Speculate. Discuss. 
Well, I did not have experiencing a ravenâs dream in my speculations thatâs for sure.
But I knew something about the amulet was bound to come out in one of the universityâs books !
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Oh no, I hope no âAre you a decendant of Myrddinâs sexy statue/Myrddinâs flesh magic?â comes up
I would bluescreen so hard if I saw that.
Like how the hell does Siobhan explain that away? How does she explain that to herself?
I mean, you could presume that Myrddin had a crush who he was imitating and that Sebastien is a descendant of that crush? That would also back up Sebastienâs book opening ability, if Myrddin designed the books to open for anyone descended from some he really liked.
Do we know for sure what Myrddin looked like?
Perhaps the transmuted body looks like Myrddin and the explanation could be that Sebastien is a (blood-magic enforced?) descendant like Thaddeus seems inclined to believe.
I find the random food recipes suspicious. Did he hide his true results in them? Putting my tinfoil hat on, the universe is a cookie and and the chewy candy is the key to the magic of instant travel. Reasoning: universe expansion model can be visualized with baking cookies + crumbling + magical super conducting materials used right afterwards + language related to both special and general relativity in this chapter.
To make my tinfoil hat taller: in a previous chapter, Myrddin described a hot chocolate recipe in the context of teleportation and taking a trip to the land of dreams/? spirit realm. The best cookies are chocolate cookies, Myrddin correctly said hot chocolate is delicious, and chocolate being the key word encoding the solution for breaking the limitations of spacetime is fun. Also, since Myrddin talks about a scar that is not healing in a comment that seems to have been added at a later point, the initial âitâ could be a wormhole/scar in the land-of-dreamsâ spacetime that causes the black wastes, and Myrddin managed to find it and learn the ârecipeâ for the dark chocolate. The other scar in the lands-of-dream/reality could have been created by one of Myrddinâs teleportation experiments where the fabric did not quite recover as expected.
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If I were Siobahn, Iâd be like inventively deceptive here.
Imply that Myrddin used that body/form for multiple distinct things in life, but towards the end, tried to fully transfer his consciousness to that body (age reasons/experimentation) and well semi-failed as his memories didnât really transfer properly.
Basically imply that Sebastian is Myrddin but with his mind well scrambled and loss of his memories. Myrddin insight, his personality but not memories. Itâs so scandalous that it automatically makes the secrecy make sense, but also limits the way Lacer would actually change his relationship to Sebastian. He is still âjustâ a promising young thaumaturge who needs to nurtured and protected.
Realistically Siobahn will be vague as fuck,and probably accidentally imply something similar.
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âDoes that look like Sebastien to you?â
âHmmmm, perhaps,â she says noncommittally, raising an eyebrow and shooting a look at Kiernan before glaring at Thaddeus.
What the hell, Lacer? Donât just ask that in front of other people. Are you trying to let Sebastienâs secret out of the bag?
Rude, tbh.
But yay, weâre finally getting a clue about Sebastienâs body!
Also, lol at the sexy statue bit. And the fermentation jar. I wonder if Myrddin made it because he took the widow up on her offer, hmmm? Or did he make the jar in order to ward off further advances?
Iâm amazed at how quickly Siobhan managed to implement the ping - very convenient - but I wonder at her dream of ravenâs flight. It leaves me uneasy. She had undone the binding between herself and the bird at that time. Where is her passenger? Has it found a way to jump to the raven? After all, a binding is a sympathetic connection and anything connected to her - but isnât her - is not technically covered by grandfatherâs spell.
On the one hand, great for her not to have the passenger anymore.
On the other, DANGER, DANGER, DANGER, terrifyingly sentient and tricky aberration loose in Gilbratha!!! There was a reason her grandfather had no choice but to trap it inside her!
Aaaaaaaah, I canât wait to see what happens in the chapters to come!
There is no way in hell Siobhan should suggest anything of the kind. She should go with the âHow would I know?â line if asked about what Myrddin did with the body.
Trying to come up with explanations just makes her look guilty and draws suspicion. Shrugging and moving on is the best thing for her here.
(After all, we donât know what will be revealed in Myrddinâs journals! Imagine making up a lie and being contradicted on the very next page! It would be quite embarrassing!)
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Okay, wild speculation time! Not about whatâs actually true, but what Lacer will speculate this time. Siobhan will play it off the only way she can: âthe resemblance is striking, odd coincidence that.â Itâll work because the truth is just too wild for Lacer to pull out of his hat, but letâs face it Siobhan is not actually that great of a liar. Sheâs mostly gotten by so far by taking refuge in audacity. So sheâll probably fail to fully conceal that she doesnât truly think itâs a coincidence.
The actual truth is still several large leaps from where Lacer is though. So instead heâll take her flubs as possible evidence toward the theory that the Raven Queen really is an imprisoned mind that knew Myrddin and that Sebastien is the spitting image of someone they both knew and had affection for. Bam! Now Lacer thinks the real reason she offered Sebastien her âboonâ was lingering attachments to someone who has long since passed and he gets lost in wild speculation about who the historical Sebastien was.
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Since Stef created the hot chocolate recipe, would that mean that she has magic in real life? 
Weâre on to you, Sorceress @Stef!
Though, this also makes me wonder, with the right spell and the right ingredients, would it be possible to do alchemy that was also baked goods? There has to be some overlap, right? And, if so, with his obsessions with sweet treats, Myrddin might be the one to combine the two.
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Nah the best thing about such a lie is that it is unfalsifiable but fits so perfectly with what Lacer knows that it would work really well at concealing the actual truth
She would explicitly say that he used that form for multiple purposes in life but at the very end, she would imply Myrddian failed/semi succeeded at a conciousness transfer. That cant be falsified because Oliver has the last book, moreover final experiments that end your effective existence dont get recorded by definition
Myrddin recording something about an amulet transforming himself in this scenario doesnt falsify Siobahns lie, rather its just one of the things that Myrddin did with that form before his final experiment. An interesting prologue to disastrous end
Haha yeah Stef what do you have to say? Is there a secret in the hot chocolate recipe?
The alchemical foods idea reminds of the Wandering Innâs wondrous fare: Myrddin == Erin Solstice (reincarnated instead of isekaiâd this time)
It might be more about the locations rather than the ingredients themselves. Though if the ingredients are the key it would be so cool!
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That recipe is entirely magical and bewitchingly delicious - even when made without the Cloud Sheepâs milk. Have you tried it yet, @Keid? 
And yes, I believe itâs entirely possible for a thaumaturge to bake magical goods, as weâve seen from Sebastien time at the Glasshopper. And, I suppose even a perfectly normal human can bake âspecial browniesâ with a stove and an oven, although that might not be exactly what youâre thinking.
Here is a picture of it, you all can tell me what you see.
All I can add is that Myrddinâs chocolate chip cookie recipe is off the freaking rails, and more addictive than beamshell.
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Curious if anyone here has anyone read âBook of Nightâ by Holly Black.
Its also about a girl that steals a book and if I remember right she is also mentored by a con artist guy.
I read it towards the beginning of this year. It has a magic system where people use awakened shadows to cast magic. Not to spoil the book but people in that series assume that an awakened separated shadows are automatically evil / dangerous. One of the conclusions of the book is that not all awakened separated shadows are evil.
Kind of reminds me of the aberrants in this story. Maybe her bound shadow isnât as evil as she thinks. Dangerous but not necessarily her enemy.
I kind of get the sense that when most aberrants come into the world they are out of control. But maybe over time they can stabilize themselves. Becoming more aware and in control of their power.
No, Iâm pretty sure the thing in her head is evil - sheâs able to sense what itâs thinking and she could feel it lying to her and itâs desire to consume her and take her body for itself.
If you go back to the chapter where she was confronted by the red guard and then lost control of her shadow you can find the details.
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If itâs an Aberrant, even if it were friendly toward her, its effects could be devastating toward others. Evil in this context may be tricky; amoral aberrants that just want to propagate an effect may not be âevilâ. But that doesnât mean that you can let them achieve their goals.
I hold out hope that it is not actually an aberrant in the usual broken-sorcerer sense. It could be the consciousness of someone - perhaps even partly Siobhanâs consciousness.
There is a possibility here that Siobhan herself had a break event, and the thing in her mind is under control because of something Grandfather did to prevent the effect from promulgation.
Hannah. I feel like I must have a very different view of that chapter.
Quote from 201 where the shadow disconnects.
It didnât want to eat her, literally. It just wanted to kill her and use her corpse for its own purposes. Metaphorically. Maybe not her physical corpse. But something like that.
To me that reads that sheâs not really clear on what the shadow is feeling. it didnât want to eat her and it âmetaphoricallyâ wanted to kill her and take her corpse. Iâm not even sure what that means in a metaphorical sense.
Also the shadows actions in that chapter are totally protecting s. from the red guard. Telling her to run away.
JKlarinet. Iâve always had the thought that all Aberrant are like a screaming new born. In the sense that they have no control of their new power and it goes wild. I think some Aberrant can stabilize and become conscious. They can gain control over their power and the urge to propagate their effect. Maybe even regain some of the person that they were before they broke. They all start as a amoral being that wants to propagate its effect but maybe some can transition past that stage. Become a being with a moral conscious in control of their power.
I donât want to spoil the bonus content. The bonus chapter Codename: Moonsable gave me the sense that Aberrant are more then a wild break of magic forever running out of control. Havenât we also heard in the story of a couple Aberrants that the red guard have named / made deals with and isnât actively trying to capture them?
I think that Aberrants have inherent desire to spread their effect but I think there are Aberrants that can hold themselves back from acting purely on that desire.
Poeâs thoughts in my fan fic are my personal speculation on aberrants; the spell is still trying to warp the world to match the sorcererâs desire, even after the sorcerer can no longer end the effect. Moonsable is interesting because she broke in such a way that she wanted to be adored in a specific condition.
I do think that Lacer wants to do something like determine if one could âbreakâ and make the spell promulgate more of the self onto the world; i.e. could you cast a spell that makes your will on the world a reality with you in it, but the aberrant you can simply warp reality without any spell array at all? Cast a spell of self on the self and becoming more of oneself?
Those types of aberrants would be thinking creatures, and very dangerous. A spell to promulgate a their consciousness forever onto reality, and therefore immortal and unbeatable by magic.
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I mean, thereâs no reason that that necessarily has to make it evil. Even if it isnât the rightful owner of her body (and I feel like there are potential reasons to think that it is), imagine that you are imprisoned, without any control or agency, and forced to watch the life of someoneâs body as a passenger for around a decade.
Are you telling me that this experience wouldnât give you a strong desire to take control of the body and live your own life? That watching all of this from the back seat wouldnât give you time to stew on every decision and dwell on every single one that you feel like you wouldâve made differently until you had a deep seated desire to control the body, regardless of whether or not you would act on it? I certainly would, and given this imprisonment I would also absolutely lie and posture for any chance at improving things to give me agency
Amber seems to be acting with much more complexity than any aberrant would typically be capable of, and has not yet even apparently sought to propagate any aberrant effect. Even when she had direct access to significant reserves of power, she didnât use it to propagate an effect, and instead used it to rescue Siobhanâs body.
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