Page 8 of Discord
We couldn’t bring the painting down into the library. We brought it to Ripley’s spell room. Her spell room was spectacular. She had painted the walls and floor black, and her altar was beautiful. Reyson leaned it against the wall, while Felix came to stand next to me.
“There’sdefinitelymagic in this painting,” he said. “I’ve just never done this kind of magic before.”
“I have. See this brown? It’s blood. Someone has woven blood magic into the paint.”
Reyson wrinkled his nose.
“I used to paint, but blood is a horrible medium.”
I grabbed Ripley’s athame and started scraping some of the brown paint off into a bowl. Reyson and Felix were both peering over my shoulder.
“Can you teach me this spell?” Felix asked.
“Of course.”
“I’m going to go check on my witch. There is a lot of frustration coming from downstairs, you have everything handled in here?”
“Yeah, definitely, go check on her. You don’t think Dorian and Silvaria are back, do you?”
Reyson just chuckled.
“Definitely not. They would have come to get us, or Bram would have eaten them.”
I waved him off as I raided Ripley’s supplies. She was well stocked. We needed ambiance, even if we were decoding a painting. I snapped my fingers and lit some of the candles and incense.
“It’s pretty bloody cool you know how to do this. I’ve never studied painting, and Ripley never took classes at the academy. Ravyn might know how to do this at the museum, but I’ve never asked.”
That meant a lot to me. I knew something these academy witches didn’t! I could help out, and wasn’t dead weight. I remembered Ripley’s mugwort trick for combining two potions. This was going to need two.
“Tell me more about this mugwort trick.”
“It’s not horribly complicated. It’s just a pinch for normal sized potions, and a teaspoon if you are making a big batch.”
“Amazing,” I whispered.
I gathered what I needed and lit a fire under the cauldron. Icould notbelieve I had met Minerva Krauss the other day. She was a badass witch when it came to curses. I tried not to make too much of an ass of myself when we found her at Ripley’s desk. She was totally smitten with Reyson.
I needed to find out all the little tricks and shortcuts she’d come up with over the years; all of them things that I’d never learned and that she hadn’t published in her books.
I ground the paint with some agate crystals, and my potions had just started to cool. I dropped a pinch of mugwort in a flask, like I’d seen Ripley do, and funneled both potions in. The potions sizzled, then turned a bright blue. This was my first time mixing these two, and I didn’t know if that was what was supposed to happen.
“Did I do it right?”
Felix just laughed and clapped me on the back.
“Yeah, mate. If you hadn’t, it would have exploded!”
“Is Ripley going to get mad if I mess the painting up? I know it’s under her care. I don’t want to get her in trouble.”
“I know her better than you. She’s getting her receipts for when this goes public. It won’t matter then. She wants you to do this, if she didn’t then she would have stopped you by now.”
I nodded and carried my flask over to the painting.
“Clarictus Dracergio!”I shouted, as I threw the mixture at the painting.
Felix and I watched as it stripped away the paint and left the magic behind, exposed on the canvas. It was kind of like a magical paint thinner which I’d first learned about in high school. My teacher didn’t show it to the rest of the class, but he liked me as I stayed late a lot, so he taught it to me me after hours.
“Nice!” Felix said, high-fiving me.
