"It was," Shade-Seeker agrees, collecting himself. "In the end, my battle with the self-styled 'King of Worms' was... underwhelming. I ask myself whether he, too, was only a minor mage, and had spun a few potent tricks into power and position, or whether he was too much a mage, and when his great spell failed where it had worked before, he had nothing on which to fall back."