Embers to Inferno | Episode 19 Part 2 (Patreon)

As you can see, episode 19 was getting a bit too long for me to finish in a single month, haha. But this is my favorite part, the entire reason this episode even exists is for this moment!

Some of you might recognize what Valtor is talking about here 👀 I didn’t want to spoil the episode right at the start of this post, but all credit goes to Rist—the amazing author of Sparked! I asked her for permission to use her concept and expand on it a little more. I’ll talk about it in more detail below!

*Spoilers ahead*

The fight comes to an end, and of course, Valtor manages to trick Bloom. In terms of raw power, Bloom is already far beyond him, but Valtor knows exactly how her mind works. She treats this as a magical sparring match and doesn’t expect him to use brute force to subdue her. A hard but valuable lesson for her: never assume your enemy will fight fair!

Now, she’s completely at Valtor’s mercy, heheheh 👀

I scream every time over this part! I was so inspired by Rist’s work that I had to bring a similar scene to life in my own story. If you’ve read her fanfic, in chapter 1 Bloom gets immobilized, and Valtor tells her a similar story and touches her nexus. I tried to come up with a different way to write it so it wouldn't feel too similar, but honestly? It was just too perfect 😅 So I asked her if I could take inspiration from her idea and use the concept of “Witchers.”

Of course, I was already familiar with Witchers from other media, especially my favorite game ever, The Witcher: Wild Hunt, but bringing the idea into the Winx universe was Rist’s idea! The witchers in ETI and probably Sparked as well, are also very different from those in the games/books; it's really just the name that felt so fitting.

Once I had her blessing, I started developing more lore for the Witchers. I’m honestly such a big fan of unsettling, horror-esque media. I don’t really enjoy watching horror movies, but I love horror games and reading manga/manhwa with horror themes. This is my first time writing/drawing something within that genre, but I’m absolutely loving it!

It felt like an important moment for Valtor to be the one revealing the darker side of the Magical Dimension to Bloom. At Alfea, Bloom was always pretty sheltered—unless, of course, it was time for her to clean up a mess after everything went wrong, lol. Beyond that, the Magical Dimension always came across as so sparkly and perfect, and Faragonda definitely worked hard to keep it that way.

Having Valtor be the one to pull back the curtain marks a new chapter for them, a level of trust Bloom didn’t even share with Faragonda. At least, that’s the sort of vibe I was going for. Valtor, being the devious demon he is, can’t help but take a little advantage of the situation though 😂

I’ve always loved the idea that a fairy’s wings are extra sensitive and tied to their power. It’s not a new concept by any means, but it was never really explored in Winx Club. The wings are treated more like tools for flight and not much else, there’s almost no consequence when someone hits them in the back or tugs on their wings (like Mitzi did in the Hallowinx episode).

A ton of people have asked if sensitive wings would be canon in ETI too, and I can finally offically confirm that yes, they are 😌!

Hope everyone enjoyed this episode! Can't wait to hear everyone's thoughts about the Witchers, wing cutting and everything else that happened!