Spirit of the Codex
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Sharon felt pleased to have broken through Richard’s shell. She felt good enough to practice her encantations. When she got back to her room, she pulled out her summoning book.
It was an old, metal codex inscribed with circular symbols that she mostly could not understand. It had been in her clan for generations untold, and was a relic of some power. On the cover a Fire glowed in the center.
Sharon set the book down, and sang a greeting to it with her hand resting lightly on it. Her voice echoed in the bare room, and the spine of the book resonated with it. The Fire flared, and the etched symbols traced in blue light, flowing from the center.
The song wound on, and the book began to sing back in harmony. Two of the circular etchings on the surface leapt off the page and began spinning on the desktop. Faster and faster they went, as they slowly rose and hovered in the air in front of her face. No bigger than the tip of her thumb, they had the appearance of translucent marbles.
They began to glow, having the appearance now of tiny suns over the book, orbiting each other, drawing up the Fire between them.
At her sung command, the clasp snapped open against the desktop, and the pages clinked past, to her favorite passage.
She paused for a moment to trace the patterns with her fingertips, then she began to sing. The summoning song began softly and, Sharon fancied, politely. The Fire descended and made the traces flow blue. As it picked up steam, a number of the tracings separated from the page, and the rings rose to meet the Fire. The rings began to spin, with the largest encompassing the rest as it became a single glowing orb.
At this point, the song was one of welcoming, and the orb sang back, describing what it saw. A cylinder in the midst of the void, three occupants separated by feet of space, but yards of glamour. Webs of glamour everywhere, from the pulsing wings outside the ship to the illusory miles of corridors inside.
In the echoed song, she saw both realities. She could see the three of them confined in the little tube, but also Richard bent over his workbench, working on one of his arcane little firearms. It made her self-conscious to intrude on his privacy, and she cast her gaze elsewhere.
She could see Amy setting the order of battle for her toys as well. As she watched her, Amy paused and turned to look at her. The girl’s eyes gazed up knowingly.
Sharon abruptly sang to release the spirit, and it sang a farewell to her as it left. The rings returned to their positions on the page, and the codex closed. Sharon took deep breaths as she tried to calm herself after that gaze. The Fire returned to its home on the cover, along with the two composition rings.