Entire Craft Sequence story so far...
We’ve broken down each book separately, giving character introductions, a summary, and some analysis as to how the book fits into the wider series. Check them out here:
However, we know that some people may just need a quick reminder of the plot (though the Hidden Schools is rarely succinct, so ‘quick’ is perhaps not the best word) and have thus created this post which contains the narrative across the first seven books of the series.
Enjoy!
This post necessarily contains spoilers for all books other than Wicked Problems and goes through events chronologically for ease.
The God Wars
In the world of THE DOMAIN, gods are as undeniable as gravity. As diverse as the peoples who worship them, the gods grew hand-in-hand with humanity, developing strength and power through worship, and granting power to their faithful as grace.
Until. A century and a half ago, MAESTRE GERHARDT developed a new form of magic and power: the Craft. Power that had previously been reserved to the gods was now accessible to the people - or at least, to the people with a natural aptitude to harness the Craft and pull power from stars and souls.
The first experiments with the Craft left devastating scars on the world. The gods began to worry. And then they began to fight back. Thus began a century of THE GOD WARS, a series of conflicts that spread country by country, culture by culture, until they engulfed the entire world.
The world broke, a little. Gods fought. Gods died. Believers rose up against anyone who seemed to be able to use the Craft, no matter how much danger they posed. Craftsfolk banded together, and their institutions took off into the sky to become THE HIDDEN SCHOOLS and other flying universities. Craftsfolk developed new ways of using the power of the stars and of the soul, becoming godlike in their own ways. Generations were born, lived, and died in the Wars. Many fled the Old World for the New, only for the Wars to follow them.
DRESEDIEL LEX, ancient Quechal city on the continent of Northern Kath in the New World, was the setting of one of the first major victories for Craftsfolk. The Quechal gods and their holy knights were all but defeated. The forces of the Craft, led by KOPIL, THE KING IN RED met to negotiate peace.
Peace talks failed. The battle restarted. More people died, and the world broke a little more. Ultimately, the King in Red was victorious; TEMOC ALMOTIL, the last Eagle Knight of the Quechal gods, was saved by ELAYNE KEVARIAN, teenage warrior and Craftswoman.
The world went on. Remaining gods signed peace agreements with their Craftsfolk enemies, some of whom were experimenting with immortality and leaving flesh and blood behind to become the first Deathless Kings. The Craft rose as the dominant power in the world, remaking institutions and governments and revolutionising the world until it was nearly unrecognisable from the one that came before.
Our story proper begins back in Dresediel Lex, forty or so years after Liberation.
Last First Snow
Forty years after Liberation, Elayne returns to Dresediel Lex as partner in a Craft firm, to negotiate land rights between The King in Red and investors in the city. This is where our series starts (chronologically) in LAST FIRST SNOW. The deal Elayne has worked on for months is about to be agreed, when she learns Temoc is back in the city, peacefully leading a protest against the new developments in the Skittersill area of the city.
Temoc is now married to MINA ALMOTIL, and they have a young son CALEB ALTEMOC. He has turned away from war after decades lost in the desert. Elayne mediates between Temoc’s people and the King in Red to find a new solution for the Skittersill. The relevant parties come to agreement, meet in Chakal Square to sign a treaty…
And a riot breaks out. Investor TAN BATAC is shot. Wardens - Dresediel Lex’s police force - retaliate against the crowd. A child dies. Wardens and the King in Red refuse to hand over the man who killed the child, and thus the peaceful protest becomes a violent uprising, led by THE MAJOR. The King in Red is happy to fight back. Temoc leaves to be with his family. Elayne attempts to hold the line and keep peace as much as she can.
She can’t succeed. Not against this. Unnatural beasts of Craft are set against leaders of the Skittersill Uprising when they leave the Square to convince Temoc to return. He still has the power of the gods, weakened though it is. He makes the decision to leave his family and return to Chakal Square with CHEL, a protestor from the Skittersill; to protect his son, he carves the sacred scars of the Eagle Knights into Caleb’s skin. Mina finds him, their son bloody and unconscious.
Temoc returns to the Square and Mina desperately tries to get Caleb to a hospital - but she’s being chased by demons. In a terrifying flight and fight, she manages to reach Elayne Kevarian’s hotel room; the demons are dispatched by the Craft, and Caleb taken to hospital.
In the Square, the Major has been mortally wounded and asks Temoc to sacrifice him to the gods, feed them and get more power back. Temoc does so, breaking the last possibility of peace - the King in Red will destroy the Square and the Skittersill Uprising the next day using God Wars weapons. Elayne learns that Tan Batac arranged to have himself shot to prevent the new conditions of the Skittersill deal from coming into effect.
Elayne is forced to promise not to intervene to protect the people of the Skittersill - and a promise with the Craft cannot be broken without breaking your own mind. She finds a loophole, and is able to save much of the Skittersill itself, if not its people.
Gripfire falls from the sky. The King in Red rides the corpse of a dragon into battle. The few remaining gods rise up and make some of the dead, including Chel, into weapons, but they can’t fight against the might of the King in Red. The Skittersill Uprising is brutally quashed.
At the last minute, Elayne finds herself praying - and someone, or something, answers her.
Last First Snow ends with Temoc a fugitive, the King in Red maintaining control, Mina raising Caleb alone, and Elayne leaving. Before she goes, she confides in ZACK, a knowledgeable golem working for Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, about the strange answer to her prayers in Chakal Square. And, finally, Temoc confronts his former colleague ALAXIC, who he learned sent the demons after his wife and son to force him back to battle.
Two Serpents Rise
It’s seventeen years since the Skittersill Uprising. Seventeen years since THE KING IN RED rained down gripfire on protestors in the Skittersill. Seventeen years since TEMOC ALMOTIL abandoned his family to go on the run with his gods, fighting back at the King in Red from the shadows. Seventeen years since CALEB ALTEMOC woke, drugged and scarred and bleeding, with the power to redirect both the Craft and Applied Theology.
In TWO SERPENTS RISE, Caleb is now an adult, working for the King in Red with his best friend TEO BATAN. He plays poker by night, risking soul and sanity, but by day he is a risk manager working in a grey cubicle. He’s floating through life and doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life - except to not follow in his father’s footsteps. Temoc, still on the run, is blamed for any and all attacks in Dresediel Lex, and Caleb has to deal with questioning each and every time. He sees his father when Temoc breaks into his house occasionally, but they have no real relationship.
Someone is poisoning the water of Dresediel Lex with TZIMET, demon-like creatures, and Caleb is called by nightmare to solve the problem. He meets a mysterious cliff runner, MAL KEKAPANIA, and quickly falls in lust with her. He doesn’t include her in his report of the incident - much to Teo’s disgust. She’s innocent, he’s sure of it, and he’s thinking with his dick rather than his head.
RKC is about to merge with Heartstone, led by KAL ALAXIC, an old enemy of the King in Red; Heartstone is naturally concerned about the demons in the water. Caleb is sent to assuage Alaxic’s concerns, and learns that the merger will bring THE TWIN SERPENTS, AQUEL AND ACHAL under the King in Red’s control. The Serpents are ancient, giant creatures that were part of the old Quechal religion - not quite gods, but given the hearts of sacrifice victims to keep them sated and asleep. They slumber beneath the ground in uneasy sleep.
Alaxic requires a new condition to the merger: RKC will keep the Serpents asleep above all other priorities, even Kopil’s own life. RKC agrees.
Meanwhile, Caleb is chasing Mal. He uses the sacred scars his father carved into him as a child to take hold of the Craft that now runs Dresediel Lex and fly as he literally chases her. It’s a thing, let’s move on. More attacks happen across Dresediel Lex; Temoc claims he isn’t to blame but Caleb doesn’t know whether or not to believe him.
At the Heartstone-RKC merger Caleb learns that Mal is a Craftswoman working for Alaxic’s company. He once again chases after her, and they start dating, for a given value of dating.
Seven Leaf Lake, a reservoir that was brought over to RKC through the merger is attacked, and Mal is sent to fix it along with some Wardens and Caleb. They battle against Mal’s old friend and colleague ALLESANDRE OLIM, ultimately killing her and rebuilding the broken station at the reservoir together. That evening, Caleb finds Mal bloodletting as a sacrifice and they argue before they part.
Caleb, of course, goes back to Mal before long. They don’t agree, but they can live with their disagreement on the fundamental matter of religious sacrifice.
As an eclipse approaches, across the city madness takes flight. Nightmares infest the city, dreams of Aquel and Achal, snakes of flame, the end of the world. On the day of the eclipse itself, Caleb decides to show Mal an RKC secret about how the city functions: the corpse of the old Quechal god QET SEA-LORD, his heart desalinating sea water in a Craft bastardisation of his old godly powers to bring the rains. Caleb may disagree with Mal’s bloodletting, he says, but he understands sacrifice. Everyone in the city is part of this sacrifice to keep the modern world turning.
In a totally unforeseeable turn of events, Mal betrays Caleb’s trust in the middle of the night, steals Qet’s heart and breaks the city. Meanwhile, Alaxic tries to kill Temoc in a murder-suicide but Temoc escapes. The water runs black with tzimet. Dresediel Lex is in chaos. Protestors descend on RKC, which is now locked behind a Craft barrier.
Somehow still not seeing that Mal has betrayed him, Caleb finds her at a bar they visited once. She reveals she stole Qet’s heart as part of a plan to bring down RKC and the King in Red - and that this was the plan the whole time. She and Alaxic worked with Allesandre Olim before and after the Heartstone-RKC merger to tie Kopil to the Twin Serpents and ultimately kill him.
Finally coming to his senses, Caleb fights Mal and steals back Qet’s heart. He escapes to Teo’s house and is surprisingly joined by Temoc - who is, to Caleb’s shock, NOT behind the attack. The three of them go to RKC and, using Temoc’s gods, manage to get through the Craft barrier and fight their way up to where the King in Red lies unconscious in his offices. Meanwhile, Mal awakens the Twin Serpents. Caleb and Teo are planning to rip up the Heartstone contract to wake Kopil, but Temoc has other plans and at the last minute knocks out his son in order to use Teo as a sacrifice to the Serpents. He comes close to succeeding before Caleb and Teo manage to foil his plans and awaken the King in Red.
Wardens attempt to fight Mal from the air as she sails through the city with the Serpents, sending waves of fiery destruction across the city. Caleb has a new idea - to use his scarred glyphs to channel soulstuff as a faux-sacrifice to send the Serpents back to sleep. Kopil provides the souls. He funnels the souls to the Serpents, Mal’s control breaks and she burns out, and Caleb falls unconscious.
Several weeks later, semi-recovered, Caleb pitches a new venture to the King in Red and Teo: a new organisation, a sort of non-profit, to fix God Wars damage and act as a conduit between the Craft and religion, using Caleb’s scars. They co-found the TWO SERPENTS GROUP.
Three Parts Dead
A couple of years after the last book, we rejoin the story in THREE PARTS DEAD. We meet TARA ABERNATHY, a young Craftswoman who has just graduated from the Hidden Schools - and promptly been thrown thousands of feet from the flying college after a battle with her former teachers. She survives, barely, drinking the life of an oasis in the Badlands. She drags herself, broken and bleeding, to her hometown of EDGEMONT, where she attempts to forget her studies and life as a fledgling Craftswoman. An uneventful few months pass.
Meanwhile, in the city of ALT COULUMB, a young priest, ABELARD, has the graveyard shift worshipping his god, KOS, and the eternal flame, but Kos isn’t answering. Abruptly alarms ring out, and Abelard realises the eternal flame is gone - and so is his god.
Back in Edgemont, Tara makes the not entirely wise decision to resurrect a couple of townsfolk killed by Raiders - basic, beginner level Craftswoman stuff. Unfortunately, her neighbours don’t agree and descend on her with pitchforks. Luckily help arrives in the form of the inimitable ELAYNE KEVARIAN, pinstriped and unruffled as usual. Elayne hires Tara for a new case: they’ve been hired by the Church of Kos to resurrect their god.
They quickly become embroiled in a plot that goes much further than they first thought. They are brought into the city by Elayne’s old friend, vampire pirate CAPTAIN RAZ PELHAM. The fact that nobody calls him a vampirate is absolutely shameful, but we move. Tara goes to meet an old contact of Elayne’s, who has been quite brutally murdered; a shape-changing gargoyle, SHALE, appears to have been set up as the culprit and is taken into custody by the Blacksuits, a hivemind police force, so Tara steals his face to be able to interrogate him later. Elayne is working with CARDINAL GUSTAVE and sends Tara off with Abelard to do document review (in the form of a fun vision quest).
It becomes clear that Raz Pelham is involved in the mystery, and in hunting him down Abelard gets in touch with an old friend, CAT ELLE, a Blacksuit by day and vampire-bite-addict by night. They track down Raz right as some distant Craftsperson is wiping his memory of a past deal. In saving him, Tara and he both end up hospitalised.
Tara and Elayne’s mutual old enemy, ALEXANDER DENOVO, shows up as opposing counsel and Tara confronts him in court for the first time since she destroyed his laboratory and was thrown out of the Hidden Schools in retaliation. She wins their first encounter, but much more is to come.
Tara manipulates Cat to be able to give Shale his face back so she can follow him to where other gargoyles are hiding; meanwhile Elayne is hypnotised by Denovo. Tara finds the gargoyles and learns a huge secret: the goddess SERIL, Kos’s consort thought to be killed in the God Wars, survived weakened. Kos had recently discovered this and tried to transfer power to her in secret. He was killed when he was at his weakest, and the transferred power had disappeared.
At that moment, Cat and the Blacksuits appear and haul Tara, Abelard and the gargoyles off to be tried for conspiring against the city. Tara takes over the clearly biased proceedings to reveal the secret plot. Denovo and Elayne arrive and corroborate her story; Tara realises Elayne is under Denovo’s power, and that Denovo wants to take Seril’s power for his own. As a fight breaks out, Cardinal Gustave appears in flame - he had betrayed Kos to work with Denovo against Seril. Abelard is killed. At the battle’s climax, Elayne regains some control over her body, creates a resurrection circle not for Abelard, but for Kos, who had escaped into Abelard’s cigarette at the moment of his apparent death. With Kos resurrected, Seril somewhat restored to Herself, Gustave dead and Denovo in custody, the main Alt Coulumb plot ends.
As Elayne prepares to leave the city for their next assignment, Tara decides that she wants to remain in Alt Coulumb as Kos’s in-house counsel, to rebuild what was broken. Before Elayne leaves, she visits Denovo in his cell, which is warded against Craft or divine interference. As a Craftsman, he is destined for immortality and is happy to wait for the tides to change. However, before he was captured Elayne managed to pass a curse into him that she now uses to kill him once and for all.
Four Roads Cross
Our characters start on seemingly disparate paths and plot, but they weave together into one overall story centred around the recently revived moon goddess SERIL. On two sides of the chess board we have those who want to restore Her to full power; on the other, those who want to send her back to the grave and take down her lover, the fire god KOS for good measure.
Let’s start with TARA ABERNATHY, whose first job as in-house counsel for the Church of Kos was to dispose of ALEXANDER DENOVO’s body, is focused on keeping Seril’s return secret whilst working out how to restore some of Her old power to Her. However, Seril’s gargoyles are giving truth to rumour by answering prayers across the Paupers’ Quarter. One night, lead gargoyle AEV saves journalist GABBY JONES, who of course immediately breaks the story. Tara tries unsuccessfully to quash it, and needs to come up with a Plan B.
To shore up Seril’s credit, Tara needs Her old records - scripture and archives that spell out what Seril owns and how Her theology works. Having somewhat reluctantly become Seril’s priestess, Tara is able to ask her directly - but Seril claims to not have such archives. She had poetry, stone and wing and claw - her gargoyles. After some argument about the whole face-stealing shenanigans, SHALE agrees to fly Tara over the city and translate Stone poetry into Craftwork legal jargon.
Across the city at the Temple of Kos, junior priest ABELARD is troubled. He’s been promoted to living sainthood for carrying Kos in his cigarette after He was nearly killed, but Abelard feels a fraud. He’s being called into meetings by the likes of CARDINAL EVANGELIST BEDE to discuss credit and shareholders, but has no idea what they’re talking about. He’s there as Kos’s own representative, he realises, and feels even worse. At Tara’s urging, he tries to speak to Kos - and learns that now, as a saint, he can do so in a more direct way than standard prayer.
Kos is scared. After Cardinal Gustave’s betrayal a year ago, Kos is wary of trusting His senior cardinals and is using Abelard as His eyes into a world He doesn’t fully understand. Abelard realises that the other priests know that their Lord doesn’t trust them, and that Abelard is His conduit. Kos shows Abelard the city through His eyes, shows Abelard the tangled web of obligations and prayer and decisions in which He exists, and asks for guidance. Should He force Seril and Her children to stand alone? Or should He help, thus risking His own power?
Meanwhile, at the docks cop CAT ELLE and vampirate RAZ PELHAM bust MAURA VARG for drug smuggling - and uncover a people trafficking operation. Dozens of people are trapped by predatory loan agreements as debt zombies, and slumber in Varg’s hold. Due to international agreements, Kos can’t intervene - but Seril might be able to. Between heists and paperwork, Cat and Raz dance around their mutual attraction and the spectre of Cat’s addiction to vampire bites.
And, finally (wow this is already so long), in the Paupers’ Quarter rumours abound about Seril and Her children. Debate rages over what should be done. Drunkard CORBIN RAFFERTY demands that the gargoyles be shattered, while MATT ADORNE tries to keep the peace. Rafferty’s daughter ELLEN confesses that she has prayed and been rescued by a gargoyle when lost. Corbin is incandescent with rage, and demands Ellen pray to bring gargoyles as proof they’re back. Unwillingly, she does so and Shale appears. He uses Seril’s power to show Corbin the error of his ways, unintentionally hospitalising Corbin. Ellen and her sisters CLAIRE and HANNAH move in with the Adornes.
All the pieces are moving on the board. Seril’s opponents press their attack.
Craftswoman MADELINE RAMP shows up to serve suit against Kos for His off-book relationship with Seril, and consequent undisclosed liabilities. Ramp is an old associate of Denovo’s, making Tara immediately suspicious of her convenient timing to appear in the city. Even weirder, Ramp’s assistant is DAPHNE MAINS - Tara’s best friend from the Hidden Schools, last seen catatonic from Denovo messing with her mind. Yet somehow she’s here with one of Denovo’s allies.
Time for the offence.
Tara sets up an exclusive interview between Seril and Gabby Jones. Cat and Raz free the debt zombies in Seril’s name - only to be hit by a trap. The refugees are infected with demons, and if the demons can break Seril, they’re free. Blacksuits, gargoyles, and Raz are attacked. Seril screams mid-interview as Her children and Her power are eaten. In the Adorne home, Ellen Rafferty falls ill, crying out.
Abelard asks Kos to intervene. Demons fall to fire in the night sky.
And there’s the proof Ramp needed: Kos has undeclared interest in Seril. She presses suit, and Tara calls a Council of War.
The board is set for the next phase of play.
With the help of Elayne Kevarian, Tara gets Craftsperson Ashleigh Wakefield to represent Kos in the forthcoming suit whilst she and Shale fly to Dresediel Lex to speak with the King in Red and ask him to return the rights to Alt Coulumb’s skies, which he took as spoils of war after killing Seril.
This goes about as well as you would expect.
Shale tries to kill Kopil, who is Kopil-ing on a fake beach, drinking a bright pink cocktail with four paper umbrellas. However, he is impressed enough (and / or wants to get back in Elayne’s good books enough) that he tells them that he gave the rights to the Two Serpents Group, so off Tara and Shale go to try and deal with CALEB ALTEMOC. In classic Caleb style, however, he’s managed to throw himself into the middle of danger and is currently holding together a mountain that houses an ancient goddess. Shale takes his place, Caleb gives Tara the sky rights, and Tara threatens the mountain goddess. Standard Abernathy behaviour.
Back in Alt Coulumb, debt zombies turned demon-free refugees are beginning to wake up. DR HASIM tells Cat that Grimwald Savings called in a loan unexpectedly, leading to their zombiehood. Hasim’s lover UMAR remains unconscious. Gabby Jones is determined to finish her story; in lieu of Seril, she interviews lead gargoyle Aev. Ellen Rafferty asks Claire to help her bring people together to pray for Seril, and Abelard goes out to spread Kos’ word in support of Seril. In evensong, Gabby shares her interviews and the gargoyles join the Criers’ Guild in praise of their Moon-mother. Word quickly spreads throughout Alt Coulumb.
Cat and Raz go for a longshot solution. Raz reveals there’s a community of ancient vampires living deep under the ocean; the two of them swim down to treat with them. In exchange for some of Cat’s blood, a vampire priestess offers a jewel of her cult’s blood in the form of a red jade. If Raz eats the jewel, he can use the vampires’ ancient power but will become subsumed into the cult and essentially die. Not anyone’s first choice, fair to say. Cat and Raz finally resolved their unresolved sexual tension and bang it out.
And now, we approach the endgame.
The court case begins. Ramp and Wakefield go head to head - but Wakefield only represents Kos, and thus must step aside when Seril is brought in. With Tara stuck in Dresediel Lex, Seril is undefended. She convinces Caleb to give her the rights to the sky, but there’s no way for her to get a dragon flight back to Alt Coulumb in time. She must wait for the sun to set, then Seril can trasnport her via the mood road. Aev and the gargoyles come to defend Seril in Tara’s stead. Daphne - or, as we learn, the thing wearing Daphne’s body - fights them.
The Rafferty sisters lead a vigil in the Paupers’ Quarter; Dr Hasim and fellow refugees step in to support, and show Ellen how to weave the disparate, conflicting stories of all worshippers together into one prayer. In hospital, Umar (still controlled by a demon) awakens, and forces Corbin Rafferty to help him break into the Temple of Justice, steal Denovo’s skull, and send it to a mysterious third party. They then try to break up the vigil, but Corbin’s daughters stand up to him, and Dr Hasim breaks the demon’s control over Umar.
Daphne is eating Seril through Her gargoyles, until Cat joins the fray and tries to arrest Daphne for assaulting Aev, a citizen of Alt Coulumb. Joined by her fellow Blacksuits, she fights Daphne, freeing up some of Seril’s power to final transport Tara across the continent. Tara appears, and shows she has gained Seril’s rights to the skies of Alt Coulumb. The being that was Daphne fights to destroy the contract. Tara, as is standard for Tara, is about to sacrifice herself when Raz steps in. He drinks from the jade, gaining the power of all the ancient vampires to save Tara and kill Daphne-that-was.
They win.
Cat, as representative of Seril, offers Raz asylum so he doesn’t have to go to the vampires undersea - but it means he can’t leave the city. Back in her home, Madeline Ramp, back in her home, receives a delivery of what she thinks is Denovo’s skull - except it’s missing. Tara intercepted it, and appears via Craftwork hologram to banter with Ramp.
Finally, Tara joins a delegation of Deathless Kings, the Two Serpents Group, and M Grimwald to save Shale from the mountain goddess and build Her a body. She talks to Grimwald, hypothesising that they caught wind of Ramp’s plan and called in the debt held by the refugees to ensure they’d be in Alt Coulumb ready to help.
Full Fathom Five
On the tropical island of Kavekana, theologian investment bankers build idols for the world’s richest to store their soulstuff off shore. KAI POHALA is one such priest, responsible for building and worshipping a portfolio of idols. The idols live - for a given value of ‘living’ - in a deep otherworldly pool in the caldera of a volcano; Kai remade her body in the same pool, and has unusual control over its unreality. When colleague MARA CEYLA has a failed idol that must be terminated, Kai makes the rash decision to dive into the pool and attempt to save it. She almost succeeds, before her boss JACE KOL tears her back up into the world. The idol, nicknamed SEVEN ALPHA dies as scheduled, and Kai winds up in hospital.
Across the island, street kid refugee IZZA JALAI uses what little is left of her soul to buy religious incense to mourn her god, THE BLUE LADY. The Blue Lady is just the latest in a series of gods worshipped by the street kids who has died, killed in their theology by Smiling Jack. This is the last time she’ll bury a god, Izza decides. She’s going to leave the island. She can’t go back where she came from, as the Gleb is burning and everyone she knew there dead, but she’ll go somewhere.
From her hospital bed, deep in nightmares, Kai is interrogated by ELAYNE KEVARIAN, the Craftswoman hired by Seven Alpha’s account holders, the GRIMWALDS. Because Kai tried to save Seven Alpha, Kevarian is investigating whether Mara and the Order as a whole were negligent in their duties towards her client. When Kai tries to go back to work, she’s reassigned to work directly with pilgrims rather than build idols. She’s not happy to put it lightly.
Izza wanders the streets drunk, and comes across CAT ELLE fighting Penitents - the terrifying stone enforcers of Kavekana, each hosting a criminal and re-educating them. She intervenes, and helps an injured and seemingly drugged up Cat back to her secret temple warehouse. Izza helps Cat through her recovery while stealing as much soulstuff as she can to leave for the other street kids when she leaves the island.
Kai goes back to her old haunt, Makawe’s rest, a bar and slam poetry venue by the beach. The proprieter, MAKO, is an old friend - God Wars veteran, blind and scarred, with a wicked sense of humour. They watch an Iskari poet, EDMOND MARGOT, fail his way through a set despite being almost divinely inspired mere weeks ago. He’s lost his muse. Yet, somehow when Izza gets in trouble with the police (she’s too young to be locked in a Penitent), Margot gets a vision from his god and goes to help her out. Izza is freaked out - how does this man know about her gods? In payment for his help, he asks her to tell him what happened to The Blue Lady, and she tells him how She died.
Meanwhile, Kai is reluctantly trying to work with pilgrims in the sales wing of her Order. It’s not the best fit. She’s assigned to work with TEO BATAN, a potential client from the Two Serpents Group trying to see if Kavekana would be a good fit for her Concern. She’s a sceptic, and Kai doesn’t try that hard to convince her - yet for some reason Teo keeps coming back.
What in Seril’s name is going on?
Secretly, Kai investigates what happened with Seven Alpha. She comes across Elayne Kevarian and Mara Ceyla in a nightmare, going through the evidence; when she comes to, she find Mara has slipped a notebook into her bag. It helps her investigation, and she sees that there’s a list of people who received grace from Seven Alpha - people who shouldn’t have had access to the pool or its idols. One is Edmond Margot.
Kai asks her police officer ex-boyfriend CLAUDE to keep an eye on Margot while she investigates further, particularly as Mara has now gone missing after a surprise promotion. It’s no good, though - a Penitent murders Margot, and Izza saw it happen. Having previously spied on Kai when she visited Margot, Izza is convinced she was behind it and sneaks into Kai’s house to confront her.
The two discuss what they know, and Izza shows Kai the temple to her gods. Kai realises that Izza, somehow, has replicated the caldera of Kavekana’ai, including the pool of idols. Kai begins putting things together - somehow, the Blue Lady and Seven Alpha were the same. Somehow, the street kids (and Margot) unintentionally broke into the pool with their prayers, and an idol somehow answered, dispensing grace.
Kai needs to get back up the mountain, but her access has been revoked. Easy solution: use Teo. With a client, she’s able to go up the mountain. Izza tells Cat what happened with Margot, and the two of them decide to run away together.
Up the mountain, Kai and Teo have a philosophical chat about the origin of life, how Kai can square away her beliefs with known evolution, and all sorts of excellent Applied Theology information that will make its way into a future How Magic Works article. In the pool, Kai finds example idols based on Teo’s interests and begins her own investigation into what’s going on in the pool.
She makes a horrifying discovery. Seven Alpha, and a dozen idols before her, flared into life and were snuffed out. Murdered. And then Kai sees beyond the idols and discovers a goddess behind them all, trying idols on as faces to reach out from the darkness. Kai asks who She is, when everything goes wrong. Teo drops a bracelet into the pool. The sky turns red. The volcano shudders.
Kai and Teo are arrested. Kai finds out that Jace knew all along, and that he was behind the deaths of the idols. Now that she knows, and isn’t willing to go quietly along with an NDA, he locks her inside a Penitent to be re-educated. He’s done the same to Mara, and locks Teo in one for good measure.
Izza realises what’s happened, and goes to Kai’s friend Mako for help. Somehow, the old man is able to open Kai’s Penitent and save her. He’s about to do the same to Teo’s, when Teo smashes out of it herself - remember the attempted sacrifice in Two Serpents Rise? Well, it’s left her with a few fun powers akin to Caleb’s.
Kai, Teo, and Izza run. Teo leads them out into the sea, to a warded boat - where Cat waits. They were part of a scheme together all along. Cat was sent here by Seril to retrieve a moon shard that had been locked in the pool; Teo dropped in a bracelet as a sort of homing beacon. Together, they break in, retrieve the shard, rescue the Blue Lady, and bring down Jace by calling Elayne Kevarian in - the best deus ex machina one could hope for.
And so the story ends with Izza telling stories of the Blue Lady and rescuing people trapped in Penitents. Kai confronts Mako - he wasn’t just a God Wars veteran who sailed off with the island’s gods. He was the island’s god - Makawe. He returned as a ghost trapped in flesh. He was able to open the Penitents because he made them back before the Wars.
It’s a new dawn for Kavekana, with a new goddess and new theology to build.
Ruin of Angels
KAI POHALA, publicly priestess of Kavekana and secretly priestess of THE BLUE LADY is on a trip seeking new investment opportunities, so her Order can divest from ethically and environmentally dubious Concerns. At the last minute she’s diverted to AGDEL LEX, an Iskari colony, the place from which her friend IZZA JALAI ran several years ago, and coincidentally where her sister LEY POHALA has lived for several years. They’re not in touch much - yet somehow Ley found out Kai was visiting, and managed to get a letter to her inviting her to dinner. When they meet, Ley tries to pitch her start-up to Kai, asking her sister for 16 million thaums. Kai turns her down, which in the long run turns out to not have been the best idea. Note to everyone: actually communicate to your siblings when asking for a huge favour.
Agdel Lex is a particularly weird, broken place in a world of weird, broken places. When Kai steps out of the airport, the city swims before her vision - three cities, somehow layered on top of one another. That’s why the Iskari are here, her contact GAVVI FONTAINE tells her. MAESTRE GERHARDT broke the city 150 years ago, and the Iskari came in to shore it up. There are indeed three cities: the modern Iskari city of Agdel Lex, the dead city beneath it, full of monsters and ice and dying angels, and a secret - illegal - in-between city of Alikand made by locals in defiance of the Iskari.
One such local is ZEDDIG HALA, currently engaged in the extremely illegal activity of delving into the dead city and returning with long lost, and therefore extremely valuable, items. Zeddig is from an old High Family that lost its wealth, power, and heritage when old Alikand died. She’s part of a long tradition fighting back, but the dead city is getting increasingly unstable and the Iskari Rectification Authority (AKA the Wreckers) are getting stronger. She primarily works with a grad school friend RAYMET HAAZ and a Camlaan Knight, GAL. For more on Gal, check out this entire article dedicated to her and the Knights. They work well together but have extremely different backgrounds and motivations. Zeddig will always prioritise old traditions and archives over a big score, whereas Raymet comes from a nothing background and doesn’t give a damn about the High Families. Gal, meanwhile, is a lethal weapon wrapped up in a woman, takes things incredibly literally, and is motivated mostly by honourable battle.
Oh, and Raymet is totally in love with Gal but hasn’t told her.
Speaking of love, Zeddig also happens to be Ley Pohala’s ex. After Kai turns down Ley’s request, Ley does the completely normal, understandable thing and stabs her business partner ALETHEA VANE, running off with Vane’s consciousness stored in a magical knife while Kai calls the police. Ley runs and hides with Zeddig in the hidden city. They haven’t spoken in a while - Zeddig showed Ley how to delve, and Ley turned that knowledge into a business. But now Ley is in trouble, and needs Zeddig and her crew for a major heist.
Back at the crime scene, Kai meets LIEUTENANT BESCOND, an Iskari investigator, and TARA ABERNATHY, a Craftswoman currently working with the Wreckers on an undisclosed project. Bescond is about to arrest Kai when Fontaine appears with a contract giving Kai special status. Kai needs to stay longer to fulfil the contract, and to try to get Ley out of the trouble she’s in. With Fontaine’s help, she speaks to some of Ley’s colleagues, insofar as their Craftwork NDAs allow. She meets artist demon R’OK, who tells her about Zeddig.
After some debate, Raymet and Gal are in for Ley’s heist. Ley’s knife is a kind of technology that makes it easier to delve for longer, and she wants to use it to raid the Altus facility out in the God Wastes - an unpassable desert of dead and dying gods. It’s impossible. She offers that if they help her, she’ll get the delvers to the Anaxmander Stacks in the dead city - an ancient library now impossible to access even through delving. With the new need to get out into the Wastes, Zeddig goes loan shark VOGEL, to whom she’s deeply indebted, and agrees to help on an almost definitely suicidal train job out into the Wastes.
Izza shows up to help Kai, despite the danger she’ll be in whilst in Agdel Lex. A lot of her old contacts have moved on or been killed, but she finds an old friend ISAAK, a tough street kid now massively augmented and superhumanly strong. She gets in on the train job using his contacts, but is taken aback to realise he is a devotee of THE BLUE LADY. She doesn’t want him to look at her differently, so doesn’t reveal she’s the Prophet Thief. Kai meets Tara at the Temple of All Gods, run by priests who once helped Izza and who were caught up in the demon fight in Four Roads Cross - HASIM AND UMAR. Kai realises that Tara, though bound by a contract to the Iskari, isn’t happy with them and isn’t necessarily on their side.
The two of them get on the same train as the delvers, only to be confronted by Bescond. Kai manages to pray to Izza that it’s a set up, but it’s too late and the Wreckers arrive. The delver crew, using Ley’s knife, walk through the desert to a facility holding the item Ley needs. Bescond, Tara, and Kai make their own way there, with Kai getting a promise from Bescond to let Ley go in return for her knife. We hear the story of Gerhardt, Agdel Lex, and the forming of the God Wastes from different perspectives - can’t quote it all here because it’s super long, but you should re-read the section, it’s fantastic. It starts in Chapter 46.
Ley successfully gets what she needs, but SURPRISE! The Wreckers arrive. Bescond does hold up to her end of the bargain, letting Ley go in return for the knife; Ley and Zeddig limp off into the Wastes, while Bescond arrests everyone else. Izza and Isaak are sent to an orphanage. Gal and Raymet are taken to the Rectification Authority Tower to be tortured. Gal refuses to escape, as she has been bested in combat and it would go against her code of honour. Izza, on the other hand, is thrilled to have the opportunity for a jailbreak.
Meanwhile, Tara is bringing Alethea Vane back to life. Her consciousness had been stored in Ley’s life, which makes resurrection easy for a necromancer. Vane explains the project - she’s going to send the knife into orbit, and get everyone to see the same city at the same time. This will destroy both the dead city and Alikand, allowing the God Wastes to flood in, and kill everyone in those cities. Ley hadn’t been aware of this part of the plan, or the fact that the Iskari funded it; when she found out, she tried to buy Vane out but was thwarted at every turn. Asking Kai for 16 million thaums was her last ditch effort, and when that failed she tried to remove Vane from the equation and keep the knife out of Iskari hands.
Or tentacles. What’s the word for squid limbs?
Tara isn’t happy with the project either. She tells Kai that she needs data from the orbit; she need to listen to what’s out there. She’s bound by too many Craft contracts to actively fight against the Iskari, but she’ll do what she can.
The countdown is on to the launch and everyone is moving into position:
Zeddig gets captured by Bescond while covering for Ley, who is running through the Wastes to reach the launch facility
Raymet confesses her love for Gal, which changes the rules of the game: a true believer in chivalric love, Gal is able to now break out of prison to save her lady from a tower.
Izza breaks out of the orphanage with Isaak, who now knows she’s the Prophet Thief. She goes to the Temple of All Gods, and he goes to get backup.
Kai goes to EBERHARDT JAX, a billionaire businessman who’s part of the launch, to help her get into the facility. We need to talk about him in more detail, but that’s for another article… for now, just know that he knows the world is dying, is sceptical of the old ways and the new, and knows the world needs another way forward. His idea is going to another planet, so that’s cool.
Tara stands on the walls of Agdel Lex, ready to fight the dying godlings of the Wastes.
Zeddig asks her great-grandmother to call the other Archivists of the High Families, who will do what they can do fight back.
In the facility, Kai sneaks to the launch rocket and finds Ley about to go into orbit. She takes Ley’s place, so Ley can go and rescue Zeddig.
The rocket launches. Kai goes into orbit. The world gets weird.
As the God Wastes flood into Alikand, the anti-Iskari rebels fight back. Ley, Raymet and Gal delve, trying to get as close to the Wound and Gerhardt (always dying, never dead) as possible so they can reach Zeddig in the same location in Agdel Lex. The Archivists turn into angels and fly into battle for the first time in 150 years. Tara, Hasim, Umar and Izza pray and fight back; they are joined by Isaak and dozens of street kids, all wearing the Blue Lady’s token. The forgotten, the unwanted, and the invisible are here to fight alongside their Prophet.
Ley rescues Zeddig; Gal gets closes to Gerhardt and tries to kill him. Raymet can’t lose her, and runs into the Wound after her, to her almost certain death.
The Blue Lady isn’t one for last stands. She’s a thief. She runs. So Izza runs, and the gods of the wastes chase her - and the Blue Lady makes them Hers.
Gerhardt finally dies. Raymet loses her hand, but keeps Gal.
Up in the sky, Kai changes the vision funneled through the knife and brings all versions of the city to the surface at once. They’re going to build a new city with a place for everyone - Iskari, High Families, and everyone else. A new city with a place for everyone.
The moon rises, and SERIL helps Kai back to the ground. Kai meets Tara and shares the recording of what she heard in the skies.
Legs, skittering closer.
Skazzerai.
Dead Country
TARA ABERNATHY is pulled from her life in Alt Coulumb, and her work researching the end of the world, by a letter from her mother: her father JOHN ABERNATHY, whom she hasn’t seen in years, is dead. Grief-stricken, she immediately packs up what little she needs - including a small black folder - and heads home. With no airport near Edgemont, she uses Craft to leap from the dragon mid-flight and lands in the Badlands, still quite a walk from the small town.
On her journey, she comes across a farm, burning, and a Raider dragging a young woman across the dirt. Tara is able to shoot the Raider - through the girl. Nobody said the Craft was perfect. When Tara then tries to heal the girl, DAWN, Craft explodes out from her. Dawn in powerful, untrained, and needs help.
Together, they limp to Edgemont, where they’re confronted by a beefed up guard - the Raiders have been getting bolder, and Edgemont is a different place than the one Tara left all those years ago. Guards, led by GRAFTON CAVANAUGH try to stop her from coming in. Grafton was Tara’s father’s best friend, but he’s bigoted against the Craft and hates Tara. His son, and Tara’s old classmate, CONNOR CAVANAUGH tries to intervene, but it takes Tara’s own mother VALENTINE NGOYE ABERNATHY to get Grafton to let her in.
Tara heals Dawn with the help of Connor’s soul, and speaks to her mother face to face for the first time in a decade or so. The funeral comes and goes. Tara gets through it on autopilot, giving a speech she can’t even recall. She follows Connor into a glass canyon in the Badlands, one of many God Wars scars on the landscape, and he tells her that her father died saving his life from Raiders. The Raiders have changed since she left. They’re bolder. More purposeful. Led by a Raider known as the Seer.
Back at the wake, Tara prays (though loathes that word, Craftswoman down to her bones), but something is blocking SERIL from answering. The wake is then abruptly interrupted by a young man from Blake’s Rest - the town where Tara found Dawn - injured and on the run from Raiders. Dawn recognises him, and recoils. Tara doesn’t know much of her past, but knows she was ill-treated by the people of Blake’s Rest. The man grabs Dawn, and the Raiders’ curse bubbles out from him to attack her.
Tara tries to untangle it; she saves Dawn, the man crumbles into ash, and she herself is wounded. The Raiders’ curse worms its way up her arm under her skin. But there’s no time to figure it out - Raiders are coming. Tara borrows power from Edgemont’s wards to fight back with the Craft. She wins the battle, but warns the town that the war is still to come - they’ll be back and bring their leader, the Seer. However, whether they like it or not, they’ll have her to protect them.
That night she manages to contain, but not remove, the curse. It pulses in her arm, black rot and white curse strands trying to take her over.
How can Tara save Edgemont? First, she must learn it. In between teaching Dawn the fundamentals of Craft, she learns the land field by field, yard by yard. Connor tells her stories of the town, legends and family tales shared over a pint and a song. With this, Tara can translate the town, its people and its stories into Craftwork and claims it as hers, no matter her historic dislike of the place. She brings Dawn in, teaching her how to put theory into practice. Tara’s a conflicted teacher, having been badly burned by ALEXANDER DENOVO and the Hidden Schools, but she tries her best.
Gradually, Edgemont’s people begin to trust Tara and her powers. She’s allowed to use the Craft to save a man injured by Raiders. She speaks to her father’s grave. She teaches Dawn. She and Connor sleep together, and start something of a situationship by darkness, while walking the town by daylight. Edgemonters come forward to tell her the deepest secrets of their land, the secrets nobody outside their bloodline knows, and with that Tara is able to more fully learn, describe, and claim the land.
Eventually she reaches the Cavanaugh land, and Grafton goads her. He tells stories woven with her father’s life, how much he missed Tara, how much she hurt him, twisting the knife in her loss.
He’s an absolute twat, let’s be real. Gladstone does a good job of humanising all his characters, and Grafton gets a semi-redemption but by Seril and Kos he’s a twat.
Ahem. Back to the story.
The backdrop of all of this remains Tara’s research into the end of the world, all her findings secured in that black folder she took with her from Alt Coulumb. Finally, she shares it with Dawn.
You guessed it. Skazzerai.
There is way too much to say here, and I wrote a whole series on it, so check out the skazzerai masterpost for more information. For now, all we need to know is that there is something bad at the end of the universe, and it’s coming for the Domain. Tara has gathered as much information as humanly (or inhumanly) possible and still knows next to nothing.
Tara, lost and confused about her purpose and where should be, bonds with her mother for the first time as an adult. Valentine has guessed she’s injured, and Tara shows her the Raiders’ curse injury. Valentine, who Tara thought loved Edgemont, rails against its treatment of her daughter, and begs Tara to stay safe and come home to her.
And now, the battle. Raiders arrive with a storm on their heels, and the Seer at their helm. Tara uses all her work learning the town, the glyphs she carved into the glass canyon, and the strength she built by night to channel through PASTOR MERROTT, and fights. The Craft is clear on property rights: Tara named Edgemont in the Craft, its places and people, flora and fauna, and the Raiders have no place here.
But the curse is inside her. If she is part of Edgemont, so is it - and thus the Raiders. Her defence weakens, but Edgemont guards join the fight. In doing so, they leave the wards that mark Edgemont’s boundaries, and some of the power is broken. The Raiders leave, but they have Pastor Merrott.
Dawn wants Tara to leave the Pastor to his fate and leave Edgemont. But Tara won’t. She can’t. This is her father’s town, and whether she likes it or not it’s hers.
And so Tara, Dawn, and Connor make their way through the Badlands to the Raiders’ camp. Connor knows the Badlands like Tara knows the Craft, and can tell them how to find both invisible dangers and hidden oases. The Badlands are far from the dead country they seem at first glance. Gods died out there, and the land sucked up their power.
The trio walk through an edge storm and see the only possible future, one where the world ends at the maw of the skazzerai. Connor is injured, but Tara and Dawn make their way to the Raiders’ camp by the Crack in the World.
It’s not what you’d expect. An office park, painfully normal looking - and the planetside annexe of Alexander Denovo’s journal. Again, you can read about this in great detail in the skazzerai series. This is but a brief summary. In the building, Tara and Dawn discover that Denovo somehow managed to trap a godlike being of the Craft. It kept trying to grow a body, and he kept cutting it up. It hangs suspended in wires, seemingly dead.
This being and its power changed the Raiders’ curse, made them act differently.
Made them come after Tara’s father.
Tara and Dawn fight to save Pastor Merrott, and the Craft-god wakes. It tries to eat Tara, but Dawn saves her life. Back in Edgemont, Tara confronts Dawn about how she did that. Dawn stopped the Craft-god by melding with her, offering herself in Tara’s place. And now all that power is free in the world, inside Dawn. Tara nearly convinces Dawn to come with her, but Dawn-slash-the-Craft-god sees through her. Tara confirms her suspicion: the Craft god killed her father to try and reel in Tara.
Once again, they try to eat her. Yet, with the curse now gone, Tara can pray and Seril opens the moon road. Dawn flees, and Tara is transported to Alt Coulumb. She wakes there, with her mother at her side. It’s been a week. She’s lost her left arm up to the elbow, now Craftworked bone set in silver and glyphed.
It’s the end of this story, but the start of the next: how to save the world, both from Dawn and the skazzerai.
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