The Tomb of the Maharal Part 6

The Templars have been hired to track down a pair of grave robbers before they meet their end. A simple job, more than likely not, nothing is ever simple for the Templars

“Charlotte,” Augustine snapped, forcing her to open her eyes yet again. She sighed, sitting beside a bookshelf, trying not to look at the man she had come to call father. She was trying and failing because of Augustine and Dyson to calm her mind. If -they would let her �" she could slow her thoughts, fold them back into her mind and do the one trick her true father had taught her before his death, that was how to feel powerful spells written down in books. The spell which had given birth to the living stone had to be one of pure power and a rare thing at best.

            Her father -my true father �" was a Wizard for the Royal Magic Warded of England and quickly understood his only child had an innate understanding of magic. Magic was dying in the world for a reason unknown to the powers that be. The art of being able to wield magic and to pull it from spell books was all but lost to time and history. The Dark Ages had come at a time when the world was weakened by something horribly powerful in the realm of magic and this thing, a monster, a demigod, the devil, had mostly destroyed all the knowledge of the magic throughout the world. There were countless stories, a hidden history in the books lining her father’s library about the event. Books she would spend hours reading trying her best to find out what was happening to the manna of the world and why it was dying.

            “Charlotte,” Augustine shouted, stepping around the bookshelf to see her on the floor with her legs crossed and her hands resting on her tights. “Oh, sorry,” he said, stepping away. Charlotte nodded, watching the man who saved her life from the airship that day but couldn’t stop the by air pirates from killing her family walk away. She closed her eyes, trying to remember how to hunt for a spell in a place full of them.

            She recalled then and there when she was a child reading in her father’s library. He had spellbooks all over the place, but like many spellbooks, they had protected spell cast over them. She thought, at first, she couldn’t read them, but one day, while her father was taking his two o’clock nap or something, she started to hear a whisper.

            Her seven-year-old ears picked the sounds, not the words, there weren’t any words being spoken, and she followed the whispers to a large book across the room. A giant spellbook which was written by the wizard Merlin himself. She opened the cover to the book and watched the words faded into sight and started to read them like it was another fairy tales.

            “By Merlin’s beard,” her father said a few hours later with a smile riding on his face. “Look at what you can do.”

            After that moment, she became close to her father, and he taught her to the best of his ability how to use magic while they traveled the world and gathered magical items and spellbooks for the Empire. She guesses, eight years later as she sat in the tomb of the Maharal with the Templars not much have changed.

            She opened her eyes and realized she stood in front of a white stone bookshelf, well, it once was white. Time had dulled the marble of the stone, making it almost have a yellow tint to it. She ran her fingers along the spines of the massive books. She knew, could feel, the eyes of Augustine and Dyson on her watching her hunt for the book. Dyson whispered something to Augustine along the lines of pointing out how skilled she was and how much of a waste Augustine was causing not making her use her power.

            But Augustine never stopped her from studying her magic. He allowed her to follow whatever path she wished to go down, and for a while, a long while, she didn’t care to have anything to do with magic. It was too painful to use the gifts her father had blessed her with as a blood rite.

            The more she tried to pull away from understanding magic, the stronger magic seemed to come racing after her. There was no way to get away from it. It was as if she was trying not to eat when her body was begging her to do so. It was only a matter of time before she would be broken down and go hunting for food.

            She stopped on a book in the middle of the shelf and slowly pulled it out. The book weighed more than she thought it would be and she dropped it to the floor. She went down with it, going to open it but stopped for a moment.

            “Remember,” her father’s voice said from years ago,” spell books are always protected with magic. Feel for the magic to find the trap within it. Always, my child, always be careful when you are opening someone else’s spellbook.”

            Charlotte placed her hand over the cover of the book a few inches above it. Her mother’s rosary scraped the cover before she closed her eyes. She took a deep breath, feeling the curling snakes squeeze deep in her stomach slithering up from the pit and wrapping around the bones in her arm. The manna bit into her bones of her hand, making her wince for a second, tapping into the manna of creation was painfully but over time, the pain giving away to a sense of pleasure. She imagined it was a lot like making love.

                She closed her fist and tried to force herself through the pain, and then she slowly opened her fingers, one at a time, and let go of the manna as it poured over the book. Augustine and Dyson couldn’t see the two snakes wrapping around the book, but Charlotte could see it in all its’ glory. The snakes squeezed tightly against the cover as the book shook trying to break free, but the protected spell was weak from the lifetimes being locked away. She had to keep pouring her manna into the snakes, not so much bring the manna up from inside her but use her body as a conduit allowing it to pour through her. The manna rushed out like a shot of electricity, coursing through as if she had grabbed onto a power line. She bit the pain back, not letting the spellbook win. Richard’s life relied on her not give up, or they were all going to die.