William immediately began inspecting what he could see of the magical formations surrounding Alexander Goddard… though he kept half an eye on him as well. It was still theoretically possible for him to use magic, even with only half a jaw- as long as the pain didn’t stop him and he was confident that he could. Though he couldn’t run William also didn’t want him to kill himself somehow, without arms or legs or the ability to bite his tongue. The laser had mostly cauterized his wounds, so he wouldn’t likely bleed to death.

Currently, Alexander was passed out- but when he woke up he might be able to use ki to kill himself. If he thought about it, he probably would. Unfortunately, William couldn’t do anything about that from outside the cell without killing him. Or at least, he didn’t know what yet.

Lorelei had found her way over, “Ooh, these are pretty good! Though, they rely a little heavily on having an abundance of magical materials to support some suboptimal details…”

“While I would certainly love to do an in-depth analysis… there are a couple reasons we should hurry.” William pointed toward Alexander, “If he wakes up, it will be a problem… and a dragon showing up would ruin the whole thing.”

“Oh right… that gives us… hours to a day? Depends on whether or not the keep’s wards were on full power.” Lorelei paused thoughtfully, “Dragons must have some excellent magical perception. Why do you think that is?”

“I think… that we will do some research on dragons later.” William frowned, looking over the magical formations, “I wonder if this would be easier to do from the other end?”

“If we could find it. We could have the men start digging but… they couldn’t do much better than follow it along from the outside, and not quickly.” Lorelei paused, “Where’s Lila?”

“Resting. She got her soul damaged.”

“Ah… unfortunate.”

After that, all talking stopped except that which was related to dissecting the formation.

Lorelei commented, “There seems to be a very large power source, perhaps this formation also taps into the thermal energy down below…”

“There should be a weakness somewhere along the way… unfortunately this formation blocks ki- very well I might add.” William frowned, “I haven’t had any luck slipping mana through either.”

Chris tapped against the formation, and was violently flung back, spinning past William’s head.

“Were you just probing or do you have an idea?”

Chris started scribbling on the ground with water, “If we can get part of me through, we’ll have an opening you can do stuff through.”

“The barrier would certainly try to reform but…” William stroked his chin, “It’s probably not calibrated to crush something like you. That said, it’s very powerful so it still might be able to damage you, and getting you through in the first place is an issue. If we could bring up trebuchets, that would be idea… but there’s no room to get them under the gatehouses or to fire them here anyway.”

Chris rolled over his previous words and wrote more, “Why not just use more lasers to wreck some of the stuff inside?”

“Because that is likely to cause violent explosions as it fails, and while we might be safe outside- it would probably kill Alexander. Also, I don’t know about you, but I can’t keep using that kind of magic power forever.” William nodded, “Though, if we find a good spot that’s unlikely to have horrible things happen from breaking, we can certainly do that.”

Chris went back to tapping on one of the walls the safe room shared with the castle. He continued to get violently flung away- an overreaction, but without someone controlling the formation that was all it could do. William would have stopped Chris from moving around independently in the view of others… but he didn’t really care if that was a secret at this point.

-----

William looked down at his lunch… or dinner… or whatever meal it was. Today was better than standard military fare. William tried to eat basically the same thing at his men in most cases… but today they had taken over a castle. There was no reason not to use the ingredients that were left over in some of the kitchens.

Lorelei hadn’t wanted to eat, but William dragged her away anyway. They hadn’t been making any progress, so a break was just what they needed. Lila and Jordan ate with them as well.

William supposed he should have probably been eating with all of the lords, but it wasn’t a convenient time… but later, he would have to have a grand victory feast. Though from the perspective of everyone else they had already achieved total victory, William wouldn’t rest well if they didn’t take care of Alexander properly.

“So, it’s just those connected walls and then slopes down into the ground?” Jordan pondered carefully, “Maybe we could collapse the rest of the castle on top of it? The weight might be able to crush the barrier but… I suppose that’s not really solving your problem.”

Lila clutched her head, “So, it lets light and sound through, what about air?”

“It does let air through, but we can’t manipulate it inside the barrier.”

Lila continued to grimace, “I dunno maybe throw a bunch of sedative gas in there to slow down Alexander’s return to consciousness. Or maybe you could use sound and umm...” Lila shook her head and looked at WIlliam, “How did you handle your soul being damaged?”

William shrugged, “After a gross of years you get used to it. Or go crazy. Or maybe both. The pain will dull with time though. Maybe a few days.”

“Great. I get to live with this for days, and painkillers don’t have any effect.” Lila closed her eyes, “The word I was looking for was resonation? Destroy stuff that way.”

“The destroying it isn’t the problem but…”

Lorelei’s eye’s lit up, “Perhaps if we fight the right resonating frequency for the stone? The magical formations in the walls are supported by it, and they might separate. Either way, it could let us see more. As long as we don’t accidentally collapse the whole place, or break the wrong thing…” William could see that she was already lost in thought of exactly how to do it. He couldn’t say he had any better ideas either, so they would try it.