Hey Qifrey, remember what Alaira said last week? Never take your eyes off the kids!
Had he known a member of the Brimmed Hat was so willing to approach Coco themselves, he probably would’ve been keeping tabs on her a lot more than he currently is.
Qifrey had had counted on them not leaving the shop, which Coco did when she saw the familiar Brimmed Hat Witch and decided to chase after them. They had intended to lure her out into a trap to put her to the test, but ended up with some extra company since Tetia, Richeh and Agott who was (quite literally) dragged into this while they were running after her.
Unfortunately this predicament only seem to worsen Coco’s already fragile relationship with the girls (outside of perhaps Richeh, who seems to be the sole exception of the trio at the moment). Agott to nobody’s surprise was furious with Coco, and immediately lashed out at her, bringing up all her past failures to remind her how useless she is. Tetia was in a panic about dying, and while she didn’t say it out loud, the look she gave Coco made it clear she did blame her for getting them involved in this situation. Meanwhile Richeh appears the be the only level-headed one here, (keep calm and carry on vibes), and seems to be the only one who hasn’t expressed any fault or blame on Coco for their current predicament.
Though that isn’t to say Agott and Tetia didn’t do anything helpful today. In-fact as much as she loathes being dragged into this, it’s because Agott was with them that they didn’t get immediately killed by the dragon. To put it bluntly: She saved their asses. Agott was the one who instructed everyone on what to do, and ultimately bought them enough time to get out of sight of it with a spell she had prepared in advance in their Palm Quire. And then once they reached a dead end, Tetia gave up her robes to cast a spell on it to serve as a distraction to buy time to find an exit.
But as much as Agott would probably hate to admit it, she’s likely going to be kicking herself later for not listening to Coco when she had tried to bring her attention to a large magic circle she had spotted in the distance. Either it’s a diversion to veer them off track, or (and most likely) the key to getting themselves out. Needless to say, it does make you wonder if they are about to be forced into a situation where they have no choice but to cast forbidden magic in order to even leave the place they had been taken to. It would certainly be an interesting predicament to put them in, especially since this test was originally designed for Coco specifically. Considering she doesn’t even have a wand on hand (I think?), outside of the bottle of ink she had just been given, she would certainly be pressed to make it work— to the point using Forbidden Magic could appear as the only means to get out of this plight in one piece.
According to this Brimmed Hat Witch, Coco is their seed of “Hope”. This pretty much confirms that they do see great potential in her abilities, and she’s an important test subject for their long term goals. If I had to make any guess of their intentions, considering the Witches are trying to erase and remove all knowledge of magic from Humanity’s hands, the Brimmed Hats may be trying to counteract that by attempting to restore Humanity’s knowledge and history of magic. And what better way to do that than to quite literally placing it back into their hands? The problem however, is that it’s clear that the Brimmed Hats have no intention of establishing their own conduct of rules and order. They prefer to play a rogue game, and by including Forbidden Magic in these books they are distributing, it does appear they want to bring back the dark age of chaos.
It’ll be interesting to see whether the girls figure out a way to get out first, or with the trusted help of Coco’s Brushbuddy she had brought back with her last week, Qifrey may be able to track down where the girls have been whisked off to.
Apart from the present crisis the girls have run into, this week they did talk about switching up Coco’s tools… Except, not with what she’s used to. In the beginning of the episode, I found that kind of surprising, but after seeing how they needed to quickly be able to draw/close spells on the fly in the labryinth, perhaps it’s just not practical tool for on-to-go purposes. The one she had been using since her arrival had been one of Qifrey’s old pens he lends to his students to start off with. But seeing that she hasn’t been able to find her stride with the clean lines, he concluded that perhaps she needs to find a pen that fits her hand better. So they went to an island in the town of Kalhn to visit the magic stationary story where she could find one that fits her better.
It’s there we learned more about how the Conjuring Ink. It actually comes from the Silverwood Trees, and it’s the only true they can extract the magic ink from. When healthy the tree and its branches are an enchanting silver, but when the branches dies, it turns black. In this state, the branch is highly toxic to both the tree and humans, so it’s important to remove it and keep it out of the public’s hands.
Another interesting point we learned is that apparently the Silver Trees are Witches’ sole source for obtaining the conjuring ink. It certainly does raise the stakes for Witches, as should the tree go extinct, unless they were to discover source or another way, that would be a sure way to kill off magic altogether. This is probably another one of the closely guarded secrets being kept from the overall public. It’s one thing to prevent them from obtaining magic, but it also means protecting the tree from malicious parties who seek to purge Witches from the world…
Well that’s all I got for this week, I’m looking forward to the next one. I’ve heard some teasers about the next episode from some of the behind the scenes stuff they have up on youtube. Kind of wished I didn’t watch it since it did spoil me about the dragon, haha. But hey, at least it wasn’t a huge spoiler, right?
