"The Maddening Darkness" by LuckyEd; Illustration for A Kindled Change.

"The Maddening Darkness" by LuckyEd on Deviant Art. Illustration for The Finale: Chapter 9 of A Kindled Change.

This illustration depicts the moment when Chrys confronts the Mistress for the first time, falling to her tricks and letting her consume the overwhelming magic of her emotions. The Mistress' magic becomes so powerful, that its usual dark green luster becomes pitch-black. In a symbolic and poetic way, she then uses her magic to cover every surface of the cave and blot out any light within the room enveloping them both in darkness save for the malicious green glow of the Mistress' eyes. The story ends the way it began.

I want you to ask yourself a question on how to depict something that would otherwise have no visuals to it. How do you picture a scene shrouded by pitch-black darkness? Thankfully, LuckyEd had a few wonderful paintings that clued me into how I wanted to tackle that idea. A black and white painting with only the outlines of the things inside of it to clue you into the idea of how it must be to have blackened magic artificially cover every wall to create a surreal scene. And I sincerely believe no one could've done this moment better than LuckyEd did.

No one could've encapsulated the tension and nature of the scene better. It's awe-inspiring, and LuckyEd's use of brush strokes for this one manages to illustrate the surrealness that I was trying to gun for. She also influenced the outcome of this drawing quite a bit, since I loved a lot of the ideas that she had for it when I first told her about what I wanted. The green glow from her eyes. Chrys in the picture, defeated. And the Mistress' outline instead of Queen Chrysalis were all her idea and it added to the illustration beautifully.

Observant readers might be wondering why this is a depiction of the Mistress and not the Queen, since at this moment she has yet to be revealed. It's only until the sequel that we get to see her physical manifestation, as she resides within the Queen's mind. We created the illustration this way to give readers a foreshadowing of her form. The scene IS supposed to be of complete darkness. So let us imagine for a moment that it was Chrys who drew this scene when writing about it in her memoirs. With the loving side of the Queen all but repressed now that the Mistress had taken full control of her body (evident by the reverberation in her voice gone and only the malicious one being left behind), whose figure do you think she would draw for the depiction of this moment?

Part of the reason I wanted to do an artist collaboration for A Kindled Change instead of having one artist for it like I did A Kindled Beginning and End, was to give it a sense of style and wonder. To give my story not only life by having it visually represented with drawings, but also to give it the unique flare that only artists can give it.

And as far as unique goes, LuckyEd is by far and large my favorite artist. She is truly a gem, and a wonderful person to boot. Her success is something I'm heavily invested into, and I wish her all the best. She's so earnestly taken all of my directions and instructions in stride to create for me, and is about the only person I know who has put in a lot of effort to go the extra mile for my requests as she read the story to understand what I wanted better. I couldn't ask for better.