Magistrate Korren

The man who stands beside the throne with the lists, and whose power is the only one in the saga that can take somebody else's away.

Who he is

Icarus recognises him from intelligence reports before either of them speaks.

Magistrate Korren, the king's right hand. Tall, thin, with the kind of pale complexion that came from spending years in windowless rooms making lists of who lived and who died. (ch. 40)

When Aldric makes his offer of peace, Korren is the one who produces the scroll of terms, "unrolling it with theatrical precision".

The space between thoughts

Ch. 42 to ch. 44. He does not fight the deserters together. He separates them into a grey void and makes each one meet the person they have been avoiding.

KOR: Welcome to the space between thoughts, deserter. The realm where truth lives.

KOR: this isn't about separation. This is about confrontation. About forcing you to face the one enemy you've spent your entire life running from.

KOR: The truth of who you really are.

To Matta he puts it as sentence rather than test: "This place is simply to atone for your sins."

The narration marks his magic as a different kind from everybody else's:

magic older than the kingdom. Not the raw power of awakened abilities, but something more refined. More insidious.

Each of the three gets a different accuser, and the pattern is exact.

Icarus's double has a record to boast about, "I've saved three cities from monster attacks", and shows him the world he would have built: the camps expanded, made permanent, and turned into "systematic, bureaucratic extermination". Icarus's answer is that he would rather die as himself "than as someone else's idea of who I should be", and he grabs the double's blade barehanded to say it.

All three walk out, and Korren's reaction is the same each time: "Impossible... you were supposed to be trapped by your guilt."

He moves essence

Ch. 50 is the one that matters for the rest of the saga, because it establishes that a soul's power is a thing with a location.

KOR: Not just teleportation, rabbit. Spatial manipulation. I can move anything, anywhere, anytime.

KOR: Did you think I only moved physical matter? I can relocate anything, rabbit. Including the essence that grants your abilities.

KOR: I moved your soul essence, the magical core that grants your supernatural speed, to a pocket dimension roughly three thousand miles from here. You are now operating on purely physical capabilities.

And his method, stated as a habit rather than a trick:

KOR: This is how I defeat, rabbit. Strip away their essence, and they become remarkably... weak.

See ../systems/essence.md. Nothing else in the saga separates a person from their essence and leaves both intact.

His argument

He does not think he is the same kind of thing as the people he fights, and he says why.

KOR: this is what separates pretenders from true power. Your abilities were granted to you by forces beyond your control. Mine are inherent to my very nature.

That is a claim about the Great Awakening. Everybody else's power is redistributed essence from the Thirteen. He says his is not. The saga does not confirm it or deny it. See ../events/the-ascension-of-the-thirteen.md.

Why he loses

Because he took the wrong thing. Matta's essence is three thousand miles away and she beats him with her body.

She hears him coming. Not perception of teleportation, but ears: "the faint whisper of displaced air, the subtle shift in the chamber's acoustics."

Her correction is the chapter's point:

MTA: You assumed my speed came from magic. But I was fast before I ever claimed godhood. I was fast before I ever understood what I was. I was fast because I'm a rabbit, and rabbits are born to run.

KOR: Natural speed has limits. I am beyond such constraints. MTA: You're right. Natural speed does have limits. [...] But you've never seen a rabbit at her natural limits before.

Then she removes his advantage by refusing to be left behind. She grabs him as he fades and rides the teleport through, then locks her hind legs around his torso so his spatial manipulation cannot separate them. His own certainty is what breaks first: "This is impossible! You can't maintain this level of exertion without supernatural enhancement!"

Something resists him

One detail in ch. 50 goes unexplained. He grabs her face, fingers glowing, and tries to teleport her head off her body.

Matta felt him trying to teleport her head away from her body, but something was resisting his power.

The chapter does not say what. Her essence is three thousand miles away, so it is not that. It is recorded here because it is the only time his ability simply fails rather than being outmanoeuvred.

The saga runs his mistake twice

Ch. 50 has him move Matta's essence three thousand miles away and lose to a rabbit running on legs alone.

Ch. 137 and ch. 138 run it again with different pieces. A hooded figure suppresses Alexander's obsidian, fire and ice completely, says "You're mine", and is then headbutted in the face by somebody with no powers left. The narration states the error in one line:

It thought taking his powers would make him helpless.

Both enemies treat the ability as the person. Both are wrong about the same thing, forty years apart, and both are told so by somebody bleeding.

Open questions

• Whether his power really is inherent, or whether that is a magistrate's vanity about the same essence everyone else received.
• What the space between thoughts is, and whether it is a place or a state. The phrase returns in ch. 31, where Jade dissolves into "the gentle emptiness that exists between thoughts".
• Where the pocket dimension is, and whether Matta's essence came back.
• What happens to him. Ch. 50 is his last chapter.