Fated

I've heard of a guy in Chicago who advertises in the phone book under "Wizard",though that's probably a urban legend.

If you can’t have another ally,” I said at last, “next best thing is to give your enemy another enemy.

Starbreeze doesn't rest, doesn't sleep and can hear anything carried on moving air. It'd make her the perfect spy, except that most of what she hears goes in one ear and out the other. "I'm looking for a Precursor relic, a new one" "What's a relic?" Starbreeze said curiously. "A powerful magical thing. It would have been found a week or two ago" "What's a week?

Those of us who do like visitors have to advertise, and it’s tricky to find a way of doing it that doesn’t make you sound crazy. The majority rely on word of mouth, though younger mages use the Internet. I’ve even heard of one guy in Chicago who advertises in the phone book under “Wizard,” though that’s probably an urban legend.

Other mages have an odd attitude towards diviners. By the standards of, say, elemental mages. We can't gate, we can't attack, we can't shield, and when it comes to physical action our magic is about as useful as a bicycle in a trampolining contest. But we can see anywhere and learn anything and there's no secret we can't uncover if we try hard enough. So when an elemental mage looks at a diviner, the elemental mage knows he could take him in a straight fight with no more effort that it would take to tie his shoes. On the other hand, the elemental mage also knows that the diviner could find out every one of his most dirty and embarrassing secrets and, should hi feel like it, post copies of them to everyone the elemental mage has ever met. It creates a mixture of uneasiness and contempt that doesn't encourage warm feelings. There's a reason most of my friends aren't mages.

Human beings tend to react better to good-looking people. It’s called the halo effect—someone’s attractive, so you trust them more. It’s natural, which makes it a hard habit to break, but once you start dealing with magical creatures you’d better learn to break it, and fast, because some of the most vicious things out there can make themselves look like absolute angels. Like unicorns. Don’t get me started on unicorns. For some reason everyone has this idealised image of them as beautiful innocent snowflakes. Beautiful, yes. Innocent, no. After you’ve had one of the little bastards try and kebab you, you wise up quick.

If there’s one thing all diviners share, it’s curiosity. We really can’t help it; it’s just part of who we are. If you dug out a tunnel somewhere in the wilderness a thousand miles from anywhere and hung a sign on it saying, ‘Warning, this leads to the Temple of Horrendous Doom. Do not enter, ever. No, not even then’, you’d get back from lunch to find a diviner already inside and two more about to go in. Come to think about it, that might explain why there are so few of us.

Maybe you’ve already guessed by now, and you’re sitting there wondering how I could take so long to figure it out. If you are, all I can say is that it’s a hell of a lot harder to step back and look at the big picture when you have to keep watching your feet for land mines.

For years I'd been trying to forget..., locking it up and burying it deep in my memory. The journey... had shattered that, bringing it all back - but now that I'd faced it, I found to my surprise that the fear had been worse than the reality.

I've always believed in the power of knowledge. Any problem can be solved if you understand it well enough.

At the end, in the light of the stars, trust in your friends and forgo the greater power for the lesser.

But what we do have is knowledge, and applied in the right way that can be some pretty impressive leverage.

If you can’t have another ally,’ I said at last, ‘next best thing is to give your enemy another enemy.’ Luna

Why do we do what we do? I think the reasons run deeper than we can know, and often we can only guess at the truest one.

Elsewhere is a world, but it’s not a place. It’s empty, yet you seem to meet someone no matter where you go. You can’t travel to it in the flesh, only in dreams, but the things that happen can be real, and the creatures you meet play by rules you can’t understand.

Those who lack purpose are pawns to those that do not

Those who lack purpose are pawns to those that do

I’ve even heard of one guy in Chicago who advertises in the phone book under “Wizard,” though that’s probably an urban legend.

Arachnophobia’s no match for shopping, huh?

He looked at Luna. “You got that cube? Maybe that’d do it.