The Sorcery Code (The Sorcery Code #1)(48)

Gala grinned at her, barely able to contain her excitement at the thought of the upcoming event. “Don’t worry about it, Esther—we’ll just wait and see. For now, let’s go to the market.”

And without waiting for their response, she walked out of the inn, going up the road to where she saw a cluster of buildings that typically signified a town center.





Chapter 29: Blaise


Once his house was restored, Blaise found himself at loose ends, alternating between being furious with Augusta and worrying about Gala. By now, the Council undoubtedly knew about Gala, and they were probably taking measures to find her. Hopefully, Kelvin’s territory would be the last place they would look—assuming Gala did as he asked and kept a low profile.

Still, this was not a sustainable situation. Blaise had to do something to protect her in a more permanent way, and he had to do it soon, before those scared fools mobilized fully. The fact that Gala was not answering his Contact messages worried him a bit, although he guessed that she was not fully in control of her magical abilities yet—something he found mildly reassuring, since it minimized her chances of exposing herself to the world. Nonetheless, he missed her with an intensity he found deeply unsettling. It was as if a bright light had left his life when he dropped her off at the village.

A persistent idea kept nagging at the back of his mind—that of mastering the route to the Spell Realm. It was possible he was obsessing about it as a way to keep his thoughts occupied, he admitted to himself. In a way, that’s what he had done after Louie’s death: he’d focused on his work—on creating the intelligent object that turned out to be Gala—in order to keep himself busy. At the same time, however, he suspected that understanding the Spell Realm better could lead to unimaginable advances in sorcery, potentially enabling him to become powerful enough to protect Gala from the entire Council.

Tired of thinking about it, he began planning. Although Augusta had burned many of his notes, Blaise didn’t feel particularly discouraged. He had frequently used Life Captures over the past year to record many of his particularly useful experiments, and he still had a lot of those droplets. More importantly, however, it seemed as if his mind had been working on the problem of getting to the Spell Realm ever since Gala had first described it to him, and he had some ideas he wanted to try out.

It was time for action.

He decided to start with a small, inanimate object. If he succeeded in sending that to the Spell Realm and having it come back, it would be an important step toward sending an actual person there.

Thus motivated, Blaise headed to his study, eager to take on a new challenge.



*



The spells were finally ready.

Blaise had chosen a needle as the object he would send to the Spell Realm. The spell would examine the needle at its deepest level and break it into its most elemental parts. That would destroy the physical needle, causing it to disappear, but those parts would become information, a message that would go to the Spell Realm and come back to change something in the Physical Realm, like all spells did. In this particular case, however, if Blaise succeeded, the manifestation in the Physical Realm should be identical to the original object.

Cognizant of the danger of new, untested spells and not wishing to suffer his mother’s fate, Blaise took precautions. He used the same spell that had protected him during Augusta’s attack—the spell that wrapped him in a shimmering bubble. The protection it granted would not last long, but it should be long enough to shield him from whatever havoc the experiment might cause.

Taking a slow, calming breath, he loaded the cards into his Interpreter Stone and watched the needle disappear, as it was supposed to.

Then he waited.

At first nothing happened. He could see the familiar shimmer of the protection spell, but there was no sign of the needle coming back. Frustrated, Blaise tried to figure out if he had made a mistake. The coming-back part of the spell was the trickiest. He assumed the needle would come back to its original location, but the spot remained empty.

All of a sudden, he heard a loud noise downstairs. It seemed to be coming from the storage room.

Blaise ran there, nearly tripping on the stairs in excitement.

And when he entered the room, he froze, staring at the sight in front of him in disbelief.

The needle had come back . . . in a way. It had returned not to the spot where it lay in his lab, but to the box where he had kept it originally. This return location actually made some sense, unlike the object he was staring at.

Among the shattered pieces of the box and scattered needles on the floor, he saw what he assumed was the original needle—except that now it was more like a sword. A strange, thick sword made of some kind of crystalline material that emitted a faint green glow. Instead of a hilt, this particular sword had a hole at the top.

Blaise carefully picked up the thing that used to be the needle, putting his hand through the hole at the top. It was actually comfortable to hold that way. Despite its size, the sword-like object was impossibly light, no heavier than the original needle. Lifting it, Blaise tried swinging it around the room and discovered that it was both sharp and strong. He was able to cut through his old sofa with ridiculous ease, and the sword-needle didn’t break when he banged it on the stone floor.

Both amused and discouraged, Blaise decided to place the needle as a decoration in his hall downstairs. It would work well with the new furniture he had gotten after the fire, as well as some other trinkets he had on display there.