Cottonmouth

"You say that, but you wish you had this power. [...] Anyone who had the chance to be me would take it in a heartbeat."

— to Luna about his power to control others, The Flames of Hope

Cottonmouth was a male human who was introduced in The Flames of Hope. He made up half of the consciousness of the othermind, the other half being Freedom.

Description

In his youth, Cottonmouth wore regal, silky wrappings with silver filigree thread decorating the edges. Later he was seen wearing rougher wrappings, with a new scar across one temple and long, brown hair, boasting a bright green feather tied in with gold thread. He had gold medallions on each shoulder of his cloak. During his quest to control dragons the grooves in his face deepened, especially along his forehead and between his eyes, and he wore feathers woven into his graying hair. His voice was flat and disapproving.

While setting up his throne room at the bottom of the abyss, he wore head-to-toe robes embroidered with silver, as well as his gold medallions and feathers in his hair.

When Luna encountered him in the abyss, he was seated on a throne, wearing thick black gloves with a young dragon between them. He had a plant growing through his skull, emerging behind him with vines cascading like hair, or tentacles exploding outwards. He had a white film covering his eyes, with a shimmer of mossy green overlaying it.

Personality

Cottonmouth was pretentious, self-assured, arrogant, power-hungry, bossy and confident. He is a coward about feeling any pain, and will cease to possess a dragon if they experience more pain than he can bear. He is egotistical as he was described to be the type of person who would only be interested in pictures if he were in them. He believed he was the emperor of the world and believed everyone wanted to be him. Cottonmouth was persistent on his goal to control the dragons, despite knowing the destruction that resulted from his plans.

Biography

Pre-Series

Cottonmouth was a scientist who is later appointed to the role of Advisor for the emperor during the events leading up to the Scorching. With the war between the major human empires locked in a stalemate, Cottonmouth comes up with the idea to use dragons as living weapons to gain an edge. Rather than simply capturing adult dragons, who were very rare at the time, he instead instructed his subordinates to start locating and raiding dragon nests for their eggs. The initial attempt at taming the newborn dragonets failed, resulting in the death or serious injury of many soldiers and scientists and destruction of several laboratories, which would lead to him taking more aggressive methods. Labs were moved to underground stone chambers that could not be burned, and lab personnel were outfitted in spiked leather armor; Cottonmouth himself would redirect his goals from simply taming dragons to artificially controlling them. The experiments continued for several years, all in failure, and before he could perfect his mind control technique, the angry dragons retaliated for the theft of their eggs. With human civilization nearly wiped out, the body count climbing, and the empire he served completely destroyed, Cottonmouth and several refugees would board makeshift boats and flee from the carnage, arriving in Pantala with a single dragon egg. Drawing his inspiration from a parasitic plant that could control ants, Cottonmouth would continue his experiments in the Abyss, eventually genetically engineering the plant that would become the breath of evil. He would spend several more years experimenting with the plant, attempting to infect and control various small animals and eventually working up to experimenting on his own human subordinates, all with little to moderate success. Undeterred, he proceeded with his tests, and when the dragon egg finally hatched, he attempted to infect the female dragonet - only to get himself caught alongside her, with the plant penetrating both the dragonet's skull and his own; this effectively killed them both, but the breath of evil plant would keep them in a state of petrified "undeath" from that point onwards. With two sentient brains to guide it, the breath of evil could now do exactly what Cottonmouth had wanted - it allowed both him and the dragonet (who he refers to as his "Lizard") to control the bodies of anything the plant infected; Lizard could use her Leafspeak to physically manipulate the plants in the immediate area, making it possible to infect many new hosts, while Cottonmouth did most of the controlling. And thus, the othermind was born. Cottonmouth would demand new hosts from his surviving human companions to infect, and would have the breath of evil scattered across the continent of Pantala, allowing him to take control of various animals and insects over the centuries. When the first dragons (LeafWings and BeetleWings) showed up from Pyrrhia fleeing from the constant wars between the various tribes, Cottonmouth would send swarms of his mind-controlled animals after them in an attempt to drive them off, thus starting the Legend of the Hive; his attempts would fail, however, as the dragons soon made the connection between the mind-controlled animals and the breath of evil vines overgrowing the continent, and destroyed all but the few that were left in the Eye of the Jungle. His power over the wildlife cut off and his breath of evil plants all but extinct, Cottonmouth would lay in wait for centuries as the new dragons would go on to multiply, form tribes of their own, and prosper. It would not be until the Tree Wars that Cottonmouth would finally be given the chance to take action once more. When a dragon named Hawthorn rediscovered the breath of evil and suggested trying to use it to control Queen Wasp, Cottonmouth was given his very first dragon host. Realizing her poison could be used to infect other dragons, Cottonmouth came to an "agreement" with Wasp, encouraging her to infect as many other dragons as she could while giving her control over them; she would still answer to him, however, and both Cottonmouth and Lizard could jump into any other dragon infected by Wasp and seize control without warning. While a failsafe Hawthorn had "programmed" into the breath of evil prevented it from being able to infect SilkWings and LeafWings, Cottonmouth would later force Hawthorn to "fix" his plants later on when the LeafWing, now in exile, willingly ingested some of the breath of evil while experimenting with making an antidote.

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The Lost Continent Prophecy

The Poison Jungle

Fifty years later, when Sundew and the others arrive at Hawthorn's home, Cottonmouth would trick the LeafWings into vaporizing the roots of the plant, using the smoke to infect many SilkWings and LeafWings and finally seizing control of the entire continent. However, Sundew herself would escape his clutches, foiling his plan to use her unusually strong leafspeak to spread his Breath of Evil around the continent and overseas, which would have allowed him to reclaim his previous homeland.

The Flames of Hope

In the prologue, Cottonmouth was not mentioned by name, however Raven thought about a human a long time ago that had apparently saved them all. This human was Cottonmouth. While not mentioned by name, Cottonmouth took partial control of a SilkWing at the beginning of The Flames of Hope. While he was in the SilkWing, he shouted for Sundew to show herself, taunting her with the prospect of seeing Belladonna and Blue. He asked Earwig if she knew what knocked out the unconscious HiveWing guards. When she replied saying that she did not know, Cottonmouth left the SilkWing's body, leaving Wasp in control of the SilkWing. Furious, he would punish Wasp for her failure while commanding his current Guardian, Vole, to Bring [him] the dragon - an order that ended up being too vague and would later result in Luna and Dusky being captured and infected instead. While not the dragon he had hoped for, Cottonmouth and Lizard would amuse themselves with Luna for several days, with Cottonmouth eagerly sharing his memories to her while showing off his ability to possess and control other dragons; after making Luna tell Cricket and Sky to bring Sundew to the Abyss, Cottonmouth went into a trancelike state, seizing control of his many dragons while Lizard demanded Luna's and Dusky's memories. Eventually, Cottonmouth seized direct control of Pineapple, prompting Qibli to have Moonwatcher probe his mind and discover that the RainWing, Luna, and Dusky had all been infected. Declaring that Luna was his hostage, Cottonmouth demanded that Sundew surrender herself to him, to which she agreed; as Cottonmouth, in Pineapple's body, began to lead Sundew to the Abyss, Luna attempted to appeal to Lizard, who had never had a chance to experience being a dragon. With both her own and Dusky's memories not having been enough to satisfy the undead dragonet, Luna first has Pineapple share his memories of life and love with Lizard, before having Qibli, Lynx, Sundew, Tsunami, and Moon share their memories with her with Moon acting as a "conduit". Finally convincing Lizard to rebel against the human she was bound to, Luna learns that cutting the stalk of the breath of evil that protrudes through both Lizard's and Cottonmouth's skulls will kill them both, freeing everyone from the plant once and for all. Lizard releases Luna's body from the vines she had been ensnared in, and while Cottonmouth is distracted by Sundew and their friends suddenly fighting against the mind-controlled dragons that had come to escort the LeafWing to the the Abyss, Luna cuts the stalk, killing first Cottonmouth and then Lizard (now Freedom) and putting an end to the othermind once and for all.

Relationships

Freedom

Freedom and Cottonmouth seem to have an extreme dislike for each other; Freedom hates Cottonmouth for killing her before she ever had a chance to experience a true life, while Cottonmouth despises her and sees her as an inferior being that he is unfortunately bound to for all of eternity. Cottonmouth gave her the name 'Lizard'. Cottonmouth convinced her that dragons are horrible beings that attack unprovoked. Cottonmouth was often physically violent towards her and vented out his frustrations on to her. However, the two worked together to control the breath of evil plant, using its hosts as their sole source of entertainment. Thus, they recognize that they need each other to continue 'living,' no matter how deep of a grudge they have against one another.

Quotes

"I am the emperor of this world."

― to Luna and Dusky

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"If only you had any interesting memories of your own […] Oh, that's right. You died before making any."

― Cottonmouth, in response to Freedom

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"You say that, but you wish you had this power […] anyone who had the chance to be me would take it in a heartbeat."

― to Luna, about his power to control others

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"He's the kind of person who's only interested in pictures if he's in them. He might shuffle through your memories to see if there's anything about him, but he will not care about your friends or family or crushes or anything you care about."

― Freedom, about Cottonmouth

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"I’ll get Sundew and spread my plant across the whole world. I’ll inject myself into every brain until every dragon and every human belong to me. You will all be my fingers, my little playthings, nothing more."

― to Luna, about his plan

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