Ask Luna #165

From: Alicia W.

Hey, Luna!

How’s things?

As Alex has told us, mist cloaks block magical senses and even hide the wearer from mundane senses so long as they’re not wearing it while walking around London in broad daylight. But, despite that, Rachel looked right at Alex several times while he was wearing his mist cloak (RIP).

So, how does she do that? In Chosen, Shireen told Alex that it was because they traveled to Elsewhere together as apprentices, but there’s gotta be more to it than that. I listened to Fated again recently, and what Rachel said to Alex at the top of the Canary Wharf tower really stuck out:

“You’ve had the dreams, haven’t you? I can see them. You haven’t escaped, no one does. It always comes back. I’m the only one who can break it.”

Wait, what? Rachel can see Alex’s dreams? Is she really seeing them or is that just crazy talk?

Shireen always seems to know what’s going on with Alex. She knew what he talked about with Helikaon and Morden even though those were private conversations. Later on, she helped Alex walk through some of Rachel’s memories. I always figured that’s because she has mad skills with Elsewhere.

But what if it’s because Shireen has been taking *Rachel* on tours through Alex’s dreams and memories like she did for Alex?? If that’s true, Rachel & Shireen could have been doing that for years without Alex even realizing it. Not only would that be really f-ing scary (and creepy), it would also explain how Shireen knows so damn much & how Rachel can zero in on Alex like a laser-guided missile.

Okay, Okay. So, maybe I’m overthinking it. If Shireen hasn’t opened up an “Alex Tours” franchise & isn’t leading Rachel on walking tours through Alex’s head, then it’s gotta be that jinn helping her, right?

Have you and Alex ever talked about that? You guys gotta have a theory. I’m dying to know.

Thank you for everything you do! You’re the best!

Alicia

I always figured that it was either the jinn or some sort of weird Elsewhere connection. Alex said that he and the other apprentices visited Elsewhere a few times together, so maybe something happened there?

Or maybe it’s something else. This kind of thing happens a lot, honestly. Every mage can do stuff you don’t know they can do. Nearly all of them can do at least one thing that their magic type isn’t supposed to be able to do. And pretty often it turns out that they can do things you didn’t even know were possible.

From: Lisa

1. Do you know how Landis is so good with his defensive magic since fire mages seem to be offensive oriented? Has Vari picked up any tips and increased his defenses compared to the average fire mage?

2. Is there a Light Council version of Interpol or like in the real world do they fight over who has jurisdiction?

1. He’s just really, really good. It’s what happens when you keep on practising and learning to get better and keep working on it for years and years and years. You find workarounds to things that are supposed to be roadblocks. Vari’s gotten a lot better at defensive magic since Landis started training him.

2. There are supposed to be departments in the Light Council for that, but from how Vari talks, they don’t seem to do a very good job.

From: Lincoln

Hey Luna I hope you aren’t too annoyed with some of the questions you have limited knowledge about. I think the main reason people are asking you stuff about the Council/Dark Mage politics and mage hybrids is the same reason why people hoard knowledge in general, they like to learn new things and add on to it. Plus I think people are trying to create a bigger Alex Verus Reddit and Wiki and questions like those increase the articles and exposure for the series. Hopefully these questions will dial down know but I think those are the primary reasons why.

But here’s a fun question does Hermes care if also called him Mercury the Roman name of the Trickster god? I think you could get away with it since you follow a similar pattern with your name.

Yeah, I think I get frustrated because a lot of these questions feel like people asking for a crib sheet. They want to know the One True Set Of Rules about how magic works, or the Definite Final Answer to what Richard and Morden were thinking when they did whatever-it-was five years back.

And the problem is, that way of looking at things just seems to work really badly. You never know the whole story about how something works, and you never know exactly what was going on in someone’s head. When you think you do – when you decide you know everything and you can stop listening – well, from what I’ve seen, that’s when you screw up really badly. Seen other people do it, done it myself. The lessons I’ve learned have been more like: keep your eyes open, never think you know everything, learn the big things by putting together lots of small things. I try and tell people that. Never sure how much they listen.

Oh, and I’ve never tried calling Hermes that. Doubt he’d answer to it. I don’t think he cares much about Roman gods.

From: Jason

I recently was reminded that Verus really has a problem with unicorns when my friend read Fated. Do you think we’ll get to see one in the series, or at least learn what the story is?

He just says that the things are little *censoreds*. Aren’t many of them left, so I doubt we’ll ever run into one.

From: Kevin

Hey Luna I just have a few follow up questions.

1. So I am feeling very obtuse with the abilities that elemental/life hybrids are supposed to have since they appear to be obvious to everyone else except me. Then I remembered Vihaela and while I thought that was because death and life magic were interconnected death magic is thought to be a form of elemental magic. My question is would other life/elemental hybrid magic work like her magic, with the self-healing and enhanced energy attacks? Sorry if this was obvious I didn’t think energy based magic would work with biological ones if that makes sense.

2. Regarding Rachel and her jinn related abilities is there an obvious example of abilities or stuff she can pull off that more powerful mages can’t? Sorry again if this is another obvious one but I don’t remember Deleo doing anything else then being a powerful elemental mage and acting crazy. Is it more of being in the right place right time and seeing things other mages can’t, or something else?

1. So this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about two questions up. With weird esoteric stuff like that, I’m not going to be thinking about what they’re supposed to do. I’d be watching to see what they CAN do. And the next one I run into might be different. Do you see what I mean?

Sigh. Maybe I just suck at explaining things.

2. Same again. It feels like you want me to point you at one very specific thing and tell you “All other mages ABSOLUTELY CANNOT DO THIS THING EVER, but Deleo can, this is The One Big Difference, now you have the answers and can stop thinking about it”. And it just . . . doesn’t work that way. What it means is that she’s more dangerous. If there’s something that would stop another mage, or beat them in a fight, it’s less likely to work on her, because she’ll find some way to go around it or fight through it. Now how much of that is having a jinn and how much of it is having Harvested someone and how much of it is just being batshit crazy? I dunno. But if you want to go up against these sorts of people, it’s a really bad idea to ever think you know everything about what they can do.

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