Jolan smiled at Lase. She reminded him of his mother and his sister rolled into one. It was odd but comforting.
"Okay let's get started. What types of detection or analytical spells do you have."
Lase looked at him blankly for a few moments then she blinked several times, her eyelashes fluttering in a way that made Jolan's stomach knot ever so slightly.
"I want to be a time mage not a knowledge wizard. Why would I have such things?"
Now it was Jolan's turn to look at her but his expression was a combination of incredulity and pity.
He turned his head to the side and frowned in thought. If he were paying any attention he would have noticed that it was a pose his mother often took.
"How do you survive unknown time streams if you do not analyze them?"
He again rewarded with a beautiful, blank, eyelash fluttering look on her face. This time, just as his stomach still knotted, he rolled his eyes and shook his head.
Jolan sighed. "I guess I have things to teach you as well when this is all said and done."
He immediately closed his eyes and began to work, a part of his consciousness staying focused on the spirits and their findings.
He was nowhere near the spell weaver his mother was but he was still better than his father and sister and he knew that this was saying something in itself.
His weave was almost as tight as his mother's and the threading was strong and malleable. The weave spread out before them. Lase tried to focus as much as she could but her eyes and head continually drooped and nodded, respectively.
The weave tightened as much as Jolan could tighten it and then it began to fold and twirl about itself. His hands came up before him, his fingers gently pinching closed over the twirling weave, and he pulled them out, drawing the woven strands out like golden threads of magical pasta.
He pulled, and folded loosely over and over again until he had the number of woven twirled strands that he wanted.
He held his hands upwards before himself and allowed the strands to fall down to the floor of the cottage.
They moved out and sought out cracks, crevices, and nooks and crannies. They looked for any and everything. The important, unimportant, obscure, distinct, all was to be illuminated and identified.
Jolan stood waiting, golden strands of magical weave still hanging from his fingers as they moved forward, for his findings as he sifted his perceptual gaze to the spirits seeking out the formations.
As Jolan worked to understand the cottage Anabel's curiosity caused her to begin to direct the spirits' search.
She watched as the spirits began to understand more and more about the formations. She could not help but be impressed. She narrowed her eyes and directed a spirit examining a formation near a far beach to look at a portion of weave that was interesting.
Her eyes widened as her smile broadened.
She, and her children would definitely have very interesting gains this time.
The formation had a runic foundation and parts of it was etched into stationary, but movable, items. What was fantastical about this specific part was that it was made up of granules of sand that sporadically moved upon a magical formation plate.
The plate itself was of a lightning magic and it had been buried deep at the edge of a forest a few miles from the beach.
It connected the formation to the cottage and the whirlpool. And still it did not tell her enough about the formation.
The other locations were the same dead-end without the interesting find of the unique formation plate. The importance was in the cottage. Anabel marked the plate for easy retrieval and brought her consciousness back to her body.
Jolan's eyes stayed calm and unfocused as his fingers twitched and his wrists randomly and infrequently flipped.
His mother had already informed him of the findings from the formations and the spirits were all moving towards his location to beginning preparations.
The formations were predominately wards and protections. They protected, defended and attacked, for the most part, but there was one command, buried within the weaves, that did seem special.
It was a faint stream of time magic that powered a tiny, weak loop. This loop seemed so weak that it was impossible to think that it could affect anything. But it was a time loop that spun around a month and was set to destroy itself and reset to the present after three full revolutions.
This would confuse many but Jolan's mother was an Alchemist as well as a mage. She performed experiments while she slept and she allowed her children access to her lab like chefs allowed theirs in their kitchen.
Jolan understood that this steam of magic must have been amplified and then refocused around the broad area of the island. This amplification/focus spellwork was not found in any portion of the formation.
And the tiny loop of magic itself originated somewhere below the cottage Jolan was now standing in. It merely pulled power from the formation plates to maintain an even flow of power.
Jolan's fingers twitched and his wrists flipped as his spell weave worked to understand the cottage and its surrounding areas.
He saw the flow of time beneath him. It was in a funnel with the tip turned down and the mouth opened wide and surrounding the cottage tightly.
The weave of the time funnel was tight but not as tight as his own. He flipped his wrist, his threading thinned more, and slipped through the funnel weave to understand the nuances of the time funnel.
His eyes opened as he began to understand the funnel, it's purpose, and its connection with the cottage, the whirlpool and the time loop itself. It was a central piece to the entire formation and a "key" to unlocking the cottage.
The magical threads moved passed this funnel and dropped into an abyss. The magical threads hung limply with nothing to seek, nothing to know. In an abyss devoid of time. Slow bursts of dulled light bloomed throughout the space and still nothing woke, nothing stirred.
Jolan passed his thread passed this abyss of mystical stillness and plunged into a chaos that was overwhelming and mind numbing. It was so intense it almost pulled Jolan into its chaos.
He pulled back and adjusted his threads. He added a coating of a time bracing spell and a coating of a spell for mental stability.
As the two spells floweds down the threads they strengthened and began to quickly spiral down.
Jolan's eyes opened and the threads went limp. He drew them back to himself and then they dispersed into twinkling sparks of light. The sparks first swirled around him and then entered him as both his spells and knowledge they had acquired.
He turned and looked into Lase's sleepy face. He smiled when she focused. "Let us take care of that backlash."
Lase sat forward, excitement smearing her sleepy face in odd ways.
"And we will leave this place this time."
He nodded, a bit flustered by the radiance on her face.
He shook his head and went to work.
It was true that a part of the reason that Lase was so tired was because she remembered all of her experiences in the mini loop she created to save herself. But the backlash from her not fully understanding the formations when she created the main loop made it an exaggerated condition.
Jolan had to bring her soul back together and eliminate the time energy that was essentially invading her being.
The second part would be no problem for him. He was already a high level time mage. His being could handle any type of time variance but he wanted the time energy within Lase because he wanted to study it.
The first part would have been a problem for him if he had not been by his mother's side for more than three hundred years looking for ways to mend Amethyst's soul. He could now be considered a soul spell weaver with all the theoretical experience he had. And that was the issue. It was theoretical.
Unfortunately Jolan held way to much trust in his and his mother's abilities.
Maybe he was over confident, maybe he was too arrogant, or maybe a small part of him wanted to impress Lase but in that moment he decided to do both processes at the same time.
Removing the time energy was so simple for him it was like an innate process. The other he needed to give thought and a bit of concentration to do.
He inhaled and then exhaled deeply.
A spell he had carried for over six decade rumbled and woke within him. It swirled about his magic pathways and flowed out through his pores in a kinetic web that drew what it wanted towards itself.
Lase instantly went to sleep as the time energy was drawn from her being. These particles accumulated outside her body in the form of purple sparkling drops of liquid. They moved together but did not pool. The drops just congregated together and remained individual drops. As these drops accumulated a bubble began forming behind them keeping them in one area. The walls of the bubble surrounded these drops on all sides but left an opening for them to continue to enter the enclosed space.
Suddenly there was a high pitched ethereal scream and Jolan felt an intense sense of anger, malice, and pain.
The ethereal form of an angry Lase came into the room. It rose from the floor clawing and scratching at the air as if it was trying not to move up. As if it were trying to gain purchase on a wall that wasn't there.
The spell swirled and a calm, unemotional ethereal form of Lase rose from her sleeping body. The two forms of this beautiful woman entered the swirling typhoon of the spell. They met face to face each gazing into the other's eyes.
They seemed to be in the midst of a staring contest. The spell swirled around them sparks and threads reaching out and touching them both.
The expressions on the two ethereal forms began changing in odd ways. Some humorous others horrific and still others inhuman. They continued like this for five full minutes and Jolan began to think that his arrogance may have gotten him into trouble as droplets of sweat ran down his face and back.
Then, quite suddenly, their expressions were exact mirror images of each other. The entire time this was occurring the spell had been working. The sparks and threads had been connecting these two portions of soul and the two ethereal souls were connected by webs of spell weave. Sparks going off at junctions connecting the souls to the spell. These sparks first fused them to the spell then began to bring the souls together.
The sparks essentially welded the spell weave and then tightened it with each passing minute by causing it to contract and fuse together.
The two souls began to look like two torn pieces of paper as they moved closer and closer together. As they moved together they became more and more like two halves of a torn whole.
The spell finished weaving them together and his stomach knotted as he opened his eyes and saw the broad smile on Lase's ethereal face.
Jolan released the spell and the typhoon dissipated and the spell weave returned to him with gained knowledge.
Lase's soul form returned to her body of its own accord. If it hadn't it would have been an indicator that Jolan made a mistake.
After two breaths Lase jumped up and did a short round of calisthenics. Jolan's mouth frowned but his eyes smiled and his heart again jumped.
Just as he was thinking he would need to speak to his mother about a physical both he and Lase stopped and stiffened.
They narrowed their eyes just as they heard, felt, and smelled of long exhale of stale breath permeate the cottage.
"You truly are a proficient spell weaver and maybe even a time mage. Perhaps you will complete this and I will be able to finally sleep."