Page 34 of Bonds of Magic
He walked creakily back behind the bookcase, and a few thumps and one clang later, reappeared holding what looked like a thirty-pound Nerf gun—if Nerf guns were made of silver and gold, and had visible gears, hand cranks, and bells.
“Now, I’ll need a volunteer for this,” Karve said, holding the device to his chest. “Does anyone have a piece of jewelry or a watch containing multiple metals or alloys?Notyour vocator, please. Those have enchantments that would complicate this demonstration.”
A murmur ran through our group, but no one raised their hand.
“I promise to return it unharmed,” he added.
Finally, Crystal Marks stepped forward. “You can use my necklace, I guess.” Her hands went to the back of her neck as she undid the clasp.
“Thank you, my dear,” Karve said, as she held out a thin chain with a heavy pendant that looked like an acorn. “Hold it right there.”
The acorn swung at the end of the chain, shining in different shades of silver and what might have been white gold or platinum. Crystal looked nervous, and I couldn’t blame her.
“Now, if I can just remember how to work this,” Karve said, hefting the device so the gun pointed directly at the necklace in Crystal’s hand.
He turned a dial on the side of the gun once to the left, then to the right, then to the left again. Next he spun one of the hand cranks, which caused a small piece of metal to slide to one side, revealing a button beneath it. He muttered an incantation under his breath and pressed the button.
The gun groaned to life, gears twisting on both sides as the body of the device shook. A bell rang and a little vent popped open on the top, letting out a puff of steam.
“Professor Karve?” Crystal said nervously. “What’s happening?”
“Don’t fret, child,” he said. “It’s all working exactly as—”
The end of his sentence was cut off as bright light flashed out of the gun in a widening circle, reaching the necklace and enveloping it in a golden glow. Crystal gasped when the light hit her fingers and dropped the chain, but the necklace remained aloft, hovering inside a sphere of light.
Then it began to break apart.
First the chain pulled loose from the acorn, and then the acorn began to unmake itself. Streams of liquid metal spun off of it, forming smaller, molten spinning spheres within the large ball of light. The chain unknit itself and reformed as another sphere, it too revolving around an internal axis.
“You see?” Karve said, grinning out at the class. He looked every inch the mad scientist. “It has separated the necklace into its component elements, and rendered them accessible for further use. Of course, we plan to return the necklace to its original state, but as you can see—”
He took one hand off the gun to gesture at the large sphere of light that contained the spinning orbs, and the gun immediately drooped. The sphere dropped with it, hovering inches above the ground, and Crystal let out a little shriek, her hands going to her cheeks.
“Not to worry, not to worry,” Karve said, bringing his free hand back to the gun and struggling to bring it upright again. “Just got away from me a little bit, but here we are, no harm done.”
As he slowly brought the tip of the gun back up, straining with the weight of it, the sphere rose again, resuming its rotation in the middle of the room. Crystal let out another gasp, but didn’t take her hands away from her face.
“Alright, now how do I reverse the process,” Karve said, talking to himself in a way that didn’t inspire confidence. “Is it the second lever, or the first?”
He tugged on a silver lever on the underside of the device, and more steam whistled out of the top vent. The sphere began to expand, and the smaller orbs fragmented, exploding into miniature galaxies, rapidly expanding outward.
“Hm, no, that’s not right. This, perhaps?” he said, seemingly completely unaware of the fear on Crystal’s face, or the way the entire class was backing away from the rapidly increasing ball of magic.
He turned a dial, different from the one he’d used to bring the gun to life, and the device began to shake again. In response, the sphere of light stopped expanding, but it too began to shake, and grow even brighter, which I didn’t think was a change for the better.
The sphere was almost touching the bookcases now, and we’d all backed as far away as we could, peering out from between the stacks. I didn’t know what would happen if the sphere touched one of us, and I didn’t want to find out.
“Canyoudo something?” Ash hissed at Felix.
“Not my kind of magic,” Felix said, his brow furrowed. “But if I understand the separating device correctly, what he needs to do is—”
“Ah, no, of course not,” Karve said loudly. “Here we go.”
He tapped out a sequence on a set of keys along the side of the gun, which caused a new window to open, displaying a crystalknob that he turned firmly to the left as he called out a second incantation.
Immediately, the sphere contracted, and the tiny metal galaxies reformed into the liquid metal orbs they’d been a minute before. We watched in awe as the orbs unraveled back into metal ribbons, then knit together to reform the acorn pendant and delicate chain that held it.
“If you’ll simply reach in and grasp it, Ms. Marks,” Karve said, “you should find that all is in order.”
