Strange Aeons [Book 1]

5.That Went Fairy Well [part II]

That's no good, he thought

He could see the fluxes around the hole all right, he could even make sense of them. But as he protruded is magic to touch and rearrange the fluxes, they seemed to slip from his touch, or just move at the last second, completely wasting his efforts to influence them.

«Well?» asked Banshee, her nerves starting to act up, as the water level kept on rising constantly.

«It's not something immediate, you know? Not all of us have inelegant little spells that work shaking your hands in the air. You made me lose my focus and now I have to start all over!» snapped Chico, trying to cover his trail, and his panic. He took a deep breath, focused deeper and tried again.

Nothing.

The fluxes remained beyond his understanding and reach- He started to feel cold sweat forming on his forehead.

He tried again.

The hole slightly enlarged, and the water flux got visibly faster.

«Oh my God you botched it! It will be flooded in a matter of hours!» Banshee was already feeling the tearing sensation of Garaham screaming at them with all his might. «This place has no fucking door or windows! There's no way the water's flooding out!»

«Stop shrieking I need to think!» roared Chico, starting to frantically massage his temples. Uselessly. There was no way to do something fast. They would have needed time, materials and a complex ritual.

«You know what we do in Russia when hole is problem?» Vopros's voice sounded over all the overwhelming panic going around. Chico and Banshee turned to him. «We close it.»

«What the hell do you mean? I already told you, we can't close this thing! We'd need Dispel magic, but only Enforcers know it and we can hardly ask the Chief, can't we!» Chico groaned.

«We don't have to close it forever!» Banshee's eyes started shimmering, and Chico shut up.

«I'm listening.»

«We just have to close it now, clean everything as if nothing happened and then if it opens again while we are not here... well, tough luck, who knows what happened. Am I wrong?»

«Precisely my point.» said Vopros, approvingly. Chico looked at them as if he had just ended up in a madhouse.

That was perfect.

They started to pick up anything they could use to fill the hole. They clogged the spring with cloth, then amassed everything on top of it, and finally moved a nearby bookcase to cover their work, filling it with even more boxes than it originally had. Banshee used her newly discovered Displace magic to remove the excess water, leaving the floor damp but clean. The hole in the wall was no more visible, but their consciences could clearly feel the slow amassing of water behind the patch.

They had just started breathing again, looking anxiously at the incriminated bookshelf, that right beside them a dull, grey light started to shimmer. It was like a blurred window pane through which they could see Garaham's office.

«So.» he said, putting his black and gold MontBlanc in his breast pocket, treating it with the sacredness of a relic, and looked at them, with suspect. «Everything done?»

«With no hiccups whatsoever!» Banshee lied, with a straight-up face.

Luckily for her, there was a light of worry in Garaham's eyes that made abundantly clear that, from the will to punish them the day before, he had long passed on to something more serious.