His friend choked before bursting into a fit of giggles.
“It’s notthatfunny!” he snapped.
Noble’s eyes narrowed on his grimoire. “Is there ever a time it’s not mocking you in some way?”
He pursed his lips. “There was once or twice…” Giving his head a shake, he sighed and looked back down at the book in his hand that was actually helpful. “More importantly…spells.”
Ollie frowned as he flipped through a few pages, reading as he went. “It seems the first few spells are all about detaching a ghost from an individual, with one specifically focused on permanently re-anchoring a ghost. Considering in this case the anchor would be a person, it makes sense to do that.”
He turned a few more pages.
“The next part is for objects, so the last section should be for places. Let’s see…we’ve got re-anchoring from one place to another, permanently re-anchoring again, which is surprisingly very different when a location is involved compared to a person…and—aha! Found it.” He beamed. “‘Temporarily Re-anchoring a Location-Bound Spirit’. There are two different versions of it—one for when the new anchor is a person, and another for when it's an object. The only difference between the two appears to be the symbol drawn on the temporary anchor.”
“How temporary is temporary?” Noble asked.
“It says the duration is twelve hours, but you can end it early by erasing either of the symbols you drew.” He frowned. “Based on the droplets, it's ranked as a ten difficulty-wise, though I’m not sure why, because it seems pretty simple and straightforward.”
“It being ranked as a ten is less about casting difficulty and more about how draining the spell is once cast,” Red said as he padded into the room.
Red eyed Ollienarrowly as his witch sheepishly smiled down at him. The man’s freckled face was no longer red, and the soot had been cleaned away, but he was definitely running out of baby hairs at this point. “Exploded tree cleaned up?”
“Yes,” he grunted in disgust. “Now, about the spell. It is in fact almost effortless to cast, and just as easy to end. But the temporary bond is maintained through a constant, very direct connection to the caster’s magical pool.
“While spells that draw on a witch’s magical pool to sustain themselves, rather than being completely fueled by their actual energy source, tend to be more stable—and easier to maintain—the fact is that with this spell, both will be used up quickly. The temporary anchoring will completely drain the caster in every way it can until either the twelve hours are up, the spirit hasmoved on, thus breaking the anchor, the spell is ended early, or…”
“The witch passes out?” Jahla mused.
He smirked. “No, I was going to say, until the witch dies.”
“I could die?!” Ollie squeaked as the woman gasped and looked toward him in concern.
Red shrugged. “It’s a very real possibility for those with shallow magical pools who are foolish enough to not only cast the spell, but also ignore their body’s warning signs of impending collapse. The ranking is very much set as a warning for new witches, as they are most likely to be the ones with shallow pools.”
“So again, I say…I could die?!” his witch cried again dramatically, his hands gesturing as if that made his point.
Chuckling at the theatrics, he mused, “A possibility, but an unlikely one.”
“You say unlikely, but I am a new witch, soo?—”
“Yes, but you are unlike most new witches. Considering the magic you’ve pulled off already, I doubt it would be able to drain you fully in a day, let alone twelve hours,” Noble pointed out gently, because, for some reason, the hunter loved to coddle his witch.
Which was completely bizarre to Red, especially considering what the man had done, and what his feelings had no doubt been towards witches in the past. He supposed the witch hunter was clearly ‘in love’… or at the very least, infatuated enough to be overprotective of Ollie’s feelings.
To Red, as Ollie’s safety mattered a hell of a lot, his feelings had to always come second, because he was dealing with a baby witch who could blow up far more than just the tiny tree that he’d accidentally obliterated in anger.
“You two do realize that ‘I doubt’ and ‘unlikely’ still mean you're not a hundred percent sure, right?” Jahla huffed.
Whimpering loudly, Ollie took Jahla’s hands and lamented in a tone that suggested the world was ending, “My best friend who always understands!”
The woman snorted. “I wouldn’t say always.”
“ALWAYS understands me in every way possible,” the witch reiterated sternly, as he stared intensely into Jahla’s eyes.
Eyes which she rolled as she sighed in exasperation. “You are such a dork…”
Ollie tugged his hands away with a fake, indignant hmph.
“If you are done with your dramatics…while I can’t fully explain why you are able to do what you have so far, I am sure this spell, advanced or not, will give you little trouble.”
