Last Echo of the Lord of Bells Deleted Scenes

The higher tier patrons have made their choice for the month, so I've got three deleted scenes from Mage Errant 7 for y'all! Each was removed for different reasons, and two of them- the first and last- are non-canon now. (The middle one remains canon, but more detail on that later.) Full warning, there are lots of spoilers past this point for book 7 if you haven't read them yet! 

----------------------

The first deleted scene is the original dream-dive conversation between Hugh and Kanderon- much longer and more fleshed out than the more truncated version that made it into the book. I would have liked to keep the longer version, but it introduced a number of plot holes, mostly of the idiot ball variety. Most importantly, why wouldn't Hugh ask for more details about the Tongue Eater's threat? So, sadly, the scene had to go.

Once Kanderon and Hugh had composed themselves, the sphinx set to interrogating Hugh about what had happened since Alustin’s attack.

He did his best to tell the story quickly without leaving out anything important— he had no idea how long he had left in the dream with Kanderon. 

It was a huge relief to be able to tell the story in full and not have to worry about who he needed to tell what lies to or keep what secrets from, to just share his adventures in full.

Kanderon, unlike the others Hugh and his friends had told the story to, stayed quiet throughout, only asking a handful of clarifying questions. 

There were only three moments where she interrupted to comment. The first came when Hugh told her he’d declared himself her heir.

“I’d have paid quite a bit to see Ilinia’s face then,” Kanderon chuckled.

The second interruption came when Hugh described the mysterious woman with the moving script tattoos in the Labyrinth. She had been impressed enough with Hugh’s plan to revive her by pacting with his friends, but his description of the mysterious stranger immediately diverted her attention from that.

“You’re absolutely sure you’re describing her correctly?” Kanderon asked, looking deeply disturbed.

“I am, why?” Hugh asked.

Kanderon sighed heavily. “Because you’re describing The Liar. She’s at least two thousand years old, and one of the most dangerous individuals in the known multiverse. On my best day, if she took issue with me, I’d be lucky merely to escape her. I could put up a good fight, but there’d be little question of defeating her.”

“Is she your enemy?” 

Kanderon shook her head. “No, thankfully. I might even count her as a friend— but I assuredly do not count her as an ally. Perhaps it is best to say that we walk similar paths, and have even lived similar lives, but considering the power of her enemies, being her ally, even having her on the same world as you, is profoundly dangerous. Let us hope they do not find her here.”

Hugh was curious about the Liar— curious about everything Kanderon knew about the multiverse, in fact— but he set aside his curiosity for now. There would be time for that once Kanderon was awake and Alustin dealt with.

The third interruption came when Hugh told her about acquiring Limnan adaptation magic.

“I would have preferred you not gain any alien magic so early in your career, Hugh. You may have opened some new paths in your magical development, but you’ve closed off many others. You will, among other things, likely be unable to ever transition to lichdom now. Still, as these things go, Limnan magic is one of the safest choices you could have made. I’m unaware of any adverse consequences between Limnan magic and the magic of other worlds.”

Kanderon had quite a few questions about the current political situation, Alustin’s known plans, and the like, but even that line of questioning eventually trailed off, and the two sat quietly together for a time.

At least, until Hugh started to feel the dream around them weaken, as though Kanderon were waking up. It didn’t feel urgent, but nor did it feel especially far off.

His head turned towards the strange crystal apparatus, its matrix shifting back and forth along directional axes Hugh couldn’t see.

“That’s your lich demesne, isn’t it?” he asked.

Kanderon followed his gaze. “So you figured it out, then?”

“I figured it out a while ago, honestly.”

Kanderon nodded slowly. “It would be more correct to describe it as a small part of my demesne. Even after centuries of work, I was not expecting to have to transition fully to lichdom so quickly, and I have countless adjustments to make and additions to complete before I fully awaken. It’s not simple, even for me— this will be the most advanced lich demesne ever built. I even based many of its functions off the crystalline biology of the Kyrene.”

“Are you going to be able to leave Skyhold?” Hugh asked.

Kanderon chuckled. “Oh, I figured out the problem of lich mobility centuries ago, at least for myself. I’ll simply carry the bulk of my demesne in my extraplanar spaces. And, yes, before you ask, I’ve also long-since cracked the problem of keeping all three of our affinities when I fully transition to lichdom. Our stellar affinity was by far the most difficult— I only figured that one out twenty-odd years ago.”

Hugh smiled at that, but it was a weak one.

“What’s wrong, little one?” Kanderon asked, noticing his expression. “Don’t feel bad for me— I’ve been ready for a long time to start this process. I have many reasons to be angry at Alustin, hurting you above all others, but giving me this push is not one of them.”

Hugh shook his head. “It’s not that, it’s just… you’re not going to awaken in time to help us stop him, are you.”

Kanderon shook her head slowly, and Hugh noticed that her wings had turned back to crystal at some point. “No, I won’t, Hugh. It will likely be at least a year. I’ve spent so long designing, improving, and adding features onto my demesne that there’s simply no way to speed up the process to any considerable degree.  I believe that Ilinia and Indris should be able to hold off Heliothrax, now that they know she’s a threat, but you’re going to have to retrieve the Tongue Eater on your own. I’m so sorry to push these burdens onto you, but there is no one else I trust with these tasks. You’re still just a child, and I hate myself for ever letting Alustin turn you into a weapon as he did. No, for participating in turning you and your friends into weapons. I will not evade that responsibility, because Alustin only continued what I taught him. You didn’t know enough about what that path meant to make a truly informed decision, and Alustin and I took advantage of that for our own ends.”

“It’s alright,” Hugh said. He meant it, too, but he knew Kanderon wouldn’t believe it— it would probably just hurt her even more if he pressed her. 

Instead, he just leaned his head against her. “Just… please come back as soon as you can, alright? I miss you.”

Kanderon sighed, and gently leaned her immense head against him where he sat on her paw. “I miss you too, little one. And I would love to keep up these chats, but your dream magic is new and untried, and it’s dangerous for you to connect to me like this while I’m transferring my consciousness to my demesne. I won’t cut off your access to my dreams, but promise me you’ll only visit again in an emergency.”

“I promise,” Hugh said quietly.

They sat quietly together until the dream faded entirely, and Hugh woke in his bunk with tears drying on his cheeks.

---------------------------------------

The second deleted scene is an excerpt from Leon of Clan Castis' chapter. Had a lot of fun with it, but multiple beta readers felt like it slowed down the action too much, and was too much of a tangent. And, given how long book 7 is, I really couldn't afford that slowdown. The actual excerpt isn't that long- only 500 words- but it's a curious property of stories that readers frequently misremember how long scenes actually are, based off how they feel. There's a tunnel scene in a Tad Williams novel, for instance, that a lot of readers complain goes on forever, for great chunks of the book, whereas in actuality it's only a few pages long. So when I had multiple beta readers complaining it slowed down the story too much, I knew I had to take this one out. Remains canon, though, and I might turn it into a full short story someday!

And then, when he came home after hunting down an entire group of bandits led by a gorgon knot, he was promptly acclaimed as the most annoying member of the family.

Leon was honestly still a little amazed he’d survived that one. Gorgon knots were nasty. In order to make one, it required at least five gorgon youths, dozens or hundreds of snakes, a number of highly dangerous and forbidden alchemicals, and several healers with intimate knowledge of gorgon and snake physiology. 

The process was simple enough— instead of binding snakes to a single gorgon’s scalp, you bound the snakes in between multiple gorgons’ scalps, forming a back-to-back ring of bodies. In doing so, you forced a new mind into being, one that had no intention of giving its bodies back to their original owners, and wielded all of their original affinities.

Gorgon knots were, according to legend, originally the product of magical experimentation on gorgons by the ancient draconic empire, their attempt to create a magical weapon to parallel the power of the gorgon juggernauts.

It had worked, and unlike the incredibly rare gorgon juggernauts, almost any gorgon could be joined in a knot. It was, of course, strictly banned by the gorgons, and gorgons had placed massive bounties for the heads of anyone who attempted it, as well as doing their best to suppress knowledge of the process. They had long memories, and still resented the deaths of thousands of gorgons during the Ithonian Empire, when the Ithonians had attempted to mass produce gorgon knots.

They were usually short-lived— most died to medical complications ranging from sepsis to fatal insomnia, and many of those who survived were killed in rebellions by the original minds still lurking in their bodies.

On those rare occasions a gorgon knot succeeded and lasted longer than a few days or weeks, a truly lethal monster was born. They possessed all the original affinities of their hosts, which could be cast from any of their bodies. 

The gorgon knot the bandits had made had been a small one— made from just five gorgon youths they’d kidnapped— but he’d barely survived. The rest of the bandits had died quickly, but the gorgon knot had easily deflected all his flames with a half dozen-different magics as it hovered over the tiny valley, throwing boulders and lightning bolts at Leon whenever he’d emerged from hiding.

He’d considered retreating, but the knot had flown over to the only entrance to the little valley, and hovered there, five sets of eyes watching in every direction, slowly rotating, connected by a web of twisting snake bodies between them.

In the end, Leon had cheated. He’d kept the knot’s focus on him while he used his fire and ice affinities to drain all the heat out of the cliffs on either side of the valley entrance.

Then, once the cliffs were colder than any winter, he’d ignited dozens of blasts of fire inside cracks deep in the stone. 

The two cliff-faces had simply shattered, and for all the gorgon knot’s power, it couldn’t resist hundreds of tons of stone.

-------------------------------------------------------

This last deleted scene is from Talia's big fight against Heliothrax, where she defends against a counterattack. In the end, it just felt like too much, and I wasn't entirely certain the science worked like I wanted, so it got the axe.

Talia honestly wasn’t sure which of them grabbed at their stellar or solar mana first. But before she’d picked up any appreciable speed in her drop, quite literally hundreds of sunbolts were ascending towards Talia in a broad arc.

If she’d pushed all her remaining mana into her scrimshaw ward and tried to build a stellar mana containment field around herself, it wouldn’t have been nearly enough. Her defenses would have failed after a couple of sunbolts.

Talia had a better plan.

At least, better in her opinion. Her friends had called it completely and utterly insane, above and beyond Sabae’s starstrike armor as a defense against sunfire.

One of the oddities Sabae had needed to confront while developing her starstrike armor? The fact that starfire shields had a galvanic charge. She’d found ways to counteract that, but Talia had seen potential in another route— how to enhance the galvanic charge.

As the sunbolts rose towards Talia, she calmly felt out their galvanic charge with her stellar affinity sense.

Then she carefully wrapped herself in a starfire shield that precisely matched the galvanic charge of Heliothrax’s sunfire containment fields, only vastly amplified. The sunfire shield galvanic charges weren’t normally strong enough to affect each other except at extreme close range— or while they were spinning— but Talia’s starfire shield’s greater galvanic charge reached out to affect the sunbolts a few dozen feet away.

Talia’s favorite fun fact about sunbolts and starbolts?

Their weight was basically negligible. 

As Talia plunged down into the swarm of sunbolts, they exploded away from her in every direction, forming a widening spiral of sunfire above her, barely even affecting her motion.

If Talia had failed to match the galvanic charge of Heliothrax’s sunbolts even a little, if Heliothrax hadn’t been so panicked that she had used a single spell with the same galvanic charge for all of her sunbolts, if Heliothrax had decided to use a sunfire ray or just to hurl a wall of sunfire at her, Talia would have been burnt to a crisp before falling more than a couple hundred feet.

Heliothrax, waiting with grim satisfaction for Talia’s charred corpse to fall from the sky, didn’t even have time to properly understand what her affinity senses were telling her, let alone react, before Talia erupted from the bottom of the sunbolt swarm, perfectly intact.