“Unchecked anger is a dangerous place from which to draw your magic. It’s difficult to control. It can consume you totally, transform you into something else. Someone you don’t recognize.”

This was my least favorite of the short stories volume because it felt like almost none of it complemented the main story or added anything to it. Polychrome's story was my absolute favorite and though it added little to the main plot, it served to expand the universe and Poly is a very interesting and fun character to follow. I wish she would've been better utilized in the novels, I felt like we've seen too little of her.

The second story, while it could've been interesting since it focused on the Order on its early stages, had two major problems: the main character of the story, who was a whiny, annoying thing, and Nox, who was his usual entitled and brooding (not in a good way) self. There were some hints about some possible plotlines later on, and we might see the MC from this story again, but apart from that, this was really expendable.

The third and last short started out really interesting - we see Mombi first realizing that something was going on with Oz, how she came to take care of Ozma and how Ozma was hidden all these years. But the second part had the same issue than the previous novel did - an annoying MC. And while it did explain some things we saw in book two, there were a lot more left unanswered and it was just an ok prequel. As I said, all in all, none of these added much into the main novels and though some of them were interesting and had bits that made me understand some characters better, I could've done without it.