#i'm so head empty no thoughts during the weekly toh rewatches but sometimes something comes out lmao

[thousand-winters]

It's very interesting how while in Labyrinth Runners the scouts genuinely think that Belos is worried for Hunter and would be relieved to have him back, Graye already knows that Hunter is afraid of him AND that Belos probably doesn't care that much for his well being, considering how he has no qualms in kicking him down and pretty much stepping on him (which you probably wouldn't want to do if you assumed the emperor will have your head for hurting his nephew), and he's the one who makes the Belos illusion to frighten Hunter and take advantage of that distraction.

It's unclear how much the Coven Heads knew about that relationship, but at the very least we know that Darius very much didn't know and Graye apparently does. Seems like Graye was VERY observant.

It's not just that but it almost seems like him and his scouts might have been at Hexside possibly since classes started? Enough time to have observed the students a little, because they know to use Willow to try and deceive Gus, and a bit of a baseline of how they act around each other. What caught my attention there was that the Willow illusion specifically calls him "Augustus" in that scene, which Graye wouldn't have a way to know since everybody calls him Gus now. Perhaps he dug on the student files to find out more about Gus before trying to hunt him down personally? He did have a particular investment in him because of the Looking Glass Graveyard.

All of this to say... from what we got to see of Graye in the show, it doesn't really seem like he's a particularly powerful Illusionist, at least not at the same level of expertise that the other Coven Heads have with their respective tracks.

BUT this makes me think that it was not raw power what got him his rank, it might have been him simply being clever. The kind of person who gets obsessed with the small details and as such knows how to use the information he gets from that and from snooping around to threaten or intimidate people with his illusions.

Once he's a Coven Head, he has scouts at his command, and it seems like he delegates a LOT of his work to them, which probably makes it way easier to just dedicate himself to observe and see what's useful so he can bribe and threaten people.