The color of infinity inside an empty glass

Posted by Seanan McGuire

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/14/on-the-thirteenth-day-of-hogswatch-your-seanan-gave-away-9/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=693

…a copy of What If: Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings!

Hello, readers, writers, and terrifying couch gremlins, and welcome to the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch, the game where the points are made up but the rules really do matter.  This is our final giveaway for 2025! I hope you’re all excited!  Here are a few things you should know:

1. Every post will have its own prize, and its own rules.  This is to filter out people linked here from the “hey, free stuff!” blogs, who are less interested in our prizes than they are in the fact that they don’t cost anything.
2. There will be one redistribution draw for unclaimed prizes. Any remaining after that will be returned to my office to think about what they did. If you fail to claim a prize, you cannot win another.
3. I cannot afford international postage.  If you are outside the US/Canada, you must state so in your entry.  Someone else has volunteered to cover these costs, but I still need to know.
4. All posts automatically mirror to Dreamwidth.  For RNG reasons, comments left on Dreamwidth do not count as entries; you must enter via the root post on my blog (seananmcguire.com/blog) if you want to be eligible to win.
5. If you haven’t commented here before, your first comment will go into moderation, and be approved as soon as I see it. So if your comment does not appear, please don’t comment again. It still won’t work, until I manually approve you. I promise to approve before prizes are drawn.

So here.  We.  GO!

Our final prize this year is a copy of What If: Wanda Maximoff and Peter Parker Were Siblings. To enter…

1. Comment on this post.
2. What is your favorite fictional witch?
3. If you are outside the US/Canada, tell me so.

All winners will be selected at 12PT on December 15th.  So now, as the sages say…

…GAME ON!

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/14/on-the-thirteenth-day-of-hogswatch-your-seanan-gave-away-9/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=693

Posted by Seanan McGuire

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/12/on-the-twelfth-day-of-hogswatch-your-seanan-gave-away-9/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=690

…a copy of Installment Immortality!

Hello, readers, writers, and terrifying couch gremlins, and welcome to the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch, the game where the points are made up but the rules really do matter.  This is our twelfth giveaway for 2025! I hope you’re all excited!  Here are a few things you should know:

1. Every post will have its own prize, and its own rules.  This is to filter out people linked here from the “hey, free stuff!” blogs, who are less interested in our prizes than they are in the fact that they don’t cost anything.
2. There will be one redistribution draw for unclaimed prizes. Any remaining after that will be returned to my office to think about what they did. If you fail to claim a prize, you cannot win another.
3. I cannot afford international postage.  If you are outside the US/Canada, you must state so in your entry.  Someone else has volunteered to cover these costs, but I still need to know.
4. All posts automatically mirror to Dreamwidth.  For RNG reasons, comments left on Dreamwidth do not count as entries; you must enter via the root post on my blog (seananmcguire.com/blog) if you want to be eligible to win.
5. If you haven’t commented here before, your first comment will go into moderation, and be approved as soon as I see it. So if your comment does not appear, please don’t comment again. It still won’t work, until I manually approve you. I promise to approve before prizes are drawn.

So here.  We.  GO!

Our twelfth prize this year is a copy of Installment Immortality. To enter…

1. Comment on this post.
2. What is your favorite ghost story?
3. If you are outside the US/Canada, tell me so.

All winners will be selected at 12PT on December 15th.  So now, as the sages say…

…GAME ON!

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/12/on-the-twelfth-day-of-hogswatch-your-seanan-gave-away-9/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=690

Posted by Seanan McGuire

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/12/if-we-shadows-the-dvd-extras/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=686

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

Probably our longest Shakespeare quote, and our most famous to date. I simply cannot bring myself to truncate one of my favorite speeches ever. So you get the whole thing.

The time is come for me to dissect Lorwyn Eclipsed for your amusement.  Because this is time-consuming, I only know people are enjoying it if they comment, and that means I really am holding future DVD extras hostage against comments. Sorry about that.

Welcome to the “DVD extras” for the fifth main story installment for Lorwyn Eclipsed, “If We Shadows.”  This story is copyright Wizards of the Coast, although it was written by me, and can be found in its entirety here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/lorwyn-eclipsed-episode-5-if-we-shadows

It feels important to call out that this is not the complete story; this is an unauthorized Pop-Up Video version. Go to the link above for the full story, please. Give them some clicks.  Convince them that you love me and I should get to keep writing things.  Seriously, though, please click the link, even if the story isn’t relevant to you.  Click-throughs are how Wizards knows that Story matters.

So what is this?  This is little excerpts of the story, with my thoughts on them, because, IDK, I thought it was funny.  I’ve also tried to include context for people new to Magic Story, to help you understand what the hell is going on.  If people continue to like it, I will probably continue.  If you don’t care about Magic Story, skip on over, although I’d still like it if you clicked.

And here we go!

As always, from this point on, plain text is bits from the story, italic text is my commentary on the same.

Following Maralen, Sanar and Tam ran to the edge of the palace grounds, where a potentially deadly fall to the ground awaited them. Maralen glanced over the edge, then led the students to a long, curving stem with a bud at the top, big around as an ox. “Does either of you have a sword?” she asked.

Living in a palace that is basically a giant flower lifted into the air by its stem is complicated when you don’t have wings.

Sanar and Tam stared at her. “We’re students on a field trip,” said Tam. “We’re not armed.”

Thus proving that it was not a field trip on Innistrad or Fiora.

“Well, I can’t call a faerie swarm to help us, or Rhys will follow them!” snapped Maralen. The faerie on her shoulder giggled like he was having the time of his life.

Oh, hey, the asshole faerie got pronouns.

“Do we just need to cut the bud off?” asked Sanar. Maralen nodded, and he started dredging things up from the depths of his pockets, bits of mud and flattened leaf, crushed snarlflowers and a flier for Mage Tower tryouts. He smashed them all together, mashing the mud and vegetation until the paper was saturated. With this accomplished, he packed it around the bud’s base and backed away.

“What are you doing?” asked Maralen.

“Prismari study track,” said Sanar.

This is, quite simply, one of my favorite exchanges of the entire story. I would have put up with so much more pushing characters from point A to point B if it meant that I got the calm “Prismari study track” as an explanation for mashing incomprehensible objects into explosive goo. Thank you, Sanar. Thank you.

That was enough information for Tam, who covered her ears and ducked, while Maralen stood there looking bewildered. Sanar planted two fingers in his mouth, whistling.

Tam pays attention.

Nothing happened.

Maralen frowned. “I don’t understand what—”

The bud exploded, sending sticky chunks flying in all directions. Sap splattered across the trio, and Maralen cried out in bewildered disgust.

“Did you have to blow it up?” asked Tam.

“Yup,” said Sanar.

He is gonna do great in Prismari.

Sanar followed enthusiastically. Tam looked back, hesitant, before jumping after the others.

Sanar likes new experiences. Give him something totally new and he’ll pretty much always do it enthusiastically. Tam is more aware that all flesh can die.

“You’ve been ready to run for a while,” said Tam, observing. “It’s like you created a world you knew you couldn’t live in. That’s why you asked Rhys to do you a favor and ran when he tried.”

A coracle boat like the one they’re using is a traditional type of boat used in Ireland and Wales. They’re curved, and seem sort of like the shell of a very large nut, or the cap of an even larger acorn, when you view them as a child views them.

“I needed—Oona was my creator, and I needed to know I wouldn’t become her if I had the same power she did. I needed to know that Lorwyn-Shadowmoor would be safe from her return. But I’m still myself. Even if parts of her live on in me, I’m not her, and I need to make Rhys see that.” She climbed into the coracle. “Come along. We need to find someplace safe to hole up until I know what to do next.”

Maralen is having a little identity crisis, and she’s pretty freaked out about it, and she rarely has anyone to talk to that isn’t either a giant day elemental or working for her.

“So why don’t you just release him from his promise?” asked Tam.

Tam has effectively just asked Maralen “so why don’t you kill your friend?”

“The only way I had of keeping someone beside me who’d known Maralen of the Mornsong when she was an elf and not a faerie’s dream.” Maralen looked levelly at Tam, not blinking.

Maralen is complicated by her own origins. She’s telling the truth both when she says that Oona made her from a petal, and when she says that she was born Maralen of the Mornsong, an elf who grew to strength and authority within her people. The original Maralen did exist, and was replaced by Oona’s creation, who truly believed she was that Maralen. Her memories tell her she was an elf first, even as she knows she was a faerie first.

Tam found herself wondering whether they had gorgons in Lorwyn, because Maralen didn’t flinch before meeting her eyes. Neither did most of the students she knew from Arcavios. They didn’t know to be afraid of a gorgon’s gaze, and so they weren’t. It was strange. At home, even her teacher would sometimes flinch, and she couldn’t have hurt him if she wanted.

I do appreciate that Tam doesn’t think less of people because they’re willing to meet her eyes.

“This was our destination all along,” she said. “I have friends in this bog. This is the home of the Stinkdrinker Warren of boggarts, and unless she’s moved along since last she sent word, we’ll find Ashling here.”

More characters and locations from the original Lorwyn story. We didn’t want to be married to it–we couldn’t be, really, since they had three full novels worth of word count, and we had 35,000 words plus a few side stories by other authors; everything we did had to be intentional, and even when it seemed meandering, like the Wanderwine, it had to flow straight toward its destination. But we wanted to call back as much as we could, since it’s beloved for a reason.

“She’s another I’ve known almost as long as I’ve been myself. She’s one of the flamekin of Mount Tanufel, from which the Wanderwine River springs. We’ve been enemies as often as we’ve been friends, and she knows what it is to have people assume that you’re a villain even when you’re not. The only reason I don’t see her more often in Glen Elendra is that she thinks me a fool for keeping Rhys so close when his purpose is to end me. If anyone knows anything of your friends or the path that brought you here, it’s Ashling. She runs the length of the river and back again, carrying stories and secrets to the mountain. The pilgrim’s path, once walked, is not so easily set aside.”

Maralen and Ashling met shortly after the original version of Maralen was replaced by Oona’s creation. So Ashling really has known this Maralen almost as long as she’s existed to be known.

“Maralen,” replied Ashling. Her face was a mask of the same black glass as her body, crowned with a shock of blazing bonfire. More flames leaked out along the line of her throat and from the creases of her joints, making her look like a barely contained inferno. She turned toward Tam and Sanar, burning.

Flamekin are a species of sapient fire-people pretty much unique to Lorwyn (I say “pretty much” because WotC could decide tomorrow that they’re also found on Aranzhur, and I really don’t want anyone going “AH-HA Seanan lied to us!” when I only spoke from a position of “what we know now.”

“Whoa,” said Sanar, scrambling out of the coracle and staring at Ashling. “You’re beautiful.”

“Sanar,” hissed Tam.

“What? She is. Fire is always pretty, but letting fire decide to be a person is a special sort of pretty.”

Sanar really, really likes things that burn, and things that explode, and natural disasters. Ashling may be his perfect woman.

“Boggarts” turned out to be the Lorwyn equivalent of goblins—friendly, curious people of Sanar’s height, whose skins came in a dazzling variety of colors, like a patch of verbose, sometimes oddly scented wildflowers. One of them had hauled Sanar off to learn how to fish for eels as soon as it was established that the three would be in the warren for a few hours—although not much longer, as Maralen didn’t want to give Rhys time to catch up if she could help it.

Sanar is having a very enriching day! Maybe Ashling would like a bouquet of eels?

Now, she sat at a table made from a section of petrified wood, caught between tinder and stone, with Ashling on the other side, her story having flowed out of her like so much poisoned honey. It covered the table between them, viscous, sticky, and almost visible, while Tam watched from the corner.

I just like the imagery here.

“The elves and their high perfect Morcant are also aware that the night beast is walking,” said Ashling. “They’re concocting a plan to kill the creature. They’re seeking poisons that might allow them to complete the task.”

Ashling is sort of the gossip broker of the area, not because she’s being catty, but because she hears things and passes them along, inevitable as the tide.

“Wouldn’t that be a good thing?” asked Tam. “Forgive me, but it seems like your world is better in the daylight. Our allies turned against us when night fell. If we can stop the night forever, we can perfect your world. Wouldn’t that be better?”

Congrats on finding Oona’s arguments, Tam.

“Not in the least,” said Maralen. “Lorwyn isn’t meant to exist unchallenged. We need the balance Shadowmoor provides—the true, transforming night. Isilu and Eirdu are balanced forces, equal in all things, and we’ve seen what happens when we have one without the other. I don’t want to die. If I were to agree to ending the night forever, I would deserve the death Rhys promised me. Eternal day is Oona’s way, not my own.”

Lorwyn-Shadowmoor is a dual-natured plane for very good reasons, and needs to be allowed to exist in balance within itself. Anything else is doing the plane a disservice.

“Isilu would regenerate; the balance would be restored over time,” said Ashling. “Oona destroyed both the great elementals when she created her aurora, and they found a new balance between themselves after the aurora fell.”

Hence why they’re new to this set.

“That doesn’t mean I can condone an attack on the natural order of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, not when we’ve just gotten it back,” snapped Maralen.

Also fair.

“Then I suppose we’ll have to stop the elves,” said Ashling, sounding deeply put-on. “I’ll find that boat you need, and I’ll be coming with you.” She rose, heading for the door.

Okay, fine, I’ll help you prevent the destruction of the world as we know it, I guess. If I don’t have any other choice…

Ajani frowned, then started toward the dolmen gate. As he moved, a creature like a serpent with the tiny, jointed legs of a millipede loomed up behind him, mouth gaping to show venom-coated fangs.

Ajani has helpfully agreed to demonstrate the fauna of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor further, since there’s been a shameful lack of terrible beasts in the story thus far. Say thank you, Ajani.

Breathing hard but uninjured, Ajani finished his walk to the dolmen gate. It was unmarred: no blood or damage. He crouched, scanning the ground until he found the distinctive prints left by hard-tooled Strixhaven shoes, unlike anything that normally occurred on this plane. They were pointed away from the gate, the students clearly fleeing from something.

Kirol may be mad about their shoes, but those same shoes are going to help rescue find them.

Beasts of Shadowmoor and beasts of Lorwyn, both driven to attack by the sudden change of day into night. This wasn’t how things were meant to be. Even as Ajani fought off the boar, he could tell how out of sync with itself the plane was—and how unhappy.

Remember that continuity of memory isn’t guaranteed between planes. The change is disorienting, and creatures that weren’t expecting it are lashing out.

The boat supplied by the boggarts was large and luxurious, at least compared to the coracle; it had an upper and a lower deck, and an actual wheel, allowing it to be steered by someone who understood boats. That wasn’t Maralen. It wasn’t Tam or Sanar, either, and although Ashling was accompanying them, she didn’t know how to steer. In the end, several boggarts agreed to take them down the Wanderwine, allowing them to return the boat to the warren once their passengers had been dropped off near Goldmeadow.

Bonus goblins!

“Friends are important,” said Tam. “But they can leave you vulnerable, too.” She looked back at where Sanar looked over the railing, dangling one blue hand in the water.

Tam has never made a lot of friends, and unlike the others, she is not completely thrilled to be trauma bonding with her classmates. The more people you care about, the more people who can hurt you.

Tam frowned. “You’re running from this Rhys because he wants to keep his word. Please forgive me for not putting too much stock in your promises.”

“I meant it when I asked for his word,” said Maralen. “It’s … You weren’t here. Things were different then. I didn’t know how much the world would recover from what she’d done.”

Tam has fallen into the middle of an ongoing story and is not entirely handling it well.

“She tells that truthfully,” said Ashling, moving to stand beside them. “The old fae queen, Oona, she managed to capture the auroras that naturally flare between night and day and braid them into a single great aurora that kept the whole plane locked in one state or the other for centuries at a time. Night never fell. Day never rose. We’re meant to be creatures of balance, shifting between night and day as Eirdu and Isilu command, and she stopped us where we were to stagnate. Lorwyn doesn’t remember Shadowmoor, nor does Shadowmoor remember Lorwyn, but a creature knows when it’s only half of what it’s meant to be.”

Recapping the original Lorwyn block with Ashling!

“Oona broke the world,” said Maralen.

Maralen is a lot more succinct.

“She made me,” said Maralen.

“And? Just because she’s your mother—”

“She’s not my mother,” said Maralen. “She made me. She pinched off a piece of herself, like plucking a petal from a flower, and she made me.”

Maralen often calls Oona her mother, because it’s easier: we have a word for mother, we don’t have a word for “pulled off her own toe and modeled it into a person.” Maybe Sedna, who is an Inuit goddess who did something similar, but that would be inappropriate on a Celtic-inspired plane. Maralen’s doing the best she can.

“Never heard of such a thing, little stranger? Did you think all lives began with a loving embrace and a family to welcome you? Mine began in Oona’s bower, petal-born and larval, distinct from the faeries around me in that I was half-finished, waiting to be put through my instars by Oona herself. I was to be her avatar, a part of her, carrying her consciousness ahead of my own. She fed me nectar, royal jelly for a queen, and she plucked the wings from my shoulders when they began to form. She kept me as a weapon, not a child. She could see the restiveness spreading through the world, the cycle struggling to reassert itself, and I was meant to become her when the world inevitably rose against her. She made only two mistakes, my maker-mother, and I was one of them.”

“Instars” are stages of insect life. When an insect molts, it’s passing from one instar into the next. Lorwyn faeries are closer to insects than anything else. Maralen was made in a very real, very intentional sense.

“What was the other?” asked Ashling with sudden interest.

Maralen turned to blink at her. “What?”

“You said she made two mistakes. You’re the only avatar of Oona I know. What was her other mistake?”

We found a part of the story that Ashling doesn’t know. Huh…

“Ah.” Maralen shivered. “She made and molded me, and when the time was right, she slipped me into the shed skin of Maralen of the Mornsong, who had no more need of it. She made an elf of me, to rule Lorwyn, and she didn’t consider what the heart and hopes of an elf might do to her careful plans. She made me someone else when she married me to my mask.”

If Oona had let Maralen be a faerie princess, a little clone of Oona, she might have won in the original Lorwyn. Or they might both have died. Hindsight doesn’t always tell you what would have happened, just what you might want to have happened.

“No.” Maralen looked at the water. “My creation was her second mistake. The first was my brother.

The idea of her having a brother is new information.

I was meant to rule Lorwyn when Oona could no longer carry the crown, but I wasn’t her first choice. She wasn’t sure any piece of her could remember itself as she did when subjected to Shadowmoor’s light, and so she made another before me, intended to be Shadowmoor’s prince in waiting.

So the brother didn’t get personality-melded with a convenient dead elf, he was allowed to be himself, if hollowed out in a way, not fully made to fit the Lorwyn-Shadowmoor model of dual people. Oona wanted to be sure that if her Aurora fell, she’d have an avatar to keep the dark side of the plane under control.

She already knew he was flawed when she chose to make me, from the other half of the same petal; he fought her, he defied her, and he demanded to be left to rule Shadowmoor according to the natural cycle of things.

Maralen’s brother was a more complete person than she was at that age, for all Oona’s efforts.

What memories I have from before I was Maralen came originally from Oona, and they’re colored by her experience of them. I remember my older brother fighting her so hard I thought the palace might fall. He wanted to be himself and his own, not hers. He befriended a giant, a sage who carried stories of Eirdu and Isilu, who were legends then, not parts of our living world. He called the man ‘father,’ pledged to be a good son to him, and Oona was infuriated. She ordered the giant killed where we could watch and told my brother the only lesson he should take from fathers was this: That fathers will always leave you. Fathers always fall. My brother was … He was shattered, and he swore he would never forgive her, or any part of her, however half-formed. I didn’t see him after that.”

Family trauma!

Sitting on the edge of the table, the faerie that had been accompanying them frowned up at Maralen, wings at half-mantle. It opened its mouth, looking for a moment like it was going to speak, only to flinch as the boat jerked to a sudden stop, running hard against the bank. Ashling and Maralen rushed to shout up at the boggarts who were steering them along the river, demanding to know what was happening.

That whole story was new to our little troublemaker, too.

At the helm, the old boggart let their shouting wash over him, then leaned forward and yelled, “Look to the river! All the new experiences there are don’t mean a thing if I can’t carry them home.”

Lorwyn boggarts are all about having new experiences and then sharing them with the warren. That’s why

“We walk,” said Ashling. “My memory is as unbroken as yours.”

Ashling’s memory isn’t disrupted when she moves between night and day.

“People don’t change between night and day where we come from,” said Sanar.

“Even better,” said Ashling. She bowed to the boggart at the helm, then led the others to the side, where they descended the ladder to the aurora-rainbowed bank below.

Sanar doesn’t realize he just passed up a chance to insist on holding hands with the pretty fire lady as they walked. That’s probably for the best, all things considered.

“Silence,” said Morcant sharply.

Not a nice lady, no.

“You make it sound so easy,” grumbled Kirol.

“It is. You just have to pick some flowers.”

For a Lorwyn elf who fears transitioning to Shadowmoor, getting the flowers is impossibly hard. Lluwen would change, forget what he was doing, and wander away. For someone who doesn’t change, it really is as easy as enter a glade, pick a flower.

“Picking flowers is what got me into this situation in the first place!”

Kirol is going to wind up with a fear of florists.

Lluwen prodded Kirol in the back with his spear, and they shot the hunter a wounded look. Lluwen jerked his head toward Morcant, a pleading expression on his face. Kirol sighed and kept their mouth shut. If they’d done that sooner, Morcant might not have figured out they could pass between night and day without losing their memory or getting distracted by transforming into their “Shadowmoor self.”

Lulu is trying to help.

“They don’t understand what—”

“Are you contradicting me?” Her voice was poisonously pleasant. “What a fascinating choice.”

Lulu could be in real trouble if they force the issue.

The dawnglove flowers grew in small patches, glowing pink, purple, and blueish white, like dawn distilled into something so beautiful it seemed impossible. Their bound hands shook as they reached out to pluck a sprig, and they found themself wishing, desperately, for their school-issued shears, designed to prevent bruising a single petal.

Kirol appreciates beautiful things.

A branch snapped behind them. Kirol tensed, and their vampirically sharp ears heard the crackle of distant, hard-banked fires creeping closer. They turned and saw dark outlines, humanoid shapes crackling with barely contained heat, like banked charcoals. It was easy to miss them in the dark, their presence betrayed only by the dim embers in their eyes. Leaping back to their feet, they ran, and the cinders gave chase.

Rimekin are the Shadowmoor equivalent of flamekin. They’ll burn you just as badly.

“Kirol did it!” said Lluwen, taking the dawnglove reverently from Kirol’s hand and holding it up for Morcant to see. “But the cinders …” He looked uneasily at the figures on the night side of the veil, unwilling to pursue further, burning in the dark.

Lulu is like, “we have enough, we can stop now.”

“The stranger evaded them once; he can do so again,” said Morcant. “Send him back.”

Morcant does not agree.

“It’s ‘them,'” said Kirol, getting back to their feet. “And no. I won’t go. I’m not dying for you people.”

“You’re dying for whatever I say you are,” said Morcant. “We need more dawnglove. Go. Lluwen, make him go.”

Morcant doesn’t believe in being corrected by anyone not as perfect as she is. Her repeated use of the wrong pronouns for Kirol here is intentional.

“I won’t,” said Lluwen. “They don’t deserve to die that way.”

“Lluwen—”

“No.”

For a Lorwyn elf to defy a perfect is unthinkable, and could see him branded an eyeblight, something flawed and thus deserving of destruction. Lulu’s taking a big risk here.

Morcant was glaring, clearly prepared to push the issue, when a white blur burst out of the trees and landed between them, a massive two-headed axe in his hands, fur on his shoulders bristling. He snarled at the aurora-line, and the cinders retreated. He snarled at Morcant, and she snarled back, less bestial, more arrogant.

Thank you, Ajani.

Then he rounded on Kirol, who moved in front of Lluwen ready to defend the elven hunter from the massive lion-man. Instead, the lion spoke. “Are you one of Professor Vess’s missing students?” he asked.

Kirol is willing to take risks for someone who just took a risk for them.

“And we shall,” said the lion. “My name is Ajani, and we are leaving.” He turned his glare on Perfect Morcant, who tried, and failed, to match it. One hand on the small of Kirol’s back, he began guiding the student away.

High Perfect Morcant is scary, but she’s got nothing on Ajani Goldmane in a bad mood.

Lluwen had an instant to make up his mind. Looking between Kirol and Ajani and the furious Morcant, he moved, darting after them before she could stop him. Her face contorted in anger as the forest took them.

Lulu has chosen a side, and it’s not High Perfect Morcant’s.

Ashling stepped into Shadowmoor, blue light racing along her skin and her deeply banked inner fires melting into something frozen and shimmering, like the magnetic lights that sometimes danced in the sky above the Furygale back on campus. Sanar gasped. Tam stopped walking and stared. Ashling turned to face the pair of them, a small smile on her transformed face.

Pretty fire lady is basically the living embodiment of the Prismari campus. Sanar is now officially and hopelessly crushing on her.

They were less than halfway there when arrows began thudding into the ground around them, herding them closer together. Ashling blazed blue-bright and ominous. Maralen cried out in confusion. And the moon-eyed Shadowmoor residents of the city emerged from the brush and bushes all around them, spears and knives in their hands, the transformed Brigid at the front of their pack.

Shadowmoor does not mean “evil,” but Shadowmoor kithkin are severely xenophobic, and don’t want outsiders near their homes. Amusingly, this attribute of the Shadowmoor kithkin was part of what allowed them to beat back Phyrexia.

“We can’t fight them, or we will hurt them,” said Ashling, still blazing. “What do we do?”

“We find out where they’re taking us,” said Sanar.

The kithkin are acting as antagonists here, but they aren’t villains, and neither Ashling nor Maralen wants to punish them for following their natures.

“It just … It feels like hot tea on cold nights,” she said. “Like when you know the frost is coming, but you have a good book and a hot fire. Why does it feel like that?”

“It felt like that in the cave,” said Sanar.

Isilu is all the best things about the night, no matter who or what you are. To a frightened Shadowmoor kithkin, being in the presence of Isilu probably feels like deep shadows and safe burrows, no one unknown for miles. You can learn a lot about yourself by lingering near the night elemental.

They turned, all of them, even the kithkin, and saw Isilu walking serenely toward them, a small green speck flitting in front of the beast’s moon-crowned head. Maralen gasped, clapping her hands over her mouth.

Okay, so the faerie went and fetched the night elemental. Thanks. Good job!

“What?” asked Ashling.

“That’s … I know that faerie,” she said. “That’s—”

Well this is a total shock to all of us who’ve been paying any degree of attention. But she really hadn’t seen him in Shadowmoor-mode before this.

“—My brother,” finished Maralen. “I-I only know him in his Shadowmoor form, from Oona’s memories, but I know him.”

She just didn’t recognize him as a Lorwyn.

“Shadowmoor tells lies,” said Ashling warningly. “He may not be who you believe he is.”

This may be the most openly negative sentiment any of our characters have expressed toward Shadowmoor.

On the horizon, where the edge of the forest met the fields, a line of torches appeared.

“The elves,” said Maralen.

“Elves?” demanded Brigid. “In our fields? You strangers are bad enough. We won’t allow it.”

Time for a big brawl! West Side Story dance fight time? Please?

The kithkin began to cluster together, shaking their spears and notching their bows as they eyed the torch-line. And all the while, Isilu came closer, the living night descending on the drowning dregs of day.

I know it’s bad form to be pleased by my own prose, but “the drowning dregs of day” is just nice to my ear. It’s a fun phrase to chew on.

See you Monday!

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2025/12/12/if-we-shadows-the-dvd-extras/

https://seananmcguire.com/blog/?p=686