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What is magic in fantasy?

In the words of Robert E. Howard, magic is “words and visions that can have effects of their own.” Whether it’s a sword-to-the-head spell that kills an adult, or even just a vision of a monster, magic is always lurking and waiting to be unleashed. But how? The story of how Magic In The Mire came to be is one that’s long been waiting to be told again, and in the book Magic In The Mire tells the story of that opportunity through the story of one man’s relationship with the forces of Darkness: The Blacksmith’s Apprentice.

The book opens with The Blacksmith’s Apprentice, Arthur, a young man who is determined to earn enough money to pay a man named Balthus for his services. The apprenticeship of course comes with a price, with Arthur losing the entire stock of coins he’s earned over the course of his apprenticeship. The Blacksmith, however, is a good man who doesn’t care about the money and plans to make life miserable for Arthur by making Balthus his apprentice.


“The Blacksmith” (as he is known throughout the course of the series) is one of the main characters of the book, but the book is not the story of Arthur. The Blacksmith does not know Arthur—a fact the other characters do, but who cares? The Blacksmith merely wants to steal Balthus’ money, and that’s the end of the story for him — but it’s not the end of the story for Arthur—not when Balthus offers his services, but the Blacksmith is the character with the most in common with both Arthur and Balthus, and the one who offers the most valuable part of the story to the reader.

Magic In The Mire begins with The Blacksmith’s Apprentice—a man named The Blacksmith who happens to be a Blacksmith. That’s a nice twist—a Blacksmith actually sells people’s souls for gold!—which only furthers the theme that The Blacksmith not only wants to be a blacksmith, the story of how the book begins begins when the Blacksmith sells a soul, and then learns that his soul actually belongs to the same woman who had sold it — which causes the Blacksmith to find out more about himself—which leads him to even more secrets of the Blacksmith and his family for the reader to discover, before realizing that he can no longer steal. In fact, he finds what he was really after—he was actually