Literature / Mage Errant

A fantasy series by author John Bierce.

Set in the magic school of Skyhold, the story starts from the perspective of Hugh of Emblin. Despite his ineptitude at magic, he has been chosen as one of three apprentices of an eccentric mage. In fact, all three apprentices have been deemed inept or impossible to train.

The story unfolds as Hugh and his classmates are taken on as apprentices by Alustin, Librarian Errant. They start discovering and training their unusual talents as apprentice Librarian Errants, and are soon caught up in world events far beyond their control.

There are seven books in the series so far:

• Into the Labyrinth (2018)
• Jewel of the Endless Erg (2019)
• A Traitor in Skyhold (2019)
• The Lost City of Ithos (2020)
• The Siege of Skyhold (2021)
• Tongue Eater (2022)
• The Last Echo of the Lord of Bells (2023)

The author regularly posts short stories in this universe on his Patreon.

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This series provides examples of:

• Aborted Declaration of Love: Averted. When Talia is about to tell Hugh her feelings for him, it at first seems like she won't do it, but after Hugh tells her she can tell him anything, she ends up confessing.
• Anti-Magic: Bakori is a walking example of this. As an escapee from a dying universe, spellforms decay just from his very presence and he can actively use this ability to cancel spells around him.
• Anti-Mentor: What the majority of Skyhold are for our three "failures", they only know how to teach the same magic that everyone learns and due to their special circumstances these do not work for Hugh, Talia, or Sabae. It's not until Alustin comes along that they're able to make any head-way with their abilities.
• Artificial Intelligence: What the Great Codex in Skyhold's library appears to be a Magitek version of.
  • Subverted because the Great Codex is actually just a function of Kanderon's will, but it does have some simple functions when she's not paying attention to it. Like finding what books people want.
• The Assimilator: Heliothrax. After being driven away from Skyhold decides that this is the only possible path forwards. She begins to assimilate the body's of other dragons into her own, taking their heads and attaching them to her spine. The worst part: the heads are still alive, enslaved through Heliothrax's magic.
• Awesome, but Impractical: An aversion. All three apprentices end up learning techniques that the majority of the mage population consider impractical because of their special conditions.
• Bigger on the Inside: The Great Library of Skyhold is much bigger than the mountain that holds it. It's also quite dangerous, with death tolls in the hundreds every decade.
  • Alustin is never seen without his trusty Bag of Holding, which can hold much, MUCH more than one would expect from its size. Except not really. The bag is just an ordinary bag. Alustin tells people the "bag of holding" story to throw people off of his real secret, an extra-planar space only he can access with a spellform tattooed onto his arm. The gang eventually also receive their own bag-of-holding tattooes.
• The Big Guy: Artur Wallbreaker is stated to be this. In a world where mages mainly fight at range, his unique combination of iron and stone attunements allows him to take and dish damage with an enchanted warhammer. His son Godrick becomes this to the group once he joins.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Hugh was gifted with Sabae's grandmother's storm ward notes in book one. This gets fired in book two when Hugh uses it to ward a sandship, and then an entire CITY from storm damage. It becomes more significant in book three when it was revealed that Hugh is now being referred to as THE Stormward, an appellation that is usually given to a member of the Kaen Das family.
• The Chessmaster: Kanderon became the last remaining founder of Skyhold because of this. She even engineered Bakori's breakout from the labyrinth partly to kill as many of her opposition as possible.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Using "siege magic" is basically this. It's easy to train and very powerful too, but any mage that does this becomes utterly unable to use their magic in literally any other way other than "dump all their mana into one incredibly powerful spell".
  • It is essentially an open secret that Mages that have multiple offensive oriented affinities are able to become Siege Mages without ruining themselves as they simply pick which of their affinities to focus on siege magic. Great Powers have done things this way almost the entire time and in The Last Echo Talia talks the rest of the Apprentices into picking one of their now 12 collective affinities each to use as a siege affinity.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: A variant. Alustin casually mentions the impending return of Imperial Ithos in front of the group, not realizing that the enchantment stopping it from being remembered had worn down just enough for them to be able to understand him. It's revealed he'd said it multiple times already.
• Dimensional Traveler: Several legendary characters like Galvacren and The Wanderer as well as The Radhan. As of the final two books - the protagonists have started to travel the multiverse picking up alien magic.
• Dug Too Deep: What Kanderon did by accident when she flung the city of Imperial Ithos into its own Pocket Dimension, which managed to attract the attention of The Cold Minds.
• Elemental Powers: Subverted. While there are fire, stone, water and air mages, you can also have an affinity to coins, dreams, hair, cheese, Gallium or that one tree behind your parents' house, or pretty much anything your culture as a concept for. Also there are at least six kinds of ice affinities and three kinds of fire affinities. They even overlap somewhat, as they're not ice/fire affinities as much as they are temperature affinities.
• The Empire: The Havath Dominion and even more so the fallen Ithonian Empire.
• Functional Magic: Magic is integrated into everything in the world. Even Skyhold's cleaning staff use magic for cleaning.
• Everyone Can See It: Once Talia is aware of her feelings for Hugh, it turns out pretty much everyone (aside from Hugh) already knew, including both their friends as well as Alustin and Artur, much to her embarrassment.
  Talia: How did he know about me and Hugh?
  Sabae: I think everyone but Hugh knows, Talia.
• Evil Gloating: Many of the Havathi mages love doing this despite it being the reason many of them get killed.
  • Justified, as a result of their war between Havathi and Helicote. While Havathi won, their military strength was weakened, which resulted in their military being corrupted by nepotism and never having to fight in another war for a long time afterword. As a result, many of their mages are arrogant nobles with little battlefield experience trying to make a name for themselves.
• Glass Cannon: In Talia's words, "armor's for people who don't have enough firepower".
  • Ironically enough, she and the rest of the gang end up developing their own unique battle armors. Godrick's armor is the most conventional, being made of stone, just like his father (though he upgrades by creating an "armor elemental" to serve as a sort of "living armor" to aid him in battle). Sabae's armor is classic wind-style Elemental Armor, coating her body in what is basically a skin-tight hurricane. Hugh's armor isn't so much armor as it is a swarm of levitating crystals under his direct control that allow him to set up instant Deployable Cover in any configuration he desires. And finally, Talia's tattoos interfere with most spells, including armor spells, so under the supervision of Hugh, Loarna, and most of the healing mages in Skyhold, Kanderon literally inscribes armor spellforms directly onto Talia's skeleton. Running mana through them literally gives her a full-body Deflector Shield.
• Geometric Magic: The basis for most magic in the setting. Students have to visualize and channel mana through spellforms, which are geometric designs that shape what the magic does. While it is possible to improvise spellforms, the vast majority learn them by rote memorization.
• Giant Flyer: All over the place in the world. A few standout's are Kanderon Crux, Indris, and The Sleeper Under the Sands. Who are a 75ft Sphinx, a 200ft Dragon, and a city sized Sunmaw.
• Godzilla Threshold: A Great Power engaging in combat.
• Healing Factor: Bakori can regenerate as long as he has imps to drain life from. Even Talia vaporizing most of his body was only a minor inconvenience.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: It doesn't matter that our four main characters are mages, they're still teenagers with sex drives. Even Hugh.
  • All young mages in Skyhold are taught a cantrip that functions as Fantasy Contraception. Talia cannot cast it thanks to her Power Tattoos, so her partner has to do it for them.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her... / My Sister Is Off-Limits: Both subverted. When Clan Castis arrives at Skyhold, Talia's brothers confront Hugh about his relationship with her, and he thinks he's about to get a lecture along these lines. But actually, they're worried about him. They want to make sure he's not being coerced and warn him about how she's a little crazy.
• Inept Mage: All three of the main apprentices start out as this.
  • Hugh literally explodes almost every traditional spellform he tries to cast. Interestingly, this is because he was born and raised in one of the harshest mana deserts on the planet. Hugh's body adapted to this much like a cactus holds water, developing a MASSIVE store of mana. Spellforms explode because he can't help but flood them with way too much power.
  • Sabae comes from a long line of storm mages (who control wind, water, and lightning). However, she also inherited her father's Healing affinity, which is excellent for up-close work, but bleeds into her other affinities. Any time she tries to send her storm magics out more than a few feet, it blows up.
  • Talia has special tattoos that would make her the world's strongest fire mage, at the cost of blocking all other affinities. Considering her mother, father, grandparents, and six brothers all had fire affinities, her family considered this an acceptable risk. Unfortunately, Talia did NOT get a fire affinity, instead getting two rare, oddball affinities, dream and bone. Needless to say, neither affinity works properly until she learns to frame them both in terms of fire-power.
• Internal Reformist: Downplayed, but this is how Alustin acts towards traditional methods of teaching at Skyhold.
  • MUCH more downplayed but Kanderon herself is one for the Great Powers, the games they play, and even more so the empires they create.
• Mana: All magic is done through absorbing mana from the surrounding area, and channeling it through a caster's body to "attune" it to the caster's element/s. A person usually casts from his reservoir of mana and it refills slowly over time. Certain areas (such as Skyhold) have an enormous amount of mana that can be absorbed. Other areas are virtual mana "deserts".
• Noodle Incident: Alustin is practically full of these.
  • The gorgon incident was never really explained. It was apparently so noteworthy that Indris Stormbreaker, dragon ruler of Theras Tel, considers it impressive.
  • He has a story about carrying a hatching hydra egg, but just described it as "unpleasant".
• The Multiverse: Series takes place in one of the worlds in Bierce's "Aetheriad's"
• Obfuscating Stupidity: A variant. While Alustin is definitely not stupid, he amplifies his eccentricities to make himself unpredictable. Also, it amuses him as to how much people underestimate him just because he tends to ramble on about obscure terracing magics for farming.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Coven Kanderon, Indris and Iliana when their transmissions are intercepted by Hugh.
  • Also in the same interceptions we find out about the wider multiversal cabal which literally has a faction called The Council which Kanderon is a probationary member of.
• Our Liches Are Different: Lichdom is a way to escape mortality, but in Mage Errant's elemental magic system, mages imbue some piece of fitting terrain with their soul becoming stationary.
  • Several Lichs have tried to get around their stationary nature but to date every one that has tried has either failed leading to their final death or due to their demense not being large enough to contain their entire mind have been driven irrevocably insane. As of The Last Echo Kanderon is the first to succeed thanks to her Planar Affinity allowing her to store her entire demense in a Pocket Dimension, including an infant star to power her Stellar Affinity.
• Paper Master: A large number of Skyhold's librarians are paper mages. They are usually deemed to be of not much use on the battlefield. Alustin, who is an exceptionally powerful one, would beg to differ.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Most of the Great Powers qualify.
• Pocket Dimension: All over the place but especially evident with the Bag of Holding that Kanderon created for Alustin, which is of course a ruse as the bag is just a bag, Alustin is really using his Storage Tattoo and tricking people into thinking it's the bag.
  • Post Jewel of the Endless Erg Hugh's Crystal Book becomes this for basically all of the normal books it eats.
  • Post Siege of Skyhold Kanderon has etched Storage Tattoos onto all of the apprentices so that they have their own personal Pocket Dimensions to store their things. Talia being Talia decided her tattoo should go on her lips so it looked like she was pulling things out of her mouth.
• Romantic False Lead: Avah. The group meets her while traveling to Theras Tel, who Hugh grows a crush on. While they do get into a romantic relationship, they eventually break up and he later ends up with Talia instead.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The series likes to do this a lot.
  • In Into the Labyrinth after Hugh and his friends fall into the sixth level of the labyrinth, they only manage to climb up one floor before they are all completely exhausted as the sixth floor is one of the most deadly floors and they are still rookie mages at this point in the story. If it wasn't for Hugh making the contract with Kanderon, they probably would have all died.
  • In Jewels of the Endless Erg Sabea at one point tries to use her new wind movement technique when fighting a sunmaw, but it fails because it was still experimental and she hadn't mastered it yet.
  • In A Traitor in Skyhold One of the clues that leads the gang to the traitor is Hugh realizing that there was no way he could have attended Skyhold, a magic school with an extremely high tuition costs unless someone with excess to Skyhold's finances were pulling strings, as his family was poor and only sent him to Skyhold to get rid of him.
  • A Traitor in Skyhold ends with Avah breaking up with Hugh because the events of the finale has her fully realize that Hugh's life as a mage is filled with danger, and staying together would put her life in peril as well. At the end of the day, she's just a normal girl who wants to be a merchant, she can't handle the stress of danger and doesn't want to put her life in jeopardy. Plus, she and Hugh had a relatively shallow relationship and didn't have any strong emotional connection, so to her the relationship was not worth the risk.
  • In the Lost City of Ithos when discussing about how Talia would tell her feelings for Hugh, Talia brings up how the heroes in her novels would usually go through many misunderstandings, failing to confess their feelings clearly until finally confessing their love during the final battle...but Sabae and Godrick tell her not to do any of that since a love confession during a battle could get them distracted possibly killed and the misunderstandings would just constantly annoy everyone around them, so she should tell Hugh how she feels as soon as possible while they are still out of danger.
• Tornado Move: Sabae's techniques rely on her generating cyclonic winds around her body to form armor and blast attacks from. It is interesting that similar techniques are used to shield against sandstorms, only magnified and on a personal scale.
• Training from Hell: Hugh's master seems to believe in this. For example, Kanderon Crux pelts him with crystals for multiple sessions to teach Hugh to sense crystals. It should be noted that Kanderon never told him how he should do it.
• The Trickster: The legendary Wanderer who gave away a kingdom for a treasure map.
• Underwater Kiss: Kind of. Hugh and Talia share their first kiss while the ship they were on, The Rising Cormorant, was safely sailing under the sea with an air bubble surrounding the deck so they could breathe(because magic).
• We Are as Mayflies:
  • Kanderon considers humanity this. It may be that she is working to the benefit of humanity, but any individual human life isn't that significant. She eventually gets better after warlock pacting with Hugh.
  • Keayda the stone lich plays it straight. It's referred to in universe as "temporal disassociation".
• Weather Manipulation:
  • Ilinia Kaen Das is one of the main users of this. She is capable of using her wind, water and lightning affinities to raise and redirect massive storms. She can also prevent rain falling in an area, demonstrated with Havath causing massive scale crop failure.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…
  • Talia is descended from a line of powerful fire mages. Her solution to combat is always "set it on fire".
  Talia: Why pick a lock when you can just burn down the whole building?.
  • Artur Wallbreaker and his son Godrick have literal enchanted hammers for fighting.
• White-and-Grey Morality: Aside from Bakori, most of the antagonists aren't pure evil and can be sympathetic (albeit to varying degrees) and have their reasons for doing what they do.
  • There is also Grey-and-Grey Morality at work, as while Hugh and his friends do want to do good, most of their allies aren't exactly 100% innocent.