#lightless flame

Lightless flame, turn your burning hatred upon this foul thing

*SPOILERS FOR ALL OF THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES BELOW*

Agnes Montague was going to change the world.

Well, I guess that’s obvious. She’s the dark messiah, the unwilling incarnation of pain, burning, and suffering. I suppose that’s the heart of her tragedy, isn’t it? She could have been anyone or anything she chose to be, but instead, the Lightless Flame decided she was simply a pawn. A pawn they intended to turn into a queen, but a pawn nonetheless.

Or perhaps the heart of it is that for everything she sacrificed for the Desolation and the Cult of the Lightless Flame, for all of those futures snuffed out like candles, it was hopeless from the beginning. Even if it weren’t for Gertrude and the Web, even if it weren’t for poor Jack Barnabas, her ritual never could have succeeded. She was doomed from the start, and no one even knew.

Well, maybe that’s a lie. Four people knew. Gertrude did, at the end, though she realized long after Agnes’ story was over. Elias, or Jonah, or whatever you want to call that asshole, realized just after Gertrude did. Annabelle Cane knew, whether she figured it out herself or was told by her patron. And finally, the Web knew. The Web knew for centuries before Agnes Montague was even born that each and every ritual was doomed from the start, save for the ritual of the Archives. And that’s where things start to get interesting.

You see, if the Web knew that Agnes could never have performed a ritual, why did it step in? Why did it help Gertrude? After all, the binding of Agnes to Gertrude Robinson only had two lasting effects. One is that Gertrude grew wiser. She stopped trusting luck and grew wary of subtle strings being pulled. She began to look closer and be able to tell what happened naturally and what was an act of puppeteering. If anything, this effect was bad for the Web! So why did it decide to lend a helping hand?

Easy. For the other effect. You see, when the Web’s binding took place, a seed of doubt was planted in Agnes. A seed that was watered by the love of Jack Barnabas, until it twisted and blossomed like a vine, until Agnes tied it up like a noose and hung herself with it. That was the only other lasting effect of the Web’s intervention. The hanging of Agnes Montague.

Which raises perhaps my favorite question in all of the Magnus Archives: What would have happened if Agnes had lived? And why did the Web need to prevent it? Surely, it knew that her ritual was doomed. And the Web only takes action against one thing: those who might interfere with its master plan. What would Agnes have done that might change the course of history?

Could she have realized the truth about the rituals, and systematically marked herself with each Power before Jon was even hired? Could she have discovered Annabelle’s plan and burned down the Archives with Jon and Elias still inside? Could Agnes have seen that Jon planned to end the apocalypse, and killed him before he even managed to reach the Panopticon? Or maybe, just maybe, she knows exactly how it feels to be bound to an entity against her will, and she refuses to inflict that on any other world. Maybe she neutralizes the explosives beneath the tower while Jon takes a knife to Jonah Magnus’ chest.