Chance Holloway

Chance Holloway is a former student of Havermore and former Hedge Witch leader, and a longtime friend of Odette Caplan and Damien Embery. After a magical accident, he suffers from total cognition, and is able to perceive thousands of alternate timelines at once. This has rendered him basically insane.

Background
''I didn't have a difficult life, really. My parents were a bit distant, but that's because they threw themselves into their work more than their personal relationships. Ethel and Oliver Holloway probably loved each other, too, but they sure as hell never showed it to me. Not that that really affected me, or my social life. Just meant that I could do whatever I liked without too much scrutiny. Besides, they were both Devoids, so when I learned that I could cast magic, it just gave me that much more of a reason to keep things from them.''

''Havermore couldn't wait to have me -- they invited me a year earlier than most students (I was only sixteen), and I excelled in being both a great student and a terrible nuisance. I liked to learn, I liked to study, I liked to do the whole academic-overachiever sort of thing...but I also loved getting into spots of trouble. Partying, drugs, one-night stands in the library...what a time! And it's not like it interfered with my studies, so why should anyone have cared?''

''This is going to sound morbid, but from a young age, I was very interested in death. That's not to say I slaughtered chipmunks in my backyard and fried ants under a magnifying glass -- I'm not a sociopath -- but I always found the concept of death to be fascinating, especially after discovering magic. I'd attended my grandfather's funeral in my youth, and I wondered...magic was the foundation of beauty and wonder in the world, right? It broke the laws of physics, of everything. So why not apply that to death as well? Death, after all, was the decay of the body until the end. But magic didn't end the way people did. It must have gone on for eternity.''

''It was that thought that propelled me to study necromancy. Yes, YES, I know that it's illegal, but do you think I cared? I wasn't some demagogue looking to raise an army of the dead and take over the U.K. or anything so sinister. I just wanted to see the possibility of it.''

''Havermore got wind of my interests, and tried to politely dissuade me from carrying on my study. They threatened me with expulsion and legal action. I didn't listen, and successfully animated a classmate's cat. No, it had no soul, but the body still worked, still moved around, listened to my commands. It was fascinating!''

''And then, Havermore did what it promised. When you break the rules at a magical school, they don't JUST kick you out. You see, you violated their trust, ignored the oath you promised when you accepted their invitation to study there. Therefore, you don't have the right to keep the knowledge they taught you. They sealed all of the magic I had learned in my time there. I suppose I should have been grateful that they didn't turn me over to the Court, but fucking hell, losing that magic really hurt me.''

''I may not have been in jail, but I was essentially blacklisted across the United Kingdom. Couldn't even get those Welsh fuckers to budge. So, I headed Stateside, and decided to start a Hedge. I met a lovely group of people -- Clarissa, Ren, Jonas -- and fell in love. Harold...he helped temper me. I suppose some would say that he made me boring (still had a motorcycle and punk attitude, though), but love makes everything wonderful, even the boring. We then added Damien to the mix, and I decided to help out poor Odette Caplan as well, when I saw her all alone with no one to practice magic with. In our Hedge, we did nothing fancy -- learned magic, played Dungeons & Dragons, ate chips and drank pints late at night -- and that should have been enough.''

But it wasn't enough for me.

And I ruined everything.

''Clarissa, Ren, Jonas, they died because of me. Harold, he followed by his own hand, leapt and knew he couldn't fly...''

Damien and Odette are changed forever.

And as for me?

''I see everything, now. Tunnel vision, impossible, Mission impossible -- 1996 to today, never going to stop, never gonna give you up...cute song, memes notwithstanding. Can't focus on one thing, it's forever...always seeing everything forever, and I see a thousand of you, a million possibilities, not sure which one is right, wrong, down, up, here, there. Everywhere, Laplace, the atoms align and I see the pages, read the books, but the ink dissolves under my fingers.''

''Ah, I think I heard the microwave beep. Be right back.''