Serie Quotes

Denken is an old man, and Serie opens his interview by listing his record: a self-made mage from a military family, now the most influential mage in the Northern Lands. She wishes she had met him young, when he still had energy and ambition; she is not interested in burned-out cinders. Or so she thought. The usual reading of this line is a tribute to Denken's fire. Look at what the second sentence rewards. On seeing her, he thought about how he would fight her. Denken says he gave up the thought immediately, and she passes him for having had it at all. The standard is her own supremacy: a candidate proves himself by imagining a fight with her, not by winning one or even starting one. That is an odd test for a mage exam, and a revealing one. Serie measures other mages by their distance from herself, and the compliment is mostly about the distance.