Seth Micheal Sorenson is Kendra's younger brother, a Shadow Charmer, and one of the main protagonists of the Fablehaven series, and its sequel series, Dragonwatch. Seth constantly gets into trouble, because curiosity is arguably his fatal flaw. He is also very stubborn, courageous, and hard-headed. He cares very much about his friends and family and is willing to do almost anything to ensure their safety, and is more than willing to learn from his mistakes.
Fablehaven
In the beginning, Seth goes to his grandparent's house while his and Kendra's parents go on a seventeen-day cruise to Scandinavia due to their grandma and grandpa Larsen dying. Grandpa Sorenson puts forth some rules (don't go into the woods, don't go into the barn), which Seth promptly breaks.
In his first excursion into the woods, he meets Muriel Taggert, a Witch, though he doesn't know that at the time. The next time he goes into the woods he finds the pond and he takes Kendra. They get caught and are sentenced to a day in their attic bedroom. Soon after that, Kendra convinces Seth to drink the milk that Dale puts out every day, thus revealing them to the magical world of Fablehaven. Stan, after discovering they have solved his little puzzle, reveals the true nature about Fablehaven and emphasizes the rules due to their new and dangerous knowledge.
The next day, Maddox Fisk visits Fablehaven and shows Seth and Kendra Fairies that he caught. Seth, bored out of his mind and wanting to emulate the Fairy broker, catches a Fairy on his own and keeps her in a jar overnight, unknowingly turning the fairy into an Imp. The Fairies retaliate and turn Seth into a deformed walrus. Stan, Kendra, and Dale take Seth to Muriel to see if she can heal Seth. They have to release a knot to do so, leaving her with only one.
During Midsummer's Eve, Seth, driven by curiosity and a desire to save a crying baby from wolves, accidentally allowed monsters that were disguised as wolves and the baby to swarm into their bedroom despite Kendra's persistent defiance. When the night is over, they discover that Stan and Lena have been taken and that Dale has been turned to lead. They try to find where their grandfather and Lena had been taken, and they soon meet Newel and Doren. Their search is in vain, and they return to the yard where they milk Viola all by themselves. They soon discover that their pet chicken is actually their transfigured grandmother, Ruth, through kernels that spell out "I M GRAN." Despite their uncertainty and worry, they seek help from Muriel to restore Ruth to her former state. This results in Muriel's release.
They then seek help from Nero with his Seeing Stone to discern where Stan and Lena have been taken. They give the Cliff Troll an hour-long massage in exchange for the information that Stan and Lena are at the Forgotten Chapel. Ruth, Seth, and Kendra storm the Chapel, only to find a younger version of Muriel trying to free Bahumat. Everyone except for Kendra gets captured by Muriel's enlarged Imps. Seth gets turned into an old man, Stan gets turned into an orangutan, Lena gets turned into a catfish, and Ruth into a slug. He gets turned back to his eleven-year-old self and watches Kendra get kissed by the Fairies.
Rise of the Evening Star
It's the end of Seth's sixth grade year, and he and Kendra meets a mysterious man named Errol who claims he can help them get rid of a Kobold that has infiltrated Kendra's eighth-grade year. That night, Errol takes him and Kendra to a funeral home owned by a supposed member of the Society of the Evening Star, Archibald Mangum, who Errol claims is a Viviblix. Errol says that the only way to get rid of the Kobold is to give it a statue of a frog that Seth must feed to move. Seth sneaks into the funeral home and feeds the frog statue and promptly gets bitten. The Kobold leaves the next day, and Errol then tells Seth and Kendra that they need to infiltrate a houseboat owned by a member of the Society. However, right before they leave with Errol, Grandpa Sorenson calls Kendra and tells them that Errol is most likely a member of the Society himself. He sends Vanessa Santoro to pick them up and brings them to Fablehaven under the guise of helping Stan while he's injured.
Once at Fablehaven, Grandma and Grandpa Sorenson tell the story of how Stan got injured and why they have several new people staying at Fablehaven, Vanessa, Tanugatoa Dufu, and Coulter Dixon. They explain that Vanessa, Tanu, and Coulter are at Fablehaven to find the secret artifact hidden there because the Society is closing in on the Secret Preserve.
Immediately after this, Kendra and Seth are formally introduced to Tanu, a potion master. He shows off his skills by showing them his bottled-up emotions, then taking them to see Warren, a catatonic albino. The next day, Ruth shows Seth and Kendra the Dungeon at Fablehaven, including the Imp that injured Stan. Meanwhile, Stan has been trying to call an ally of his, the Sphinx. He gets through, and sets up a meeting with him. On the day of the meeting, Coulter overhears Kendra and Seth discussing the secret meeting and impresses on them the importance of secrets. He shows them his magic glove and a magic cocoon.
Seth then meets the Sphinx, and the Sphinx tells him he has been bitten by a Demon named Olloch the Glutton, and that the Demon will not rest until he has eaten Seth. There is no worry because the Demon has no way of penetrating the walls of Fablehaven yet. Seth is undoubtably worried, and both Stan and Ruth tell him not to be. This is not true for very long, because Olloch attacks Seth while he's trading batteries with Newel and Doren, where Hugo has to save him. Seth then becomes grounded, but not before everyone finds out that someone signed "Christopher Vogel and Guest" into the Register.
Later that night, Coulter wakes Seth up in the middle of the night, telling him that he knows where the artifact is hidden and that no one wanted to go and get it, which is why he needs Seth. Seth agrees to go, and he, Coulter, and Hugo set off for the Four Hills, where Warren was before he became albino. Hugo cannot pass into the Grove itself, so Coulter and Seth forge ahead, Coulter gives Seth a Holly Wand to help ward of the Undead being that Coulter thinks resides there. Suddenly, they're both hit by a wave of immense fear, so much so that they cannot move. A pale figure comes into view, and Seth is forced onto his back because the fear is too much. Coulter, coming to his senses, shoves something into Seth's mouth: the magic cocoon. Olloch soon comes and swallows Seth whole -- the cocoon and all, thus fulfilling his desire to eat Seth.
He spends approximately two days inside Olloch before eating his way out of the cocoon only to find the Demon as a statue again. He has no idea where he is, so he goes to the Old Manor to get his bearings. On the way out he is cornered by a tornado of dust that he barely escapes. He finds his way to the cabin where Kendra and Mendigo are staying and they reunite, because Kendra thought he was dead. She explains that Vanessa was the one who signed Olloch and Christopher Vogel into the Register, because she is a Narcoblix and she bit everyone at the house. The siblings decide that they have to go back to the house to retrieve the key to the place where the artifact is hidden. They ask Newel and Doren to show them the way to theBrownie Hole where they sneak into the house using Tanu's shrinking potions. While there, they see that their grandparents are prisoners in their own Dungeon, and that Errol is in fact Christopher Vogel. They manages to get the key and barely escapes.
Back at the cabin, Kendra and Seth discuss how best to proceed. Kendra wants to flee the preserve, but Seth wants to go back to the Grove and face the Revenant that was there. While Kendra is in the bathroom, he takes Mendigo, a pair of pliers, and a courage potion. He takes the potion and starts to pull the talisman out of the Revenant when the potion fails, but he finds the strength within himself to pull the nail out of the Revenant and passes out. Seth wakes up to see Warren and Kendra standing over him, getting ready to go into the Inverted Tower. He wants to go, but is too weak. Warren gives him an energizing potion and commands Mendigo to take Seth to the Stables. When Kendra, Warren, Dale, Vanessa, Tanu, and Coulter emerge from the tower with the Sands of Sanctity, the artifact everyone was looking for, Kendra heals him with it.
Later, Seth watches Vanessa being put into the Quiet Box, and sees the mysterious prisoner escape and leave with the Sphinx.
Grip of the Shadow Plague
Several weeks after the events of Rise of the Evening Star, Seth, Newel, and Doren travel to the Seven Kingdoms, the home of the Nipsies, in order to receive gold in trade for batteries. While there, the Third Kingdom asks Newel and Doren to help them against the Sixth and Seventh Kingdoms' Nipsies who have recently started attacking the others. Seth notices that these Nipsies have fangs, grey skin, and blood red eyes. Newel destroys several parts of the Sixth and Seventh Kingdoms along with stopping a siege on the Fifth. As a reward, the Nipsies from the Third Kingdom gave Newel, Doren, and Seth gold from their treasury.
Back at the house, Warren and Tanu return from secret missions trying to find out if the note that Vanessa left on the floor of her cell in the previous book, saying that the Sphinx is in fact the leader of the Society, is true or not. They also reveal that the Captain of the Knights of the Dawn wants Kendra to come to the first united gathering in ten years in order to induct her into the secret group. Seth is jealous of his older sister, saying that she gets to do all of the cool stuff. While she, Coulter, Tanu, and Warren go to Atlanta, Seth stays home at Fablehaven. Before Kendra leaves, however, she finds out that Seth knows about the Nipsies, and he gets grounded.
While playing catch with Mendigo in the yard while Kendra is off at Lost Mesa, dark Fairies attack him and Mendigo. Seth rushes to tell Stan what happened, and Stan goes out to investigate, barely coming back inside before the dark Fairies starts attacking him. Tanu comes back all alone after he and Coulter were looking for a new home for the Nipsies. He says that he took a gaseous potion in order to escape the dark Fairies that attacked he and Coulter. Coulter then disappeared after blasts of darkness hit him, and taking a gaseous potion was all that Tanu could do to escape. Stan, Ruth, Tanu, and Dale decide to see what Vanessa knows, and they temporarily releases her from the Quiet Box. She tells them that what is going on was most likely caused by the previous occupant of the Quiet Box, and that the Sphinx released the prisoner onto the preserve.
That night, a figure appears outside of the attic window, asking Seth to let him in. Seth, having learned from his mistake the previous summer, does not, instead, he tells his grandparents. They do not se the shadow man. Later, the figure appears and reveals himself to be a shadowy version of Coulter that only Seth can see.
Soon after that, Doren asks Tanu and Seth to help him. Dark Nipsies attacked Newel and turned him into a dark version of himself. Seth escapes via a gaseous potion, but Tanu gets bitten. He turns into a shadow version of himself. That night, Tanu and Coulter come back and Seth agrees to go with them while they show him something important. Stan catches Seth trying to follow Tanu and Coulter, but he relents, saying that he’ll go with Seth. Tanu and Coulter take them to see a Demon, Graulas. Stan tries to get Seth to stop, but he is soon frozen by fear.
Graulas tells Seth that the plague was caused by the mysterious prisoner, a Dragon named Navarog, who took the Revenant’s nail and gave it to another Demon, Kurisock. The Demon then tells Seth that pulling the nail from the Revenant gave Seth abilities, such as being immune to magical fear and being able to see the shadowy forms of his friends. Stan and Seth travels back to he house, and Seth starts researching anything to do with Graulas or Kurisock. He finds out that a former caretaker, Patton Burgess, suspected that Kurisock had something to do with his uncle, Marshal Burgess' death
Kendra and Warren returns home and tell the others about Lost Mesa, and that the artifact there had been taken by none other than Patton Burgess and hidden somewhere at Fablehaven. They are filled in on what has happened at Fablehaven and the shadow plague.
The next day, dark Brownies infiltrate the house, steal the Register, and fill the house with booby traps. Everyone there, Stan, Ruth, Dale, Warren, Kendra, and Seth, flew to the pond where the Fairy Queen’s Shrine is. There, they see that a lot of the magical creatures have seeked refuge there, including Satyrs, Fairies, Dryads, Hamadryads, Nipsies, Dwarves, and Centaurs, to name a few. Seth introduces himself to two Centaurs, Broadhoof and Cloudwing, who simply gives him the cold shoulder. After this, Stan, Ruth, Warren, Dale, Kendra, and Seth privately discuss plans of how to get the artifact. Lena had shared with Kendra earlier the location of the artifact and how to get it. It was in the Old Manor and appeared every monday at noon for one minute. The group decides to create a diversion in order to get the safe. Stan, Ruth, Dale, Warren, and Seth will all go to the Old Manor with their eyes shielded from the magical creatures while those staying at the pond provide a distraction. Kendra and Seth tries to convince the Centaurs to lead the charge, but they decline. Seth calls them cowards and Broadhoof demands a duel to settle his injured pride. Seth agrees to the duel as long as the Centaurs lead the charge.
The next day, the group of five along with Hugo leave the safety of the pond to race to the Old Manor. They get there, and Seth is made to wait outside. He quickly realizes that something went wrong and goes inside the Manor. He opens his eyes with walrus butter, a substance similar to the milk, and tries to rescue Dale from a shadow woman, the tornado of dust he saw earlier in the summer. Dale gets turned into a shadow man, and Seth has to flee to the room where the safe is held. He sees his grandparents get taken, and nearly succeeds helping Warren. He makes it to the safe, and opens it to find the Chronometer, the artifact from Lost Mesa. He starts randomly pressing buttons and none other than Patton Burgess appears in the room. Patton helps Seth escape the Old Manor and race to the pond.
Patton then hears about Seth's upcoming duel with Broadhoof, and proceeded to duel the Centaur himself on Seth's behalf, winning. Kendra tells Patton that Lena, his wife, has become a Naiad again. She leaves the pond again, and the four of them go to converse quietly in a tent. Patton tells the story of how his aunt, Ephira, became the shadow woman and her merging of powers with Kurisock through a cursed tree. Seth relates that the nail from the Revenant is now a part of that tree, and that that was the cause of the shadow plague. Kendra goes to converse with the Fairy Queen about the plague and comes back with a pebble, saying that the pebble could destroy the nail, but whoever touched the pebble to the stone would die.
That night, Kendra and Seth are sitting at the edge of the hedge, talking about the plan, when Coulter shows up and is miraculously healed by Kendra. A pair of dark Satyrs run off to tell the others about what happened.
The four of them quickly formulate a plan of how to enter Kurisock's realm to stop the shadow plague, and they set off for the Demon's realm soon after that. During the battle, Seth gets turned to a shadow by Ephira's tendrils of blackness. Seth has to save Patton from the magical fear that Ephira emanates. Patton throws the stone, but it sails away from the nail. Soon after that, Seth helps Lena get close to the nail and is close by when she touches the two objects together, saving Fablehaven and killing herself in the process.
Two days later, Dougan, a lieutenant of the Knights of the Dawn, confirms that the Sphinx is in fact a traitor to the Knights and is leading the Society of the Evening Star.
Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary
Seth is devastated when Kendra is thought to be dead. He attends to her funeral but the Knights eventually finds out that the buried Kendra is a fake clone, the real Kendra were abducted by the Sphinx but eventually escapes safely.
The Knights of the Dawn has to find the next artifact, the Translocator before the Sphinx does and to find it they have to enter a sacred Dragon Sanctuary called Wyrmroost to find a key. The key to the gates of Wyrmroost is a Unicorn's first horn and the only known first horn they can think of is the Soul of Grunhold, the horn of the domain of the Centaurs at Fablehaven. After hearing Graulas calling for him, Seth goes to the Demon who tells him to steal the horn from the Centaurs that night, with the help of Nero, the Cliff Troll.
After crossing the Great Marsh, Seth and Nero are at Grunhold, the domain of the Centaurs. Using his Shadow Charmer abilities, Seth sneaks into the Tauran Maze, an invisible labyrinth that can only be solved by those who can actually penetrate the magic hiding the iron walls of the maze. Suceeding to solve the maze, Seth manges to trick the Mountain Troll Udnar, the last guardian of the Soul and Heart of Grunhold. He switches the Soul with a banana and brings the horn back to the House.
The Knights begins to form a group that will enter Wyrmroost, which Kendra is included in because of her ability to see through Distracter Spells. Seth, angry for being excluded, hides in the Extradimesional Backpack and manages to get to Wyrmroost without the others knowledge.
After entering through the gates of Wyrmroost, a large Dragon called Camarat, stops them and goes through the gear they are bringing. He eventually lets them go because nothing they have is too alarming. When they enter Blackwell Keep, the residence of the caretaker of Wyrmroost, they meet the Wizard Agad. He informs them that they can't stay there for more than a day because of some rules made up with the Dragons long ago.
The team walks for a while until a herd of Perytons comes against them, fleeing from the Dragon Nafia. The team gets split up and Kendra is on her own. She gets caught by Nafia and as a punishment for interupting her hunt, she says that she'll devour Kendra. Seth overhears the conversation from his hideaway down in the Knapsack. In an attempt to rescue Kendra, Seth climbs out of the Backpack to help out, he eventually takes Kendra's hand and they both suddenly finds the ability to speak. They manages to detain the Dragon until Gavin arrives and talks Nafia out of eating them. Seth's presence is mostly accepted.
Eventually, they reach Sidestep Cleft and has to pass through it to get to the Fairy Queen's Shrine here at Wyrmroost. Unfortunately, the Shrine is inside the domain of Thronis, the Sky Giant. All but Kendra gets captured by Thronis' Dwarf Zogo and his Griffins. Seth manages to talk their way out of there with the help of his Shadow Charmer abilities, allowing him to talk the language of Giants, Jiganti. After they receive a Truth Chain that will suffocate them if they tell a lie, Thronis lets them go under the condition that they will return the five Precious Figurines to him.
Once at the entrance of the Dragon Temple, the team manages to meet up again and proceeds to walk inside of the building. The first obstacle is a Hydra named Hespera. After getting a few nice shots on the leading head, the group hurries past the Hydra.
The second guardian is an old and huge Dragon named Glommus. He has the ability to put almost anyone to sleep, even other Dragons. After putting the Knights to sleep, Vanessa takes control over Tanu and, using one of the Adamant egged swords, manages to decapitate the Dragon.
The last guardian is a poison Dragon called Siletta. She is ancient and has one of the most lethal poisons known, her whole room is filled with potent poisons. Seth comes up with the plan that he and Kendra should use the Unicorn horn to withstand the poison and to use it to kill Siletta. Seth and Kendra manages to slay the Dragon and at the same time Gavin, in form of Navarog, manages to take down Hespera.
After retreiving the key to the Vault at Obsidian Waste, Seth is the only one to get picked up by Thronis' Griffins as an ambush by some Dragons stirred things up. He later makes it back to Fablehaven safely but gets to know that the Society of the Evening Star has kidnapped his parents.
Keys to the Demon Prison
A plan is formed by the Knights of the Dawn in order to recover the Translocator, which is located in the Australian preserve, Obsidian Waste. After retrieving the vault key from Wyrmroost, they almost immediately fly to Obsidian Waste, only to get ambushed by the Society of the Evening Star.
Lead by Mr. Lich and some other powerful enemies, such as Mirav and the Gray Assassin, the Society almost gets them, but thanks the Laura, the caretaker, they manage to get away in two cars. When arriving at the Dreamstone (the vault), Trask inserts the key into an irregularity in the wall, and an entrance opens at the back of the large obsidian structure.
They travel through a long corridor just to find a dead end, when they backtrack, they find another dead end and realizes that they are unable to get out until they finish the vault. In the first chamber they have to build a clay warrior in order for it to fight another statue. Their statue loses the fight but Trask still manages to get the key in the keyhole and both statues and their remains turns to ash.
The second chamber is a vast room filled with boiling water. After Berrigan and Vincent turns the key in the keyhole, a wall of water comes plunging against them. Thanks to Tanu giving them Fire-Resistant Potions Seth and the other Knights can survive in the hot water. The water level is rapidly rising and it becomes clear that they are going to drown if they don't find another keyhole. Luckily, Mara, Berrigan, and Elise manages to find one and the water level starts decreasing and the water turns cooler. This time, the water is turning to ice and tragically, Vincent gets trapped under the ice and drowns. Seth and the others survives and a new passage has opened
After a few more tricky paths, the finally makes it to the last chamber. The last keyhole is located on a mechanical lion, but before they manages to retrieve the artifact, Seth gets shot in the back by an arrow. He turns himelf into gas, using one of Tanu's Gaseous Potions, but ends up trapped in a bottle.
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Dragonwatch
Wrath of the Dragon King
Powers and Abilities
Seth is a Shadow Charmer. He began to develop his powers when he removed the nail from a Revenant in Rise of the Evening Star, and they were only amplified when he was right next to that same nail being destroyed in Grip of the Shadow Plague. His dark powers were stabilized and brought to full potency in Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary by Graulas, one of the four Demons at Fablehaven. While most of his friends and family disapprove of and are alienated by his abilities, Seth has never used his powers for evil.
- Immunity to Magically-induced Emotions: Seth is immune to all magical manipulation of emotion, from magical fear to the guilt of stealing a unicorn horn.
- Perception of Dark Elements: Seth can perceive dark & evil elements invisible to others. This later magnifies into being able to see anything invisible to others. However, he still needs the magical milk to see magical creatures.
- Communication with Dark Creatures: Seth can speak and understand the languages of dark creatures, from Demons to Trolls.
- Shade Walking: Seth can Shade Walk, meaning that away from bright light he is nearly invisible.
- Amicability with Dark Creatures: Seth is trusted more by dark creatures than other humans, although the degree to which this is effective varies from creature to creature, Demons in particular being immune to him, although he easily befriends the Sky Giant Thronis and the Mountain Troll Udnar.
- Power over the Undead: Seth has a link to Undead creatures, being able to hear their minds. The Sphinx (another Shadow Charmer) has explained that they are a link to life, and they will do anything to preserve that link. This makes it easy for Seth to command Undead creatures (such as Wraiths, Phantoms, and Shades), provided that they have sworn loyalty to him and are under the conditions he sets.
- Conditioned Dragon Taming: Seth, in combination with Kendra, is a Dragon Tamer. He is immune to the magical fear Dragons can induce in other creatures but his mind is dazzled and unable to think or respond to any words from a Dragon (unless he is in physical contact with his sister).
- Quenching Flames: Seth can quench flames by drawing darkness and cold from dark creatures such as, Wraiths. He is also very sensitive to heat and darkness due to this ability.
Many of Seth's abilities are never used in the series. The Sphinx, a more advanced Shadow Charmer, is able to plunge a room into darkness, release dizzy Spells, and lower the temperature in the same room. He believes that Seth would be able to do this too, with practice. He has also hinted at other abilities (projecting fear, opening locks, etc), never revealed or used by Seth.
Another key to Seth's abilities are without a doubt his courage and determination, as well as a mischievous streak and loyalty.
It should also be noted that no Shadow Charmers are identical.
Trivia
In the first book, Seth was addressed by Ruth Sorenson as "Seth Andrew Sorenson," but later his middle name was changed to Michael.