King Sorrow

To protect Robin, Gwen crafts a message to tell Robin she doesn’t believe Schrödinger’s claims. She asks Robin to cut off contact with their friend group. Afterwards, Colin texts Gwen that she has ensured Robin’s safety.

Daphne continues her research on the group that killed Jayne. Upon realizing that the group has access to a supernatural power, she buys a gun.

Gwen reviews the annotated draft of a manuscript she inherited from Arthur, entitled Toolkit for the Well-Prepared Dragonslayer. Apart from relating dragon lore, the manuscript also shares Arthur’s views on how to live nobly in the modern world. King Sorrow torments Gwen while she is reading.

Gwen sees King Sorrow flying across the moon, which terrifies her.

As Daphne proceeds north, Jayne’s ghost encourages her to kill Jett, Tana’s son and Daphne’s grandson, as revenge against Tana and Gwen.

Gwen continues reading Arthur’s manuscript. Arthur posits that souls can be drawn from the spirit world into the material world as swords. The manuscript also suggests that invisibility is an advantage for dragonslayers. Dragons sometimes fail to account for their weaknesses, which Arthur connects to the ouroboros symbol—the snake swallowing its own tail.

Gwen listens to a voicemail from Allie, who has gotten lost walking to Gwen’s house. Gwen realizes that Allie is walking along the interstate. She calls Tana to intercept Allie.

Gwen finds Tana and Allie safely together. Gwen suspects that Allie’s guilt led to suicidal ideation. She rebukes Allie for her recklessness, though her allusions to King Sorrow confuse Tana. Allie asks if she can stay with Gwen, hoping to recover from alcohol addiction. Tana offers to help.

Robin visits Gwen after deducing that Gwen’s message about wanting Robin to disconnect from the group was a lie. Tana soon follows with Allie, indicating that Allie has told her about Gwen’s impending death.

Gwen is reluctant to tell Tana the truth about Jayne’s death. To reassure her, Tana acknowledges the role Gwen and Arthur played in saving her from Jayne’s abuse. When Robin connects Jayne’s death to the dragon that attacked BA 238, Gwen shows them her tattoo.

Gwen shares everything about her arrangement with King Sorrow and her desire to end it. She deduces that Colin has hidden the martyr’s robe in the Cabinet of Curiosities; the robe is impervious to dragon’s fire and grants the wearer invisibility from evil. Allie explains that the cabinet is protected by an enchanted lock, requiring a unique key to open it. The key is with Donna.

The group hatches a plan for Allie to infiltrate The Briars, using her loyalty to Donna to regain Colin’s trust. Robin reasons that Allie’s unrequited love for Donna may be a form of self-punishment, which Robin relates to her experience with transition.

Tana brings Allie to Alcoholics Anonymous, where Tana shares how her own addiction almost led to Jett’s death in infancy. Tana committed herself to doing good things for others to manage her guilt during recovery. Allie comes to appreciate the meetings as part of her own recovery.

In February, Colin leaves town to control the public relations impact of the video in which he pushed Gwen. Allie takes this opportunity to offer Donna her gin supply. When Allie arrives at The Briars, she is stunned to see Donna in seductive clothing.

Donna pressures Allie into drinking with her. Allie pretends to indulge her request, allowing Donna to become more vulnerable about her insecurity and dependence on Van as she becomes more inebriated. The drunker Donna gets, the more Allie becomes disillusioned with her crush. Donna eventually passes out.

Allie uses Donna’s key to open the Cabinet. She takes the martyr’s robe and the cracked mirror, but runs into Colin, who has returned earlier than expected. Colin tries to reconcile with Allie over the computer center incident. Allie indulges his condescending remarks about Gwen, but is embarrassed when he mocks Allie’s crush on Donna. When he leaves, she returns the key to Donna and exits The Briars. Unbeknownst to Allie, Daphne is following her.

Gwen, Robin, Allie, and Tana meet at the Rackham College chapel, believing it will protect them from King Sorrow’s surveillance. Building on Arthur’s theories, Gwen shares her plan to draw Arthur’s soul from the Long Dark in sword form and use it against King Sorrow. She wants to conduct a séance at the Brooks Library to conjure Arthur, but when she reveals that she plans to do it alone, the others protest. Gwen is reluctant to accept their help because she fears endangering their lives. The others realize that Gwen expects to die fighting King Sorrow.

Robin teases that Tana and Allie may be romantically involved.

Donna and Colin ambush and capture the group as they leave the chapel. Knowing he has the advantage, Colin admits to killing Arthur and to burning down Fleming’s house to destroy Crane’s journal.

Before Colin and Donna can take their prisoners to The Briars, they are interrupted by Daphne, who shoots Colin three times. Another bullet ricochets into Donna’s foot. Gwen covers Donna from more gunfire, taking three bullets to the back. Tana throws coffee in Daphne’s face and then kills her mother.

Before Gwen falls into a coma, King Sorrow taunts that she will survive her recovery, allowing him to kill her while she is still at the hospital.

In a vision, Donna reunites with Van. Van rebukes her for killing hundreds of women at Black Cricket, who experienced abuse and suffering throughout their lives. Donna argues that their pasts can never excuse their actions, a point Van then uses against her. Van also defends Gwen, who has spent her life “[g]iving people their dignity back” (780).

Donna doesn’t believe that she is really talking to Van and that she can fix herself. Van gives her a sand dollar to convince her otherwise. When she wakes up, Donna is still holding the sand dollar.

One of Gwen’s wounds becomes infected, forcing her to spend more time in recovery. Colin is alive, but remains in critical condition. Donna has been released from recovery and has attempted to contact Allie, but Allie refuses to speak to her. A month before Easter, Allie panics when she sees King Sorrow in Gwen’s hospital room. He taunts her low self-esteem.

Colin asks Donna to bring him the saint’s blood to expedite his recovery. Donna is skeptical of Colin’s assertion that they are heroes, believing she could have killed Erin at Black Cricket.

Donna asks Colin about his security detail, suspecting that they come from the same firm that kidnapped her and Van. Colin claims not to know about their employment history. When she asks the guards, however, they explain that Colin has contracted their manager’s services for 20 years. This convinces Donna to turn against Colin.

Donna approaches Robin, Tana, and Allie, assuring them that she now wants to help Gwen. Donna reveals that she used the saint’s blood to heal her gunshot injury. She also recovered all the artifacts for the standoff with King Sorrow before the police could collect them as evidence.

The four women apply the saint’s blood to Gwen’s wounds and let her drink the rest.

The next day, Gwen wakes up.

Tana and Gwen’s doctor are shocked by the rapid progress of Gwen’s recovery.

Colin learns of Donna’s betrayal and uses the helmet to summon Elwood Hondo. The ritual transports him to the séance caught on Llewellyn’s film. Colin is terrified when he wakes up and sees Hondo in his room. Colin tells Hondo he needs someone dead. Hondo smothers Colin with a pillow.

Gwen dreams of Colin being pursued by Hondo in a cave. She realizes Colin is dead.

Gwen and Donna reconcile. Gwen shares that while her injuries have healed, the saint’s blood also sealed bullet fragments in her body, exacerbating her infection. Hoping to minimize the collateral damage, Gwen asks Donna to bring her to The Briars so that King Sorrow can kill her there, after which Donna can summon and kill him while he is still weak. Donna refuses to let Gwen quit the fight so easily, believing Gwen is a better person than her.

On Good Friday, Gwen confesses her self-doubt to the memory of Arthur, believing she is still too weak to defeat King Sorrow. She then leaves the hospital.

Robin, Tana, Allie, and Donna surprise Gwen outside the hospital, having anticipated that she would try to leave. They insist on joining her, arguing that King Sorrow would have no one left to bargain with if all of them are dead. Donna promises that if the plan goes wrong, she will kill Gwen to placate King Sorrow and buy themselves more time.

Donna warns Tana about breaking Allie’s heart. She admits to Gwen that she is afraid of losing Allie the way she lost Cady and Van.

The group hides inside Brooks Library. After lamenting her past actions, Donna affirms that she wants to stop King Sorrow from killing more people. Robin affirms that she sees the same good in Donna that Van saw. Tana cites the positive impact that Gwen has had on her life. Gwen regrets allowing her friends to join her at the library. Tana consoles her by sharing her regret of deceiving Arthur into thinking that sex with her was a form of coercion. Gwen forgives her and feels resolved in the company of her friends.

After the library closes, the group ascends to the Special Collection tower. Gwen projects a video of Arthur from the night of Donna’s bachelorette party, using it to conduct the séance. The group calls Arthur to return to them.

A newspaper flies down to Gwen and opens to the crossword, showing clues that hint at Arthur’s presence. While Gwen works on the puzzle, a window breaks, prompting Donna to observe that it is already Easter.

King Sorrow crashes onto the library roof. To distract King Sorrow, Donna challenges him to a riddling contest. She stakes her life, drinks from a thermos, then asks a riddle whose answer King Sorrow correctly guesses is “fire.” It is revealed that Donna consumed dragon’s tears, allowing her to breathe fire onto the dragon’s eyes. King Sorrow is blinded and stunned. Donna dies and reunites with Van in the afterlife.

Arthur’s spectral presence directs Gwen to a crack in one of the tower’s glass walls. Gwen draws a luminescent blade from the crack. With the protection of the martyr’s robe, Gwen succeeds in cutting off one of King Sorrow’s talons. Allie reaches into the crack and draws a shield created by the soul of Van. This repels King Sorrow’s fire blasts.

King Sorrow breaks the tower wall with his tail and swats down each of Gwen’s friends. When King Sorrow’s tail finds Gwen under the martyr’s robe, Gwen uses the sword to pin it to the floor. King Sorrow tries to bite at Gwen but ends up swallowing his own tail. He takes flight, but cannot steady himself as he continues to eat. Eventually, King Sorrow swallows himself whole. Gwen is left critically injured.

Hovering between life and death, Gwen sees Van, Donna, and Colin burning an old Christmas tree. Arthur embraces her and invites her to stay. Gwen considers his offer.

Gwen wakes up as firefighter Jett Nighswander rescues her from the tower ruins.

Gwen momentarily considers returning to her friends on the beach.

Gwen dies in the ambulance.

Gwen is revived in the emergency room and sent to Portland for surgery.

Six weeks later, Gwen continues her recovery. She attends a remembrance for Donna, during which Erin eulogizes Donna as a person who suffered because of her anger, but loved her friends in a redemptive way. Gwen appreciates the honesty of Erin’s eulogy and remembers Donna as someone who stood with her at the end.

In 2018, the California wildfires occur.

That same year, a fire destroys The Briars. It is hinted that Gwen is involved in its destruction.

Gwen visits a hill she used to sled down with Arthur, reminiscing about their relationship in spite of the physical pain resulting from her injuries. It is also revealed that Allie and Tana are married.

In 2019, fire hits the Notre-Dame de Paris. A firefighter compares the sound of the flames to a screaming dragon.

That same year, Svangur writes a negative review of Toolkit for the Well-Prepared Dragonslayer by Arthur Oakes with Gwen Underfoot on Goodreads.

In 2020, a powerful explosion rocks Beirut, Lebanon. Witnesses report hearing a giant snake hissing just before the explosion.

In 2022, Gwen attends Robin’s retirement party in London. Several days later, Russia invades Ukraine. Gwen and Robin are watching the news when Gwen sees the outline of a dragon in an explosion. Gwen concludes that another dragon has entered the world and feels a duty to stop it. Robin assures her that other people will emerge to fight it.