Breath of evil

The Breath of Evil is the physical form of The Othermind, used by Queen Wasp to mind control the HiveWings.

Roles in the series

The Hive Queen

It has a fairly minor role in The Hive Queen, showing up near the end when Blue and Swordtail are trying to burn down Wasp's greenhouse of the plant, after Cricket spies on Wasp secretly injecting HiveWing eggs with it in the Jewel Hive Nest.

The Poison Jungle

Sundew, Willow, Nettle, Mandrake, Cricket, and Bumblebee, are sent on a dangerous mission by Queen Sequoia to see if Hawthorn has found a cure to the mind-control yet. After traversing through the most lethal part of the jungle, they are attacked by Hawthorn's vipers, supposed to deter outsiders from finding the plant. Just as the vipers start to close in, he calls them off and invites the gang in for tea. After some conversation, they discover he has found a cure to mind control, dubbing it the "heart of salvation". It turned out to be only the immature root of the Breath of Evil, and The Othermind (who was controlling Hawthorn because he ingested the plant during his experiments), had more of the 'heart of salvation' in the chest that they were about to burn to free the HiveWings from Wasp's control. What's more, now more dragons that aren't HiveWings were breathing the smoke of the plant. The entire continent was now in danger, as the Breath of Evil was out of its quarantine in the Eye, and would start spreading across Pantala. The Othermind also revealed it had broken Hawthorn's cage of only working on HiveWings, and could now infect anything on Pantala. This led Sundew, Willow, the others, plus the LeafWings who weren't infected and some SilkWings, to flee to Pyrrhia with Clearsight's map, with more Silkwings on the way.

Appearance

It has been described to have a dark red stem with bright green veins. The leaves are the opposite, bright green with dark red veins. Each one is the size of a dragon talon and has tough, jagged edges. Cricket has stated that the Breath of Evil would look perfectly creepy if it didn’t have clusters of tiny white flowers in between the leaves. Each flower contains a large dark red seed, almost black. Its roots, dubbed 'Heart of Salvation' by Hawthorn, appear to be a pale brown with white skin that, according to Sundew, seemed "ghostly against the dark earth".

Trivia

• In The Hive Queen, it is said to smell horrible, as if it was rotting. It is also noted to smell slightly peppery.
• According to Sundew, the Breath of Evil is like a weed and will spread faster than normal plants.
• The Breath Of Evil can grow on any terrain and soil.
• The Breath of Evil has similar leafspeak to the rest of the Poison Jungle and can communicate with it, but it has to talk through a host to communicate verbally to dragons.
• Its effect appears to be very potent, as the protagonists considered putting it in the HiveWings' water supply, and its fumes can infect a dragon easily as shown in book 13 with Blue.

Gallery

• 
  Breath of Evil by Mirage Tree
• 
  Othermind by Mirage Tree
• The breath of evil as a LeafWing
  The breath of evil as a LeafWing

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