#maaaaaaagic

Time has been a bit scarce for all the writing and art I wish I could do (art especially is a bit stalled), but I have a bit from the next chapter of Borderland Sorrows to share. Maaaaaagic!! I LOVE WRITING MAGIC! (The stuff in brackets below will be Elvhen, I just haven’t translated yet)

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Nepenthe set the last glyph and could feel all of them now, like anchor points pulling at the surrounding magic. She visualized the threads of magic drifting towards each glyph and imagined picking them up. They felt slippery, loose in her mind and she frowned as she pulled them towards each other, drawing them up towards the center of a dome and weaving them together. A bundle slipped through her focus and snapped back down to the glyph and she winced. This was usually much easier - it was like there was an interference, something itching in her brain that was interrupting her spellwork. [.....spoilers....]

With a steadying breath she tried again, pulling, slowly pulling, twisting the threads together. Please work. The threads twined, trembling with her effort, and the ringing in her ears came back, a jarring discordance. She clenched her jaw, her brow furrowed in concentration. Please, please, please. Hissed words echoed in her mind, jagged, painful. [Come. Deeper. Come] Nearly there.

The threads slipped and snapped back again. She snarled a curse under her breath. The interference was making it difficult to concentrate. Maybe this was the wrong approach. She tried to remember how Abelas had instructed her when she dispelled the barrier - a way of letting magic flow through her instead and how that had felt.

[Come. Deeper. Come]. Nepenthe tried to ignore the whispers as she worked to recreate what she’d done at the temple, focusing on her breathing, the vibrations of the magic. She started to reach for the glyphs again and the discordance became a screech, a pain lancing through her head and settling behind her eyes, prickling like needles. She gasped, a tear leaking from the corner of her eye and her vision swam. This way was worse. Much worse. She released the magic and steadied herself on a trunk, breathing hard.