Sorry, ate the owl.

[Sean Hall]

"So your son's a mercenary then? Highest bidder, so on," Sean said as he arranged a new spell circle around the box.

[Isolde Schwarz]

"When it suits him. I can't necessarily judge him on that. I was too."

"But a fair bit of this feels personal."

[Sean Hall]

"Because he's hunting people like Wanda?" Sean asked finishing the arrangement of reagents and drawing another circle.

[Isolde Schwarz]

"And he took the time to call me out before he did it."

[Sean Hall]

"Seems like a lot of hiding if he just wants to challenge you to a fight," Sean said examining a star chart and adjusting some of the runes he was using before beginning the spell. He grabbed a knife and cut his thumb before tracing a slow circle around the pieces of the wooden box. Once he'd finished he with the circle he up a piece of wood and held it over the center of the collection of pieces. The chant changed and shadows seemed to lengthen, the whole world seemed to feel increasingly tense. It was then that Sean snapped the piece of wood in half and the world relaxed. The two pieces slowly dissolved into motes of energy that fell down onto the pieces of the box. Sean hoped the repair spell would work, putting the box and the pattern that had been carved into it back together so he could examine it.

[Narrator]

The box resisted the magic a bit, but the pieces did start pulling themselves back together. He had to quickly secure some parts as they were missing their fasteners to hold them together long term, but eventually the box was pulled back together and most of the vine pattern seemed intact.

[Sean Hall]

"It worked," Sean smiled feeling an edge of fatigue from turning a bundle of debris into a whole box. He opened his senses to the weave of magic to see if the enchantment still held any remnant of the original working that would help define its purpose.

[Narrator]

The working had obviously expended itself and while his spell had restored the physical box, this magic was not really his magic, so restoring the working itself wasn't surprising. He did get some impressions from the residual magic though. The larger working seemed to be about obfuscation and repulsion. That working felt incomplete, so there was probably more to it for which the box was just the anchor. There was the remnants of another working, the one which had destroyed the box and set off whatever the device inside. It seems like it had been tied to several potential triggers, through exactly what they were had been muddied by the box's destruction.

[Isolde Schwarz]

"So what are you thinking we're dealing with, here?"