The Whispering Vault

“As you wish.”

Grandma didn’t wait for any additional confirmation as she unleashed the torrent of magic she had been gathering. The energy manifested itself as ethereal runes that began surrounding the air around Ozrith. Lines upon lines of them were written rapidly as if scrawled by a host of expert calligraphist.

As the ritual began to reach its finished state, Ozrith would feel a pulling sensation on him. It wasn’t a physical sensation, but something that pulled on the rune of binding he currently wore. There were so far no attempts to remove the rune, simply Grandma poking and prodding at it, looking to discover its mechanisms.

The pull on Ozrith increased as the final rune manifested itself. Grandma watched Ozrith with an unblinking gaze, her body remained unnaturally motionless as she focused on the ritual. Whether or not the rune reacted to this invasion was an important thing for the old crone to see. It would be unfortunate if she attempted to force her way in carelessly and killed the boy…

The ritual continued, but Grandma herself paused for a moment, deciding it would be unwise to take any actions without first thinking things through. This additional rune that appeared would be more difficult to unravel than the obedience rune she had been planning on removing. She also didn’t want to leave Ozrith in this state for too long. Even if his body could take it, he wouldn’t likely take kindly to waking in a state similar to when she had just fetched him from his solitary confinement. However, there was a way she could take out both in one fell swoop, although she’d need to be quick about it.

Raising both hands, ten small silvery shimmers appeared in front of each of her fingers. Her brow furrowed as she gazed intently at the rune on his chest, still revealed by the presence of the ritual she had created. Releasing a small burst of magic, the silvery shimmers shot forward, revealing themselves to be needles, each with a thin near invisible thread attached to the end of them. The needles penetrated the skin around the runes, bending with ease as they began to rapidly wind the thread around the rune while being careful to avoid puncturing any internal organs, in particular, his heart that was directly under the runes. Within mere moments, the faint outline of a cocoon of threads was visible, wrapped around the runes.

Releasing the ritual entirely at this point, Grandma turns her energy towards the strings now encircling the two runes. Using the strings as a point of circulation, the old woman begins to cycle a powerful silencing spell through them, her intention to erase all signs of the rune. Simply channeling such a spell towards him would suppress the runes, but with a conduit for the spell to flow through and focused on a specific area, she aimed to outright destroy the runes.

The threads were gone, but they had already served their purpose. Now that Grandma had marked the area she wished to strike, she could take greater action now. Body trembling slightly as she drew upon more and more magic, the old woman was well aware she was pushing what this body could take. Still, using a more magically efficient yet slow method wasn’t something that appealed to her at the moment and so she continued to pull in more and more magic.

A palish white, near translucent globe, appeared around the defense rune on Ozrith’s chest. The globe hung there for a long moment, not a single movement coming from it. Then Grandma let out a long sigh as she unleashed all the magical energy she had been building up. A gust of wind rushed through the vault as the palish orb began to rapidly shrink. As it grew smaller, its brightness transitioned from no more than a pale white to something akin to a pinpoint of blindingly bright white light that one might expect to shine from the heavens.

As the orb shrunk, the magic of the defense rune was pulled along with it, soon confined in a very small space indeed. Suppressing a cough, Grandma raised her left hand, a snap of her fingers resulting in the pinprick of light to be consumed a pinprick of black, the void. With the defensive rune removed, Grandma allowed the small summon of the void to unravel lest it does serious harm to Ozrith’s body. Walking closer to Ozrith, Grandma began inspecting the obedience rune once more.

Extending one of her wizened hands towards Ozrith, Grandma gently caressed the now defenseless rune on the boy's chest. In a single precise motion, she traced the outside of the rune with her index finger. The briefest of smiles touched her lips as the rune crumbled away, its magic dissipating. What the boy now needed was some rest. Turning her back to Ozrith, Grandma withdrew from the chamber. There were others matters in the vault she needed to attend to and if the boy wasn’t bright enough to search her out when he awoke that was his problem.