'Cottonmouth' was an
ancient male human who was introduced in The Flames of Hope. Along with
Freedom and the breath of evil, he was part of the othermind. Though his
body was long deceased, his consciousness was kept alive for
approximately five thousand years within the mindspace until the
othermind was destroyed by Luna. He was formerly worshipped by the Abyss
village.

## 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.

When Luna encountered him in the abyss, he was seated on a throne and
wearing thick black gloves. The breath of evil grew through his skull,
dividing behind his head and cascading away. He had blank, staring eyes
with a white film covering them and a shimmer of mossy green overlaying
it.

## Personality

Cottonmouth was deranged, easily offended, and sinister. He was also
calm and delighted at the prospect of controlling as many creatures as
he could. Cottonmouth was also pretentious, self-assured, arrogant,
power-hungry, bossy and confident. In his youth, he was loud and took up
all the space and air around him; however, he was still cold, and had
already formed a plan to control dragons.

Cottonmouth was a coward about feeling any pain, and would cease to
possess a dragon if they experienced more pain than he could bear. He
was 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 also believed that dragons were unpredictable creatures,
which attacked unprovoked, calling them 'reptiles.' Cottonmouth was
persistent on his goal to control the dragons, despite knowing the
destruction that resulted from his plans.

## Biography

left
Pre-Series
Cottonmouth was a
scientist who was 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. His hosts presumably started the worship
of him, and also the tradition of the Guardian of the Abyss. 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.

-----

### The Lost Continent Prophecy

left 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.

left
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 was 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

### Coyote

Coyote was quick to exclude Cottonmouth when he boasted about each of
his friends ruling the three empires, and Cottonmouth spoke to him
coldly. Coyote told Cottonmouth that his plan to capture and tame
dragons was ridiculous and was willing to let his brother carry on
looking for dragons alone while he and his friends returned to the city.
He mocked Cottonmouth's pretentious tone, laughing at him along with
their friends, and slapped his brother on the shoulder before implying
that by chasing dragons, Cottonmouth planned to avoid being drafted into
the army, to which Cottonmouth replied frostily; he then waved away his
brother's protests before shouting that he would race Cottonmouth back
to camp.

As Cottonmouth grew older and assumed a position of power within his
empire, he was quick to curtly order Coyote around. Coyote eventually
agreed to his brother's requests, throwing up his hands and stalking
back towards the dragon's cave in order to steal more of their eggs.
Coyote seemed uneasy around his brother.

### Freedom

Cottonmouth often referred to Freedom as "his lizard," and considered
her to be a fool.

Freedom and Cottonmouth seem to have had an extreme dislike for each
other; Freedom hated Cottonmouth for killing her before she ever had a
chance to experience a true life, while Cottonmouth despised her and saw
her as an inferior being that he was unfortunately bound to for all of
eternity. Cottonmouth gave her the name 'Lizard'. Cottonmouth convinced
her that dragons were 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 recognized that they needed each other to
continue 'living,' no matter how deep of a grudge they had against one
another.

## Quotes

I am the emperor of the world.
to Dusky and Luna

The Flames of Hope
163

-----

If only you had any interesting memories of your own. Oh,
that's right. You died before making any.
to Freedom

The Flames of Hope
213

-----

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

The Flames of Hope
231

-----

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
The Flames of Hope
233

-----

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
The Flames of Hope

179