Sell you a Bridge chapter 267

June 5th 2016 The Moon 6:00 PM EDT

I  had no real idea how to get through the wards on the shelf. Granted, I  was a master at security systems, and my void magic skills were pretty  decent, but actual ward schemas were more of Jim thing, with Zee being  our second string in terms of magic cracking. It was funny because my  girl had never really been a thief, nor trained with my mentor, but just  by virtue of her magical knowledge she was far and away the second most  qualified of us to get through the protections in place over the Eye of  Odin.

Zee walked past me and stood in front of the shelf,  scanning it carefully. She bit her thumb cutely as she studied the  spellwork, her impressive magical knowledge slowly taking apart the  intricacies of the defenses and laying bare their secrets as I'd seen  her do so many times before. I smirked to myself in triumph when she  finally opened her mouth to share her understanding with me, turning to  look at me with a confident expression on her face. She put both hands  on her hips and decisively stated. "I don't know what this is."

I  blinked. "I...wait, what? Then what the hell were you just doing  staring at it? You looked like you were immersing yourself completely in  the magic so you could properly disarm it?" I rubbed the area above my  nose as I felt a headache coming on, retroactively embarrassed in my  confidence in the occasionally flaky love of my life. In my defense she  was usually reliable about magic stuff.

This time she just  shrugged. "It was pretty. The design is really complex and impressive,  but I can't make heads or tails of where it starts or end. Some kind of  recursive mobius structure I think. Either way, void magic or not I have  no clue how the hell I would go about deconstructing something like  that. I'm pretty sure Jim is going to have to be the one handle this."  She shot my mentor an apologetic smile. "Sorry about that Mr. Craddock,  I'm kind of embarrassed but this is pretty out of my depth."

Jim  just waved her off with a chuckle. "No need, dear girl. Learning to  construct wards and learning to break them are indeed similar arts, but  only in the initial stages. In the later levels ward schema are  specifically made to be counterintuitive to prevent cracking. You  education with Nimue has been progressing well for your age, and you've  clearly put quite some time into personal research, but there is no  substitute for experience in such matters, not even talent. Leave this  to me."

He stepped up and raised a hand, his ghostly glove  gliding over the glowing gossamer shielding. Where his fingers traces I  saw the protections I could see with my aura sight flicker into  existence, traceries of lightning in the air. He gave a relieved sigh.  "Ah, good. I had worried that it might be concealed or encrypted, but it  seems that this particular structure is built with other goals in mind.  I won't need to rely on your aura sight for this spellwork Morgan my  boy. Simply give me a moment to study it."

I nodded,  though he didn't see me do so. That hadn't been a request, more of a  notification of intent. I waited a few minutes and stepped up next to  him. "Is this really that complicated? I've seen you crack the wards on  Shadowcrest itself. This is just a shelf, are the defenses really that  much higher of a level compared to Zee's crazy powerful haunted house?"  It was hard to believe this Collector guy had those kinds of resources  at his disposal.

To my surprise though, Jim just shook his  head. "Different goals. This is an internal system. It's designed under  the assumption that the thief will have either snuck past the wards  carefully or set them off and be in a hurry. Zatarra's wards were made  for defense, these are made to be a time sink. They are, frankly  speaking, an incomprehensible mess. They're needlessly overcomplicated  and contradictory in structure because the point is that the thief is  supposed to lost hours trying to sift through the nonsense so they get  caught."

An expression of realization crossed my face.  "Ah, I get it. The Collector is expecting whatever defenses we have  against his wards to break down, if we have any at all. Then he can just  mob us with robots while we're stuck here unable to get what we want." I  paused. "So...is that going to happen? Because if it is I feel like we  should make some kind of preparations, or maybe even run away. I don't  think I can take an army of those robots, they were pretty fucking  powerful when I fought them earlier."

Jim batted his hand  in the air like he was slapping away a fly. "Bah, leave me alone boy, I  almost had it. I said the thief is SUPPOSED to spend hours lost in the  nonsense. I am not your average thief. I can get this open in only a few  minutes if you can shut up and let me focus. Go stand over there and  let me work." His voice wasn't mean or snappish, just distracted. Jim  tended to be blunt when he was in mid task, and I didn't hold it against  him.

I walked over to stand by Zee. Her eyes were fixed  on the apparently entirely visible structure of the wards as Jim worked,  trying to learn as much as she possibly could by watching. I considered  interrupting but in the end I just shook my head and headed over to  stand by Drea instead. I put an arm over her shoulder. "So, imminent  danger aside, that whole thing is pretty beautiful right? Like I see  things like this a lot with aura sight, but I've never seen a ward  scheme visible in the normal spectrum like that before. I guess the  distraction is part of the whole trap."

She rested her  head on my shoulder. "It is pretty. Zee was right. I have to admit, I  don't mind taking a little break while we let Jim do the work getting us  in. We should have down time in more of our operations, it's nice to  take a minute to catch our breath. Though I'm skeptical we could enforce  it in most circumstances." She pursed her lips in mock concentration.  "Say, do you think our enemies would accept a legally mandated fifteen  minute break if we proposed it? Just had them stop the fight so we could  recharge a bit?"

That mental image made me snicker. "Oh  I'm sure. Maybe if we bring snacks for everyone. Some capri suns and a  sleeve of crackers with some kind of dip. Or maybe little cucumber  finger sandwiches and some thermoses of tea, given our recent time in  the UK." I turned and called over to John. "Hey, you guys are  like...legally obligated to stop and drink tea when it's offered right?  It's like that old story about vampires needing to count grains of sand  before they can cross them I think."

He shot me a gesture  that looked like a peace sign, but based on context and attitude was  more like a middle finger. " Sure, just like you Americans have to eat a  whole apple pie every day to wash down your big macs." I snickered at  the acerbic tone. I didn't actually believe any of the stereotypes about  british people, but I was always curious to see how John was going to  roast me back when I brought it up. He strolled over to stand by us to  watch Jim work. "Anyway, do you lot know when he's going to be done? My  hands are itching just sitting here like this. I feel exposed."

The  smirk dropped off my face and I turned to watch Jim seriously. I'd been  trying not to think about the possibility of us being caught. Tommy was  handling the security system, but it wasn't like that was foolproof.  The longer we stayed here the more likely we might slip up and get  caught. I was pretty sure I could handle another dozen of those robots  no problem. I was pretty sure I COULDN'T handle another hundred of them.

Luckily,  Jim's voice floated back over his shoulder, his tone detached as he  concentrated. "Rush a miracle worker, get lousy miracles. Lucky for you  all I'm about finished with this. This configuration is a mess, and the  recursive nature of the enchantment makes it worse, but by necessity its  not exactly flawless. I just need another second and..." There was a  loud zap and a shower of red sparks as the entire defensive structure  dissolved into motes of light, only drawing a small yelp from my mentor  as he pulled back his hands.

He looked back at me, and  after an aura check to make sure there were no defensive redundancies  reached down to pick up the box containing the Eye of Odin. When no  alarms went off we all breathed a sigh of relief, even me, which was  probably stupid because I was the one who gave the ok, but sue me,  things went wrong sometimes. Once that was done I turned to the rest of  the moon base chamber, scanning everything nearby with my aura sight in  an attempt to find some weapons that could be used to charge me up.

The  first reason we came was the Eye, but I also needed something powerful  enough to dump into my void form to get the points needed to pick up the  resurrection artifact for Zee's mom. To do that I needed something even  more powerful than Black Adam's lightning, but preferably spread out  over a longer time. So maybe a few items that were only close to as  strong used all together. I sifted through the racks, looking for any  sort of powerful looking weapon, and I managed to dig up a few of them  from different corners of the room.

First  up was a small and extremely well crafted bronze laser pistol. The  thing was polished to a mirror finish and had a mother pearly grip, with  a few dials on the side of it that could be adjusted to focus or widen  the beam, as well as to turn it up or shift the energy type. I knew  almost nothing about how it worked, but I DID know from the aura that it  was powerful, so I narrowed the beam, cranked the power, and then  handed it over to John. Then I picked up a huge chromed laser cannon,  then a massive yellow blaster with a glowing neon green canister as the  fuel source.

I  passed them out as I found them, making sure that each of my group had a  weapon (Suzie apparently carried a laser cannon on her and waved me off  as I offered, pulling it from seemingly nowhere), even if it was just a  generic plasma blaster, and I stuck to energy rather than physical  damage types. Once that was done I headed to the middle of the room and  had everyone surround me. "Alright guys. Once I'm shifted start firing  right away. Staying in this state drains my energy constantly, so if we  don't keep up the output it'll be counter productive."

They  all nodded and then I shifted. I changed my state to a living shadow,  but as before, I reached out to my bloodline, opening a Hole in the  world as I did it, and BECOMING that hole. I felt myself fundamentally  alter, embodying the void itself, in a way I hadn't felt when I did this  before. Some sort side effect of my bond to Morana probably.  Regardless, I was ready, and everyone started firing. I felt the energy  pour into me, my spirit drinking it in like dry ground soaked up water  in the desert. I didn't use points to sustain myself, but my power, and I  felt my head start to throb. I ignored it. Now wasn't the time for  that. Now was the time to get stronger. I had a life to restore.