The book had opened my eyes to the possibility of shadow slipping, but it hadn’t offered any clues on the methodology. All I had to go on was my one experience shadow slipping with Brin.
It wasn’t much. Then again, I’d done some miraculous things on less.
For now, I’d concentrate on unraveling the spells covering the oubliette’s walls. That had to come first. Everything else was meaningless until they were down.
Facing the nearest wall, I activated my other sight again. It was just as complicated and exhaustingly complex as it had been under my first examination.
There were two ways that I knew of to unravel a magic working. The first took the longest. You concentrated on one spot. Teasing the snarled knots of magic until you could gently pull them apart. Much like you might if you had a tangled ball of string.
The second was faster, relying more on brute force than anything else. With that method, you sucked away the power behind the working to render it inert. It required a lot of concentration. Willpower too. If you wavered even a tiny bit, the spell would rebound. A dangerous situation that could leave me brain dead or comatose.
For what I was about to attempt, I had a feeling I would need both methods.
Moving closer to the wall, I hovered my hand just over a spot where several patterns intersected. I was careful not to touch, afraid of setting off the built-in defenses.
Mentally, I prodded the spell.
The magic lashed out. A lance of blinding pain speared my temples.
“Ouch. Shit. Fuck. Damn.”
I backed away, cradling my head as a throb took up residence behind my eyeballs.
Someone had booby trapped the oubliette’s spells to deter magic breakers like me
“Brin,” I growled.
I could see his trace in the weaving. Somehow, he’d managed to tweak the spell. Just enough to hurt and not permanently damage anyone who tried to mess with it.
Tossing a glare at the wall, I gave into my need to pace back and forth. “Quite the boy scout, isn’t he?”
His level of preparation was frightening. As was his ability to anticipate what I would do next. Either the man was a genius tactician or he understood the way I thought.
Probably a little bit of both.
I stopped to face the wall. “Be as stubborn as you want,” I told it.
He had no idea how much I could endure when the word “no” or “you can’t” came into play. It was my greatest superpower and my biggest weakness.
Going at the pattern headfirst might not work. But what if I came at it sideways?
Earlier Alches had been both here and in the shadows at the same time. One foot in two worlds, so to speak. If I could do something similar, it might blunt the rebound effect.
Book had said I couldn’t travel from here using the shadows. A rule I suspected didn’t apply to realm guardians. But nothing was said about halfway sliding into them like Alches had done.
It might just work.
There was a rustle of movement from behind me.
“You’re an idiot,” Book declared, running a hand through his hair to leave the curly brown mass disheveled.
“Look who finally decided to stop hiding behind ink and vellum,” I drawled, the majority of my attention still focused on the spell.
Book folded his arms across his chest. “I had no choice. You’re going to get yourself killed. What kind of idiot decides to shadow slip five minutes after learning of its existence?”
“Aren’t you the one who brought it up?”
“Yes, but I didn’t think you’d actually do it.” At my incredulous look, he rolled his eyes. “At least not before learning the basics and considering all the pros and cons.”
