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: She's part of the mind controlling the Breath of Evil, but is a lonely, abused, bitter, tired dragonet who never got to see the world or experience life or even be loved by her mother before she died. A big part of defeating Cottonmouth is getting her to come around and realize there was more to being a dragon than burning and destroying things.