The Spell Realm (The Sorcery Code #2)(68)

After what seemed like a long time, but could easily have been a moment, Gala knew that Dranel’s pattern was as it had been before. He was not conscious yet, but that would come eventually.

She was waiting for that moment when she became distracted by something far, far more important.

She sensed Blaise casting a spell.

As she focused her thoughts on the pattern he was generating, Gala again ‘traveled’ somewhere. Wherever she now was, she saw a complex shape with sounds and tastes that she found mesmerizing. She soon knew what the spell in front of her was meant to do.

It was meant to bring Blaise to her, to the Spell Realm.

Except it was doomed to fail in its goal.

Blaise had made a number of subtle, but fatal mistakes in his calculations. It was clear to her that the spell would not work as intended. If allowed to run its course, it would end up killing Blaise’s mind, but even if it didn’t, the next part of the spell—the part that was supposed to take Blaise back to the Physical Realm afterwards—was flawed. Still, it did give Gala an idea of what a return spell might look like, and she tucked away the knowledge for later, focusing on the more immediate task in front of her.

Reaching out toward the spell, Gala tried to change it, to fix the errors that she could see as she had fixed Dranel’s pattern. She had no idea if it would work, but she had to try. Everything inside her trembled at the possibility that Blaise’s spell might go through in its current form, that he would perish in his attempt to reach her. She only had time to implement a few tweaks in his spell. Her priority was to ensure that he survived the trip in.

She focused on the problems in the fabric of the spell. Fixing the spell came naturally to her. The mistakes dulled the bright colors and the subtle patterns. All Gala had to do was make it beautiful again, like all complete spells were. Following her intuition, she broke the spell structure down into smaller parts. If she succeeded, Blaise would arrive in the Spell Realm, and no other parts of the spell would take effect. Once Blaise arrived, she would work out the other details.

Having set the fix in motion, Gala anxiously watched the pattern unweave, desperately hoping that she herself had not made any errors.





Chapter 50: Barson





As Dara and her colleagues completed the spell to teleport them into the Council Hall, Barson braced himself. He knew enough about sorcery to realize that this was a dangerous maneuver. In a flash, he was standing inside the room. His soldiers were here as well—all except two. He could see a bloody mess on the floor, and a cold shudder ran down his spine as he understood what happened.

Two of his men had materialized in the same spot, dying gruesomely in the process.

It was an honorable death, and one Barson couldn’t dwell on now. Seeing the shocked looks on the sorcerers’ faces, he yelled, “Charge!” and started running across the giant hall toward the frightened group of sorcerers. His men followed, letting out a fierce battle cry.

As they ran, a barrage of powerful spells began assaulting them. Terrible heat, bone-chilling cold . . . Pierre and his comrades were trying every elemental spell in their arsenal. The spells slowed Barson and his men, but the enchanted armor protected them from the worst of it, absorbing the energies of the spells. Barson knew there was a threshold, a limit to this protection, but he also knew that this was one advantage of this battleground. In an enclosed space like this room, the sorcerers’ hands were tied when it came to some of their more powerful spells.

Then the attacks on the mind began. The Guard had protection for this as well, but Dara had warned Barson that some mild effects would still be felt. The fear that gripped his whole being, however, was anything but mild. Still, Barson didn’t let it stop him; he had been trained to face fear and utilize it to his advantage. Running faster, he yelled, “Now!” and lifted his bow into the air.

His men joined him, and a moment later, a small cloud of arrows flew toward the sorcerers. Instead of reaching the target, however, the arrows fell harmlessly to the ground, bouncing off the shimmering protective shield that the sorcerers managed to put up. Barson was not deterred, however. “One arrow,” he roared, signaling a different strategy—one that had been developed specifically to deal with this magical defense.

His men focused all their arrows on one particular spot, magnifying the impact of the strike. It was his sister who had come up with this strategy, and it worked. The combined force of the arrows hitting the same spot caused the sorcerers’ protective shield to weaken, and the next batch of arrows dissipated it completely, leaving Barson’s opponents without their primary defense. Now the soldiers’ arrows pierced flesh, and screams filled the air as sorcerers tried to scatter, running in every direction.

“Contain the perimeter,” Barson ordered, unsheathing his sword. And as the screaming intensified, he and his men swiftly dispatched the remaining opponents.

When it was all over, the floor was red with blood and corpses lay in piles at his feet. Surveying the room, Barson saw that all of his men had survived this portion of the fight.

The takeover of the Tower was complete.

It was a victory as grand as any Barson could’ve imagined.





Chapter 51: Blaise





Blaise slowly became aware of being conscious.

He could still think—which he reasoned meant he was still alive. However, when he tried to open his eyes, he discovered that he could not. As far as he could tell, he had no eyes . . . and no body that he could feel.