Strixhaven University welcomes you. Begin your magical studies on a faraway plane, encountering new friends, mysteries, and dangers, in this fantastical dark academia.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Strixhaven: Omens of Chaos by Seanan McGuire, which is out now.
Eula Blue was supposed to be a mage. That was before the war came—before the fight for the Multiverse devastated Eula’s home, and with it her hopes for a magical education.
But the destruction of the war also brought something new: the ability to travel to other planes. And when Eula receives an invitation to study magic at a distant school called Strixhaven, she leaps to take it.
Eula’s journey brings her closer than she ever thought possible to her fellow students, including the mysterious Segante, a boy whose secrets Eula longs to share. But not everyone is thrilled by the arrival of the new class, and Eula and her new friends quickly become targets.
To make it through their first semester, they’ll have to fight for their place in this new world—or else they’ll be dead before their final exams.
This special first edition hardcover includes a Command Tower Magic: The Gathering card with all-new Strixhaven artwork—while supplies last!
EXCERPT
Even getting to Strixhaven is no easy matter. Three of Strixhaven’s new interplanar students journey across a treacherous Omen Path on their way to the university. Soon after departing from their home planes, Eula and Alandra receive a swift lesson on the cutthroat reality of Segante’s world of Fiora.
Someone outside the carriage yells. Eula moves, pushing Segante out of the way to look out the window herself. A barricade has been set up across the road, and four men are there, swords in hand, menacing the driver. He’s still seated at the front of the carriage, and their pegasus doesn’t appear to have been hurt, but there’s no going forward.
“He needs to just pay them and we can get on with it,” murmurs Segante, so close to Eula’s ear that she jerks away, turning to stare at him. He shrugs. “They’re highwaymen. You pay them and they let you by. If you protest too much, they decide you have something worth protecting, and they get curious. That’s when people get hurt.”
Their driver doesn’t appear to have been informed about the customs of Fioran highwaymen. He’s continuing to protest, and as Eula watches, two of the men advance on him, swords aimed low. The other two turn toward the carriage door. Segante grabs her, pulling her away from the window.
“Blue girl,” he snaps at Alandra. “Can you not be blue?”
“Excuse me?” asks the merfolk girl.
“We don’t have anyone who looks like you around here. They’re likely to decide you’re someone important—daughter of a noble household or dignitary from another city-state—and try to take you for ransom. Even if they don’t, that little pet of yours is going to be nigh irresistible. Lots of fine ladies in the high city who’d pay well for something as unique as that.”
Alandra’s eyes darken, literally, sunny yellow trending toward orange, like sunlight filtered through heavy cloud cover. She clutches Orestes more tightly to her chest.
Eula glances back out the window. The men are moving slowly, unhurried and unconcerned, but they’re almost to the door.
Can’t open a door you can’t touch. She raises her hands, holding the dimensions of the carriage in her mind, and throws a shield away from herself, covering the side of the carriage in a shimmering film of white shot through with inky black. The window goes hazy, distorted by the shining dome of the shield.
Segante blinks, then moves to peer through the thickened window. “They’ve stopped,” he reports. “They’re looking confused. Can you make this thing cover the whole carriage?”
“No,” says Eula, voice strained and tightly clipped off. “I can’t hold this forever, either.”
“No stamina, huh?”
“I don’t see you helping,” she snaps.
“I’m not the one who provoked the brigands. All the driver had to do was pay them,” he says. “Highwaymen are a normal part of travel. You can’t just go around killing them because you don’t like them doing their jobs.”
Alandra screams.
It’s less like the shriek of a frightened teenage girl and more like the wail of a seagull: loud, wild, and undulating up and down the scale of what sound can be, impossibly shrill, going on and on and on, long past the point where she should have run out of air. Eula stares at her in disbelief. The sound goes on, getting bigger and bigger in the close confines of the carriage. She claps her hands over her ears, fighting to maintain her concentration and hold on the shield. The highwaymen have reached it now: she can feel them banging their fists against it, testing its limitations.
Holding it intact while Alandra screams is getting harder by the second.
“What is she doing?” demands Segante. “Blue girl! What are you doing?”
Alandra continues screaming.
A peal of thunder announces the arrival of a sudden storm. A crack of lightning splits the sky, and torrents of rain crash down across the plains. It sounds like a wave the size of a city park slamming into the ground around them. Around them, but not—Eula sneaks another glance out the hazy window—not directly on top of them. The rain appears to be falling everywhere except for where the carriage sits, leaving it dry and undisturbed.
The hammering on the door gets stronger, hands beating at Eula’s shield until it feels like they’re hammering against her body. She moans and drops to her knees. Segante steps around her.
“Let it go,” he says, his voice surprisingly soft.
She gives him a startled glance. He looks back at her, expression surprisingly gentle, and nods.
Eula releases the shield. It collapses from the outside in, unraveling like a lace doily, until the final strands dissolve and the magic snaps back on her, leaving her gasping and unsteady. She braces her hands against the carriage floor as she struggles to catch her breath, and so she misses what happens next, as Segante opens the door and steps out into the rain-drenched afternoon.
He closes the door behind himself as he says something, his tone quiet and reasonable, but his words are taken by the storm. A minute or so later, the carriage door opens again, and Segante climbs back inside, dripping wet and perfectly calm.
“They’re gone,” he says, simply enough. “Alandra, if you could shut down the monsoon long enough for our driver to get us out of here, I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”
Alandra stops screaming and blinks at him, the orange bleeding out of her eyes and leaving them bright yellow once again.
“What did you do?” she asks as she holds Orestes close against her chest.
“Nothing,” he says.
He retakes his seat. The carriage rolls on, gathering speed as their driver resumes his journey toward the omenpath, and as there’s no window in the back of the carriage, none of them looks back.
None of them see the bodies.
