Despite everything in his body telling him that he needed to.
Sashaak needed to help him. Laric knew that, but what could he do, and how was he going to get help from Sashaak? Maybe the dragon would sense something from him? But Laric didn’t know what that was going to involve, nor did he know how he could fight past this.
“Interesting,” Talia’s distinct voice said from nearby. Laric tried to move again, but nothing within him worked. “When I had established my little perimeter, I had not anticipated that I would catch such critters within it.”
What could he do? Laric found himself thinking back to some of the lessons that his grandmother had taught him. There had to be something in what she had described of some of the spellslips that he might be able to use to get free from this trap in some fashion. But so far, nothing that he could think of made any sort of sense.
He noticed a figure moving, though it wasn’t getting closer. That had to be significant, but why? Was Talia afraid of getting too close to them? Maybe she worried that they might be able to break free.
“You really can’t move, can you? I suppose I’m not terribly surprised to see the two of you,” Talia said, and Laric assumed that she was talking to him and Rowan, “but bringing a merchant into this is another matter altogether. Then again, this merchant isn’t quite a merchant, is he?”
The shadowy form of Talia started to loom closer.
Laric felt frustration rising within him. And then he realized that it wasn’t just frustration within him—he was feeling the potential within him. It seemed as if some part of it was getting stronger, more concrete.
Not his potential, though.
Sashaak’s.
Sashaak was getting closer.
He tried to filter what he could see out and into Sashaak, though Laric didn’t know if the way he was seeing everything would even be useful to the dragon. Sashaak had been the one to give him a glimpse of where to find Talia, so Sashaak should know something, shouldn’t he?
“Has he revealed that he is responsible for what happened to her?” Talia said, gesturing to Xavier.
Laric wanted to turn, wanted to look over at Xavier. What was she getting at?
It might be a good thing that he couldn’t speak, because if he could, he might have actually said something. He had realized that there were things that Xavier was keeping from him.
“Oh, probably not,” she continued, “because doing so would involve him revealing that he knew so much more than he was letting on. A challenge for someone like him, someone who wants to maintain his innocence and an air of mystery about his role in such things. That is, until he just so happens to return after the attack.”
“There was nothing about what I just so happened to do,” Xavier said.
Laric blinked. He couldn’t speak, but Xavier could?
That peculiar sense of Sashaak started to loom more potently, and though it was there, it still remained distant in such a way that Laric could not quite grasp it.
Talia stopped moving closer, and she stared at Xavier. “More tricks than I would have anticipated.” There was a hint of amusement in her voice. “But then, you come bearing gifts, don’t you? You aren’t so empty-handed here.”
“You will release us,” Xavier said.
“Will I? And if I don’t, what do you think is going to happen?” Talia cackled. How could Laric have ever thought that she was helpful to them? There was a real darkness, and a bitterness, to the way she laughed. “Do you believe that I am in any way afraid of what you might try? Others will come soon. I have seen to that, so it is just a matter of time. And I have the time to spare. Soon the entire council will be upon you. Then what will you do? What will your town do?”
“You won’t harm those people,” Xavier said, but even as he did, Laric didn’t know what else he would be able to do, if anything.
“I already have proven what I am willing to do,” Talia whispered.
She had suggested that there was something more to what they’d planned here, but what? Power, maybe? If there was power, what kind of power was it? What was its purpose and its source? There had to be some aspect of it that mattered, some way for them to better understand what she was doing and how she had captured them in the first place. Laric tried to focus, tried to hold on to some of that power, tried to understand what it was that he was feeling, but even as he did, it was too much for him. The power that rippled around him was too much.
He had been struggling with it. He did not know if there was going to be any way for him to fight past what was happening here, nor if there was another way for him to be able to do anything, short of just trying to break free in some fashion, yet it felt… He wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but he could feel something.
Then Sashaak’s magic blossomed vibrantly.
And what was more, it seemed as if there was a structure to that potential. It was as if Laric could see that structure, could see the way that it needed to form, and recognized how he had to allow that structure to spill out from him. He had no idea what that was going to require, and he didn’t know if there was anything he could do with it, just that he could see it warming brightly in his mind.
A single word formed with it: “Release.”
He heard it from Sashaak. Laric didn’t know why he heard the word, but he had an awareness of it.
Release?
Sashaak wanted him to release that power. And was Laric the one responsible for holding on to it? It felt like this was Sashaak’s potential, but maybe Laric’s potential was bound up in Sashaak’s, and between the two of them it was somehow linked together.
But he had to release it.
Doing so could be dangerous. Yet not doing so… Not doing so would be even more dangerous.
Laric clung to that for just a moment, then Talia started to come closer.
He felt that potential inside of him, and he let it go. In doing so, it spilled out of him, and away from him, exploding into thundering bits of energy that rippled outward.
There was a gasp, and then Laric could move. He jerked his head around, already starting to think about one of the other spellslips that he could form—before immediately changing from a spellslip into one of the spellcraft forms that he had learned from Sashaak. He was not going to suffer here because Talia thought to hold them hostage.
He couldn’t see where she had gone, but he could feel that power expanding inside of him, that bit of potential, and he began to create a haze of heat that formed in front of him, gifted by Sashaak in some manner.
“Release,” Sashaak said again.
And again that energy spilled from him.