He blinked, startled into clarity. Her comment, even if it was intended as gratitude, sent a shiver of fear through his body, throwing into relief the actual weight of the choice he was making here.Shouldhe trust her? He felt some natural inclination to, as if he’d known her in some past life. But his rational mind reminded him of a dozen reasons he should know better.
It was not too late to turn back. But that was not in his nature.
After lighting a ring of candles around the platform, Ellsbeth set her written procedure on a table for reference and began to prepare the ritual space. Rawlins let her take the lead, offering only occasional guidance—where to find the iridium, how best to hang the incense.
The ritual was mathematically advanced, but the elementals involved were relatively common—mostly precious metals, which would be activated but mercifully not consumed by the process. Gold, silver,and copper ingots were laid out in sequence on three intersecting lines, which converged on a focal point at the center.
The quantities needed were determined by the period of time for which they wanted to induce immobilization. “I’m calculating for a five-minute duration,” Ellsbeth said, writing her math out neatly in her notebook.
“Make it two,” Rawlins replied.
She looked up at him, conflicted. “Five is an easier divisor and gives us more time for observation.”
“Two minutes,” he said definitively.
She narrowed her eyes, clearly wanting to know why but able to see he had no desire to explain himself. She relented and went about calculating for a two-minute duration.
In truth, Rawlins was nervous about the possibility of an unintended effect. It was rare for him—for anyone—to perform a ritual that was untested, and in this case, one that was not evenrelatedto any other ritual he had previously performed. He had a solid grasp on the underlying principles, but there were risks, especially with magic that directly impacted a person as its subject. The human body and mind were notoriously tricky targets of arcane mechanical influence.
The ritual was meant to restrain only the wrists of the subject, but with an untested activation, it was always possible there could be spillover. If Ellsbeth’s lungs were somehow immobilized, she wouldn’t be able to breathe. He had a brief, awful vision of her collapsing to the floor, suffocating, which he tried to purge from his mind.
Two minutes might make her pass out; five would be lethal. But he didn’t need her thinking about that while she did the preparations.
Ellsbeth moved confidently through the space, making careful measurements. Rawlins rechecked as she went without finding a single error. Once she finished laying out the last trail of metals, she wasted no time stepping into the circle at the center of the platform.
Rawlins was starting to feel conflicted; surely, she knew the risks, and she had no doubt read gory reports of what could happen to people subjected to untested rituals. If she was certain she wanted to do this, there was nothing to be gained by reminding her of the dangers now; he would only evoke fear and compromise the process. So heasked simply, to clear his conscience, “You’re sure you’re comfortable being the subject?”
She nodded. “I’m confident in my work. And in you to conduct it.”
“All right, then.” He picked up her written instructions and walked around the ritual circle, igniting the incense in four hanging burners, each suspended above a rune inscribed in chalk on the platform. The pungent smoke wafted across the space, already dim in the candlelight.
Rawlins stood at the edge of the ritual circle. He looked at Ellsbeth in the center; she was visibly self-conscious, arms at her sides, feet planted slightly apart. He could see her fear and, in proportion to it, her courage. Admiration swelled within him as he began chanting. “Teneatur corpus.Animiat dormus.”
Ellsbeth exhaled and rolled her shoulders as Rawlins continued, intoning the Latin that she had written. “Teneatur corpus. Membra rigus.”
The metals on the floor began to gleam. In the dim candlelight, theeffect was subtle, but it became more pronounced as he continued the invocation. The faint hum he loved so much pierced the silence;the mysterious droning sound, with no discernible source, enveloped them.
He kept his voice steady and slow, even as his excitement grew line by line—and with it, his fear. It was undeniable that the ritual was working, but the final effect remained unknown. He hadn’t experienced this thrill of discovery since early in his career, and the stakes were heightened vastly by the fact that the mysterious forces he summoned were not directed at some inanimate object. They were very much about to impact a person—one whose body and safety he had, in a short time, come to care about more than he ever expectedto.
So he struggled to maintain his equanimity and the even pace of his voice as he pronounced the final line: “Teneatur corpus. Manus ligatum.”
The glow of the metals on the floor flared to a new level of brightness, and instantly a suffocated gasp escaped Ellsbeth’s throat. Her entire body tightened, and her hands, which had previously been hanging at her sides, snapped together in front of her. Her eyes went wide, and Rawlins felt a moment of panic, fearing he had collapsed herwindpipe or permanently altered some other internal system he could not reverse.
But he could see that she was still breathing. And there was excitement in her eyes.
“I’m okay,” she said, reading his mind.
“Your hands?” he asked. She held them out in front of her, showing that they were pressed together at the wrists, as though bound by an invisible pair of cuffs. He watched her flex and intertwine her fingers, marveling at the unseen force that kept them together.
“Pull them apart,” he said intently. “Try as hard as you can.”
Her arms flexed with the strain, then went slack as she gave up. “I can’t.”
Never had those two words been spoken with such joy and wonder, and Rawlins smiled at her delight. She deserved to celebrate.They had done it.The first instance of writ magic he had ever witnessed. It hadworked.
“Incredible,” he murmured. Her joy moved him, its effortless transparency, and he surrendered to the moment, in ways that again brought him back to his first days as a practitioner of arcane mechanicals.
And then both of their smiles melted, replaced by…something else. A current of electricity coursed between them, shifting the energy in the room.
