Intro
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Hi, everyone
This probably requires some explanation.
If you have been following my work for some time, you will know that I created Schooled In Magic - a cross between Harry Potter and Lest Darkness Falls in which the heroine is transported to another world, goes to a magic school, and start introducing semi-modern ideas, innovations, technologies that eventually create a steampunk world in which magic and technology not only coexist but enhance each other in a number of surprising ways. It is a world where airships and guns face witches on broomsticks and wizards with magic wands. At this point in the saga, the pace of change is picking up and nothing is certain any longer, from the limits of magic to politics and just about everything else.
Naturally, you can download the first book in the series from Kindle Unlimited here (it will be free between 8/1/2025-12/1/2025):
Amazon.com
And you can see the other books in the series here:
The Chrishanger
The Princess Exile is a stand-alone book set in that universe. You do not have to know much more about the universe than what I said above to understand it, as pretty much all the characters in this book are new. Some locations are not, but I will try to fill in as much detail as possible as I go along. I've also attached the recap I used for earlier books below, which gives you some idea of just what happened and why.
And now I've got your attention …
Please join my mailing list (List information - chrishanger@chrishanger.simplelists.com - Simplelists) as in this day and age it is the only way to keep up with every new release. I promise I won't spam you with anything other than my releases: I do have a blog, which is a little more than just new releases, and you can see it at The Chrishanger
or you can just follow me through any of the other ways listed here: The Chrishanger
Links to the general theme, Fantastic Schools are currently (and constantly) looking for new authors. If you are interested in writing for us, please check out the link below:
The Chrishanger
Thank you for your time
Chris
Schooled in Magic Recap
It is, of course, difficult to summarise twenty-four books (and six novellas) in a handful of pages, but I've tried to hit the high points.
Emily grew up in our world. Her mother was a drunkard. Her father a mystery. Her stepfather a leering man whose eyes followed her everywhere. By the time she turned sixteen, she knew her life would never get any better. She lost herself in studies of history, dreaming of a better world somewhere in the past. And then everything changed.
Shadye, a powerful necromancer on the Nameless World, wanted to kidnap a Child of Destiny to tip the war in his favour. He entrusted the task to sprites, transdimensional creatures with inhuman senses of humour, who yanked Emily out of her world and dumped her into Shadye's prison cell. Unaware he'd made a dreadful mistake, Shadye proceeded to try to sacrifice Emily to dark gods in a bid to gain their favour. Emily would have died if she hadn't been saved by Void, a sorcerer on the other side. Void took her to his tower, realised she had a talent for magic and arranged for her to study at Whitehall School.
Emily found herself torn between the joy of magic - she had something she was good at, for the first time in her voice - and the trials and tribulations of living in a very difficult world. Befriending a handful of people, including Imaiqah and Princess Alassa of Zangaria (and the older students Jade and Cat), Emily started introducing innovations from Earth to the Nameless World. Shadye, catching wind of how changes were starting to spread, assumed he'd been right all along about the Child of Destiny. Mounting an attack on Whitehall, Shadye nearly killed Emily before she managed to weaponise concepts from Earth to beat him.
That summer, she accompanied Princess Alassa to Zangaria and discovered her changes were not only spreading, but unleashing a whole new industrial revolution. This didn't sit well with many of the local aristocrats, including King Randor - Alassa's father - and a number of his courtiers. The latter mounted a coup, determined to take control for themselves before the commoners got any more ideas. Emily helped Alassa to retake control, at the price of seriously worrying King Randor. He had to reward her, by giving her the Barony of Cockatrice, but he feared her impact on the kingdom. The seeds were sown for later conflict as the king's concerns started to grow into outright paranoia.
Emily's second year at Whitehall was just as eventful as the first. Emily's research into magic, including discovering a way to create a magical battery, nearly got her expelled. She might have been tossed out, if events hadn't overtaken her. The school was plagued by a murderer, later revealed to be a shape-shifting mimic. Emily figured out the truth - the mimic wasn't a creature, but a spell - and discovered how to defeat it. She also learnt enough from the spell's final moments to, eventually, duplicate it as a necromancer-killing weapon.
Worse, however, she was starting to attract interest from outside the school. One of her roommates - Lin - was revealed to be a spy, hailing from Mountaintop School. Another nearly killed her, quite by accident. It was a relief to find herself spending her summer on work experience, in the Cairngorm Mountains. She saw, for the first time, the grinding poverty of people living on the fringes - and just how far they'd go to save themselves. It was sheer luck - and a piece of spellwork that triggered a small nuclear-scale explosion - that saved her life from a newborn necromancer.
Planning her return for third year, Emily agreed - at the request of the Grandmaster and Lady Barb - to allow herself to be kidnapped by Mountaintop School. There, she met the Head Girl - Nanette, who'd posed as Lin - and Administrator Aurelius, a magician with plans to reshape the balance of power once and for all. She also met Frieda, a girl two years younger than herself who was supposed to be her servant. Unimpressed with the classism running through the school, and grimly determined to find out its secret, Emily sparked off a rebellion amongst the low-born students and discovered the grim truth. Mountaintop had been sacrificing the low-born students for power. Breaking their spell, she left. She took Frieda with her.
That summer, Emily made a deadly enemy of Fulvia Ashworth, Matriarch of House Ashworth. Calling in a favour, Fulvia arranged for Master Grey - a powerful combat sorcerer who'd been appointed to serve as a teacher at Whitehall - to manipulate Emily into challenging him to a duel. Unaware of this, Emily's discovery that Alassa and Jade had become lovers (and her first real relationship, with Caleb) took second place to a series of weird events taking place in the school, eventually traced back to a demon that had escaped Shadye's fortress and slipped into the school's wards. Backed into a corner, Emily risked everything to free the school from the demon, offering the creature her soul in exchange for letting everyone else go. The Grandmaster stepped in before the deal could be concluded, sacrificing himself so that Emily might live. Pushed to the limit, unwilling to run, Emily faced Grey in the duelling circle and won. The victory nearly killed her.
Her magic sparking, nearly flickering out of control, Emily returned to Zangaria and discovered that the kingdom was plagued by unrest. King Randor hadn't kept his word about granting more rights to the commoners, prompting trouble on the streets. Worse, the rebels - including Imaiqah's father - were being aided by a mystery magician, later revealed to be Nanette. Alassa nearly died on her wedding day, shot down by a gunpowder weapon that had grown from the seeds Emily had planted. Furious, King Randor demanded that Emily punish the rebels. Horrified at his demands, unaware the king didn't know what he was asking, Emily fled. She was not to know that the king's paranoia had become madness.
She was not best pleased, when she returned to Whitehall, to discover that Grandmaster Hasdrubal had been replaced by Grandmaster Gordian. Gordian was progressive in many ways, including a willingness to open the tunnels under Whitehall and determine what secrets could be found there, but he neither liked nor trusted Emily. She had to balance his concern with her growing relationship with Caleb as she worked with one of the tutors - and a new friend, Cabiria of House Fellini, to explore the tunnels. The tutor pushed too far and nearly caused the school to collapse in on itself. Luckily, Emily saved the school using techniques she'd devised with Caleb, only to find herself steered to the nexus point and hurled back in time ...
Emily rapidly discovered that the stories about Lord Whitehall had missed out several crucial details. The Whitehall Commune was on the run, fleeing enigmatic monsters - the Manavores - that seemed immune to magic. Their bid to take control of the nexus point nearly failed - would have failed, if Emily hadn't helped them. She ensured they laid the groundwork for the school, before figuring out a way to return home. In the aftermath, Emily and Caleb consummated their relationship for the first time.
She was not to know that Dua Kepala, a powerful necromancer, was about to start his invasion of the Allied Lands. Having crushed Heart's Eye, a school very much like Whitehall, the necromancer intended to invade the next kingdom and take its lands and people for himself. At the request of Sergeant Miles, Emily joined the war effort, fighting alongside General Pollack and his son Casper, Caleb's father and brother respectively. Separated from the rest of the army, Emily and Casper attacked Heart's Eye, reignited the nexus point under the school and found themselves locked in battle with the necromancer. Dua Kepala killed Casper and would have killed Emily, if Void hadn't stepped in and fought Dua Kepala long enough to let Emily gain control of the nexus point and swat the necromancer like a bug. She found herself in sole possession of the nexus point and thus owner of the abandoned school. She and Caleb would later start developing plans to turn Heart's Eye into the first true university, a place where magic and science would merge for the benefit of all.
Reluctantly, she accompanied General Pollack and the remains of his son to Beneficence, a city-state on the borders of Cockatrice. There, she met Vesperian, an industrialist who wanted her to invest in his rail-building program. Emily barely had any time to realise the problem before the financial bubble Vesperian had created burst, unleashing chaos on the streets as the population realised their savings and investments had simply evaporated. Worse, a religious cult, bent on power, took advantage of the chaos to secure their position, aided by what looked like a very real god. Emily, plunged into battle, discovered it was a variant on the mimic spell, one dependent on sacrificing humans to maintain its power. She stopped it, at the cost of sacrificing her relationship with Caleb. They would remain friends, but nothing more.
Emily returned to Whitehall, at the start of her final year, to discover that the staff had elected her Head Girl, despite Gordian's objections. She didn't want the role, but found herself unable to refuse it either. She found herself clashing with Jacqui, a student who wanted the post for herself, as her relationship with Frieda started to go downhill. The younger girl's behaviour grew worse and worse until she nearly killed another student and fled the school, forcing Emily to go after her. She was just in time to discover that Frieda had been manipulated by another sorcerer, too late to save Frieda from a murder charge brought by Fulvia.
Stripped of her post as Head Girl (and replaced by Jacqui), Emily threw herself into defending Frieda from Fulvia. She rapidly worked out that Jacqui had been subverted by Fulvia long ago, to the point where Jacqui was prepared to risk everything to do her will. Scaring hell out of the other girl, Emily triggered off a series of events that led to Fulvia's defeat and eventual death. However, her position at Whitehall was untenable. Realising the school no longer had anything to offer her, with an apprenticeship promised by Void, Emily choose to leave.
Unknown to her, events in Zangaria had moved on. King Randor had discovered that Imaiqah's father had plotted against him, that Emily had chosen to keep this a secret and that Alassa and Jade were expecting their first child. In his madness, Randor imprisoned Alassa and Imaiqah in the Tower of Alexis, intending to take his grandchild and raise him himself while leaving his daughter to rot. Jade sought help from Emily and Cat, launching a bid to free the prisoners from the tower. During the plotting, Emily and Cat became lovers. The bid to free Alassa worked, at the cost of Emily herself falling into enemy hands. Randor sentenced her to public execution, but she was rescued by her friends. As they fled to Cockatrice, Randor - desperate - embraced necromancy and prepared himself for war to the knife.
A three-sided civil war broke out, between the king, the princess and the remaining nobility. The king crushed the nobility, only to be outgunned by the princess's faction (as it had embraced modern weapons and ideology). Desperate, Randor mounted a bid to kill his daughter - nearly killing Imaiqah, who was stabbed with a charmed dagger - and use magic to crush her armies. Horrified, Emily and Cat planned to kill the necromancer king before he killed the entire kingdom. Their plan went horrifically wrong, forcing Emily into a point-blank fight with a necromancer. She won, barely, but Randor's dying curse stripped her of her magic.
Seemingly powerless, plunging into depression, Emily threw herself on the mercy of House Fellini, the one magical family with experience in dealing with magicless children. She rapidly found herself dealing with a mystery, from Cabiria's seeming lack of power to just what happened when the family performed the ritual that unlocked her magic. However. It seemed futile. A clash with Jacqui revealed just how powerless she'd become, leading to a fight that ended her relationship with Cat. Emily wasn't in the best state to discover that the family had a deadly secret, or that Cabiria's uncle wanted to claim Heart's Eye for himself. It took her everything she had to gain access to the nexus point long enough to undo the curse blocking her powers and kill him.
Still reeling from the near-disaster, Emily joined Caleb and a handful of her other friends in preparing Heart's Eye for its new role. As they explored the school, they discovered the mirrors had been part of an experiment that had gone horrifically wrong. The school was linked to alternate timelines, including one with a surviving Dua Kepala and another dominated by an evil version of Emily herself. They eventually figured out that the school's original staff had been fishing in interdimensional waters, catching hold of a multidimensional creature that was trying to break free. As reality itself started to break down, Emily managed to let it go.
After briefly returning to Zangaria to meet her namesake - now-Queen Alassa's daughter, Princess Emily - Emily started her apprenticeship with Void. Pushed to the limits, forced to comprehend levels of magic she'd never realised existed, she found herself preparing for a greater role. Testing her constantly, Void eventually sent her to Dragora with an unspecified objective (seemingly to find out who murdered the king before the regent was appointed). She eventually discovered that the king had been killed by his daughter, who'd been pushed into developing her magic before she could handle it. Unwilling to kill the daughter or let her wreck havoc, Emily took a third option and used the magic-blocking curse to save the daughter's life and give her time to grow up. Her instincts warned her not to tell Void what she'd done.
Several months later, Emily found herself going to war again. Three necromancers had banded together to invade the Allied Lands, using vast armies of slave labour to cut through the mountains and flood into the lowlands. Working out a plan, Emily used the bilocation spell to ensure that she'd be with the army raiding enemy territory and trying to sneak into the necromancer's castle to reignite the nexus point (as she'd done earlier at Heart's Eye). After a shaky start, and the decision to share the battery secret with a bunch of other magicians, she used a mimic to take out the final necromancer and then reignited the nexus point. Unknown to her, the nexus point was the linchpin of the entire network. Reigniting this nexus point would reignite the remainder, frying a handful of necromancers who'd been too close to the drained points when they came back to life. Between the nexus points and the batteries, the threat of the necromancers was gone ...
... And, with their defeat, the glue that held the Allied Lands together was also gone.
It did not take long for trouble to begin. In the aftermath of the war, old grudges flared to life. Kingdoms battled for power and position, armies warred over patches of land, commoners demanded political rights and freedoms from their aristocratic masters and magicians started plotting to separate themselves from the mundane world or set up new kingdoms in the formerly Blighted Lands. And, with the White City no longer wholly human and the White Council scattered, it was only a matter of time before the fragile peace was shattered beyond repair.
In a desperate bid to save what they could, the Allied Lands planned to hold a conference at Laughter Academy to settle the questions frozen in time by the seemingly-endless war. But all was not well in the witches school. The girls were growing increasingly reckless, increasingly out of hand, preying on the mundanes below the mountain school while their tutors plotted and schemed to take advantage of the chaos. No one knew why.
Recovering from the trials and tribulations of the war, and eager to resume her apprenticeship, Emily was in no condition to intervene. But when Lady Barb, her former tutor, asked for her help, Emily could not refuse. Heading to Laugher, she took up a teaching position as she searched for the truth. Dragged into a deranged plot to resurrect a long-dead witch, assisted by shadowy figures from outside the school, Emily discovered that the real purpose was to disgrace the school. She was barely in time to save the girls from certain death.
However, she was unaware that - now the war was over - powerful magicians felt they no longer needed her. And, as she left Laughter for the final time, she found herself surrounded by enemies and placed under arrest. Realising they intended to kill her, she tried to escape - fighting a bunch of combat magicians, led by Master Lucknow, to a standstill. Void arrived - summoned by Jan - in time to insist they gave her a proper trial in front of the White Council. It went badly - for them. Queen Alassa and a bunch of Emily's old friends and allies arrived to speak in her defence. In a bid to save face, Master Lucknow put forward a proposal.
The Kingdom of Alluvia had been rocked by revolution. The king and queen were prisoners, the crown prince and his brother leading an army to put down the rebellion before it spread out of control. The White Council proposed that Emily should meditate between the two sides, in hopes of ending the conflict peacefully. Agreeing, Emily travelled to the kingdom in the company of Prince Hedrick, Lady Barb and Silent, her maid. She arrived to discover that the king had already had his head chopped off.
The mission rapidly proved impossible. Neither the Crown Prince - now King - nor the rebels wanted to agree on terms. Worse, Emily became aware that an unseen force was manipulating both sides, a force using magic. She investigated, all the while trying to convince the two sides to lower their demands, but it was impossible. As matters spiralled out of control, she discovered the worst possible news. Nanette, her old enemy had been posing as Silent. And that meant that it was Void who was pulling the strings.
Hurrying to Whitehall, where the White Council was gathering to discuss the future, she discovered she was too late. Void had already claimed the nexus point for himself, using a combination of Emily's own spells to take control of the school and declare himself the new ruler of the Allied Lands. He tried to talk her into joining him, pointing out that the White Council were incompetent and the kings and patriarchs self-interested. Emily refused, only to be held prisoner by a spell targeted on her name. Lady Barb saved her, buying time for Emily to escape at the cost of her life.
Unknown to Emily, as she and a handful of companions fled, she was chased by two sets of enemies; Void's enhanced troops and the remainder of the White Council's forces, which blamed her for the chaos. Emily was forced to run deep into Alluvia, where she forged an uneasy alliance with Prince - now King - Dater and then into Rose Red, where she joined forces - briefly - with Princess Mariah, Dater's promised bride. Leaving the newly-married Dater and Mariah behind, holding a nexus point against Void, she and her companions kept moving, encountering rebels - one of whom claimed to be her - and, eventually, being taken prisoner by the White Council's forces.
Held in Resolution Castle and threatened with the complete loss of her magic (again), Emily was forced to escape, destroying what remained of the White Council's enforcers in the process. Making it to Zangaria, she was confronted by Void and captured by Nanette, who risked the displeasure of her master to avenge herself on Emily. Helpless, Emily took the risk of opening her mind to Nanette, showing her rival that it hadn't been her who'd killed Aurelius, Nanette's former master and father-figure. Convincing Nanette to join her, they made their way back to Zangaria and planned a counterattack. Mustering Emily's allies, they went on the offensive and eventually won, defeating Void at the last moment.
But it was too late to save the old order. Many kings and aristocrats had been killed in the first terrible moments of the war. Others had been forced to flee and fight for their lives. The old White Council had been destroyed, while the magical communities had been infiltrated and turned against each other. And rebels and revolutionaries want to reshape the world according to their ideals …
The war is over. The peace has yet to be won.
And with new enemies making their appearance, Emily's life is as dangerous as ever …
This probably requires some explanation.
If you have been following my work for some time, you will know that I created Schooled In Magic - a cross between Harry Potter and Lest Darkness Falls in which the heroine is transported to another world, goes to a magic school, and start introducing semi-modern ideas, innovations, technologies that eventually create a steampunk world in which magic and technology not only coexist but enhance each other in a number of surprising ways. It is a world where airships and guns face witches on broomsticks and wizards with magic wands. At this point in the saga, the pace of change is picking up and nothing is certain any longer, from the limits of magic to politics and just about everything else.
Naturally, you can download the first book in the series from Kindle Unlimited here (it will be free between 8/1/2025-12/1/2025):
Amazon.com
And you can see the other books in the series here:
The Chrishanger
The Princess Exile is a stand-alone book set in that universe. You do not have to know much more about the universe than what I said above to understand it, as pretty much all the characters in this book are new. Some locations are not, but I will try to fill in as much detail as possible as I go along. I've also attached the recap I used for earlier books below, which gives you some idea of just what happened and why.
And now I've got your attention …
Please join my mailing list (List information - chrishanger@chrishanger.simplelists.com - Simplelists) as in this day and age it is the only way to keep up with every new release. I promise I won't spam you with anything other than my releases: I do have a blog, which is a little more than just new releases, and you can see it at The Chrishanger
or you can just follow me through any of the other ways listed here: The Chrishanger
Links to the general theme, Fantastic Schools are currently (and constantly) looking for new authors. If you are interested in writing for us, please check out the link below:
The Chrishanger
Thank you for your time
Chris
Schooled in Magic Recap
It is, of course, difficult to summarise twenty-four books (and six novellas) in a handful of pages, but I've tried to hit the high points.
Emily grew up in our world. Her mother was a drunkard. Her father a mystery. Her stepfather a leering man whose eyes followed her everywhere. By the time she turned sixteen, she knew her life would never get any better. She lost herself in studies of history, dreaming of a better world somewhere in the past. And then everything changed.
Shadye, a powerful necromancer on the Nameless World, wanted to kidnap a Child of Destiny to tip the war in his favour. He entrusted the task to sprites, transdimensional creatures with inhuman senses of humour, who yanked Emily out of her world and dumped her into Shadye's prison cell. Unaware he'd made a dreadful mistake, Shadye proceeded to try to sacrifice Emily to dark gods in a bid to gain their favour. Emily would have died if she hadn't been saved by Void, a sorcerer on the other side. Void took her to his tower, realised she had a talent for magic and arranged for her to study at Whitehall School.
Emily found herself torn between the joy of magic - she had something she was good at, for the first time in her voice - and the trials and tribulations of living in a very difficult world. Befriending a handful of people, including Imaiqah and Princess Alassa of Zangaria (and the older students Jade and Cat), Emily started introducing innovations from Earth to the Nameless World. Shadye, catching wind of how changes were starting to spread, assumed he'd been right all along about the Child of Destiny. Mounting an attack on Whitehall, Shadye nearly killed Emily before she managed to weaponise concepts from Earth to beat him.
That summer, she accompanied Princess Alassa to Zangaria and discovered her changes were not only spreading, but unleashing a whole new industrial revolution. This didn't sit well with many of the local aristocrats, including King Randor - Alassa's father - and a number of his courtiers. The latter mounted a coup, determined to take control for themselves before the commoners got any more ideas. Emily helped Alassa to retake control, at the price of seriously worrying King Randor. He had to reward her, by giving her the Barony of Cockatrice, but he feared her impact on the kingdom. The seeds were sown for later conflict as the king's concerns started to grow into outright paranoia.
Emily's second year at Whitehall was just as eventful as the first. Emily's research into magic, including discovering a way to create a magical battery, nearly got her expelled. She might have been tossed out, if events hadn't overtaken her. The school was plagued by a murderer, later revealed to be a shape-shifting mimic. Emily figured out the truth - the mimic wasn't a creature, but a spell - and discovered how to defeat it. She also learnt enough from the spell's final moments to, eventually, duplicate it as a necromancer-killing weapon.
Worse, however, she was starting to attract interest from outside the school. One of her roommates - Lin - was revealed to be a spy, hailing from Mountaintop School. Another nearly killed her, quite by accident. It was a relief to find herself spending her summer on work experience, in the Cairngorm Mountains. She saw, for the first time, the grinding poverty of people living on the fringes - and just how far they'd go to save themselves. It was sheer luck - and a piece of spellwork that triggered a small nuclear-scale explosion - that saved her life from a newborn necromancer.
Planning her return for third year, Emily agreed - at the request of the Grandmaster and Lady Barb - to allow herself to be kidnapped by Mountaintop School. There, she met the Head Girl - Nanette, who'd posed as Lin - and Administrator Aurelius, a magician with plans to reshape the balance of power once and for all. She also met Frieda, a girl two years younger than herself who was supposed to be her servant. Unimpressed with the classism running through the school, and grimly determined to find out its secret, Emily sparked off a rebellion amongst the low-born students and discovered the grim truth. Mountaintop had been sacrificing the low-born students for power. Breaking their spell, she left. She took Frieda with her.
That summer, Emily made a deadly enemy of Fulvia Ashworth, Matriarch of House Ashworth. Calling in a favour, Fulvia arranged for Master Grey - a powerful combat sorcerer who'd been appointed to serve as a teacher at Whitehall - to manipulate Emily into challenging him to a duel. Unaware of this, Emily's discovery that Alassa and Jade had become lovers (and her first real relationship, with Caleb) took second place to a series of weird events taking place in the school, eventually traced back to a demon that had escaped Shadye's fortress and slipped into the school's wards. Backed into a corner, Emily risked everything to free the school from the demon, offering the creature her soul in exchange for letting everyone else go. The Grandmaster stepped in before the deal could be concluded, sacrificing himself so that Emily might live. Pushed to the limit, unwilling to run, Emily faced Grey in the duelling circle and won. The victory nearly killed her.
Her magic sparking, nearly flickering out of control, Emily returned to Zangaria and discovered that the kingdom was plagued by unrest. King Randor hadn't kept his word about granting more rights to the commoners, prompting trouble on the streets. Worse, the rebels - including Imaiqah's father - were being aided by a mystery magician, later revealed to be Nanette. Alassa nearly died on her wedding day, shot down by a gunpowder weapon that had grown from the seeds Emily had planted. Furious, King Randor demanded that Emily punish the rebels. Horrified at his demands, unaware the king didn't know what he was asking, Emily fled. She was not to know that the king's paranoia had become madness.
She was not best pleased, when she returned to Whitehall, to discover that Grandmaster Hasdrubal had been replaced by Grandmaster Gordian. Gordian was progressive in many ways, including a willingness to open the tunnels under Whitehall and determine what secrets could be found there, but he neither liked nor trusted Emily. She had to balance his concern with her growing relationship with Caleb as she worked with one of the tutors - and a new friend, Cabiria of House Fellini, to explore the tunnels. The tutor pushed too far and nearly caused the school to collapse in on itself. Luckily, Emily saved the school using techniques she'd devised with Caleb, only to find herself steered to the nexus point and hurled back in time ...
Emily rapidly discovered that the stories about Lord Whitehall had missed out several crucial details. The Whitehall Commune was on the run, fleeing enigmatic monsters - the Manavores - that seemed immune to magic. Their bid to take control of the nexus point nearly failed - would have failed, if Emily hadn't helped them. She ensured they laid the groundwork for the school, before figuring out a way to return home. In the aftermath, Emily and Caleb consummated their relationship for the first time.
She was not to know that Dua Kepala, a powerful necromancer, was about to start his invasion of the Allied Lands. Having crushed Heart's Eye, a school very much like Whitehall, the necromancer intended to invade the next kingdom and take its lands and people for himself. At the request of Sergeant Miles, Emily joined the war effort, fighting alongside General Pollack and his son Casper, Caleb's father and brother respectively. Separated from the rest of the army, Emily and Casper attacked Heart's Eye, reignited the nexus point under the school and found themselves locked in battle with the necromancer. Dua Kepala killed Casper and would have killed Emily, if Void hadn't stepped in and fought Dua Kepala long enough to let Emily gain control of the nexus point and swat the necromancer like a bug. She found herself in sole possession of the nexus point and thus owner of the abandoned school. She and Caleb would later start developing plans to turn Heart's Eye into the first true university, a place where magic and science would merge for the benefit of all.
Reluctantly, she accompanied General Pollack and the remains of his son to Beneficence, a city-state on the borders of Cockatrice. There, she met Vesperian, an industrialist who wanted her to invest in his rail-building program. Emily barely had any time to realise the problem before the financial bubble Vesperian had created burst, unleashing chaos on the streets as the population realised their savings and investments had simply evaporated. Worse, a religious cult, bent on power, took advantage of the chaos to secure their position, aided by what looked like a very real god. Emily, plunged into battle, discovered it was a variant on the mimic spell, one dependent on sacrificing humans to maintain its power. She stopped it, at the cost of sacrificing her relationship with Caleb. They would remain friends, but nothing more.
Emily returned to Whitehall, at the start of her final year, to discover that the staff had elected her Head Girl, despite Gordian's objections. She didn't want the role, but found herself unable to refuse it either. She found herself clashing with Jacqui, a student who wanted the post for herself, as her relationship with Frieda started to go downhill. The younger girl's behaviour grew worse and worse until she nearly killed another student and fled the school, forcing Emily to go after her. She was just in time to discover that Frieda had been manipulated by another sorcerer, too late to save Frieda from a murder charge brought by Fulvia.
Stripped of her post as Head Girl (and replaced by Jacqui), Emily threw herself into defending Frieda from Fulvia. She rapidly worked out that Jacqui had been subverted by Fulvia long ago, to the point where Jacqui was prepared to risk everything to do her will. Scaring hell out of the other girl, Emily triggered off a series of events that led to Fulvia's defeat and eventual death. However, her position at Whitehall was untenable. Realising the school no longer had anything to offer her, with an apprenticeship promised by Void, Emily choose to leave.
Unknown to her, events in Zangaria had moved on. King Randor had discovered that Imaiqah's father had plotted against him, that Emily had chosen to keep this a secret and that Alassa and Jade were expecting their first child. In his madness, Randor imprisoned Alassa and Imaiqah in the Tower of Alexis, intending to take his grandchild and raise him himself while leaving his daughter to rot. Jade sought help from Emily and Cat, launching a bid to free the prisoners from the tower. During the plotting, Emily and Cat became lovers. The bid to free Alassa worked, at the cost of Emily herself falling into enemy hands. Randor sentenced her to public execution, but she was rescued by her friends. As they fled to Cockatrice, Randor - desperate - embraced necromancy and prepared himself for war to the knife.
A three-sided civil war broke out, between the king, the princess and the remaining nobility. The king crushed the nobility, only to be outgunned by the princess's faction (as it had embraced modern weapons and ideology). Desperate, Randor mounted a bid to kill his daughter - nearly killing Imaiqah, who was stabbed with a charmed dagger - and use magic to crush her armies. Horrified, Emily and Cat planned to kill the necromancer king before he killed the entire kingdom. Their plan went horrifically wrong, forcing Emily into a point-blank fight with a necromancer. She won, barely, but Randor's dying curse stripped her of her magic.
Seemingly powerless, plunging into depression, Emily threw herself on the mercy of House Fellini, the one magical family with experience in dealing with magicless children. She rapidly found herself dealing with a mystery, from Cabiria's seeming lack of power to just what happened when the family performed the ritual that unlocked her magic. However. It seemed futile. A clash with Jacqui revealed just how powerless she'd become, leading to a fight that ended her relationship with Cat. Emily wasn't in the best state to discover that the family had a deadly secret, or that Cabiria's uncle wanted to claim Heart's Eye for himself. It took her everything she had to gain access to the nexus point long enough to undo the curse blocking her powers and kill him.
Still reeling from the near-disaster, Emily joined Caleb and a handful of her other friends in preparing Heart's Eye for its new role. As they explored the school, they discovered the mirrors had been part of an experiment that had gone horrifically wrong. The school was linked to alternate timelines, including one with a surviving Dua Kepala and another dominated by an evil version of Emily herself. They eventually figured out that the school's original staff had been fishing in interdimensional waters, catching hold of a multidimensional creature that was trying to break free. As reality itself started to break down, Emily managed to let it go.
After briefly returning to Zangaria to meet her namesake - now-Queen Alassa's daughter, Princess Emily - Emily started her apprenticeship with Void. Pushed to the limits, forced to comprehend levels of magic she'd never realised existed, she found herself preparing for a greater role. Testing her constantly, Void eventually sent her to Dragora with an unspecified objective (seemingly to find out who murdered the king before the regent was appointed). She eventually discovered that the king had been killed by his daughter, who'd been pushed into developing her magic before she could handle it. Unwilling to kill the daughter or let her wreck havoc, Emily took a third option and used the magic-blocking curse to save the daughter's life and give her time to grow up. Her instincts warned her not to tell Void what she'd done.
Several months later, Emily found herself going to war again. Three necromancers had banded together to invade the Allied Lands, using vast armies of slave labour to cut through the mountains and flood into the lowlands. Working out a plan, Emily used the bilocation spell to ensure that she'd be with the army raiding enemy territory and trying to sneak into the necromancer's castle to reignite the nexus point (as she'd done earlier at Heart's Eye). After a shaky start, and the decision to share the battery secret with a bunch of other magicians, she used a mimic to take out the final necromancer and then reignited the nexus point. Unknown to her, the nexus point was the linchpin of the entire network. Reigniting this nexus point would reignite the remainder, frying a handful of necromancers who'd been too close to the drained points when they came back to life. Between the nexus points and the batteries, the threat of the necromancers was gone ...
... And, with their defeat, the glue that held the Allied Lands together was also gone.
It did not take long for trouble to begin. In the aftermath of the war, old grudges flared to life. Kingdoms battled for power and position, armies warred over patches of land, commoners demanded political rights and freedoms from their aristocratic masters and magicians started plotting to separate themselves from the mundane world or set up new kingdoms in the formerly Blighted Lands. And, with the White City no longer wholly human and the White Council scattered, it was only a matter of time before the fragile peace was shattered beyond repair.
In a desperate bid to save what they could, the Allied Lands planned to hold a conference at Laughter Academy to settle the questions frozen in time by the seemingly-endless war. But all was not well in the witches school. The girls were growing increasingly reckless, increasingly out of hand, preying on the mundanes below the mountain school while their tutors plotted and schemed to take advantage of the chaos. No one knew why.
Recovering from the trials and tribulations of the war, and eager to resume her apprenticeship, Emily was in no condition to intervene. But when Lady Barb, her former tutor, asked for her help, Emily could not refuse. Heading to Laugher, she took up a teaching position as she searched for the truth. Dragged into a deranged plot to resurrect a long-dead witch, assisted by shadowy figures from outside the school, Emily discovered that the real purpose was to disgrace the school. She was barely in time to save the girls from certain death.
However, she was unaware that - now the war was over - powerful magicians felt they no longer needed her. And, as she left Laughter for the final time, she found herself surrounded by enemies and placed under arrest. Realising they intended to kill her, she tried to escape - fighting a bunch of combat magicians, led by Master Lucknow, to a standstill. Void arrived - summoned by Jan - in time to insist they gave her a proper trial in front of the White Council. It went badly - for them. Queen Alassa and a bunch of Emily's old friends and allies arrived to speak in her defence. In a bid to save face, Master Lucknow put forward a proposal.
The Kingdom of Alluvia had been rocked by revolution. The king and queen were prisoners, the crown prince and his brother leading an army to put down the rebellion before it spread out of control. The White Council proposed that Emily should meditate between the two sides, in hopes of ending the conflict peacefully. Agreeing, Emily travelled to the kingdom in the company of Prince Hedrick, Lady Barb and Silent, her maid. She arrived to discover that the king had already had his head chopped off.
The mission rapidly proved impossible. Neither the Crown Prince - now King - nor the rebels wanted to agree on terms. Worse, Emily became aware that an unseen force was manipulating both sides, a force using magic. She investigated, all the while trying to convince the two sides to lower their demands, but it was impossible. As matters spiralled out of control, she discovered the worst possible news. Nanette, her old enemy had been posing as Silent. And that meant that it was Void who was pulling the strings.
Hurrying to Whitehall, where the White Council was gathering to discuss the future, she discovered she was too late. Void had already claimed the nexus point for himself, using a combination of Emily's own spells to take control of the school and declare himself the new ruler of the Allied Lands. He tried to talk her into joining him, pointing out that the White Council were incompetent and the kings and patriarchs self-interested. Emily refused, only to be held prisoner by a spell targeted on her name. Lady Barb saved her, buying time for Emily to escape at the cost of her life.
Unknown to Emily, as she and a handful of companions fled, she was chased by two sets of enemies; Void's enhanced troops and the remainder of the White Council's forces, which blamed her for the chaos. Emily was forced to run deep into Alluvia, where she forged an uneasy alliance with Prince - now King - Dater and then into Rose Red, where she joined forces - briefly - with Princess Mariah, Dater's promised bride. Leaving the newly-married Dater and Mariah behind, holding a nexus point against Void, she and her companions kept moving, encountering rebels - one of whom claimed to be her - and, eventually, being taken prisoner by the White Council's forces.
Held in Resolution Castle and threatened with the complete loss of her magic (again), Emily was forced to escape, destroying what remained of the White Council's enforcers in the process. Making it to Zangaria, she was confronted by Void and captured by Nanette, who risked the displeasure of her master to avenge herself on Emily. Helpless, Emily took the risk of opening her mind to Nanette, showing her rival that it hadn't been her who'd killed Aurelius, Nanette's former master and father-figure. Convincing Nanette to join her, they made their way back to Zangaria and planned a counterattack. Mustering Emily's allies, they went on the offensive and eventually won, defeating Void at the last moment.
But it was too late to save the old order. Many kings and aristocrats had been killed in the first terrible moments of the war. Others had been forced to flee and fight for their lives. The old White Council had been destroyed, while the magical communities had been infiltrated and turned against each other. And rebels and revolutionaries want to reshape the world according to their ideals …
The war is over. The peace has yet to be won.
And with new enemies making their appearance, Emily's life is as dangerous as ever …