Scholar of Magic (Art of the Adept #3) - Michael G. Manning Page 0,76

skin and a few tendons.

Will was lining up his shot when he heard the sound of breaking glass behind him, followed by the sound of flames billowing to life. That wasn’t a spell. Spinning around, he saw an expanding ring of white fire that seemed to stick to the wall on one side of the entrance to the Nerrow home. Although he’d never made it himself, he recognized it immediately—alchemical fire.

“She’s too fast, Will,” yelled Tiny.

“Forget her, they’re trying to burn the house,” Will responded. The front gate was still intact, so he used the force-lance he had constructed to destroy the lock, then pushed it open. Tiny rejoined him as they stepped into the yard where the baron was using his fire elementals to control and contain the spread of the fire.

Will couldn’t help but admire the man’s quick thinking. Water would have made things worse, and wind would have been a disaster. The door opened, and Agnes poked her head out, “What’s happening?”

“Damn it! I told you to keep the door shut!” yelled her husband.

Will moved closer, waving at Agnes to go back in, while Darla glanced at him for a split second, disapproval in her gaze. She didn’t spare much attention, though; her eyes were still scanning for new threats.

He was almost to the porch when he heard an odd clunk, as though a rock had hit the walkway. Looking down, he saw a large, heavy glass vial beside his one bare foot, with a thin strip of rune-inscribed paper around its neck.

The enchantment was familiar to him, for he’d used it in the past, though this one appeared to be acting according to a timer rather than a command word. It’s an alchemical bomb. The sentence rolled through his head casually as Darla’s eyes widened and she began to run.

Without time to escape or flee, Will did the only thing he could. With one hand he touched the vial, and with a thought he stored it inside the limnthal. When he straightened up again, he saw both Darla and his father watching him warily, waiting to see if he would burst into flames. He ignored their looks; he was too busy doing math in his head. Arrogan said time in the realm within the limnthal runs a thousand times slower, so if the enchantment was going to explode in say, one second then I have… He lost his place once and had to start over, but eventually he was sure it was somewhere just over fifteen minutes. Or more if it had more than a second left, he reminded himself.

If it went off while stored in the limnthal, he wasn’t sure what would happen, but his best guess was that everything he had stored within the limnthal’s extradimensional space would be burnt to cinders. His gold was in there, along with his weapons and other sundries, but he worried most about the expensive cuts of beef and lamb. Losing so much valuable meat would be devastating. He held up a hand as though asking the others to wait. “I’ll be right back.”

Tiny followed him as he re-crossed the street and retrieved his boot. Once Will was reshod, he used the butt of Tiny’s fallen spear to nudge the various vampire parts into a pile. The task was easier than he had expected since most of them had been gradually wiggling themselves closer together before his intervention.

Initially he had meant to simply resummon the alchemical firebomb and let it handle the incineration for him, but as he watched the wriggling mass of vampire parts, another idea came to him. Back when his grandfather had been educating him on the finer points of troll regeneration (and reproduction), the old man had told him that troll parts would fuse together. Will wondered if the vampire pieces would do the same. Or will they somehow differentiate and separate themselves? Will we wind up with two new, mixed-together vampires, or one larger, mixed-up vampire, or just the two individuals that we started with?

“Will, what are you doing?” asked Tiny, nudging his elbow.

“I’m waiting to see if they mix together or separate into the original creatures,” said Will absently.

“Shouldn’t we burn them?”

“I will, just