That and the fact that under her clothes she would also have had a scar the same as Sebastien from her medallion, and he would have seen the holster she wears on her chest, the anklet she uses for casting her shadow - just many things that would have been clues.
I’m also….very interested to see this from Siobhan’s point of view. I reread the chapter and there’s quite a lot:
he quickly followed up with a paralysis spell that had nothing to do with sleep, shadows, or anything else that might be within her area of expertise
So she could have been communicating with the thing in her head and getting increasingly desperate during all this - desperate enough to do something crazy?
He repeated his earlier divinations to ensure she was not somehow near to waking, then retreated to the side room for several restricted components and a potion that would keep her in a coma for the next few hours.
I really wonder how this works with the binding to her sleeper raven active. I know she was tired and it was growing weaker, but even so…
It was a struggle to connect his own memory of that moment to Siobhan’s, as her mind writhed and fought against him like a panicked, rabid animal fighting against the snare. But once he had the thread of the memory, he could follow it to all the pieces that connected to it.
Several times, he was forced to pause for fear of damaging her, as her mind, still strangely agile, began to tear itself apart in her desperation to resist him.
Her struggles were exceptionally powerful, and several times, he almost thought they would cause him to lose control of the spell. If given enough time, she might have even overcome the potion he fed her earlier, well before her system had physically processed it.
Each thought that might otherwise have led to the realization that something was wrong, he bent around the edge of the hole and connected to another mundane thought.
The process was complex, and he was forced to adjust his weaving several times as certain thoughts and memories refused to bind properly to each other.
Even now, Siobhan fought him, though more feebly now that she had forgotten what was happening, who was doing this to her, and why. Her thought web was peculiar—less fluid than most, yet with more connections than normal. Perhaps it would lead to a strange form of creativity based on widespread experience rather than the more typical intuition. It certainly made reconstruction difficult.
But Thaddeus was persistent and meticulous. When he was done, the hole, empty of gleaming strands of memory, was left only with the faint ghostly shimmer and shadow of the underlying parts he could not remove. Otherwise, it was clean work. The wound was patched and would heal fully with time.
One wonders if it’s all her doing the fighting or both her and the creature - and what kind of thoughts he’s been joining to others. But most interestingly….
Finally, Thaddeus cast a spell to create new memories. Many among the Red Guard found this the most difficult, and it was because no two minds were alike. People were prone to noticing when a thought did not sound like their own or when memories felt alien. However, Thaddeus had a way to get around that.
Using one’s own mind against them required fourth order connections and a delicate touch, but given the slightest suggestion and a few nudges, people were incredibly good at filling in the gaps. He believed it was a design flaw in the brain.
This meant he could not definitively and precisely control what she filled in the gap in her memory with, only push her in the right direction and provide key points for her to latch on to. But whatever she created, it would feel natural to her.
Siobhan is a deeply paranoid and suspicious person. What memories will she have filled in? What might she have kept? What might the creature be telling her even now?
She gasped like a corpse risen from the dead, mouth gaping open, chest arched up as her fingers scrabbled at the fabric over her breasts as if to peel everything back until she could tear at her own heart.
This is…deeply concerning. I don’t want to speculate what’s happening here because there’s not enough information and too many options.
Siobhan looked wildly around with wide eyes, settling slowly as she seemed to piece together what had happened. She nodded, and in a hoarse voice, said, “I bear at least half the blame. I cannot believe I thought giving a bit of a scare to Thaddeus Lacer was a good idea. Though whatever you cast, I am surprised you managed to take me down before I could react.” She gave a tight smile and sat up. “This is a bit embarrassing.”
I half suspect she’s just playing along to get out of there and figure out what’s going on in her head.
Once again, I’m desperately yearning for the next chapter. Let me into her head, I want to know what’s going on because her external reactions are usually so different to what’s going on under the surface.
In my darkest and most tinfoil hatty fears, I almost wonder if the creature is currently running the show at the moment.
