COBALT: The Red Phantom (Book One)

Chapter 30: How to Tear a Dimensional Rift (Part 3/4)

          But Zalius returned, a few knicknacks in tow and a sour frown hanging on his lips as he walked through the false wall. He knelt down to let them spill onto the floor, grabbing a thick chunk of chalk and pointing it back at the wall with an accusing frown. "Clean?"

          Káel swallowed. "I sorted it."

          Zalius let his contempt scream in silence, carefully balancing the stick of chalk on its head and muttering a spell for it to start on drawing by itself. Káel felt a little useless standing to the side staring at Zalius, the man orchestrating half a dozen chalk sticks while he placed an armful of candles everywhere until the scent of sweet wax filled the room. The guilt mixed with bitterness when Zalius brought Puff into the mix, getting the little drake to light the candles and leaving him about as useful as Phantom as they both leaned against a wall.

          Káel stared at the lines of chalk, nearly taking the entire space now and laced with runes he couldn't translate. The only detail that seemed to give away ancient lumience. "This looks dangerous." 

          "If you want dangerous, that half shot zodraic battery ritual was about a hundred times more likely to kill you... and the whole school," Phantom replied, the chuckle in his throat running off at Káel's expression. "I'm kidding! It was more like a thousand."

          Káel breathed out a sigh, watching Zalius place the final ingredients down in their own circles. Pixie dust, crystalback venom, a dragon scale, a winter tree branch, and a final ingredient that sucked at Káel's gut when he thought about it.

         His blood. 

         He watched Zalius pull a thin blade from his little mound of materials, pinching it by the tip as to not freak Káel out more while he walked towards him.

         But now that it was all really about to happen, the spirit's actions didn't help much. He could feel the colour ebbing from his cheeks, his gut flopping between trust and fear, friend or foe. He'd done all of this for a creature he'd trusted by their incapacity to harm him in any way, and he was about to break down that wall.

          "It's okay, he's not going to stab you."

          Káel gave Phantom a wary glance, a clear tremble hitting his fingers as he accepted the blade from Zalius. "Phantom, we're really friends, right?"

          He didn't shift at all from the question, arms folded as his shoulders bounced off the weighted question. "Of course."

          "Alright. Good," Káel weakly replied, dragging the stone of doubt in his stomach over to the final circle. He stared at his cut reflection in the blade, grimacing as he placed it to his palm.

          "Woah there!" Phantom yelled, jolting Káel before he went to slice. "Why are you cutting you hand open?!"

          Káel blinked, flattening his tone. "It needs my blood."

          Phantom gave the logic an incredulous scoff. "It doesn't specify how much. Prick your finger or something, coinkidink brain." 

         Káel looked at the blade, a breathless laugh involuntarily escaping while his nerves leaned again towards friends at Phantom's sass. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pricked the tip of his finger and smeared a tiny line of blood in the final circle. "That it?"

         He looked to Phantom to share a joking smirk, his friend no longer leaned against the wall, nor anywhere else in sight. Zalius had placed the rock at the dead center of the drawing, the faint glow of the chalk lines seeming to hold some suspicion in where Phantom's illusion had disappeared to.