Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
“No idea. I didn’t bother asking. They have a very strange sense of humor, these basajaunak—”
“I think you do,” one shouted, and the rest laughed.
“Don’t mind them, they’re still drunk,” he muttered. “Here. Drop that into the fire. No, not that one, the other one. In your left hand.”
“Use your words,” I mumbled, reaching over the cauldron. “Is this going to scorch me?”
“No. It’s slow acting. But back away after.”
I did as he said. As I backed up, the pounding within me slowed to a halt. I stopped with it and cocked my head.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” Sebastian said urgently, “but get your little ass over to this pan and prepare to drop that what’s-it-called into the stuff.”
He was clearly frantic. He only got this way when a potion was about to turn. As intricate as this potion seemed to be, it was probably constantly in a state of about to turn.
The silence within me was deafening. No emotions. No intentions. No expectations. No danger. Nothing. It was like the magic spell had switched off.
“Are they dead, maybe?” I whispered as sweat broke out on my forehead.
“No,” Ivy House said. “The spell is giving you time to focus before battle.”
And now my heart started hammering. Given Ivy House’s way of doing things, that would mean right before battle.
“We have to get out of here,” I said urgently, standing over the pan and holding the bag of powder he’d indicated upside down, securing the top with one of my hands. “Do we expressly need this potion, and if so, how long until it’s done?”
“When you drop that powder, I need you to put in a burst of magic with it. You know how. Three—two—one—drop.”
I maintained hold of the bottom of the bag and released the top, dumping the contents.
“Of course we need this potion! This will theoretically slap a cap down over the mages. A dome, I mean. Like the dome at that challenge however long ago? That’s what gave me the idea. Here.” He handed me a spoon. “Stir that pan stuff. Pour all the terror I see on your face into stirring. Go, go.”
I did as he said. He moved faster now, visiting the book again, going to the cauldron.
“That dome will last for a bit, and then it will shrink to encompass their weakest member.”
“Their weakest member?” I asked.
“Yes. The one we’ll leave alive to tell the tale. Stop stirring. That’s good. Grab the red…flower…leafy thing from the…thing there. Gotta hurry. Gotta hurry. Here we go.”
I grabbed the bright red flower with green sprigs from the stump as he added more ingredients to the cauldron and started moving the spoon in the opposite direction.
“Can’t let it make all the decisions, can we?” he muttered. Then he talked louder for me. “With the amount of power in the dome, we’ll have probably ten to twenty minutes, give or take, before they pick it apart with whatever potions they brought. They’ll have multiple things to get them out of a trap, they’ll just have to find the right one. Maybe use two, we’ll see. Your added power will throw them for a loop, as will the complexity of this potion. Drop that flower into the— No! Not the pan, the pot. Into the pot there.”
“With magic?”
He paused and raced back to the book, finding the spot with his finger. “Magic, yes. A crapload, if you can manage it. The more magic you drop in, the more time you’re buying us.”
I did as instructed while he continued to explain, working as he talked. That combination helped him focus.
“While they’re trapped in the dome, we’ll unleash hell on the ground crew. Austin— Steele— Alpha—”
“You’re starting to sound like your best friend Edgar,” Nessa said.
“What a thing to say,” Sebastian muttered as Edgar said, “Oh my! I didn’t know we’d progressed that far past the ‘getting to know you’ stage.” He beamed.
“You’re making a very dangerous enemy,” Sebastian told Nessa.
“I hope so. Otherwise, I’ll get bored with all these new friends.”
He shook his head and kept muttering to me. “Alpha has underestimated what he’s walking into. The ground crew will be powerful and large. They aren’t taking any chances with you this time. You’ve rattled them.”
“How do you know that?”
He jerked his head my way before going back to the cauldron. “Stir that pot. I had the basajaun—Dave—take my phone to get a signal. Saw a message from someone in my network. It seems the fear you instilled worked too well. We don’t have the people. We need a crutch. This is that crutch. We batter the crap out of the ground crew, kill as many as we can, and then we go back to the mages. When they emerge from the dome, we’ll pound them with attack spells. After they get their defenses erected, we’ll play defense until the shifters can hopefully kill the rest of the ground crew and move on to the mages. It’s the best option we have—”