In the past, S. had only seemed to open the book with the amulet active, that is when she was Sebastien.
Not this chapter.
Does this mean Lacer is right?
Siobhan doesn’t even seem to realize that she tested the theory … but did she do it on purpose?
I thought this as well, but others on Patreon told me she opened it in her own body. I don’t know if that’s correct - I wasn’t able to find it when I went back through recent chapters.
Perhaps someone else with a better memory or who has done a recent re-read would be able to confirm?
On a side note, I want her to respond to Lacer with aggression. 
I think questioning Lacer’s trustworthiness and asking him why he’s so interested in controlling another grown adult might be the way to go.
I’m not excluding the possibility of her being related to Myrrdin but for me the amulet is the key, and possessing it is what allow her to pass the identity check
Or maybe it’s the fact that she’s used it and it left some kind of mark the book recognizes or it can recognize her Will if that’s even possible.
Also now she’s a bit in an awkward situation since Lacer thinks she’s using Sebastien to pass the identity check of the books… it wasn’t a lie since she is Sebastien but that’s definitely not helping her right now.
What I love about this is that it seems to kind of smack her in the face; oh, Sebastien explained that he didn’t want to say, but Siobhan hasn’t and its like she forgot that she hadn’t. What was the plan for this question?
I am having enormous fun imagining her response:
I am using Sebastien to get to you and the University.
Sebastien is like my agent.
Nothing bad. Don’t worry.
I have made a bargain with Sebastien and Lord Stag.
Sebastien helps me with the book.
Sebastien is everything to me.
She is the most important person in my life.
I keep imagining if Siobhan does a gender thing accidentally, and then it becomes a question because Sebastien wore the dress after all, but then Lacer would be entirely unbothered by the “she” part and go straight into Daddeus mode: “My daughter/apprentice is dating a blood-sorcerer … where’s my shotgun?”
See, this is something I could definitely see happening. Because it is absolutely true that Siobhan will keep Sebastian safe at all costs, literally no sort of divination will say otherwise.
I have re-read the chapters relating to her opening the book and she is always wearing the amulet. I think there have only been maybe 2 or 3 times that she has taken it off, and never when reviewing the book. I want to know, can she open it in her own body when NOT wearing the amulet. Can Sebastian open it when not wearing the amulet. If I were her, I would have tested that right away. I think its the amulet. Without it, she would be just as helpless to open the books as anyone else.
She’s opened them in both bodies. Without the amulet? No, I can’t think of a time she’s read the books without the amulet.
Lacer notes that they got past the ID check relatively quickly, however, so it wouldn’t necessarily be hopeless without the amulet.
But there is also the very first time: she found and activated the spacial array to get the amulet. We don’t know if there was a magical protection/lock there - shouldn’t there have been?
Otherwise it’s like putting the front door key under the welcome mat.
This is actually an interesting point. WHY did Myrrdin make an amulet that would work as a key? It implies he wanted other people to look at his work. Or maybe his consciousness transfer work was real, and he needed another body to be recognized by the book.
Its another mystery. I cant wait till Siobhan reads Olivers book.
Me either! What I think is entirely possible: they can’t make cerelium from beast cores using instructions found in that book, because Myrdin
didn’t write it down!
I have not been reading the last few chapters,
I don’t have time to rush over and figure out what I’m missing now
I think it’s because she’s Null, rather than because she’s descended from Myrddin.
Oliver is explicitly a Null, and we’ve seen him pass through a similar identity check when he followed Lord Morrow through that warehouse ward. And it’s explicitly stated that Nulls who can cast magic existed, and Thaddeus thinks the Naughts are like that.
Plus I think there’s evidence throughout the story that she’s mildly resistant to some kinds of magic / that she is a Null who can cast magic. From her somewhat unlikely ability to lie / tell the truth under truth compulsions, to her facility with casting with other parts of her body. She even passed through a similar ward herself, on the way to look at Myrddin’s books with Thaddeus and Kiernan.
I don’t think she’s a Null: magic affects her like anyone else (there’s plenty of evidences throughout the story) and potions works fine for her while they don’t for Oliver.
And if she really was a Null, do you think Lacer would have missed it when casting spells on Sebastien ? Or Liza ?
It does make me wonder how Gera sees Oliver though, I don’t remember reading anything about that.
I know this is a little off topic, but, do we think that Nulls can be used like conduits?
I don’t think they should be able to, magic doesn’t like to work with them, so no?
A normal mage can use their own skin
I don’t think Nulls are supposed to be entirely immune to magic. Potions have been shown to work on Oliver, they’re just less effective. And smiliarly he’s been affected by concussive blasts, calming spells, etc. I think being a Null just means you lie somewhere on the gradient between ‘slightly resistant’ and ‘fully immune’ whereas normal people don’t.
And if Thaddeus’ inspections of her could detect something like that, I think it’s possible that the divination diverting ward would obscure the issue. Everyone already expects diagnostic spells to be harder to cast on her.
Idk, I don’t think the hints at her having some traits of a Null have been less subtle than those for Oliver in the first book or two.
What’s hinting at her being a Null for you then ?
Because spells and potions work fine on her, like if she was a Null her anti divination ward wouldn’t work well, and she’s been examined by a lot of people when she was traveling with her father, she’s been healed, put to sleep, stunned, …
I am taking as an assumption that she’s a Null, and using what affects her to define the bounds of what a Null can be.
The pure Naught bloodline was too good for me, supposedly. But all it did was keep ‘er alive a little longer after she lost Paimon.
Naught. Perhaps a variant on “Null?” He had heard rumors, of course, about those who were born with the traits of a Null, yet still able to cast magic. How they could resist the madness that came with casting through their own flesh and blood.
Or, perhaps the Blood Emperor’s experiments had not been so fruitless, after all. This changed everything.
Raaz Kalvidasan, Siobhan Naught’s adopted grandfather, may have had some connection to the Third Empire’s cohort
I guess you can suppose Lacer is wrong here? But the thing about Miakoda, and the later reference to the Blood Emperor’s experiments being successful + Raaz’s origins, suggests pretty strongly that he’s not. She is a Naught, i.e. a Null that can cast magic.
The question then is what being a Null gets you. You seem to be assuming that it makes you immune / resistant to healing, stunning, etc. I am not assuming that.
I think they’re called Nulls primarily because they can’t cast magic, not because they’re immune to it:
Even Nulls, who by some anomaly of genetics could not cast magic at all,
I think we agree Oliver is a Null.
Magic was even in the carpet beneath his feet, an illusion spell mimicking new grass. It was hard not to consider his own differences in a place like this.
What affects Oliver?
The healing potion spread its magic throughout Oliver’s chest, but, despite its potency and commensurate price, he could feel it petering out against his natural resistance before it made it much further. One of the many curses of his bloodline.
In a blur of confusion, Oliver belatedly attempted to leap up and over the foggy force and wave of wooden shrapnel. The blast clipped his shins painfully, sending him twisting through the air.
Lord Morrow stared at him in surprise, looking back at the intact ward. “B-but that’s impossible!” Obviously, he had assumed that the ward, keyed physically to him, would keep Oliver out. If it were someone else, perhaps it would have.
Those quotes clarify a bit about what a Null can and can’t do: they are resistant to some potions, not noticeably resistant to battle spells, and are able to walk through some wards (clearly not all, or Oliver would have done that in the first place). At Knave Knoll he is also affected by a calming spell and the air witch’s spells. Nulls are not immune to all magic. They are not even, seemingly, resistant to all magic.
There’s a more explicit explanation in a more recent chapter:
Nulls were at a disadvantage in many ways, being entirely unable to do magic, but they had a few specific advantages. Because of the way that magic struggled to affect them, they were useful in combating Aberrants and countering magic that lacked physical components.
Of course, the Architects might outfit them with artifacts and use them as a fighting force, but the problem with the most common battle spells was that they caused harm by affecting the environment. Oliver was resistant to magical effects, both good and bad. But he was just as likely to get roasted by a fireball or have his organs ruptured by a concussive blast as anyone else.
So Nulls are resistant only to direct effects of magic. And they are only resistant, not immune.
Siobhan clearly shows some of the other Null traits:
She slowed as she was forced to push through the magical resistance around the doorway. Finally, she slipped past as if the barrier were a thick, invisible soap bubble that snapped back into place behind her. Kiernan let out a strangled sound from behind her.
She is mysteriously the only one not rendered unconscious by the Pendragon corps’ stunning mine.
She is the only one to resist Lacer’s conch shell evacuation spell without help.
She is able to mostly ignore her vow to the Red Guard regarding the Newton incident, and tell Damien and Oliver about it.
In a more recent Patreon chapter, she was the only one mysteriously unaffected by Lacer’s powerful spell.
I think there are usually too many confounding factors to say whether she’s resistant to potions or battle spells. There’s some evidence in that direction:
The potion had been too weak, or she’d sustained too many injuries, to fix everything. She could feel it tugging futilely at her abdomen
Plus I am assuming by default that there is a gradient of Null bloodline strength, and that some might have stronger or weaker powers. So Siobhan e.g. not being resistant to potions in exactly the same magnitude as Oliver isn’t surprising to me.
But I think being a Null is subtle, unless you fully can’t cast magic. The divination diverting ward is probably making it even harder to detect, since it offers an expected reason why people meet strange resistance trying to target her with a lot of spells. Plus, being a magic-casting Null is supposed to be impossible. I think people would go to a variety of more likely conclusions first.
Anyway, all of the above together makes it pretty clear to me.
That’s her grandfather’s amulet protecting her.
Vows can be subverted, as Lacer has showed. And it only restricts her from talking to people without prior knowledge of in incident. And both knew about it.
She also swore as Sebastien which isn’t her real name.
She wasn’t the only one, and it’s because she has a really strong Will.
She did something to protect herself that the other didn’t and the light refinement spell is also supposed to reinforce her mental defense, actively casting all the time might also help since it means her Will is always at least partly focused.
She was indeed really badly injured here and it did heal her quite a lot.
And she keep using potions without issues, even her own with simple components.
2 Things:
He pushed through the doorway himself, and as soon as Thaddeus met his gaze, pointed urgently and silently to the doorway.
And she had been invited in the room previously too as Sebastien the week prior, so it might be why she was able to pass there. But the goal was to get her in so it might also be that the ward did not mark her as someone new.
As for Oliver yes that’s pretty clear, it’s even mentioned that his sister is one.
I think the question is not whether she is a Null, but what, exactly, the Naught Bloodline lets her do that may be special.
Is it the dual casting (or is that a side effect of the aberrant) or a particular immunity from the madness caused by casting through your own flesh, or is it actually the ability to use a conduit touching any part of her body?
Or, is some of this Myrdin bloodline, or the amulet, or an attribute of the People?
She may have some immunity from direct magic, but I don’t think she does; grandfather cast the blood magic mirroring spell on her as a child. If she was really like a full Null, I strongly suspect that shouldn’t work, but but could be that Nulls have a different issue entirely. Maybe the “ground out” magical effects, so they break magic around them, not necessarily be immune to it.
Or is the Naught something else entirely: like a program for Myrddin or the Blood Emperor to go body hopping?
The one thing the Naught bloodline is noted to have accomplished is that it kept Miakoda alive longer for a time after her initial break event. It seems to have been at very least several days of her obsessively casting through her own flesh if not weeks.
If casting through flesh lets the spell effects bleed into that flesh in a runaway feedback loop that changes someone forever and inevitably makes someone an aberrant, and the Naught bloodline seems to drastically slow down that feedback loop, then I’m inclined to believe that you can influence them throughout the process and get a sort of build-your-own-aberrant kit, and that that is morbidly the whole point of the bloodline.
“It’s why Kal didn’t want her marrying me, isn’t it?” Naught said with a shrug. “The pure Naught bloodline was too good for me, supposedly. But all it did was keep ‘er alive a little longer after she lost Paimon. It couldn’t save her from the sickness in her head. She just kept casting, even when she didn’t need to, even when she knew what it would do to her, just for the pleasure of it. She didn’t care about me or little Siobhan anymore, only the magic. I didn’t see ‘er when she died. Kal said it was a mercy. I wouldna’ recognize ‘er corpse, and…”
and
The mirror, a rectangle taller than it was wide, was framed in smoldering brimstone, carved in the shape of twisted and elongated limbs, with disjointed fingers poking out here, a knee bent backwards there at the corner, and horribly mangled human feet at the bottom, as if they had been crushed under the monstrous weight of the mirror.
…Finally, the smoldering brimstone face at the top of the mirror came into view, bound into the frame.
Siobhan tried not to recognize it.
That, to me, is probably the same unrecognizable body that Kal shaped to purpose.