Chapter 276 Weekly Discussion - "The First Crack"

I anticipate shocked, excited, and maybe confused screaming.

Discussion welcome, as always. :slight_smile:

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Grandfather begging her to live is everything.

Confirmation that bits of both Claudio and Miakoda are in her head is good fodder for the theory mill.

I reread this chapter so many times during the typo hunt that I feel relatively calm now, but oh god, the screams when I first read it would have exceeded your wildest dreams :joy:

By the by, there’s a tab at the start of the paragraph:

Grandfather’s voice came from somewhere nearby. “Please, please,” he said, gasping and on the edge of tears. This seemed very strange and out of character for him, and Siobhan deduced that she must still be dreaming.

Brava, Azalea, it was a masterful chapter.

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I am so shocked and excited indeed!!

Are we finally gonna discover what’s up with Siobhan’s split-will power? Have we been seeing the POV of something that is not Siobhan all along?

If Siobhan’s power is like an ability to generate a copy of her mind, why is the copy missing the memories that Raaz was in the process of removing? My theory is Siobhan’s body is now a suitable vessel for beings to manifest from the spirit realm with the restriction that once they enter they become a reflection of whatever the state of Siobhan was at that time (combination of Claudio’s power to tether plus Miakoda’s power to reflect Siobhan’s mind into them?)

Raaz killed everyone else while she was asleep, didn’t he?

Now, what killed Raaz? Is the maybe-not-Siobhan going to attack him?

There’s a lot here and it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting.

Firstly, it’s Claudio and Miakoda. That’s fascinating. So what we have in the current day is them merged together? Perhaps there is some space for reasoning with them then. I doubt Claudio by himself would have been been convinced by anything Siobhan could offer him.

Also, is the mirror still around? Are there also 2 moms now?

It’s interesting how both grandfather and Lacer were only able to affect a single part of Siobhan while messing with her brain. Are the others not in her physical body at all then, but in the Spirit Realm?

I wonder what is going to kill grandfather with the aberrants already sealed. Perhaps it’s a similiar kind of thing as with Lacer’s attempt at erasing her memories – he’s only managed to wipe them from a single will and the seal will break immediately when Siobhan fully wakes, forcing grandfather to improvise the spell and push even harder. Probably not, given that the POV Siobhan doesn’t remember and I imagine the one that’s being operated on wouldn’t either.

Maybe the problem is that they’re too distinct? Two individual Siobhans as opposed to a single Siobhan with multiple wills like we have later? We’ve never seen one will be active while the other is unconscious. It brings to mind the story of Myrddin and his reflection with them fighting for control of his body.

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These cliffhangers hit hard. I have a lot of feelings mixing in me when reading this chapter.

1 wow. We are long away from the chapters where “this is a class about how waves and illusions work”.

2 I feel like a drug addict who needs the next hit. (Even though we are already double dose on the good stuff :D)

3 I really should reread the story… (but I wait till the end of the book)

4 I can’t find the words… It is rare to see that things make sense but also are like :open_mouth:

5 who is her grandfather really? I feel like it is a big deal that she saved his life.

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It seems quite possible that her grandfather is from beyond the known lands which is why he knows people there might be able to help her. Others have suggested previously that Siobhan “falsely” believing the Blood Emperor disappeared instead of “correctly” believing he was assassinated was what her grandfather taught her and is evidence he was part of the empire, which came from the unknown lands. Certainly a place Siobhan might have to flee to if she can’t stay in Gilbratha.

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Raz has dried blood under his nostrils. I wonder if he has will strain and that this is his cause of death.

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It’s interesting that her will split both times she had her memory altered, not just from having an aberrant in her mind. I wonder if the aberrant is what caused her to have a weirdly forceful/clear will and good memory. Maybe her lack of muscle memory is due to the seizure somehow?

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To be honest, when you’re in the spirit realm you start to…dissipate, in a way.

She was very young, unprotected, and she was thrown in there three times. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the reason for her lack of coordination.

Though I will once again point out that she definitely has some kind of muscle memory considering she doesn’t have to consciously think about breathing, using utensils, writing, she can climb walls, etc. It is not completely unheard of to semi collapse when you’re thinking very hard and are panicking. And you don’t have to be magically damaged to suck at dodging :stuck_out_tongue:

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The blooming dynamic very much seemed akin to those conceptual spaces. I would suspect Siobahn achieved in a way what both Claudio was trying to do in tapping into the concepts of that far part of the spirit realm.

I wonder if “touch” is just a concept with enough ideation behind it to be a stable form of connection and if so it forms enough of a connection that one is considered close enough to part of Claudio to be stabilized by his aberrant connection manifestation. Similar logic may be had for Siobahn and her mother both by a part of the mirror entering her and her touching it to go through and jump back. Similar aspects of connectivity and affiliation resulting in shifts but in principle the shift is really just a exchange of information creating a shared paradigm of being. Ie. By touching one becomes part of a system of interaction and on some level in the spirit world that may mean one is considered part and parcel of another, which may relate to both the protection Raaz got, Siobahns split will and why the Redguard use Aberrant components like they do(and why those components can enact their effects stably).

I can see why Raaz did what he did, he wasnt as skilled in delineating information that would imprint onto the spirit world like a Shaman so he chosd all he knew to be of context, but he still failed as a result of not really being skilled in the actualities of such

I suppose this may be the origin of her split will, which may in essence be a result of her mother. A mirror and a reflection of herself tilted inward from all of what made her, her, being pulled and aggregated by Claudios bond. Which makes sense and is interesting, akin to making perhaps a perfect vessel. What delineates ones imprints in the spirit world from the mundane? Or rather if the Will draws on the spirit realm for spells what delineates the imprints left in it to the “realer” actors in the mundane world? One could say informational synchronicity at least in part, for the spirit world is vast and holds symmetries that may alienate one from their shallower existance in the mundane world. And for the other connection, Claudio solved the connection with the absoluteness of his bond, and in how suddenly he did so may have avoided informational degradation, giving a perfect snapshot for Siobahns mother to copy through her door if she helped Siobahn out. And in doing so, leaving a perfect imprint of what it meant to be siobahn in the space in the spirit world. And thus one may end up in a situation where the Will is so closely synchronized across spaces as to have multiplied, a continuity made due to perfect information.

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Okay, this might be a bit of a leap, but does anyone else think that Siobhan’s grandfather might still be alive?

Like, he himself was too deeply associated with what happened and his lingering injuries would be too much of a thread to pull on, so he had to fake his own death and/or implant false memories in Siobhan’s head of his death in order to maintain the seal.

With Claudio mostly dealt with, nothing else seems like a big enough threat to him to legitimately cause his death, or to leave him with a large enough fear of breaking that he kills himself to eliminate the threat that his aberrant poses to the world.

I think he would have chosen a less horrific way for himself to “die” if that were the case. Siobhan remembers him with a hole in his head, bodily fluids leaking out.

Also he probably wouldn’t have allowed her to end up on the streets eating rats. Even if he couldn’t reveal himself, someone as powerful as he would have had little trouble covertly doing something to improve her situation.

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But then again, she did say right after in that flashback, that it wasn’t how it actually went down. S

Can’t wait for the new book!

I mean, a horrific image does seem like one way to keep someone from examining a memory too closely or thinking about it too much. Trauma tends to have its impact on people regardless of whether or not they actually remember it, and offering an explanation for the trauma could even be a benefit to a man who is pragmatic above all else.

If avoiding exposing Siobhan to horrors were truly his priority then he likely wouldn’t’ve been studying her mother’s horrific magical corpse so close to where she slept.

I mean, I think you’re right that something definitely wouldn’t have gone to plan for that to have happened, but it is also notable that she was able to make it to a neighboring town and avoid the Red Guard, which at this point seems somewhat unlikely without his aid.

Things not going to plan does not necessarily mean his death. Maybe he trusted someone he shouldn’t’ve, maybe he gave her money and trusted her to survive on her own, but she got robbed, maybe he just trusted Ennis to be where he said he would be. There are plenty of other ways for things to go off the rails from here.