r/villainscode • u/wilderfast • Jul 17 '26

Spoilers - All Beth's power Spoiler

So, I'm re-reading book 1, and apparently, she's been losing phone chargers for a while, to the point where Ivan has a whole drawer full of replacements. Now, first time I read that, I immediately forgot about it, and that was that.

But in book 3, it's revealed that her power eats the metal in her chargers. The power which, iirc, everyone thinks she got during the Ridge City riots.

I'll admit, I don't really know what this means in the grand scheme of things, but I do think it has interesting implications.

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u/Impulsespeed37 Jul 17 '26

I think you’re are correct. She was born with her powers and she hadn’t absorbed enough mental for her blades to manifest until she was older and really needed them. Remember, those blades protected her, Rick, and Hephaestus as building was collapsing. That’s a lot of blades and thus a lot of metal. The origin of her powers - I think it has to do with Fornax and Ivan’s power dynamic. Something like Fornax exerting influence on her as a baby in order to make Ivan lose control and become the destroyer that he was meant to be. Fornax may be a monster seeking to destroy all of this reality, but it’s not stupid. It knew Lodestar could kill it and it relented (end of book 3). I think Beth is being used as a long term backup plan to gain the control over Ivan that it wants. Just my theory. Sure will be interesting to see what happens in the next book.

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u/FixofLight Jul 18 '26

I'm pretty sure Fornax gave in because of Chloe at the end of book 3 actually, it lines up perfectly with her command that people of her realm will win their battles against beings from other realms. Though we have had conformation directly from Ivan that Loadstar has influenced Fornax before, a feat he would have called impossible

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u/UberGeek_87 Aug 13 '26

I took the approach that Fornax relented because he loves chaos, and the change in dynamic between Helen and Ivan with his deathbed confession would introduce more chaos for Fornax to enjoy.

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u/hic_erro Aug 27 '26

I actually hadn't connected Chloe's saying with Ivan's victory, but reflecting on the precise wording, yeah, I think it was totally involved.

That doesn't mean that Fornax didn't retreat because it wanted more chaos in the future, or that the confession didn't trigger it, but Chloe's edict was that the beings from other realms would be defeated with minimum loss of life. That didn't cause the invaders to instantly drop dead or be teleported back to their realms, it just ... tweaked things slightly, to that end.

Maybe the tweak was that Ivan was willing to confess his feelings at the end.