“What about the portal thing?” Marci asked. “Could you still do that? Like, could we open a portal under Vann Jeger’s feet and drop him into a lake of lava or a black hole or something?”
“I’ve done both of those, actually,” Amelia said with a smile. “But there’s something else I haven’t told you. Watch.”
She stuck her hand out in front of her, and Julius flinched instinctively, bracing for the sharp bite of dragon magic. A bite that did not come.
“Um, was something supposed to happen?”
“Yes,” Amelia said glumly, dropping her hand. “And that’s exactly my point. Thatshouldhave opened a portal large enough to drive a truck through, but I haven’t been able to open so much as a pigeonhole since I woke up.”
Julius stared at her. “You tried to open a portal from my couch?”
She nodded. “While you were on the phone. But as you see, it didn’t work.”
“Why not?” Marci asked.
“I think it’s the injuries,” Amelia said, patting the bloody towels covering her chest. “Rapid healing and cutting through the fabric of time and space both require a lot of magical oomph, and apparently I don’t have enough to do both at the moment.” She reached into the bag on her lap for another taco. “That’s why I’m eating so much. I’m hoping food will help get me back up to speed. Well, that and tacos are freaking delicious.”
“Could it be something else?” Julius asked, remembering Chelsie’s theory that Amelia might be compromised. “We know Estella did something to you, and ruining your ability to portal would definitely count as effective sabotage.”
“It would,” Amelia said with her mouth full. “But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. Messing with a dragon’s magic means messing with the core of what makes us what we are. That’s not something you can do without the victim noticing. I mean, even if Mother had knocked you out for the process, could you overlook your seal?”
Never. “Then I guess we’re just going to have to wait and hope your power comes back,” Julius said, defeated. “Because, barring a miracle, I have no idea how we’re going to beat Vann Jeger without you.”
“I don’t know about that,” Marci said, tapping her lip in the way she did when she was thinking of something big. “Vann Jeger’s a tried and true monster, but at the end of the day, he’s still a spirit. What if we tried banishing him?”
Julius frowned. “Does that even work on spirits his size?”
“Why not?” she asked. “Spirits vary wildly in size, intelligence, and ability, but—as your sister explained to me earlier today—they’re all just basically sacks of sentient magic. If that’s true, then, mechanically speaking, Vann Jeger should be no different than the tank badger spirit we pulled off that dude yesterday.”
That didn’t sound right to Julius. “I don’t know—”
“It’s very simple,” Marci said, digging a piece of casting chalk out of her pocket as she sank to her knees and began sketching a circle on the scuffed hardwood floor. “One of the core tenets of Thaumaturgical Theory is that all magic can be reliably manipulated regardless of the source. That’s why, unlike Shamans who just grab whatever magic is available and throw it around, Thaumaturges always take the time to write out our spells, because no matter how crazy the magic might feel when you’re pulling it in, it all acts the same once you put it through your spellwork. It’s just like electricity. It doesn’t matter what generated it or even what form it arrives in. Once you run that current through a voltage regulator, it’s all just power.”
“We’re still talking about alotof power,” Julius reminded her.
“Doesn’t matter,” Marci said. “If Vann Jeger is made of magic like every other spirit, there’s no reason the normal banishing spellwork shouldn’t work on him. It’s just a matter of scaling it up.”
“How are you even going to get him into the spellwork?” Julius asked, looking down at the hula-hoop sized circle Marci had just finished drawing at his feet. “The badger was happy to sit on our client, but I don’t think Vann Jeger’s going to stand politely in one place.”
Marci smirked. “He will if we draw a big enough circle.”
“She’s right,” Amelia said excitedly. “This whole thing started because Vann Jeger wanted to fight a dragon. If we give him what he wants, he’s not going to leave the battlefield, so if we draw a circle aroundthat, he might not even notice he’s in a trap until it’s too late.”
“How is he not going to notice?” Julius asked. “We’ve done a lot of banishing jobs, and the spirits never look happy about it.”
“That’s because I generally trap them in a ward first so they can’t get away,” Marci explained. “They’re struggling because they’re stuck, not because of the rest. At the simplest level, banishing a spirit is just a transfer of power from one place to another. Once you’ve got your target trapped in your circle, you suck out its magic to shrink it down to a size you can manage, and then you use the magic you just took to power a spell that will banish the spirit back to its domain or bind it or do whatever it is you want to do.”
“And again, how is that not noticeable?” Julius said, exasperated. “You’ve sucked magic out of me, remember? It’s not exactly a subtle operation.”
“That’s different,” Amelia cut in. “You’re a dragon. We make our own magic. If a mage takes some, then we’re left with a gap until we do something to regenerate what we lost, like eat or sleep. This makes us very attuned to even minor changes in our power, but spirits are different. They’re more like empty pots that magic gets poured into. This doesn’t mean they won’t notice when they’re getting empty, but if they’re busy with other things—like, say, a long-awaited epic fight with a dragon—they might not notice someone siphoning off the top until it’s too late.”
That was encouraging, but, “How would we even get an ‘epic fight with a dragon’? You’re down for the count, remember?”
“Iam,” Amelia said with a smirk. “But you’re not.”
Julius’s eyes went so wide they hurt. “You’re joking.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
