The dancing candle flames casting a soft, flickering light across the room, clashing with the harshness of the unforgiving cement floor.  It had taken him more than an hour to put each element carefully in place: two sets of candles, cerulean blue and coal black; glassy, smooth stones only tarnished by painted letters from the aleph-bet; and writing, precise and deliberate on the cold, hard floor.

The downfall to ritual magic was the time it took to cast it.  An hour to set each of the pieces, and then nearly that long to imbue the spell that would draw upon their power.  It always left him feeling drawn and somewhat tired by the time it was done.  Aviad rocked back, letting out a loud breath as he finally opened his eyes.  His calf muscles were burning from crouching in place for so long; he leaned back on his hands to take the weight, stretching his left leg out in front of him.

"There, it's done," he announced proudly, as if he expected the others present in the room to do nothing but care.  The spell had taken an hour to set up, and hour to cast, and what felt like weeks of convincing Dervla Bagnold to let him try it.  The funeral home owner had been giving him dirty looks every time he suggested he might be able to improve on the network of defense spells that he'd been strong-armed into helping her recast.  According to her, it had taken years of experimentation to get them just right, and the idea that one overconfident mage could waltz in and blithely make improvements had obviously given her a bile taste in her mouth.

Not that he'd really minded either the dirty looks or the fortnight of convincing.  The latter had given him more than enough reason to stick around for far longer than Dervla would have otherwise tolerated.  And the former -- well, Aviad thought as he cast an exhausted but triumphant grin back over his shoulder in the witch's direction -- that just made it interesting.

"Was that so bad, Freckles?" he asked cheerfully.  Even leaning on his hands was proving to be uncomfortable; he sat down hard on the cement, stretching his legs out in front of him.  The length of time that it would take him to cast the spell had almost been the last straw, but luckily, this sort of ritual wasn't disturbed by anyone moving about inside the circle, so the funeral home operator had been able to go about her normal 'naked wrestling' business undisturbed.  "And just think, it'll take more than chalk and an unruly ghost to crack this one open."