possession | Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist

The primary magic we see in The Wishing Blade series is ribbon magic. Today I thought I’d showcase the sinister maroon ribbons of magic’s lure.

Magic’s lure is a rare form of ribbon magic with the power to command people to do a mage’s bidding. Unlike the telepathy powers in the Distant Horizon universe, it doesn’t actually change the target’s mindset… it’s physical.

But some people are more aware than others that they’re being affected. It depends largely on how closely the command matches with what they already want, and what other external factors might distract them from recognizing what’s happening.

Few mortals have access to magic’s lure, and Daernan (one of the main characters in the Wishing Blade series) is one such mage. He keeps his power hidden, knowing most people equate magic’s lure to being a power of the Trickster, Isahna, a nefarious, ill-favored god. Worse, since Daernan has royal blue shapeshifting ribbons, which are also a favored magic of the Trickster, he’s occasionally accused of being one of the god’s pawns… though that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Daernan would prefer to avoid using magic’s lure when he can. Still, it has its uses, and when time is of the essence, he’ll sometimes bend that rule.

Here’s a scene from The Shadow War in which Daernan and his friend, Siklana, are trying to get past a stubborn secretary to deliver an important message, but Siklana’s diplomatic attempts are failing miserably.

Siklana raised an eyebrow. “I am not going anywhere if this buffoon will not permit me speak with Marquis Eornayan. I’ve tried reasoning with him. I’ve tried listing my family credentials. I even tried giving him an exact time schedule of when the shadows are likely to arrive, and he still won’t listen. I don’t suppose you want to try your charms?”

“Not really,” Daernan admitted. But considering the glare the secretary gave Siklana, and the quill the secretary had snapped a moment ago in frustration, Siklana wasn’t getting in on her own.

He sighed. Siklana knew far more about court manners than he did, but he knew enough that he could manage an upper class attitude when he needed to, and he did have magic that might get them inside. He hated using it, but they only had a short amount of time remaining before the shadows got here…

An uncomfortable lump formed in his throat, but he returned to Siklana’s side, put on a proper pose, and added just a bit to his height via his shapeshifting ribbons. He offered the secretary his hand. “I apologize for the behavior of my assistant, good sir. I am still familiarizing her in the way of the court.”

Siklana’s jaw dropped and her cheeks blushed a furious red.

Play along, he sent, and I should be able to get us in.

She shut her mouth, though her eyes remained as wide as horseshoes. He didn’t usually communicate telepathically with anyone other than Toranih.

“I am Mage Daernan Nivasha. Please let Marquis Eornayan know that I have urgent news regarding a threat to the sovereignty of this excellent city. While I am willing to wait until his earliest convenience, I should note that an attack by the same cursed trickster who stole the magic of Cirena may be imminent. It is of the utmost importance that we speak with him.”

The secretary parted his mouth in a soft “O” and a tiny, fluttering maroon ribbon finished working its charm. The secretary smiled apologetically. “Just a moment. I shall alert him.” He shuffled from his desk, discarded his broken quill into a wicker basket on the way out, and then slipped between the giant doors behind him.

“How… how…” Siklana stared at Daernan. The redness in her cheeks had been replaced with a white that resembled that patch in Daernan’s hair.

He lowered his eyes and scuffed his boot on the marble floor. “We’ve got a way in now.”

“When I said to work your charm, I didn’t mean… There is no way you did that with good looks alone,” she hissed. She lowered her voice. “You have magic’s lure?”

He cringed. “Let’s not go announcing that to everyone, shall we?”

“Certainly not,” she murmured. “Everyone else can figure that out for themselves.”

Daernan let out a breath. If anyone else found out, they’d say he really was a pawn of the Trickster. It had taken a long time for him to accept he had those ribbons. He kept them on a short leash. A cage, really. If people hated string mages, they hated magic’s lure equally. “Go on in if they ask for us. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Daernan’s usually a lot more down-to-earth (Down-to-Cirena? Down-to-the-mortal-realm? I should probably decide what their equivalent phrase would be) than the other nobles, but when it comes down to it, he knows how to play the part.

The question, of course, is whether or not that’s going to work in his favor in the long run. Daernan might prefer not to use magic’s lure more than necessary, but the gods have other plans in mind (as we see in Magebane).

Other instances where we see magic’s lure is The Wind Mage and Wolf, involving one of the city guards that the main character, Livena, does not see eye-to-eye with, and as the magic of one of the main characters in the novella I’m currently writing and releasing through the Wishing Blade Universe Newsletter. Both of those stories are set in the Legends of Cirena era, two hundred years prior to the Wishing Blade series, though the latter novella leans heavily into setting up the events that eventually lead to the Wishing Blade era.

Of course, the fun thing about the in-progress novella (currently just titled “the Ferta story” is that it’s also set at a time when Isahna, the Trickster in the Wishing Blade series, is still only a god’s champion. And yes… he still gets to play a role. 😉

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Beware of magic’s lure…

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Happy reading and writing!

There are a bunch of powers in the Distant Horizon universe, from Tim’s techno sight ability to mentally connect with computers to Jenna’s elemental ability to manipulate plant growth and use super speed. Previously, I’ve talked about the life-spirit power and it’s ability to save or suspend lives.

Today, let’s talk about telepathy.

There are several uses for telepathy, including the common ability to read minds and broadcast thoughts for communication, to the more obscure abilities of possession, and even more skilled (albeit nefarious) trick of planting specific memories in a target’s thoughts.

It’s the latter I want to focus on today. Tim got a taste of this in The Glitch Saga.

But Jenna… she deals a lot with the finer troubles of telepathy. While she’s not a telepath herself, a certain notorious Lady Winters leaves a set of memory seeds in Jenna’s head—seeds which, over time, attack her mind with false memories and nightmares meant to leave her more susceptible to future telepathic attacks. The primary seed she has to deal with in Distant Horizon is of beastie transformation, which proves burdensome while she’s trying to search a beastie plant.

Here’s an excerpt from Distant Horizon:

The winding corridor opened to rows upon rows of floor-to-ceiling tanks, each filled with thick, greenish fluid. Bubbles traveled up the tubes, passing over occupants who had been stripped of everything but a breath mask. A helpless, sickening sensation spread through me. I stared at the liquid, petrified.

Lady Winters dragged me into a tube and shoved me inside, the numbing liquid surrounding me, slick against my skin. Burning.

I needed to escape, to breathe, to run—

“Let’s not open these doors, ‘kay?” Jack said, jarring me from my nightmare. I glared at him, but for once, I didn’t mind his sarcasm. Lady Winters had taken joy in giving me that memory. Her identity charm rustled against the fabric of my shirt.

“Isn’t there some way we can help them?” I asked.

“By the time they’re here, it’s too late.” Inese motioned to the tanks around us.

I closed my hands into fists. Lance pushed me forward, and as we passed the tanks, one of the occupants woke. Bubbles erupted around her mask. Her eyes bulged, terrified. She pounded her fists on the glass.

Lance stepped back, despite all his show for strength, but I saw my reflection. It placed me in that tube—in that thick, unknown liquid with its sense of helplessness…

I flinched and turned away. I was betraying the people who were imprisoned here, but every time I looked at them, I was the prisoner.

A memory seed tends to use some sort of outside world trigger (in this case, the beastie tanks), to activate a pre-planted memory. In some cases, the victim will be aware they’re the target of an attack, and in some cases they’ll simply react without knowing why. In other cases, the victim is trapped in the memory, only aware of of what the memory is showing them.

The more skilled the telepath, the harder it is to remove these seeds. Unfortunately for Jenna, Lady Winters is one of the most skilled telepaths within the Camaraderie. And, unfortunately, the memory seeds makes it a tad difficult for her to do research that the rebels need in order to combat the Camaraderie.

Here’s a look at one such scene in Fractured Skies.

I huddled under a mass of vines, Tim’s tablet in my lap. All the lights were on, and I’d made sure the flower charm was nestled firmly against my skin. There was a good chance the charm was the only thing that was going to keep me from having a memory attack. I pressed the icon on the tablet for the Legion Spore folder. A list of files popped up. Some of the documents contained lines of code—gibberish I had no hope of understanding. But some of the documents looked promising, more like a research paper.

Biology—a science I understood.

My heart pulsed in my wrists, warning me this was a bad idea. But if I wanted control of my memories, I had to understand what the Legion Spore was and what it could do.

I opened the first document:

The Legion Spore is an experimental project requiring beasts and power users to be merged with a computer AI to form a single entity of enormous capability and power. To do this, the Legion Spore utilizes a hub system. This system consists of both beasts and power users, each assigned to use their powers for specific tasks while being linked to a single mainframe.

That must have been why I heard multiple voices when the Legion Spore spoke, why it sounded like a discordant chorus. If everyone was trying to think at once, with so many voices crying in pain…

The tablet shook in my fingers.

I could do this. I could read a simple research paper without freaking out because of some stupid thoughts in my head.

For mobility, the Legion Spore flies by utilizing a combination of air and fire elementals who provide the upper membrane with hot gas. In order to conserve space, the air sacs may be deflated while inside a hangar. The hull of the ship, including the membrane, is formed from the bodies of shapeshifters.

I stared at the words. I’d seen all of this before. Not personally, but I’d seen what Lady Winters showed me in the memory attacks. The shapeshifters had been tied to the outer steel frame, a grid of interlinked metal that created the skeleton of the hull. The other beasties and humans were forced to kneel inside a tower of cages. Though the structure was metal, it was mostly empty space and not much bigger than a cargo-hold. Wires ran around their skulls and across their bodies, and into glass tubes between them…

Cold sweat poured down my back.

Dear Community, how could anyone have supported this project?

The vessel is mostly organic, and entirely self-sustaining. Like the Portuguese Man O’ War that it was designed to resemble, the Legion Spore ensnares its prey with long tentacles, targeting organic matter and devouring it through the use of various acidic agents. This may prove doubly useful in battle, as the Legion Spore can feed itself while targeting enemy combatants.

The Legion Spore ate people?

The room wavered in the corners of my vision. My stomach revolted. I closed my eyes and took quick, shallow breaths. I needed a drink of water—

I needed to get through this document first. This was a short one. The more I understood, the better off I’d be against the Legion Spore next time.

Even if the ship did eat its enemies.

Once its prey is devoured, the nutrients go to the Legion Spore’s nutrient tanks. These tanks feed into the hull of the ship, which mimics the flesh and muscle of various warm-blooded creatures—

The fleshy hull stretched out before me, veins pulsing underneath its skin. A sour odor drifted to my nose, but when I tried to wipe it away, a thin tentacle caught my hand.

Thud-thump.

A heart was beating.

Thud-thump. Thud-thump. Thud-thump.

My heart pounded, each thump growing louder as other beating hearts joined in.

A column of thinly covered muscle rose above me as the tentacle dragged me toward a seething, bleeding organ. I couldn’t let it take me! I yanked my hand from the tentacle and fled to a small door at the end of the vessel. A sticky hand grabbed my ankle. I careened to the ground. Airy whispers filled my head, vying for attention. My eyes were dry from the heat of the ship. I was on the top level, next to the air sac. Hot air swirled above me. Their murmurs tickled my ear.

We are legion…

No—I couldn’t let it catch me—couldn’t let it trick me into revealing the location of the Coalition. I pounded on its walls. I had to get out—

Needless to say, Jenna is ready to put a stop to the memory seeds’ attacks, and much of Fractured Skies revolves around her searching for a solution to the problem of those seeds.

Eventually we get to Starless Night, where, without giving too many spoiler, Jenna discovers that the memory seed is a lot more involved than she first thought, and considerably more dangerous. Because, what might happen if a telepath leaves more of themselves in a seed than anyone realizes?

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Join Jenna’s fight with memory seeds in the Distant Horizon series!