History Fanfic / HopeForTheHeartless

* EvilerThanThou: Arawn towards the Horned King. The Death Lord was the only one who surpassed his former apprentice in cruelty. He even chews at the Horned King for becoming "a disgrace to the name of Evil".

* IWouldSayIfICouldSay: The Horned King acts like this regarding the positive emotions and hope that start awakening in him.
* IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim: Or ''If You [[MurderByInaction Leave Him To Die]], You Will Be Just Like Him'' when Avalina has the chance to escape the wounded and unconscious Horned King.

* PapaWolf: The Horned King becomes one towards Avalina, especially after his above-mentioned DeclarationOfProtection.

* RedemptionQuest: The Horned King is given a chance for something no soul condemned to the Black Cauldron has before received; to redeem himself.

-->'''The Horned King''': I will never harm her!
-->'''Arawn''': But you have. You've already harmed her in more ways than you care to recount. Ripping her from her family was an impeccable start. So why do you balk now? She knows the location of the Pig-Boy. She can tell you where he lives. You could finally get your long-awaited revenge...
-->'''The Horned King''':...I value Avalina's company more than the blood of the Pig-Keeper.
-->'''Arawn''': ''[snarls furiously for being unable to deny the truth of the claim]'' You're a disgrace to the name of Evil. There was a time you would have killed her instantly, without feeling, without deferment. And yet now, you not only refuse, but ''vehemently'' so. You are not the Huntsman you were. You were unbeatable! Undefeatable! And now, you've fallen in the most disgraceful way possible. Not by a sword or a spell, but a little peasant girl, so pathetic and weak it's a tragedy she's survived this long.
-->'''The Horned King''': But she is anything but weak. Her strengths appear as weaknesses, but I have never seen or heard of a mortal so strong that they cry for their enemies, and call a... creature like me... a friend.

* VillainProtagonist: The story is narrated mostly through the Horned King's point of view, in addition to Avalina's.

** Arawn is a straighter example of this trope to the point of having the EvilerThanThou attitude towards the Horned King.

** While Avalina is weeding her garden one day, she ends up finding one of the former Cauldron-Born. She realizes that the area around the castle's drawbridge is full of them and there is probably hundreds of them. This event was written after the author remembered one scene from the movie; when the Black Cauldron's power left the Cauldron-Born, many of them "died" on the lands around the drawbridge. The Invisibles had removed the skeletons inside the castle and the courtyard when they were reformed, but since they can't go outside that circle and the area was restored to the way it was before, of course the skeletons would still be there.

* DarkIsEvil/DarkIsNotEvil: [[ZigZaggingTrope Dark is shown from both sides of the morality spectrum]].

* EvilCounterpart: The evil and death Arawn represents is the perfect antithesis of the goodness and life Avalina represents, including their [[EvilMentor respective]] [[MoralityPet roles]] in regards to the Horned King.

* GoryDiscretionShot[=/=]BattleDiscretionShot: These tropes are usually averted, like with the deaths of the Mad Pack wolves. However, when the Horned King, Creeper and Addie kill the bandits who kidnapped Avalina, she flees back to the castle under the lich's orders and the slaughter is left under the reader's imagination. However, in both of those instances, the remains are shown later.

* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: While Avalina and Mitternacht are fleeing from the Mad Pack, they jump over a five feet tall log that has spear-like branches sticking out of it. Two of the wolves are impaled by them as they jump. They're deaths are slow as their remains prove two weeks later.

* AxCrazy: We get the Mad Pack, an entire pack of thirty-five wolves of these. They suffer from an incurable disease similar to rabies, leading them to kill humans and animals just for the sake of killing. They've lost all their reason and natural instincts to the point that they attack on sight ''anything'' that moves, even an undead creature such as [[WalkingWasteland the Horned King]].

* KilledOffForReal: All the thirty-five wolves of the Mad Pack die either while chasing Avalina and Mitternacht or while fighting the Horned King. Later the bandit group of over twenty men [[spoiler:(who are all former soldiers of the Horned King)]] who kidnap Avalina are slaughtered by the Horned King, Creeper and Addie.

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: The Horned King does something beneficial to Prydain while saving Avalina’s life multiple times. First he puts an end to the Mad Pack, the AxCrazy pack of SavageWolves that have terrorized the humans and animals for the last 20 years. Months later, the lich kills (with Creeper and Addie's help) the children-kidnapping and killing bandits [[spoiler:who were his soldiers]].

* SavageWolves: The Mad Pack is a pack of rabid wolves that has been terrorizing animals and humans of Prydain for twenty years, increasing in numbers over the years. The incurable disease they suffer from causes them to attack and kill anything that moves. By the time they're faced, their number is thirty-five.

* NotSoHarmlessVillain: Creeper assists his master and Addie in slaughtering Avalina's captors with his claws (as he doesn't know how to wield weapons), enjoying every second of it. He's as bloodthirsty as the Horned King, he just gets less chances to show it. He might have [[ImAHumanitarian eaten the remains]] if he didn't have to hunt down the fleeing bandits individually.

** See the IronicEcho section below for one example.

[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10455567/1/Hope-For-The-Heartless Hope For The Heartless]] is a ''Disney/TheBlackCauldron'' fanfic by [[https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5180544/TheCacklingCactus TheCacklingCactus]], featuring as the main character [[TheDreaded the]] [[HornedHumanoid Horned]] [[OurLichesAreDifferent King]], the film's BigBad.

* MeaningfulName/MeaningfulRename: Avalina lampshades these tropes, arguing that names ''do'' matter and that if one's name no longer suits their personality, they should be renamed.

* GoryDiscretionShot/BattleDiscretionShot: These tropes are usually averted, like with the deaths of the Mad Pack wolves. However, when the Horned King, Creeper and Addie kill the bandits who kidnapped Avalina, she flees back to the castle under the lich's orders and the slaughter is left under the reader's imagination. However, in both of those instances, the remains are shown later.

* LighterAndSofter: The Horned King was bad in the movie, but the [[CharacterDevelopment exploration of his character]] makes him less menacing. While there are no musicals in the movie, this story provides many songs (both sad and happy ones).[[WideEyedIdealist Avalina]] and [[PluckyComicRelief the Invisibles]] also lessen seriousness of the pace. While the Horned King's past as a ruthless warlord is reminded of and some darker elements have been included (like the [[AxCrazy Mad]] [[SavageWolves Pack]] and [[AncientEvil Arawn]]), the story is overall more idealistic than the movie.

* LighterAndSofter: The Horned King was bad in the movie, but the [[CharacterDevelopment exploration of his character]] makes him less menacing. While there are no musicals in the movie, this story provides many songs (both sad and happy ones).
[[WideEyedIdealist Avalina]] and [[PluckyComicRelief the Invisibles]] also lessen seriousness of the pace. While the Horned King's past as a ruthless warlord is reminded of and some darker elements have been included (like the [[AxCrazy Mad]] [[SavageWolves Pack]] and [[AncientEvil Arawn]]), the story is overall more idealistic than the movie.

* OriginalCharacters: Avalina, her brother Arran and their mother, the Invisibles, Mitternacht and Gethin.

-->'''The Horned King''': ''*with his grip on Avalina's throat*'' I should kill you now, after all the trouble you've caused me.
-->'''Avalina''': ''*sobs*'' Well, if you're going to kill me, then do it! There's nothing stopping you!

-->'''The Horned King''': After all the trouble I've gone through to keep you? ''*grins maliciously at Avalina while glaring at her face-to-face*'' Then ''I'' would be the fool, child. ''*releases his grip*''
** The Horned King describes his former master Arawn this way: while heartless, the Death Lord of Annuvin doesn't believe in attacking something [[ForTheEvulz for no reason]] because it would be a waste of time, resources and energy. Instead, he would spot a potential threat and eliminate it without expending extra energy. Therefore, the reason he torments Avalina at all is because he sees her as a threat to his own long-term plans.

* Really700YearsOld: The Horned King is revealed to be over a thousand years old.

* {{Secret Keeper}}s: When the Horned King allows Avalina to return to her mother and brother for three days to say her farewells, she convinces them to keep all about her situation a secret. They reluctantly agree, both to prevent mass panic from erupting from the knowledge of the Horned King's return and because they can't possibly do anything without endangering Avalina's life. Months later, after Taran and Eilonwy's almost fateful encounter with the Horned King and Avalina, they recount it to Dallben. They eventually decide to remain silent for the same reasons as Avalina's family.
* SheCleansUpNicely: Avalina. [[UnkemptBeauty Not that she wasn’t pretty before]], but when the Invisibles make her wear silk dresses (something brush farmers hardly can afford for) and fix her hair for her meals with the Horned King, she can hardly recognize the beautiful young lady staring back at her from the mirror.

-->'''Arawn''': ''*snarls furiously for being unable to deny the truth of that claim*'' You're a disgrace to the name of Evil. There was a time you would have killed her instantly, without feeling, without deferment. And yet now, you not only refuse, but ''vehemently'' so. You are not the Huntsman you were. You were unbeatable! Undefeatable! And now, you've fallen in the most disgraceful way possible. Not by a sword or a spell, but a little peasant girl, so pathetic and weak it's a tragedy she's survived this long.

** Avalina towards the Horned King ''even before'' meeting him. One night (in the second chapter) she wonders what might have led him to become such a monster. The sympathy grows when she gets to know him over time, pushing away any hatred.

* ToiletHumour: During one of the Invisibles' conversations, ThePrankster duo repeatedly use the term "poop". The disgusted first Invisible eventually snaps and demands them to find a substitute for it, threatening to arrange the things so that they can never touch glitter or sparkly stuff again. The duo sounds initially shocked but then they take away their comrade's triumph by saying "thou dung heap".

** If you ever make a friend in a gwythaint, it would be loyal to you for life. If you ever give a gwythaint a reason to either hate or love you, it would do so with no happy medium.

** When Avalina is close drowning in cold water, the Horned King dives in to save her, fully aware of [[WeaksauceWeakness the dangers to himself]].

* WalkingWasteland: The Horned King. The ground and lake around his castle are lifeless, and the sun never shines there. Even after [[FertileFeet Avalina]] manages to bring some life to it [[spoiler:(even an entire forest)]], any plants brought near him quickly die. When he teleports to a forest clearing Avalina's captors have camped in, even the trees die. [[spoiler:However, when he's made by Avalina to come to her garden for the first time, his presence doesn't kill off or scare anything animals or plants.]]

* WhatTheHellHero: After the Horned King keeps Avalina locked up in the dungeons for two weeks with a barely sufficient feeding, one of the two prankster Invisibles finds her barely alive. It immediately rushes to scream at the Horned King's face about his cruelty towards Avalina and indifference for the chance he's been granted to be free of the Cauldron. It outright ''orders'' him to go to the dungeons and see the poor girl. The lich actually does that (though claiming that the reason is not the Invisible) and decides to let the Invisibles nurture Avalina back to health.

--> "You have the most genuine smile of anyone I've ever met. When you're happy, I know it's real. Not a mask, like I've seen other people wear."
* WholePlotReference: The story has more than one similarity to the infamous ''Disney/BeautyAndTheBeast'' story: a young smart peasant girl is imprisoned to a scary castle for months by a monstrous royalty who must earn a human's love to save himself from a FateWorseThanDeath. Slowly the [[MoralityPet prisoner]] and her [[LimaSyndrome captor]] grow closer, with a turning point being when the captor scares the prisoner to flee the castle on horseback and saving her from SavageWolves, nearly dying in the process. The prisoner then nurses her captor back to health.

* YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre: When Avalina breaks down due to her physical weakness after being released from her sickbed she has spent time in after nearly drowning, decreasing herself, the Horned King puts an end to it and explains to her that she has a different kind of strength (other than physical, mental or emotional) that's also the most uncommon version of it.
--> "You have the strength to show compassion and kindness to anyone you meet. Even...something like me. And child, that is...The greatest kind of strength. One I am sure many see as nothing more than a myth. I...believed it to be nothing but complete nonsense myself, all those pathetic stories of young maidens so pure even the most savage of beasts would eat from their hands like pets and I believed them so kind it was nearly sickening. I never even pondered the possibility of such a creature existing, so fanciful was the notion. But...here you are, right in front of me, something I believed to be nothing more than a foolish tale spun by feebleminded tramps. And...You are anything but weak. Or nauseating."

* IronicEcho: Before Taran and Eilonwy start telling Dallben about their almost fateful encounter with the Horned King and Avalina, Taran makes him promise not to tell anyone about what they're about to tell him. Dallben is shocked of it sounding similar to [[ContinuityNod what he told the boy when using Hen Wen's oracular powers in the movie]].

** The Horned King, while still completely ruthless against anyone else, eventually comes to treat Avalina, Creeper, the Invisibles, Mitternacht, and the gwythaint[[spoiler:s]] as his {{Nakama}}.

* LighterAndSofter: The Horned King was bad in the movie, but the [[RousseauWasRight exploration]] [[BeneathTheMask of]] [[CharacterDevelopment his]] [[TheDarkSideWillMakeYouForget character]] makes him less menacing. While there are no musicals in the movie, this story provides many songs (both sad and happy ones). [[WideEyedIdealist Avalina]] and [[PluckyComicRelief the Invisibles]] also lessen seriousness of the pace. While the Horned King's past as a ruthless warlord is reminded of and some darker elements have been included (like the [[AxCrazy Mad]] [[SavageWolves Pack]] and [[AncientEvil Arawn]]), the story is overall more idealistic than the movie.

* LimaSyndrome: The Horned King imprisons Avalina in order to keep his resurrection as a secret. After months of living with her, he genuinely starts to care for her.

* MeaningfulName / MeaningfulRename: Avalina lampshades these tropes, arguing that names ''do'' matter and that if one's name no longer suits their personality, they should be renamed.

* {{Mordor}}: [[WalkingWasteland The Horned King's]] lands. The sky is permanently in red clouds, the lake's water is lifeless and poisonous, trees are dead, nothing green grows in the soil and no animals of any kind appear. Despite this, Avalina tries to tend a garden there. She starts by the fall and gets results in the spring, making this trope subverted. See the FertileFeet section above for more details.

* NeverMyFault: When Avalina is rescued by the Horned King, Creeper and Addie from the bandits, the one who captured her tries to kill her (again), accusing her of leading the lich back to them. In reality, [[LaserGuidedKarma it's]] ''[[LaserGuidedKarma he]]'' [[LaserGuidedKarma who caused this to happen by kidnapping Avalina from the Horned King's lands in the first place]]. Also, she did warn them that she's under the lich's protection (they didn't believe her as they didn't know of his resurrection).

* Literature/TheNightingale: This story is stored in one of the books of the library the Horned King provides for Avalina. It's written in a foreign language Avalina describes looking like chicken scratchings (probably Chinese, as the story is set in ImperialChina by the WordOfGod). The Horned King translates the story for her and it becomes her favorite.
* NightmareFetishist: The Horned King collected his slain soldiers to form the Cauldron-Born for ''centuries''. They were his corrupted joy, [[spoiler:and are still at some level as shown when he collects with Creeper the remaining Cauldron-Born outside the castle to make Avalina feel easier there. Instead of ordering the Invisibles to make them vanish, he stores them to the dungeon level's cells where Avalina never goes, a level above the room containing the Black Cauldron. He does this despite ''knowing'' that he can't use them for anything anymore]].

* NoSenseOfHumor: The Horned King starts out with this, but Avalina's influence causes this trope to become subverted. However, if you're not Avalina, you can expect the Horned King to show rather sarcastic humor.

** The Horned King and Mitternacht. The horse was called Death by everyone, as well as [[TheDreaded feared and hated]], believed to be a lost cause. Avalina proved that assumption to be unfounded while having a limited time period to do that, and the music helped in that. The third Invisible notes [[HisStoryRepeatsItself the similarities with Mitternacht and the Horned King's story]]. Also, the lich becomes as [[PapaWolf protective of Avalina]] as Mitternacht.
** After enduring numerous pranks from the Invisibles for many months, the Horned King makes a mental recapitulation about them and finds two traits about them that remind him of himself: the Invisibles are deeply passionate about their work, like he had been about world domination; and like him, they have endless drive and ruthless determination to make something work, no matter how difficult that might be.

** [[spoiler:One of the Horned King's former henchmen (the one who kidnaps Avalina) is revealed to be the one who almost killed Taran in the movie when the boy fell to the mess hall while trying to rescue Hen Wen. The author chose that man to be the main threat to Avalina out of the bandits because his behavior during his brief appearance indicated that he enjoys killing regardless of the victim's age.]]

* FertileFeet: Avalina turns out to be this, having an extraordinarily strong aura of Life. She gets the permission to try to tend a garden on [[{{Mordor}} the Horned King's lands]] during the autumn. Slowly her work brings results; by the spring, some green grows, worms appear in the soil, some birds appear to eat them and [[CueTheSun the sun shines a little bit through the permanently cloudy sky]]. [[spoiler:Suddenly an entire healthy forest appears in the place of dead trees in one night. The Invisibles had apparently put Creeper to fly with Addie and spread "Magic Treedust For Enhanced Growth" all over the area to speed up the trees' growth. However, they say that Avalina had to first want the trees to grow.]] After Avalina's birthday, the lake's water becomes clean again, fish appear in it, and a deer herd briefly drinks the water. [[spoiler:More animals appear soon after.]] The Horned King wonders how Avalina's aura's effects have not been noticed before. The Invisibles theorize that because everything grew by itself there where she lived before, her aura's influence wasn't needed.

* FirstTimeFeeling: The Horned King doesn’t have a beating heart and due to that, no emotions. He explains to Avalina that he feels only twisted, muted versions of the real things. However, after experiencing for months something resembling positive emotions, [[spoiler:his heart comes alive after centuries of being dormant]]. His emotions become stronger after this, both the positive and negative ones. After Avalina prevents his chance to have revenge on Taran, he’s angry at her for weeks. Eventually she realizes that because the lich hasn't had to deal with real emotions for centuries, of course he would be overwhelmed by them.

* ForeignLanguageTirade: After one of the Invisibles' infuriating pranks on him, the Horned King curses them under his breath in all languages he knows, but retains himself from using English since Avalina is present.

** The first Invisible acts as the group's leader, trying to keep others in line and being very frustrated at ThePrankster duo's antics.

* GoThroughMe: When the Horned King is about to finish what he [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown started on]] Taran before an earthquake interrupted him, Avalina comes between them, pleading him to stop. Eventually the lich concedes after remembering how Taran saved Avalina from falling to the chasm created by the earthquake and leaves with her.

* GoryDiscretionShot / BattleDiscretionShot: These tropes are usually averted, like with the deaths of the Mad Pack wolves. However, when the Horned King, Creeper and Addie kill the bandits who kidnapped Avalina, she flees back to the castle under the lich's orders and the slaughter is left under the reader's imagination. However, in both of those instances, the remains are shown later.

* GriefSong: When Avalina met Malwolaeth (Mitternacht) for the second time, she realized that he acted like a savage because he didn't know how else to express his grief over the death of his rider. Having lost her father not long ago, the girl knew the feeling and sang "Adiós" by Jesse y Joy. It was a start for her friendship with the horse.

* HeartIsAnAwesomePower: Avalina is not a fighter or a sorceress, but her aura of Life and great compassion even for the likes of the Horned King allow her to accomplish some things some people wouldn't even dream of, like befriending the lich in question, causing [[spoiler:his heart to reawaken]], riding a gwythaint and causing [[spoiler:an entire healthy forest to grow in a lifeless area]]. The Horned King himself lampshades this trope twice at least. In one instance he says it [[YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre to comfort Avalina during one of her moments of self-loathing]]. The other instance is when he [[ShutUpHannibal refuses to give in to Arawn's temptations]].
--> ''"...she is anything but weak. Her strengths appear as weaknesses, but I have never seen or heard of a mortal so strong that they cry for their enemies, and call a... creature like me... a friend."''

* HeroicBSOD: Avalina receives these several times. One of the most notable ones is her weeks-lasting depression after the Horned King becomes angry with her for ruining his revenge towards Taran. She avoids him out of fear, spending most her days either in her room or with Mitternacht and crying constantly. She can barely eat or sleep and weakens physically. She’s temporarily pulled out of it by her above mentioned EurekaMoment, but goes back into it after hearing the Horned King saying (thanks to [[ManipulativeBastard Arawn]]) that she means nothing to her. Mitternacht and her snowfight with Creeper help her to her feet, but she gets fully past this only after the Horned King saves her from drowning and apologizes for his behavior.

* {{Honest Advisor}}s: The Invisibles serve as this to the Horned King, and they are ''not'' afraid to bring forth their opinions to him since he can do nothing to hurt them physically.

* InfiniteSupplies: The Invisibles can conjure things out of thin air, even such things that shouldn't exist in the setting or timeline the story takes place. They are always vague about where they get the stuff. When they disobey the Fates, they're confiscated of this ability for a while several times.

* InterspeciesFriendship: There's Avalina (a human) with the Horned King (a lich), Creeper (a goblin) and the Invisibles (creations of the Fates). She's also pretty close to Mitternacht (a horse) and quickly befriends Addie (a gwythaint). Also, Mitternacht and Addie become playmates through the races they have with Avalina riding Mitternacht and Creeper riding Addie. Later, Addie's baby Gethin is added to the picture.

* {{Irony}}: At one point Avalina has to puncture an abscess in Mitternacht’s frog, but she has never done that before. The contradictory information she gets from books makes her unsure, as she doesn't want to hurt her horse. The Horned King advises her to trust her own judgement about what alternative would be best and not let doubt, second-guessing and the opinions of others to hinder her decision making. It turns out that this is exactly what the Horned King’s former master Arawn had told him centuries ago. That advice had helped him to become [[TheUnfettered both a powerful warlord and such a monstrous being]].

[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10455567/1/Hope-For-The-Heartless Hope For The Heartless]] is a Disney's ''Disney/TheBlackCauldron'' fanfic by [[https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5180544/TheCacklingCactus TheCacklingCactus]], featuring as the main character [[TheDreaded the]] [[HornedHumanoid Horned]] [[OurLichesAreDifferent King]], the film's BigBad.

The Horned King finds himself resurrected, his castle restored to the way it was and the Black Cauldron placed on the spot from where he used it. Of his old forces, only two return: [[OurGoblinsAreDifferent Creeper]] and the only survivor of his two [[GiantFlyer gwythaints]]. The Fates have also provided him four invisible creatures (who are fittingly called the Invisibles) as servants and counselors.

Has two small videos in YouTube. One is made by [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHTOP8ga0GGNzg1iCkGJMag Faerydae]] and is titled as "Horned King X Avalina Save Me". The other is made by [[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCppEaBbA4UV96kTL4GEQHyQ Akemi Rain]] and is titled as "'Hope For The Heartless' Fanvideo".

* AdaptationalHeroism: The movie's Horned King was an absolute, irredeemable {{sociopath}}; here, he eventually becomes a NobleDemon.

* ArmorPiercingSlap: Played with. During the Horned King and Avalina's argument about her [[GoThroughMe interference]] in the lich's chance to have his revenge on Taran, she suddenly slaps his face. While it doesn't hurt him physically (she can't hit hard), he's shocked that ''anyone'' slaps him at all and that it's ''her'' of all people. Unfortunately, the slap only makes him hold anger towards her for weeks.

* BadDreams: Avalina gets these several times. In one of them she's included to the event when the Horned King created [[DemBones the Cauldron-Born]] in the movie, the scene ending with her being killed by them. In another one, the Cauldon-Born are advancing unstopped throughout Prydain, killing one by one Mitternacht, Arran and Avalina's mother, with Avalina being killed by the Horned King at the end. It's revealed that these dreams are caused by [[DreamWeaver Arawn]] who's trying to keep Avalina's fear of the Horned King fresh. The Invisibles can drive Arawn away from her nightmares, but cannot prevent natural bad dreams.

** Before Avalina came along, Creeper has received for his entire life nothing but cruelty.

* BeingTorturedMakesYouEvil: Avalina guesses that Creeper was turned evil with the constant abuses the Horned King has put him through.

** Avalina is over time able to sense - mostly during the music hours - that the Horned King is under his cold and scary shell [[BeingEvilSucks a very lonely, desperate and unloved person]].

* BilingualBonus: The author has invented at least some of the characters' names from a website that has many names and their meanings in Celtic, Gaelic or old Welsh. (See MeaningfulName / MeaningfulRename sections below for examples.)

* CombatPragmatist: When the Horned King starts teaching Avalina self-defense with the dagger he has given her, he encourages this philosophy: don't look for a fight, keep the weapon concealed if possible, take the first chance to flee from the fight, aim for the enemy's closest part to you and kill if there is no other way out.

** When Creeper sees the Horned King diving in the lake in order to save Avalina, he remembers how Taran had agreed to comply with the lich's demands in order to save Hen-Wen's life. That's the closest thing the goblin has witnessed to this scenario -- someone saving someone else's life with great personal risk.
** The Horned King reveals that he collected slain soldiers to form the [[AnimateDead Cauldron]]-[[DemBones Born]] for centuries before being even sure of the Cauldron's existence. It's a reference to what he said about them after they had been created; "all dead from centuries past". (The scene is actually shown in one of the BadDreams made by Arawn for Avalina.)
** While Avalina is weeding her garden one day, she ends up finding one of the former Cauldron-Born. She realizes that the area around the castle's drawbridge is full of them and there is probably hundreds of them. This event was written after the author remembered one scene from the movie; when the Black Cauldron's power left the Cauldron-Born, many of them "died" on the lands around the drawbridge. The Invisibles had removed the skeletons inside the castle and the courtyard when they were reformed, but if they can't go outside that circle and if the area was restored to the way it was before, of course the skeletons would still be there.

* TheCorruption: Avalina describes hatred this way while she withers under the Horned King's weeks lasting anger towards her. She says that it's the only emotion that doesn't need a living heart to stem from, being a demon of its own right.

* DarkIsEvil / DarkIsNotEvil: [[ZigZaggingTrope Dark is shown from both sides of the morality spectrum]].
** [[CardCarryingVillain Arawn]] is certainly DarkIsEvil played straight.

** The Horned King slowly goes from a CardCarryingVillain to a NobleDemon.
* TheDarkSideWillMakeYouForget: The Horned King has for so long been absorbed in his goal of finding the Black Cauldron in order to {{take over the world}} that he has forgotten much of his long past. He doesn’t remember who he was before becoming Arawn's apprentice or the reason for his desire to conquer the world. As he spends time with Avalina, he receives several flashbacks of his past life.

** The Horned King can be one, especially towards the Invisibles. It's the only way he's able to compete against them with his inability to touch them physically. He may also qualify as TallDarkAndSnarky; he's taller than other characters with his height of about 6.5 feet, he's knowledgeable and while he has no hair, he has a dark aura.

* DeterminedHomesteader: Brush farmers are portrayed this way. They make their farms in Prydain's wilderness and visit civilization only twice or thrice a year. They work with a zest and a zeal not seen in industrial farmers. They’re known for being honest, as they readily aid a neighbor in their time of need; and brave for choosing to live in Prydain's wilderness, which is known of its beasts.

** Arawn. He repeatedly torments Avalina through her dreams to keep her fear of the Horned King strong. The dreams include the Horned King at his scariest, [[DemBones the Cauldron-Born]] and deaths of her beloved ones.
** The Invisibles are this as well, protecting Avalina from Arawn by changing the bad images he creates into positive ones, but they can't alter natural nightmares.

** The Horned King reveals that he collected slain soldiers to form the [[AnimateDead Cauldron]]-[[DemBones Born]] for centuries before being even sure of the Cauldron's existence. It's a reference to what he said about them after they had been created: "all dead from centuries past". (The scene is actually shown in one of the BadDreams made by Arawn for Avalina.)
** While Avalina is weeding her garden one day, she ends up finding one of the former Cauldron-Born. She realizes that the area around the castle's drawbridge is full of them and there is probably hundreds of them. This event was written after the author remembered one scene from the movie: when the Black Cauldron's power left the Cauldron-Born, many of them "died" on the lands around the drawbridge. The Invisibles had removed the skeletons inside the castle and the courtyard when they were reformed, but if they can't go outside that circle and if the area was restored to the way it was before, of course the skeletons would still be there.

** The Horned King can be one, especially towards the Invisibles. It's the only way he's able to compete against them with his inability to touch them physically. He may also qualify as TallDarkAndSnarky: he's taller than other characters with his height of about 6.5 feet, he's knowledgeable and while he has no hair, he has a dark aura.

* DebtDetester: During the below mentioned GoThroughMe situation, the Horned King remembers how Taran saved Avalina from certain death and grudgingly admits to himself that he owes the pig-keeper. Before he leaves with Avalina, he decides to repay the debt in his own twisted way: by putting back in place the boy's shoulder that was dislocated during the NoHoldsBarredBeatdown the lich gave Taran.

* FertileFeet: Avalina turns out to be this, having an extraordinarily strong aura of Life. She gets the permission to try to tend a garden on [[{{Mordor}} the Horned King's lands]] during the autumn. Slowly her work brings results: by the spring, some green grows, worms appear in the soil, some birds appear to eat them and [[CueTheSun the sun shines a little bit through the permanently cloudy sky]]. [[spoiler:Suddenly an entire healthy forest appears in the place of dead trees in one night. The Invisibles had apparently put Creeper to fly with Addie and spread "Magic Treedust For Enhanced Growth" all over the area to speed up the trees' growth. However, they say that Avalina had to first want the trees to grow.]] After Avalina's birthday, the lake's water becomes clean again, fish appear in it, and a deer herd briefly drinks the water. [[spoiler:More animals appear soon after.]] The Horned King wonders how Avalina's aura's effects have not been noticed before. The Invisibles theorize that because everything grew by itself there where she lived before, her aura's influence wasn't needed.

* FunctionalMagic: A distinction is made between a spell and a prayer made to the Fates: a spell's effects can be reversed unless otherwise noted (which is done rarely), while a prayer's effects can't be reversed by anyone else than the one who made the prayer in the first place.

* MythologyGag: The Invisibles nickname the Horned King "the ol'Bonehead". This is a reference to ''Creator/{{Disney}}'' animators' protest against [[ExecutiveMeddling the producers' renaming]] of their movie ''Basil of Baker Street'' into a more American-sounding ''Disney/TheGreatMouseDetective'': they wrote [[http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/09/seven-little-men-help-girl.html a hilarious list]] of "new American titles" for past Disney movies, such as ''[[Disney/{{Cinderella}} The Girl with the See-through Shoe]]''. ''The Black Cauldron'' was renamed… ''The Evil Bonehead''.

* {{The Nicknamer}}s: The second and the third Invisible invent all kinds of nicknames for people, mostly for the Horned King.

* {{The Prankster}}s: The second and the third Invisible. They pull various and creative pranks on the Horned King. Since he can't physically hurt them, he can only rage at them.

* RedemptionQuest: The Horned King is given a chance for something no soul condemned to the Black Cauldron has before received: to redeem himself.

* [[WhatTheHellHero What the Hell, Horned King?!]]: After the Horned King keeps Avalina locked up in the dungeons for two weeks with a barely sufficient feeding, one of the two prankster Invisibles finds her barely alive. It immediately rushes to scream at the Horned King's face about his cruelty towards Avalina and indifference for the chance he's been granted to be free of the Cauldron. It outright ''orders'' him to go to the dungeons and see the poor girl. The lich actually does that (though claiming that the reason is not the Invisible) and decides to let the Invisibles nurture Avalina back to health.

* ByronicHero: The Horned King becomes this as part of his CharacterDevelopment.

The story starts almost two months after the events of the movie. Following the Horned King's defeat and death at the hands of the pig-keeper Taran and his friends, his soul was [[SealedEvilInACan sealed]] inside [[ArtifactOfDoom the Black Cauldron]] and trapped into [[AndIMustScream endless suffering]]. However, [[CosmicEntities the Fates]] themselves unexpectedly contact him and set him free for the period of eighteen months. Before that time frame is up, he must perform [[ImpossibleTask a seemingly impossible assignment]]: he must earn a human's love in spite of all his sins. If he succeeds, he will deserve his permanent freedom from the Cauldron. Otherwise he shall be re-imprisoned [[FateWorseThanDeath for all eternity]].

* SuperStrength: The Horned King is strong enough to swing a massive log over his head like a club, throw off of himself numerous wolves swarming over him and break a rock by squeezing it with some of his fingers. According to himself, he easily possesses [[TheStrengthOfTenMen the strength of ten men]] at least.