Chapter 143: A Miracle
Simon wasn’t sure how this would work exactly, but there was no time left to deliberate. Any minute now, Freya’s heart was going to stop, her body was going to spasm as her organs shut down, and she’d be replaced by an abomination that could only ever be a mockery of the woman she’d been, and there was no way he could let that happen.
So, he pulled the trigger. In this case, for once, that didn’t involve saying anything at all. Instead, he moved forward and stood in the gap that he’d drawn to render the runes useless, completing the circuit with his own body.
For a moment, nothing happened, but only for just long enough to make him wonder if he’d screwed something up. That was quickly followed by a tingling that started in his feet and slowly moved up his body as the precisely carved symbols in the ground began to glow with an unearthly light.
“What… what is this?” Freya asked. “What are you doing to me?”
She seemed very uncomfortable about what was happening, but Simon had no way of knowing if that was superstition, or something deeper. At this point, all he could do was watch and wait. He was both the conductor of the circuit and also the off switch. If he stepped out of this spot it would cease working, and all this effort would be wasted.
He didn’t do that. Instead, he ignored her growing fear and his own trepidation, and watched as the light grew and pulsed, and the magic took hold of Freya.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Just half a minute of this, maybe a little more.” He didn’t know how long this would take, though, he was just trying to put Freya at ease as her body started to glow.
The truth was he was in unexplored territory here, and even if he wasn’t, the atmosphere was so charged and dangerous that things felt like they might end badly for him too, and he had some idea of what was going on.
It wasn’t possible to explain any of that to Freya. Instead, he prayed silently as the light of his brute forced magic filled her with forces she would never understand.