#only halfway through the series so perhaps this is later elaborated upon but for the moment? just. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

whispersafterdusk · 6 years ago

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The Master’s Apprentice - ch 6

Time passed quickly when all he let himself think about were his lessons; some days Kestrel introduced something new, some days she made him review what he'd already learned. He had reached a point where throwing frost, water, fire, wind, or lightning was second nature, able to do so in the blink of an eye with both hands aimed in front of him or pointed in different directions (and he'd even managed to get the spray radius almost up to that of a two-handed cast - something he was definitely proud of).

He'd also been introduced to casting earth and rock spells (there really wasn't any better descriptor for those) and, because of that, had learned that one of the locked doors he hadn't been able to explore opened into a very long, gently sloping staircase that led to a large storeroom. ((Continued below cut))

"This sort of magic will strengthen you against physical sorts of damage similar to a ward's defense against magic and allow you to change the landscape around you but, unlike with fire, frost, or lightning, you aren't able to simply create earth or stone out of nothing...I have yet to figure out why," she'd explained.

Within the storeroom were stacks upon stacks of wooden logs, carefully preserved bolts of cloth, empty bottles and a variety of tools and pieces of things to repair the tools; at the very rear of the room where there had once been logs was where Kestrel set him to practicing these new spells -- he'd called stones from the ground and shaped the soil, and had dug the back of the room out further (and learned that yes, she had not been exaggerating when she'd said that moving earth like this was difficult: the harder he pushed outward the more the soil he was exerting force on and the effort required to keep moving it kept increasing exponentially unless he was careful with how he pushed and adjusted things).

Between the earthen spells and his ever strengthening wards (practice, practice, practice) Onmund was actually confident in his own defense - far more than he'd been at the College, that was for sure. He'd been trapped down here, by his count, for about five and a half months and he was already well advanced beyond what he imagined his peers were at.

Of course...it was difficult to think about them, or about anything else on the surface; nighttime was the worst time to be alone with his thoughts. His supposed immortality aside, it hurt to think that he'd never see anyone he knew again...he'd never love or get married, have a family, he'd never adventure and see what the world had to offer. He was trapped in an elaborate hole in the ground, and would possibly be here until the end of time itself...and at night when his tired mind caught him unaware the realizations cut deeply, and made his eyes burn and his heart ache.

And strangely, it made him wonder how Kestrel had managed to be alone for so long. From the little snippets here and there he gathered that she'd been alone for nearly fifty years or so before he'd fallen down here, and that while she'd had quite the number of apprentices they had been spread out over long periods of time interspersed with even longer periods of total isolation. How had she not gone mad? How had she wrestled with the feelings of loneliness, of regret and longing? She still refused to tell him her exact age and he knew she had to be ancient...perhaps it was a question of time needed -- time needed to mourn and miss things, and time to heal and move on.

He still hadn't asked her what had happened to the man before him; she didn't talk about him aside from the odd comment here or there, explaining how whatever she was teaching him was something she'd discovered alongside that previous apprentice, and she'd let slip no hints whatsoever about who he'd even been or how long he'd dwelled with her.

It was a mystery he woke up one morning deciding he needed an answer for: if the previous apprentice had been gifted immortality then where was he? Surely, after all her warnings and sympathy about Onmund being unable to ever leave, she hadn't actually LET the other man leave.

"...may I ask you something, before we begin today?"

"Of course."

He hesitated a moment, slowing to a stop about halfway to the Hall of Mirrors; Kestrel took a few steps more to notice he'd paused before she stopped and turned around.

"The spell you have on me... If you created that with your last apprentice, and it also gave him immortality...why were you alone when I fell down here? What happened to him?"

She smiled faintly and shook her head. "I was wondering when you'd work up the nerve to ask about those that came before you. Follow me, I will show you something."

She turned around and started back down the hallway but instead of the Hall she went to her own room; Onmund followed and once he was inside saw that her room was nigh identical to his in layout save for a flat table-like structure covered with a cloth in the center of the room, a coffin of white wood that stood next to a wardrobe, and a polished, pale brown wooden coffin on a wide, tall stone slab where a bed should have been. With a very intricate, complex wave of her hand and an uttered word the stone slab ponderously moved aside to reveal a hole carved into its middle -- Kestrel walked over and stepped down onto the first rung of the stone ladder within the hole and, when Onmund followed her a moment later, he found the ladder went down for quite a ways (and it was tight, claustrophobic even - barely wide enough to fit his shoulders).

Eventually his boots landed on a chilly stone floor, with the only light being that pitiful amount that managed to make it from the hole at the top of the ladder down to this level; he suspected they were even deeper down than the storeroom had been and this room was absolutely frigid and their steps echoed in the space.

Kestrel conjured a series of very tiny magelight orbs - each about the size of her thumb, and sent them into the room in a flurry of light where they twinkled like fireflies; as the room steadily filled with their golden glow Onmund's eyes widened at what they revealed:

Coffins. Heavy iron sarcophagi lined the walls to either side of what was essentially a stone vault - he could count twenty seven that had their lids on, and five more that stood open with their lids set perpendicular across their tops. Each one shimmered in the magelight, their tops and sides polished to a sheen and with what he assumed were names carved near the heads.

"Here before you you see the apprentices of the past -- and before you ask, all save for one of them died of old age," Kestrel said softly. "And, not all of them died down here... I have moved from den to den over the years but did not want to leave them behind, buried and forgotten."

Onmund took a few careful steps into the room before looking back to her; Kestrel nodded to him - she apparently didn't mind if he took a closer look.

Jyrmi, Brellin, Evulme, Balur, Agati... Each closed coffin that held a body bore a name and not a single speck of dust, and all of the coffins were finely crafted. He walked halfway through the room, pausing where the magelights had stopped at the border between dim light and darkness; the room continued on but Kestrel had purposely not sent the magelights back far enough to fully light it. The coffins to either side of him were empty...were there just more empty ones back there?

(And exactly how far ahead did she plan? It was a chilling thought that one of these had almost had HIS name on it).

"I - I guess I understand why most of these would be here," he said slowly, looking back at her from over a shoulder. "But I don't understand why you'd show me this - if he was immortal he should still be alive. Why did he die? Is he even down here? Are one of these his?"

Kestrel conjured a much larger orb this time and sent it rocketing to the far end of the room - Onmund shielded his eyes as it raced by him - and there it stopped against the back wall, revealing a single pathetic, lonely wooden coffin shoved into a corner.

The wood looked old and dry rotted, it had no name; it was coated in dust and dirt and looked neglected. He gave Kestrel an uneasy look and she slowly strolled toward him between the line of coffins.

"I am not so isolated here as I've made you believe," she started. "I can choose to observe the surface world. It's possible to come and go from here if you know how to navigate the web of protections that surround this place. Many of my apprentices I observed for years, watching them grow and gauging their ambitions, until I offered them a chance to learn from me and plucked them from the life they had. He was one of those...a very ambitious, curious man. Oftentimes he was shunned for radical ideas and his penchant for asking questions, challenging 'common' knowledge. He leapt at the chance to learn under my tutelage - I was offering him exactly what he desired, and he was the perfect companion in all aspects...TOO perfect. I foolishly loved the man - it was difficult not to. That was why I couldn't bear the thought of outliving him, but I couldn't bring myself to turn him either."

Onmund looked back to the wooden coffin again - it definitely didn't look like it belonged to someone that was loved. "What happened?"

"We began to craft our spell... And when it seemed we had succeeded we were both especially cautious not to be too hopeful but also incredibly drunk on the rush of our triumph. For twenty years we carefully monitored him - his appearance, his mental and physical health and needs. Nothing changed. We declared it a victory. And when he was convinced he had immortality with no adverse side effects he went to rid himself of me - the romance had been a ruse."

She said it all matter-of-factly, with hardly any emotion, but Onmund himself was incredibly disturbed and confused. "I...but... But he needed you for the immortality...why would he try to kill you? HOW did he try to kill you? I can't so much as sneeze in your direction without going unconscious."

She laughed softly and rested a hand on his shoulder. "At the time we didn't realize it was shared characteristics...our intentions hadn't been to share, but to gift. And once he thought he had his gift he no longer needed me, just the vast amount of knowledge that he coveted and the freedom to move forward on his own, the-" Kestrel abruptly stopped, biting her lower lip. "-the thing be damned," she finished after a pause.

"Thing...?"

"The thing we guard. That he and I once both guarded out of fear for what it could possibly do," she elaborated. "For all I know he decided he could control that too, and needed me gone so he could take possession of it. I don't know and I don't care, and it's too late to ask him now. To save myself I was forced to kill him, and once he was dead I felt everything I'd gained from him fade...to say nothing of how it feels to have your heart so cruelly broken."

A silence fell between them; Onmund couldn't help but stare at the coffin - his predecessor, right there in front of him, and by all accounts a traitor, a liar, and a would-be murderer.

"So he tried to attack you, failed, and you killed him. Like you almost killed me?"

Kestrel shook her head. "No no, when the spell was between myself and him it wasn't able to kill, and did not prevent him from harming me...it wasn't until after that - much, much later - that I figured out how to add that in. I am not taking that chance again." She turned on a heel and began to walk back to the ladder; the large magelight orb over the coffin in the corner extinguished and, as she walked by them, the other tinier ones began to as well.

Onmund hurried to follow her so he wouldn't be left alone in the dark, and it was a very long climb back up into her room; his arms and legs were burning by the time he hauled himself out of the opening and rolled off the stone slab onto his knees, sitting there in the floor and waiting for the slab to slide back into place before he used it to push himself back to his feet.

She was already moving toward the cloth-covered table and with a flourish yanked the cloth free; the table was a sheet of mirrored glass marked with runes and etched with constellation drawings. At her gesture he came over to look at it -- it was amazing craftsmanship and he'd not seen anything like it before, and he wondered what its purpose was but assumed she'd be telling him if she was showing it to him now.

"This..." she said quietly, running her fingers lightly over its smooth surface, "is a scrying table. A means to look at things from far distances - assuming what you're looking at isn't warded to block your sight."

"Scrying... I've heard of that, actually," Onmund murmured. He too reached out a hand to rest his fingers against the silvered glass; it was cold to the touch and he could feel a sort of latent power within it - something that would awaken with the right application of...something. "I didn't realize you needed something like this to do it though."

"You don't," Kestrel laughed. "You can use a simple map and a pure crystal - I prefer quartz - but it's considerably more difficult, and I dislike doing things the hard way for no reason."

"How does it work?"

"It's a combination of invested magicka from the caster, a high degree of mental focus, and knowledge of your subject or target," she explained. "Having something belonging to someone you're wanting to scry helps but it's not required."

Onmund leaned forward, admiring the etchings and designs within the mirrored surface. "Will I learn how to use this?"

"Of course...though, don't get your hopes up, it will be awhile. It takes a lot of mental training that we've not gotten to yet."

The thought of being able to scry his family, his friends...to be able to see them again, even if it was just through a mirror, was a very tempting, attractive thought. "I definitely want to learn."

With a soft chuckle she placed hands on his shoulders and turned to guide him out of her bedroom. "In time. To build a house you have to have a sturdy foundation - likewise, to climb to new heights with magical skill you must first have a solid foundation of knowledge."

"Yes, yes, I get that," he said with a small laugh. He took a few quick steps to get out in front of her, shrugging off her hands. "What are you showing me today, then?"

"I think today is a fine day to review," came her answer as she stepped ahead of him and led the way to the Hall of Mirrors.

-----------------------------------------------

Onmund had gotten into the habit of keeping a bound book of blank parchment sitting on his desk - something he thought he could have used as a journal, to leave some record of his discontent and attempts to find freedom again - and yet he hadn't done that at all. Every morning he instead placed another tally mark in a row to keep track of how long he'd been here; by his count he'd been here eight months and six days exactly, which hardly seemed like any time at all.

There were mornings where he woke before Kestrel came for him and he would sit at his desk and read sometimes but far more often he would retreat into daydreams -- he wondered how long the others had looked for him before giving up, how long they'd waited to let his family know he'd "died," or IF they'd even told his family yet...he knew his family would demand a body to be buried which the College obviously couldn't give them. How angry would his parents be at them? Or at HIM for refusing their wishes to be a hunter or farmer and becoming a mage, and (no doubt in their eyes) dying because of his idiotic choice?

There was a part of him that thought he should hate Kestrel for all this...but he didn't. And he also thought that he should still be trying to escape despite the spell that could kill him with a thought...and yet, he didn't want to do that either (and not just because he'd die). He hadn't even given it a thought in...a month, maybe more. The things he was learning here he felt he couldn't learn anywhere else and...well.

Kestrel was a good teacher - a good master mage. He had a lot of learning to do before he'd be advanced enough to help her research or anything like that but she never held that against him. She was firm but kind, never talked down to him, patiently helped when he asked, kept his curiosity and eagerness alive and strong with each new thing, and carried herself with a confidence no doubt born out of untold years of experience - that she seemed terrified of whatever it was that they guarded down here...he wondered if it was better if he never found out. But he knew he would, eventually -- Kestrel's lessons this week had been of mental strength: sharpening his focus, withstanding mental assaults, broadening his ability to multitask (multicast?) rapidly by demanding he juggle several spells or problems all at one time. He'd thought at first that this would be the precursor to learning how to use the scrying table - and maybe it was part of that - but the last few days she'd really doubled down on increasing his mental defenses.

She was preparing to tell him about the thing that was down here with them. She had to be.

Another week went by, and then another. Her lessons didn't change from the mental exercises, nor did she allow him time to practice anything other than that; it was starting to become a bit nerve wracking waking up each morning wondering if today would be that day.

And yet when that morning finally came he found himself oddly calm -- he'd been anticipating this for weeks so maybe it wasn't too strange... Well, he supposed that he hadn't really been afraid of the Eye of Magnus at first either as he had no idea what it was at the time (and look at what'd happened with THAT).

With little fanfare (and hardly speaking) Kestrel led the way back to her room and moved her coffin and the stone slab aside again; they climbed in silence down the stone ladder to the chilled mausoleum and then walked by the dim light of a single magelight orb to the far end of the room where the wooden coffin of the last apprentice sat. Kestrel veered toward the corner opposite of that coffin and seemed to simply disappear into thin air, though the air itself appeared to ripple like a pond's surface. Onmund paused, uncertain of what he'd just seen, then Kestrel's disembodied hand stuck out of the midst of the air ripples and gestured for him to come closer.

He did and felt the hair on his arms stand on end as he passed through some sort of magical field; looking back out into the room was almost nauseating as everything visually rippled, like he was at the bottom of a deep pool looking upward. There was a semi circle of runes carved into the floor and up the walls that were only visible if he was standing within it and Onmund swore his teeth were vibrating from all the power concentrated in this one tiny area; it was a very bizarre feeling overall but it did look as though they simply stood together in a rune circle as the walls and floor still remained - or appeared - solid.

Kestrel then began reaching out to runes etched into the walls, touching them rapidly and in a sequence Onmund had no hope of following; he heard a deep thrum, and felt it in his bones too, and then a sliver of the wall disappeared -- it was a sliver just barely wide enough to let Kestrel slide through turned sideways, and it was a considerably tighter fit for his larger frame. By the time he'd squeezed through he was panting and shaking a bit from the sudden onset of immense claustrophobia and jumped a bit at Kestrel's cold hand on his arm.

The light that came through the gap in the wall seemed to be swallowed up by the darkness in this room; there was a sharp border at the edge of it's light - very sharp, like something solid stood there but Onmund couldn't see anything...but he could feel something. Something that scratched at his mind, a mental tickle, a hissing that rose and fell with the cadence of someone speaking...something in this room wanted his attention. A sense of unease filled him and he clamped down with the mental protection spells Kestrel had been drilling into him for three weeks; the scratching and whispering became quieter, but didn't go away completely.

Kestrel's fingers dug into his sleeve - she hadn't let go of him since they'd stepped into his room. At her quiet word a magelight orb appeared above their heads and its light too cut off abruptly about ten feet from them as though a wall was casting a shadow there, but all Onmund could see was a deep darkness.

"I am only going to show you a glimpse," she said quietly. "I don't dare risk anything longer than that. Are you prepared?"

"I...I think so."

Kestrel kept her hand on his arm but tugged and pushed him ahead of her, positioning him so he directly faced the darkness; only then did her hand move from his arm to his waist and her other came up to rest at his belt as well.

Then the darkness dropped, and the whispers and scratching hit him with renewed strength.

It wasn't language as he recognized it - it wasn't words. It was...emotion, and images. He didn't even fully grasp what he was looking at as he wrestled to keep the wordless whispers at bay -- he saw a brief glimpse of something black and shining like obsidian, spiky and about the size of a book, and as his gaze fell on it he felt a compulsion to pick it up and put it on.

Whatever it was wanted him to wear it - it was a powerful artifact and Kestrel had no right to keep it from its rightful wielder. He saw himself as Arch-Mage in a spiked crown, guiding young minds without fear of persecution or concern about what the damned Nords thought of his College. All he needed to do was cross the room, pick it up, put it on, and he'd be free of his damned slave master as well.

And between Kestrel's firm grip on his hips and his own struggle to stay put he managed to cut through the scratching and non-noise, through the compulsion; he grit his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut - NOT looking at it shut him off from the desire to grab the...the whatever that was, though it did little to silence the noise in his mind.

And then it went silent - or as silent as it had been when they'd first entered; his heart was beating rapidly and he felt a little lightheaded, and put a hand to Kestrel's on his hip and took comfort that yes, she was still there. When he finally worked up the courage to open his eyes he found the strange wall of darkness was back in place. Everything had returned to normal.

He shrugged Kestrel's hands off and, on unsteady legs, squeezed himself back through the gap in the wall and into the mausoleum, falling against one of the nearby empty iron coffins and trying to get his heart rate and ragged breathing back under control. He was only faintly aware of Kestrel coming out through the gap behind him and replacing all the warding spells; his heartbeat was impossibly loud in the quiet, and he didn't argue when she gently slipped one of his arms over her shoulder and in turn slid one of her arms around his waist and half guided, half carried him back to the far side of the room to lean him against the wall beside the base of the ladder.

It felt like an age had passed before he composed himself, and when he looked up to Kestrel she wore an expression devoid of any emotion.

"What... What did I just look at?" he whispered.

Kestrel slowly lowered herself down to squat on her heels in front of him, looking him in the eyes. "I call it the Crown of Domination... I know very little about it. It bears the power and mark of Molag Bal, and I suspect it might have even originated in Coldharbour. Even before I lowered a few protections to let you see it you still felt its influence, yes?"

He nodded weakly. "I - I did, yes. I felt something trying to claw its way in, and there were whispers that weren't actually words, but I understood what it wanted me to do. I don't even know what I really saw - just...spikes, and a black shine."

"It compels whoever looks at it to put it on...I'm not nearly brave enough to try and figure out what is meant to happen if it's worn," she said softly. "Are you all right?"

"You keep that thing down here...so close to where you sleep?"

She nodded. "I found it hundreds of years ago, entirely by accident. I was unprepared for it, and my apprentice at the time..." She shifted, turning to place a knee on the floor to balance herself as she looked back to the lines of coffins. "That's her - third from the left. There was once a time where I used my illusions to live freely among mortals...she was my only apprentice but we had partnered with several scholars from the capital to unearth what we'd been led to believe was a Black Book. It most definitely wasn't - we all fell under some sort of...ensnaring mental magic. One of the scholars closest to the crown put it on, and before I managed to break free of the spell he had already slaughtered my apprentice and all but two other men. When I struck him down the other two fought to claim it themselves and killed one another."

"That's awful..." His hands were shaking and he clenched them in his lap, blowing out a breath. "And you don't know what its supposed to do?"

"No, I do not. Did you see visions? Promises of power?"

He nodded. "I saw myself as Arch-Mage, teaching others...unafraid of the Nords and their stupid attitudes toward magic. And free of you and your spell," he added after a pause, glancing up to her uneasily.

She turned around, looking thoughtful; carefully she folded her legs under her to sit on the freezing floor. "It may very well be it just shows you what you desire, or what it thinks you desire. I can't be certain because what it initially showed me was nothing I had ever wanted once in my entire, considerable life."

"I've never thought of ever rising to the rank of Arch-Mage. I just wanted to learn," Onmund murmured. He again glanced to her and then quickly looked away -- he didn't want to be Arch-Mage, and he'd thought that he didn't want to leave either...he thought he'd come to terms with that. But if the crown showed him something it thought he wanted - if it was going to show him whatever it needed to to make him put it on...

With a huff he forced himself to look back at her - he would try to understand his own thoughts on that half of it later. "If that thing is so dangerous, why risk anyone else? If your last apprentice actually did want that crown for himself -- I mean, is the spell on me enough to protect or deter me from that? What if it DOES get to me somehow?"

She smiled kindly at him. "It won't. My wards and simple distance between you and it has worked for far, right?" At her question he nodded. "You have nothing to worry about. And as for why I would risk other apprentices...it was always my hope that we would find a way to safely destroy it - or, well. A way TO destroy it, period. Maybe you will be the one to help me with that goal...I certainly hope so."

Onmund was silent a moment, letting that sink in; he might technically be a captive but if they found a way to destroy the crown then he'd be a hero, and there'd be no reason to stay hidden away down here. "-if we destroy it, we could leave, right?" Kestrel tilted her head, looking at him curiously; that she hadn't immediately said no encouraged him. "I mean, if we don't have to guard that thing anymore, we could just go back to the surface. You said you used to hide among mortals - there'd be no reason to stay hidden down here anymore, right? And there'd be no reason to forcibly keep me with you either since there's no secret left to keep. Not that I'd leave," he added hurriedly. "You've taught me a great deal and I want to learn more. But...if the crown is gone...?"

With another kind smile she leaned forward to pat his shoulder, then stood and moved to the ladder. "It's fine to dream of the world from time to time, but don't let it distract you from what we must do."

"I understand. I understand a lot better now."

"Good. Go and rest...we'll begin again tomorrow."

#The Master's Apprentice #tma #The Master's Apprentice - ch 6 #Onmund #AU #Skyrim

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rejectedembers · 7 years ago

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Firebrant: Shades of Magic

So, here I go again, being a hypercritical bitch about a beloved book, or, rather, series. I want to make it clear right off the bat that I LOVE this series; I love the characters, I love the setting, I love the writing. I’d read this series again in a heartbeat, and no doubt eventually will. That doesn’t mean that I don’t see its flaws and weaknesses, or at least see what it could have been.

Spoilers inbound.

Without a doubt, this series’s biggest strength is its characters. I would even venture out in saying that Schwab doesn’t write characters, but rather people for how real they feel. A big part of this stems from her enchanting, but not overly flowery style of writing; descriptions never overstay their welcome. But these are all things you discover the more you read. The series’s major draw, however, is its setting, or at least that’s what the premise would have you believe.

The blurb on A Darker Shade of Magic immediately informs you of the parallel Londons (Red, Grey, White, and Black), and how only Antari can travel between the worlds. My assumption upon picking up this novel was that the inter-dimensional travel was going to play a significant part in the upcoming tale, and it does...for the first book. But once you get into book 2, characters seem to barely ever travel between the worlds.

This is especially noticeable in the third book where I don’t think they traveled outside of the Red world at all to resolve the main conflict within the plot. Traveling could have easily been facilitated without even changing much of the plot: the MacGuffin the protags are after could totally have wound up in one of the other worlds at some point in time (I’ll elaborate more on this later). It’s especially annoying since we get constant reminders via Ned’s chapters of how Osaron’s magic seems to be seeping into the other worlds. It’s like Schwab is dangling the possibility of going there in our faces only to never deliver on this promise.

Honestly, the big problem here is simply a lack of world-building. When Schwab does spend time describing even the small, insignificant parts of everyday life, the setting really comes to life. I had very little difficulty imagining all of the Londons despite the fact that I’ve never even been to a single London in my own reality. But after establishing these settings in the first book, Schwab rarely returns to world-building from the perspective of the past. Events and characters become very grounded in the present, and even in flashbacks the focus is generally on the characters and what they were experiencing internally. The Red, White, and even Black worlds start to feel like there just isn’t much history to them, when that can’t possibly be true. And while I agree that it would have been rather tedious to sit through pages and pages of a character expounding on the “grand history of Arnes” or something of the like, there is something in particular that irks me when it comes to the lack of history.

The Antari play such a large role in the series, and yet after everything is said and done, you don’t actually get to know all that much about them. You get to know tonnes about the Antari characters, but almost nothing of the Antari themselves, their culture, their historical roles. Granted, part of the appeal of the Antari is that even they can’t answer what they really are, where their powers came from, why they were chosen, but how Antari come to be and what they decide to do with themselves afterwards are two entirely different groups of questions. It’s mentioned that there were once dozens if not hundreds of Antari prior to the catastrophe that happened in Black London. I find it hard to believe that, even if they each had their own loyalties, some of them wouldn’t have come together to create a unique culture. Even, at least, something more or less academic, trying to find answers to the question of how Antari come to be.

I was really disappointed to find that the lore of the Antari was never expanded upon. More information on the Antari could have provided a lot of substance to many different areas of the story. The Antari characters could have learnt something about themselves while delving deeper into the mysteries of their predecessors, the concept of a culture of inter-dimensional travelers opens up more opportunities to include traveling in the story, and the plot could have received some much needed resolution for several key questions (I’ll expand on this later, too).

This leads us to the overarching plot of books 2 and 3, easily the weakest part of the series. I love a good “save the world” plot as much as the next fantasy junkie, but I feel like it was just tackled lazily here: some evil force shows up, threatening to destroy all that the characters love, and they are the only ones who can defeat it. Other than that, there’s not much else to say about the main conflict, no twists or turns in the structure that keep you on your toes. A large chunk of the time was just waiting for the characters to find a solution they can start working on so they can finally have something to do.

It doesn’t help that Osaron is one of the least compelling villains I’ve read about recently. I feel that Schwab was aiming to make him both a threatening, alien force unable to be reasoned with or properly comprehended by mortals, and a relatable human-ish being with desires and personality. I find him to be a failure on both ends, since the addition of some aspect of humanity completely destroys the image of him as an imposing, unbeatable entity, and he never reaches a level of depth and complexity that the human characters do, making him seem more like a caricature of a villainous person than anything. And this comes in stark contrast to Athos and Astrid, the villains from the first book, although you don’t even know they are the true villains until at least halfway into the novel. They were quite compelling for how they were very human and yet very, very twisted, and I really wished there had been more with them, especially for how they could have contrasted with Holland, showing us what White London is versus what it could be. Obviously, Athos still would have had to die, but it would have been interesting to see Astrid try for revenge or something of the like.

All in all, I don’t think the structure of the series helped. The first book very much feels like a standalone; one or two elements don’t get completely solved, but I also don’t think it was necessary to have seen them get resolved to have still had a full story experience. And while the first book provides set up, the plot of A Darker Shade of Magic feels entirely separate from the plot of A Gathering of Shadows and A Conjuring of Light, and because of this, the entire series feels stilted. Books 2 and 3 are so intertwined they might as well be one book, but the jump from book 1 to 2 is downright jarring in comparison. To be honest, I prefer the jump from 1 to 2 over 2 to 3, but considered as a whole, the lack of a continuous plot through all three books (or the lack of dedication to a series of single book adventures) definitely makes it seem like Schwab only intended to write one book but somehow came out with three.

In general, I would have liked to see a story that had an overarching plot, but included smaller moments of drama and adventure within. The characters are what really make this series stand out, and they shine the brightest when they interact with each other. They needed more time together, conversing and taking part in some action, solving problems together. Setting up almost episodic mini-arcs would have provided a good platform for this.

When it comes to leaving the main plot (mostly) intact, the ending could have been a bit more like this. Lenos could have known of an Inheritor due to his Antari grandmother, and, through tracing its path, they discover that she smuggled it to one of the other worlds (providing a little validation for Kell). Thus, our three Antari travel to either White or Grey London (perhaps Lenos’s grandmother sent it somewhere it could do no harm), and take part in their own little adventure to retrieve it. This would also provide an ideal chance to have them discover and learn from each other and/or their surroundings something about Antari history and culture. Meanwhile, Alucard stays behind with Rhy, and the two discuss what happened in the past (I’m not sure it’s ever explained why Alucard can’t just tell Rhy the truth. Is there a reason why Rhy may not believe him without proof? Seriously, it bugged me how they just never talked it out.). Rhy forgives him either then or later, and Alucard should have a moment where we see him protecting Rhy, making Rhy’s choice later on to have Alucard be an official protector make more sense, especially politically since there would have been witnesses. The three Antari eventually return, and execute their attack (or still have to travel to the ship market since maybe the Inheritor got smuggled around again). The point is the majority of the time spent mostly just sitting around the palace struggling to find a solution would be cut out, or relegated to some much more concise Rhy/Alucard chapters.

There are a few other disappointments I had with the series. Ojka, while an interesting character, is never really given much to do, a moment to shine. Most of the chapters involving her feature her internal thoughts about Holland and what he’s done, but not what she’s done. It feels like she was built up to be and do more, and so is far too quickly killed off.

I’m also disappointed that there wasn’t some deeper connection revealed between Osaron and the Antari. I really got the sense after A Darker Shade of Magic that there was something about the Antari specifically that resulted in Vitari not being able to immediately take over their minds and bodies, something more than just “they are extra magical and thus extra magically resistant”. Once I got a bit into A Gathering of Shadows, I theorized that everything from Black London, including stones, was a piece of Osaron via his magic, and that Vitari was just a branch of Osaron’s consciousness. Thus, whatever special connection Vitari had to the Antari also applied to Osaron.

After more solid evidence was given to suggest Delilah was Antari, I came up with a more fully-fledged theory: Osaron was to be the Black London Antari, or at least used to be one prior to absorbing all of the Black world’s magic. This would check out with the general pattern that was emerging: one Antari from each of the worlds. It also made sense logically as only an Antari should have been capable of whatever magic resulted in Osaron claiming it all in his own world. Not to mention this would explain the relative lack of/access to knowledge on the Antari; one of their own practically destroyed an entire reality, and they would not want that happening again. The magic, thus, that connected Osaron/Vitari to the Antari was more than just power, but some mystical tie that exists between Antari. Obviously, this is not what happened at all.

I have a few other, smaller nitpicks. I really wanted to see Kell and Alucard face off in the tournament just to experience the absolute bitterness that would be Kell after being forced to throw the match or else be caught. This would have contrasted well in a later scene of Kell and Alucard fighting side-by-side and discovering that they work well together. I also wanted to see more adventures aboard the Night Spire. It could have been more removed from London, or at least on the outskirts and so available to the group. In any case, the ship got a lot of play early on and build up in general for something much bigger, and for it to pretty much never come back in the main plot was disappointing. Pretty much everything with Ned and King George the IV was a waste of time. I was really hoping that that subplot would go somewhere if only to allow for some inter-dimensional traveling, but unfortunately not. I’m not a fan, either, of the decision to make the series rather dark and depressing by the third book. I understand that the situation was meant to be dire and “real” and adult, but it started to feel cheap once characters just started getting killed off left and right.

Also, while I feel that the characters were very well-written, there is one thing concerning Kell that has bugged me since the end of the first book: he never seems to feel any real guilt over sending Holland to Black London. Admittedly, Holland was the aggressor, and so I can see Kell not feeling overly guilty about besting him and pretty much killing him in their last duel, but Kell is an Antari and he knows that they heal faster than most and can recover from some otherwise pretty nasty injuries. So, it kind of baffles me that his excuse for why it’s alright that he sends Holland to Black London is because Kell’s sure the other Antari is going to die anyways. Holland did end up recovering, so I just feel that maybe Kell should have known better than to assume.

In any case, Kell’s never really forced to confront any guilt over the fact that the whole situation is entirely his fault even if it was simply a chain of consequences from one unfortunate choice. The closest we get is that he, eventually, sympathizes with Holland and the poor treatment he’s getting from everyone, because, had he given in at the end of book 2, Osaron would have used his body to get to Red London. If anything, though, this consequence didn’t feel like a result of a decision Kell made, but rather one that Holland made when he first found Osaron in Black London. The reason for Kell’s guilt or regret should come from the decision he made back in book 1 to send Holland to Black London, but there’s never get a good scene of him mulling over this fact, or even approaching Holland about it in a meaningful way. There’s also, that I can remember, no mention of Kell ever feeling that he should be completely responsible for finding a solution to the situation he inadvertently caused. Even if he never vocalizes it, or tries to go out on his own, he just never even thinks about it, and I just find it so incredibly odd that a character like Kell never feels the depth of that guilt either towards Holland or the entirety of Red London.

So, that’s all I have to say on this series, I hope. I do really love this series. It captured me from the onset, and even as I sat there with a critique starting to form in my brain, I couldn’t help but want to read more, for it to go on forever. My complaints are largely things I’ve noticed in retrospect, and aren’t about to deter me from picking up these books again. The Shades of Magic series deserves all the praise it gets, and I hope this rant doesn’t deter anyone from loving it any less.

#shades of magic #a darker shade of magic #adsom #a gathering of shadows #a conjuring of light #v e schwab #book rants #booklr #rejectedembers

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