The smell of rotting meat washed over me. The footsteps had stopped. Where was he? Right in front of me? Why the hell had I closed my eyes? He could be right there, looking at me, cover spell blown, and I wouldn’t know it. Of all the stupid—!

A grunt. So close that the exhaled air tickled my torn ear. Shit! The moment he moved so much as an inch, he would bump me and my cover would break. I had to act now. I was about to open my mouth to cast the binding spell, when I realized, even if it worked, I was trapped. I’d backed myself into the corner and he was blocking that corner. To get past him, I’d need to shove him aside, and that would break the binding spell. Goddamn it! How could I be so monumentally—

Stop!

Get past him first, then cast the binding spell. Have a fireball ready to distract him—the external kind, easy to cast. I tensed, ready to leap. Then, with another grunt, he turned and walked back into the cave.

The moment his footsteps receded as far as the doorway to that chamber of horrors, I opened my eyes, then recast the cover spell. He stopped at the room entrance, did a quick visual sweep, then, muttering away again, continued down the main passage.

I looked at the boulder. No time for fooling around with low-level magic. I needed to use the major telekinetic spell. It would drain my power supply completely, meaning if it wasn’t enough to move this rock and he came back, I was screwed. Might as well just hand him a limb and let him start ripping.

Oh, stop that. Just because you’d be spell-powerless, doesn’t make you powerless. If he comes back, you’ll do what you’d do in any situation like that. Fight and run, run and fight. He’s a man. Nothing more. You’ll fight and you’ll run and you’ll pray that someone comes to get you out of this hell before it’s too late.

Pep talk over, I rubbed my hands over my face, pushing past the lingering wisps of panic. Then I put my hands against the boulder, dug my feet into the dirt floor, cast the major telekinesis spell, and heaved.

The rock shuddered. I kept pushing. Another shudder, then it began to move, inching up from the depression.

A noise behind me. Thump. Drag. Thump. Drag.

A cover spell flew to my lips, but I forced it back. If I broke the telekinesis cast, it would be an hour or more before I could recast it, and even something as low-voltage as a cover spell might not work now, with my power level so low.

Keep pushing.