Tymely News
Character Feature: Verda Bagley
An AI generated image of Verda Bagley, in 1945.
Verda Bagley is an ally of Little Miss Secret, Simmons and Mashu'ra. She's also a field operative of the Order of Ash and Smoke with a lot of experience.
She's one of the most powerful witches in the world, but ironically doesn't consider herself to be one, instead thinking of herself as simply 'talented'.
She's a mother to her very core and uses nursery rhymes as a concentration aid to focus her mind for spell casting. She can often be heard singing in combat, to keep her mind from wandering.
She appears to be in her twenties, but is actually in her forties during She Hunts Demons. It isn't explicitly stated until book two, but her aging process has been unnaturally slowed by her magic.
She hates the common labels that come with her magic and only puts up with being called a witch, because that's the convenient term used by the others in the Order.
She also doesn't believe the creatures the Order fights are actually demons, because according to the beliefs of her religion (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), demons don't have physical bodies, having been denied that opportunity when they rebelled against God, before the world was.
Instead, she considers them evil monsters that need to die, because their actions are the darkest kind of evil. Her theories about the demons are not well accepted by the Order, but toward the end of the book, she gains some indirect evidence she was right all along, leading her to conclude the so-called demons are actually Unseelie Fairies.
Like LMS, she absolutely hates demons that prey on children and will go out of her way to put them down.
As a witch, her best elements are Spirit, Water and Wood, but she also has a little mastery of Air and in book two, she starts experimenting with Animal magic. She's an expert on curses of all varieties and she often works to counter curses planted by demons.
Her favorite spells involve manipulating tree roots and branches to attack enemies or forming water into barriers or weapons. She also sometimes uses reversed curses, a technique she learned by observing the action of the protective spell surrounding Little Miss Secret. These are effectively delayed-action curses she places on herself that affect the first person to attack her.
Verda is the expert Little Miss Secret consulted when she was looking to counter the curse she lives with.
Aside from her magic, she fights with a shotgun and she's almost never without her switchblade, because sometimes magic fails.
Her best attributes are a keen intellect and a creative approach to any situation, both of which she can use in the heat of combat, with a cool and level head. Like Simmons and Little Miss Secret, Verda isn't one to give up easily and always has a new trick up her sleeve, whether it's magic or not.
She's extremely adverse to the idea of leaving behind or abandoning a friend and she'll go to great lengths to rescue them, almost regardless of the danger.
Tags: ashen-blades, character-feature