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Dendrobates pumilio is the formal name for the creature. “Strawberry poison dart frog” is the common name.
Like that amphibian, Peril has two names for what she is. “Venenum Pellis” is the formal name. “Monster” is the laconic one.
She may look like an ordinary girl from a distance. But anyone who gets close notices her deep poison-purple eyes, the slight glisten of her skin, and the look of someone who has never been defeated.
(Not that anyone really gets that close, mind you, at least not long enough to gaze at her like that. You usually don’t note the appearance of someone’s skin or the specific shade of their eyes when you’re dying of the toxic fingerprints they’ve left on you.)
Now that she’s an exile, remembering her days in the empire makes Peril feel as if her head’s been set on fire. She remembers the towering city built into the mountaintop, the golden walls of the palace, and Osprey’s occasional lessons on various subjects.
Osprey, her favourite old man. She’d doomed him like she’d doomed the prisoners, just with a request rather than with poison.
“I want to save my mother,” she told him, walking into his room and stopping a short distance from him. “Is there a way?”
Osprey turned his wheelchair around to look at her.
“There’s a loophole.”
“Pull the plug, sire,” Peril grinned. It’ll be like spitting fire.
And he told her.
Too bad Scarlet killed him for that.
Peril had genuinely liked Osprey. He wasn’t like all the other so-called gents of the empire, those who said awful things about her yet froze in fear when she was around to hear them. (Well, technically everyone did that, not just the men, but “gents of the empire” sounds better in her head than “people of the empire”.) He wasn’t like Scarlet, who later tried with all her might to strangle Peril’s desire for being by Clay’s side.
Peril misses Osprey, simple as that. During her brief and thoroughly unpleasant visit to Possibility, a woman throws a dead chicken at her, and she’s wearing the same kind of horn-rimmed glasses he did. That little detail adds tenfold to the hurt.
“Osprey,” Peril mutters under her breath as she hurriedly exits the town, “I’m glad you’d never do that to me.”
The winds blow across the scrubland outside the town, scattering sand and dust like Peril has scattered people’s souls across the world. And she hopes that, whoever or whatever he is now, Osprey has been born into a nice life.
The longer she spends outside it, the more Peril sees how full of tricks the empire was. It really hits home one day at Jade Mountain, in the middle of a conversation with Ibex, Flame’s replacement.
They’re sitting in the corner of the dining hall, at two narrow tables pushed to face one another (Peril has a table reserved for her, since everything she touches is left with poison on it, and Ibex’s is a spare), when Ibex suddenly and slightly abashedly tells her that his life’s dream is to become an artist.
“Interesting. Go on.”
“My parents don’t want me to, though. I mean, I’m good at it - I really am.” He pulls out a sketchbook and shows Peril a couple of his drawings. Even as colourless rough sketches, they’re pretty great. “But they say it’s not a good enough job. They keep telling me that the only way to make it in life is to be a scientist or a soldier - even more so because we’re nobility.”
“Now that’s just stupid.” Peril observes tactfully. “Why would anyone want to make happy kids aim higher?”
Ibex shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine. They don’t seem to realize that they’re just wetting fire.”
“Ha. Fools of the empire.” says Peril, twirling her custom fork into her spaghetti.
Peril has never had any formal schooling (up until Jade Mountain, of course), but she’s been taught her whole life nonetheless. The only student in a school where Scarlet was a sadistic teacher/headmaster, where the only lesson taught was that she was a born killing machine, unlovable to anyone but Scarlet. She’d learned the rules thoroughly, and when you retread something in your mind that many times, it becomes very difficult to wipe it out.
Still, Peril’s unlearning what Scarlet has put in her head. The first seed is planted the day she meets Clay, and The Revelation is like a shower of rain absorbed into the soil that surrounds the seed.
The Revelation. A simple fact that splits the foundations of Peril’s worldview, shaking her world like a building-toppling earthquake. An earthquake forceful enough to bring down the very mountains of the Sky Kingdom.
The Revelation, as her long-lost mother half-spits at her, is that Venenum Pellis don’t naturally exist. Her condition is wholly induced - small amounts of poison fed to a child since infanthood, moving past immunity to actual production.
In other words: Peril doesn’t have herself or even her parents to blame for her poisonous nature. The only one accountable for her toxicity is Scarlet - the woman who’d spent Peril’s whole life telling her that she came into being as a horrible monster.
Yeah, that really messes her up. (Kind of an understatement, but whatever.)
As the months pass by, Peril can see, more and more, how foolish she’s been. A fool of the empire.
But she’s broken loose and spat fire, and that’s put her on a better path (even if it doesn’t seem like it most of the time).
Peril’s emotions have always been swinging things, like pendulums in her chest counting beats between the arteries and veins pumping toxic blood.
It isn’t until Clay, though, that this becomes really pronounced. Her environment hasn’t exactly been conducive to a wide emotional range - eat, kill prisoners (and occasionally visit Osprey), sleep, repeat.
But Clay changes that. It’s like he brings the world into focus, the moment he pushes her away without screaming in agony and dying on the floor. And, in an odd way, learning of Scarlet’s manipulations enhances the effect. The world isn’t just what one person says - there’s a whole lot of difference in there. Finally, there’s something to get emotional about.
And get emotional she does, with a vengeance. Often, she feels like she’s either hovering on the border between happiness and sadness, or very quickly switching between the two with considerable whiplash. She remembers Clay and gets so happy she thinks she’ll die, thinking about the future she might have with him - and then SUDDENLY SADNESS when she remembers that it’s only a “might”, not a “will”, and will only be a “will” if the cards stack exactly right.
And sometimes she feels like she’s on the line between two other concepts. On the edge of the Sky Kingdom, looking into a pool of water left by last night’s chilly autumn rain, Peril feels borderline good and borderline bad. Good because she’s on her way back from defeating her evil father (who is also a literal shapeshifter - seriously, WHAT, universe?) and watching Scarlet go down one and for all, in no small part thanks to her. And also because people like Clay and Turtle, people she knows are good, like her. But she feels like she’s bad because, well, all those deaths in the arena still have to count against her on some cosmic scale. The two feelings live inside her, side-by-side, each trying to push out the other.
Out of pure habit, Peril considers sticking her finger in the water and poisoning it, but quickly berates herself. Since, you know, that’s not a very good thing to do.
(Habits have a tendency to stick around, though. Sometimes, Peril can’t quite get rid of a tingling fear that she’s living in a muddle, that Scarlet was right after all and that Clay and everyone else will see her out when her head gets clear.)
Peril lives her life with the shackles of her past, but she’s still borderline free. Clinging to Clay like a lifeline makes it so that, even with the scarlet mist gone from her eyes, she still can’t see clearly. She gets freer after meeting Turtle and his group, and even freer after making several other friends. There are multiple people who can keep her grounded now - including herself, although learning to be one of them is a long and fraught process.
That day is definitely her life’s biggest turning point. It’s like a windfall of luck - the guy who’s begun to teach her other ways of life was born immune to poison. (Apparently it’s a thing that happens from time to time in the Mud Kingdom, and is accompanied by a bright red birthmark. Peril can’t see any such mark on Clay’s skin, but he’s wearing fairly covering clothing so she supposes she might in the future.)
Peril is a grand champion gladiator with the touch of death. No challenges and no changes in her life, and therefore no challenges and no changes of mind.
But with a simple touch, Clay flips her world upside-down. He’s the one to finally break her stride.
And for that, she is deeply grateful.