Breath of evil

The breath of evil is the physical form of the othermind, used by Queen Wasp to mind control the HiveWings.

Biography

The Hive Queen

The plant has a fairly minor role in The Hive Queen when Cricket spies on Wasp secretly injecting HiveWing eggs with it in the Jewel Hive Nest. After learning this, Blue and Swordtail help her burn down Wasp's greenhouse of it.

The Poison Jungle

Sundew, Willow, Nettle, Mandrake, Cricket, and Bumblebee, are sent on a dangerous mission by Sequoia: to see if Hawthorn has found an antidote to the mind-control. After traversing through the most lethal part of the jungle, they are attacked by Hawthorn's vipers, meant to deter outsiders from finding the plant. Just as the vipers start to close in, he calls them off and invites the group 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, which the othermind had convinced him was an antidote. It had the ability to control him because he ingested the plant during his experiments on it. Sundew, her friends, and Queen Sequoia were fooled into burning the root, putting even non-HiveWings under the mind control. The entire continent was now in danger, as the breath of evil had broken out of its quarantine in the Eye of the Jungle, and was about to spread all the way 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, and the LeafWings and SilkWings who weren't infected to flee to Pyrrhia using 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. Its roots smell like old oranges.
• 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 The Poison Jungle with Blue.

__NOWYSIWYG__