"What in the voodoo... magic... is going..." I try to ask, but the words won't form properly.
Everything is too heavy.
The exhaustion I've been fighting crashes over me like a wave finally breaking, dragging me under with the particular inevitability of tides that cannot be resisted. My eyes, which I'd forced open moments ago, begin to close despite my best efforts to keep them from doing so.
No,I think desperately.Not again. I need answers. I need to understand what's happening.
But my body has decided that answers can wait.
That understanding is secondary to survival.
That sleep—true sleep, not death, not floating between realms, just simple unconscious rest—is what I need more than anything else.
The darkness that claims me is warm.
Not the cold void of the afterlife. Not the strange in-between of the spirit realm.
Just darkness.
Comfortable.
Safe.
I stop fighting.
And I let it take me.
CHAPTER 4
The Scholar's Burden
~MORTIMER~
"So this will stabilize her long enough so her energies won't keep depleting?"
The question emerges with scholarly precision that belies the concern churning beneath my composed exterior. I've spent centuries perfecting the art of appearing unbothered while internally cataloging every detail, every implication, every piece of information that might prove useful later.
But watching Gwenievere float unconscious in a sphere of magic that I can't fully comprehend tests even my practiced composure.
The sphere dominates the center of the room—if this space can be called a room. We're somewhere between dimensions, in a chartered pocket of reality that Professor Eternalis conjured with the casual ease of someone setting a table for dinner. The walls don't quite exist in the traditional sense; they're suggestions of boundaries, shimmering membranes that separate our sanctuary from the dimensional chaos still roiling outside.
The floor beneath my feet is solid enough, but it carries a particular shimmer that speaks of temporary existence. Walk too far in any direction, and I suspect the stability would fail,dropping whoever dared test its limits into whatever void lies beyond this conjured space.
Not exactly the Academy.
Not exactly anywhere.
The sphere containing Gwenievere hovers at chest height, rotating slowly on an axis that seems determined by magic rather than physics. Its surface is translucent—glass-like but not glass, carrying the particular shimmer of power concentrated into visible form. Through its curved walls, I can see her floating in the center, suspended in liquid light that supports her without touching, cushions without confining.
Her silver hair drifts around her face in slow-motion waves, each strand carrying its own luminescence as if even unconscious, her power refuses to dim entirely. The incantations that typically crawl across her skin during moments of great magic have settled into stable patterns, golden symbols rotating around her body in concentric circles like protective satellites.
Beautiful.
Terrifying.
Mine.
The possessive thought surfaces with dragon intensity that would have surprised me centuries ago but has become familiar since our bond formed. Something about this woman—this fierce, impossible, infuriatingly reckless woman—calls to parts of me I'd kept dormant for longer than most civilizations have existed.
