Chapter 11
The Breach
After several hours of sleep and a hearty meal, Robin felt up to a second attempt at tapping into the Craft Arcanum.
She entered into a trance more quickly this time, as if now her mind knew the way to go.
"Methuselah, I need to talk to you," she said into the vastness.
The old Witch appeared beside her. "Is there no rest even for the dead?" She joked.
"You awaken the powers of other Witches. I need to know how to do that. I need Amon to use his power."
"Has he awoken?"
"No. Is that a problem?"
"Yes. And not your only one. You can't force a Witch to use their power if they are unwilling."
"You used my power to end your own life, which I was not willing to do," Robin argued.
"And is that something you would force on anyone else?"
"No."
"Exactly. You could not do it, not even to save the life of your love."
"Then I just need to wake him up so I can convince him to use his power to destroy the Orbo."
"But he can't wake up until the Orbo is destroyed."
"So what can I do? There must be something."
Methuselah thought, then nodded slowly. "This is a battle that is raging in Amon's heart. If you wish to help him, that is where you must go."
"Amon's heart?"
"His heart, his soul, his dreams, his subconscious. You must enter it. I can teach you the Craft, but it will be dangerous. The heart is a strange place. Not everything will be as it seems, and you may very well learn truths you will not like knowing, about him and about yourself. The soul cannot lie. You will be powerless, and if he dies while you are in his mind, you will be lost in darkness forever, cut off from your body, unable to live or die."
"I don't care. If there is any chance it can save him, I'll do it."
"I thought so."
Robin had to clear away the Craft that slowed the passage of time in order to cast the next one. As soon as she snuffed out the candle, Amon gasped, and for a moment Robin hoped he would awake, but he didn't. She tried shaking his arm. "Amon, wake up. Please wake up."
But he didn't, though he constantly seemed to be on the verge of awakening.
Robin knew she had to move quickly; the more the Orbo spread inside him, the less chance they had of destroying it.
There were a number of languages used to write Craft spells. It held exponentially more power if it was a dead language. Dead languages belonged to the world of spirits, and so could be used to manipulate the unseen forces of the world.
When Robin had first started learning the Craft, it had been from on old book written mostly in Latin. It was a forbidden book, a copy of one said to be destroyed hundreds of years before. She had access to it only as part of her specialized training as a Witch Hunter.
There had been a thrill of excitement the first time she created a Craft spell. There was none of that now.
This Craft was written using Sumerian Cuneiform, a language she didn't know. She had painted the glyphs on her hand while still in the trance, and she could only pray she'd gotten them right as she copied them onto the floor around Amon, taking care to stay within their circumference as she painted them.
When she was done, she knelt above Amon and prayed. She prayed for success and forgiveness. Then she spoke the mantra she'd been told in an ancient tongue she didn't understand.
Immediately as she spoke the last word, her body went limp and she fell. Her head fell onto Amon's chest, but she kept on falling, tumbling dizzily, falling through a silver mirror that splashed and rippled like the surface of a pool, falling into a dark place.