The Spell Realm (The Sorcery Code #2)(71)
Thinking of Gala distracted Dranel again. He felt something related to her. A sense of urgency. A sense of awe. She was here. And not in the ephemeral presence he had witnessed before, when he’d learned her name. No, she was here in the same way Dranel was here.
Quickly he brought his attention to her and saw that he was too late. She had just become interwoven in a spell. He examined the algorithm of the spell. What the mathematics implied was genius.
It was a way out of this realm—something Dranel had thought impossible to initiate from within the Spell Realm itself.
He reacted instantly. He didn’t want Gala to leave. He wanted to interact with her once more.
He tried to change the pattern responsible for her departure, to stop its unfolding, but it didn’t work. Still, Dranel knew he should be able to do something to that pattern, so he tried again. This time, he attempted to slow the spell down, and that seemed to have a small effect. Even so, he only had mere moments to observe her before she left. Fleetingly, he wondered if this slowdown would harm Gala somehow, but decided that it would not. In the worst case, as a side effect, it could tamper with the timeline of when she would appear in the Physical Realm.
With no time to lose, Dranel began examining Gala and her handiwork. As he marveled at her beauty, he became aware of something else. She was not the only strange pattern interwoven into this departure spell. There was another. Curious, Dranel took a closer look at this other being—and recoiled.
Something about this other pattern filled Dranel with dread—and it was only when he felt it that he realized what dread meant. It was an emotion, and emotions were the reason he preferred never to be lucid.
This pattern evoked a barrage of emotions in Dranel, each one worse than the one preceding it. It wasn’t the pattern itself—Dranel was certain he had never seen it before—but rather the way the pattern made Dranel feel. There was anger and a sense of loss, desperate longing and regret. He felt overwhelmed with feelings. And in the midst of all this turmoil, Dranel wished for one thing above all: for the silence of the Spell Realm to take all of these emotions away.
Before he could even start to contemplate how to regain his serenity, the spell he tried to slow down finished its execution, taking Gala and whatever accompanied her to the Physical Realm.
Dranel stayed behind, his thoughts in turmoil. He wanted to return to his former peaceful existence, but he didn’t know how. Something about what had just happened disturbed him deeply, and he didn’t understand what it was.
As he drifted, lucid, in the pattern-filled world surrounding him, he found himself resenting every bit of noise, every spell that felt like an intrusion. He tried to be someplace where there were no disruptions, no echoes from the Physical Realm, but such a place could not be found.
And as time went on, Dranel slowly came to the realization that nothing would ever be the same again—unless he did something to restore the peace and quiet he longed for.
Unless he silenced the source of his distress.
Sneak Peeks
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Excerpt from
The Thought Readers
Note: The Thought Readers is the first book in a new urban fantasy series, Mind Dimensions. The excerpt below is unedited and subject to change.
*
Sometimes I think I’m crazy. Right now I am sitting at a casino table, and everyone around me is motionless, as though frozen. I call this the Quiet, as though giving it a name makes it seem more real—as though giving it a name changes the fact that all the players around me are sitting there like statues, and I am walking among them looking at the cards they have been dealt. Doesn’t that sound crazy?
The problem with the theory of my being crazy is that when I ‘unfreeze’ the world, as I just did, the cards the players turn over are the same ones I just saw in the Quiet. If I were crazy, wouldn’t these cards just be random? Unless I am so far gone that I am imagining the cards on the table.
But then I win also. If that’s a delusion—if the pile of chips on my side of the table is a delusion—then I might as well question everything. Maybe my name isn’t even Darren.
No. I can’t think that way. If I am truly that confused, then I don’t want to snap out of it—because if I do, I will probably wake up in a mental hospital.